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http://web.archive.org/web/20160210061953id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2013/10/28/its-crisis-time-for-obamacare.html

This is especially true for Democratic senators such as Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina facing tough re-election battles next year in states Obama lost. A group of these vulnerable Democratic senators recently signed a letter to embattled Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking that the March 31st open enrollment deadline for Obamacare get pushed back. Republicans in the House, meanwhile, may seek to increase the pressure this week by again voting to delay the mandate for individuals to buy insurance or face a tax penalty. Calls for an individual mandate delay, fiercely opposed by the administration, will likely becoming overwhelming if the federal website is not functioning seamlessly by Dec. 1. Even if the mandate is delayed, the millions of young, healthy and currently uninsured people the law depends on to make the economics work could ultimately decide paying the penalty is better than buying insurance. That could spark a "death spiral" for the law, an outcome that would be devastating for the Obama presidency and Democrats hopes in 2014 and beyond. The hearings begin on Tuesday but the main event comes Wednesday when Sebelius squares off against Republicans at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. Obama speaks on the health care law the same day at Faneuil Hall in Boston, the place then-Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006 signed the Massachusetts law cited as the model for Obamacare. ALSO IN WASHINGTON THIS WEEK – The House-Senate budget conference begins Wednesday at 10 a.m. EDT with a meeting that should be little more than a photo-op and a chance for the 29 members to speechify on their priorities. No one in D.C. holds out much hope that the conference will produce any kind of "grand bargain" on spending, tax reform and entitlements. There is some hope they could find a smaller bargain that replaces the 2014 sequester cuts with longer term entitlement changes. But that's also difficult in that Democrats won't agree to Social Security or Medicare cuts without significant additional tax revenues that Republicans view as impossible. The chances still seem greater that the committee fails and a much smaller group must cut another temporary deal to keep the government open and raise the debt ceiling again nearly next year. — By Ben White, POLITICO's chief economic correspondent and a CNBC contributor. White also authors the daily tip sheet POLITICO Morning Money [politico.com/morningmoney] Follow him onTwitter @morningmoneyben.

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Even if the website gets fixed by the end of November, as the White House promises, potentially bigger problems lie ahead.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160318022932id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/13/bankers-asked-to-swap-profit-for-prayer.html

With the event focusing on banking ethics, Welby suggested that the program could be used for financial hopefuls before they enter the City of London or Wall Street. However, he did add that it would also be available for those interested in government roles, the armed forces and the Church itself. There was little information on who would be signing up to this scheme and whether any person or company had already shown an interest. A video on the Church's website said that the group would be available to people from the 44 countries and 38 provinces that make up the Anglican Communion, but also would extend to form an "ecumenical" group from all cultures. The reputation of financial services and banking has been through the wars in recent years following the crash of 2008. Risk-taking has been frowned upon as regulators have been busy stepping up their efforts to ensure a repeat episode doesn't play out. In the U.K., high profile banks have been on the receiving end of heavy fines for the miss-selling of financial products to customers. Read MoreShould bankers swear an oath to God? In January, a yearly survey of 27,000 people from 27 countries by the public relations firm Edelman found that banks and financial services were the least trusted sectors. Welby worked in the oil industry in the 1980s and became a group treasurer of a large British exploration and production company. On Sunday, he recalled his life of derivatives trading and futures contracts but said that it was at odds with the definition of what ethics should be about. Rather than results and rewards, he said that ethics should be about what you do as a "virtuous person", and predicted a future of overregulation if the industry didn't change itself. His comments match those of other global faith leaders who have spoken directly to the industry. In January ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Pope Francis asked business leaders to put their wealth at the service of humanity and aids they had a responsibility towards others, particularly the most frail, weak and vulnerable.

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Bright young professionals from the banking industry have been asked to attend a year-long course run by the Anglican Church.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160318025749id_/http://www.cnbc.com:80/2014/01/11/ny-yankees-alex-rodriguez-suspended-from-pro-baseball-for-entire-2014-season.html

Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez has been hit with a 162-game suspension from arbitrator Frederic Horowitz, effectively ruling him out for the entire 2014 season. The suspension also covers the postseason. Rodriguez originally received a 211-game suspension from MLB in August due to his alleged ties to Biogenesis, an anti-aging clinic in South Florida which supplied performance-enhancing drugs. A number of high-profile players were suspended for their involvement in the scandal, including Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz, and Jhonny Peralta, but Rodriguez received the biggest penalty of them all, allegedly for interfering with MLB's investigation. (Read more: Elite athletes born all 'roided up: Data on books) While the other players connected to Biogenesis immediately accepted their suspensions, Rodriguez appealed and was able to finish out the season. Following a contentious arbitration process, Horowitz did not uphold the original ban, but this should be considered a major victory for MLB and commissioner Bud Selig. It is still the longest suspension under MLB's Joint Drug Prevention & Treatment Program. Guillermo Mota previously received a 100-game suspension in 2012. The other big winner today, at least from a financial perspective, is the Yankees, who will no longer have Rodriguez's salary ($25 million) on the books for the 2014 season. They have a very good chance to keep their payroll under $189 million even if they sign Japanese right-hander Masahiro Tanaka. (Read more: Firms show off gadgets for drivers, parents, athletes) Below is a statement from Alex Rodriguez, who intends to take his fight against MLB to federal court: "The number of games sadly comes as no surprise, as the deck has been stacked against me from day one. This is one man's decision, that was not put before a fair and impartial jury, does not involve me having failed a single drug test, is at odds with the facts and is inconsistent with the terms of the Joint Drug Agreement and the Basic Agreement, and relies on testimony and documents that would never have been allowed in any court in the United States because they are false and wholly unreliable. This injustice is MLB's first step toward abolishing guaranteed contracts in the 2016 bargaining round, instituting lifetime bans for single violations of drug policy, and further insulating its corrupt investigative program from any variety defense by accused players, or any variety of objective review. I have been clear that I did not use performance enhancing substances as alleged in the notice of discipline, or violate the Basic Agreement or the Joint Drug Agreement in any manner, and in order to prove it I will take this fight to federal court. I am confident that when a Federal Judge reviews the entirety of the record, the hearsay testimony of a criminal whose own records demonstrate that he dealt drugs to minors, and the lack of credible evidence put forth by MLB, that the judge will find that the panel blatantly disregarded the law and facts, and will overturn the suspension. No player should have to go through what I have been dealing with, and I am exhausting all options to ensure not only that I get justice, but that players' contracts and rights are protected through the next round of bargaining, and that the MLB investigation and arbitration process cannot be used against others in the future the way it is currently being used to unjustly punish me.

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The 162-game suspension is the longest in baseball history for doping, but shorter than the original 211-game suspension originally sought.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160615015731id_/http://fortune.com/2011/05/03/in-a-post-osama-world-risk-is-still-high/

There is no question the United States has achieved a moral victory by finding and killing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. More practically, the implications relating to geopolitical risk are much less certain. While some would argue that killing the head of al Qaeda is a positive development, there is also a credible case to be made that this action could potentially accelerate terrorist activity if bin Laden is perceived as a martyr by his brethren. In assessing the impact of the death of bin Laden, it is important to note that he has been on the run from U.S. Special Forces for almost a decade. While figuratively bin Laden remained the head of al Qaeda, there is no doubt that being on the run reduced his effectiveness from an operational leadership perspective. With the entire CIA looking for him and a massive award on his head, bin Laden realistically didn’t have the capability to micro manage al Qaeda operations. Therefore it is unlikely that the killing of bin Laden will dramatically reduce the threat from al Qaeda in the short term. Stepping back for a moment, it is also important to note that the very nature and organization of al Qaeda remains very much in question. There are some analysts that question whether al Qaeda is as organized as is often portrayed by the press. In fact, as Marc Sagemen, a former CIA agent based in Islamabad, and author of Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, wrote: “There is no umbrella organization. We like to create a mythical entity called al-Qaeda in our minds, but that is not the reality we are dealing with.” This is a controversial position and is widely disputed, but the reality is that al Qaeda is most certainly not organized akin to a Western criminal organization with specific command and control functions. To this point, as of 2004, it was estimated that almost two-thirds of the senior leadership of al Qaeda had either been captured or killed. If this were a typical American crime family, it would be safe to assume the family would be out of business. This has not been the case for al Qeada. In fact, the July 2005 London bombings purportedly occurred without specific leadership from abroad. Conversely, the 2009 plot by three Londoners to detonate seven bombs on airliners bound for North America was tied directly to al Qaeda. These actions suggest that al Qaeda is alive and well despite this loss of “leadership.” While al Qaeda, as led by bin Laden, may have once provided funding or training for some of these groups, currently many them, as characterized by the 2005 London bombings, likely work largely independently. In fact, while bin Laden had at one time bankrolled al Qaeda, his ability over the past decade to do so was limited by the fact that he was cut off from the family fortune; and even if he still had some independent wealth, moving those funds would have likely given U.S. operatives information as to his whereabouts. Conceptually, bin Laden’s key role over the past decade seemed to have been to fan the flames of discord against the United States, and the Western world generally. In this effort, he was certainly successful and the al Qaeda network will likely need to fill this vacuum. Ultimately, the real legacy of bin Laden is the hundreds of thousands of operatives that have been trained in al Qaeda terrorist camps. In fact, Gary Bernsten, a former senior ranking CIA official, and author of Jawbreaker, has estimated this number to be as high as 800,000. Despite the death of bin Laden, this large group of like-minded Islamic terrorists continues to exist. It is also important to note that, based on the evidence, al Qaeda activities are typically planned years in advance of when they are actually intended to occur. Therefore, even if bin Laden were more directly involved in orchestrating broader terrorist activities of the al Qaeda network than we believe he was, it is still not likely that any potential attacks currently in the pipeline would necessarily be thrown off course. The primary example of this process is the September 11th attacks in the United States. According to reports, the idea for these attacks was germinated in 1996 and planning began in 1998, which was a full three years before they occurred. Not surprisingly, equity markets, as a proxy of investors’ propensity to accept more risk, have completely shaken off any potential positive impact of bin Laden’s death. This is partially because of the points outlined above, which suggest that killing bin Laden likely won’t halt terrorist activity in the intermediate term, but also because there is real potential that bin Laden’s death accelerates terrorist activity on the basis of avenging bin Laden. In fact, Hamas started stirring such emotions by stating the following in a press release: “We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.” We certainly won’t suggest that the world is not a better place with the death of bin Laden, but it is not quite clear that is a safer place, or that geopolitical risk premiums should be reset lower as a result. While the head of the serpent has been cut off, the snake is still very much alive.

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Geopolitical risks remain largely the same as the day before Osama bin Laden was killed, since his legacy – operatives trained by al Qaeda – remains alive and well.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160816205046id_/http://time.com:80/money/3449779/used-car-prices-best-time-to-buy/

It’s a great time to be in the market for a used car. The Wall Street Journal recently cited data indicating that used-car prices declined for the four consecutive months through August. USA Today noted that the average used car purchased at a franchised auto dealership sold for $10,883 in August, down 1.6% from the previous year and 2.4% versus July 2014. Edmunds.com predicted that used car prices would dip around 2% overall this year, and that some used vehicles—in particular, large crossover SUVs like the Chevy Traverse—would drop in price by upwards of 8%. What’s more, the forecast calls for used-car prices to stay on a downward trend for the foreseeable future. AutoTrader.com, the Atlanta-based online marketplace for new and used vehicles, says that its inventory of certified pre-owned vehicles has risen 6% since March, and that by year’s end buyers can expect a handful of top “pre-loved” car models—including the 2011 versions of the Ford Fusion, Toyota Corolla, and Honda CR-V—to be priced at roughly 5% less than what dealers were asking just six months ago. What accounts for the sudden price dip? A quick review of what has happened in the new and used car markets over the past few years sheds some light. In 2011, used vehicle prices hit a 16-year high in the wake of the Great Recession, when relatively few consumers were purchasing or leasing new cars because money was tight and credit was less available. That meant a shrinking supply of used cars, as there were fewer trade-ins or vehicles coming off lease. The “Cash for Clunkers” stimulus program also removed millions of used vehicles from the market, further tightening supply. According to Cars.com, the average 2012 listing price for five popular used vehicles five or more years old had risen a whopping 29% over the three years prior. Around that time, however, new car leases and sales surged, rising 13% in 2012 and continuing with impressive growth in 2013 and 2014. All of those new vehicle purchases and leases have translated to a parallel rise in trade-ins and cars coming off leases. “Leasing has surged in recent years with thousands of those cars coming back to dealerships as used cars,” Michelle Krebs, AutoTrader.com senior analyst, said via press release. “The abundance of returned lease cars should result in used cars coming off their historical highs of recent years, representing good buys for consumers.” The takeaway is that used cars are cheap, at least when compared to the record highs of a few years ago, and that the market for previously owned vehicles should remain attractive to buyers through the near future. Yet this turn of events isn’t all good for consumers. When used car prices tank, so does the value of your trade-in, if you have one. Also, automakers are more likely to offer low-price lease deals when their anticipated resale value is high. The flip side is that when used car prices crater, like they’re doing now, car dealerships must assume that they’ll be forced to sell off-lease vehicles for less money—and therefore they need to make more money from the person leasing the car in the first place. In other words, typical monthly payments for a customer leasing a new car are likely to rise compared to the rates available not long ago.

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When the market for new car sales is hot, smart buyers know to look instead at the overflowing inventory of used cars—a supply that's cheap and getting cheaper.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160917132258id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/09/16/14/56/modelling-shows-impact-of-bight-oil-spill

Oil spilled from a well blowout in the Great Australian Bight could reach a wide stretch of the southern Australian coastline, new modelling has revealed. BP has proposed drilling two exploration wells in the Bight and has released modelling on a worst case discharge from its Stromlo-1 well with no clean-up response. It shows oil on the sea surface could travel up to 2650 kilometres from the well site and would almost certainly reach large sections of the South Australian coastline. It also reveals up to a 64 per cent chance of it reaching Esperance in Western Australia and a 41 per cent chance of it stretching as far as the NSW south coast, depending on the time of year. The company says it's confident a loss of control would be contained within 35 days, but says drilling a relief well to completely kill the blowout would take 149 days. The modelling has angered environmental groups, which have called on the regulator to immediately reject BP's application to drill in the Bight. "The risks posed by this project to the environment and to the coastal communities of southern Australia are simply too great," Wilderness Society national director Lyndon Schneiders said. "The time has come for the regulator to terminate this project once and for all." The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) is expected to rule on BP's plans on September 29. It has twice previously asked the company to rework its proposals because of environmental concerns. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said NOPSEMA could not, in good conscience, allow the project to go ahead. ""The environmental and economic impact of a spill on the marine life, fisheries and tourism industry of South Australia would be absolutely devastating," Senator Hanson-Young said.

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Oil giant BP has released modelling which reveals the impact of a major oil spill from the exploration wells it wants to drill in the Great Australian Bight.

http://web.archive.org/web/20161115133627id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/11/14/12/19/joyce-shorten-take-jobs-message-to-vic

Labor and the Nationals are homing in on disgruntled regional voters, as Barnaby Joyce acknowledged the federal government needs a better listening ear. Both the Nationals leader and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten were in regional Victoria on Monday, where the community is reeling from a recent drop in dairy prices and the imminent closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station. Attending media events 75km apart, the leaders zeroed in on concerns about the future of farmers, small business owners and blue-collar workers. Speaking at a farm in Riverslea, Mr Joyce boasted the Nationals represent "things you can touch, things you can understand". There was "no systemic problem" with the dairy industry, but improved water infrastructure, cheaper inputs such as grain and improved milk prices would help farmers and deliver flow-on effects to the wider community. "Once the money gets into the district it starts to spin around," he said. Mr Joyce said dairy, food processing and horticulture had a big future as industry made the most of free trade agreements. Asked whether US president-elect Donald Trump, who has advocated higher tariffs, would make it harder for Australia the deputy prime minister said he would travel overseas next year to open doors to new markets. The Nationals took a hit in the Orange by-election in regional NSW at the weekend, where the primary vote was down 34 percentage points. Mr Joyce said it was important "you don't sook and you don't sulk". "We take our medicine, we understand it, we respect the voters and we go back and work harder again," he said. Visiting a manufacturing plant in Moe, Mr Shorten said the government needed to focus more on prioritising Australian-made products and employing Australians. "Haven't they learned anything from the American election results? Where you abandon hard working, working-class communities and provide no support for them, that is when people get angry at mainstream politics," Mr Shorten said. "We are here and Malcolm Turnbull should take a day out of his busy diary, leave the Sydney harbourside and come and visit Latrobe Valley and other communities." Mr Shorten said he was not a "rampant greenie" who saw no future for coal, but the government should better manage the transition to renewable energy. "What we need to see here is a genuine effort to find Australian jobs for people dislocated by change."

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The federal government and opposition are jousting for political advantage in regional Victoria, which is feeling the effects of economic shifts.

http://web.archive.org/web/20131027004636id_/http://abcnews.go.com:80/2020/video/happened-hotel-room-20619706%26flashvars

Reporter: Long after most of us put our work week behind us, kelly osborn is still up at night. Still pouring through every piece of evidence but by far the most difficult pieces to study --- are the... Reporter: Long after most of us put our work week behind us, kelly osborn is still up at night. Still pouring through every piece of evidence but by far the most difficult pieces to study --- are the images of her dead daughter. A lot of people will ask, how could a mother look at the photographs from an autopsy? I don't recommend it to any, any parent. But why did you? I had to. I became my daughter's investigator. I didn't have a choice. Reporter: And immediately there were clues. The kind she says only a mother would notice. The first, I was very shocked at um, looking at her eyes. Sheena and i, we wore the same mascara, and I knew that we, if you cry with this mascara on, that mascara just clumps up, your eyelashes are all clumped up and, and hers were perfect. Reporter: If sheena took her own life, there were no tears, which experts say is very rare. Her make up untouched. Reporter: Something else only a mom would notice -- that diamond bracelet they fawned over at christmas. Reporter: Kelly says it was on the wrong wrist. It is on her right wrist, and I knew that sheena didn't wear her bracelets on her right wrist. As a matter of fact, that video on christmas, when she got that bracelet, she takes that bracelet out of the box, and shows it, with her right hand and automatically places it on her left wrist. Reporter: The crime scene photos also show both the bathroom and the shower doors left open. Sheena's mother convinced she would never have done that with her babies - her two little dogs right there in the room. She would have made sure that her dogs didn't see her that way. One or both of those doors would have been closed. Reporter: And while that's what a mother noticed from those photos veteran crime reporter lee williams saw something else. There's a photo of sheena in the shower, her feet are caked with sand and debris, yet there's no debris on the white floor, on the shower or on the white floor of the bathroom immediately outside the shower. So her feet were caked in sand and yet there was no sand anywhere in that bathroom? None whatsoever. Other than on her feet. Reporter: For williams, sand on her feet and not on the floor around her, makes it nearly impossible to believe sheena killed herself in that shower. So either sheena was carried in there, post mortem, and hung. Or she somehow levitated into that room. Reporter: Kelly had the reporter on her side, but what she truly needed were some big names, forensic heavyweights. And she got three of them to look at all the evidence. One of them taking 20/20 went back to that very hotel room with her. Reporter: Jan johnson is one of those c-s-i experts who examined the evidence. She's spent more than 40 years studying crime scenes, and she immediately saw red flags. A pillow lying on the floor. I would be interested in what is on that pillow. Reporter: A veteran investigator would rule everything out, asking could that pillow have been used to smother her. You're thinking someone could have used one of these pillows to kill her. Absolutely. Reporter: Most telling the bathroom. Where she says crucial evidence was missed. This is where sheena was found hanging from a dog leash. That's correct. It's attached to the shower head. Clipped at the top. Extending downward. The noose around her neck. Her buttocks eight inches off the ground. She's extended toward the back side of the shower with her legs extended outward. Reporter: She's not suspended in midair. No. Reporter: Her legs are on the bottom of the shower. Flat. Reporter: Wouldn't that give somebody ample opportunity to pull themselves back up? Absolutely. Reporter: She points to her clothes, if she were convulsing she would expect the clothes to ride up the body. She points to the cuffs of her pants down around her feet and january says it looks like she was dragged into the shower. The pants are her-- extended outward. And you would have expected if she had, you know, walked her way down the shower wall and hung herself that the pants would've gone up her legs. I mean, her clothing is perfect. She appeared serene, like she had just fallen asleep. A hanging is a violent act. Towards the end, um, your body fights that, it fights the ligature. It struggles to get air, and there was no evidence of any of that. Her hair was perfectly in place. Yeah. And in fact you described it as tucked right behind her ear the way she typically would. It was like a mannequin that had just been pushed over on its side. I've never seen a hanging like that. Reporter: And one more red flag for jan and that entire team of experts was what they saw in sheena's eyes. When you looked at those images and saw she had popped blood vessels you thought -- she had been strangled. You usually see petechial hemorrhages in a strangulation, you don't often see them in a hanging. Reporter: The hemorrhaging in sheena's eyes they believe is more consistent with a violent struggle, a strangling and then the bombshell conclusion. All three experts weighing in, and in every one of their reports -- three words stood out, "staged crime scene." And that's huge, that means that what was done to sheena was staged to make it appear as a suicide. What I think happened in that room that night is -- I think that she may have been suffocated on the bed and i think that she was dragged into the shower and placed into that leash that was already set up on that shower head. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

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Act 3: A crime scene expert discovers 'red flags' in the hotel room Sheena Morris was found dead in.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140530083527id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/29/emmet-gowin-photography-intimate-wife-edith-incestuous

Gowin has often pictured Edith naked, framing the female body as a sculptural form. Photograph: Emmet Gowin, Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York "She had just finished dancing with someone else, and as she approached me, I didn't think I'd ever seen anyone so alive." Photographer Emmet Gowin is remembering the night he met his wife, Edith Morris, in the 60s. Some of the most striking images he's ever taken – 130 of which are on show in a retrospective at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris – focus on his wife, his most enduring subject. These "established Edith as a person, and us as a couple", he says. "If you set out to make pictures about love, it can't be done. But you can make pictures, and you can be in love. In that way, people sense the authenticity of what you do." As soon as the pair married in Danville, Virginia in 1964, he adopted her family – "a feminine clan" – wholeheartedly, and began photographing their everyday life and gatherings. Back then, art that focused on family was a total anomaly. "I was asked by a journalist if the work is incestuous," Gowin says, mystified. "Photojournalism was the modality. You were reporting on a broader world," he says of the expectations that arose during the Vietnam war period. "We've got antecedents now … you can hardly find graduate work where people aren't doing things about their family." To Gowin, it's never been hard to share intimate moments with Edith and his family. "What's great is that the picture is already taken before it goes public. It's in secret. The trust that develops from such a habit engenders risk, and you realise you're not as vulnerable as you thought. Once you become comfortable with being more truthful about who you are, the easier it is, the prouder you become. That's the way it unfolded for us." He has often photographed Edith naked, but her nudity has nothing coy about it; it's a plainspoken, fetish-free approach to the female body. His photographs show many tender nuances of womanhood, coupledom and motherhood, whether Edith is baring her breasts, nuzzling into her son Elijah's neck, spreading her legs with a nightgown lifted above her pelvis, or simply showing the nape of her neck. One particularly soulful portrait, taken in 1983, shows her, unclothed, perched on a windowsill with vines framing her. She looks like a wood nymph, yet human in the folds of her stomach and the dip of her breasts. Gowin's images of his wife manage to combine reverie and reality, veneration and humility. Moreover, his Edith portfolio is a prismatic look at age. The most recent portrait is from 1999, in which she looks rather severe, with round glasses, crinkled eyes, choppy hair and pursed lips. Similarly composed portraits taken in 1980 and 1994 flank each side in the exhibition, magnificently evoking the grace of ageing. Gowin developed his style under Harry Callahan, at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence in the mid 60s. "I made 10 times as many images as the other students," he says of the early years. "I destroyed all those negatives except a few. I did it as a reminder that you can't afford to waste time: take it seriously." His early photography experience still resonates. "As a good picture would come, I would never know exactly what I had done. When you did see it, it would strike you as a great surprise – who did that? How did it happen? Being surprised by your own work makes you both less serious and have serious reverence." In 1967, he crossed over from student to teacher, taking a post at the Dayton Art Institute. Six years later, he was appointed to teach at Princeton, an establishment he stayed at until his retirement in 2009 (though he admits "I could never have gotten into Princeton as a student"). As a teacher, he rhapsodised about creativity so philosophically that, after the first class of every semester, students often had to double-check they were in the photography class they'd signed up for. It's easy to imagine why they'd be thrown: over the course of our conversation, Gowin quotes James Joyce, William Blake, Diane Arbus, the Bible, Charles Darwin, Maya Angelou and William Henry Fox Talbot. This is not someone who plows linearly through a curriculum. His life and work have been fed by a perpetual sense of wonder at the world, a quest for beauty and an openness to transcendence. He describes his teaching role with awe: "Going over ideas that you love, smoothing them out and presenting them to someone new ... to honour the thoughts you had yesterday tomorrow is a kind of refinement that brings you dignity. It gives you endurance and dedication." Gowin's work, in the exhibition and more generally, can be cleaved into two periods. The family moments in his Virginia hometown peter out, and give way to sprawling global landscapes. It feels like a brusque change of scope. Gowin photographed landscapes, on the ground and aerially, from the early 1970s onwards. He travelled to the ancient Italian town of Matera, the archaeological site of Petra in Jordan, and spent several years chronicling the scarred topography of the American West. He realises it disappointed fans when his family portraiture fell by the wayside, but he is unrepentant: "The world is larger and more complex than that. You change as much as the world around you changes." Further, he says: "The authentic thing is to follow your heart, your instincts, your emotions. If you located yourself in an idea, your life would be lived very sadly." In the past few years, Gowin has made multiple trips to the tropics, studying devastated land and photographing nocturnal moths. On these expeditions, he travelled with a cut-out silhouette of Edith on trips she couldn't attend. "It was extremely comforting to have her along. I got as interested in that as the insect pictures I was trying to take." His insect series incorporates Edith's silhouette, so while they may be a long way from his raw black-and-white snaps in Danville, the affection for his subject is just as heartfelt.

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When he started taking intimate portraits of his wife and family in the 60s, it was a totally alien concept. The master photographer shares his thoughts on going public with personal shots – and why after 40 years he's turned his sights on moths

http://web.archive.org/web/20140817213042id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2011/11/01/why-facebook-went-west/Lj6xFrHGEFeRuVcE7CLKuO/story.html

Editor’s Note: This article is from the Globe archives. It originally appeared in The Boston Globe on Sept. 9, 2007. In April of 2004, two Harvard undergrads walked into the Charles Hotel for a meeting with a venture capitalist. What happened next either highlights Boston’s deficiencies as a greenhouse for a new generation of Web start-ups, or illustrates the incredible magnetism of Silicon Valley - or a bit of both. The Harvard students were Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, and they were at the Charles to talk with a senior associate at Battery Ventures of Waltham. It was the senior associate’s job to spot interesting companies for the partners at his firm to consider as investments. (The firm where this person now works allowed him to be interviewed only under the condition that he not be named.) He’d heard about the website that Zuckerberg and Saverin and a few other students had built because he himself was a Harvard alum, and a few days earlier, he’d run into some current students who had told him about it. It was called Facebook, and at the time it only had 1,000 or 2,000 users. Zuckerberg told the senior associate that he was planning to go to California for the summer, and he wasn’t sure whether he would return to Harvard for his junior year. Summer was less than two months away. The senior associate was pretty sure that if Battery Ventures didn’t invest before then, a Silicon Valley venture firm would discover the deal. For venture capital firms, getting in first can often mean getting a bigger chunk of a start-up for less money - especially if the start-up isn’t talking to other firms. And Facebook wasn’t. After a second meeting at the Charles, and a visit to Battery’s offices above the reservoir in Waltham, Zuckerberg said he thought Facebook was worth about $15 million, and was willing to accept an investment ranging from $1 million to $3 million, which would have given Battery a substantial chunk of the start-up. But Battery had already made an investment in an earlier social networking site, Friendster, which was foundering. Zuckerberg struck some partners at the firm as a little too brash. And no one was sure whether Facebook would appeal to anyone other than college students, its target. There were also turf issues with Battery’s Silicon Valley office, which had invested in Friendster. “There was a question about whether we on the East Coast side were going to lead an investment with a sophomore in college who was considering a move to the West,” says the senior associate. The firm passed - even though Scott Tobin, the Battery partner who evaluated the opportunity, could have invested a few hundred thousand in Facebook without putting the deal to a vote of all the partners. (Tobin had earlier invested in Akamai Technologies Inc., now a member of the S&P 500 index.) Zuckerberg, who grew up in Westchester County in New York and attended Phillips Exeter, went to California in June 2004 with two of his Facebook cofounders. Through a chance connection, Zuckerberg was introduced to Peter Thiel, a cofounder of the online payment system PayPal, who was running a hedge fund called Clarium Capital. He met with Thiel in August, at Thiel’s office in downtown San Francisco. Facebook found its first financial support in PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel (left), who invested his own money in the venture. Thiel is shown with Elon Musk, his PayPal cofounder, in their Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters. Thiel had also been an investor in Friendster, and he knew that the conventional wisdom was that all the social networking sites “were just fads that would come and go,” he says. Thiel listened to Zuckerberg’s pitch in the morning, asked him to go out and grab lunch, and by the time Zuckerberg returned in the afternoon, “we said we’d invest, and we agreed to the basic valuation parameters,” Thiel says. ”It seemed like a good company,” he said, adding, “Most of the time, we’re not that fast.” Thiel put in $500,000 of his own money in return for 10 percent of the company. Zuckerberg set up shop in Palo Alto, and by the end of the year, Facebook was approaching a million users. In 2005, the company took in $12.7 million from the Silicon Valley firm Accel Partners, and by the end of that year, the site had more than 5 million users, having decided to allow high school students to join. ”Facebook was perhaps the most controversial deal we’ve done in several years,” says Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. “Some of my best friends in the business were wondering why we’d write a check to a company that had very little defensibility to their business.” Indeed, anyone could potentially build a better site and lure Facebook’s users away. Last year, the company passed 12 million users, and raised another $27.5 million; this time, Greylock Partners, a Waltham firm that has a branch office in San Mateo, Calif., invested. Greylock partner David Sze, who works on the West Coast, admits that he had the opportunity to invest in Facebook in 2005, but says, “I was too busy - I just didn’t have the cycles to look at it. In retrospect, that was a mistake.” Facebook now has 39 million users and is the sixth most popular website in the United States, according to the measurement firm comScore Inc. An average of 150,000 new users create a free Facebook account every day, according to the company. A Bear Stearns analyst recently estimated that the company, which has already spurned several acquisition offers, is worth as much as $6 billion, and will bring in about $140 million in revenue this year. That’s with just over 300 employees. (Looming over Facebook’s success - and any eventual public offering - is a lawsuit filed by several fellow Harvard students who allege that Zuckerberg built Facebook using software code he had originally written for their site, ConnectU.com, and that he also borrowed parts of their business plan. A Facebook representative said that none of its founders were available to comment.) What makes Facebook so appealing is that once users join and create connections with their friends and colleagues, it becomes an incredible hub of information: friends can share photos, tell you where they are, show what music they’re listening to, what parties or conferences they’re planning to attend, or how much money they’ve raised for next weekend’s charity walkathon. Facebook also decided, in May, to allow other companies to develop applications that users can easily incorporate in their profile pages. Each of these apps - there are now more than 3,000 of them, according to the tracking firm Adonomics - adds new features without the company investing a penny. And unlike MySpace, Facebook is allowing the companies that develop these apps to use them for marketing purposes or to make money, which provides a great incentive. So even if Boston didn’t end up as Facebook’s home base, there are plenty of companies here now developing applications for it. Needham-based TripAdvisor, Inc. offers a world map that you can stick virtual pushpins in, to show your friends where you’ve been. Fafarazzi.com in Somerville has an app that allows Facebook users to send each other photos of celebrities, to reflect their mood. StyleFeeder Inc., a Cambridge shopping recommendation service, launched an app in June that has since been installed by 45,000 people. ”We don’t want to make Facebook the cornerstone of our growth strategy, but we’re happy to ride the wave,” says Dina Pradel, StyleFeeder’s vice president of marketing. Could Facebook have succeeded if it had gotten an investment locally before Zuckerberg Co. went West, and kept its headquarters here? When I put that question to Accel Partners’ Breyer, who is a native of Natick, he had a one-word answer: no. ”So many of the Facebook employees have come from top Internet companies like Yahoo, eBay, and Google that the culture that has been built at Facebook is fundamentally more consumer Internet savvy than if it would’ve been built anywhere else on the planet,” Breyer says, after praising the engineering talent in Boston. ”Folks in the Valley are incredibly geo-centric to a point of snobbery,” writes Battery Ventures’ Scott Tobin via e-mail. He acknowledges that Silicon Valley is producing more companies than Boston but “to make an argument that great companies can’t be built in any one place is bunk in my mind.” He mentions Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash., and Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego as examples. “It just takes a good driving attitude to make it happen.” As for passing on Facebook, “that may turn out to have been a mistake,” Tobin admits. Innovation Economy is a weekly column focusing on entrepreneurship, technology, and venture capital in New England.

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Turned down by a local venture capitalist, two Harvard students look to Silicon Valley for funding instead. The result: Boston misses out on an online phenomenon worth up to $6 billion.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150109083840id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/01/08/21/38/two-suspects-in-paris-magazine-shooting-spotted-in-north-france

Police close off a service station in northern France where the fugitive gunmen were reportedly spotted. (AFP) Heavily armed police and security forces have descended on a small town in northern France where the two brothers suspected of the Charlie Hedbo attack robbed a service station and took off back towards Paris. The manager of a petrol station near Villers-Cotteret in the northern Aisne region "recognised the two men suspected of having participated in the attack", the source told AFP. Brothers Sherif and Said Kouachi are suspected of slaughtering 12 people during a rampage at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo yesterday. French newspaper La Parisien reports the two suspects robbed the service station, about an hour's drive north of Paris, at around 10.30am local time (8.30pm AEDT). Sherif Kouachi and Said Kouachi. (Supplied) Shots were reportedly fired during the robbery, and the suspects were carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and what appeared to be a rocket launcher. They abandoned a grey Skoda car on the site, which has been seized by police for examination. The men then drove off in the direction of Paris in a white Renault Clio with covered-up number plates. RAID, the anti-terrorist unit of the French police force, and the GIGN, a paramilitary special operations unit, have been deployed to Villers-Cotterets. Eighteen-year-old suspect Hamyd Mourad reportedly handed himself in to police after learning he was wanted but the Kouachi brothers have been on the run since the shootings. One French security official who declined to be named warned that "there will be a showdown" with the men who are heavily armed. The Kouachi brothers are believed to be the orphans of Algerian immigrants who grew in Rennes, in France's northwest, French newspaper Liberation reports. The paper describes Cherif Kouachi as an "occasional Muslim" who worked as a sports instructor before he became radicalised by the US invasion of Iraq and highly-publicised images of human rights abuses at Abu Gharib prison. In 2005 Cherif was arrested with another French national for planning to fly to Iraq to take part in the war against US forces. He was sentenced to three years jail in 2008, including a suspended sentence of 18 months. The brothers are alleged to have links to a Yemeni terrorist network and are believed to have returned to France from Syria in the last year. A witness to yesterday's attack told reporters that one of the attackers had said "you can tell the media it's al-Qaeda in Yemen". Do you have any news photos or videos?

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Two brothers suspected of having gunned down 12 people in an Islamist attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were spotted Thursday morning and are armed, sources close to the manhunt said.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150517195204id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/05/14/uber-lawsuit-stole/

Every new startup wants to be the “Uber of . . .” its own industry, but now an entrepreneur is claiming the popular ride-sharing app was actually stolen. Kevin Halpern filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday claiming that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick stole the idea for a “real-time, cellular phone-based” car service from a startup, Celluride Wireless, that Halpern founded in 2003. Celluride appears to no longer be in operation, though the company is named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, along with Halpern. The lawsuit filed against Uber in claims that Halpern began meeting with Kalanick — whom the complaint describes as “an approachable fellow entrepreneur” — in 2006 and later shared detailed information about the ongoing development of Celluride with the future Uber co-founder. Halpern alleges that these discussions were held under the guise of confidentiality. Halpern worked until 2008 to develop the technology for Celluride, which, the lawsuit says, is similar to Uber’s business and app interface. Halpern claims Kalanick and fellow Uber co-founder Garrett Camp then stole his trade secrets and presented them as their own at a venture capital conference in the fall of 2008, which was months before the launch of Uber. Uber said Thursday that Halpern’s lawsuit has no merit. “These claims are completely baseless. We will vigorously defend against them,” Uber spokeswoman Kristin Carvell said in a statement. Halpern is accusing Kalanick and Camp, along with a handful of venture capital firms that back Uber, of misappropriation of trade secrets, conversion (illegally using someone else’s idea) and breach of contract. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory damages. An attorney for Halpern did not immediately respond to Fortune when asked why the lawsuit was not filed until this week, more than six years after Uber’s founding. (Halpern’s attorney announced the lawsuit in a taped press conference.) In 2009, Halpern sued Anu Shukla, the founder of tech company Offerpal Media (now called Tapjoy), for breach of contract in a similar lawsuit that alleged Halpern helped create Offerpal only to be cut out of the company shortly before it was founded. That lawsuit was later dismissed, as was another one filed against two Santa Cruz police officers who arrested him for being under the influence of an illegal stimulant. Of course, Uber is no stranger to legal action itself. The ride-sharing service has faced lawsuits from taxi companies as well as charges brought by passengers and former Uber drivers. Successful tech companies are often the targets of lawsuits by people claiming to behind the original idea. Facebook, for example, was sued by the Winklevoss brothers, who attended Harvard with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The brothers, who claimed Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social network, eventually won a settlement. In another lawsuit against Facebook, Paul Ceglia claimed to have a contract showing that Zuckerberg had promised him half of the company. Ceglia has since reportedly gone missing after being accused in federal court of fabricating the evidence. For more about Uber, watch this Fortune video:

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Kevin Halpern, who previously lost a similar case against another startup, claims Uber ripped off its wildly successful idea from his company, Celluride Wireless.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150802004100id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/14/are-russias-bonds-the-next-big-worry.html

Since this summer, Brent crude oil has fallen from above $115 per barrel to around $61.08 a barrel in Asian trade Monday, with many analysts predicting prices will continue to slide. At the same time, the ruble has dropped around 70 percent since the end of June, with the U.S. dollar fetching around 58.2 rubles Friday. Government debt not a worry Only around $38 billion of Russia's government debt is denominated in dollars, and of that amount only around $6 billion of interest and principal payments are due in 2015, compared with around $400 billion of foreign-exchange reserves, Wells Fargo noted. With around two-thirds of government debt borrowed in rubles, the central bank can theoretically create enough rubles to pay off those creditors, the bank said. Read More US Congress readies new sanctions on Russia Obviously, that creates inflation risks. The cost of Russia's borrowing has climbed recently, with its 10-year ruble-denominated sovereign bond yield around 13.00 percent Friday compared with 8.33 percent at the end of June, according to Reuters data. Russia's central bank raised its main interest rate by 100 basis points to 10.5 percent on Thursday – the latest in a series of hikes this year as it attempts to rein in inflation and bolster the country's struggling economy, which also faces headwinds from sanctions from the West due to its conflict with Ukraine. Credit Suisse Private Banking echoed the relatively sanguine view on Russia's sovereign debt risks, adding it expects the country's current account surplus will rise in 2015 on a combination of weaker domestic demand and the ruble's decline. In a note last week, Credit Suisse said it has a positive view on the country's sovereign hard-currency bonds on attractive valuations, but it is more cautious about buying into the local-currency ones. Both banks expressed concern over Russian corporate debt. "Any Russian company or bank that needs to service foreign currency debt would have a more difficult time making foreign currency debt servicing payments if it does not generate revenue that is denominated in foreign currency," Wells Fargo said, noting the ruble's decline also lowers corporate net worth. Read More Why India and Russia remain BFFs Russian companies owe about $160 billion in intercompany debt to overseas parents and subsidiaries, likely mostly to Western European companies, while Russian banks have around $200 billion of external debt and other sectors have around $300 billion, Wells Fargo said.

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Russia is among the worst hit by oil's decline, but clean living may keep government finances on an even keel. Its corporate debt may be another matter.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150823201203id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/31/airasia-captain-left-seat-before-jet-lost-control.html

People familiar with the matter told Reuters it was the Indonesian captain Iriyanto who took this step, rather than his less experienced French co-pilot Remy Plesel, who was flying the plane. The outage would not directly upset the aircraft but would remove flight envelope protection, which prevents a pilot from taking a plane beyond its safety limits, leaving the junior pilot to fly the jet manually in delicate high altitude conditions. The decision to cut off the FAC has surprised people following the investigation because the usual procedure for resetting it is to press a button on the overhead panel. "You can reset the FAC, but to cut all power to it is very unusual," said one A320 pilot, who declined to be identified. "You don't pull the circuit breaker unless it was an absolute emergency. I don't know if there was one in this case, but it is very unusual." It is also significant because to pull the circuit breaker the captain had to rise from his seat. The circuit breakers are on a wall panel immediately behind the co-pilot and hard or impossible to reach from the seated position on the left side, where the captain sits, according to two experienced pilots and published diagrams of the cockpit. Shortly afterwards the junior pilot pulled the plane into a sharp climb from which investigators have said it stalled or lost lift. "It appears he was surprised or startled by this," said a person familiar with the investigation, referring to the decision to cut power to the affected computer. The captain eventually resumed control, but a person familiar with the matter said he was not in a position to intervene immediately to recover the aircraft from its upset. Data already published on the plane's trajectory suggest it may have been difficult for someone to move around the cockpit in an upward-tilting and by then possibly unstable aircraft, but there is so far no confirmation of the cockpit movements. "The co-pilot pulled the plane up, and by the time the captain regained the controls it was too late," one of the people familiar with the investigation said. Tatang Kurniadi, chief of Indonesia's NTSC, told Reuters there had been no delay in the captain resuming control but declined further comment. Lawyers for the family of the French co-pilot say they have filed a lawsuit against AirAsia in Paris for "endangering the lives of others" by flying the route without official authorisation on that day. Investigators have said the accident was not related to the permit issue. AirAsia did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit. Although more is becoming known about the chain of events, people familiar with the investigation warned against making assumptions on the accident's cause, which needed more analysis. Safety experts say air crashes are most often caused by a chain of events, each of which is necessary but not sufficient to explain the underlying causes of the accident.

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The captain of the AirAsia jet that crashed into the sea in December was out of his seat conducting an unorthodox procedure when his co-pilot apparently lost control.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150825180615id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/06/dow-up-triple-digits-as-street-eyes-data-dollar.html

The U.S. 2-year Treasury yield traded near 0.50 percent while the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield gained to hold 1.91 percent, up from 1.85 percent earlier. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up more than half a percent higher on Monday, holding in the black for the year. The blue chip index gained as much as 187 points after falling triple digits in the open. "I don't know why bad (economic) news continues to be good news," said Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group, who noted the weaker dollar. Markets were closed on Friday and stocks opened sharply lower on Monday, following futures that plunged after the monthly employment report showed the addition of 126,000 jobs, far below the estimated 245,000 from a Reuters poll. "The theme of 'data dependent' is back in the market," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital. He still expects the Federal Reserve to raise rates in the second half of this year, but said that weaker economic data could push a rate hike out to 2016. The ISM non-manufacturing Index was 56.5 in March, its lowest level in three months but in line with estimates. The Markit Purchasing Managers Index rose to 59.2 in March, the highest level since August. On Tuesday, traders will eye the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) as one of the few other economic indicators coming out this week. "We really don't get much (data) this week. That's why we're getting a bigger reaction (in stocks)," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities. Stability in the dollar cross "is helping markets as well." The strong dollar weighed on corporate profits last quarter and is expected to continue to be a headwind. Analysts are also watching for the effects of lower oil prices. Alcoa reports quarterly results this Wednesday in the unofficial start to the earnings season. "The dollar is a little softer. It should be a lot softer," said Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. "The biggest disconnect is that people actually think the U.S. economy is recovering" and will lead to a rate hike soon. Read MoreBad news turns good for 'Fed addicted' stocks European markets were closed for both Good Friday and Easter Monday. Asian stocks outside Japan gained on hopes the weak jobs report would push out a rate hike by the Federal Reserve. U.S. stock futures continued to indicate a lower open following remarks by New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley that the central bank will watch subsequent data to see if March's report was an aberration or an indicator of greater economic weakness. Weekly jobless claims have held to lower levels and had suggested a stronger read on monthly nonfarm payrolls. Dudley was the first Fed official to speak publicly since the March labor report. Over the weekend, Greece's finance minister told reporters in Washington after a meeting with International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde that the country "intends to meet all obligations to all its creditors, ad infinitum." Athens is due to pay the IMF 450 million euros ($494 million) Thursday. Read MoreGreece needs deal by April 24: Varoufakis In U.S. corporate news, Tesla delivered 10,030 vehicles during the first quarter, its highest quarterly total ever and a 55 percent increase over the first quarter of 2014. Lorillard and Reynolds American closed higher as investors sought guidance on whether a proposed merger between the tobacco giants will be allowed to proceed. The stocks fell in recent weeks on sentiment that it would be rejected, but reports emerged late last week that the FTC was leaning towards a proposed compromise that would allow it to go through.

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U.S. stocks closed higher, rebounding from initial losses on the disappointing jobs report as weak data renewed hopes of a rate hike delay.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150913091958id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/13/why-china-russia-ties-are-heating-up.html

Kirill Kudryavtsev | AFP | Getty Images Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang (on right) reviews an honor guard during an official welcoming ceremony at Vnukovo airport outside Moscow on October 12, 2014. The U.S. and Europe imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Russia in the wake of its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March, with measures including a ban on cooperating on oil exploration in the Arctic as well as targeting politicians, financial institutions, defense technology companies and energy players. Read More China's exports surge in September; Imports also unexpectedly rise China has been vocal in opposing the sanctions and Li's three-day official visit, his first since taking office last year, has offered the mainland the chance to scoop up deals which can offset Russia's inability to trade with the West. But the deals likely won't be on an entirely equal footing. Russia imports more from China than any other country, but Russia is only China's ninth largest trade partner, just under the U.K., noted Tony Nash, global vice president at Delta Economics. In addition, Russia may find itself relegated to primarily a supplier for China's factory floors. Indeed, it's a pattern visible in China's trade data for September, with imports unexpectedly rising 7 percent, driven by increasing shipments from commodity-intensive countries, including Russia, which are expected to be processed and re-exported later. Read More Russia Deputy PM: 'Sanctions not good from any side' "The Chinese were delighted because it enabled them to get hold of many, many deals that might not have come their way," Colin Chapman, president for New South Wales at the Australian Institute of International Affairs, told CNBC Tuesday, noting that many of the deals expected to be signed during Li's visit are in the energy segment.

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China Premier Li's trip to Moscow is expected to net as many as 50 trade deals, as sanctions spur Russia to accelerate ties with the mainland.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150918200220id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/29/singapore-easiest-place-to-do-business-for-9th-year.html

The larger emerging markets did not do very well: China ranked 90th, while Brazil ranked 120th and India at 142nd, below the troubled economies of Russia and Greece, which ranked 62nd and 61st respectively. Eritrea, where it takes an average of 84 days to start up a new business, ranked last followed by Libya (188th), and the Central African Republic (187th). However, the compilers of the rankings noted that their analysis uses a narrow spectrum of parameters and does not measure all aspects of the business environment that matter to firms and investors. The quality of fiscal management and other aspects of macro-economic stability like the levels of skills in the labor force or the resilience of a country's financial system, are not considered. Read MoreFamily business: Trust can be thinner than blood East Asia and the Pacific saw a marked improvement in business conditions over the past year, according to Rita Ramalho, lead author of the report: "Consistent regulatory reforms have improved the ease of doing business in the region in the past decade, and contributed to more business opportunities for local entrepreneurs." In Vietnam, ranked 78th, a reduction in the corporate tax rate to 22 percent from 25 percent this year gave start-ups a boost, while China enhanced its electronic filing and payment system and made business incorporation less expensive. Read MoreChallenges China faces for its future: Kevin Rudd In Mongolia - one of the world's fastest expanding economies - local businesses saw the average time for tax compliance fall to 148 hours from 192 hours over the course of 2013, a shorter time than Austria, for example. It ranked 72nd.

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Singapore topped the World Bank's ease of doing business rankings for the ninth consecutive year, according to a report, released Wednesday.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150926041605id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/21/hhs-calls-for-slew-of-obamacare-rule-changes.html

The announcement comes just one week into Obamacare's second open-enrollment season, which is set to run through Feb. 15. One of the rules calls for open enrollment for health insurance plans that will go into effect in 2016 to to begin Oct. 1, 2015, and run through Dec. 15 of that same year. That would mean a sign-up season two weeks shorter than the current season. Read MoreObamacare toothache! Enrollments were juiced up Another proposal calls for having Obamacare customers be "defaulted" to a lower-cost insurance plan instead of their current plan. "Under current rules, consumers who do not take action during the open enrollment window are re-enrolled in the same plan they were in the previous year, even if that plan experienced significant premium increases," CMS said. "We are considering alternative options for re-enrollment, under which consumers who take no action might be defaulted into a lower-cost plan rather than their current plan." Although CMS said it is considering allowing state-run Obamacare exchanges to implement that default option in 2016, the agency is eyeing using that option on the federal Obamacare exchange HealthCare.gov starting only in 2017. While the defaulted option could protect customers from sticker shock once their now-pricier plan renews, the option also increases the likelihood that people will find themselves in a plan that doesn't include their preferred doctors or hospitals. Automatic renewal is currently a concern among Obamacare advocates, who worry that people will end up staying in plans that are too expensive for them, or which do not give them the most value for federal subsidies that help them pay their premiums. CMS said the proposed rules would also add provisions to "facilitate public access to information about rate increases and small group markets for" individual health plans. "It also proposes provisions to further protect against unreasonable rate increased in the individual and small group markets," CMS said.

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The Obama administration late Friday called for a slew of significant rule changes that would affect the Obamacare health-care program.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160202120203id_/http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2006/08/2008410115343541975.html

The British-owned Asia Energy wants to develop an open-pit mine at Phulbari in Dinajpur district, 350km northwest of Dhaka. Residents and rights groups say the mine would displace hundreds of families and damage the environment. Asia Energy officials said on Monday they had withdrawn staff from Phulbari and cut operations in the mining area to a minimum. The six demonstrators died on Saturday when police opened fire on a crowd near the Asia Energy office. Police returned the bodies of the six to their families and Dinajpur district officials pledged to pay compensation to the relatives. Tofayel Ahmed, a leader of the opposition party Awami League, said on Monday: "The casualties at Phulbari adds another black chapter to the country's history. We strongly condemn it and have called for the August 30 countrywide strike to voice our further protest." ThreatsPolice say at least 120 people have been injured in clashes at Phulbari over the past two days. The protesters have already enforced an indefinite strike from Sunday around the mining area and in nearby towns, local officials said. Protesters have defied policewarnings against demonstrations On Monday, hundreds of protesters in Phulbari defied police warnings against demonstrations, blocking a train line and burning an effigy of Mahmudur Rahman, the government's energy adviser. Protesters have defied policewarnings against demonstrations They also threatened to halt all transport and cut communications in the area. Mahmudur said on Sunday the violence had sent "negative signals" to Bangladesh's potential overseas investors and called for calm. Trying to ease tensions, authorities on Monday withdrew police and paramilitary troop reinforcements from Phulbari, witnesses said. The withdrawal cheered the protesters, who vowed to force Asia Energy out of the area.Development Asia Energy intends to spend $3 billion on the mine and a related power plant. Total investment over the mine's 30-year life is expected to total $10.4 billion. Gary Lye, chief executive officer of Asia Energy Corporation (Bangladesh) Pty Ltd, denied the Phulbari project would harm people or the environment. Asia Energy said it had submitted development plans and a feasibility study and was awaiting final government authorisation to start mining.

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<P>Opposition parties in Bangladesh have called for a nationwide strike to protest against the deaths of six people who were killed in protests against a coal mine.</P>

http://web.archive.org/web/20160410050855id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2016/04/06/born-blue-chet-baker-gets-lost-and-found/1NY7VPCayCAnEMUBlwXXYK/story.html

It’s a mini-Jazz Age in movies these days. Among the greats celebrated in new biopics are Miles Davis in “Miles Ahead” (April 15), Nina Simone in “Nina” (on VOD April 22), and Ethan Hawke as Chet Baker in Robert Budreau’s “Born to Be Blue,” opening Friday. Their stories call out for the standard stereotype of the genius who must endure hardship and inner turmoil to create art. The challenge comes when a filmmaker tries to fit a life that is as variegated as a jazz solo into that template. When Baker died in 1988 at a well-worn 58, he left behind a messy mythic legacy, enough for many movies (Bruce Weber’s 1988 doc “Let’s Get Lost” is a good start). Budreau focuses on key events in the 1960s (with flashbacks in sleek black and white that would make great album covers) and pretty much makes up the rest. At first the results seem both convoluted and one-note, an improvisation that goes nowhere. But when Hawke’s Baker finally slips out of the whiney loser persona and performs “My Funny Valentine,” the scene evokes Baker’s elusive melancholy and wistful torment, making the earlier fumblings worth the struggle. “It came too easy to him,” laments Baker’s long-suffering manager Dick Bock (Callum Keith Rennie). By 1966 the easy times are long gone, and Baker lies strung out on heroin in an Italian jail cell staring at his trumpet on the slimy floor. A tarantula crawls out of it. Then, who should walk in but Dino De Laurentiis, offering to make a biopic of Baker’s life? This never happened, and at this point “Blue” threatens to become a meta-movie as the made-up movie within-the-movie merges with the real movie’s real-life flashbacks. Luckily, a drug dealer fed up with Baker’s debt knocks his teeth out. His career seemingly at its end, Baker falls in love with Jane (a great Carmen Ejogo), the actress who plays his real wife in the movie-within-the-movie, and the story slips into a jazz take on the comeback theme. For the next two decades, the end notes reveal, Baker made the best music of his career. The film does its job if it encourages people to give that music a listen. Written and directed by Robert Budreau. Starring Ethan Hawke, Carmen Ejogo, Callum Keith Rennie. At Kendall Square. 98 minutes. Unrated (drug use, narcissism, bad sex).

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The jazz legend’s life offers plenty of material for a great movie – a heroin addict whose bad decisions led to getting his teeth knocked out, resulting in a dramatic comeback.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160701173602id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/future/story/20160627-i-am-gay-but-i-wasnt-born-this-way

She was on top of me. It wasn’t a command — it was a challenge. You so obviously cannot be gay, was her implication, because this is good sex. It was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop its unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular understanding of orientation was that it was something you were born with, something you couldn’t change. If you happened to engage in activity that ran counter to your sexual identity, then you had two options: you were lying to yourself and everyone else, or you were just experimenting. The sexual categories were rigid. Fixed. They weren’t subject to human imagination or experimentation – to the frustration of many sociologists, and kids, like myself, who found themselves inexplicably in bed with a player from the other team. My sexual journey through college was anything but run-of-the-mill. I came out at a conservative Christian college in the US and was in a gay relationship for around two years with a basketball player who ended up marrying a woman. During that time, we both pal’d around with girls on the side. I even went so far as to fall in love with one. To this day, she and I joke about how she was the only girl I was ever in love with, and how I would’ve been quite happy marrying her. As a writer, this kind of complicated story is incredibly interesting to me – mostly because it shows that my own personal history resists the kind of easy classifications that have come to dominate discussions of sexuality. Well, you must have been gay the whole time, some might think, and because of some religious shame, you decided to lie to yourself and experiment with a girl. But that was nothing more than a blip in the road. After all, most kids experiment with heterosexuality in college, don’t they? If so, that ‘blip in the road’ has always been a thorn in my flesh. How do I explain that I was honestly in love with a woman? Some people might argue that I am innately bisexual, with the capacity to love both women and men. But that doesn’t feel like an accurate description of my sexual history, either. I’m only speaking for myself here. But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this way. In 1977, just over 10% of Americans thought gayness was something you were born with, according to Gallup. That number has steadily risen over time and is currently somewhere between 42% and 50%, depending on the poll. Throughout the same period, the number of Americans who believe homosexuality is “due to someone’s upbringing/environment” fell from just under 60% to 37%. These ideas reached critical mass in pop culture, first with Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later with Macklemore’s Same Love, the chorus of which has a gay person singing “I can’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.” Videos started circulating on the internet featuring gay people asking straight people “when they chose to be straight.” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign declared unequivocally that “Being gay is not a choice,” and to claim that it is “gives unwarranted credence to roundly disproven practices such as conversion or reparative therapy.” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often cast as homophobic, and their thinking is considered backward As Jane Ward notes in Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, what’s interesting about many of these claims is how transparent their speakers are with their political motivations. “Such statements,” she writes, “infuse biological accounts with an obligatory and nearly coercive force, suggesting that anyone who describes homosexual desire as a choice or social construction is playing into the hands of the enemy.” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often cast as homophobic, and their thinking is considered backward – even if they are themselves gay. Take, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The City fame. In a 2012 interview with New York Times Magazine, the actress casually mentioned that homosexuality was, for her, a choice. “I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” The blogger John Aravosis was one of many critics who pounced on Nixon. “Every religious right hatemonger is now going to quote this woman every single time they want to deny us our civil rights.” Aravosis leveled the same accusations against me in 2014 when I wrote a piece for The New Republic discussing my own complicated sexual history. Calling me “idiotic” and “patently absurd”, Aravosis wrote, “The gay haters at the religious right couldn’t have written it any better.” For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they think they were born gay. And yet the available research does not support this view. Patrick Grzanka, Assistant Professor of Psychology at University of Tennessee, for instance, has shown that some people who believe that homosexuality is innate still hold negative views of gays. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic respondents he studied shared similar levels of belief in a Born This Way ideology. As Samantha Allen notes at The Daily Beast, the growing public support for gays and lesbians has grown out of proportion with the rise in the number of people who believe homosexuality is fixed at birth; it would be unlikely that this small change in opinion could explain the spike in support for gay marriage, for instance. Instead, she suggests it hinges on the fact that far more people are now personally acquainted with someone who is gay. In 1985, only 24% of American respondents said they had a gay friend, relative or co-worker — in 2013, that number was at 75%. “It doesn’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as it does that they simply know someone who is currently gay,” Allen concludes. In spite of these studies, those who push against Born This Way narratives have been heavily criticised by gay activists. “They tell me my own homo-negativity is being manifested in my work,” says Grzanka. Similarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for pushing against the ruling LGB narratives, with some gays telling her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter,” the controversial US author of books like If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans. And when I published my essay on choosing to be gay, an irate American lesbian activist wrote me that it had “just been confirmed” to her that my writing was “directly responsible for four gay deaths in Russia.” While I can understand why some contemporary activists (and the journalists who seem beholden to their agendas) might chalk up recent gains in LGB acceptance to Born This Way’s cultural infiltration, activism must be founded upon facts and truths, or the whole program will eventually turn out to be a sham. Drowning out every voice that dares to question dominant cultural narratives is not the same thing as invalidating the arguments those voices are making. As Ward says, “Just because an argument is politically expedient doesn’t make it true.” So what does the science say about Born This Way? There is a unanimous opinion that gay “conversion therapy” should be rejected Let’s first be clear that whatever the origins of our sexual orientation, there is a unanimous opinion that gay “conversion therapy” should be rejected. These efforts are potentially harmful, according to the APA, “because they present the view that the sexual orientation of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illness of disorder, and they often frame the inability to change one’s sexual orientation as a personal and moral failure.” Little wonder these therapies have been shown to provoke anxiety, depression and even suicide. In other words, the question of the efficacy of conversion therapies is a non-issue. We condemn these efforts not just because we don’t think they work — perhaps anyone could be tortured into liking or disliking anything? — but because they’re immoral. The question of what leads to homosexuality in the first place, however, is obscure, even to the experts. The APA, for example, while noting that most people experience little to no choice over their orientations, says this of homosexuality’s origins: “Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors.” Similarly, the American Psychiatric Association writes in a 2013 statement that while the causes of heterosexuality and homosexuality are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial including biological and behavioral roots which may vary between different individuals and may even vary over time.” True, various eye-grabbing headlines over the years have claimed that some scientists have found something like The Gay Gene. In 1991, for example, neuroscientist Simon LaVey published findings that he claimed suggest that “sexual orientation has a biological substrate.” According to LeVay’s research, a specific part of the brain, the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus (INAH-3), is smaller in homosexual men than it is in heterosexual men. You can spot the problem with this study a mile away: were the gay brains LeVay studied born that way, or did they become that way? LeVay himself pointed this out to Discover Magazine in 1994: “Since I looked at adult brains, we don't know if the differences I found were there at birth or if they appeared later.” Further, the brains LeVay studied belonged to AIDS victims, so he couldn’t even be sure if what he was seeing had something to do with the disease. Another landmark paper on the origins of homosexuality was published in 1993 by a geneticist named Dean Hamer, who was interested to learn whether homosexuality could be inherited. Beginning from his observation that there are more gay relatives on a mother’s side than a father’s, Hamer turned his attention to the X chromosome (which is passed on by the mother). He then recruited 40 pairs of gay brothers and got to work. What he found was that 33 of those brothers shared matching DNA in the Xq28, a region in the X chromosome. Hamer’s conclusion? He believes there’s about “99.5% certainty that there is a gene (or genes) in this area of the X chromosome that predisposes a male to become a heterosexual.” A 2015 study sought to confirm Hamer’s findings, this time with a much larger sample: 409 pairs of gay brothers. Researchers were pleased with their findings, which they claimed “support the existence of genes on… Xq28 influencing development of male sexual orientation.” But not everyone finds the results convincing, according to Science. For one thing, the study relied on a technique called genetic linkage, which has been widely replaced by genome-wide association studies. It’s also noteworthy that Sanders himself urged his study to be viewed with a certain caution. “We don’t think genetics is the whole story,” he said. “It’s not.” And as Allen points out, there have also been studies that found no “X-linked gene underlying male homosexuality.” Perhaps predictably, these studies haven’t received as much media coverage. If you are enjoying this story, take a look at the other pieces in our Sexual Revolutions special series, including: Besides the individual critiques leveled against each new study announcing some gay gene discovery, there are major methodological criticisms to make about the entire enterprise in general, as Grzanka points out: “If we look at the ravenous pursuit, particularly among American scientists, to find a gay gene, what we see is that the conclusion has already been arrived at. All science is doing is waiting to find the proof.” The other problem with Born This Way science is summed up nicely by Simon Copland: “Scientists are asking whether homosexuality is natural when we can’t even agree exactly what homosexuality is.” Grzanka agrees. “If you know anything about social constructionism, then you know these sexual categories are very recent. How then could they be rooted in our genome?” Our desires may express themselves in many different ways that do not all conform to existing notions of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’. This is one of the best takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a penetrating analysis of sex between straight white men. Gay men make up only a fraction of the US population — yet Ward says that there are many men not included in that number who engage in homosexual behavior. Why, then, do some men who have sex with men identify as gay, and others identify as heterosexual? This question interests her far more than ‘how were they born?’. Ward stresses that not all straight-identifying men who have sex with men are bisexual or closeted, and we do a disservice if we force those words on them. That’s because terms like ‘heterosexual’ and ‘straight’ and ‘bisexual’ and ‘gay’ come with all sorts of cultural baggage attached. Crucially, she argues, “whether or not this baggage is appealing is a separate matter altogether from the appeal of homosexual or heterosexual sex.” Even if you accept that sexual desire may exist on a kind of spectrum, the predominant idea is still that these desires are innate and immutable – but this runs counter to what we know about human taste, says Ward. “Our desires are oriented and re-oriented based on our experiences throughout our lives.” In fact, the straight-identified men Ward studied for her book sometimes found themselves in situations that sparked the desire for homosexual sex: fraternities, deployments, public restrooms, etc. But Ward doesn’t conclude these are somehow repressed or latent gay men. Rather, she argues that they — like all of us — have come to desire bodies and genitals within specific social contexts pregnant with “significant cultural and erotically charged meanings.” In other words, what they want isn’t the “raw fact” of a man’s body, but what it represents in a certain context. Why might we be uncomfortable asking whether and how much control we each possess over our “full range of erotic possibilities,” as Ward calls it? “What would it mean to think about people’s capacity to cultivate their own sexual desires, in the same way we might cultivate a taste for food?” she asks. Ward thinks this question is the next frontier of queer thought. When I first said I chose to be gay, a queer American journalist challenged me to name the time and date of my choice. But this is an absurd way to look at desire. You might as well ask someone to name the exact moment they began liking Chaucer or disliking Hemingway. When did I begin to prefer lilies to roses? What time did the clock read at the exact moment I fell in love with my partner? All of our desires are continually being shaped throughout our lives, in the very specific contexts in which we discover and rehearse them. I’m claiming that at some point during college, my sexual and romantic desires became reoriented toward men Thinking back to my college romances with women and men, I can begin to understand how my own experiences might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my desire for homosexuality. I want to be very clear: I’m not claiming I simply began to ‘grow into’ my homosexuality, or that as I became more comfortable with being gay, I allowed myself the freedom to express what had always been latent within me. I’m claiming that at some point during college, my sexual and romantic desires became reoriented toward men. These desires suggested to me a queer identity, which I at first reluctantly accepted and then passionately embraced. This new identity in turn helped reinforce and grow new gay desires within me. Granted, none of this means that there were no genetic or prenatal factors that went into the construction of my or any other sexual orientation. It just means that even if those factors exist, many more factors do too. So why not encourage conversations about those other things? Humans aren’t who and what we are because of one gene Humans aren’t who and what we are because of one gene. We’re who and what we are for a variety of reasons, and some of it might have something to do with how our genes randomly interact with our environments. But that’s not the whole story, and to engage in discourse that pretends it is — regardless of the nobility of the intentions — could have “profound and very negative consequences” for the LGBT community, says Grzanka. “Limiting our understanding of any complex human experience is always going to be worse than allowing it to be complicated,” he says. So what are we to do with the Born This Way rhetoric? I would suggest that it’s time to build a more nuanced argument — regardless of how good a pop song the current one makes. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, and most importantly, it’s just not the truth, as we currently understand it. The evidence to date offers no consensus that the Born This Way argument is the beginning and end of the story. We should stop pretending that it does. Secondly, the entire search for a gay gene is predicated upon the assumption that homosexuality is not the natural or ‘default’ state of a developing human. ‘Something had to happen to make that man gay!’ But why cede such enormous ground to those who believe something has ‘gone wrong’ inside gay bodies and brains? For that matter, why play their game and pretend the only forms of difference that deserve justice are those we were born with? “That’s a very narrow understanding of what justice looks like,” says Ward. What about the concern that homophobes will want to ‘encourage’ gay people to be straight if there’s no biological basis for sexuality? Let’s turn it around. Is it not equally true that ‘finding a gay gene’ might inspire the same homophobes to ‘find a cure’ for homosexuals? It doesn’t take too much creativity to imagine a scenario in which homophobic parents, upon being informed their fetus has ‘the gay gene’, choose what to them may seem the lesser of two evils: abortion. Finally, I would argue that the Born This Way narrative can actively damage our perceptions of ourselves. In my sophomore year of college, I attended a Gay Student Alliance event at a nearby campus. It was the last meeting before Thanksgiving break, and the theme was coming out to your families. The idea was that the students would rehearse the coming out speech that they’d deliver while they were home. Student after student, while sobbing hysterically, said something like this: “Mom, you see how much pain this is causing me! Of course, I’d want to be straight if it were up to me. This is just who I am! You have to accept that because I can’t change that.” I wanted to grab each of them and say, “Being gay is not a handicap. It’s OK to be queer even if you choose to be queer — and you should want to be queer! Because we are beautiful and fabulous.” Ward sees this as a self-hating narrative. “Could you imagine if the dominant narrative of people of color was, ‘Well, of course I’d want to be white if I could. Wouldn’t everyone want to be white?’ That’s so racist! We’d never accept that story.” Perhaps it is time to look to the beginning of the gay rights movement. “Queer Nation and earlier movements in the US were not fundamentally organized around Born This Way explanations,” says Grzanka. “They were organized around sexual liberation, and the radical notion of challenging heteronormativity.” Gay and lesbian activists, says Ward, used to draw on religion parallels to argue for inclusion. “People aren’t born with their religions. They’re born into religious cultures, and they can convert if they’d like. But there are still legal protections for them.” Eventually activists decided that argument wasn’t working fast enough, particularly in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. “Then there was a shift, and the leaders of the movement chose to jump on board with a less nuanced argument that people already understood: just like race, people are born with their homosexuality.” Fortunately, we have now made enormous strides in understanding and affirming our queer sexualities. Some experts have even started using categories like ‘mostly straight’ and ‘mostly gay’ to try and expand our limited ways of viewing human sexuality. A recent UK poll from J. Walter Thompson Innovation group found that only 48% of Generation Z (ages 18-24) identify as “100% heterosexual.” Respondents were asked to rate themselves on a scale from zero (which signified “completely straight”) to six (“completely homosexual”). More than a third chose a number between one and five. In response to the poll, one of my Facebook friends quipped about how natural selection must be working in overtime, what with making all of us gay! Indeed, as Ward notes, the Generation Z findings don’t signal some evolutionary shift over the last 15 years. Rather, they show that the times — the ‘nurture’ part of the nature/nurture dichotomy — are changing. Homosexuality isn’t considered taboo. Heterosexuality isn’t (always) considered the compulsory norm. And importantly, each isn’t always constructed in opposition to the other. I’m thankful for a new generation that is capable of imagining sexuality in a way that transcends the gay/straight binary, that couldn’t care less about what happened to their bodies and minds to make them who they are today. I’m hopeful that for this generation, sexual histories like mine and Cynthia Nixon’s aren’t seen as threatening, but liberating. I don’t think I was born gay. I don’t think I was born straight. I was born the way all of us are born: as a human being with a seemingly infinite capacity to announce myself, to re-announce myself, to try on new identities like spring raincoats, to play with limiting categories, to challenge them and topple them, to cultivate my tastes and preferences, and, most importantly, to love and to receive love. This story is part of our Sexual Revolutions series on our evolving understanding of sex and gender. Brandon Ambrosino is a freelance journalist. He Tweets as @BrandonAmbro. Ignacio Lehmann is an Argentinian photographer who has travelled the globe for his 100 World Kisses project. Join 600,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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Is sexuality purely the result of our biology? Brandon Ambrosino argues that simplistic explanations have ignored the fluid, shape-shifting nature of our desires.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160723182157id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/worldnews/oscar-pistorius/10943659/Oscar-Pistorius-10-reasons-why-he-is-guilty-or-innocent.html

5) During a shaky performance in the witness box, Pistorius changed his story and his defence from previous statements read at his bail hearing and the start of his trial; adding the last words he exchanged with Steenkamp and that he heard the lavatory door slam, and first saying he fired at an intruder, then that he fired by mistake. Oscar Pistorius sits in the dock during his trial in Pretoria (Reuters) 6) On his account of challenging an intruder, Pistorius admitted he didn't check the sound he heard with his girlfriend lying awake next to him. Five couples living nearby told the court how their first reaction on hearing bangs, screams or cries was to verify what they heard with the person next to them. 7) The trigger of the gun Pistorius fired had to be pulled four separate times to fire the four shots, suggesting a conscious action. 8) He could not explain how he never heard or saw Steenkamp leave the bed to go to the lavatory moments before he started shooting into the door, despite her being just feet away from him. 9) Pistorius said Steenkamp never responded to his instructions to call the police, or made a sound as she hid in the lavatory. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel said this was "impossible" to believe. 10) Witness Dr Johan Stipp told the court he saw a light on in Pistorius' bathroom when he heard shots fired; the athlete said he was "too scared" to switch the lights on until after the shooting. 1) Pistorius had a heightened fear of intruders because his family had been victims of crime many times before, and this made him react more dramatically to a perceived threat. 2) The athlete felt especially vulnerable because he did not have his prosthetic legs on when he fired the shots. A psychologist said his reaction might seem “extraordinary” for an able-bodied person, but could be explained by his disability. The Paralympians’ team doctor said disabled people often exhibited more dramatic “fight-flight” responses, and Pistorius would have chosen to fight since he was unable to flee. 3) Pistorius suffered from a Generalised Anxiety Disorder, a psychiatrist who evaluated him found, which along with his disability may have made him react more extremely to a perceived threat. 4) Pistorius fought to save Steenkamp's life and was, witnesses said, distraught by what had happened. 5) The state presented scant evidence of the row they say prompted the shooting, through witness testimony or communication between the couple. The majority of Steenkamp's WhatsApp messages reflect that she was happy with the athlete. She also wrote him a Valentine's card in which she revealed she was in love with him. Oscar Pistorius listens to evidence in court (AP) 6) Sound tests conducted by the defence showed Pistorius screamed like a woman when he was anxious, his lawyer Barry Roux said, explaining the "woman's screams" neighbours heard. 7) Both prosecution and defence accept there were two sets of bangs: the gunshots and Pistorius later breaking down the door with a cricket bat when he realised Steenkamp was in the lavatory. Sound tests suggested the two sounded very similar. The gunshots neighbours thought they heard might have been Pistorius breaking down the lavatory door. 8) Neighbours who heard a woman screaming only heard one set of bangs; the timings of phone calls to estate security made by those witnesses, and Pistorius' phone calls to the estate manager and friends after he broke down the door, suggest they didn't hear the gunshots, only Pistorius screaming for help and the second set of bangs from the cricket bat. 9) Police contaminated the crime scene by failing to wear protective clothing, moving key exhibits and walking over the lavatory door. 10) Prosecutors decided to charge Pistorius with premeditated murder when they believed he took time to put on his prosthetic legs before firing the fatal shots. State forensic experts later agreed with the defence assertion that Pistorius did not have his legs on when he fired the shots.

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Oscar Pistorius is on trial for the premeditated murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. The state say he killed her deliberately after an argument; the athlete says he believed she was an intruder. The following are 10 reasons why the judge might find him guilty, or innocent

http://web.archive.org/web/20161004154144id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/04/05/47/nikolic-wants-second-chance-likely-in-qld

Controversial jockey Danny Nikolic claims he has been the victim of a conspiracy by corrupt Racing Victoria officials. Nikolic has told a court RV integrity services head Dayle Brown and chief steward Terry Bailey are corrupt and have led a targeted campaign against him. The Caulfield Cup-winning jockey said he has been treated very differently from other riders, including by RV investigator Tim Robinson. "I believe there's been a very well thought out position, Dayle Brown and Terry Bailey especially," Nikolic told his appeal to regain his jockey licence. "Because I've had words with Terry Bailey, I just find that in my opinion I get treated very differently to anybody else by those three in particular." Nikolic blamed Bailey or Brown for the decision to scratch the Lee Freedman-trained Kookaburras after the jockey was seen taking a mouthful from a can of beer at a 2010 race meeting. "Even now I think someone has come over the top and made sure that that horse got scratched, obviously to stop me from riding for that stable and to embarrass me publicly," Nikolic said on Tuesday. RV barrister Jeff Gleeson QC suggested Nikolic believed the decision to scratch the horse was part of an ongoing conspiracy orchestrated by Bailey and Brown against him. Nikolic replied: "Something like that." "I believe if it had have been another jockey the horse wouldn't have been scratched," he added. Nikolic, who was outed for threatening Bailey at a 2012 race meeting, said he would relocate to Queensland if he regains his jockey licence. "By relocating I won't have to put myself in the firing line of Terry Bailey and his henchmen so to speak," he told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Gleeson suggested Nikolic believed the conspiracy and Bailey's allegedly corrupt behaviour would continue if the jockey was relicensed. "On your view Terry Bailey as a corrupt chief of stewards will lay in wait for you, he will be quite prepared to manufacture evidence against you and will continue in his campaign of conspiracies to make your life impossible as a jockey." Nikolic said he did not know what Bailey would do but believed he would lose out in that it was his word against the steward's. "That's why I don't even want to ride in Melbourne and I want to restart my career in another jurisdiction until Terry Bailey is either moved on or retires. "Do I think he'll make life hard for me if I ride in this jurisdiction, my honest answer is yes I do." Nikolic said he did not know if Robinson, a former policeman, was corrupt but it was possible. "I think he's got an opinion about me and he's gone out of his way to make life very difficult for me." Nikolic says he has paid the penalty for past wrongful acts, which include assaulting a fellow jockey, the rider's girlfriend, a taxi driver and a policeman.

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Jockey Danny Nikolic continues giving evidence in a Victorian tribunal as he tries to regain his riding licence.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140522151105id_/http://time.com/108353/70-of-mastectomies-arent-necessary-heres-why-women-have-them-anyway/

In a new study published in JAMA Surgery, researchers say that 70% of women with breast cancer in one breast who decide to remove the other breast do so unnecessarily. In fact, only 10% of women diagnosed with breast cancer should consider such prophylactic mastectomy, say experts. But that hasn’t kept rates of mastectomies from climbing. In the 1990s, about 1% of women diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast opted to have the other one removed; that percentage has jumped to 20% in recent years. MORE: Angelina Jolie’s Double Mastectomy: It’s Not the Only Option This increase is despite the fact that studies don’t show that removing an unaffected breast can lower a woman’s risk of recurrence or increase her chances of surviving the disease. That doesn’t change the fact that there are other reasons—perfectly understandable and deeply human ones—that may be guiding women’s choices. We spoke with leading experts and identified these four. 1. A fear of doing nothing “Fear is absolutely driving the decision,” says Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “I definitely understand that fear; we often hear, ‘I don’t want to deal with this ever again.’” And that’s reasonable, especially for women who go through the rigors of chemotherapy, and who are worried about surviving their disease so they can be there for their children and their families. That fear, however, can overshadow reason. Bedrosian was not involved in the current study, but published a trial in 2010 in which she and her colleagues found that only a small and specific group of women diagnosed with breast cancer—those under age 50, with early stage disease that was negative for estrogen receptors—may benefit from having both breasts removed. These women enjoyed a nearly 5% improved chance of survival five years after diagnosis than those who did not have the unaffected breast removed. But as the current study found, this represented less than 10% of women with breast cancer. Studies also show that the chances of breast cancer recurring in the opposite breast are very, very small. In fact, breast cancer patients are more likely to develop recurrent tumors in other parts of the body—the liver, lungs, or the brain—than they are their other breast. Still, says Hawley, “There are probably other things caught up in the variable of worry, from not wanting to think about [cancer] anymore, to not wanting to regret anything in the future if something did happen.” VIDEO: MRI: A New Tool to Detect Recurrent Breast Cancer 2. Early detection means too much information Technology may also play a role in driving up rates of just-in-case surgery. More women are getting an MRI of the breast, both as a way to screen for breast cancer and to give doctors a better picture of the tumors. These images are refined enough to pick up the tiniest of lesions, including those that may not need treatment. But it’s hard for women to do nothing at all after learning they have a growth in their breast, even if they might be benign and not require treatment. In such moments, it’s likely that every instinct tells women to do something. “The feeling is to do everything possible, and doing everything possible means more surgery,” says Hawley. 3. The pink ribbon brigade Breast cancer advocacy is a model of how to mobilize and educate the public about a disease. Rates of screening have gone up while death rates have come down (although it is still the leading cancer killer among U.S. women). The awareness about the disease and the push for better treatments, however, have magnified the obligation and responsibility behind every choice, from screening to diagnosis and treatment. And that’s especially true about the decision surrounding prophylactic surgery. “There is a hyper awareness surrounding prophylactic mastectomy, and many women are choosing it without a clear understanding of why,” says Bedrosian. Coverage of celebrities’ decisions to proactively remove their breasts may also heighten the urgency of taking aggressive action for many women. “I don’t know of anyone publicly who has said they were diagnosed with breast cancer recently and chose to have lumpectomy with radiation,” says Hawley. (Good Morning American anchor Amy Robach, who does not carry the BRCA breast cancer genes which put women at higher risk of recurrence, still decided to have a double mastectomy.) “There is a feeling that doing everything you can is a way to take control. And just doing a lumpectomy and radiation may not be taking as much control as choosing a double mastectomy.” MORE: Study: Double Mastectomy May Not Improve Survival 4. Not enough accurate information about options Bedrosian admits that part of the reason women are choosing to proactively remove their breasts, even when they may not need to, has to do with the fact that doctors don’t have the best tools for helping patients make this decision. For the 10% of women at high risk of having recurrent breast cancer, the decision isn’t as challenging. But for the remaining 90%, many of whom may not have a genetic risk but have distant relatives with the disease, the decision becomes harder. “Communication is important to make sure that patients are informed about the medical facts,” says Bedrosian. “It’s important to make sure that our patients are making informed choices and not simply fear-driven choices.” In the end, it’s a very personal—and complicated—decision, in which each of these factors, and many others, may take on varying degrees of importance.

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Science says the treatment doesn’t lower risk of recurrence, but here’s why rates of the procedures continue to climb

http://web.archive.org/web/20140729200223id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/02/28/bmw-gets-plugged-in/

Among the new models that BMW will introduce in 2013, two stand out. The first, a sports coupe named the 4 Series, is instantly recognizable as a BMW. A bit lower and wider than the 3 Series coupe it replaces, it will be built at BMW’s Spartanburg, S.C., manufacturing complex and sell for prices starting at about $45,000. The second vehicle, an all-electric city car called the i3, is unlike anything BMW — or anyone else, for that matter — has ever made. Its weight-saving carbon-fiber body is wrapped in layers of electronic services and smartphone apps designed to make life simpler and save time for the owner. Searching for a parking space? The i3 will help you find one at your destination — as well as arrange to rent out your space at home while you are gone. Need a charge for the lithium-ion batteries? Another feature locates the nearest charging station and arranges for an emergency boost if you can’t find it. Should you be planning a trip out of town, BMW will help you swap your electric car for a gasoline-powered one with a longer range. Engineering cars that make driving pleasure a top priority has made BMW the bestselling luxury brand in the world. Its cars are renowned for innovative design, high-performing engines, and exceptional handling. The i3 has none of those things. It is designed for utility and fuel economy, and when it goes on sale this fall, it will be expensive — about $40,000 — and probably appeal to a small number of people. So why is the Munich automaker risking its reputation by venturing into unproven new technologies where sales will be tiny and profits a challenge? The answer goes to the heart of BMW’s long-running success. It wants to be seen as a manufacturer of cars that serve a real purpose. In pursuit of that goal, it has made this detour. While BMW believes that the luxury-car market will remain robust, it also thinks buyers are becoming more interested in two qualities that it has largely ignored: sustainability and interconnectedness. In its new mission statement it aspires to become the “world’s leading provider of premium products and premium services for individual mobility.” In other words, BMW wants to make cars that are plugged-in and eco-conscious. What the initiative means for BMW is uncertain. Six months after the i3’s introduction, it will launch the second car in its i Series, a $125,000 grand touring car with a plug-in hybrid drivetrain. Other electric models are expected to follow. In all, they will require an investment of several billion euros, with little prospect of a quick payoff — a tremendous risk for a company that, in its entirety, is smaller than GM’s Chevrolet division. Rumors have appeared in the automotive press that BMW has canceled or postponed some models because of weak electric-vehicle sales, or is adding gasoline-assisted versions as a hedge against buyer resistance. But BMW’s top executives appear committed. “There is no doubt in my mind,” chairman and chief executive Norbert Reithofer told Fortune, “that sustainable thinking and action is an essential condition for long-term growth, higher profitability, and the development of new customer segments and pioneering technologies.” BMW embarks on its new direction from a rock-solid financial base. BMW Group’s brands — BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce — all set sales records in 2012. Sales of BMW cars alone rose 12%, to 1.54 million, besting Mercedes-Benz and Audi for the title of the world’s most popular premium brand. In the U.S., 281,460 BMWs were sold, leaving Cadillac, Buick, and Acura in the dust. BMW’s market capitalization has surged to 45 billion euros, twice the value of Mercedes. The stock is up 30% in the past six months and hit an all-time high in January. At BMW the car has always been the star. The company’s heart and soul is the Forschungs- und Innovationszentrum, the research and innovation center known as the FIZ. A short drive from corporate headquarters in Munich, the FIZ is home to some 8,900 engineers and others who bring together the three essential functions of the car business — product development, procurement, and marketing. In 2007, though, BMW was faced with problems that could not be solved at the FIZ and that threatened BMW’s survival as an independent company. Rising commodity prices and the expensive euro were driving up the costs of manufacturing at the same time that automakers were investing large sums to meet EU regulations for CO2 emissions. Traffic congestion in cities and an aging customer base were depressing demand for high-performance cars. Chairman and chief executive Helmut Panke had sold off the money-losing Rover Group and led BMW’s expansion in North America and China, but the supervisory board declined to extend his contract when he reached the mandatory retirement age. In his place it installed a dark-horse candidate, a manufacturing specialist named Norbert Reithofer. Reithofer, then 50, had spent most of his career in production, making his reputation by halving the time required to ramp up production of a new 3 Series car. Reithofer set out to understand the threats to the company and the factors that were braking its profitability. He identified some 200 economic, technological, and social trends likely to shape BMW’s future. “It became obvious that our competitive position was at stake,” Reithofer explained at the time. “We realized that we couldn’t carry on as we had before.” The project was controversial. “Many people didn’t understand back then why the company needed to make changes after being successful for so many years,” he told Fortune recently. “But things are different now. The results have shown that we are on the right track.” With his study in hand, Reithofer set in motion what he called Strategy No. 1: BMW would become the leading provider of premium products and services for individual mobility by 2020. BMW watchers understood that it was a radical plan. Reithofer’s focus on “premium” was a clear refutation of BMW’s foray into mid-price cars with the Rover acquisition. And his declaration that BMW would provide “premium services” as well as “premium products” signaled that BMW would be venturing beyond the FIZ. Reithofer also set ambitious financial targets. By 2012 he wanted BMW to sell 1.8 million vehicles, earn operating margins of 8% to 10%, and achieve a return on capital of 26%. The next step was figuring out how to meet the targets. In the spring of 2008 he assembled some of the company’s most innovative thinkers at a secret location in Munich and gave them instructions to redefine personal transportation for the 21st century. A team traveled around the world, visiting big cities, interviewing urban planners and architects, and talking to residents. After nine months the thinkers came up with a new direction. BMW would follow two different paths: one evolutionary, with efficient combustion engines and the technologies that surround them — its traditional car business, in other words — and the other revolutionary, with electric powertrains, recyclable materials, and software-driven mobility services. Strategy No. 1 gave birth to “Project i” — for intelligent, innovative, and international. In 2009, Project i unveiled its first experimental vehicle, the Mini E. It wasn’t elegant — the back seat of a conventional Mini had been removed to make room for batteries — but the car taught BMW about owner usage and battery life. One Mini E set a record at the time by traveling 147.3 miles on a single charge. Next came the ActiveE, which began U.S. field tests with 700 cars in January 2012. Based on the BMW 1 Series, it was more sophisticated than the Mini E, with seating for four and a thermal management system for improved battery performance. For the third phase of Project i, BMW unveiled the i3 at the Frankfurt Auto Show in 2011. Developing it sent BMW into uncharted territory. For the carbon-fiber body, it formed a joint venture with an American company, SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers, and built a $100 million manufacturing plant in Moses Lake, Wash., to take advantage of hydropower from the nearby Grand Coulee Dam — sustainable power for a sustainable car. Raw material for the carbon fiber is shipped from Japan to Moses Lake, then sent to component makers in Wackersdorf and Landshut, Germany, and then on to Leipzig for final assembly. BMW figures the lifetime global-warming impact of the electric i3 is a third less than that of a similar-size diesel hatchback because of the use of carbon fiber for the body, recycled aluminum in the chassis, and interior panels and seats made out of hemp fibers, recycled water bottles, and the like. The Leipzig plant, which was expanded two years ago to accommodate the i3, runs on 100% renewable energy. Although the i3’s electric powertrain weighs about 440 pounds more than a similar combustion setup, the car is 550 pounds lighter, thanks to its aluminum chassis and carbon-fiber body. The car needs eight seconds to get to 62 mph — tortoise time for a BMW — but that didn’t stop Ludwig Willisch, president of BMW North America, from exclaiming after a drive, “It looks great, and it goes like hell. It is a true BMW.” But the real innovation can be found in the passenger compartment. BMW calls i3 the world’s first fully networked electric vehicle. The driver will be able to summon a mobile charging truck if his battery runs out. He will have smartphone apps to find charging spots, and the ability to swap into a gas-powered car. Operation of the navigation system, as well as the transfer of information among the vehicle, the outside world, and the driver’s smartphone, has been tailored for city driving. If the i3 is all about practicality and convenience, the i8 grand tourer sits at the opposite end of the mobility spectrum, where glamour and performance rule. Early i8 concepts featured two large pivot doors for access to both the front and rear seats, and laser headlights that are 10 times brighter than standard ones yet somehow don’t blind oncoming drivers. The combined gas and electric motors of its hybrid drivetrain are said to whisk the 3,250-pound car to 62 mph in 4.6 seconds on the way to a top speed of 155 mph. For those with a lighter foot, fuel economy is figured at 104 miles per gallon. Deliveries begin in the first half of 2014. BMW’s search for services and features to wrap around its i cars has taken it thousands of miles from Munich. For years automakers have used satellite design studios in Southern California to get a window on new trends. BMW has one, of course, but it also uses a technology office in Mountain View, Calif., where 40 professionals seek out, evaluate, and develop high-tech ideas. BMW has a beachhead on the East Coast too; it created its own New York venture capital operation in New York City and funded it with $100 million to invest in mobility services. Among its holdings is London-based Parkatmyhouse, which connects home and business owners who want to rent their parking spaces with drivers looking for a spot. Another is a California company called ChargePoint, the largest network of independently owned charging stations, operating in 14 countries. There’s more. If you own a BMW in San Francisco, the company offers a service called ParkNow that lets drivers find and book a parking spot in advance at off-street locations, as well as get information on related services, such as finding a car wash and renting a bike. Want to drive a BMW but don’t own one? BMW has established DriveNow, a car-sharing service, in Munich, Berlin, Düsseldorf, and San Francisco. Find a car on its website and pay per use; you’ll be billed by the minute. All this focus on the future does not mean that BMW is ignoring the present. The company easily met its financial targets for 2012, and propelled by strong sales in China and the U.S., the company expects to hit its target of 2 million in car sales in 2016, four years earlier than planned. Growth is coming from expanded offerings of small and compact cars like the 1 Series, and from BMW’s ability to exploit product niches in existing segments. At the Paris Auto Show last fall it presented a short, chubby hatchback with a hybrid powertrain that it called the Active Tourer. About the same length as the 1 Series, the Active Tourer will share a front-wheel-drive platform with the Mini, making it the first BMW to come to market without the rear-wheel drive that enthusiasts prefer. Considering the inability of Nissan and others to profit from electric vehicles, BMW’s ability to sell them at premium prices is hardly a given. Fortunately, Reithofer can afford to be patient. Since 47% of its stock is owned by Munich’s Quandt family, BMW essentially operates like a private company. When asked how soon BMW could expect a payoff from its i investments, Reithofer said the project had already been paid for, and “if everything goes according to plan, we will earn a reasonable margin per vehicle and make money on every car.” Just to make sure there was no misunderstanding, he added, “We don’t build vehicles that are not profitable.” A BMW supplier was overheard one day complaining that the company’s standards make it a very difficult customer. “Every time we get to perfect, they change perfect,” he said. The same might be said of BMW’s long-term strategy. Besides continually refining the ultimate driving machine, BMW has taken on the additional challenge of creating the ultimate sustainable and plugged-in urban vehicle for the 21st century. It is big challenge for a small company, but then that is what makes BMW BMW. This story is from the March 18, 2013 issue of Fortune.

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The company is making huge bets on green, wired cars for city dwellers alongside its high-performance luxury vehicles.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140803074356id_/http://fortune.com:80/2012/03/01/what-google-learned-from-sopa/

FORTUNE — Google GOOG today implemented its controversial new privacy policy, which ties together more than ever before data gathered from users’ online activities across all of its properties — search, Gmail, Google Plus, Picasa, Google Maps, etc. — to better target ads based on users’ interests. There is plenty of blowback, of course. But that might have been mitigated, at least somewhat, by Google’s ad campaign, “Good to Know,” which comprises cute line drawings to explain and promote the new policy. “Online privacy has never looked more cuddly,” decided Advertising Age. MORE: The story behind “Inside Facebook” Or maybe privacy intrusion has never looked more cuddly is a better way to put it. Google of course is putting the best possible face on what is, after all, a highly controversial, possibly troubling move. But the campaign might be unique in terms of taking such actions directly to the people, circumventing lawyers, interest groups and politicians to the extent possible. “Good to Know” was launched in Europe before the anti-SOPA campaign reached full volume, culminating in an online movement of people and companies that resulted in Web blackouts and other protests the led to the anti-piracy legislation’s being shelved. Google took part, though only with a message on its site stating its opposition to the bill. But the company must have been pleased by the effort’s success, since it offered further evidence that in many cases, direct-to-the-public publicity campaigns can be highly effective. MORE: How StumbleUpon saved itself Of course, that can work both ways, and for a lot of people, Google’s new policy is a lot like SOPA in being anathema to the interests of Internet users. Some of the same groups and many of the same individuals that opposed SOPA also oppose this. But if such battles are increasingly fought in public, that might be a lot better than having them fought in Congress, the courts, or lawyer’s offices, where interests other than the public interest are bound to hold more sway.

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With its "Good to Know" campaign, Google tried to take the debate out of the realm of lawyers and politicians and into the public square. Given that opposition is still vociferous, it's hard to know how effective it has been.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140909123120id_/http://www.people.com/article/molly-glynn-chicago-fire-actress-dies-bicycle-accident-storm

09/08/2014 AT 06:30 PM EDT Molly Glynn, an accomplished Chicago theater actress who also played a recurring role as a doctor on the TV series , has died after a tree toppled by a powerful storm struck her as she rode her bike in a forest park. She was 46. Glynn was with her husband, Joe Foust, when the storm rolled quickly into the area, just north of Chicago, the executive director of First Folio Theatre and a close family friend, David Rice, said Sunday. "Molly was one of the most loving and generous people in the Chicago theater scene," he said. "She was incredibly talented – incredibly versatile. She could handle both comedy and the deepest, darkest dramas." Glynn's husband called 911 just before 4 p.m. on Friday to say his wife had been injured, Cook County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Sophia Ansari said. NorthShore Evanston Hospital spokeswoman Colette Urban confirmed Glynn died Saturday. Glynn had an audition earlier in the day Friday and she and her husband had decided to go for a ride. The inclement weather took them by surprise and the tree slammed into Glynn as the couple sought to ride to safety, Rice said. "It was a freak accident and a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. Others in the theater community in and around Chicago also expressed shock and sadness. "It is an incalculable loss," said Michael Halberstam, the artistic director of the Glencoe-based Writers Theatre. "She was a loving mother and wife and everyone who met her fell in love with her." Glynn grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, Rice said. In addition to her husband, she is also survived by two teenage sons. Foust has been open about his grief with his Facebook followers, sharing a link to of himself on Sunday wearing Glynn's wedding band as well as his own. "Wearing the rings myself," he wrote below the photo. "Preparing to say final goodbye before she goes off to surgery to donate her organs. I know it's just a shell now, but I've grown used to the comfort of her body here in this room. Be kind. Love hard. Remember."

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The Chicago-based actress was biking with her husband when a tree fell on her during a fast-moving storm

http://web.archive.org/web/20150322060530id_/http://www.foxsports.com:80/arizona/story/arizona-wildcats-ncaa-tournament-bad-boy-detroit-pistons-032015

Updated MAR 21, 2015 7:11a ET Arizona had been close to the top but has never quite broken through to the hallowed ground in the first five years under coach Sean Miller. Looking for that little extra boost -- a jolt of inspiration and motivation for this season -- Miller stumbled onto something while watching a two-hour documentary from ESPN's 30 for 30 series: "Bad Boys." It became required viewing for his Wildcats. There were lessons to be learned and messages to take away from the Detroit Pistons teams of the late 1980s and 1990s: Teamwork, toughness, family, roles and winning. "With team success it's amazing how individual accolades follow, how players in a team sacrifice, and how it comes back around and they benefit," Miller said Friday as his Wildcats prepared for a Round of 32 game against Ohio State. "There are a lot of lessons. Defense is something you can control better than offense. For our team to be totally committed to being a great defensive team, (it) will take us the furthest we can go." His players say they've taken the lessons to heart en route to a 32-3 record heading into Saturday's game. What was senior point guard T.J. McConnell's prime takeaway? "How close they were as a team," McConnell said. "He wanted our team to be like that. We've watched it so many times that we're pretty much like that. We kind of figured it out as they kept talking about how close they were and what they would do for each other. We said to ourselves we have to be like that." Success didn't come easily or overnight for the Bad Boy Pistons. They had to get past the reigning powers of the time, the Celtics in the East and the Lakers in West. After several years of knocking on the door, the Chuck Daly-coached Pistons won back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990. It's a journey that Arizona can relate to -- the Wildcats have twice been one basket away from the Final Four during Miller's tenure but have yet to take that big step. "How Coach (Miller) viewed it was we have been knocking on the door of a Pac-12 championship and the Final Four," said Ryan Reynolds, Arizona's director of basketball operations. "Our program, like the Pistons, has to break down some doors." Miller first showed the tape last summer -- initially to his returning players, then to his entire team. They've watched it at least four times, enough to have broken down some parts into segments to illustrate points. Chief among them are the staples of a championship team: Defense and rebounding. "(That) was the backbone of their team," said Arizona assistant coach Joe Pasternack. "Everybody had a certain role on the team, and everybody had to accept that role." Isiah Thomas was the leader. That's McConnell. Bill Laimbeer was the enforcer. Kaleb Tarczewski, though lacking Laimbeer's mean streak, plays that role for the Wildcats. Mark Aguirre, the scorer, comes in the form of freshman Stanley Johnson. And Rondae Hollis-Jefferson plays defense like Dennis Rodman and has the personality of John Salley. "In that aspect, as far as being the hustle guy, diving on the floor for a loose ball, having energy, I would say, 'yeah,' " Hollis-Jefferson said, agreeing with the Rodman comparison. "Know your role," he said. "If you think about it, in a way, we're like them because we have so many situations, so many places where we didn't break through. They (Pistons) were getting closer and closer every time. Eventually they broke through. "It's time to break through." Tarczewski added three points: Playing with heart, being physical and being unafraid. "It was about being all in and playing hard basketball," he said. "That was the most important thing. They were a team, and everyone was playing their hardest, doing everything they could to win. That's what we're trying to do. "They were a family. Everyone was trying to win. That's what he was trying to tell us. It was good for us. It provided our team a lot of motivation." For Johnson, the prevailing message was one of toughness, to be the "baddest boys" on the court. "We're not going to get punked, not going to back down from anybody," Johnson said. "It's not about how big or tough you are. We're going to show you -- and not by fist fighting -- but how we crash the glass and how we play offense and defense. "If we lose, we're going to lose the right way, doing our thing. That's the mentality how this team works. That's what (Miller) was getting at." Follow Steve Rivera on Twitter

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Sean Miller uses message from Pistons' hard-fought climb to top as inspiration for pushing Arizona toward long-awaited breakthrough.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150428003659id_/http://fortune.com/2012/01/23/chinas-housing-market-is-set-for-a-hard-landing/

FORTUNE — The Chinese government’s announcement last week that growth for 2011 slowed only slightly to a still impressive 9.2% was greeted enthusiastically by the world’s stock markets. Investors also remain buoyant on China’s future. They appear to be buying the official line that the gigantic property price bubble is gradually and smoothly deflating, posing little risk to an engine that’s so crucial to the future of global trade. But the math tells a different story. The housing frenzy has driven prices so high, so fast, that a crash on the scale of the real estate collapse in Japan in the 1990s is a virtual certainty. And China’s already exaggerated official growth rate could take a pounding, all the way to the zone of the unthinkable, into the low single-digits. For this analysis, I’ll borrow heavily from my former professor and mentor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Robert Aliber. Affectionately known to his students by his initials “RZA,” Aliber is now retired to New Hampshire, but he writes a superb newsletter for his friends and clients. He spotted the reckless credit expansion, huge trade deficits and asset bubbles that now haunt both the U.S. and European economies long before most experts. As Aliber puts it, “In China, the housing boom is a far bigger source of growth than is widely recognized, and it’s totally unsustainable.” China can’t grow its way out of a European recession Aliber got his first clue that the craze spelled disaster from a former student living in Beijing. The young Chicago alumnus told Aliber that he’d just moved into an apartment building with several hundred units, and was the only one living there. Investors had bought all the other apartments that hadn’t sold. Later that year, Aliber visited the office of an upscale developer in Beijing, who was getting $600,000 for 1100 square foot units with bare walls. The folks doing the purchasing were earning between $20,000 and $30,000. Given those modest incomes, it was obvious that the buyers weren’t purchasing an affordable new residence, but speculating in real estate, either to live there for awhile then flip the unit, or simply leave it vacant while seeking a buyer willing to hand them quick windfall. What amazed Aliber was the chasm between the prices of the apartments and the rents they fetched. A typical $600,000 unit brought a landlord less than $1000 a month in rent after expenses (assuming no mortgage). It wasn’t the rental yields that attracted investors, it was the huge price appreciation, averaging from 20% to 30% from 2008 until last year. Rents — the cost of living in the unit — exercise a sort of gravitational pull on prices. That’s because people won’t pay far more to own a home than to rent a similar one, unless they think prices will keep soaring — a view that’s a sure sign of casino mentality, and never lasts. In China, prices in the frothiest markets are fifty or sixty time rents. That’s the case with the example we discussed above, where the price is $600,000, and the rent is $12000, a ratio of 50-to-1. The 50 to 60 multiple is far above the level in most U.S. markets at the height of the bubble in 2006; in those heady days, a multiple of 40 was considered giant. So how far do China’s prices need to fall so that the cost of owning is reasonably close to the level of rents? Aliber reckons that the rental yield on apartments will eventually go from less than 2% to 5%, or even a bit higher. The rental yield is simply the annual rent divided by the market price, just as the yield on a bond is the fixed interest payment divided by the price of the bond that day. In the U.S., the rental yield averages around 6%, meaning the multiple of prices to rents is around 17. The adjustment to a 5% rental yield in China would push prices down by 60%. 15 business people who’ve changed China Aliber is by no means the sole China expert to predict that a steep drop is coming. “I estimate that a decline of 60% or even more is the upper end of the range, but is indeed possible,” says Derek Scissors, an economist at the Heritage Foundation. The adjustment has already begun. While the government’s official figures show modest declines starting late last year, those numbers are famously unreliable. A better view comes from owners trying to sell their units. Losses of 30% aren’t uncommon. In fact, many owners who paid, say, $600,000 in 2010 are furious that their landlords are now offering unsold units in the same building for $450,000. What’s the probable hit to China’s vaunted growth rate? It’s important to recap the forces that caused the frenzy. China imposes tight restrictions on returns on bank accounts, government bond yields and other domestic investments. Inflation for 2011 exceeded 5%, but 10-year bond yields are just 3.5%. It’s extremely difficult to find investments that yield more than inflation. When the easy money policies took charge after the worldwide crash of 2008, the excess cash flowed into the only place with big returns — real estate. For around four years, China has been building around 1 billion square meters of housing a year, ten times the figure in the U.S. The amount needed to accommodate real owners — people moving from farms to the cities, for example — is 700 million square meters. So let’s assume that demand goes back to that level. China is also swamped with seven to eight million vacant units. If around two million of those are sold a year, China will need to build just 500 million square meters annually — half of the total over the past several years. That decline will pound not just expenditures on apartments, but production of steel, copper and appliances. By Aliber’s reckoning, the sharp decline in housing production could lower China’s growth rate by a full five points. In his view, around three points of its 9.2% growth rate in 2011 came from the bubble. Shave two more points for the empty apartments that need to be sold, and future growth looks far less robust than the official projections. Unlike the post-crash U.S., China will keep growing after the bubble bursts, though at a far slower rate. What bears watching is the effect of another gigantic stimulus program to compensate for the decline in housing. If renewed inflation follows, so will a slowdown needed to tame it. Or as Aliber observes, “China’s spurt of a 10% growth rate is likely to be history.”

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The numbers are grim: China’s property bubble is heading for a spectacular burst, and its effect on the country’s economy will be widespread.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150723230837id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2015/07/19/fillmore-set-shows-family-stone-peak-potency/3NsI1xKHdVmh2Kv7eZGEtO/story.html

The years 1967 and 1969 were known for their festivals, but live music in the ’60s may have had no better year than 1968, when club rock hit a kind of Hall of Fame peak. The days of rubbish amps and teenybopper gaggles were in the past, and the two Fillmore venues — one on each coast — were the psychedelic Mecca and Medina of the post-pop crowd. “Sly and the Family Stone: Live at the Fillmore East — October 4th & 5th, 1968,” a four-disc set, released last week and comprising four shows played across two nights, is sourced from New York — and, one might add, plenty of people’s wish lists, since there has been so little live Sly available over the years. And with the opening notes of “Are You Ready” — a query doubling as a warning that you are about to get seriously rocked — it’s evident that this is going to be one doozy of a box. The first show has some technical bugs, — amps act up, microphones fluctuate — but that only serves to bolster an inchoate feel from which Stone had a knack for wringing rhythm. The second show that night is pure groove, including a version of “Dance to the Music” with a pliancy that even the well-known studio cut lacks. It’s all the more remarkable given that blues, R&B, soul jazz, hambone satire, Louis Armstrong-style vocalese, and Bachian modulations all go into the mix. That it works seamlessly is pure Sly, which is why he mattered as rock and soul’s foremost assimilator. One highlight of the early show from the second night is a treatment of “Color Me True” with barbershop polyphonies brought to bear amid the Family’s perpetual roiling. “Do you take credit for somebody else’s cooking?” goes one refrain, inviting the response, nope, this is all you guys. The third show also features the best version of the Otis Redding-like stomper “M’Lady,” and goodness how it churns and burns. Pumping bass, full-throated horns, giant fistfuls of funky organ notes, cannonades of drums: This is just a massive sound, punctuated with unaccompanied vocals that in turn morph into wordless instruments. Things come completely untethered at the final show, a soul-music symposium voiced by members of a band that had never been tighter as a live act. The “Turn Me Loose / I Can’t Turn You Loose” medley might as well come with an advisory to don a helmet, lest you dance too hard and jar your skull against a wall. Sister Rosie Stone, on keyboards and vocals, is a huge presence throughout, and at one point Stone pleads with the sound man to turn her up. Hers is the voice that cuts best through Stone’s slab of sound. Stone himself is quite the sound painter on the organ. It’s something for which he’s never been given a ton of credit: That organ that manages to be both an obvious hallmark of the band at its greatest fettle and a surprise, too, when it comes washing over you. There’s enough variety here that you understand why the whole shebang needed to come out — and vintage audiophiles will just about bow down before the quality of these tapes. Had a record label released that second show from Oct. 4 as a single LP back in its day, we’d be going on almost five decades now with a live Sly Stone album counting as as one of the best ever waxed. Good to have in the books at last.

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A new four-disc set of recordings made in New York in 1968 shows Sly and the Family Stone at their peak, mixing blues, rock, funk, soul, and more.

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Russians in particular, in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis, have reportedly been trying to stash their cash in London's most expensive properties, but this is not something chief executive of exclusive property finder London Central Portfolio, Naomi Heaton has seen much of. Read MoreLondon house prices face boost from Ukraine turmoil "From our point it hasn't been much of a story, there has not been a notable impact on the market as a result of the sanctions imposed in April and at the moment I would be really surprised if new sanctions would have any impact," she said. "There were only 51 properties over $10 million sold last year, so we were never talking about a big quantity, and Russians only represent about 2 percent of buyers," she said. However, while Russians may not be buying that many prime London properties – they are certainly renting them. There are more Russians, particularly students, newly renting property in "iconic postcodes" in central London than any other nationality, Heaton said. Read MoreLondon luxury housing market 'cooling', estate agents warn "Russia represents the highest proportion of students at 13 percent of our tenancy start-ups this year. So we are seeing Russians, but interestingly we are seeing them at the other end of the process," said Heaton.. "We have more Russian students than any other nationality, which is a very interesting statistic – but we are not seeing the buying end," she added. Global estate agent Knight Frank has found that international buyers are now retreating from the ultra-luxury London property market. Foreign buyers accounted for under half (47 percent) of the super-prime market so far this year, down from 64 percent last year and 73 percent in 2012.

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Foreign buyers have been blamed for rising London house prices, but estate agents say the rental market has seen a rise in Russian interest.

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In January its members campaigned against and helped defeat the LDP's candidate for governor of Saga, a prefecture in farm-heavy southwestern Japan. Though agriculture is only about 1 percent of Japan's economy, that defeat worries those who fear the government could temper what Koichi Kurose, chief economist at Resona Bank, calls "a symbolic part of Abe's structural reforms" ahead of nationwide local elections in April. "If they pull back from that to win elections, they can pull back from the whole Abenomics reforms," he said. "Foreign investors are also watching closely whether or not Abe can carry out agricultural reforms, which will affect their evaluations of Abenomics," said Chizu Hori, senior research officer at Mizuho Research Institute Ltd. At home, farmers hurt by another plank of Abenomics - loose money and a weaker yen - are also watching closely. Hiroyasu Sugiura, 67, whose dairy lies in the shadow of Toyota Motor factories in central Japan, says he is desperate. The tumbling yen helps exporters like Toyota but has led to a sharp rise in feed costs, which now swallow nearly 80 percent of Sugiura's dairy revenue. Read MoreAbenomics gets a mixed report card "The weaker yen ... may have given Toyota Motor trillions of yen in profit, but we are getting squeezed by the same national policy," said Sugiura, who is also the head of the Aichi Dairy Cooperative. "We want the government to protect us." For the consumer, however, high prices and a recent butter shortage are the pitfalls of a closed market for milk and dairy products, where output volume and sales prices are set by the state and a few designated groups under the JA, while imports are under effective state control. Raw milk production was 7.45 million tonnes in the year through March 2014, down from 8.66 million in 1997, while the number of dairy farmers has fallen to 18,600 in 2014 from 160,100 in 1975. Cow numbers have fallen by a third from their peak. Meanwhile, Japan imposes a 360 percent tariff on butter imports to protect domestic farmers while maintaining an import quota as a condition for such high tariffs under international rules of trade.

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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's program to revive the nation's economy is set to meet perhaps its stiffest challenge, the nation's sclerotic farming industry.

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"We're sick of being deceived by the ruling party," said Yorie Arakaki, a 44-year-old housewife among protesters who clashed with police a few weeks ago as dump trucks came in the dead of night to start working at Henoko, site of a new base to replace Futenma air base in central Okinawa. "We now see that the will of the people won't be honored." Emotions are especially high this year, the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa, which left 30 percent of the island's population dead. Residents lived under U.S. rule for the next 27 years. Even now, Okinawa hosts nearly 75 percent of the U.S. military presence in Japan, taking up 18 percent of its land area. Abe's push to beef up Japan's military, driven by China's growing assertiveness, has some worried in Okinawa, which sits some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) south of Tokyo. Last month, buoyed by December's re-election, his government passed a record $42 billion defence budget. "In the hypothetical case of a military 'situation,' Tokyo is so far away it won't feel the pain, just like 70 years ago," Nago mayor Susumu Inamine told Reuters. "Then, Okinawa helped buy time for the home islands, and this thinking basically hasn't changed. People on the mainland want Okinawans to put up with everything so they can feel safe." Everyone agrees that Futenma, crammed in the middle of a densely-populated residential area, must be moved. But a rising number of Okinawans now say it should be shifted from the islands altogether. Reasons include the planned deployment of the controversial Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, loathed for its noise, among other reasons. Read MoreCranking up reforms: Tokyo analysts to lose overtime pay "The vibrations make your insides go numb," said Kanako Kawakami, a 56-year-old resident of Ginowan, the site of Futenma. Huddled among a group of 100 protesters, Kawakami was part of a round-the-clock vigil on a hillside in front of Camp Schwab, a U.S. base that abuts the Henoko site. Dump trucks arrived in the dead of night. In January, an 80-year-old woman was hurt in clashes between protesters and riot police. The bases have always been a devil's bargain for Japan's second-poorest prefecture, where unemployment is about 75 percent higher than the national average. In the rundown city of Nago, Abe's vaunted economic growth policies appear to have had little impact on its 61,500 residents. Some are resigned. "Bases bring in money," said taxi driver Masatsune Naka, 65. "People have to support families." To help the prefecture, Tokyo has provided a generous development budget, insisting it is not linked to bases. But after the election of anti-base governor Takeshi Onaga in November, and the trouncing of ruling party candidates in a December parliamentary election, the government said it was cutting the budget by 16 billion yen to 334 billion yen in the 2015/16 fiscal year. And as the percentage of the island's GDP coming from the bases falls - from 15 percent in 1972 to 4.9 percent in 2011 - Okinawans are aware they need to be more self-reliant. Tourism now accounts for nearly 10 percent of GDP, including a hefty number of foreigners. Freeing up base land for local use would also allow expansion of growing industries such as information technology and call centers. Economically, though, things would be tough. Okinawa's GDP ranks alongside that of the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu. "There's no way we'd ever declare independence, we couldn't feed ourselves," said Satoru Kinjo, head of the local branch of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. But islander anger, and the government's response, could pose a national danger for Abe. On Jan. 25, nearly 7,000 people gathered to protest the Henoko base in Tokyo. "The Japanese people will be watching what happens here," Inamine, the Nago mayor, said. "People who have supported the government and LDP up to now won't be able to excuse their excesses anymore."

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Japan's Okinawa looks and feels almost like a different country. A growing number of islanders say it should be just that.

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In December, Maryland Health Connection Executive Director Rebecca Pearce resigned, and in late February, the exchange fired its primary IT contractor, Noridian Healthcare Solutions. In addition to downtime for fixes, the exchange has had issues with lost and frozen applications, incorrect subsidy determinations and feuding contractors. Maryland enrolled 63,002 people in private health plans as of the end of open enrollment on March 31. Connecticut, a smaller state with fewer uninsured residents, enrolled 76,597 people. Maryland likely won't be the only state to dump its own exchange, said Howard, who sees Oregon, Minnesota and Massachusetts as likely candidates to follow Maryland. He calls all four state exchanges "outright failures." Read MoreHere are the healthiest counties in America He also expects most states on the federal exchange to come off in the next few years, taking back some autonomy. "States really do need to have a better understanding of their marketplaces, to have a role in plan management, plan selection," Howard said "They know their citizens, their unique needs." And, in fact, Counihan said Connecticut has been in talks with four other states, some on the federal exchange, some running their own sites, to provide similar services. Consolidation is the most likely course of action for everyone, Howard said. He doesn't expect any more states to start their own exchanges. Instead, they'd be more likely to join some other multistate exchange. He pointed to Kentucky, with its successful, "clean, no-frills model" exchange and California, which has outpaced other states in enrollments, as states that could follow Connecticut's lead in franchising their services. He also expects new vendors to enter the fray. —By CNBC's Jodi Gralnick. Follow her on Twitter @jodigralnick.

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Maryland became the first state to take drastic action to fix its flawed Obamacare website. It likely won't be the last.

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Tidewater is Wordell's play on energy, specifically deep-water drilling. Such drilling is going through a down cycle right now, he said, but "Tidewater is positioned as strongly as they can be. They have all new equipment," he said. "Over the next 12 to 18 months, I'm very, very comfortable that deep-water drilling is going to continue have a continued upcycle." Tidewater is down almost 50 percent this year. Wordell also likes PVH Corp. and Tyco, which he said has a tremendous pipeline of deals. Patrick Kaser, managing director and portfolio manager at Brandywine Global, has his eye on General Motors, which is down almost 20 percent year to date. He called the automaker a cheap stock with a strong balance sheet and good cash flows. "GM is one of those that could be a much better stock going forward than it has been looking backwards," Kaser said. For an energy pick, Kaser likes Halliburton, which fell more than 22 percent in 2014. "You're looking at a good management team, a cheap valuation. The market's expecting earnings to fall. They will. That's clearly, I think, already priced into the stock," he said. However, Kaser emphasized he has a long-term view of three years on the stock, noting he can't predict the next three months. Another name on Kaser's buy list is Reliance Steel, which he thinks has a reasonable valuation and will benefit from a growing economy. While he doesn't own GameStop, Kaser said he is "intrigued" by it because of the debate over whether physical video game disks will continue to be relevant. "Controversy creates opportunity and people assign too high a probability to a negative outcome and that really creates the buying opportunity," he said. —CNBC's Jackie O'Sullivan contributed to this report. Disclosures: Patrick Kaser owns GM, HAL and RS, which are also investment banking clients of Brandywine Global. Don Wordell and his family own MAT, TDW and PVH, which are also investment banking clients of RidgeWorth Capital Management, and they own TYC through the company fund.

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Sometimes the worst performers in this year's market can be next year's gems, two pros told CNBC Tuesday.

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Below is an unedited transcript: CHELSEA HANDLER: Hello, hello. I am very, very, very excited and thrilled to be doing this interview, because it’s finally something serious out of my life, and I would like to go on the record and say that I am a proud holder of an AOL e-mail account, and for the first time in my life not embarrassed to say it. (Laughter.) We spoke last week on the phone to discuss what we would be talking about today, and first I want to talk about your passion for sleep. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Yes. You know, I thought when I read your book, My Horizontal Life, I thought if I had written a book called My Horizontal Life, it would have been about sleep, not sex. (Laughter.) And I kind of came to sleep late in life. I basically — (laughter) — came to it because I fainted from exhaustion, and hit my head on my desk, and broke my cheekbone and got five stitches on my right eye. And that’s what started my love affair with sleep. (Laughter.) But in the course of doing that, I kind of discovered that we are paying a heavy price by being a sleep-deprived society, that if we actually could up our sleep portion every day, we would become wiser. You know, I feel that we are — we have so many leaders at the moment, in media, in politics, in business, who are incredibly smart, high IQs, great degrees, and no wisdom, they’re making terrible decisions. And I think one of the reasons is sleep deprivation. Bill Clinton said that some of the worst decisions in his life were made when he was tired. He didn’t specify which worst decisions in his life — (laughter) — but if only he’d gotten eight hours sleep, we would have missed all those months of impeachment hearings. (Laughter.) CHELSEA HANDLER: So, how do you propose one gets a full eight hours of sleep every night? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I think first of all it’s prioritizing. Like everybody here is incredibly busy, you know, they could work 24 hours a day, but the reality is that once we look at the medical evidence, sleep deprivation leads to health problems. It actually reduces your sex drive, did you know that? CHELSEA HANDLER: I have a great sex drive, so I don’t know anything about that. (Laughter.) ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: No, but I mean, if you — but if you are exhausted, isn’t your sex drive diminished? CHELSEA HANDLER: Never, no. (Laughter.) That’s why I’ve been able to write so many books about it. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: She’s so sleep deprived that even her perception is kind of damaged. (Laughter, applause.) But it’s also like I know that when I’ve had a good night’s sleep I feel more creative, less reactive, I enjoy my life more. And, you know, at my age, you know, I’m 61, and at my age I find that I don’t want just to be effective, I want to enjoy my life. That’s really important to me. You know, I want to enjoy every day, every hour. Even when difficult things happen, as they happen in each of our days, even when I have to face challenges and problems, it makes all the difference in the world if I’ve had a good night’s sleep. End of commercial. 10 most powerful women entrepreneurs CHELSEA HANDLER: Can I ask, so what do you look forward to most throughout your day? Is it walking into work, is it your day at work or is it walking home at night and able to have dinner with your friends or family or what have you? I mean, what gets you going each day, what’s your favorite part of it? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, I’m lucky that no two days are alike. I’ve moved from Los Angeles to New York when AOL AOL bought the Huffington Post, and took down the cubicles on the fifth floor, brought editors and tech together. So, when I walk into our offices now — incidentally I also installed two nap rooms. I forgot to mention that. (Laughter.) ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Yes. And because we also own MapQuest, and nap rooms are called Nap Quest One and Nap Quest Two. (Laughter.) Although I must say, Chelsea, that the other day as I was going by, I saw the door of one of the Nap Quest rooms opening, and three people come out of it. (Laughter.) So, I don’t know if we should rename it ménage a trois. But as long as people are happy at work, I’m fine. (Laughter.) CHELSEA HANDLER: Well, you also have cocktail Thursdays, right? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: No, you have cocktails. CHELSEA HANDLER: Oh, that must be me. I’m confusing it. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: You have margarita Thursdays. CHELSEA HANDLER: We have margarita Thursdays every Thursday at work, yes. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I thought maybe margarita Mondays would be better. It alliterates, and then like triple-shot espresso Thursdays to get through Friday. CHELSEA HANDLER: Well, that brings me to another point. I mean, I think creating a work environment as a female is or can be very, very different than the environment that’s created by men. So, can you speak to that, and how you feel about that? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I do feel very maternal about our work environment. I love celebrating things. Like yesterday we launched two new sites, Huff/Post 50, our boomer site, with Rita Wilson as our editor. So, we brought Rita into the office with champagne to celebrate the launch of Huff/Post 50. We also launched Gay Voices, and today we launched High School and Weddings, which we launched a year and a half after divorce. We do things a little unconventionally. (Laughter.) Divorce was the brainchild of Nora Efron, who’s been here, and everybody loves her here. And one morning, I was staying with her in Long Island, and she said to me, you know what we must launch, a divorce section, because, she said, marriage comes and goes, but divorce is forever. (Laughter.) CHELSEA HANDLER: How do you feel about creating the kind of environment — I know in my experience running television shows, which is different than obviously what you do, but it’s — you know, I have a business partner who’s a man, who says it’s okay, our policy needs to be that it’s okay for a woman to cry at work but not about work. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I like that. CHELSEA HANDLER: So, you can cry at work if it’s a personal issue, and I am a big proponent of that as well. I feel like everyone should feel like they have a place that’s safe, and when you come to work I want everyone to be excited to get there. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Absolutely, I love that. I cry a lot. You know, my friends here will tell you I love crying. (Laughter.) Almost as much as I love sleeping. (Laughter.) The reason for that is that I like to sort of get it all out. I like to start the next day fresh, you know, to put it all behind me. I like to really be able to say I have no grudges and no regrets. And in order to do that, you have to cry about the things that upset you and get them out of you. You know when people say I have a thick skin, I don’t let things upset you. I don’t believe that, and I don’t want to have a thick skin, because if you have a thick skin, you don’t let the good things in either. So, I prefer to be permeable, like a child. Have you seen how children are? You know, they can be really upset, they can cry, and then five minutes later, you look at them and it’s over. And that’s how I like to be. You know, the older I get, that’s my ideal way of being, watching little kids and emulating them. CHELSEA HANDLER: What is your relationship like with your daughters? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, that’s like the biggest thing in my life. That’s why, Chelsea, you know, you and I have just met but how much time did we spend backstage with me urging you to have a child? (Laughter.) CHELSEA HANDLER: She said, do you want children, I said no, and she said, yes, you do. (Laughter.) I said I’m pretty sure I don’t, and she said, you’re wrong. (Laughter.) ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: She’s going to London with her boyfriend. I said London is a great place to get pregnant. (Laughter.) So, I’m now going to be e-mailing her on her AOL account, you know, reminding her, a good time of the month, I found that out. So, anyway, from — it’s just women here, right? You know, I had my children late. You know, I lost my first child that was stillborn, my first pregnancy. My first child was at 38, my second at 40. And there’s nothing I love more than spending time with them. They are both at college. You know, one is 20, one is 22. One is an artist. You went to her website. CHELSEA HANDLER: I went to her website, yes. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: IsabellaHuffington.com, a commercial for my artist daughter. And the other wants to be a journalist; she’s a senior. And what I love — now, you know, as anybody here with adult children knows, they become your friends. They’re always your children, because you always mother them. And the reason why I keep saying that you should have children is because you are so nurturing. I mean, look at the tribe that you surround yourself with. I don’t know if you know it, but her brother lives with her and he’s her chef. You have your Pilates teacher living with you. You have a couple of gay friends living in your guesthouse. (Laughter.) 10 global women on the rise Are you sure you’re not Greek? (Laughter, applause.) Because it reminds me of my life, my home. You know, there are days when I would walk into my kitchen and know half the people there, because my mother was like that. You know, whoever would come in, the FedEx man, my mother would say, oh, come and sit down, I just baked something. You know, she could not have an impersonal relationship. And I love that way of being, and I have a sense that that’s how you are. I mean, you are nurturing to younger comedians like Whitney Cummings (ph), whom you helped so much. And that’s another thing. Mentoring has been such a big part of this conference, and whether you are mentoring like you all did yesterday — I just arrived today unfortunately — or the way you’re mentoring younger comedians, it’s just such an important responsibility for women whose lives have worked out. CHELSEA HANDLER: Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly, and I think when you can create opportunities for women — and not just women, when you can create opportunities for other people that are in your field, you know, especially women, because we all know those types of women that are out there that aren’t doing that, that don’t think there’s room for everyone, and to have the ability and the confidence to not be in the center of the spotlight at all times and to share the stage, which I think is a huge lesson for a woman, and I think it comes a lot from the way you were raised, and I know your relationship with your mother was obviously a hugely impactful one. Can you talk about her a little bit and maybe something that she said or an experience you had with her that’s stayed with you for a long time? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, she was the foundation of my life, because she — you know, growing up in Athens without any money, I literally saw a picture of Cambridge in England, and I said to my mother, I want to go there. And everybody around us said, don’t do be ridiculous, you’re never going to get in, you have no money, most English girls don’t get in. And my mother said, let’s make it happen. But it wasn’t let’s make it happen like a stage mother with pressure, it was more like let’s make it happen, and if you don’t make it happen, I won’t love you any less. You know, go for it, but my love doesn’t depend on you getting there. You know, earlier, when the conversation turned around risks, you know, I really believe that we women especially are so afraid of failing, that so often we don’t try new things, because the chances of failing are always there. And my mother always kept saying that failure is not the opposite of success, failure is a stepping stone to success. That was one of her favorite things to say. And the other one that you would appreciate was that angels fly because they take themselves lightly. So, it was all about humor and not taking yourself and your life too seriously. CHELSEA HANDLER: I like that. My mother passed away as well, so I have a very — CHELSEA HANDLER: Oh, thank you. And I feel, I don’t know if you feel this way, but I feel like I almost feel her presence around me more since she passed away than I did before. I feel very protected and I feel very close to her, which I think happens to a lot of people who had kind of close relationships with their parents. Do you feel that? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Yes, I feel that, and I also kind of do believe actually that there is another dimension to life, and when we open ourselves to it, we do have these experiences, whether it’s through dreams or meditation, which I’ve been doing every day for many, many years. CHELSEA HANDLER: You meditate every day? CHELSEA HANDLER: What time of day does this happen? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I do it in the morning before the day starts, because if I don’t, I’m not going to get it done. The same with yoga or exercise or something, I’ve learned that if I don’t do it right away, I’m not going to do it. And then all these things that nurture us are really important. I mean, shall we share our secret? CHELSEA HANDLER: Yes, what is it? Oh, our facialists. We have the same facialist. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: We have the same facialist. CHELSEA HANDLER: This woman who basically beats the shit out of your face so you look younger an hour later. (Laughter.) She calls it contouring; I call it something else. (Laughter.) ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: But she’s really great, Mila Moorse (ph). Let’s give her a commercial. She’s in Los Angeles. And she said to me that Chelsea and you are the two women who don’t stop working while you’re having a facial. We make calls, we sit there, and when there is kind of something noisy happening, we say, so sorry, we’re on the tarmac. (Laughter.) Sherry Lansing (ph) taught me that. She said, if I’m blow-drying my hair, there are two kinds of people in my life: the ones to whom I say, I’m blow-drying my hair, and the others to whom I say, I’m so sorry, I’m on the tarmac. (Laughter, applause.) Because women, you know, are never supposed to have to take any time blow-drying their hair or doing anything, we’re supposed to be picture perfect getting out of bed. (Laughter.) CHELSEA HANDLER: Can we talk about your father, too, because you had a different kind of relationship with your dad? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: You know, I kind of worshipped my dad. He was brilliant, he was an intellectual. He published an underground newspaper during the German occupation of Greece, and he was arrested and spent the war in a concentration camp. So, when he — he actually met my mother in a sanatorium. She was recovering from TB, he was recovering from the camp. And she was told that she could not have children, and she got promptly pregnant before they were married, and that was me. And he never kind of wanted to play by the rules. He was a huge philanderer. When my mother complained, he said to her, you should not interfere in my private life. (Laughter.) So, I was kind of in awe of his intellect, but I also kind of resented how much pain he caused my mother. I actually kept urging her to leave him, because I could not stand seeing her so sad. And she did leave him when I was 11, but never really stopped loving him. It’s sort of ironic how — CHELSEA HANDLER: So, what are your thoughts to obviously be as successful as you are? And I know you’ve been married. I mean, what are your thoughts on marriage? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Oh, I feel that for me having children sort of satisfied that desire to have a family. So, I’m not ruling anything out ever in life, but I’m not either looking forward to it in any way. You know, I feel that my life is — I feel very grateful for my life right now. One of my favorite sayings is Collette, you know, the French writer, who said, “I had such a wonderful life, I just wish I had realized it sooner.” And I feel so many of us are very blessed. You know, there is no life that hasn’t carried problems and crises and challenges, but we are blessed. I really, really want to recognize that every day. I tell my children, you can experience any emotion in the world you want, but I also want you on a daily basis to experience gratitude, because if we don’t, we just take far too much of our life for granted. CHELSEA HANDLER: Do you feel proud of yourself? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: No, actually that was interesting, but my mother, whenever they would say to her, you must be so proud of your daughter, she said, no. Pride is not the way she related to me or to life, and it’s not the way I relate to it. I feel very lucky that I’m doing something I love, and that every day I go to work and I love it. And what Sheryl Sandberg was saying about feeling that you can make a difference, and that we have all those ways available to make a difference, and that the world needs all of us to make a difference, it’s not like we can’t be spectators, we need to be involved and discover sort of the leader in the mirror. We can’t wait for somebody else to solve problems. And that’s partly why I love what we are doing at work, because we are constantly bringing more and more people into the conversation and turning conversations into action. CHELSEA HANDLER: I know we’re out of time already, but I would love for people to have the opportunity to ask questions. Is there anyone who wants to ask a question? If you do, please raise your hand like a civilized lady. CHELSEA HANDLER: Oh, there’s the woman right over here. Oh, I’m sorry, you work here. (Laughter.) Nobody wants to ask — oh, here we go, sorry. Do you want to stand up? QUESTION: I’m Kim with (She Dappers ?). And it’s actually the same question I’ve been trying to ask most of the panelists all day, but just because you’re talking about family and mothers, and the theme kind of this afternoon has been around — you know, Gloria Steinem said, we’re not crazy, it’s the institution that’s crazy, and Sheryl talking about mothers leaving too early or women leaving too early, taking their foot off the gas. So, I’d love to hear if you have thoughts, what can the business community do to try to encourage women, after they do have kids, so they don’t have to make that choice of all or nothing, stay at home or work? There’s so many incredibly talented women who feel there’s no option and it’s one or the other, and I feel like business has the opportunity to lead in this area, not wait for governments, although I’d love governments to be involved, but not wait for policy but to say, you know what, business structure doesn’t fit our society anymore, we have to change from businesses to create a platform that’s more family centered. So, do you have any thoughts on that? ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I think actually a lot of businesses are beginning to do that, and a lot of women are beginning to recognize that this juggling act is really ultimately about the decisions we make every day. It’s not about the big decision, are we going to work or are we going to have a family; it’s often about the little decisions like am I going to leave this meeting earlier to pick up my daughter from school, am I going to skip something in order to be present at something that matters to my child. And businesses need to acknowledge that, not just for mothers but increasingly for fathers. You know, we just brought in, we just hired Lisa Belkin from the New York Times. She’s been writing a column there called Motherlode about parenting. And we are renaming the column Parentlode, because we want to acknowledge the fact that I work with many men with young children, and they’re also a big part increasingly of their children’s lives. And as a culture we need to acknowledge that. And when we acknowledge that, it’s going to be easier for women to be able to do the famous juggling act. There’s a tremendous amount of redefining of success and happiness going on in the world, and I think we women are leading the way, because let’s face it, you know, men define success in a very unhealthy way, you know, working around the clock, having a heart attack in your fifties, and that’s the price you pay for the corner office, and we are saying no, we are going to do it differently. And as we are doing it differently, I think we are going to make a big difference for women who are following us. (Applause.) CHELSEA HANDLER: Well, I would like to say thank you very, very much for sitting down with me, and that this was very entertaining, to say the least, and you’re a lot funnier than I am. So, thank you. (Laughter, applause.) Check out additional coverage from Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit. For more transcripts from the Most Powerful Women summit, click here.

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Talk show host and comedian Chelsea Handler interviewed AOL Huffington Post Media Group's president and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit.

http://web.archive.org/web/20151212012431id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/12/04/01/43/climate-talks-crawl-as-deadline-looms

Angry developing nations have warned that UN talks aimed at averting catastrophic climate change are at risk without a deal on the hot-button issue of financing. Negotiators from 195 nations are haggling in Paris over the ingredients of a universal accord to slash greenhouse-gas emissions that trap the Sun's heat, warming the Earth's surface and oceans and disrupting its delicate climate system. Taking effect from 2020, the pact would target emissions from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas - the backbone of the world's energy supply today - and channel hundreds of billions of dollars to vulnerable countries. The question of finance to help developing countries make the shift to cleaner energy sources is "make or break", said South African negotiator Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, who spoke on behalf of the G77 group of 134 developing and emerging countries including China, on Thursday. "It has to be clearly understood that finance is critical," she told a news conference. Gambia's environment minister, Pa Ousman, demanded money for poor nations to pay for the fallout of climate change events - known as loss and damage. "If loss and damage is not addressed adequately, there will be no agreement in Paris," he said. "There is not going to be any other, second Paris. This is the time. This is the moment." More than 150 world leaders including President Barack Obama launched the talks on Monday, seeking to build momentum for the tough negotiations ahead with lofty rhetoric about the urgency of the task. But after three days of grinding discussions over a hugely complex 54-page draft pact, bureaucrats unveiled a document just four pages shorter and with vast stretches of text yet to be agreed. "I don't see any translation of the rhetoric of the leaders of the world into working towards tangible outcomes in Paris. This is very, very dangerous," Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoaga said. Ministers from around the globe will descend on Paris on Monday to try to transform the draft prepared by diplomats into a universal climate accord to avert planetary overheating. The conference is scheduled to conclude on December 11. "At this rate, when ministers arrive next week they will wonder what progress has been made since world leaders took to the podium in Paris," said Greenpeace's head of international climate politics Martin Kaiser. At the core of the talks is the goal of limiting average warming to a maximum of 2C over pre-Industrial Revolution levels. Kaiser said long-term goals were now clearer in the draft, though it did not call for fossil fuels to be phased out by 2050 so as to limit warming to 1.5C - a more ambitious target being pushed by low-lying island nations at risk of sinking into rising seas.

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Climate negotiators in Paris have revealed a draft deal after three days of talks, disappointing activists who say too little progress has been made.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160527115055id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/05/26/15/48/indonesia-s-child-sex-offenders-face-death

Indonesian President Joko Widodo's move to add executions to a possible list of harsher punishments to face child sex offenders is populist and short-sighted, human rights activists say. Describing the situation of violence against children in Indonesia as an "increasing emergency", the president announced on Wednesday a government regulation that will give immediate power to the courts to enact harsher penalties to convicted child sex offenders. Among the changes is the inclusion of the death penalty for someone convicted of sexual intercourse with a child in the situation where they cause their victim serious injury, mental disturbance, infectious disease, death or the loss of reproductive functions. Under certain circumstances, a judge could also order chemical castration, microchip implants as well as the "public punishment" of revealing the crime and identity of the sex offender. "This government regulation in lieu of laws is meant to overcome the emergency caused by sexual violence to children which has increased significantly," the president, referred to as Jokowi, said when announcing the changes late on Wednesday. Haris Azhar of rights group KontraS has attacked the measure saying the government has not been able to present any evidence to suggest that the country is facing an "emergency" of sexual violence against children, nor that harsher penalties will prevent offending. The term "emergency" has also been used to justify the executions of drug traffickers with little evidence of its effect, he said. Mr Azhar argued that violence against children and women was an "institutional problem" in Indonesia and that the government should be looking at ways of changing people's mindsets and tackling sexism and discrimination, rather than enacting harsher punishments. "The burden is only on the perpetrators ... (This change) is not looking at the bigger problem," he told AAP. He accused Jokowi of enacting the changes in a bid for "popularity". The changes come as activists pushed for harsher penalties for sex offenders after the death of 14-year-old Yuyun, whose battered and bound body was found near her school in Bengkulu, Sumatra last month. Police say the 14-year-old had left school at around lunchtime on April 2 when she was snatched, gang raped and strangled. Earlier this month seven youths, who were the first to be tried over the case, were each sentenced to 10 years in prison for the offences of rape and violence causing death. Her other alleged attackers remain before the courts. After the attack made national headlines, Adriana Venny, from the women's group Komnas Perempuan, noted they had placed a draft bill before parliament seeking to widen Indonesia's limited definition of rape and include further sex offences but that it had been languishing in the "temporary list" in parliament for more than two years.

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Child sex offenders in Indonesia could face execution and chemical castration under a host of harsher penalties announced by the government.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160531065219id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/earth/story/20150316-ten-parasites-that-control-minds?

Zombie ant fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) Ants are great navigators, following highly efficient paths as they forage for food. But in the rainforests of Thailand, Africa and Brazil, Camponotus leonardi ants get pulled off course by Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a parasitic fungus (pictured above). A spore first infects an ant foraging on the rainforest floor, then spends 3-9 days developing inside its body. When the fungus is ready to complete its life cycle, it manipulates the worker to plod blindly away from safety, like a zombie. A study in 2009 found that the ants always went to similar locations: around 25 cm up a tree, in a spot with just the right amount of humidity for the fungus to grow. The ant then clamps down on a leaf with its mandibles, and dies. Within 24 hours, fungal threads emerge from the corpse. Finally, a stalk pushes out of the ant and begins raining spores onto the rainforest floor, where they can infect more ants. It's a bit like the chest-bursting scene from Alien, except that the ant is mercifully dead when the fungus explodes out of its head. Kamikaze horsehair worm (Paragordius tricuspidatus) One of these worms can grow up to a foot long, and look like a cooked piece of spaghetti. But to get to that point, it needs a house cricket or grasshopper to do its bidding. The worm coerces the cricket into jumping slap bang into the nearest body of water First, a tiny horsehair worm larva is eaten by the larva of another insect, such as a mosquito or mayfly. Once this emerges from the water, a cricket or grasshopper will snatch it up. Then the horsehair worm begins to develop inside the cricket in earnest. But the worm's final stage of development takes place in water. The cricket wouldn't normally swim, or even hang out near water, so the worm must get it there. By altering the functions of the cricket's central nervous system, the worm coerces it into jumping slap bang into the nearest body of water. The hapless cricket then drowns itself, allowing the horsehair worm to emerge and reproduce. From the outside, you wouldn't be able to tell if a cricket had been infected, but neurologically, the worm is in control. Ben Hanelt of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who studies the worms, says he has seen a whopping 32 worms pushing themselves out of one luckless host. If you think making a cricket believe it can swim is impressive, this parasitic barnacle takes body-snatching to another level. A Sacculina barnacle enters a host crab by finding a chink in its claw joints. The barnacle sheds its hard shell and squeezes itself in. At this point it looks more like a slug than a typical barnacle stuck to the underside of a boat. It then sets up home, leeching off the crab's nutrients and turning it into the vehicle that will allow it to reproduce. Once fully-grown, the barnacle looks more like a soft, pulsating egg yolk. If the crab is female, Sacculina forces it to care for the millions of barnacle larvae as if they were her own. But if the crab is male, it will be feminised in order to do the same thing. Not only is it rendered infertile, it grows a larger abdomen to carry the barnacle's young, its gonads shrink, and it stops developing its fighting claws. If you see a snail with two beautiful eye stalks, pulsating with emerald- and olive-green stripes and dappled with charcoal grey flecks capped off with a maroon dab, be impressed. You're not just looking at a pimped-out snail, you're looking at a snail infected with a parasitic flatworm. The green-banded broodsac first squirms its way into the stalks of the snail, so that they look like juicy, pulsing, brightly-coloured caterpillars. This is just the kind of snack nearby birds are in the mood for. Then the worm manipulates the snail's behaviour. In 2013, Wanda Wesolowska and Tomasz Weslowski of Wroclaw University in Poland found that the infected snails behaved differently from their apparently non-infected counterparts. They positioned themselves in more exposed and better-lit places, situated higher in the vegetation. This probably makes the snails more conspicuous for foraging birds. Once eaten by the bird, the worm can reproduce, and the cycle continues. This wasp needs a host that will protect its eggs from potential predators. So what better bodyguard than an insect with markings that suggest danger? Ladybirds may seem like the stuff of cartoons and cute lunchboxes, but they can take care of themselves. When disturbed they emit a disgusting poison, and their hard shell with its bright red and black spots warns off predators. But they don't stand a chance against the parasitic wasp, which leaves behind a single egg with one sting. After the wasp egg hatches, the larva chews through the ladybird's internal tissues before bursting through the abdomen to spin a cocoon between its legs. The ladybird is now a "bodyguard", standing guard over the cocoon. Still alive despite everything, it will thrash and twitch its limbs if a predator approaches. It's not clear why it behaves like this, but it may be triggered by venom left by the larva. Rather unexpectedly, a 2011 study found that a quarter of the zombie ladybirds survive the assault. Emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa) The emerald cockroach wasp has a metallic body that glows emerald with bright crimson markings on two of its legs. Found in the tropical regions of Asia, Africa and the Pacific islands, it is a beautiful insect, but pity the cockroach that crosses its path. It is one-sixth the size of a roach, but that doesn't stop it. First it delivers a simple paralysing sting. Then it hijacks the roach's mind, injecting an elixir of neurotransmitters into its brain. This turns the roach into a helpless zombie. After a quick suck of recharging roach blood, the wasp chews off the roach's antennae and leads it to its nest like a dog on a lead. There it lays its eggs on the roach's abdomen, and barricades it in with pebbles. But the hapless roach doesn't even try to escape, even though it physically could. It just sits there submissively, as the wasp larva eats it alive. Finally the adult wasp bursts out of the cockroach's remains. This single-celled creature is perhaps the most famous of all host-manipulating parasites, perhaps because it operates close to home. It mainly infects rats and mice, in order to be eaten by a cat so that it can reproduce. Between 30 and 60% of people are infected by T. gondii Infected rats and mice lose their fear of the smell of cats, according to a 2007 study. Instead, they become attracted to a pheromone in the cats' urine. The animal becomes less likely to hide under the floorboards and more likely to sniff around its feline predators, putting the parasite on course for its ultimate destination: the cat's stomach. Between 30 and 60% of people are infected by T. gondii. But it's less clear that the parasite affects human behaviour. In 2006 Kevin Lafferty of the US Geological Survey in Santa Barbara, California found some evidence of personality changes in people infected by the parasite. So far this is only a correlation, which is far from conclusive. Nevertheless, Lafferty says: "my money is on cause and effect". Toxoplasmosis is also unusually common in people with schizophrenia, but again it's not clear what that means or how significant it is. "Schizophrenia is a complicated syndrome, perhaps with multiple causes," says Lafferty. He adds that there are plenty of infected people that don't have schizophrenia, and plenty of people with schizophrenia who aren't infected. "Still, I am comfortable in saying that Toxoplasma is a correlated risk factor for schizophrenia." You might not think of a virus like rabies as a parasite, but to a biologist that's exactly what they are. "I would call rabies and flu parasites, because they generally reduce the fitness of their host, or benefit at the expense of their host," says Levi Morran of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Rabies is one of the most frightening parasites, because it seems to blur the line between humans and animals. The virus is spread through saliva, usually from a scratch or bite. It makes animals – usually dogs and bats, and occasionally humans – more aggressive, compelling them to spread the virus through biting and scratching. "Rabies manifests itself with a wide range of neurological signs, including changes in behaviour but also loss of motor control," says parasite expert Andres Gomez of ICF International in Washington, DC. "The latter sometimes include difficulties with swallowing that eventually lead to hunger, hypoglycaemia, and dehydration." Supposedly, it creates a fear of water, but this is a myth. "Patients have involuntary spasms when trying to drink and later when presented with water," says Gomez. "But it's not fear." Yes, that's the flu. In 2010 Chris Reiber of Binghamton University in New York and her colleagues found evidence that the influenza virus makes people more sociable. They found that people given a flu vaccine interacted with significantly more people, and in significantly larger groups, in the 48 hours after being exposed, compared with the 48 hours before. The infected hosts were more likely to head out to bars and parties. It's only one study, and quite a small one, but it does make a certain sinister sense. It would benefit the virus if its host passed it on to as many people as possible, before the symptoms started and they became bedridden. Parasites are everywhere. Most species will be living with more than one parasite, and even parasites may have their own parasites. So in some cases, a host may be carrying multiple parasites with different agendas, who must battle for control of the host. This is particularly likely if one parasite is ready to move onto another host, but the other isn't. It was as if the younger tapeworm wasn't there To see this happening, Nina Hafer and Manfred Milinski of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Ploen, Germany infected small crustaceans called copepods (Macrocyclops albidus) with multiple tapeworms (Schistocephalus solidus). These tapeworms ultimately need to move onto a fish host called a stickleback, and to get there they manipulate the copepod's behaviour. It becomes more active, and thus more likely to be spotted and eaten by a stickleback. If two tapeworms were both ready to move hosts, their effect on the copepod's behaviour was even stronger, suggesting they were working together. However, if an older tapeworm that wanted to leave was sharing the host with a younger tapeworm that wasn't yet ready, the host copepod still became active. It was as if the younger tapeworm wasn't there. Hafer and Milinski argue that the older tapeworm was effectively sabotaging its younger competitor.

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Some of the creepiest species on Earth are experts in getting their own way. Meet 10 parasites with the power to control their hosts' behaviour

http://web.archive.org/web/20160612225549id_/http://www.nbc.com:80/the-blacklist/episode-guide/season-3/zal-bin-hasaan/307

Red wants a meeting. With whom, no one knows, except his debtor Gallego, who refuses to be Red's go-between… until Red promises to deliver Blacklister and international terrorist Zal Bin Hasaan, who's currently holding several Israeli military software engineers hostage. Since Hasaan is also responsible for the Peshin bombing that killed Samar's brother Shahin, Red calls the FBI, and in turn, Samar calls Mossad to bring in Agent Levi Shur, her former lover. In a complex operation, the FBI retrieves the hostages, and Samar is stunned to find her brother among them. The only problem? Shahin is really Hasaan, and the hostage operation is a Trojan horse meant to snare top Mossad agents. After setting off a bomb and shooting Levi, Shahin takes his own sister hostage. Luckily, Red shows up to free Samar, explaining he can grant Shahin death with a purpose - the purchase of Liz's freedom. Devastated, Samar surrenders her brother to Red, who uses him to secure Gallego's services. Aram discovers that The Director has tapped Liz's phone and sent Solomon to Wing Yee to intercept her during a proposed meeting with Tom. While Tom promises Liz that he has a plan to make her life normal again at another location, Ressler intercepts Solomon, who waits alone at Wing Yee. When Hitchin learns The Director has ignored her directive to play nice with the FBI, she boots him out of the post office. Delighted, Ressler visits Cooper to share the good news, but becomes instantly enraged to find Tom there, having stowed Karakurt in the garage. After punching the daylights out of Tom, Ressler returns to the office to find Samar in a state of near shock. Since the present moment is all Samar can count on, she and Ressler indulge in the passion of the here and now.

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Samar's tragic past erupts during the search for the next Blacklister. Christine Lahti and David Strathairn guest star.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160629073716id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2006/02/10/nyregion/blessing-the-fallen-and-steadying-those-left-behind.html

And since 9/11, the workloads have grown heavier. Scores of officers, traumatized and stung by the loss of so many comrades, turned to the chaplains for solace, guidance and a prayer. Father Romano, for one, spent 10 months at ground zero and accompanied the body of every recovered officer as it was carried out of the pit. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly says the stigma that once kept many officers from seeking out a chaplain, lest they be seen as frail, has largely faded since 9/11. "The shock waves were huge throughout the entire department," he said. "For the first time, people saw the organization as a big nurturing family and seeking help was no longer a sign of weakness." The chaplains, on call 24 hours a day, reflect the department's increasing diversity: there is the Rev. Luis Serrano, a Hispanic Pentecostal minister, the Rev. Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, a black Baptist and the first female chaplain, and Iman Izak-El Mu'eed Pasha, the unit's first Muslim religious figure who recently retired. (His replacement is being sought). With their standard-issue navy blues and lapels glinting with insignia, the chaplains are, at first glance, indistinguishable from the rank and file. But they do not carry weapons and wherever they go, they are swept up in the embrace of high-ranking commanders, pimple-faced cadets and civilian 911 operators. "I'm not Jewish, but I want this guy to do my eulogy," Detective Stephen Giaco said jokingly after giving Rabbi Kass a hug in the Midtown North station house where he works. "That's because he'll make me sound like a better person than I really am." Chaplains have the power to pick up a phone, call a commanding officer and wrangle out a resolution to a personality clash. They are also sworn to secrecy, something they tell each new class of police recruits. "We're a shoulder to cry on and a sympathetic ear but a lot of what we do is troubleshoot for the officers," said Ms. Johnson Cook. "We can cut through the red tape. And when it comes to the African-American community, sometimes I serve as a cultural translator." With four decades on the force, Rabbi Kass is almost as recognizable around police headquarters as his boss, Commissioner Kelly. He is also a frequent presence at churches, mosques and Hindu temples. "If there was an entry in Guinness Book of World Records for the rabbi who attended the most Catholic Masses, I would win hands down," he said with a boyish grin. Rabbi Kass has had a colorful run: there were the death threats that earned his family months of round-the-clock security and a starring role in a hostage crisis that was resolved with a pastrami sandwich. Rabbi Kass persuaded the self-identified Jewish hostage-taker to exchange his guns for two Carnegie Deli sandwiches. Another mark of devotion to the job? He left his own son's bar mitzvah when he got word that an officer had been shot in the line of duty. Addressing a class of police academy students this week, the rabbi lectured the recruits about the lures of graft, the temptation to prejudge those of other ethnicities and, more profoundly, an officer's power to take away life. "You are the only ones in society that can use lethal force," he said. "None of you should ever shoot your gun lightly. And if you do, it should be done with great reluctance and sadness. It is when you shoot and not think twice, that you have lost your humanity."

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New York City police chaplains, whose functions were once largely ceremonial, now serve as therapists, confidants and spiritual leaders; workloads have grown heavier since 9/11 as scores of traumatized officers turned to chaplains for solace, guidance and prayer; chaplains include rabbi, Roman Catholic priest, Pentecostal minister and black female Baptist, and replacement is being sought for retired Muslim imam, all reflecting increasing diversity of police force; photo of Rev Luis Serrano, Rabbi Alvin Kass and Rev Robert Romano at officer's funeral (M)

http://web.archive.org/web/20160809045446id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/worldnews/asia/singapore/11489177/Lee-Kuan-Yew-his-most-memorable-quotes.html

• Lee Kuan Yew, Asian statesman - obituary • Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew dies aged 91 • A model for the New Authoritarians or a one-off genius? • Lee Kuan Yew life in pictures "Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I'm meaningless." "Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle-dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no way you can govern a Chinese society." "If you are a troublemaker... it's our job to politically destroy you... Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac." "You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools." "We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don't do that, the country would be in ruins." "If you don't include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society... So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That's a problem." "You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government. You get that alternative and you'll never put Singapore together again: Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again... and your asset values will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people's countries, foreign workers." "I wouldn't call myself an atheist. I neither deny nor accept that there is a God. So I do not laugh at people who believe in God. But I do not necessarily believe in God - nor deny that there could be one." "Without her, I would be a different man, with a different life... I should find solace in her 89 years of a life well lived. But at this moment of the final parting, my heart is heavy with sorrow and grief." "There is an end to everything and I want mine to come as quickly and painlessly as possible, not with me incapacitated, half in coma in bed and with a tube going into my nostrils and down to my stomach." "Even from my sickbed, even if you are going to lower me to the grave and I feel that something is going wrong, I will get up." People pay tribute outside the Singapore General Hospital where elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew (AFP/Getty Images) Barack Obama said after meeting the still-healthy Mr Lee at the White House in October 2009 that “this is one of the legendary figures of Asia in the 20th and 21st centuries”. He had set Singapore on a path that has seen average incomes rise 100 times, with investments across the globe, a widely respected civil service and world-class infrastructure. But he was criticised for his iron-fisted rule, forcing several opposition politicians into bankruptcy or exile, and once invoked Machiavelli in declaring: “If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.” Mr Lee’s political career spanned 30 years as premier and 20 years as senior government adviser. But in his last years, he was a shadow of his old self as his health deteriorated following his beloved wife’s death in October 2010. He remained revered by many but also became the target of scathing attacks in social media as some Singaporeans began to muster the courage to speak out against him and the political and social model he had bequeathed. The statement from the Prime Minister's Office that was posted on Facebook His impact, through his policies and via his son, current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, is likely to be felt for years to come. Lee Kuan Yew first became prime minister after Britain granted Singapore self-rule in 1959 prior to its stormy post-colonial union with Malaysia. Born to a 20-year-old father whom he described as a “rich man’s son, with little to show for himself” and a 16-year-old bride in an arranged marriage, Mr Lee grew up thinking British colonial rulers were invincible. He had a rude awakening during World War II after Japanese invaders easily overran British forces and took over Singapore in 1942, shattering the myth of European supremacy in Asia. “The dark ages had descended on us. It was brutal, cruel,” Mr Lee said of the Japanese occupation, calling it “the biggest single political education of my life because, for three and a half years, I saw the meaning of power”. Mr Lee survived massacres of civilians and at one point worked for Japanese propaganda. After liberation, he left to study law at Cambridge, where he secretly wed his classmate Kwa Geok Choo before returning home in 1950. Queen Elizabeth II shares a toast with Singapore's then Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew in 2006 (AP) He was shaken by Kwa’s passing after more than 60 years of marriage and admitted that “at this moment of the final parting, my heart is heavy with sorrow and grief”. They had three children, the oldest of whom is Lee Hsien Loong. Daughter Lee Wei Ling became a doctor, and son Lee Hsien Yang became a top corporate figure. Mr Lee stepped down as prime minister in 1990 and handed power to his deputy Goh Chok Tong, who in turn gave way to the veteran leader’s elder son in 2004. In 2011, he stepped down as a cabinet adviser after the ruling People’s Action Party suffered its worst performance yet in a general election, its share of the vote falling to a low of 60 percent. The Prime Minister’s Office said arrangements for the public to pay respects and funeral arrangements will be announced later.

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The man credited with turning Singapore around made some extraordinary speeches in his time. Here are some of the best exercerpts

http://web.archive.org/web/20160814002256id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2016/08/12/almost-20-years-after-her-death-we-still-love-princess-diana/21450556/

There's something about the British royal family that seemingly keeps the world intrigued. And the ladies of that royal family, particularly Duchess Kate Middleton and Princess Diana, are especially interesting. Princess Diana was a member of British high society before marrying Prince Charles in 1981 and gaining the title of princess of Wales. She was an active member of the British royal family until her death in 1997. Princess Diana is often mentioned or remembered by her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. Both have tried to honor their mother's legacy by continuing her work helping the poor and sick. PHOTOS: Princess Diana's wedding to Charles The Prince and Princess of Wales kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their wedding. (PA Archive) Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales leave St. Pauls Cathedral in London following their wedding on July 29, 1981. (Anwar Hussein) Britain's Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer pose following the announcement of their engagement, Feb. 24, 1981. (AP) Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles leaving St. Paul's Cathedral after their wedding rehearsal. (PA Archive) The adorable bridal attendants group on the steps of St.Paul's Cathedral before the wedding ceremony of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer. (PA Archive) The Prince and Princess of Wales at the High Altar in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, during their wedding at St. Paul's Cathedral. Look at that train! (PA Archive) The Prince and Princess of Wales pose for a wedding portrait in Buckingham Palace after their marriage ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral. The Princess is wearing the Spencer family tiara. (PA Archive) The Royal couple, the Prince and Princess of Wales with their young attendants. Sitting, left to right, Catherine Cameron and Clementine Hambro. Standing, left to right, Lord Nicholas Windsor, Edward Van Cutsem, Sarah Jane Gaselee (in front of India Hicks), Prince Edward, the Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince Andrew and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones. (PA Archive) The Prince and Princess of Wales on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their wedding. (PA Archive) The lovebirds on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London on their wedding day. (AP) The Prince and Princess of Wales in an open carriage, waiting to drive to Buckingham Palace after their wedding. (PA Archive) The 1981 stamp issued by Britain's Royal Mail, to commemorate the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer. (AP) Princess Diana's engagement ring was a blue sapphire with diamonds. Diana's son Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton with this ring in 2010. (AP) A gallery worker holds the duplicate Bridal shoes that Princess Diana wore at her wedding. They were designed by Clive Shilton, and were displayed at La Galleria in Pall Mall, London, in 2011. (Joel Ryan/AP) The relaxed Prince and Princess of Wales on their second wedding anniversary, July 29, 1983. (AP) But any new story connected to Princess Diana often prompts some headlines, like when the world learned that her gravesite at Althorp Estate will be renovated before the 20th anniversary of her death in August 2017. A book written by her former bodyguard is also still making headlines more than a decade after it was published. The book highlighted the devastating night that Princess Diana confronted Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles about their affair. In one excerpt shared on DailyMail, the bodyguard recalled the exact moment the affair came to a head. "Please don't go, Ken,' Diana murmured, as the couple leapt guiltily to their feet. It was as though my presence was giving her strength for what she was about to say. But I felt I had no business eavesdropping on this deeply personal business and I excused myself, retreating to the foot of the stairs. I found the whole situation extraordinary. What possible need could there have been for Charles and Camilla to conduct a clandestine meeting at a crowded party where the Princess was also present? It was a terrible insult to Diana, and the only charitable interpretation is that the Prince believed their absence would not be noticed. After a few minutes, Diana emerged. She seemed elated, and as she walked back into the party she held her head high. I admired her immensely for it. A few minutes later, Charles and Camilla also appeared, looking shaken — whatever Diana had said must have hit home." So why all the interest? Maybe fans view the royals as the ultimate celebrities. And when a celebrity dies young or unexpectedly, it often makes their name legendary, and in turn makes stories about them interesting talking points for decades. PHOTOS: Princess Diana from toddler to tiara Princess Diana's life in photos Princess Diana wearing a tiara and diamond necklace on an official visit to Australia, April 12th 1983. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) Family album picture of Lady Diana Spencer at Itchenor, West Sussex, during the summer of 1970. (AP Photo) Lady Diana Spencer, 21, Prince Charles's girlfriend, is pictured in 1980 at the Kindergarten in St. Georges Square, Pimlico, London, where she works as a teacher. Diana, youngest of 56-year-old Lord Spencer's five children, would not talk about her friendship with Prince Charles, although it is known they have been on dates and she has stayed with the Royal Family at Balmoral. (AP-Photo) This is a Feb. 24, 1981 file photo of Britain's Prince Charles and the then-Lady Diana Spencer on the grounds of Buckingham Palace after announcing their engagement. According to the British news agency, Diana, Princess of Wales has died following a car accident in Paris, France, Sunday Aug. 31, 1997. (AP Photo/Ron Bell/Pool) Prince Charles and his bride-to-be, Lady Diana Spencer, driving down the course in an open carriage before Royal Ascot in England meeting on June 19, 1981. (AP Photo/Press Association) UNITED KINGDOM - JULY 01: An informal study of Prince CHARLES, the Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana SPENCER, whose wedding will take place at Saint-Paul's Cathedral, London on 29th July 1981. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images) Prince Charles looks at his beaming bride, the Princess of Wales, at the top of St. Paul’s steps after their marriage in London on July 29, 1981. (AP Photo/Press Association) UK Out LONDON - JULY 29: (FILE PHOTO) Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales leave St. Paul's Cathedral following their wedding July 29, 1981 in London, England. (Photo by Anwar Hussein/Getty Images) FILE - In this July 29, 1981 file photo, Britain's Prince Charles kisses his bride, the former Diana Spencer, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London, after their wedding. Sony Electronics and the Nielsen television research company collaborated on a survey ranking TV's most memorable moments. Other TV events include, the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the O.J. Simpson murder trial verdict in 1995 and the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. (AP Photo, file) LONDON - JULY 29: Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Charles ride in a carriage after their wedding at St. Paul's Cathedral July 29, 1981 in London, England. (Photo by Anwar Hussein/WireImage) The Princess of Wales (formerly Lady Diana Spencer) smiles as she talks with the Commander of her Household Cavalry escort, Andrew Parker-Bowles, as she and the Prince of Wales leave Buckingham Palace in London for Waterloo Station to begin their honeymoon on July 29, 1981. (Press Association via AP Images) Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales (1961 - 1997) pose together during their honeymoon in Balmoral, Scotland, 19th August 1981. (Photo by Serge Lemoine/Getty Images) Princess Diana wearing a Jasper Conran suit during a visit to a community centre in Brixton, October 1983. (Photo by Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) PARIS, FRANCE: Britain's Princess Diana arrived in Paris Friday, 13 November, 1992, on a private three day visit she is making without her husband, Prince Charles. (Photo credit should read JOEL ROBINE/AFP/Getty Images) HONG KONG, HONG KONG: Britain's Princess Diana stands with tennis players Michael Chang of the US (L) and Sweden's Jonas Bjorkman during the awards ceremony at the Hong Kong Open 23 April. Princess Diana, on a private visit to Hong Kong, watched as Chang defeated Bjorkman 6-3, 6-1 to win the tournament. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images) The Princess of Wales visits Chinatown in Liverpool, April 1982. She is pregnant with Prince William, and wearing a pink wool maternity coat by Bellville Sassoon and a hat by John Boyd. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) WINDSOR, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 06: Princess Diana At Polo, Just Two Weeks Before The Birth Of Her First Child, Prince William. Wearing A Maternity Dress Designed By Fashion Designer Catherine Walker She Is Walking With Sarah Ferguson. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) LONDON - JUNE 22: New born Prince William with Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Charles leave St. Mary's hospital on June 22, 1982 in Paddington, London, England,. He was born in the Lindo Wing of the hospital on June 21. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images) LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - FEBRUARY 01: Princess Diana Holding Her Baby Son, Prince William, At Kensington Palace. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) NEW ZEALAND - APRIL 18: Princess Diana And Prince William In New Zealand. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) (FILES) This picture taken 17 June 1997 shows Diana, Princess of Wales, a key volunteer of the British Red Cross Landmine Campaign at Red Cross headquarters in Washington DC. Princess Diana may have survived her fatal Paris car crash in 1997 if French medical staff had not wasted precious time, a leading British surgeon indicated at her inquest 19 November 2007. AFP PHOTO/FILES/Jamal (Photo credit should read JAMAL A. WILSON/AFP/Getty Images) The Prince and Princess of Wales visit Barmouth in Wales, November 1982. She wears a suede beret by John Boyd and a coatdress by Arabella Pollen. (Photo by Terry Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) The Princess of Wales visits University College Hospital in London, December 1982. She wears a John Boyd hat and a velvet suit by Caroline Charles. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - FEBRUARY 01: Princess Diana And Prince Charles With Prince William And His Koala Bear Toy At Kensington Palace (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) Princess Diana (1961 - 1997) at the School of the Air, in Alice Springs, Australia, 30th March 1983. She is wearing a dress by Jan van Velden. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) AYERS ROCK, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 21: Prince Charles, The Prince Of Wales And Diana, Princess Of Wales Standing In Front Of Ayers Rock During Their Official Tour Of Australia (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) NEW ZEALAND - APRIL 18: Princess Diana During A Visit To New Zealand Wearing A Dress Designed By Fashion Designer Donald Campbell (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) MANUKAU - APRIL 19: Diana Princess of Wales meets firemen during a visit to Manukau, near Auckland, New Zealand during the Royal Tour of New Zealand on April 19, 1983. Princess Diana wore a suit designed by Jan Van Velden, with a hat by John Boyd. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images) CANADA - JUNE 23: Princess Diana in Edmonton during an official visit of Canada (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) Princess Diana (1961 - 1997) leaving St Mary's Hospital, London with her new-born son Prince Harry, September 1984. She is wearing a red coat by Jan van Velden. (Photo by Terry Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) VENICE, ITALY - MAY 5: (FILE PHOTO) (L-R) Diana the Princess of Wales holds her son Harry, whilst looking at Prince William held by his father Prince Charles on May 5, 1985 in Venice, Italy. Prince William will celebrate his 21st birthday on June 21, 2003. (Photo by Georges de Keerle/Getty Images) On July 1st Diana, Princess Of Wales would have celebrated her 50th Birthday Please refer to the following profile on Getty Images Archival for further imagery. http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/Search/Search.aspx?EventId=107811125&EditorialProduct=Archival For further images see also: Princess Diana: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/Account/MediaBin/LightboxDetail.aspx?Id=17267941&MediaBinUserId=5317233 Following Diana's Death: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/Account/MediaBin/LightboxDetail.aspx?Id=18894787&MediaBinUserId=5317233 Princess Diana - A Style Icon: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/Account/MediaBin/LightboxDetail.aspx?Id=18253159&MediaBinUserId=5317233 LA SPEZIA, ITALY - APRIL 20: The Prince and Princess of Wales in La Spezia during a tour of Italy. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) TWERTON ON AVON - MAY 31: Diana Princess of Wales meets girl guides outside the Poolemead centre for the Deaf on May 31, 1985 in Twerton on Avon, Bath, Avon. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images) CANADA - JULY 01: Diana Princess of Wales celebrates her birthday in Canada (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) Princess Diana (1961 - 1997) inspects a guard of honour during a two-day visit to the 1st Battalion, the Royal Hampshire Regiment in Berlin, October 1985. She is wearing a pink and black suit by Victor Edelstein and a hat by Frederick Fox. (Photo by Lucy Levenson/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) UNITED KINGDOM - OCTOBER 04: Diana, Princess of Wales with her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, at the piano in Kensington Palace (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) KLOSTERS, SWITZERLAND - FEBRUARY 06: Prince Charles With Princess Diana On A Ski-ing Holiday Together. The Princess Is Wearing A Red 'head' Ski Suit And A Headband And She Is Holding A Pair Of 'dynamic' Skis. The Prince Is Wearing A Blue Ski Suit And Carrying A Pair Of 'k2' Skis. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) VIENNA - APRIL 16: Diana, Princess of Wales, wearing a sapphire diamond and pearl necklace, attends a banquet on April 16, 1986 in Vienna, Austria (Photo by Anwar Hussein/Getty Images) TETBURY, UNITED KINGDOM - JULY 18: Princess Diana Carries Prince Henry (harry) On Her Shoulders At Highgrove. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) UNITED KINGDOM - AUGUST 22: PRINCESS DIANA ON BOARD HMS TRAFALGAR NUCLEAR SUBMARINE MEETING THE CREW DURING A VISIT TO THE NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE IN FASLANE IN THE FIRTH OF CLYDE, SCOTLAND (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) SANDHURST - APRIL 10: Diana, Princess of Wales wears a Catherine Walker white suit with drum majorette gold frogging and epaulettes and a graham smith hat for her visit to the Sandhurst Military Academy on April 10, 1987 in Sandhurst, England (Photo by Anwar Hussein/Getty Images) Princess Diana and Prince Charles of Wales attending a Lionel Richie concert at Wembley Arena, London, November 7th 1987. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images) The Prince And Princess Of Wales At A Prizegiving, At Polo, Smiths Lawn, Windsor. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images) Diana, The Princess Of Wales, And Prince William, At A Polo Match, Smiths Lawn, Windsor. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images) ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND - AUGUST 14: Princess Diana With Her Sons Prince William And Prince Harry At Aberdeen Airport. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) MAJORCA, SPAIN - AUGUST 10: Diana, Princess of Wales with Prince Harry on holiday in Majorca, Spain on August 10, 1987. (Photo by Georges De Keerle/Getty Images) Princess Diana (1961 - 1997) driving an armoured vehicle with the Royal Hampshire Regiment at Tidworth, Hampshire, 23rd June 1988. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) CHAMBORD, FRANCE - NOVEMBER 09: Diana, Princess of Wales, wearing a white and blue lace and sequin evening coat-dress designed by Catherine Walker for a dinner at the Chateau de Chambord during her official visit to France. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) The Princess of Wales at the museum in Kuwait City, March 1989. She is wearing a gold embroidered bedouin gown that was presented to her with a silver tea set to mark the occasion of her visit. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Getty Images) The Princess of Wales with her sons William and Harry on the chair lift during a skiing holiday in Lech, Austria, April 1991. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 7 Diana, Princess of Wales attends the Premiere of Dangerous Liaisons, in London's West End, on March 7, 1989 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images) ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - MARCH 15: The Prince And Princess Of Wales attend a desert picnic on March 15, 1989 in Adu Dhab, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Georges De Keerle/Getty Images) BATH - MAY 30: (FILE PHOTO) Prince William, Diana, Princess of Wales, Prince Harry and Charles, Prince of Wales, attend the wedding of the Duke of Hussey's daughter in May, 1989 in Bath, England. (Photo by Anwar Hussein/Getty Images) LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - SEPTEMBER 11: Princess Diana With Her Sons Prince William And Prince Harry Standing On The Steps Of Wetherby School On The First Day For Prince Harry. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) INDONESIA - NOVEMBER 05: The Princess Of Wales Playing Bowls At Sitanalia Leprosy Hospital In Indonesia (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) NIGERIA - JUNE 3: (FILE PHOTO) (PRINCESS DIANA RETROSPECTIVE 17 OF 22) The Princess of Wales speaks with Nigerians circa 1990 during a visit to Nigeria. Princess Diana, 36-years-old, died with her companion Dodi Fayed, 41-years-old, in a car crash August 31, 1997 in Paris, France. Fayed was the son of an Egyptian billionaire. (Photo by Georges De Keerle/Getty Images) The Princess of Wales and the Queen Mother in an open-topped landau on their way to the Royal Ascot race meeting, June 1990. The Princess wears a Catherine Walker suit and a Philip Somerville hat. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) The Princess of Wales walks amongst crowds of children waving flags during her visit to Cullompton in Devon, September 1990. She is wearing a Catherine Walker dress. (Photo by Terry Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES - OCTOBER 05: Princess Diana With Mrs Barbara Bush At The White House (Photo by TIM GRAHAM/Getty Images) Diana, The Princess Of Wales Takes Her Sons, Prince'S William, And Harry Out On The Boat ' Maid Of The Mist ' To View Niagara Falls. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images) LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - NOVEMBER 18: Diana Princess of Wales attends the Premiere of Hot Shots, in London's West End, on November 18, 1991 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images) The Princess of Wales (1961 - 1997) talks to children at the British school in Seoul during a visit to Korea, 1992. (Photo by Linda Grove/Getty Images) INDIA - FEBRUARY 11: Diana Princess of Wales sits in front of the Taj Mahal during a visit to India (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) CALCUTTA;INDIA - FEBRUARY: Princess Diana the Princess of Wales holds hands with a nun at Mother Teresa's Hospice in Calcutta during her visit to India in February of 1992. (Photo by Anwar Hussein/Getty Images) GIZA, EGYPT - MAY 12: Diana Princess of Wales visiting the Pyramids in Giza during an official tour of Egypt. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) EGYPT - MAY 13: Diana, Princess of Wales in teh Alazhar Mosque, Cairo, Egypt (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 13: Diana, Princess of Wales, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, and Prince Harry, attend the Trooping The Colour Ceremony on June 13, 1992 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images) Princess Diana (1961 - 1997) on a skiing holiday in Lech, Austria, March 1993. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Getty Images) Princess Diana (1961 - 1997) meets local people during a field visit to Red Cross projects in the remote mountain villages of Nepal, 3rd March 1993. (Photo by Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images) Diana Princess Of Wales, Prince William & Prince Harry Visit The 'Thorpe Park' Amusement Park. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images) Princess Diana (1961 - 1997) during a visit to the Red Cross borehole project for refugees in Zimbabwe, July 1993. She is wearing a safari suit by Catherine Walker. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Getty Images) Princess Diana (1961 - 1997), Prince Harry, Prince William and Prince Charles at a parade in the Mall, London, during V.J. Day commemorations, August 1994. Diana is wearing a Tomasz Starzewski suit and a hat by Philip Somerville. (Photo by Terry Fincher/Getty Images) UNITED KINGDOM - MAY 20: Princess Diana Reviewing The Troops Of The Princess Of Wales Regiment In Kent. The Princess Is Wearing A Pink Suit Designed By Versace. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) Diana, Princess Of Wales Attends The Serpentine Gallery Summer Party. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images) LONDON -OCTOBER 08: Diana, Princess of Wales laughs as she visits the London Lighthouse, the HIV/Aids charity, to help launch it's £1.5 million Capital Appeal on October 08, 1996 in London, England . (Photo by Anwar Hussein/Getty Images) Diana, Princess of Wales at Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art for a benefit ball. (Photo By: Richard Corkery/NY Daily News via Getty Images) ANGOLA - JANUARY 15: Diana, Princess of Wales wearing protective body armour, visits a minefield being cleared by the chirty Halo in Huambo, Angola (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) WINDSOR, UNITED KINGDOM - MARCH 09: Official Portrait Of The Royal Family On The Day Of Prince William's Confirmation. Front Left To Right - Prince William, Princess Diana, Prince William, Prince Charles And The Queen. Back Left To Right - King Constantine, Lady Susan Hussey, Princess Alexandra, Duchess Of Westminster And Lord Romsey (Photo by Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images) GREAT BRITAIN - JUNE 06: Diana, Princess of Wales crouching down to embrace a pupil at the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images) Diana, The Princess Of Wales Visits Washington, Usa.Gala Dinner Held By The American Red Cross, To Raise Funds For Landmine Victims Around The World. . (Photo by Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images) This video includes images from Getty Images and clips from BBC. Music provided courtesy of APM Music.

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A recent story was republished that dove into Diana's difficult life in the royal spotlight and how she confronted Charles about his affair.

http://web.archive.org/web/20161125133317id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/11/24/12/55/townsville-crime-crackdown-extended

A crime crisis in Townsville has police laying about 30 charges a day as they promise to continue their blitz over Christmas. Officers have made 803 arrests and laid 1808 charges since they began cracking down on crime in the regional centre in mid-September. The police blitz was initially meant to last a month but has just been extended for a second time, with 10 additional officers to support local crews in tackling the crime problem over the festive holidays. The city's crime rate has risen so dramatically that some locals have resorted to taking matters into their own hands by chasing down young offenders. The majority have been charged with property, drug and traffic crimes. Among them is a 16-year-old boy who was charged with 105 offences, including armed robbery and burglary, over a month-long spate of thefts in the city. Police Minister Mark Ryan said the region would also get 15 extra permanent officers in December as part of efforts to curb the crime problem. "With these additional policing resources ... I'm confident that we will get on top of the criminal offending situation here in Townsville," he said. A new chief superintendent position was also announced when Mr Ryan and Police Commissioner Ian Stewart visited Townsville on Thursday. Mr Ryan will also discuss the possibility of using drones to curb the crime rate during a meeting with Townsville Labor MP Scott Stewart. Mr Stewart has raised the left-field idea with senior police and argues they are considerably cheaper than helicopters and can be launched from a police vehicle within seconds. Authorities are also working on long-term strategies that examine contributing factors to youth crime.

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A crackdown on crime in Townsville will continue over the Christmas holiday period after police made 803 arrests in the first two months of the blitz.

http://web.archive.org/web/20130328182200id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/active/9952758/The-horses-saddled-with-our-obesity-epidemic.html

The guidelines in Dr Randle’s research state that the “optimum” weight for a rider is less than 10 per cent the weight of their mount (US guidelines say 20 per cent). With the average stable horse weighing 500kg to 600kg (79 to 94 stone) this means a rider should weigh 60kg (9.4 stone). But since horses have been lugging heavy loads for centuries – armour; carriages; caravans – you’d have thought they’d be used to it by now. Not so, says Julian Marczak, chairman of the Association of British Riding Schools. “A horse’s back is precious,” he warns. “The combination of a heavy rider and an incorrect saddle fitting is enough to put a horse out of work, long-term. And, behaviourally, you can turn a very sweet-natured horse into a cranky horse overnight.” There are now 4.3 million amateur riders in Britain. The number of horses in private households has increased from 900,000 to 1.2 million in a decade, with £732 million spent on riding schools every year. As the number of “happy hackers” increases, so, too, do the risks they bring to their mounts: limited experience, nervous handling and – often – excess weight. Overweight amateurs particularly upset readers of Horse & Hound. “Don’t fat riders make your blood boil?” asks one on the magazine’s forum. News editor Flora Watkins says the furore was ignited last year when a US company started producing “extra large”, 18-inch saddles for obese riders. “A horse will find it hard to leave the ground, let alone leave the fence up, if its rider is too heavy,” she warns. “Larger riders should look at heavier breeds – like a half-shire or a weight-carrying cob,” she continues. “The Household Cavalry horses, which are half-Irish draught and half-thoroughbred, must be able to carry a 13 to 14 stone man, plus four stone of armour, when they are on parade.” Whatever the breed, a rider’s weight is a sensitive subject. “It’s one of the most embarrassing things to bring up,” says Marczak. “But what’s more important – saving someone’s blushes, or saving the horse’s back?” Food for thought for rotund riders.

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It's not just humans who get bad backs. Now horses are feeling the strain as overweight riders put the pressure on

http://web.archive.org/web/20131010104618id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/may/20/haroon-mirza-lisson-gallery-review

Surround sound … Haroon Mirza's Adam, Eve and a UFO (2013). Photograph: Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery Often, I dance alone in my flat. How sad is that, you say, but I don't care. Feeling the beats pulsing through me, being taken over by dark rhythms or a voice, I sometimes fall over the furniture. Which is why I didn't risk dancing in Haroon Mirza's exhibition at the Lisson Gallery – though the whumffs and thuds beating around a circle of eight speakers in the upstairs gallery, all pointing inward, proved almost irresistible. A column of sound rose in the centre of the space. I wanted to be there, surrounded, but there was too much stuff in the way: the foam sound-baffles on the walls, the speakers on the floor, the "UFO circuit" (I have no idea what a UFO is in electronic terms, but it looks pretty with its pulsing lights) and all the cables festooned about the place crowded me out. Following the aural conversation criss-crossing the room from speaker to speaker (each one different) made me feel I was in some swanky hi-fi studio, being given a demo of the system that's right for me. Let's try the reverberation chamber instead, a shiny, all-white room. Clap your hands and the echo is a hard and immediate ricochet. A panel speaker hangs from the ceiling and a tubular LED light leans casually against a wall. The light comes on and off, but it is nothing like Martin Creed's famous work. I was alone in there, except for an ant. I only saw it for a moment before the light went out. It looked stunned. Perhaps it was dead. When the light comes on, it is accompanied by a shushing sound that gets louder as the light dies away to darkness. We are left in an abrupt silence that reminded me of Beckett's Breath. When the light came on again the ant was still there, an inert speck on a glass ledge inside something like an old-fashioned paraffin lamp, or perhaps a crack pipe, on the floor. It is an ant farm. When an ant wanders over a copper plate inside, the pitter-pattering of its miniscule feet is mixed in with the sound of water: something like rain, or the noise inside a shower. That's what we hear when the light comes on. I stayed in there for a long time, bemused. Then later, on the street, looking in through the window, I saw the exterior shell of Mirza's chamber in a sealed off part of the gallery. A showerhead has been plumbed into the wall, gushing water into a plastic dustbin. A microphone relays the noise of the shower into the chamber, along with the ants' footfalls. That's the sound you hear when the light comes on. Originally, this peculiar work had the title Pavilion for a Beautiful Nuisance. This has now been changed to Pavilion for Optimisation. Ant noises; water; reverb. Is this a kind of found and manipulated music? It is the sound of something approaching as the light fades away. The reverb in the room makes me feel exposed. In another part of the gallery stands an array of turntables, the needles juddering over various doctored vinyl and handmade records, all played by an invisible DJ. One turntable has been adapted to set off electronic wails, like a bird calling from high up in a jungle canopy. You'd go mad if you had to listen all day, and the whole thing has a doomy, repetitive beat. Amid it all is a recorded voice, from far away and long ago. In 1969, the American minimalist composer Alvin Lucier sat alone in a room, and recorded a brief statement: "I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed …" Lucier played back his voice, rerecorded it and played it back again. He repeated the process until his voice became a quivering abstract resonance equivalent in sound to the room itself. Lucier had a slight speech impediment; I Am Sitting in a Room was an attempt to smooth out his own speech defects. You can hear him hesitating over the word rhythm. It sounds like he is speaking from inside an echo chamber, or his words are being manipulated by a DJ. There's a clue here to the whole of Mirza's show. Mirza has remixed Lucier's recording, compounding the composer's degenerated voice with the other sounds in the gallery: the beats of a needle bouncing over tape glued to a record, a long foghorn boom from another prepared disc. This is Lucier, the dubstep remix. I tried dancing, but the tempo made me feel like a slow-mo zombie on downers. On a website dedicated to this show are a number of fascinating essays about Mirza's work. David Toop on insects, architecture, gamelan and frog choruses, and much besides. Art critic Ossian Ward on DJing is also particularly good. Mirza is a DJ too. You can be one as well, because the website features a number of samples from which you can mix your own music and upload it via SoundCloud and on to the website. Jellyman from the band Django Django has already made a version. Mirza's work is doing the rounds. He crops up everywhere – he has another show opening at the Hepworth in Wakefield this week. It is much more than a case of plug it in and turn it on. He's a sampler and a remixer, a scratch DJ of minimalist art and music, of John Cage and dub reggae soundsystems, a rethinker of bricolage and old-fashioned avant garde audio experiment. Mirza might be a bit of an equipment fetishist, but you've got to love the stuff you use. As much as he quotes, he reinvents. Isn't that something art, and music, literature and dance, always does? Just about able to set up a hi-fi system myself, my appreciation of decks and speakers, or the finer points of the turntablist's art, are barely minimal. Just spin me a few platters and I'll have a go.

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From a room that replays the sound of ants crossing a copper plate to conversing speaker circles, Mirza's Lisson Gallery show is a riveting sonic adventure, writes Adrian Searle

http://web.archive.org/web/20131120213657id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/19/jules-de-balincourt-hitchcock-painting-london-review

An almost believable view … Jules de Balincourt's High and Low, Photograph: Jules de Balincourt/Victoria Miro Gallery The day has a holiday air. People are out on their rooftops or standing about on patches of green. I can't tell what time of day it is – let's say the afternoon – or the season; the soft sunlight and hazy distance, where unending buildings rise in the thickening sky, make me think of late summer or early autumn. That was the time of year the painting was finished, so maybe something of the world crept into the Brooklyn studio where Jules de Balincourt painted High and Low, completing the large group of paintings now at Victoria Miro Gallery. High and Low is filled with the kind of modern, aspirational shoebox architecture you find everywhere; a ubiquitous banality hemming diminutive bits of 19th-century Greek revival – a stray townhouse and a distant set of steps that seem to lead nowhere. Here and there the cityscape gets fudged. It is a world unfinished, or about to give up on itself. At points the perspective goes astray, the buildings warping out of alignment. Some of the figures don't seem quite solid, either, or have forgotten to bring their shadows with them. At one point, the sky abandons its pretence, and you can see the whirls and knots of the plywood panel on which it was painted. It is like The Truman Show. This is something we often care not to remember when we look at a painting. We know the birds are just ticks of paint and the world is just smears and blobs on a sheet of board, or a bit of cloth stretched over a frame and fastened there with cheap industrial staples or a row of carpet tacks. You'd be an idiot not to acknowledge the something and nothing that is a painting, but even more of a fool to reduce it to bare material fact. The world is always about to fall apart, and us with it, so it's best to acknowledge the happenstance miracle of being alive. Perhaps that is what is happening here, in this almost believable view, where people have gathered, going about their day or ranged on the rooftops in watery light, looking at something we can't fathom. Maybe everyone is waiting for something to happen. They seem to be looking towards the small park, but there isn't much going on down there. There's a very big statue of a man with a cane, dwarfing the strollers, and what seems to be a picnic. Kids play, couples walk. We are either too early or too late, which leaves us free to let our eyes wander. High and Low would make a good jigsaw or drawing for a New Yorker cover. It's the sort of painting you can project yourself into, losing yourself in this painted day. This is an unsophisticated sort of pleasure, but one I never wholly tire of. Children like to lose themselves in pictures like this. You imagine the lives people live there, and get distracted as you look. You could call it escapism but you always re-find yourself inside the labyrinth of looking, thinking and daydreaming. Looking is a beginning as much as an end in itself. All these windows in all these buildings remind me of a nativity calendar. Each one is itself like a little painting. Some show us the corner of a room, the ones further away as abstract as a Kazimir Malevich work. Oddly, the little dun-coloured interior views in the nearer buildings remind me of some early paintings by Luc Tuymans. Nothing much happens in them, either. These fragmentary internal views incite our curiosity and voyeurism. I stay on the lookout for someone dressing or having a row or pressed up against the window having a bit of wild sex, as they do in Steve McQueen's film Shame. But they don't, or I haven't found them yet. They'd just be blobs anyway. I feel like Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, or Gene Hackman in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 thriller The Conversation. Looking becomes bugging, a kind of god-like act of surveillance. The more you look, the more there is to see, but the anomalies of this world become even more insistent, as if the fiction can't sustain itself. The unreliable narrator becomes the unreliable painter. Jules de Balincourt's paintings are not very consistent. There are big ones and little ones, crowded ones and empty ones, paintings filled with figures and others that appear almost entirely abstract. Sometimes he paints explosions, but they're sort of benign and cartoonish, opening like jazzy flowers. He paints views and people and maps and words, pretty much always on birch panels using thin oils. There's one piece showing a man sticking something in a bin; and there's a cursory portrait of Chelsea Manning, hung high on the wall, as though removed from the rest of the world. But most paintings have groups of people in them, some seen close up, others far away: people sitting in a tree, people watching, sleeping or sitting around in the shade. Every painting has its own atmosphere, its own timbre. There are all degrees of depiction, just as there are different flaws, fault lines and blind spots. Things that have been painted out grin through the layers, like the smile of the Cheshire cat. Often de Balincourt starts in one place and ends in another, working on a large number of paintings at once. He doesn't draw and he rarely uses photographs or other source material. Ideas migrate from painting to painting, as if he were telling himself a story. He likes to let things fall apart, and to let the half-said or the inarticulate have their stumbling say. Viewing his work is like stumbling on the kerb or catching a snatch of half-heard conversation. Somehow, these moments make his paintings more believable, less smooth, carrying more of the texture of the day. It wouldn't work in any other medium.

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The French artist's absorbing canvases create whole worlds, embrace the miracle of being alive – and leave you feeling like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, writes Adrian Searle

http://web.archive.org/web/20140920011944id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/oct/17/architecture.communities

'This is one of those projects that is trying to do an awful lot for an area that needs moving along' ... the National Waterfront Museum. Photograph: James Brittain Wales claims to have been "the world's first industrial nation". If the number of museums relating to Wales' industrial heritage is any measure, it has now become the world's most advanced post-industrial state. You'd expect a substantial amount of industry to be on display in institutions such as Cardiff's Museum of Welsh Life, but there are also national museums dedicated to coal mining, woollen and slate industries, plus numerous decommissioned industrial sites that have been converted into heritage parks and the like. Perhaps in some future museum of 21st-century Welsh life, there'll be an exhibition about the current craze for museum building. Now we have the new £30m National Waterfront Museum, which opens in Swansea tomorrow, and aims to tell "Wales's story of industry and innovation". It sounds like the last thing the country needs, but this new institution is a welcome arrival. That's partly because it combines two existing facilities - Cardiff's Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum, and Swansea's Maritime and Industrial Museum, thus reducing the total number of museums - but primarily because it is a piece of quality architecture in Wales's second city. Swansea could certainly do with an image makeover. The Lonely Planet guide described it as "an ashtray of a place", the movie Twin Town called it "a pretty shitty city", and even native son Dylan Thomas damned it as "a graveyard of ambition". In the post-industrial world, the city's most notable export has been Catherine Zeta Jones. Added to which, the flag-waving structures of recent years - Richard Rogers's Welsh National Assembly, the Wales Millennium Centre, and the Millennium Stadium - have all gone to Cardiff. Scarred by heavy industry and second world war bombing, much of Swansea is a jumble of old industrial buildings, decaying modern office blocks and cheap new commercial buildings resembling giant Travelodges. Despite its location on a beautiful bay, it's often difficult to guess the city is anywhere near the sea. Even in the former dockyards to the south, where the National Waterfront Museum is located, a 1970s housing development completely blocks the view to Swansea Bay. The "waterfront" of the title refers to a basin 100m inland. "I hate the phrase 'catalyst for regeneration', but this is one of those projects that is trying to do an awful lot for an area that needs moving along," says Martin Knight of architects Wilkinson Eyre, best known for their acclaimed "winking" Millennium Bridge in Gateshead. That Stirling prize-winning project has become the symbol of a rejuvenated Tyneside, and Wilkinson Eyre's presence here, in another post-industrial port city, suggests Swansea is ready for its own "Gateshead effect". There is even another striking Wilkinson Eyre footbridge - the Swansea Sail Bridge - just around the corner from the new museum. "You probably haven't got enough to make a quarter or a district like they did there, but there's a framework you can build on," says Knight. "The main thing is to make a new heart for this area that will tie into the existing building stock." The former Swansea Maritime and Industrial Museum occupied a two-storey brick warehouse alongside the basin. This area was once a rail yard, but in recent times it has been a huge car park serving the leisure centre next door - a hulking 1970s box now closed for refurbishment. Echoing the goods carriages that once pulled through here, the new section of the museum adds a curving series of four interlocked steel and glass cubes, peeling away from the warehouse building. Joining the old and new components together is a glazed internal street that forms an axis running from the basin, through the museum and its grounds, and back into the city centre. The architects have tried to forge a direct connection between the city and the sea with this new axis. If someone were to demolish the 1970s houses across the basin, the job would be complete. "We've done the best we possibly can," says Knight. Approaching the museum along this new route, the translucent boxes hardly feel like a spectacular climax - some have even compared them uncharitably to a business park - but it was more important to build a flexible, practical building than a local icon, say the architects, especially for a museum concerned with industry. The facade looking away from the city, however, is more of a show-stealer. It is clad in heavy Welsh slate - vertical slices of it arranged in irregular horizontal bands that imitate the glass on the other side. It has become almost a cliche to use slate as shorthand for Welshness - the new Welsh National Assembly and the Wales Millennium Centre also bring out the Welsh slate, the former as a heavy plinth, the latter in a sort of dry-stone wall pastiche - but this is arguably the most successful. The effect is contemporary but warm. Set off by aluminium channels between them, the slate panels' colour and surface textures change with variations in the light and weather. "We wanted to use the widest variety of Welsh quarries we could," Knight explains, "and make this really representative, but in the end we could only find two that could deal with the logistics of the programme and the budget. Part of the problem was that smaller suppliers are geared more towards doing headstones." On the inside, the architecture takes a back seat to the exhibitions, which were created by specialists Land Design. As you'd expect, there are a few big pieces of machinery, but the museum's emphasis is more on the social history of industrial Wales. There is no single point of entry, but it is hoped visitors will be led up a giant new staircase to the first floor of the old warehouse. Here, the displays begin with a wall-sized live panorama of the city, followed by an interactive exhibit based on the 1851 census (the first to show that industrial workers outnumbered agricultural workers, and the basis of the "first industrial nation" claim). The route then opens out into the main volume of the old warehouse, which has been stripped back as far as possible to reveal the original roof structure, before winding across a mezzanine bridge into the new building, and down to the open hall housing the big machines (tilt hammers, steam engines and the like). Here, Wilkinson Eyre's expertise with bridges pays off; the heavy steel elements supporting the external glass complement the exhibits. Lastly, there is a separate and rather forlorn little room projecting the industrial narrative into the future with some virtual exhibits on Wales's new growth industries, such as nanotechnology and renewable energy. If there's one lesson the millennial rush of new museums has hammered home, particularly those that have failed after a couple of years, it's that the numbers have to add up, both in terms of visitors and revenue. Whatever it brings to the city and its people, the National Waterfront Museum (which will be free to all visitors) must also generate cash to stay alive. Perhaps it's not even accurate to describe such a building as a museum. Most of the old warehouse building's ground floor is given over to commercial space: a museum shop and café inside, plus units for external bars and restaurants that will come into life after the school coach trips have gone home. It is also hoped that the grand upstairs gallery of the warehouse will double as a venue for the hosting of corporate events. The display cases are designed to slide back to the perimeter of the room on rollers, creating space for a 200-person banquet. So as much as cataloguing the past, this is a museum that might point Swansea towards the future. If the end result is a revitalised cultural destination for the city, the slurs about ashtrays and graveyards could become history too.

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With its sleek new museum, built by 'winking-eye bridge' architects Wilkinson Eyre, Swansea may yet become the next Gateshead, says Steve Rose.

http://web.archive.org/web/20141005185604id_/http://fortune.com:80/2014/10/03/todays-hot-news-englishman-apologizes-for-being-rude-about-france/?

What is the world coming to? In a shock development Friday, a prominent Englishman Friday apologized for making the kind of comments that the English and French have routinely been making about each other every day at least since, I dunno, the Hundred Years War. Andy Street, chief executive of the august retail chain John Lewis Plc, had regaled fellow-businessmen in an after-dinner speech in London Wednesday with some choice views on the state of the U.K.’s favorite neighbor, calling it “finished” and “sclerotic, hopeless and downbeat.” “I have never been to a country more ill at ease … nothing works and, worse, nobody cares about it,” Street said of the country that gave us The Declaration of the Rights of Man, modern mathematics and a whole host of cheeses that can’t be sold in the U.S. because they’re too delicious. With a rhetorical flourish, Street described as “the squalor pit of Europe” the Gare du Nord, the rail terminus from which relieved Limeys–laden down with purchases of clothes more stylish and food more tasty than they can generally find at home–take the Eurostar back to their sceptr’d isle. (You can find more in the same vein here, or you can dust off your old copy of A Tale of Two Cities, depending on how much time you have.) It wasn’t immediately clear whether Street’s comments were part of the company’s marketing for its new French-language e-commerce portal, which–perhaps for the better–doesn’t yet have a launch date. Either way, by midday, Street was beating a retreat worthy of…no we’re not going to go there…anyway, he was very, very sorry. “The remarks I made were supposed to be lighthearted views, and tongue in cheek,” Street said in a statement. “On reflection I clearly went too far. I regret the comments, and apologise unreservedly.” Francophobes around England (i.e., all 48 million of ‘em) were shocked by the apology. They resorted instantly to lamenting the decline of the Royal Navy since Nelson’s day and sensed that the whole thing was cooked up by the foreigner-loving Foreign Office to make sure that the U.K.’s new delegate to the European Commission doesn’t end up with the portfolio for Humanitarian Aid & Crisis Management. A spokeswoman for John Lewis refused to apologize for Street’s apology when pressed. Likewise, a spokesman for the French embassy declined to provide any assurances that the French would now stop being rude about cheddar and Vivienne Westwood, or at least stop pointing out that they won soccer’s World Cup a lot more recently than we did.

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Disgraceful climbdown by CEO whose heart is obviously in the right place, writes our London correspondent (who had a positively shocking experience in Provence last year) in a fit of uncontrollable Francophobe rage.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150824001315id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/06/samsung-the-apple-watch-doesnt-worry-us.html

The South Korean electronics giant has already released six smartwatches, including the 3G-capable Gear S. But Eom said the company had no plans to take its foot off the gas pedal. "The wearable market has a huge potential. So we are making heavy investment in R&D…. I would say a significant portion of our investment is around wearables and we will be ready in time to deal with the market trend," he said. Smart wearable device shipments are expected to reach 116 million units in 2017 compared to the 17 million estimated last year, according to Juniper Research, with wrist wearables set to dominate. Some doubt was cast over the viability of the space when Google said it was ending its current version of Glass. But products by Samsung, Apple and a number of other manufacturers highlight that other tech giants are not shying away from wearables. Eom's comments came as Samsung unveiled a host of connected home products at its stakeholder event. Speaking to CNBC, the executive laid out his vision about how Samsung's smartphones and wearables would connect to these devices. "We have a product roadmap for the next three years and we will bring more connectivity through our next product range… By 2020, we'd like to connect all of our products together," Eom, who recently took the job as Samsung's European chief, said. Read MoreWhy Samsung could dominate Apple and Google in the smart home Last August, Samsung acquired SmartThings, a platform which allows users to control devices through their mobile phones, in an effort to bolster its connected-home capabilities. Samsung has already released a number of internet-connected home appliances, such as fridges and washing machines, and is hoping to connect items like these to its smartwatches and smartphones. "In Europe there are 18 different gadgets and appliances on average in a home and if we are connecting them…to bring additional benefit, it will be great. Our smartphone technology is clearly capable for us to be leading the connected home market," Eom told CNBC. Samsung is ramping up investment in the smart-home space, but analysts said it needed to convince consumers of the value. "I think there still are issues over the value proposition and that needs to be overcome to bring connected homes in to the mainstream," Steffen Sorrell, senior analyst at Juniper Research, told CNBC by phone.

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Samsung has dismissed the threat to its smartwatch range from the Apple Watch, and has ramped up investment in the category.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150905160356id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/24/er-bowl-makes-for-super-tv-sales.html

Shoppers on the hunt for more of an investment set will still find price breaks. Even some cutting-edge ultrahigh-definition set (also called 4K technology) are on sale. At Best Buy, a 55-inch LG LED 4K set with 3-D and Web connectivity is 14 percent off, at $3,000. But buying may be a bit premature for most shoppers. There's not much 4K content yet to justify the premium. "The prices on those, you're probably not going to see many less than $3,000, although this is an industry that eats its young," Barry said. "You're going to see those prices start to come down." (Read more: Ultrahigh-definition TVs steal CES spotlight) A more solid bet: Consider trading up to a "smart" TV that connects to the Internet and, in some cases, your smartphone or tablet. "We're starting to see that's a more sought-after feature," said Arnold. Sets often run $100 or so higher than comparable models without that capability. The smart TV advantage: Users can access content from the Web and their devices right on the set, as well as sync devices to pull up content related to what's on screen (such as football stats). Some apps also let smart-set owners stream video to their tablet (for crucial snack runs to the kitchen) or set up a virtual gathering (with fans who live elsewhere), said Barry. If you're in the market for a tablet, some retailers are bundling them with smart TVs. Through Feb. 8, for example, Amazon is offering a free Galaxy Tab 3 (regularly $300) with the purchase of one of nine select Samsung smart TV models. The sets, which start at sale prices of $1,098, are already discounted 35 percent or better. Sports fans may also want to hunt for a high refresh rate, which better captures on-screen motion, said Arnold. "It provides a little more realistic experience," he said. —By CNBC's Kelli B. Grant. Follow her on Twitter @Kelligrant and on Google.

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Believe it or not, the Super Bowl offers some of the best TV sales of the year. Here's how to find the best deals.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150916080101id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2013/11/14/holiday-shopping-season-looking-bleak-for-wal-mart-kohls.html

Over at Kohl's, a mid-tier department store chain that also serves a price-conscious clientele, the mood was bleak after the company said its comparable sales fell 1.6 percent last quarter. Kevin Mansell, Kohl's chairman, president and CEO did not account for the weak quarterly results in the company's earnings report, saying only, "As we enter the holiday season, we believe we are well-positioned from a merchandise content and inventory perspective to gain market share. We have increased our marketing spending and improved its impact and reach in order to drive higher traffic to our stores and on-line." (Read more: Kohl's shares stumble after earnings miss) But later, on the call with analysts, Mansell was more frank. "Let's be clear: we were disappointed in the third quarter results," he said. He noted that Kohl's e-commerce business only grew 15 percent for the quarter, which is lower than historical growth. "If we had not replatformed (e-commerce) , we were not going to be able to reach our full potential online," Mansell said. "It's not a fourth quarter initiative, its' a next three years initiative that just went through. We knew it was going to hurt our online business." Wal-Mart said comparable sales at its U.S. stores, its biggest unit, fell 0.3 percent in the third quarter ended on Oct. 31, in part because of price reductions on televisions and sluggish sales of toys and packaged foods. Analysts had expected flat U.S. comparable sales, which include those online and at stores open at least a year. Business was also slower than expected at its Sam's Club chain and in key markets like Canada and Mexico, but the company's e-commerce operation and small-format stores performed well. Wal-Mart caters to lower-income customers, who have been reluctant to spend this year because of higher payroll taxes and slow job growth. The retailer and analysts do not expect that caution to abate this holiday period. "That low-end consumer is just not willing to step out and buy those discretionary items," said Edward Jones analyst Brian Yarbrough. (Read more: These retailers pushing the envelope on Black Friday) To compete against retailers such as Amazon.com and Target, Wal-Mart began its holiday sales earlier than last year and is advertising more heavily. Wal-Mart U.S. Chief Executive Officer Bill Simon told reporters that the company would also "invest" in prices, its term for cutting them. But some analysts were not convinced that would be enough. "Lowering prices no longer drives an offsetting increase in traffic which has been the lifeblood of Wal-Mart," said Ken Murphy, a senior vice president at Standard Life Investments. Wal-Mart lowered its full-year forecast and now expects earnings of $5.11 to $5.21 per share, compared with an earlier outlook of $5.10 to $5.30. The company said it still expected sales to rise 3 percent to 5 percent in fiscal 2015, which begins in February. Earlier this week, the world's largest retailer announced it will begin its in-store Black Friday sales at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, two hours earlier than last year. In addition, Wal-Mart.com will begin offering Black Friday sales on a limited number of items Thursday morning—likely before the turkey is even in the oven. —By NBC News and wire reports

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Wal-Mart forecast a disappointing Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season, saying it expects sales to be flat, and Kohl's said it would spend more on ads.

http://web.archive.org/web/20151219231608id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/girl-slashed-queens-box-cutter

Security camera footage captured the alleged assailant. 12/17/2015 AT 08:45 AM EST A 16-year-old foreign exchange student from China was slashed in the face by an unknown assailant Wednesday morning as she walked to school in Queens, New York, police confirm to PEOPLE. The student, whose name was not made public, was walking east on 13th Avenue near 147th Street in the Whitestone neighborhood at around 8:20 a.m. when she was attacked. The incident was caught on a local security camera. "She's slashed in her face, twice," Robert K. Boyce, the New York Police Department's chief of detectives, tells . "Once from her ear to her throat, to the middle of her throat, and another part of the face as well." The attack "came out of nowhere," Boyce added. The girl's injuries were not considered life-threatening. The attacker, who was wearing a surgical mask during the attack, has not yet been apprehended, the NYPD tells PEOPLE early Thursday. "This is terrible," the girl's aunt, who was said to be her guardian, told the . "She was on the way to school, only an eight-minute walk, when she was attacked. She was carrying a cup of hot chocolate." The aunt said the girl's wounds were "so deep. There was so much blood … We hope he gets caught." The girl was treated at LIJ Children's Hospital. An employee there told the that the injuries could have been much worse. "She could have died," the employee said. "She is going to be OK. She is not going to die. She got hurt." The suspect was said to be possibly in his 20s and wearing a surgical mask, white gloves and a gray hooded sweatshirt with black stripes on the sleeves.

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The suspect, who used a box cutter and was wearing surgical mask, was still at large Thursday morning

http://web.archive.org/web/20160604144531id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2016/03/31/tracy-morgan-car-accident-encounter-with-father/21336426/?

Before you go, we thought you'd like these... Tracy Morgan made some heartbreaking revelations about his near-fatal car accident in a new sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey. The interview, which will air on Winfrey's OWN Network on Sunday night, covers the dark, emotional time in the comedian's life. In it, he recounts an encounter at the gates of heaven with his late father. Tracy Morgan reveals encounter with late father after near-fatal car crash Tracy Morgan presents the award for outstanding drama series at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP) LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 20: Actor Tracy Morgan speaks onstage during the 67th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 20, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 20: Actor Tracy Morgan speaks onstage during the 67th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 20, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by FOX/FOX Collection/Getty Images) Tracy Morgan, right, and Jane Krakowski hug at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP) LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 20: Tracy Morgan, Maven Sonae Morgan and Megan Wollover pose in the photo room at the 67th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Microsoft Theater on September 20, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Dan MacMedan/WireImage) LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 20: Actor Tracy Morgan and wife Megan Wollover pose in the press room at the 67th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 20, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic) Tracy Morgan, left, and Megan Wollover pose in the press room at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Tracy Morgan, left, and Megan Wollover pose in the press room at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 20: Tracy Morgan poses at the 67th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 20, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) Tracy Morgan, left, and Megan Wollover pose in the press room at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) SEE ALSO: Martin Sheen believes O.J. is innocent, is producing a docu-series to prove it "When you're in a coma for 8-10 days, you're basically knocking on the door," Morgan said. "I dont know if I was in a coma or in and out of a coma, but I was talking to my dad. He had this green thing on, and I just remember him saying, 'I'm not ready for you son.'" See photos from the Tracy Morgan crash: Tracy Morgan reveals encounter with late father after near-fatal car crash In this image from video the limousine bus carrying Tracy Morgan and six other people lies on it's side early Saturday morning June 7, 2014 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Morgan remained hospitalized as state and federal officials continued their investigation of the six-vehicle crash on the New Jersey Turnpike that took the life of a Morgan friend and left two others seriously injured, authorities say. (AP Photo/Will Vaultz Photography) FILE - This April 28, 2012 file photo shows Tracy Morgan at The 2012 Comedy Awards in New York. Billboard announced Wednesday, April 17, 2013 that the 44-year-old will host the awards show on May 19, 2013 from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File) In this image from video the Wal-Mart truck involved in the crash of the limousine bus carrying Tracy Morgan and six other people is seen early Saturday morning June 7, 2014 on the New Jersey Turnpike at the accident scene. Morgan remained hospitalized as state and federal officials continued their investigation of the six-vehicle crash on the New Jersey Turnpike that took the life of a Morgan friend and left two others seriously injured, authorities say. Wal-Mart President Bill Simon said in a statement a Wal-Mart truck was involved and that the company "will take full responsibility" if authorities determine that its truck caused the accident. (AP Photo/Will Vaultz Photography) Kevin Roper, center, arrives with his attorney David Jay Glassman, left, for a court appearance Wednesday, June 11, 2014, in New Brunswick, N.J. Roper, a Wal-Mart truck driver from Georgia, was charged with death by auto and four counts of assault by auto in the wake of a deadly chain-reaction crash on the New Jersey Turnpike early Saturday, June 7, 2014, that killed comedian James McNair and left actor-comedian Tracy Morgan and two others critically injured. (AP Photo/Mel Evans) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - MAY 06: Tracy Morgan speaks onstage at Spike TV's 'Don Rickles: One Night Only' on May 6, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Spike TV) In this image from video the limousine bus carrying Tracy Morgan and six other people lies on it's side, left, as emergency responders work the accident scene early Saturday morning June 7, 2014 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Morgan remained hospitalized as state and federal officials continued their investigation of the six-vehicle crash on the New Jersey Turnpike that took the life of a Morgan friend and left two others seriously injured, authorities say. (AP Photo/Will Vaultz Photography) Kevin Roper, second right, tries to walk past cameras blocking him as he arrives for a court appearance Wednesday, June 11, 2014, in New Brunswick, N.J. Roper, a Wal-Mart truck driver from Georgia, was charged with death by auto and four counts of assault by auto in the wake of a deadly chain-reaction crash on the New Jersey Turnpike early Saturday, June 7, 2014, that killed comedian James McNair and left actor-comedian Tracy Morgan and two others critically injured. (AP Photo/Mel Evans) Kevin Roper, walks past cameras blocking him as he arrives for a court appearance Wednesday, June 11, 2014, in New Brunswick, N.J. Roper, a Wal-Mart truck driver from Georgia, was charged with death by auto and four counts of assault by auto in the wake of a deadly chain-reaction crash on the New Jersey Turnpike early Saturday, June 7, 2014, that killed comedian James McNair and left actor-comedian Tracy Morgan and two others critically injured. (AP Photo/Mel Evans) This photo provided by the New Jersey State Police shows Kevin Roper. Roper, a Wal-Mart truck driver from Georgia, was charged with death by auto and four counts of assault by auto in the wake of a deadly chain-reaction crash on the New Jersey Turnpike early Saturday, June 7, 2014, that left actor-comedian Tracy Morgan and two others critically injured and another man dead. (AP Photo/New Jersey State Police) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - JUNE 11: Kevin Roper arrives for a court appearance at Middlesex County Courthouse on June 11, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Roper is the Walmart truck driver accused of causing the accident that critically injured comedian Tracy Morgan on Saturday, June 7. (Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images) Traffic moves pass the scene of a serious accident at milepost 71 on the northbound lanes of New Jersey Turnpike on Saturday, June 7, 2014 near Cranbury, N.J. Comedian Tracy Morgan is in critical condition following an early morning accident on the New Jersey Turnpike. The comedian was injured in a crash involving six vehicles that left at least one person dead and several others, including Morgan, with serious injuries. (AP Photo/David Gard) This Friday, April 21, 2013 image released by South Beach Comedy Festival shows comedian Tracy Morgan performing during the 8th Annual South Beach Comedy Festival in Miami Beach, Fla. The comedy festival runs through April 21. (AP Photo/South Beach Comedy Festival 2013, Mitchell Zachs) Host Tracy Morgan speaks on stage at the Billboard Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Sunday, May 19, 2013 in Las Vegas. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP) The traumatic June 2014 car accident in New Jersey resulted in the death of fellow comedian James McNair and almost caused Morgan to lose his own life. "I just started crying so hard," he continued. "I was crying hard -- probably harder than I cried during the funeral -- and I just kept saying, 'Dad!' 'cause he was my best friend in life." OWN will air the entire interview on Sunday, April 3. Watch the video below for more of Morgan's revelations: More from AOL.com: Rihanna goes topless for intimate, black & white 'Kiss It Better' video Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Russell Crowe to host 'Saturday Night Live' 'Inside Amy Schumer' teaser reveals huge 'Game of Thrones' 'spoiler' (Video)

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Tracy Morgan sat down in an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he reveals that he talked to his father in heaven during his coma.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160610213207id_/http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-man-a-plan-a-mini-canal-pilots-use-toy-boats-to-practice-for-panama-1465577264

PANAMA CITY, Panama—On a recent Tuesday morning, Captain Fernando Jaen was piloting a cargo ship through the Panama Canal’s new set of intimidatingly narrow locks. “The times we’ve had conversations, we ended up crashing,” Capt. Jaen said. “You have to concentrate.” Moments later, a tiny miscalculation sent the ship’s midsection on a course to brush the wall. If the impact were severe, Capt. Jaen knew that he, and possibly the entire crew, might be plunged into the watery abyss below—which, in this case, might have required everybody to take a break and change their socks. The Panama Canal evokes romantic images of seafaring precision and derring-do. Here, at a new $8 million training facility for freighter pilots, the only outsize thing is the potential for embarrassment. Experienced Canal pilots climb aboard miniature battery-powered ships with little engines, little rudders and little anchors all meticulously constructed to match the dimensions of real cargo vessels in 1-to-25 scale. They traverse a scale replica of the canal where the water ranges from about 2 feet to six-and-half feet deep. There is nothing Titanic here. About the length of two pickup trucks, the ships have room for two to four sailors to safely stand or sit on their decks, which are sometimes piled with faux cargo containers that double as chairs. When it gets cramped, pilots switch around to stretch their legs. The “tugmasters” who join them steer suitcase-sized tugboats by joystick on a remote control. It is all part of what Panama Canal Authority officials refer to as a laboratory for maneuvers—a roughly 10-acre scale remake of the real Canal, complete with elfin docks, locks and a clone of the Culebra Cut that connects two man-made lakes in which several stations along the Canal are re-created. “For everyone that comes in, they kind of laugh at the beginning. They look like toys,” said Capt. Jose Burgos, a Panama Canal pilot and training officer. “That’s the rub.” In a recent practice run, Capt. Londor A. Rankin, the Panama Canal Pilots Union’s Secretary-General, and a pilot with more than 30 years of experience, hit a bank. A rubber stopper resembling a clown’s nose on the boat’s submerged bow softened the blow. Capt. Rankin straightened his vessel for another round of bumper ships. The effect on his pride was life-size. “It made my ego feel this small,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “You have to respect the vessels in the simulator, as well as we respect the vessels in real life because they react very similar.” The facility, which opened in March, is the newest of a handful of tiny training centers, including ones in France, Australia and the U.S., where maritime professionals come to practice driving gargantuan vessels without actually driving gargantuan vessels, which is impractical. “When we’re piloting ships, we’re doing it for our customers. You don’t practice things on your customers,” said Capt. Alison Buckler, talking about a training course she took at the Maritime Pilots Institute in Louisiana. She had her picture taken from the stern of a miniature cargo ship. She later posted it to Facebook. Her mother wrote “Cute!” “It looks like a little boat,” said Capt. Buckler, who’s been a pilot for 12 years. “People don’t get it, but in our world, people get it.” The new Panama center runs parallel to the real Culebra Cut in Summit, a region of Panama City, among lush hills brimming with monkeys and the occasional crocodile, one of which recently wandered into the training lakes. It was promptly evicted and a fence went up. As the Panama Canal nears the end of a nine-year, $5 billion expansion to accommodate bigger ships, scheduled to open June 26, the Canal Authority plans to train its roughly 250 pilots on the new waterways. They are also using computer simulators, but animations can’t fully replicate the feel of wind and water currents. Working on physical models provides a just-right dose of reality without life-size risks, said Nick Cutmore, secretary-general for the International Maritime Pilots Association, which promotes manned-model training. At Summit and similar facilities, sea pilots get a dress rehearsal for disaster on a diminutive scale: malfunctioning electrical systems, stuck anchors, broken rudders. Miniatures can be used to replicate all kinds of complicated real-life situations. With CyberCity, a 48-square-foot, 1-to-87 scale fake town, cybersecurity experts train to protect unsuspecting citizens from hackers. Two tabletop CyberCity settlements in New Jersey and Colorado, built by the SANS Institute, react to cybercriminals as they would in the real world. If hackers derail a train, the city’s tiny model train actually derails. If they fire the rocket, a Nerf projectile goes off. Because they are scale replicas, the pee-wee ships feel like real ones, said Capt. Jaen. How they turn and respond to different water depths, plus their line of sight and horsepower, create the illusion of being on a colossal counterpart. That said, the lakes’ birds and fish look like giants against the scale models. Rough winds rock a model ship much more violently. And everything happens faster on the smaller scale, making the exercise mentally taxing, trainers and trainees said. One criticism of these mini-ships, said Capt. Joseph Murphy, a marine transportation professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, is cost. Weeklong training sessions can run upward of $10,000. The models themselves cost hundreds of thousands, and they simulate only the ship in whose likeness they are built. The Panama Canal Authority shelled out roughly $500,000 for each of its two model freight carriers and is buying a third. In a computer simulator, the “ship” can morph from a tanker to a cruise to a cargo carrier, said Mark Woolley, chief of staff in the Office of the President at SUNY Maritime College in New York City and a former executive for a simulator-development company. “Simulation technology is so advanced, I don’t really see the need to go out on a small pond in a boat,” said retired U.S. Navy Captain Woolley. He said he has never boarded one. The Canal Authority is banking others will see the need. It hopes its manned-model unit will draw mariners from around the world. “You feel the adrenaline,” said Capt. Rankin, the pilots-union representative. “To me, it’s the best training we have gotten here.”

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Pilots who will guide ships through the new, expanded Panama Canal are practicing on miniature locks with scale replica boats.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160805124703id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/culture/music/bob-dylan/10460969/Bob-Dylan-Like-A-Rolling-Stone-is-the-interactive-new-video-any-good.html

Bob Dylan has never really been celebrated as a cutting edge technocrat, so it is slightly odd to find his website hosting a ground-breaking video. Even odder, the song in question is nearly 50 years old. Like A Rolling Stone was recorded in 1965, the moment Dylan really cracked his new electric phase, combining the depth and resonance of folk lyricism with the primal force of rock into six minutes and thirteen seconds of blistering attack on a world adjusting to new realities. “That snare shot sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind,” is how Bruce Springsteen recalled first hearing this at 15 years old. The new video, meanwhile, seems aimed at trying to engage with today’s 15 year-olds. Created by digital media company Interlude, it has sixteen different storylines (presented as distinct TV channels), which viewers can toggle between. On each channel, actors and presenters mouth the lyrics, so you can cut from a fake news channel where the victim of a mugging sings about mystery tramps selling alibis to a vacuous game show host asking “Do you want to make a deal?” An innovative video for the interactive generation, it allows the freedom to channel surf through the same song, with each viewing experience essentially creating a new edit. It’s clever stuff and if it was Lady Gaga it might even work but if the plan was to engage with a new generation, I think they might have to start with adding Auto-Tune and a rapper. I strongly suspect that most old Dylan fans will come to rest on the Music 1 Classics channel where there is some raw old DA Pennebaker footage of Dylan and The Band performing live. While most pop stars may benefit from such visual bedazzlement, Dylan is at his most compelling intense and unadorned. Previously the most famous Dylan video was a black and white single shot of Dylan holding up lyric signs. Frankly, I think its iconic position is safe.

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A new video for Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone has been posted on his website. But it might not impress the interactive generation, says Neil McCormick

http://web.archive.org/web/20160813230628id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2016/08/11/fashion/stylists-jennifer-lopez-gwen-stefani.html?hpw&rref=fashion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

“It’s the kind of thing where I don’t need to think about the outfits that much anymore,” she added. Egos abound on both sides of the celebrity styling business as the architects of A-list facades have gained followings to rival their clients (see: Jen Atkin, Kardashian tress tamer). Stylists have publicists. Tag teams are rare. But joining forces in 2007 allowed Mr. Zangardi and Ms. Haenn, both former stylists for MTV’s on-air personalities, to play up their different strengths and sensibilities. Ms. Haenn veers toward hip-hop (her first styling job was on the set of the video for Trick Daddy’s “Take It to da House”). Mr. Zangardi is more pop: “Mandy, Britney, Christina Aguilera, the boy bands,” he said the other day over coffee with Ms. Haenn at the Soho House here in West Hollywood. Ms. Haenn grew up in Brooklyn, Mr. Zangardi in Ohio. “Mariel is the bad cop,” Mr. Zangardi said. Ms. Haenn said: “Look, I’m comfortable being like, ‘No, that’s not my favorite,’ or, ‘No, I don’t like that,’ even if they do. They get used to getting that from me and getting what Rob brings.” “It’s Ohio versus New York,” Mr. Zangardi said. Their first joint effort was styling Rihanna’s 2007 “Umbrella” music video, which featured computer-generated water splashes and a series of good-girl-gone-bad ensembles (a leather romper, a low cut baby-doll dress). More work for the singer followed: a horned headpiece from Rihanna’s “Rockstar 101” video sits on a shelf in the duo’s studio here, though Rihanna is no longer a client. In 2009, Andrea Lieberman, a stylist whom Ms. Haenn looked up to, moved away from longtime clients like Ms. Stefani and Ms. Lopez to start her own clothing line, A.L.C. Ms. Lieberman said she was relieved to see her star clients end up working with a strong team. “It was important to me that when I left both women, they were in supremely good hands,” Ms. Lieberman said about Ms. Stefani and Ms. Lopez. “I knew Rob and Mariel had it. They seamlessly could edit the best of the world of fashion with the world of music and had an incredible work ethic. It was a no-brainer for me to suggest them both to Jennifer and Gwen.” Ms. Lopez recalled her first meeting with Ms. Haenn and Mr. Zangardi, in 2011. “I found them to be shy and kind of quiet, but they had their point of view,” she said. “We started working together, little by little, and it worked really well. Those things you can’t really force, you have a sensibility or you don’t.” Mr. Zangardi and Ms. Haenn have since scripted many head-turning moments for Ms. Lopez: the mustard colored, cape-capped Giambattista Valli gown she wore to the Golden Globes in January, the crystal-studded Dsquared2 bodysuit she opened the American Music Awards with in 2015. The bodysuit was displayed in a glass case, along with Ms. Lopez’s other sartorial hits (that green Versace dress), outside a recent “All I Have” performance in Las Vegas. Mr. Zangardi was there to ensure that the array of outfits Ms. Lopez would wear that night were ready for the spotlight. “She’s sliding on the floor in boots that are rhinestone that we have to recrystal every day,” he said. (Ms. Haenn was in Japan with Ms. Stefani.) They work out of a windowless, fluorescent-lit studio, jazzing up dancers’ mall-bought outfits with safety pins and sequins (the budget for the backup crew is not what it is for marquee performers). In the back, a dozen bins of Spanx are stacked next to racks of old costumes worn by Ms. Lopez and Shakira, a former client. Despite the modest digs, clients like Ciara, Cara Delevingne, Rachel McAdams and Emily Ratajkowski often drop by to try on clothes. At a recent fitting for the backup dancers on Ms. Stefani’s tour, Ms. Haenn, Mr. Zangardi and their in-house tailor, Anna Kenaraki (poached, with blessings, from Ms. Lopez), bopped along to reggaeton and debated the merits of side versus back zippers (back zippers, Ms. Haenn said, are less likely to get stuck during a frantic midconcert costume change). They discussed the sartorial effects of “bum flaps,” rectangles of fabric that frame the hips of Ms. Stefani and her dancers and create the illusion of movement even when they’re not doing much of it. These are conversations Mr. Zangardi and Ms. Haenn like to have. “When you’re on a red carpet, you’re just doing this,” Ms. Haenn said, strutting two steps and squatting primly. “With what we do, we need to make sure you’re not going to get stabbed with a huge safety pin while you’re running around on stage.”

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Rob Zangardi and Mariel Haenn build on the sensibility of their star clients to create onstage wardrobes and red-carpet moments.

http://web.archive.org/web/20161020071638id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/18/09/57/greens-query-day-s-political-donations

The electoral watchdog says it expects Family First will soon lodge updated information about payments made to it by retiring Senator Bob Day. The South Australian senator on Monday announced he was resigning from the upper house to deal with the fallout from his Home Australia group of companies going into liquidation. Senator Day apologised for the pain, stress and suffering caused to the group's clients and workers by the collapse. But Greens senator Lee Rhiannon said Senator Day had questions to answer about his almost $2 million payments to the party, after more than 200 homes were left unfinished. "The people who had been left high and dry by his building company were forced to watch as Senator Day bankrolled his own political career," she said. "You can see why the public cynicism and contempt runs deep." It is likely liquidators McGrathNicol will examine the political payments as part of its investigation into the management of the group. The Greens asked the Australian Electoral Commission in June to examine what Senator Rhiannon described as "irregularities" in donations and loans to Family First. AEC commissioner Tom Rogers told a Senate hearing on Tuesday night the commission had "done some work in that space". "I would expect there would be an amended return published on our website fairly shortly," Mr Rogers said. He said he would not comment further as it was an "active" case. Electoral commission returns record $938,975 in payments from Senator Day or his private company to Family First between 2010/11 and 2014/15. An amount of $381,775 in 2012/13 hasn't been recorded as either a "donation" or "other receipt" in Family First's return. The party's 2011/12 return originally showed $57,360 in total debts to "B Day". An amended return submitted 18 months later disclosed total debts of $1.089 million to "Robert John Day". The 2012/13 return records $1.471 million being owed to "B & B Day Pty Ltd". The 2013/14 return records no debt owed to Senator Day or the company. Senator Rhiannon said it would have been expected Family First would have made payments of at least $1.47 million to pay off the loan, but the disclosure only recorded $1.19 million in payments.

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The Australian Greens say questions about Family First senator Bob Day's political donations are more relevant than ever since the collapse of his business.

http://web.archive.org/web/20120210041936id_/http://www.thepostgame.com:80/blog/spread-sheet/archives/201202

She's surrounded by hot bodies and party girls, a bunch of surfers soaking in the sun in the waning minutes of a Jacksonville Jaguars game. She knows most of them, smiling behind her shades as they show skin and affection the way so many beachgoers do. To a stranger, she seems just like one of them -- another young American with too much time spent on a tan and too little time spent at work. And in a way, she is like them -- she was a pro surfer too, hanging ten for sport and hanging out for a living. But in another way, Kristin Wilson is completely different from all the other surfers. She is an entrepreneur, a business woman, a money-making author of her very own American dream. And what's funny is, her American dream has nothing to do with surfing. It doesn't even take place in America. We go from sun-drenched Jacksonville a few Sundays ago to a dark room in Las Vegas a few months ago, where a few college-age men sat stone-faced at their computers. This is a scene that used to take place everywhere in America, every day -- young men (and some women) playing online poker. For many, it was a hobby. For some, a growing addiction. For these guys, from North Carolina State University, it was a job. And then, on April 15 of this year, the unthinkable took place. ThePostGame brings you the most interesting sports stories on the web. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to read them first! "I was actually playing when it happened," says Nick Hatley. "The Department of Justice had seized the websites." The FBI had shut down three of the biggest online poker sites, alleging the owners had laundered money and defrauded banks to skirt gambling laws. Poker players are nothing if not resourceful, so Hatley and his friends started looking at other sites. Surely there was a way around this. "When PokerStars stopped letting players open new tables," Hatley says, "I knew there was a serious problem." Panic set in. This wasn't just a temporary power outage; some players had hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in the coffers of these companies. Poker agent Brian Balsbaugh later told CNBC's Darren Rovell, "It happened, it happened fast and it completely annihilated what was a flourishing industry in the United States." It came to be called Black Friday. And suddenly thousands of online poker players had to choose their country or their main source of income. Hatley left for Canada in May, but immigration rules forbid staying for more than six months out of a particular year. So he was stuck. "Then," he says, "we found Kristin." Kristin Wilson is the last person you'd think could be a poker pied piper. She has never played. She doesn't even own a deck of cards. And beyond that, surfing seems about the least appropriate sport to prepare for a career in poker. Surfers are up before dawn, eating perfectly, soaking up the rays and allowing the rhythm of the waves to wash all stresses away. Online poker players are up all night, eating whatever, staring at their screens until the adrenaline withers their nerves away. But Wilson, 29, never really fit in perfectly with surfers either. She was a cheerleader who had an interest in quantum physics. She studied and surfed in Costa Rica before graduating from the University of Central Florida in 2004, and got her MBA in '05. Surfing was something she was good at -- something she actually moved back to Costa Rica to do after getting her business degree -- but she didn't want to do it forever. Her true calling happened almost randomly. She met several people in Costa Rica who worked in sports books, which are huge there. She kept in touch. And on April 15 of this year, she read countless cries of desperation on her Twitter and Facebook feeds. Several mentioned the idea of going to Costa Rica. She knew the terrain. She spoke Spanish. She could help. "So I just started emailing people," she says. "I figured I should just do this as a business. Not many people were equipped to just pick up and move to a different country." That was for sure. The hurdle for the poker players to relocate to Costa Rica wasn't money. They had plenty. It was logistics. And effort. "Poker players by nature are very lazy," says Hatley. "Most people like me, they just sit in the house and play poker all day. They don't understand how to deal with life issues." Wilson knew the type -- let's face it, surfers aren’t exactly detail-oriented either -- and she figured she could do a lot more than find these guys a place to live. How were they going to set up a bank account? How were they going to get around safely? How were they going to install a T-1 line, for that matter? So for $1,000 a person, Wilson did pretty much everything for the transplants. She found them houses, she had them fetched at the airport, she walked them through immersion in the day-to-day culture. She even defended them to skeptical landlords who didn't want night owls as tenants. One of her clients, an online poker forum called PocketFives.com, suggested they join forces. Kristin got her own page, calling it "Poker Refugees." And now it's a strange, platonic marriage between the refugees and the sunny blonde. "I'm their friend," Wilson says. "They call when they're having a bad day. They tell me what hand they got. They copy and paste it into an email and send." That's the least of her self-appointed duties. She finds the exiles maid service, groceries, even places to go to find a date. She wakes up at 4:45 a.m., works out, reaches out to the next group of refugees on the way from Vegas or Canada, meets with prospective clients, and then helps whomever needs it for the rest of the afternoon and evening. She answers questions on the Poker Refugees website -- even one from a New Yorker in Denmark who has no foreign bank account but wants to play anyway. "I can still help you," she chirps. Wilson no longer surfs, has no boyfriend, and doesn't see much of her roommate in her three-bedroom condo. Her trip home to North Florida was merely to see her folks, see some friends, and get her car fixed. "If I'm ever not working," she says," I feel guilty." She's not lonely or miserable, though -- not hardly. She's just an entrepreneur running her own start-up. She loves the challenge and the intimacy of it. In real estate, you're just an agent. In this kind of thing, you matter. "It would be impossible without Kristin," says poker refugee Mazin Khoury. "If you spoke Spanish, you'd have a better chance. But we don't." If you think this little enterprise is somehow un-American -- a Florida girl getting paid to help gamblers go off-shore to make a mint -- consider that the poker exiles pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes to the U.S. government. They wouldn't be paying anywhere near as much if they lived at home. Wilson is hardly patting herself on the back, but when you add up dozens of poker players each making tens or hundreds of thousands, her service is funneling the U.S. government a rather large amount of money. "I still pay taxes," she says. "We're all contributing members of society. We're not complaining or living off the government." And that's why pretty much everyone thinks this situation won't last. There are too many millions -- even billions -- at stake. "I'm still sticking to the notion in my head we'll have poker back," says Khoury. "There's too much money to be made by these companies and the U.S. government. It just seems like how can something not get done when it's a billion dollar industry." Kristin's fine with that. She says when that time comes, she'll just move on to something else. That's the surfer in her -- ride every wave until the end and don't look back. For now, she'll be up late at night, taking calls from her new clients, trying to empathize with a bad deal or a bad hand. "What am I supposed to say?" she jokes. "I just tell them they'll get it back." Hearing that makes the poker refugees feel better. Because, after all, Kristin's already gotten it back for them. Popular Stories On ThePostGame: -- Tilted World: The Broken Faith In Online Poker -- Video: Flare Surfing Is Both The Coolest And The Hottest Thing On Water -- MLB Veteran Survives Near-Fatal Surfing Injury

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Parlay-vous? Then we're definitely speaking the same language here. A teaser is not just a preview. We'll discuss when it's better to give than to receive, and vice versa.

http://web.archive.org/web/20141011090640id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/08/27/broadband-adoption-is-up-but-lets-not-get-too-excited/

FORTUNE — Broadband adoption in the U.S. continues to rise, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Among adults 18 and older, 70% have broadband access at home — up from 66% a year ago. As Pew notes, that’s a significant increase. But a deeper look at the numbers shows that broadband deployment in the U.S. remains sub-par, especially when you consider that the Internet was invented here, and we’re supposed to be the global leader in innovation. The survey considers “broadband” to be anything that delivers download speeds of 4 Mbps, which is about what the most anemic DSL services provide. That’s actually accurate enough (the FCC uses the same standard) — and that’s the problem. Akamai reported in April that the average broadband speed in the U.S. had actually grown by 28% in the previous year — to a pathetic 7.4 Mbps. The U.S. came in eighth in Akamai’s ranking — just after the Czech Republic, which boasts an average broadband speed of 8.1 Mbps. South Korea placed first, with 14 Mbps. Japan’s average was 10.8. MORE: The Microsoft CEO candidate no one is discussing Parts of Pew’s survey report assume that smartphones provide “broadband access.” That might help make the digital divide seem a bit narrower, as long as you don’t think about it too much. Yes, you can watch movies on your phone, but even if the movies run smoothly, watching them can quickly eat up data caps and cost money. Otherwise, Pew reports that while 90% of college graduates have broadband in their homes, only 37% of non-high school graduates and 54% of those making less than $30,000 a year do. There are racial differences, too, but according to Pew, ownership of smartphones among blacks and Hispanics nearly bridges that gap. In some ways, that makes sense. If you have neither in-home broadband nor a smartphone, you’re way behind someone with one or both. But that shouldn’t lead us to believe that owning a smartphone makes up for the lack of home broadband. Law professor Susan Crawford, who analyzes the communications industry, writes at Wired that counting slow bandwidth at home, and counting smartphones as broadband, “allows us to pretend there’s a vibrant marketplace for high-speed Internet access, with satellite duking it out with cable modem access, mobile wireless supplanting the need for a wire at home, and no need for oversight or a change in industrial policy.”

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Should we think of smartphones as providing "broadband access?" What about DSL service with speeds not far above dial-up access?

http://web.archive.org/web/20150823215425id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/02/word-that-rhymes-with-today-runs-afoul-of-indian-censors.html

Mumbai, a word drawn from the Marathi language, has been the official legal name of Mr. Joshi's home city since 1995, when the nativist political party in power chose it to replace the Anglicized name Bombay, used since colonial times. Not everyone adopted the new name, though. Some kept using Bombay out of long habit or institutional inertia — the city's stock exchange and its high court still bear the name, for example. Others stuck with Bombay as a political statement, rejecting what they considered xenophobic politics behind the change. Read MoreBig change in India on its way: Finance Minister Though this divide leads to regular dust-ups on televised talk shows, Mr. Joshi's case was the first in recent memory in which an artist has been called out for using Bombay. "If the name of this city has been changed, it's only fair that we adhere to the new name," said Meenal Baghel, editor of The Mumbai Mirror, a daily newspaper. "But should it have been bleeped as if it is a four-letter word? I think that's ridiculous." The film censor's decision drew considerable criticism and mockery on Monday, but the board's top official, Pahlaj Nihalani, said he stood by the decision, which was made by his predecessor. (Mr. Nihalani became the board's chairman in January.) "Given the past controversy over the use of Bombay in films, this was avoidable," Mr. Nihalani told The Hindu, a daily newspaper. "There are some elements who make deliberate attempts to create controversy by using Bombay, keeping in mind future prospects." More from the New York Times Taking Note: Meet the Flawed Politician Who Might Lead the N.Y. AssemblyEditorial: Mr. Putin Resumes His War in UkraineKrugman: Long-Run Cop-Out Mr. Joshi, for his part, was adjusting to his new status as a test case. He uses both names interchangeably — his album is called "Mumbai Blues" — and describes himself as so apolitical that he reads only the sports and entertainment sections of the newspaper. The song in question, "Sorry," was written as an imagined lament of a father to his daughter, written on the anniversary of a brutal gang rape in New Delhi. Mr. Joshi wondered about the censorship board's priorities. Noting that he does not drink or smoke and rarely uses profanity, he said: "Look at the songs that are coming out in Bollywood, one song that says 'I am an alcoholic,' and another that says 'weed from this place is the best weed to have.' If all of that is acceptable, and it can come out, and people are dancing to it, how can it be a problem that I have used the word 'Bombay?' "

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Mumbai-based musician Mihir Joshi hits the censors when he uses the word "Bombay" in his song - a sore point in India's war over history and identity.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150923073533id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/19/want-that-bonus-ditch-the-hawaiian-shirt-commentary.html

In 1996, when I was at Morgan Stanley, they sent around a company-wide email announcing Casual Friday. My first thought was great! My second was, what am I going to wear??? The email didn't go into detail. "Business casual" was the term used. That morning, I put on my khakis, blue button-down shirt and nice loafers, hopped in a cab and went to the office. I played it safe — right down the middle. We would later call this, "The Wall Street Jumpsuit." Read MoreThe escort indicator: Wall Street is booming again That's one of the most basic rules: Keep it simple. Don't draw attention to yourself. You can mix and match and move things around, but leave the crazy individual fashion statements for the club. As I made my way to the desk, everyone looked different. It was like when you're in fourth grade and you'd see your elementary teacher at the grocery store. You realize, hey, they're actually a real person! It was like a peek behind the curtain to their personality. And scrutiny was at an all-time high. I flipped on my computer and started getting ready for the day. That's when I saw a Hawaiian shirt strolling by. I did a double-take and immediately exchanged a look with my desk-mate Lauren. We both giggled. To some, a Hawaiian shirt might symbolize a fun loving and carefree guy. But just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. Don't get me wrong, I built an entire career on being different — but it has limits. Read MoreSummer in the Hamptons will be sizzling A few weeks later, a female co-worker was wearing something that looked like it could be balled up on Kim Kardashian's bedroom floor. It was white and basically see-through. She looked great — maybe too great. Although this was long before Twitter existed, her white shirt was trending throughout the entire company. Employees from different departments were getting emails and then finding excuses to stop by the 37th floor to catch a look. Beyond the murmuring, sideways glances and damage to your reputation, a Casual Friday faux pas could get you slapped with an unwanted nickname forever (not just during your time at the company). You're branded for life. And you can't recover from this. So, with the help of some of my friends, here's a list of some of the more infamous nicknames on Wall Street that came straight from Casual Friday: "Black Jeans." I'm not sure if it was solely because of the color of his jeans. It might have also had something to do with the tightness of them. But this gentleman was called Black Jeans for years. In private, of course. You don't want to be rude. "Coldplay." The dude wore the shirt once. But it was more of his reaction that created the nickname that would stick for the rest of his time at the company. He adamantly defended himself by saying he didn't like the band, but he liked the colors of the shirt. The lesson here is: Don't defend your mistakes. "Da Plane!" A woman in Chicago chose to wear a shirt that was fully revealing in the back. All of her peers got to see the monster ink she was representing. Her entire back was tatt'd up. So, taking from the show, "Fantasy Island," they decided the best nickname for her was Tattoo's catch phrase, "Da Plane! Da Plane!" SFP (a.k.a, "Sorry For Partying"). Thursday nights were epic for this guy and he would always apologize for it the next day. "I'm sorry for partying," he would spout the next morning. And he was really sorry the day he accidentally came to work wearing two different kinds of shoes. This is not considered casual; it's considered still drunk. JBF ("Just Been F…."). Her hair screamed, "I just had sex!" Apparently her boyfriend's apartment was right near the office and that's where she slept on Thursday nights. You can get a pass for smelling like Taco Bell and Patron, but at least put a comb through your hair. I'm not kidding when I say these things will stick with you FOR LIFE. If I bumped into Black Jeans on the street today, I'd still call him Black Jeans. Read MoreHelicopter to your beach house? There's an app for that Buttons. Yes, those seemingly benign things on your shirt — they, too, can break you. How many buttons unbuttoned is acceptable? The answer is: Two. (Personally, I'm more of a three-button guy.) Four? BUZZER! Unacceptable. Nobody wants to see your impressive amount of chest hair and the office isn't cocktail hour in the Hamptons. So, unbutton at your own risk. This is not to diss all casual attire, but rather to say that there is a time and place for your Nantucket Reds, your club logo'd golf shirt, the tight-fitting ensemble and boat shoes without socks. Just not on Wall Street. Not on Casual Friday. So, the next time a Wall Streeter with a black card steps to the register holding a new wardrobe, they shouldn't be asking themselves: How much will this cost? They should be wondering: What could this potentially cost me if I wear it at the office? If you don't work on Wall Street, aloha! Enjoy that Hawaiian shirt.

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On Wall Street, Casual Fridays can't make your career, but they can certainly BREAK it, says Turney Duff.

http://web.archive.org/web/20151010113451id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/19/bankers-unhappy-with-their-bonus-get-set-to-sue.html

Data from salary benchmarking website Emolument earlier this year showed bonuses in some City jobs are set for dramatic falls. Currency traders could see a 42.9 percent drop in bonuses during the next payout season in 2015, while emerging market and equity derivative traders could see bonuses slashed by 30 percent. Bankers' bonuses have been in the spotlight this year as European regulators have looked to clamp down on what they view as large rewards that fuel excessive risk taking. The European Union unveiled rules last year that limit bonuses to no more than a banker's salary, or double that level with shareholder approval. Banks have also been under fire from financial regulators who slapped five global banks with $3.4 billion worth of fines over the rigging of key foreign exchange markets. Read MoreFX bonuses set to plunge on probes, low volumes Against this backdrop, Hayward said banks might be reluctant to pay out the bigger bonuses that employees are expecting. "I think banks are conscious about public perception of bonus levels. I also think they need to improve their balance sheets and profitability," Hayward said. But some lawyers disagree with Nockolds' forecast of a rise in legal challenges this Christmas, suggesting that cases like Commerzbank in 2012 are unusual. "While some employees may be unhappy if they experience a lean year, over the years the courts have made it clear that that the key test – to demonstrate that the award was irrational – requires a very high threshold," Monica Kurnatowska, employment partner at Baker & McKenzie, told CNBC by phone.

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Bankers disappointed with their Christmas bonuses could fuel a surge in legal cases bought against their employers, a law firm warned.

http://web.archive.org/web/20151012221440id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/15/forget-switzerland-make-big-bucks-in-usa.html

Cramer's approach? Stay out of it. Why take on the headache of the European Central Bank and the floundering European economy if you don't need to? "The key takeaway is that this stuff is impenetrable to all but the pros, and even they get it wrong very often, so what's the darned point?" the "Mad Money" host asked. Frankly the Swiss franc has nothing to do with the price-to- earnings ratio on a good quality domestic biotech like Bristol-Myers. So, don't sweat it. Instead, Cramer encouraged home gamers to invest in stocks of companies with very limited sensitivity or just go straight for U.S. companies. "We are doing really well in this country, and these other places are just floundering around doing a whole lot of nothing," he added. Another reason to stick to the U.S.? Innovation. Cramer has noticed that the U.S. seems to be the only country right now with any innovation in the pipeline. European biotechs, social media and cloud stocks are a scarce commodity right now. But the main reason to invest domestically—you make more money in the U.S. The stronger that the dollar becomes, the cheaper goods get overseas. Domestic companies like Restoration Hardware can fill its showroom with furniture from Europe at lower prices. Ultimately, the goods are in the U.S. anyway! This country boasts a stable government, universities, abundant natural resources and the smartest and most rational central bank. ---------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim CramerCramer Remix: Coke, Pepsi or Monster? Cramer: The cause of the commodity collapse Cramer: Low Treasury rates are good for you---------------------------------------------------------- After all, America is not held hostage by Russia's natural gas debacle. Don't just run out and gobble up all American stocks, Cramer warned. Be strategic and pick the domestic companies that can benefit investors on weakness.

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How could a country famous for chocolate take down the market? Jim Cramer thinks investors should stay domestic.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160512014916id_/http://www.people.com/article/game-thrones-melisandre-says-her-mom-has-crush-jon-snow

05/11/2016 AT 10:00 AM EDT fans have something to celebrate in the , aka the magical Red Woman responsible for the happy feat, Melisandre, recently revealed to PEOPLE that in addition to the heat she took from fans begging her to resurrect Snow, a couple of her family members were interested in the return of the handsome actor who plays the Lord Commander, Carice Van Houten as Melisandre on Game of Thrones Helen Sloan / Courtesy of HBO "My mother and my sister both have a crush on him," Van Houten tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "[Kit] really enjoys when I say that. He's met my mother two times or something and he's always sort of flirty with my mother, it's really cute. My mother says at home, 'He's just like a son,' she's trying to hide the fact that she thinks he's a gorgeous man. He's really cute." The Dutch actress says that despite the long hours cast and crew spent filming the big resurrection scene, they found a way to have fun with it. Kelly Ripa on the cover of PEOPLE "I had a lot of fun with him in that sense, 'If only my mother was here,'" she recalls with a laugh. "And he has a ripped body, he's a beautiful young man. But most of all he's a really generous actor and a really sweet guy, but it was a long resurrection. For that little thing it was a long day." "We shot the s--- out of it," Van Houten adds. "I've touched Kit's body, I've cleaned him I don't know, 55,000 times. To the point where I was like, 'Can he just wake up now?'" airs Sundays (9 p.m. ET) on HBO.

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A chat with Game of Thrones' resident resurrectionist Melisandre (aka actress Carice Van Houten) about her mother's warm fuzzy feelings for actor Kit Harington

http://web.archive.org/web/20160523094901id_/http://time.com:80/2891180/kfc-and-the-pit-bull-attack-of-a-little-girl/

The social media universe became furious at KFC this week after an employee reportedly asked a 3-year-old victim of a dog attack to leave one of their restaurants because “her face is disrupting our customers.” Read a response to this piece from the American Pit Bull Foundation. But it wasn’t KFC employees who broke down the door to Victoria Wilcher’s grandfather’s house and mauled the toddler until half her face was paralyzed and she lost the use of one of her eyes. Three pit bulls did that. Pit bulls make up only 6% of the dog population, but they’re responsible for 68% of dog attacks and 52% of dog-related deaths since 1982, according to research compiled by Merritt Clifton, editor of Animals 24-7, an animal-news organization that focuses on humane work and animal-cruelty prevention. Clifton himself has been twice attacked by dogs (one pit bull), and part of his work involves logging fatal and disfiguring attacks. Clifton says that for the 32 years he’s been recording, there has never been a year when pit bulls have accounted for less than half of all attacks. A CDC report on dog-bite fatalities from 1978 to 1998 confirms that pit bulls are responsible for more deaths than any other breed, but the CDC no longer collects breed-specific information. Another report published in the April 2011 issue of Annals of Surgery found that one person is killed by a pit bull every 14 days, two people are injured by a pit bull every day, and young children are especially at risk. The report concludes that “these breeds should be regulated in the same way in which other dangerous species, such as leopards, are regulated.” That report was shared with TIME by PETA, the world’s largest animal-rights organization. The little girl’s grandfather shot and killed the three dogs that attacked her, and both he and his girlfriend are facing child-endangerment charges. KFC has donated $30,000 to the girl’s family to help with her medical bills, and more money keeps flooding in. But so far the outrage has been directed at the rude KFC employee, not at the growing problem of pit-bull maulings. As pit-bull attacks become more and more common, they’re getting increasing attention on social media, but not always in support of the wounded children. In March, a Facebook petition to save Mickey, a dangerous pit bull in Phoenix, got over 70,000 likes. Mickey was facing euthanasia for mauling 4-year-old Kevin Vincente so badly that he cracked his jaw, eye socket and cheekbone. Kevin is facing months of reconstructive surgery, but more people were concerned with saving the dog than helping the boy. Mickey’s Facebook page has now become a social-media landing page to save other dogs that are considered dangerous. Clifton says he’s seen an unprecedented rise in dog maulings in recent years, as more pit bulls enter the shelter system. Between 1858 and 2000, there are only two recorded instances of shelter dogs killing humans. From 2000 to 2009, there were three fatal attacks involving shelter dogs (one pit bull, one breed similar to a pit bull, and one Doberman). But from 2010 to 2014, there have been 35 shelter dogs who fatally attacked humans. All but 11 were pit bulls. Supporters say pit bulls are getting a bad rap. Sara Enos, founder and president of the American Pit Bull Foundation, said that it’s wrong to blame dog attacks on pit bulls, because it’s the owners who are to blame. “It really boils down to being responsible owners,” she said. “Any dog from any breed can be aggressive, it matters how it’s treated.” And, as TIME reported in 2013, pit-bull owners all over the country are trying to rebrand the breed, insisting pit bulls can have a softer side when treated humanely. Many pit-bull advocacy organizations, including BAD RAP, did not want to comment for this story. But there is a growing backlash against the idea that pit bulls are more violent than other dogs. “There is not any breed of dog that is inherently more dangerous,” said Marcy Setter of the Pit Bull Rescue Center. “That’s simply not true.” But critics say that pit bulls are inherently dangerous no matter how they’re treated, because violence is in their DNA. “Why do herding dogs herd? Why do pointing dogs point? They don’t learn that behavior, that’s selective behavior,” says Colleen Lynn, president and founder of DogsBite.org, a national dog-bite-victims group dedicated to reducing dog attacks. “Pit bulls were specifically bred to go into that pit with incredible aggression and fight.” “Every kind of dog is neglected and abused,” Clifton agrees. “And not every kind of dog responds to the neglect and abuse by killing and injuring people.” But there’s another root cause of the rise in pit-bull attacks, one you might not think of: Hurricane Katrina. Pit bulls are especially popular in Louisiana and Mississippi, and many of the volunteers responding to Hurricane Katrina found themselves saving stranded dogs. Most of the pit bulls they saved had been kept inside and behaved well around the rescuers, Clifton said, because they knew their survival depended on it. The dogs who were rescued were good pit bulls, he says, and “the real badasses, the ones chained outside, were drowned.” Clifton said that many of the volunteers, who had very little experience with dog rescue, became attached to the breed and involved in pit-bull advocacy. And that helped galvanize the pro-pit-bull movement in the wake of Michael Vick’s 2007 dogfighting scandal. That movement helped encourage more people to adopt pit bulls as lack of sterilization caused the population to grow. “If you need a marker in your head for when pit bulls got out of control, it’s 2007 with Michael Vick,” Lynn says. Vick’s high-profile trial for dogfighting and cruelty to animals roused a growing sympathy for pit bulls, which led more people to adopt them and bring them into their homes. “We need to get used to mauling injuries, because we’re going to be seeing a lot more of them,” warns Lynn. “Each of us will know a mauled, disfigured child by a known dangerous breed of dog. There will be one in every school.” But what can be done about the growing number of pit bulls? Some say the best solution would be breed-specific sterilization, which would curb the pit-bull population and reduce euthanasia in shelters. Most dogs of all breeds are spayed and neutered — about 80%, by Clifton’s estimation. But only 20% of pit bulls are sterilized, partly because the population that owns pit bulls tends to resist the spay-neuter message. He notes that there are a number of free sterilization programs for pit bulls, including one run by the ASPCA, but that even the largest programs aren’t sterilizing enough pit bulls to reduce the number of shelter intakes. Lynn agrees that breed-specific sterilization laws are the most humane and efficient way to deal with the situation and avoid having more dogs euthanized. “If you want to hit that ‘no kill’ status, you better do something about the pit-bull problem.” Pit bulls currently account for 63% of the dogs put down in shelters, but only 38% of the admissions. Lynn says that all pit bulls should be sterilized, except those that come from licensed breeders. Even PETA, the largest animal-rights organization in the world, supports breed-specific sterilization for pit bulls. “Pit bulls are a breed-specific problem, so it seems reasonable to target them,” said Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA’s senior vice president of cruelty investigations. “The public is misled to believe that pit bulls are like any other dog. And they just aren’t.” Even the ASPCA acknowledges on its website that pit bulls are genetically different than other dogs. “Pit bulls have been bred to behave differently during a fight,” it says. “They may not give warning before becoming aggressive, and they’re less likely to back down when clashing with an opponent.” Opponents of sterilization argue that it can be difficult to determine which dogs are pit bulls, and that breed-specific efforts are unfair to certain dogs. “When you discriminate against a breed, you’re also discriminating against good dogs as well,” Enos said. Setter of Pit Bull Rescue Central opposes breed-specific sterilization because she says it’s ineffective, because the laws don’t target irresponsible owners. But Nachminovitch said PETA stands by breed-specific sterilization as a common-sense solution to what has become a human-safety issue. “These dogs were bred to bait bulls. They were bred to fight each other to the death,” she said. “Just because we’re an animal-rights organization doesn’t mean we’re not concerned about public safety.” Updated: The original version of this story referred to reports that a girl who had been mauled by pitbulls had been asked to leave a KFC restaurant. KFC, which initially apologized, now says two investigations have yielded no evidence the incident actually took place.

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It's horrible that KFC kicked out that 3-year-old girl, but let's focus on the real problem: pit bulls were bred to be violent

http://web.archive.org/web/20160531054907id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/culture/story/20151015-film-review-don-cheadles-miles-ahead

The mystique of Miles Davis was rooted in the sinister magnetism of his character as much as it was in the nocturnal genius of his music. His nickname was ‘Prince of Darkness’, and in the ‘50s he was a hypnotic reptile of cool, with sunken cheeks and a killer stare that said, “Don’t mess with me.” By the late ‘70s and ‘80s, with his tangle of long hair, regal-pimp wardrobe, and iconic rasp (the result of raising his voice too soon after a throat operation), he’d become a deeply transgressive figure, infamous for his drug abuse and violence against women, with a dissolute rock star’s mystery and danger. He seemed like some magnificent creature that had crawled out of a swamp – the ultimate midnight badass. Miles Ahead, a free-form biopic directed by its star, Don Cheadle, is a passionate jumble of a movie, a heady plunge into Miles Davis’ persona that doesn’t always bother to make sense of what he did or why he did it. At the center of the film is Cheadle, who slithers deep inside the croaky Davis charisma. Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live once memorably compared Davis to a Gremlin, but Cheadle, with lethally pursed lips and iceberg eyes, gets beyond the comic kitsch and recreates the fabled Davis mannerisms in all their ferocity: the stare that turns every encounter into a showdown, the rasp as quietly threatening as Don Corleone’s. Damned if he doesn’t make the man as fascinating as he really was. The film opens in the late ‘70s, when Davis, holed up in his townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has become a scraggly hermit who has spent the last five years in seclusion without performing or issuing any new recordings. He has now made one, though: a secret session at Columbia Records that has yielded a tape the company wants, and which winds up being stolen from Davis during a party at his home. His attempts to get it back – a wild downtown car chase, showdowns at gunpoint – are the frame for this raucous, frazzled section of the movie, which at many points had me siding with Columbia. The company owns the tape, which Davis treats as a rare artefact of his timeless genius. But is that his jazz purity speaking, or it just his crazed, drug-fueled ego? Watching Miles Ahead, we can scarcely separate the two. The movie keeps leaping back to the ‘60s, when Davis, having made the 1959 cool-jazz epiphany Kind of Blue (now the best-selling recording in the history of jazz), had become a superstar. What he chooses to do with his freedom and clout is to lord it over everyone in his midst – and that includes the love of his life, Frances Taylor, played by Emayatzy Corinealdi as an elegant baby doll out of a Mad Men daydream. Taylor is a gifted dancer who Davis marries and then wants to possess. He forces her to stop dancing and rubs his womanising right in her face. And when she protests, he beats her up. Why? In contrast to a great biopic like Get on Up, which rooted James Brown’s inexcusable behavior in his complex reaction to racism and his own childhood abandonment, Miles Ahead lacks any true psychology. It basically says: Davis was a raging tyrant – deal with it! The spectacle of his bad behavior can be horribly transfixing, as bad behavior in biopics so often is, yet the movie needed to give us a richer sense – some sense – of the source of his demons. Davis’ ultimate act of heartbroken fury is to withhold his talent from the world It’s the late-‘70s Miles, for all the slapdash staging of this section of the movie, who we can relate to the most, because there’s a vulnerability that keeps peeking through his tattered facade. He hooks up with a disheveled reporter (Ewan McGregor) who wants to do his comeback story for Rolling Stone, and while this feels like the creakiest device imaginable, Cheadle and McGregor actually develop a compelling chemistry. As the reporter helps Davis score some drugs from a dorm-room dealer, then heads back to Miles’ place for a late-night confessional coke binge, we begin to see that Miles Ahead is really a comedy of depression. The Davis we see has made a mess of his life, and he’s suffering for it, but his ultimate act of heartbroken fury is to withhold his talent from the world – to say, “You don’t deserve me.” Can he get over himself? In the end, he does, though I wish we’d seen with greater precision how it happened. The closing credits feature Cheadle’s Miles in concert during the early ‘80s, wearing a leather jacket with an insignia that says #SocialMusic. “Social music” is the term that Miles thinks should be used instead of jazz (“a made-up word,” he says derisively), but all I could think was: nothing was marked with a hashtag in the ‘80s! Surely Cheadle knows this, but the idea seems to be that as a filmmaker, he can be as loose and improvisatory as he wants to be. He may even think that he’s working in the spirit of jazz. But biographical dramas, unlike jazz, need to be grounded in reality. And Cheadle’s performance, while it makes Miles Ahead worth seeing, should have been grounded in a more focused and tough-minded movie. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

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The great jazz trumpet player’s drinking, womanising and drug abuse are all on show in the new film Miles Ahead. But the film never gives us a convincing reason for his bad behaviour.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160601081551id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/03/28/the-media-and-trump/

As Donald Trump’s position at the front of the Republican presidential race has become more and more unshakeable, the media’s attitude towards him has changed gradually from a position of somewhat gleeful ridicule to concern that this man actually has a shot at becoming president of the United States—and that the media itself may have helped put him there. The latest example of this theme (one that I explored in a recent post here at Fortune) can be seen in a recent piece by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, entitled “My Shared Shame: The Media Helped Make Trump.” In it, the NYT writer says that he and the media are complicit in Trump’s rise, in part because many mainstream outlets gave him so much free coverage during the race, even when he didn’t deserve it. I polled a number of journalists and scholars, and there was a broad (though not universal) view that we in the media screwed up. Our first big failing was that television in particular handed Trump the microphone without adequately fact-checking him or rigorously examining his background, in a craven symbiosis that boosted audiences for both. Ann Curry, the former Today show anchor, tells Kristof that “the media has needed Trump like a crack addict needs a hit,” because he is a ratings gold mine. This view was corroborated recently by CBS chairman and CEO Les Moonves, who told a media conference that Trump has been a boon for the TV industry. “This is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald,” he said. Sign up for Data Sheet, Fortune‘s technology newsletter. According to one recent estimate, Trump has been the beneficiary of close to $2 billion in free media coverage since his campaign began. TV networks have spent more time showing an empty podium or a Trump headshot during his phone interviews than they have on most of the rest of the Republican field. CNN’s ratings have climbed by 170% since the race began. Kristof goes on to say that the media also made a number of other crucial tactical mistakes when it comes to Trump, and the first was to see him as a carnival clown. “The media made a mistake by covering Trump’s candidacy at the start as some sort of joke or media prank,” Harvard political scientist Danielle S. Allen tells the NYT columnist. The Huffington Post famously tried to cover Trump’s campaign only in its entertainment section, although it eventually had to drop that idea. At least part of the reason why Trump was seen as a joke—even after it was obvious that he had a broad level of support—is that most mainstream media outlets underestimated his appeal with U.S. voters. “We failed to take Trump seriously because of a third media failing: We were largely oblivious to the pain among working-class Americans and thus didn’t appreciate how much his message resonated,” Kristof argues, and it’s hard to disagree. CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, host of the show Reliable Sources, spent most of his broadcast on Sunday talking about how the media missed the boat on Trump, and how this was at least in part because of a certain snobbery on the part of mainstream media analysts and journalists. The bogus "media created Trump" meme is just another way elites are not taking Trump seriously. — Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) March 27, 2016 One of the central questions raised by all of this media second-guessing and hairshirt-wearing is this: Could the media really have altered the overall trend of Trump’s rise to prominence and his possible nomination as Republican candidate? If TV shows hadn’t given him so much coverage, or had challenged his erroneous statements more directly, or pointed out his obvious flaws as a president, would that have changed anything? We’ll never know the answer to that, because we can’t un-bake the Trump cake. But not everyone is convinced that different media coverage would have resulted in a different outcome. For one thing, even when Trump’s misstatements and racist commentary are singled out or highlighted as a problem, his support never seems to waver. If anything, it grows. Trump media coverage debate, solved: He is impervious to media criticism, so doesn't matter. — Peter Kafka (@pkafka) March 27, 2016 In a very real sense, regardless of what kind of coverage he and his policies are given by the mainstream press, Trump wins, at least in the eyes of his supporters. If he gets fawning coverage, then it’s obvious how great a candidate he is. If he gets critical coverage, then it’s obvious that he was right about the untrustworthy liberal media—something he routinely criticizes at his rallies—and he still wins. Watch: “We want to make media for the way the world is today.” There’s also more than a touch of hubris in the idea that the media has somehow “made” Donald Trump what he is, or convinced millions of people to support him. The mainstream press might like to think that it has that kind of influence and power over people, the way it theoretically used to, but that’s probably not the case in today’s decentralized media environment. In many ways, Trump is a post-media candidate. His Twitter stream, his behavior at presidential debates, his use of radio and TV to push his views through the press who cover those events (which they have to do as professional journalists, as Jeff Zucker of CNN has pointed out in his defense of the network’s Trump coverage) are all carefully calculated. There’s no question that Trump’s status as a media entity in his own right has been cemented by a captive media industry, desperate for revenue—and not just TV, but plenty of online outlets as well. Is the media alone to blame for his appeal? No. But the early failure to take him seriously let Trump set his own agenda, and the wall-to-wall coverage since then has reinforced the impression that he is unstoppable. The mainstream press helped to create this political bed, and now they are being forced to lie in it, and are complaining about how uncomfortable it is.

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The media isn't solely to blame for Trump's rise, but it has clearly played a role in a number of ways

http://web.archive.org/web/20160717084259id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/autos/news/2017-hyundai-elantra-sport-ups-style-performance-article-1.2709793

The Hyundai Elantra has developed a reputation as a steady, reliable yet drab compact car. It’s the ham sandwich of cars: you know what you’re gonna get, you’ll enjoy it reasonably and it’ll get you through your day. While performance and panache are not essential to the economy car market, some competitors—the Honda Civic and Volkswagen Jetta, for example—are able to get the lead out while keeping costs low. For those who prefer their ham sandwiches toasted with melted Swiss and a bit of chipotle aioli, the Elantra hasn’t had much to offer—until now. FOLLOW DAILY NEWS AUTOS ON FACEBOOK. 'LIKE' US HERE. The Elantra has introduced a Sport version that is actually, well, sporty. With a 1.6-liter Turbo GDI four-cylinder engine replacing last year’s 2.0-liter inline four-cylinder and a new design that is reminiscent of the Mazda3, the 2017 Elantra Sport is worth a look for driving enthusiasts looking for a bargain. Horsepower has been increased from 173 in the 2016 model to 200 in the 2017. Likewise, torque has jumped from 154 pound-feet to 190. Add in a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission with paddle shifters along with a multi-link rear suspension that promises a more dynamic driving experience and Hyundai is starting to encroach on Jetta GLI territory. The new Elantra Sport also looks the part. Hyundai has dumped the round, Prius-like body of Elantras past in favor of a more angular body with a longer hood and more powerful lines to go with that new, Mazda3-esque grille and elongated headlights. The elephant in the room or rather the elephant suspiciously missing from the room is price. It’s not yet clear how much 2017 Elantra Sport will cost or how its price tag will compare to that of the Jetta GLI, the standard bearer in the world of performance-oriented compact sedans. In 2016, the Jetta GLI had an MSRP that was a solid $9,000 more than the Elantra Sport, which clocked in at a little more than $20,000 for a manual transmission. With all the reworking and restyling done by Hyundai, it’s tough to imagine it won’t be asking for a little more coin this time around. If the Elantra Sport enters the Jetta GLI’s $30,000 neighborhood, it will be a tough sell for Hyundai; if it leapfrogs Volkswagen pricing all together, then it might be in some real trouble. The 2017 Elantra Sport is due to hit dealerships this fall, so we’ll find out soon enough. Did you find this article helpful? If so, please share it using the "Join the Conversation" buttons below, and thank you for visiting Daily News Autos.

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With a new look and a new engine, the Elantra Sport will look to compete with the Volkswagen Jetta GLI.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160807191652id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11970585/John-Lewis-advert-song-2015.html

The stage-shy teenager, who wanted to be a medical researcher growing up, said she was mad when she found out a friend had surreptitiously uploaded her music to a streaming website. However, this led to Katy Perry tweeting about her song and a record deal. Aurora Aksnes, who performed at the Great Escape festival in Brighton this year, calls her style "dark pop". Finally. New music that makes my ??a flutter. Check this 17 yr old angel @AURORAmusic RUNAWAY https://t.co/KLZRLeSiVk pic.twitter.com/scJvDfDgSU The revelation ahead of the release of John Lewis' advert launch on Friday morning puts an end to hopes that Adele, who recently returned to the record books with her new single Hello, would be the voice of this year's festive spot from the retailer. Rumour has it that the new John Lewis Christmas ad will feature Adele doing a cover of Peter Andre's 1996 hit, Mysterious Girl Speculation had intensified after a 10-second teaser with just the hashtag #OnTheMoon, which many believe to be a teaser for the John Lewis advert, appeared during a Sunday night episode of The X Factor – notably similar to how Adele had chosen to tease the release of her new song in a previous week. Manic Street Preacher fans will be disappointed that their petition to have the band record the John Lewis advert was unsuccessful. Word is this year's Christmas John Lewis song is a winsome acoustic cover of Chumbawamba's TubThumping The Christmas advert will feature a cover of the Oasis song Half the World Away, a 1994 B-side that doubled as the theme tune to The Royle Family. The song would fit well thematically with the #OnTheMoon rumours. Two of the six songs used in John Lewis' Christmas adverts, since it started working with the agency Adam & Eve / DDB in 2009, have reached number one in the charts. Taken by Trees kicked off the John Lewis tradition of having breathy covers of classic pop songs. The Swedish singer recorded Sweet Child O' Mine, the 1988 rock anthem from Guns N' Roses. Taken by Trees' version, which was also used in the final scene of the 2010 film Life As We Know It starring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel, reached number 23 in the UK charts. Since 2010, the adverts have focused on British songs and singers. Ellie Goulding's cover of Your Song, originally released by Elton John 40 years earlier, peaked at number two in the charts, with sales at the time of 72,292 copies, and topped the UK Official Download Chart. Ms Goulding also performed the song during Prince William and Kate Middleton's first dance at their wedding reception. John Lewis had another success in the same year with its spring campaign, which used a Fyfe Dangerfield cover of Billy Joel's She's Always A Woman. Often regarded as the best John Lewis Christmas advert, the song from 2011 was the lowest-ranking song on the charts out of all its peers. Amelia Warner, who goes by the stage name of Slow Moving Millie and is married to Fifty Shades of Grey actor Jamie Dornan, sung a cover of Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want by The Smiths. It peaked at number 31 in the official charts. Gabrielle Aplin's cover of The Power of Love, released in 1984 by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, was the first John Lewis advert song to reach number one. It re-entered the top 100 the following Christmas following a seasonal surge in downloads. Lily Allen got a second consecutive number one for the department store with her cover of Somewhere Only We Know, the 2004 indie ballad by Keane. Some of the proceeds from the single, which accompanied the animated tale of a bear and a hare, were donated to Save the Children's Philippine Typhoon Appeal campaign. Ms Allen later said she earned only £8,000 from the song. John Lewis turned to the Beatles for the second time in 2014, having used a version of From Me To You in 2009. New indie singer-songwriter Tom Odell crooned a cover of Real Love, a John Lennon song that was reworked by the three remaining Beatles in 1995. Odell's version reached number seven in the charts.

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The breathy tones of the annual John Lewis advert cover song have become a core part of Christmas season. What does this year have in store?

http://web.archive.org/web/20161012152917id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/12/09/03/tough-new-laws-for-serious-vic-crimes

Up to 100 Victorians who have committed serious crimes like rape will get mandatory jail rather than community corrections orders. The orders were introduced under the previous Coalition state government and led to some serious offenders skipping jail. "We've had far too many people committing heinous crimes, violent crimes, and getting a slap on the wrist, rather than a custodial sentence they so richly deserve," Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters on Wednesday. "We're essentially mandating a jail term. The length of a jail term is still a matter for judges." Past controversial cases involving community corrections orders have included: - A man found with hundreds of images and videos of child porn, including the rape of a child, 6, whose jail term was suspended for four years and put on a three-year CCO - A principal who became obsessed with a Year 12 student and sent her 3500 text messages and breached an interim intervention order was put on a two-year CCO with 250 hours community service - Two thugs who attacked an intellectually disabled man in a Geelong library, leaving him with a broken arm, got a nine-month and 12-month CCO. The change affects future sentences of up to 100 criminals, the premier said. Attorney-General Martin Pakula said in the past, such orders were applied to rape and "it shouldn't happen." "In 2015, there were about three rapes that got community corrections orders," Mr Pakula said. Under the new laws, crimes like murder, rape, sexual abuse of a child under 16, and commercial drug trafficking will no longer be eligible for community corrections orders. Community corrections and other non-custodial orders will also not be allowed, except where special reasons apply, for offences including manslaughter, child homicide, kidnapping and intentionally causing serious injury. Opposition leader Matthew Guy said his party would "most likely" support the changes, but admonished the government for the time it took to make them. "This arose in December 2014...why hasn't he done anything since December 2014," he said.

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Victorians who commit serious crimes such as murder and rape will no longer be able to get community corrections orders.

http://web.archive.org/web/20161108160951id_/http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-good-year-goes-bad-for-giants-eli-manning-1416191007

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.—After 162 regular-season games in the NFL, Eli Manning’s worst football should be behind him. Last season appeared to be rock bottom, as the Giants’ quarterback tossed a league-high 27 interceptions, including five in a loss to Seattle. And for all of the Giants’ problems heading into Sunday’s loss to the visiting San Francisco 49ers—season-ending injuries to wideout Victor Cruz and cornerback Prince Amukamara,... EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.—After 162 regular-season games in the NFL, Eli Manning ’s worst football should be behind him. Last season appeared to be rock bottom, as the Giants’ quarterback tossed a league-high 27 interceptions, including five in a loss to Seattle. And for all of the Giants’ problems heading into Sunday’s loss to the visiting San Francisco 49ers—season-ending injuries to wideout Victor Cruz and cornerback Prince Amukamara, as well as the league’s lowest-rated defense—Manning was the biggest positive, tossing 17 touchdown passes against just six interceptions. On Sunday, when his second career five-pick performance resulted in a 16-10 loss, he was practically the Giants’ only problem. “I’ve got to make better decisions, better throws,” Manning said. “They’re all on me; it’s nobody else’s fault. I’ve got to protect the ball and can’t afford to turn it over, especially a couple times in field-goal range.” In his defense, Manning’s offensive line didn’t play well, particularly after right tackle Justin Pugh went down with quadriceps injury in the first half. And statistically, Manning has had worse games; back in 2004, for one, he registered a 0.0 quarterback rating in a 37-14 loss to Baltimore. But until Sunday, when he completed 22 of 45 passes for 280 yards and a 36.6 rating, Manning had never been so toxic. When tight end Larry Donnell’s leaping 30-yard reception put the Giants on San Francisco’s 35-yard line, Manning responded with an interception. When Josh Brown’s onside kick surprised the 49ers and resulted in a Giants’ first down near midfield, Manning responded with an interception. And when Odell Beckham Jr. defied gravity by hauling in a flying 37-yard sideline catch in the fourth quarter, Manning responded with his fifth and costliest pick of the day. The potentially game-winning pass to Preston Parker was deflected before falling into the hands of 49ers linebacker Chris Borland. But that fact should not absolve Manning, who tossed three consecutive incompletions from the 4-yard line prior to the turnover. Manning’s first pick, in the second quarter, was a poor read. He was trying squeeze a pass into Beckham before 49ers linebacker Chris Borland jumped the route. On the next drive, Manning saw a looming defender behind receiver Rueben Randle, but let go of the football anyway. “I tried to pull it back and couldn’t pull it back enough and it kind of slipped out and went to the linebacker,” he said. But it wasn’t just the interceptions. Manning neglected open receivers on several plays, and overthrew others in big spots. He even put running back Rashad Jennings at risk with a check-down pass at the end of the third quarter. Fortunately for the defenseless Jennings, who was playing for the first time since spraining his knee in Week 5, the pass fell incomplete. The 49ers deserve some credit for the way they pressured Manning, but his meek response shouldn’t have been a total surprise. Entering Sunday, Manning had completed just 35.6% of his passes when under pressure, ranking him below every qualifying quarterback besides former Jets starter Geno Smith, according to Pro Football Focus. “It was obviously the accuracy issue,” Tom Coughlin said afterward. “He had great pressure and I don’t think anybody’s going to argue with that one.”

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Eli Manning threw five interceptions and failed to capitalize on late opportunities as the Giants lost to the San Francisco 49ers 16-10. Was it his worst game as an NFL quarterback?

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Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe In 2011, Minado Restaurant in Natick substituted tilapia for red snapper, and escolar was advertised as white tuna. A manager at the time explained that escolar was the American name for white tuna. In 2012, Minado changed the red snapper sign at its buffet to read “tilapia,” the fish it was actually serving. But “white tuna” was written next to the word “escolar” — as if the two were interchangeable. They are not. Minado staff did not return calls seeking comment. Debee Tlumacki for The Boston Globe In 2011, what East Bay Grille in Plymouth advertised as native scrod or haddock was actually previously frozen Pacific cod. A general manager at the time said the restaurant hadn’t yet updated the menu. In 2012, fish advertised as Schrod Nantucket or haddock again tested as previously frozen Pacific cod. Pacific cod was also substituted for the grouper on the menu. A general manager attributed the haddock mislabeling to a clerical error, and blamed the grouper misrepresentation on a supplier. In 2011, the operator of Kowloon in Saugus said he was unaware that escolar was being served as white tuna and that tilapia was labeled as red snapper. In 2012, the restaurant had stopped serving white tuna, but DNA testing revealed striped bass on the menu was actually a cheaper, farmed hybrid bass. In 2011, the owner of Doyle’s Cafe in Jamaica Plain said he thought he was serving Atlantic cod in a dish, but it was actually cod caught off Alaska and shipped east in freezer containers. In 2012, the fresh cod described on the menu again turned out to be previously frozen Pacific cod. The owner said he has since revised the menu to simply say cod. In 2011, the H Mart supermarket in Burlington misrepresented crimson snapper for the more expensive red snapper, and escolar, which can cause gastrointestinal problems, was mislabeled as white tuna. At the time, an executive with H Mart blamed a supplier for the mix-up. In 2012, the supermarket sold cheap freshwater perch as pricier ocean grouper, and Pinjalo snapper was marketed as the more expensive red snapper. A company executive for the Asian grocery chain said he was investigating the mislabeling problems.

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A year after a Globe investigation revealed restaurants and stores across Massachusetts were routinely selling customers cheaper, lower quality fish than they promised consumers, a new round of DNA testing shows that the vast majority are still mislabeling seafood. Over the past several months, the Globe collected 76 seafood samples from 58 of the restaurants and markets that sold mislabeled fish last year. DNA testing on those samples found 76 percent of these fish samples weren’t what was advertised.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140125064101id_/http://www.buzzfeed.com/aaronc13/9-things-we-learned-about-edward-snowden-during-his-live-qa

Not all spying is bad. The biggest problem we face right now is the new technique of indiscriminate mass surveillance, where governments are seizing billions and billions and billions of innocents’ communication every single day. This is done not because it’s necessary — after all, these programs are unprecedented in US history, and were begun in response to a threat that kills fewer Americans every year than bathtub falls and police officers — but because new technologies make it easy and cheap. I think a person should be able to dial a number, make a purchase, send an SMS, write an email, or visit a website without having to think about what it’s going to look like on their permanent record. Particularly when we now have courts, reports from the federal government, and even statements from Congress making it clear these programs haven’t made us any more safe, we need to push back. This is a global problem, and America needs to take the lead in fixing it. If our government decides our Constitution’s 4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable seizures no longer applies simply because that’s a more efficient means of snooping, we’re setting a precedent that immunizes the government of every two-bit dictator to perform the same kind of indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance of entire populations that the NSA is doing. It’s not good for our country, it’s not good for the world, and I wasn’t going to stand by and watch it happen, no matter how much it cost me. The NSA and the rest of the US Intelligence Community is exceptionally well positioned to meet our intelligence requirements through targeted surveillance — the same way we’ve always done it — without resorting to the mass surveillance of entire populations. When we’re sophisticated enough to be able to break into any device in the world we want to (up to and including Angela Merkel’s phone, if reports are to be believed), there’s no excuse to be wasting our time collecting the call records of grandmothers in Missouri.

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The NSA whistle-blower answered questions Thursday about freedom, spying, and America in an online chat with Twitter users.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140214213205id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/29/peter-doig-exhibition-national-gallery-scotland

A lone figure walking beside an indigo swimming pool; a boat passing before the entrance of a cave as a great black bird swoops by; a girl dressed in white, clambering high in the branches of a vast tree on a starlit night: these are some of the strange and poetic recent subjects of the painter Peter Doig, the subject of a major exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery this summer. Doig, who was born in Edinburgh, raised in Canada, studied in London and now lives in Trinidad, is known for his rich, shadowy, mysteriously suggestive images, which draw on his observation of the natural world as well as images seen in photographs or films – such as Girl in White with Trees, a detail from which is pictured right. He is also known for the extraordinary prices his works realise at auction: his Architect's Home in the Ravine was sold for £7.7m at Christie's auction house this year. The exhibition, called No Foreign Lands, will show 120 works made over the past dozen years, including a handful of freshly completed paintings that have never been shown in public before. He continues to draw on his life in Trinidad, where he has lived with his family since 2002, and which, he said, "continually poses possibilities for painting, in a different way from London or New York. In Trinidad you might see something just on the walk to the studio. It's hard to explain; it's just that kind of place." When Doig came to prominence in the 1990s, his figurative painting was somewhat out of kilter with the neo-conceptualism of the Young British Artists (YBA). He became known for pictures suggested by the landscapes of Canada, but with surface patinas and patterning that hinted that he was at least as interested in the formal language of painting as in representing the world he saw. According to Keith Hartley, the curator of the exhibition, "he is trying to get some kind of balance between something he's seen in reality and can't get out of his mind, and being pulled in a formal direction". Doig's work has always defied easy categorisation. "You can't place him in any fashion or school," Hartley said. "He's not a YBA, he's a free spirit." Unlike the ideas-based works of many of his peers, Doig's paintings are, rather, situated in the world of purely visual thinking. Doig himself said he enjoyed his slightly off-centre world, in dialogue as much with the painters of the past, such as Matisse, Bonnard or Degas, as with his own painter peers. "I never minded being a bit on the outside; I liked that painting was marginalised, a bit of a niche activity. I'm not saying it's clandestine, but other people who make paintings: that's who your real audience is," he said. His work has the "kind of authority that can't be striven for, but only arrived at like an unexpected gift", according to the Guardian art critic Adrian Searle. No Foreign Lands: Peter Doig is at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, from 3 August to 3 November.

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Strange and poetic figurative art of the Trinidad-based painter Peter Doig will be showcased in exhibition of 120 works

http://web.archive.org/web/20140306222055id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/dec/09/tom-hunter-serpentine-gallery-review

New ideas are everywhere in British politics. Let's measure national happiness! Let's make welfare proactive! The problem is that so many of these big ideas for a "big society" come from a government whose painful economic policies make the enthusiastic ideological overproduction look like the most cynical window-dressing – liberal-minded tinsel on a Tory tree whose needles turn out to be razors. Is nobody doing any ambitious social thinking that is not a veil for callous cuts? Step forward, the Serpentine gallery. This will come as no surprise to fans of its co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, whose publications, projects and patronage of artists amount to a sustained attempt to reconnect art, ideas, and the world and have made the Serpentine the most creative public art space in London. The latest manifestation of the slightly wacky sense of mission that flourishes at the Serpentine is a community art project with a difference. Skills Exchange brings together artists and community groups and makes a point of linking young artists and older people: out of a residency by artist Tom Hunter on the Woodberry Down estate in Hackney, east London, comes a film he made with older residents called A Palace for Us. This is a magical film. It weaves the memories of people who grew up in east London and have lived on the estate since it opened into a silvery thread of meaning illuminated by dramatisations of their experiences filmed in the aged, but dignified, Woodberry Down buildings and public spaces. The estate, begun in 1946 and completed in 1963, was like a "palace" to those who remembered the East End slums, remembers one participant. But the film is also a palace of memory. Contemporary art often seems obsessed with youth: here it listens to the stories the old have to tell. It evokes all our stories. Britain in 1945, out of the ruins of war, built the welfare state that clever rich kids are now so casually pulling apart. Estates like Woodberry Down embody an ideal of decent housing for all that was born out of the miseries of the 1930s and terror of the 1940s. A Palace for Us gently and acutely bears witness to this history that is now being dismantled. Hunter's film is not a rant, but a moving homage to lives and memories that today are obliterated by harsh and violent caricatures of the white working class. Everyone should go to the Serpentine to learn to see through his subjects' eyes. The government should go.

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Jonathan Jones: The government should head down to the Serpentine to see Tom Hunter's magical film that retells the stories of older residents on an east London estate

http://web.archive.org/web/20141010133508id_/http://fortune.com:80/2014/10/08/spain-gdp-drugs-prostitution/

Call it a European miracle. Spain raised its 2013 GDP estimate by €26.2 billion (about $33.6 billion) to €1.05 trillion, a 2.5% boost. What’s contributing to this good news? Illegal activities. Spaniards apparently consume €5.4 billion in illegal drugs and spend €3.8 billion on prostitutes, accounting for 0.87% of GDP. The Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), Spain’s national statistics bureau, did not add illegal activities just for fun, however. As part of new EU regulations, member countries have to include the measurements. There are obvious motives for doing this. On a cynical level, using illegal activities to boost GDP could help some countries stay under deficit-to-GDP ratios mandated by the EU. On a scientific level, measuring illegal activity allows for apples-to-apples comparisons between countries where drug use and prostitution are legal (and already measured) and others where they are not. “If you want to compare EU countries, it makes sense to harmonize the way you measure the size of the economies,” says Diane Coyle, an economics professor at the University of Manchester in the U.K. and the author of GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History. According to the new measurements, the GDP share of illegal activities was 1% in Italy, 0.7% in U.K., and 0.4% and 0.2% in Portugal and Germany respectively. But how accurate can these figures possibly be? The mere fact that the activities are illegal, or at least not legally registered, makes measuring them difficult to say the least. Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick, says that because of measurement difficulties, estimates of the illegal economy are likely off by at least 20-25%. “People breaking the law don’t often send in forms to the government.” So how do national statistics agencies estimate the market value of illegal activities? To put it simply, they extrapolate from what little data they have. Take Spain, where prostitution is something of a “semi-legal” activity. On the edges of most Spanish cities, one can find alterne clubs frequented by prostitutes and their customers. The clubs sell drinks and rent rooms, economic activities that can be measured, but the prostitutes are not registered and they don’t report the income they earn in those rented rooms. So in late 2013, statisticians from the INE contacted ANELA, a Valencia-based trade association for alterne clubs. The statisticians asked the association to estimate the average price for a visit to a prostitute; the number of services given per day; and the average rent collected per prostitute/day by alterne clubs for the years 2002, 2007, and 2012. After realizing that the questions weren’t a joke, ANELA Marketing Director José Roca says for the three years he answered €50/€70/€40 per service to the first question, 6/8/4 times/day to the second. To the third, he answered a flat €50. But those numbers were estimates at best, he says, and any GDP figures developed based on them would be inaccurate. “It’s an approximation,” he says of the INE’s figures. “You can’t know.” Representatives at Hetaira, a Madrid nonprofit that works to protect the rights of sex workers, were similarly dubious when INE asked them for help estimating the number of prostitutes working in Spain. “We have only numbers of people who we help [about 1,000 per year]. It’s very difficult to know how many people are involved because there is no registry,” says Mari Carmen Fernández, a social worker at Hetaira. “What seemed surprising to us is that they use these numbers for the GDP, but they are not recognizing the rights of people who work in the industry.” The accuracy of GDP estimates for illegal economic activity will improve over time, and even more so if and when those activities are made legal and taxed. But for some economists, that may be missing the point. Along with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the University of Warwick’s Andrew Oswald is part of a school of economic thinkers who believe that GDP is an outdated measurement and that countries should instead measure the psychological wellbeing, or happiness, of their citizens. “GDP served its purpose well. But modern life is different. The problem is not a lack of food,” he says. “All the physical wants across Western Europe are essentially satisfied, so mental wellbeing is the criteria.” How prostitution and drugs contribute to that measurement is another question entirely.

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Spain raised its GDP estimate for 2013 by just under $34 billion, thanks to the economic contribution of illegal activities. But how accurate can those numbers be?

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Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” was a breath of fresh air, as long as you didn’t think too hard about it. Dropped into a competitive Top 40 battleground trying its best to figure out how to incorporate dubstep and EDM, a body-positive call to arms wrapped up in girl-group duds with a hip-hop sheen stood out if only by sheer chutzpah alone. That Trainor’s attitudes were as judgmental and dismissive as the ones that she was embraced for as an antidote to (albeit aimed in a novel direction) was immaterial. On pop radio, hooks can forgive just about anything, and “All About That Bass” had them. For better or for worse, “Title,” Trainor’s full-length debut, is more of the same. (In more ways than one, as it includes all four songs previously released as Trainor’s preceding EP, also called “Title.”) The Massachusetts-raised Nashville transplant doesn’t always know quite what she’s trying to say or how to say it, but she figures that she can sell it with little more than a smirk and a giddy bounce. In “Walkashame,” she expresses embarrassment at stumbling home the morning after, and then gets righteously indignant at the suggestion that she might have something to be embarrassed about. The sexual politics in “Dear Future Husband” are a sitcom nightmare, demanding apologies after they fight even when she admits she’s wrong, and dangling sex as an incentive. Trouble is, it’s all just so infernally catchy. Of course, in the case of “Dear Future Husband,” it’s because she’s simply stripped the lyrics from “Runaround Sue” — which admittedly had their own sexist streak — and pilfered the song’s romping backbone seemingly whole, right down to the backing vocals and honking sax. But that’s Trainor’s gift and curse: She’s a plunderer first and foremost. Built on not much more than a simple, percussive rhythm, “Bang Dem Sticks” is more or less a rewrite of Ed Sheeran’s “Don’t,” with a horn line that directly echoes Sheeran’s vocal hook. She even steals from herself with “Lips Are Movin,” which follows the formula of “All About That Bass” to a tee, straight-up referencing her earlier hit at one point. “3am,” meanwhile, finds Trainor aping Katy Perry, in that it finds her aping Sara Bareilles. But instead of delivering a self-esteem anthem like “Roar” (or a someone else’s esteem anthem like “Brave”), Trainor’s song is quieter and more vulnerable, racked with self-doubt that can’t just be sung away with a good pep talk in the mirror. When she steps away from pastiche, she struggles; John Legend comes through loud and clear on boilerplate ballad “Like I’m Gonna Lose You,” while she could be anybody at all. At this stage in her young career, Trainor has sass and infectiousness, but it’s all secondhand. And it’s not the same as personality. (Out Tuesday) Meghan Trainor plays the Paradise Rock Club on March 17.

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“Title,” Meghan Trainor’s full-length debut album, is packed with contradictions and sitcom-worthy situations — but the tunes are so infernally catchy that you might get hooked anyway.

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For sure, virtually all praise for the Watch also included some criticism. Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal personal technology columnist, who was impressed overall, told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" that exercise kills the Watch's battery life. "[D]ays when I went to a 45-minute spinning class, it was dying by 8 or 9 pm," she said. Still, she was impressed at how well the Watch works on its own, describing how she went out for a morning run without her iPhone, and was able to stop at Whole Foods for coffee and water and paid using only her Watch. "For me that was one of the breaking points where I said this thing is freeing from the phone," she said. Edward Baig, USA Today personal technology columnist, told CNBC that the watch isn't an essential item to own, but it is "awfully nice to have." He used it to hail a ride using the third-party Uber app and although he was a little bit confused by the interface, he did get a ride. He added that Apple Pay on the Watch works better than on his phone because "you are just hitting a couple of buttons, putting it right to the register and it worked very well." Read MoreIs the first Apple Watch just a teaser? Re/code's Lauren Goode noted, in an otherwise positive and delighted review, that the company hasn't quite fixed at least one previously revealed flaw. "I've used Apple Maps for turn-by-turn directions, and like the way the watch buzzes on my wrist ahead of an upcoming turn. Although the Maps app did at one point think I was on a road that was on the other side of a creek. Oh, Apple Maps."

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Users almost universally hailed Apple's flagship wearable as a transformative moment in mobile tech. But do you need to run out and buy one? Maybe not.

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But just as global supply hits record levels, China's economy is slowing and its desire for the reddish-brown ore may have plateaued. Since peaking at US$190 in 2011, iron ore prices have slid more than 70 per cent to about US$50 a ton. This is denting tax revenues, forcing smaller mining companies to close and lay off thousands of employees. "Western Australia was the big beneficiary of the China boom," says Chris Richardson, economist at Deloitte Access Economics. "But it is suffering now as the mine construction phase ends and commodity prices fall amid a surge in iron ore supply and faltering demand." Read MoreCiti analysts call the 'end of the Iron Age' In 2013 the state lost its triple-A credit rating. On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's warned it may face a further downgrade because of its budget problems. Western Australia says that if iron ore prices stay at US$50 per ton it would wipe out A$4 billion (US$3 billion) in projected royalty revenues in 2015-16 — 12 per cent of the state budget. Unemployment in the state, although still modest at 5.8 per cent, has risen from 3.8 per cent when iron ore prices peaked. House prices have started to fall in the state capital Perth, while they continue to grow in Sydney and Melbourne. Mr Barnett wants other states to give Western Australia a greater share of revenues from a nationwide goods and services tax. But so far Canberra and other states have rejected his pleas. On Friday, state premiers will discuss the dispute. Weak Chinese data are fueling concerns that Western Australia's problems could spread across a country that has avoided recession for two decades by riding China's commodities boom. More from The Financial Times: Bernanke chooses hedge fund for first post-Fed job Bund yields hit low as Greek debt plunges Christine Lagarde dashes Greek hopes on loan respite Iron ore is Australia's biggest export, worth A$74 billion in 2013-14, and the plunge in prices is beginning to hurt the federal budget. In December, Canberra revised its budget deficit forecast to A$40 billion, or 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product in 2014-15, up from a forecast of A$29.8 billion made in May, citing the impact of a fall in iron ore prices to US$60 per ton. Since then, prices have continued to fall further and this week Joe Hockey, Australia's treasurer, warned they could fall as low as US$35, costing the exchequer a further A$6.35 billion a year in lost revenues. "If iron ore prices stay at about US$45 and export volumes remain at current levels, then Australia should be OK," says Warren Hogan, ANZ chief economist. "But it is a finely balanced situation and if we see the iron ore price drop lower and Chinese demand fall it could spell trouble." The Liberal-National coalition's second budget next month will be a critical moment. Last year Mr Hockey flagged deep cuts to spending in an attempt to return the budget to surplus. Many of these reforms remain blocked in the Senate. Similar tough medicine this year could undermine confidence at a time when the Reserve Bank of Australia is trying to encourage business investment to diversify the country's resource-dependent economy. "There is a need to get businesses to invest and take advantage of opportunities as China transitions to becoming a consumer-led economy," says Mr Hogan. "Agriculture, tourism and education are key sectors." A weakening Australian dollar and a loosening of visa rules are boosting inbound tourism. In the year to the end of September, 789,000 Chinese tourists visited Australia, up 10 per cent on a year earlier. Chinese tourists are now second in number only to New Zealanders — and they spend the most at A$5.4 billion a year. Whether these alternative industries can cushion Australia from the collapse in commodity prices remains to be seen. "China won't be throwing money at Australia any more," says Deloitte's Mr Richardson. "And there is a real question mark over whether the country is prepared to undertake the reforms needed to transition its economy."

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The last time Western Australia was engaged in a dispute with Canberra of this magnitude was during the 1930s Depression. The Financial Times reports.

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These external risks could be exacerbated by elevated indebtedness of the household and corporate sectors since the global financial crisis, Mourmouras added. Singapore's household debt was equivalent to 76.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter of 2014, compared with 71.9 percent two years earlier. IMF expects Singapore's economy to grow 2.5-3.0 percent in 2015, in line with government's own forecast range. The economy's growth pace has been moderating in recent years, expanding 2.9 percent in 2014 after growing 4.4 percent in 2013. On the domestic front, Singapore also faces hurdles as the country transitions towards a growth model that relies less on low-wage foreign workers, IMF said. This has resulted in a tight employment environment that has put pressure on labor-intensive businesses. The prospect of higher interest rates could also put further pressure on Singapore's slowing property market. The city's once-exuberant real estate market has been softening over the past year-and-a-half as government measures to stabilize prices took a toll on transaction volumes and prices. With 90 percent of Singaporeans owning at least one property, the health of the property market has far reaching implications for the economy. Read MoreSingapore tops growth forecast, MAS stands pat To be sure, while the outlook for the economy is "uncertain", IMF says Singapore undoubtedly has a few things going for it. Lower energy prices, a less restrictive monetary policy stance and the expansionary budget are expected to fuel a recovery in domestic demand, which could offset the drag a cooling real estate market and rising interest rates, Mourmouras said. In February, the government unveiled a budget featuring higher retirement benefits, larger infrastructure spending and corporate tax rebates. Furthermore, strong macroeconomic fundamentals—a very strong external position, adequate level of foreign reserves, large fiscal buffers and strong bank balance sheets—will likely help absorb financial shocks, he said. Singapore boasts one of the world's largest current account surpluses relative to GDP despite slower growth. It expected to register a current account surplus of 19 percent of GDP in 2015-2016 thanks to a lower oil import bill, according to Scotiabank.

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A "protracted period of slower growth" in the global economy is the most important short-term risk to Singapore's trade-oriented economy.

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Of course, viewing the VIX over the course of the year can be misleading. Read MoreVolatile markets are facing the 'old normal' A huge run at the end can distort the index's value, and a three-day losing streak to close the year made the gauge's increase look bigger an on annualized basis than what was really happening. For 2014, the VIX averaged just shy of 15, which is below its historical norm but well off its lows for the year. The CBOE itself, however, looked at the behavior of more than a dozen volatility measures and found reason to believe that 2015 is setting up for some uneasy though not necessarily unprofitable times ahead. Specifically, the exchange actually has an index that looks at the volatility of the VIX—the VIX of VIX index, which measures expected volatility of 30-day forward VIX prices. Read More1999 all over again? Hold on to your hats! Over the course of the year, the VVIX had an average price of 83, which is close to its historical trend. However, even as equities showed their best quarter of the year in 2014's final three months, the VVIX steadily rose and stayed in territory that indicates investors are expecting a testy start to the new year. "The 2014 average doesn't seem like a big deal, but the average for the fourth quarter of 2014 was over 97—that's a clear indication of excess nervousness in the equity markets as of late," Russell Rhoads, a senior instructor at the CBOE Options Institute, said in a report. "Well over 100 going into 2015 may be a red flag for the equity market in the new year." That trend is consistent with Wall Street sentiment, which sees a market moving higher through the year but in for a bumpy ride getting there. Events like the mid-October market disruption, then, could be more common and result in higher readings across the various volatility gauges. Strategist at JPMorgan Chase believe a number of factors will converge to make equity gains more challenging, not the least being continued changes in Federal Reserve policy that could see the first funds rate increase in more than six years. Read MoreThe market's next Fed fear: The exit strategy "In our 2014 volatility forecast, we predicted that volatility would increase in H2 2014 due to the end of the Fed's (quantitative easing) program and a turn in the rate cycle," the firm said in its 2015 outlook report. "October's shock is an example of the market volatility we are likely to see in 2015 as the Fed increases rates, and the market adjusts to lower levels of liquidity." The JPMorgan team expects a 15 percent increase in volatility, with the VIX averaging about 16. That's part of a forecast in which the firm believes the S&P 500 will rise to 2,250 by the end of the year, implying a nearly 10 percent upside from current levels.

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Volatility and the stock market have made for an uneasy couple, but lately they've managed to enter into a marriage of convenience.

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In January Netflix posted fourth-quarter earnings that smashed analysts' expectations with accelerating sales growth, ending the year on 44 million subscribers. With earnings momentum in Netflix's favor, some analysts don't think a high valuation necessarily means the stock will fall. "The sector in general is very hot and in that environment things get puffed up. Just because it has a high valuation I don't necessarily think that means it's going to fall. I don't see any banana skins on the horizon," Alex De Groote, media analyst at Panmure Gordon, told CNBC in a phone interview. Despite strong growth, analysts are worried about the low margins for Netflix's streaming business. In the U.S. Netflix offers a traditional DVD delivery service to customers which can be ordered online. This part of their offering has a 52 percent profit margin, while the streaming arm has 11 percent. Noronha said the company's revenue model, in which users pay a monthly subscription, is enough to see the company grow. (Read more: How net neutrality debate could affect consumers) "Netflix has an existential problem, which is that what they pay for their content is more than what they are taking in from their subscribers. So they have to increase prices to their subscribers to make that profit machine start working," he told CNBC. "The problem they have is last time they tried to hike prices, the stock tumbled by close to two thirds. So when is the market going to start finally realising, it's a great service…but that doesn't mean that you need to own the stock." A European representative of Netflix declined to comment. Netflix has been trying to broaden the appeal of their product to appeal to investors and grow their subscriber base with original programming such as "House of Cards", which has been extremely popular, as well as a deal with Comcast to improve streaming quality. (Read more: 'House of Cards' 101: How to manage the media) On Friday, Stephane Richard, the CEO of French telecom company Orange, said Netflix has contacted operators there ahead of its autumn launch. The streaming giant is also eyeing expansion into Belgium and Germany. Richard Broughton, head of broadband at IHS, said after consolidating its user base last year, Netflix is now looking for expansion to grow its subscriber base. "It was more about consolidation of a subscriber base last year. France and Germany are being talked about as is Belgium so that is significant expansion. They are good markets, have a good broadband structure and customers with a willingness to pay. It's big deal from their standpoint but those markets are not cheap to compete in," Broughton said in a phone interview.

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Debate has surrounded tech sector valuations with some analysts unconvinced that Netflix's stunning rally is here to stay.

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House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo vowed Wednesday to put new limits on contracts that restrict employees from working for competitors, breathing new life into a long-running reform campaign that has divided the Massachusetts high-tech sector. In a speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, DeLeo said noncompete agreements should be limited to one year. He said the contracts should not apply to lower-wage workers, such as sandwich-shop employees. Workers also should be clearly informed that a noncompete agreement is required before taking a job, DeLeo said. “Our goal will be to protect businesses here and improve Massachusetts’ reputation as the premier incubator for talent,” DeLeo said. His support for compromise legislation on noncompete agreements was welcomed by major employers, including EMC Corp. of Hopkinton, which has been a longtime supporter and enforcer of noncompete contracts. The state House speaker made the promise for the first time during a speech Wednesday morning at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. But the details of DeLeo’s proposal irked some in the state’s startup sector, who said having any restrictions that prevent workers from taking new jobs makes Massachusetts less competitive with a state like California, where noncompete agreements are largely banned. The timing of the bill’s release was unclear, although state lawmakers have only until the end of July before formal sessions end for the year. A spokesman for Senate President Stanley Rosenberg said he isn’t going to comment until he sees the specifics of DeLeo’s proposal, but noted that Rosenberg supported noncompete reforms in 2014. Noncompete agreements give companies the ability to sue a former employee who takes a similar position in the same industry. Supporters of the agreements say they are an effective way of preventing workers from leaving with valuable trade secrets. Opponents argue that such agreements stifle innovation by handcuffing people to their jobs, preventing bright employees from launching their own startups or joining fast-growing rivals. Noncompete agreements typically range from one to two years in Massachusetts, although some are longer, said Christopher H. Lindstrom, a lawyer at Nutter McClennen & Fish. Judges can decide to amend a noncompete agreement, but two-year agreements aren’t usually seen as overly burdensome, he said. “There’s no question that limiting it to 12 months would have a significant impact on a lot of employers out there,” Lindstrom said. Venture investors and technology entrepreneurs have made noncompete reform a central part of their public policy lobbying during the past few years. Those efforts gained traction on Beacon Hill in 2014, when the Senate approved a bill that would have made it tougher to enforce noncompete contracts that last longer than six months and prohibited their use for hourly workers. One story that particularly resonated with lawmakers came from a college student from Wellesley who told them she had lost her summer job at a camp when management realized she had a noncompete agreement in effect with a nearby camp. DeLeo and other House leaders declined to go along with the Senate at the time. “Having him support reform really feels like progress,” said Jody Rose, executive director of the New England Venture Capital Association. EMC’s support is also significant. The company has previously opposed efforts to change noncompete laws, but EMC’s general counsel, Paul Dacier, said Wednesday that DeLeo’s proposal “protects legitimate business interests while ensuring continued growth of our state’s innovation economy.” DeLeo and his staff worked closely with business leaders, including the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, during the past year to fashion a compromise bill. The involvement of the partnership, which consists of some of the most powerful CEOs in the state, started about a year ago, president Daniel O’Connell said. “The group felt they could provide some constructive input about a compromise on the issue,” he said. EMC’s chief executive, Joe Tucci, is among the partnership’s members, but O’Connell declined to disclose the specific stance of any individual members. He said his group reached a consensus on the issue, and that the consensus is reflected in the reforms suggested by DeLeo on Wednesday. “The speaker did not address all of our recommendations, but we felt he hit all the important points,” O’Connell said. “Twelve months seemed like a reasonable compromise to protect the intellectual property of employers and also allow employees to plot their own career paths.” Associated Industries of Massachusetts, another business group, had been one of the most vocal supporters of noncompetes. But spokesman Chris Geehern said DeLeo’s proposal appears to be a reasonable compromise. He said DeLeo consulted with AIM several times before Wednesday’s speech. Democratic Representative Lori Ehrlich of Marblehead has aggressively pursued bills to eliminate or restrict noncompetes for years. She said she would prefer a ban on them, but sees DeLeo’s approach as a big step forward in the debate. Some notable members of the state’s tech sector, however, panned DeLeo’s plan as too limited. Travel-tech veteran Paul English noted that he had to wait 18 months to start his newest company, Lola, to avoid a lawsuit under his noncompete agreement with a previous employer, Priceline Group. Restricting noncompete agreements to one year, he said, would still seriously limit entrepreneurship. “I frankly think it’s just so weak that it almost has no impact,” English said. “To me, it’d be kind of like the new mayor of Flint, Mich., saying ‘Let’s just clean up half the water. We’re still going to make kids sick, but they’ll be a little bit less sick.’ ” And Bijan Sabet, an investor with the Boston venture firm Spark Capital, said, “Why do employees in our state have less rights than employees in California?” Jeff Bussgang, a general partner at another Boston venture firm, Flybridge Capital Partners, sees DeLeo’s stance as a positive development, but acknowledged that progress has been slow, especially for startups that are used to the fast pace of the innovation sector. “I’ve been working on noncompete reform for like five years,” Bussgang said. “As an entrepreneur, it doesn’t make any sense. You’re like, ‘Problem? Solve the problem. What could be simpler?’ ”

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House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo has said the House will back a bill that restricts the use of noncompetes to a 12 month period. Some tech-industry figures think that’s still too restrictive

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Grace Carricarte and her brother Brian know better than most just how devastating the disease of alcoholism can be. They describe their mother, also named Grace, as a woman who always loved tending to her family. "My mom was an incredible mother and motherhood was really what her life revolved around," Grace told "20/20." According to her children, she made sure every detail, from their home to their meals to their birthday parties, was perfect. But after Grace divorced their father, something in her seemed to change. "The one thing that she had put a hundred percent of her energy into, which was being a mother, being a part of that family, it was completely gone and completely disrupted," said Brian. "So I just feel she looked for something else to kind of fill that in." Though Grace, 29, and Brian, 26, say they never actually saw their mother drinking while they were growing up, her behavior began to seem puzzling when they were teens. "I remember, I was probably 13 at the time," said Grace. "And my mom was really late to pick up a friend and I from a party. And we get in the car, and my mom is kind of exaggeratedly swerving. First she was swerving, but then she started to swerve for fun. I was so mad. And... I go, 'Mom, stop it.' I was almost a little bit afraid in the car, because she was weird, but I never thought she was drunk." Years later, when Grace and Brian were young adults, it finally became clear to them that their mother was struggling with alcoholism. Like so many women, Grace Carricarte succeeded in hiding her drinking from loved ones for a long time. Eventually, however, her addiction became unmanageable. The family insisted she get help. Grace entered two rehab programs, but failed each time to stay sober. "She didn't feel that she could relate to what was going on in a lot of the rehab centers," said Brian. "And because a lot of people were there for drug issues, for heroine, crack, cocaine, so she's like, 'This isn't me. I don't have that problem.'" Grace's family pleaded with her to give rehab one more try, but she refused. Then Brian made a horrifying discovery when he visited his mom at her home. "The house was just oddly quiet, the TV was on, very loud," said Brian. "And here I am thinking she's asleep or something, and you know, I'm calling her name, and nothing. Then finally, I went over to her, went over to shake her, and I realized she was stiff. And the real reality of what was in front of me... she's gone." Just 50 years old, with a bottle of vodka at her bedside, Grace Carricarte lost her battle with alcoholism. The official cause of death was chronic ethanolism, a term coroners often use on the death certificates of people who have drunk themselves to death. CLICK HERE to take the Alcoholics Anonymous quiz that may help you decide whether treatment is right for you. "There was a lot of shock in our family," said Grace. "A lot of shock, because most people didn't believe that she was an alcoholic, let alone to believe that it would kill her." Since the death of their mother, Grace and Brian say they have struggled with the question of what more they could have done to save her. They say they have learned some hard lessons about addiction. "The addiction wants to protect itself, so the addiction will tell you whatever it needs to, to keep itself alive," said Grace. "And my mom, she didn't identify with being an alcoholic, and by all means, she didn't look like an alcoholic. I still have that feeling that I couldn't help my mom. My head tells myself, 'No, really, we did everything we could.' "But in my heart, in the heart of anyone who loves someone, it never feels OK to see somebody that you care about not able to get better."

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Grace Carricarte's children don't remember her drinking when they were growing up, but during their teenage years they realized she had a problem. That didn't prepare them for her untimely end.

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After agreeing the settlement with regulators, HSBC said it "does not tolerate improper conduct". Other regulators including the US Department of Justice, which is known for levying heavy fines, are still investigating the banks over the foreign exchange scandal. Mr Scott, who joined HSBC in 2007, was based in London and ran the bank's currency trading operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He was fired on Tuesday, a move first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by people familiar with the matter. HSBC declined to comment. Mr Scott was not immediate available for comment. He is the third person that HSBC has fired in the wake of the foreign exchange trading scandal, the people said. In October the bank fired Edward Pinto, a Scandinavian currency trader, and Serge Sarramegna, head of its spot foreign exchange desk in London. The two traders had been suspended since the start of the year. In November, Frank Cahill, a currency trader who joined the US bank from HSBC in 2012, left Goldman Sachs. According to settlement documents published by the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority, groups of unnamed bank traders who called themselves the "players", the "3 musketeers" and a "co-operative", were found to have attempted over a period of almost six years to have rigged key forex benchmarks, including at least one provided by central banks. Using chat rooms, traders were also found to have attempted to trigger clients' stop-loss orders — a specified level to sell the currency to limit potential losses — for their own benefit. They also shared confidential information about client orders, the FCA found during its "Operation Dovercourt" investigation. However no specific allegations have been made against the traders who have left HSBC. They have not been charged with any wrongdoing.

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HSBC fired Stuart Scott, its European head of currency trading, a month after the bank was fined $618 million over the issue.

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The purchase was extremely fortuitous, because, a highly anticipated 3D Peanuts movie featuring, Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the gang is set to open in November of 2015. It will be the first Peanuts movie in theaters in 3 decades. "I think it's going to be big," said Cramer. Anticipation among the Peanuts faithful has already begun with fans posting comments about the movie's trailer, released earlier this year. And Iconix is already working on major marketing endeavors concerning the movie. "We're currently working with pretty much every major retailer around the globe, on programs to sell (Peanuts) products and on ways to promote the movie," explained Cole. ------------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Game Plan: Disney, Whole Foods and other Cramer plays Seeking new high, Cramer turns to cannabis Cramer's sell stock: Bullish catalysts ebbing away------------------------------------------------------------- Cramer thinks the success of the Peanuts movie could surprise even the biggest fans, in part because it not only appeals to children but also their parents and grandparents, all over the world. "I believe the movie will be in 75 countries in 40 languages," Cole added. Although Peanuts may be a big catalyst, it's hardly the only one for Iconix. Cramer says the company is firing on all cylinders and he believes recent earnings strength confirms the outlook. "When Iconix reported last Wednesday, it blew away the numbers, posting a 9-cent earnings beat off of a 63-cent basis, with higher than expected sales that rose 10.5% year over year, and management also raised their full-year guidance," he said. "That's the troika I want to see." Considering these quarterly results and the forthcoming Peanuts movie, Cramer thinks the stock warrants investor attention. "But you have to look at it now. Not in November 2015. Now, it's selling for less than 15 times next year's earnings estimates," Cramer said. "But don't take it from me. Go through the presentation and you'll understand why the company's stock can go much higher."

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If you’ve always wanted to buy a stock for Peanuts, now’s your chance. Of course, this is no penny stock.

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He was not amongst the four to abandon but, visibly hurt, he struggled to keep up and was definitively dropped with 20km left, giving up several minutes by the finish. Froome took over the yellow jersey by just one second from Tony Martin who, for the third day running, saw the overall lead hovering agonisingly just out of reach. And for the second day running it was bonus seconds on the finish line that denied him. Having finished second on the opening stage timetrial he lost the yellow jersey by 3sec to Cancellara on Sunday after the latter picked up four bonus seconds for finishing third. Froome's second place gave him six extra seconds and that put him into yellow. Frenchman Alexis Vuillermoz took third on the stage ahead of Ireland's Dan Martin with Tony Gallopin next over the line. Froome gained 11 seconds on his overall rivals, defending champion Vincenzo Nibali and Nairo Quintana, while Alberto Contador lost 18sec. Froome is now 36 seconds ahead of Contador with Nibali at 1min 39sec and Quintana at almost two minutes. Tejay Van Garderen is third overall at 13sec ahead of Frenchman Gallopin and Belgium's Greg Van Avermaet. AFP Froome was able to put time into Contador, Quintana and Nibali on the famous Belgian climb. Great teamwork from @TeamSky today #TDF2015 Just hearing that Chris Froome (Team Sky) has taken the leader's yellow jersey at the Tour de France following that superb second place on the Mur de Huy. The Briton leads Tony Martin (Etixx-Quick Step) on general classification by a single second. Joaquim Rodríguez (Katusha) holds on to take the stage ahead of Chris Froome (Team Sky) with Alexis Vuillermoz (Ag2r-La Mondiale) in third. Ireland's Dan Martin (Cannondale-Garmin) could only manage fourth spot. Chris Froome is leading the way up the Mur de Huy. Joaquim Rodríguez attacks and has overhauled the Team Sky rider. Froome reacts and attempts to chase down the Spaniard. Giampaolo Caruso (Katusha) takes over on the front before team-mate Joaquim Rodríguez takes over. Bob Jungels (Trek Factory Racing) is the first man onto the foot of the Mur de Huy. All of the main general classification riders are near the front of the chasing bunch. Geraint Thomas now leads the bunch, the Team Sky riders is chatting to, I think, Movistar's Alex Dowsett. The Mur de Huy is almost upon us - just 2km away now. Alberto Contador is now on the head of the bunch, less good news for Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) who has been dropped by the leaders. Nairo Quintana (Movistar) is close behind a triumvirate of Tinkoff-Saxo riders. Julian Arredondo (Trek Factory Racing) took the single point on the top of the Côte de Cherave. Chris Froome just lashed out at another rider after the Team Sky leader was almost boxed in. 6km remain. Zdenek Stybar now leads the bunch for his Etixx-Quick Step team-mates. We're on the penultimate climb of the day, the category four Côte de Cherave. Just 10km of the stage now remain and Michael Rogers (Tinkoff-Saxo) has taken over on the front of the bunch. Cannondale-Garmin, too, are near the front. Etixx-Quick Step are close by, could they be setting up Michal Kwiatkowski or Rigoberto Uran? Richie Porte is doing a big turn out on the front with his team-mate Chris Froome on third wheel. The pace has upped and the 110-rider peloton is now stretched out in a long line. Michael Schär (BMC Racing) was the first over the top of the Côte d'Ereffe. The Swiss is now the virual leader in the mountains classification. His compatriot, Fabian Cancellara, now trails by 2min 30sec. Angelo Tulik (Europcar) attacked off the front in an attempt to nick the point at the top of the Côte d'Ereffe, but the Frenchman was reeled in by the bunch that is being led by Team Sky. Around 20km from the finish line now and everybody's jockeying for position at the front of the group. Cannondale-Garmin are working for their man Dan Martin. The maillot jaune is now almost a minute down on the leaders. By the way, we're on the category four Côte d'Ereffe, so one point on offer here in the mountains classification. "I walked down and then back up Mur de Huy earlier," writes Tom Cary who is out in Belgium. "It was baking hot, huge crowds already massing to watch the juniors, some of whom were almost ground to a standstill by the the steepness of gradient, which maxes out at around 20 per cent. Reminded me a bit of Jenkin Road in Sheffield, near the finish to stage two last year. Only more colourful. And Belgian." André Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) outspints John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin) at the intermediate sprint to add another 20 points to his tally in the competition for the green jersey. Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis) took third spot. Meanwhile, Alejandro Valverde (Movistar), one of the pre-stage favourites, has chased his way back on to the leading group after being caught out by that split in the bunch. Greg Van Avermaet (BMC Racing), Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) and Romain Bardet (Ag2r-La Mondiale) bridged the gap alongside the Spaniard. The pace of the peloton is quickening up with all of the main general classification contenders' teams riding on the front. There's been a split in the buch and Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) has been left to his own devices by his team-mates. The Swiss now trails the head of the bunch by almost 20sec. Laurens ten Dam (Lotto Jumbo-NL) has NOT abandoned despite what I said earlier. The Dutchman dislocated his shoulder before popping it back and continuing. Nails. .@laurenstendam and @W1lcokelderman crashed. Ten Dam's shoulder was dislocated, but it's popped back in. Both riders are back in the race. With the intermediate sprint nearing, Team Sky are now leading the peloton keeping their leader Chris Froome away from any danger. Tinkoff-Saxo and Astana are on the opposite side of the road, but out on the front. Dmitry Kozontchuk (Katusha) has now abandoned the Tour de France following this crash... Twitter has, as you'd imagine, gone into meltdown. Some are saying that the race shouldn't have been neutralised just then, others believe Christian Prudhomme did the right thing. I will remember this. Every crash we will waiting during the #tourdefrance Agree with @PatLefevere (a first). Crashing has always been part of racing until today, obviously. Presumably, though, if the race organisers didn't have enough medical staff to deal with the carnage that ripped through the peloton, then the rac had to be stopped, right? After all, the ASO have a duty of care to protect the riders. Besides, the bunch was as one so nobody actually lost anything from the race being halted. Here's another angle from that crash... The Côte de Bohisseau has been neutralised as the peloton gets moving again. Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) looks pretty cut up with the back of his jersey completely shredded. Jose Mendes (Bora) has just been spotted at the back talking to a doctor, but the Portuguese is back riding now. More here from the road with Jonathan Vaughters, the Cannondale-Garmin boss... Jack Bauer went down, but lucky and has no injuries. Rest of team fine. Others not so lucky. Everyone risks all for TdF. This is the price. After a few minutes at standstill, the riders are now rolling again. There are a number of riders who will be hurting tonight. Johan Van Summeren (Ag2r-La Mondiale) is one of those. Just hearing that the official reason for the race being stopped was down to the fact that there were so many casualties that the medical staff couldn't cope. Utter carnage. Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) is back on his bike and, for now, is still in the Tour. Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEdge), William Bonnet (FDJ - below), Laurens ten Dam (Lotto Jumbo-NL) and Tom Dumoulin (Gian-Alpecin) have all abandoned the Tour de France! Fabian Cancellara is in a bad way and could soon follow. The race has been stopped by race director Christian Prudhomme. There's been a big, big crash. The maillot jaune is down. Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEdge), too, hit the deck. The race has been neutralised for the moment. It would appear that FDJ's William Bonnet clipped wheels with another rider before crashing down at around 50kmh. Fabian Cancellara took evasive action before riding off the road and somersaulting over his handlebars. No Team Sky riders involved, they're safely on the front now. A number of Team Sky, Movistar and Astana riders are having words with Christain Prudhomme. They want to race, but the race is being slowed down. The breakaway group's lead has been whittled down to just 20sec now with 62km of the stage reamining. Not too far from the first clib of the day, the Côte de Bohissau. Tony Gallopin (Lotto-Soudal) has punctured and is being shephered back on by his team car. Jan Barta (Bora-Argon 18), who is in the breakaway for the second successive day, won the first Tour de France jersey of his career earlier today after the Czech rider sealed stage two's prestigious Telegraph Cycling Podcast Pédaleur de Charme award, as voted for by our listeners. Richard Moore claims that Barta is wearing the shirt under his team jersey right now, but I think he's fibbing. Jan Barta poses with his Pédaleur de Charme T-shirt outside his team bus in Antwerp Photo: SIMON GILL The breakaway's lead has now dropped to 2min and the peloton is now apssing through the feedzone where they are collecting their mussettes. I'm off for a brew. The peloton is still looking fairly relaxed. I think it's fair to say that today has been quiet. Very quiet. That will all change later though. We're roughly at the halway point in today's stage and the leading breakaway's advantage has increased ever so slightly. Tony Martin (Etixx-Quick Step) has punctured, but wasted little time in getting back on. By the way, I just spoke, briefly, to Daniel Friebe, author of Mountain High, as I was curious about what sort of gearing the riders would use for the final stretch of today's stage. Personally, I always ride a compact chainring on the front with a 25 tooth sprocket on the back – 28 for the high mountains. Was thinking the professionals may opt for lower gearing for any explosive kick on the Mur de Huy, but apparently not. Mario Aerts, Daniel said, used a gear as high as 39x19 when he won La Flèche Wallonne in 2002 and despite modern riders appearing more than happy to use larger cassettes on the back on the long climbs, today won't be one of those days. Laurent Jalabert reckons the final stretch today can be won pushing 39x21 or 39x19. I feel queasy. By the way, Richard Moore said he'd push 39x28 which seemed a little more sensible to me. Just under 100km to the finish for the leading quartet of Bryan Nauleau (Europcar), Serge Pauwels (MTN-Qhubeka), Jan Barta (Bora-Argon 18) and Martin Elmiger (IAM Cycling). The first climb of this year's Tour de France, the category four Côte de Bohissau, comes 50.5km from the finish before the intermediate sprint 128km into the stage. The breakaway's lead has dropped a little – down to 3min 12sec now. In the opening hour the quartet covered 45.1km. Meanwhile, here's Kilometre 0, a new show from The Telegraph Cycling Podcast, which takes listeners behind the scenes at the Tour and along for the ride on the world’s biggest bike race. KM0 will be released every weekday morning for the three weeks of the Tour. This first episode joins the podcast team of Richard Moore, Lionel Birnie and Daniel Friebe on their way to Utrecht for the start of the race. The four-man group of escapees are nearing Meensel-Kiezegem, the birthplace of Eddy Merckxx, and lead the peloton by 3min 30sec. Just spoke to Richard Moore who explained that a statue will be unveiled today in Meensel-Kiezegem to honour to the great Belgian. Merckxx, by the way, is following today's stage with in a car alongside Bernard Hinault and tonight the Cannibal is hosting a bit of a 'do' for the great and the good of cycling later tonight. Sir Gary Verity, the man behind last year's grand départ in Yorkshire, is off to Merckxx's gaff where he is planning on getting stuck into the Belgians sizeable wine collection. While the leading quartet of Bryan Nauleau (Europcar), Serge Pauwels (MTN-Qhubeka), Jan Barta (Bora-Argon 18) and Martin Elmiger (IAM Cycling) continue to increase their lead – they've edged a further 10sec ahead of the bunch – why don't we see what Sean Yates, the Tinkoff-Saxo directeur sportif, has been saying for himself? “The No 1 goal is [for Alberto Contador] to stay out of trouble. It was also the No 1 goal yesterday but we just managed to find ourselves in the right position to work with Quick Step. I wouldn't say there was a plan but yes, we have a bunch of experienced riders who know how to manage that sort of situation. "Today, it's not up to us to dictate the race. I'm not saying that Alberto is going to ride conservatively. You don't ride conservatively on the Mur de Huy with riders like [Chris] Froome, [Nairo] Quintana or [Vincenzo] Nibali by your side. But for sure guys like Nibali, who missed out yesterday will be eager to make amends. "Do I expect one of the big guys to win the stage? Well, you have guys like Valverde who already won Flèche Wallonne and holds the record for Mur de Huy, he must be a favourite today. Purito [Joachim] Rodríguez also won Flèche. I wouldn't count out riders like Peter Sagan because it's a reasonably short climb at 2.5 kms and if he has the legs he had yesterday in the sprint, you can't rule him out in spite of his weight. The same applies to Fabian [Cancellara].” Our man Tom Cary spoke to Yates, who was in "fine form" and told us that Contador is in "great shape" despite his recent exertions at the Giro d'Italia. Yates, also, played down any suggestion that Team Sky should have worked with Tinkoff-Saxo yesterday to put more time into Quintana and Nibali after the pair weer caught out by the split in the bunch. That small breakaway has now increased their lead over the bunch to 3min 20sec. Just got off the phone to Tom Cary who is heading towards the Mur de Huy after loitering around the team buses in Antwerp before the start to today's stage. Tom had a chat with Simon Bayliss, Mark Cavendish's agent and Patrick Lefevere, the manager of the Manxman's Etixx-Quick Step team. By the sound of it the mood in the Etixx-Quick Step last night was "emotional" and both Cavedish and Mark Renshaw, the leadout man who came in for some criticism following the disappointing stage finish for the Belgian team, are "very upset". Cavendish, of course, is out of contract at the end of the season but we've no news on the negotiations. Not yet. The four-man breakaway are being allowed a free rein and lead the bunch by 1min 30sec. Astana are on the front of the peloton with a clutch of Movistar boys close behind. All appears fairly relaxed at the moment. And we're off. Straight from the off a quartet of riders went off the front. Bryan Nauleau (Europcar) was the first to go and the Frenchman has now been caught by Jan Barta (Bora-Argon 18), Serge Pauwels (MTN-Qhubeka) and Martin Elmiger (IAM Cycling). Just hearing that the maillot jaune punctured in the neutralised zone. Before Christian Prudhomme drops the flag, here's a detailed look at what's on offer today... Total prize money on offer: €32,950 1st place: €8,000, 2nd: €4,000, 3rd: €2,000 with a decreasing scale down to a €200 for 20th place. Intermediate sprint: 1st place: €1,500, 2nd: €1,000, 3rd: €500. First rider over category three climb: €300. First rider over category four climb: €200. Most aggresive rider of the day: €2,000. Highest placed young rider on general classification: €500. Leaders of the team classification: €2,800. Holders of the jerseys: Yellow €350; green €300; polka dot €300; white €300. 1st place: 10 seconds, 2nd: 6sec, 3rd: 4sec. Total points on offer towards green jersey: 289 Intermediate sprint: 20, 17, 15, 13, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points respectively to the first 15 riders At the finish: 25, 22, 19, 17, 15, 13, 11, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 points for the first 15 riders across the line Total points on offer towards the polka pot jersey: 6 Category four climbs: 1 point to the first rider to cross each of the day's three climbs Category three climb: 2 and 1 point respectively to first riders to crest the Mur de Huy It's fairly warm over in Belgium – around 25°C – and the peloton is still tapping away through the neutralised section. Christian Prudhomme, the race director, is leading the pack in his red Skoda. In a few minutes he'll wave a flag at which point the race is officially under way. Stay tuned. Interesting, but utterly meaningless, fact: Peter Sagan has already not worn the green jersey for more stages than he didn't wear the green jersey in the last Tours de France combined. Alejandro Valverde (Movistar), has been talking and he says today could be a "very good day" but admitted that the stage is a very different race to La Flèche Wallonne, but remains confident. "It's a very good day for me," the Spaniard said. "I'm going to try and do my best, I hope there will be no problems with my team." Asked about the final climb of the day where we can expect fireworks, Valverde confirmed what we all know: "You've got to be very well positioned. You have to be at the front and ready to attack. You have to be in the top five when you reach the final kilometre." Right folks, the peloton is rolling through the streets of Antwerp, but at the moment it's just a processional pedal through the, quite long one at 13.3km, neutralised section. Hopefully there aren't any nasty fall here like this one yesterday... Alain Gallopin, Fabian Cancellara's assistant directeur sportif at Trek Factory Racing and uncle of Tony, the Lotto-Soudal baroudeur, reckons the maillot jaune will struggle at the end of the stage and it will be a case of limiting any losses. "Today it'll be harder. He's 15kg heavier than other riders," said Gallopin. "It makes a difference in a climb with a gradient up to 19 per cent. We'll have to limit the losses to keep the jersey or to take it back tomorrow. Today it's a mini Flèche Wallonne, tomorrow it'll be a mini Paris-Roubaix, which won't be a problem for Fabian. "With Fabian, we never know. He's a great champion. He might be less strong than before but he compensates it with his experience.” While we're waiting for the action – which is due to start at 12.10 (BST) – why don't you listen to The Telegraph Cycling Podcast team of Richard Moore, Lionel Birnie and Daniel Friebe discuss yesterday's second stage? So, how's today's stage going to play out? Well quite a number of riders took some nasty knocks yesterday, but as yet nobody has abandoned. As the stage today heads down through the Ardennes, we can expect the winner to come from a select group of riders that usually excel in La Flèche Wallonne – the one-day classic that finishes on the Mur de Huy. Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) would be most people's favourite to take the stage – the Spaniard won on the Mur earlier this year to add a third Walloon Arrow to his extensive palmarès. Dan Martin (Cannondale-Garmin), too, will also be hoping to get involved at the business end of the stage. Another rider, Joaquim Rodríguez (Katusha), who would be hoping to shine on the short, but brutal, ascent up the Mur de Huy, crashed twice yesterday and has said that he injured both his knee and hip. “It's been a day of suffering, more than in a mountain stage, Rodríguez told the Tour website. "I'm not that worried about the time lost [1min 28sec], that can happen to other riders, today or tomorrow, and there are stages to make it up if I'm fine. I'm more worried about my knee. I hope it'll be ok." Beyond the three favourites, there are a handful of riders who could do well. Michael Albasini (Orica-GreenEdge), Michal Kwiatkowski (Etixx-Quick Step) or Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) may all fancy their chances. So too could Chris Froome (Team Sky) or even defending champion Vincenzo Nibali (Astana). Incidentally, Wilco Kelderman (Lotto NL-Jumbo) currently holds the record on Strava on the Mur de Huy with a time of 3min 23sec, Romain Bardet (Ag2r-La Mondiale) is fourth on 3min 36sec and Warren Barguil (Giant-Alpecin) fifth with a time of 3min 39sec. Some were suggeting yesterday that Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) could even go for the stage, but I really can't see the Swiss being able to beat the likes of Valverde or Martin on the Mur de Huy, which though only 1.3km in length, reaches an eye-watering gradient of 19 – yes 19 – per cent at one point. Johan Museeuw, the Lion of Flanders, meanwhile, is tipping the popular Slovak for the stage... According to me @petosagan will win today #TDF2015 #huy pic.twitter.com/7d88puFpPl Morning everybody and welcome to our live rolling blog from stage three of the Tour de France. Before we get stuck into today's racing I have a small confession to make, but you must promise not to tell anybody, okay? I haven't actually seen a single minute of racing from this year's race. Not one. Over the weekend I was stuck at a wedding, but I'm back now and will be here in the hotseat through till Friday. Before we look at today's stage why don't we have a quick look at who's wearing what? Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) will start the day in the maillot jaune, his 29th day in the leader's yellow jersey after the big Swiss rider nicked a 4sec time bonus for his third place on Sunday, while André Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) will be dressed in green as leader in the points classification competition. Incredibly, the German sprinter has never worn the maillot vert despite having won stages in every Tour since 2011 – the year he debuted in the race. Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) wears the white jersey, or maillot blanc, as leader in the young riders classification. There's no leader in the mountains classification, but later today the first polka dot jersey (maillot à pois) will be issued. By the way, there are just four categorised climbs today – the Côte de Bohissau, Côte d'Ereffe, Côte de Cherave and Mur de Huy with the latter being where the stage will be decided. Here's what the stage looks like... Welcome to our coverage of stage three of the Tour de France. John MacLeary will be along shortly to talk you through the day, in the meantime let's look in detail at what Tom Cary had to say about yesterday's stage: It was flagged up as a stressful, dangerous day for Chris Froome (Team Sky) and his overall race ambitions, while for Mark Cavendish (Etixx-QuickStep), it was seen as the perfect opportunity to get his Tour de France up and running with a first stage win since 2013. In the event, it worked out the other way around for both men. On a wild and windy day on the Dutch coast, Froome and his Tinkoff-Saxo rival Alberto Contador both made it into the front group and ended up putting a handy 1min 27sec into the two other members of the so-called Big Four: Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) and Nairo Quintana (Movistar). • Tour de France 2015, stage two - as it happened For Cavendish, though, there was only misery and despair as he was left to sprint from well over 300m and ended up being caught and passed, not only by stage winner Andre Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) and second placed Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo), but also, disastrously for Cavendish's Etixx-QuickStep team, by Fabian Cancellara (Trek). Greipel centre wins ahead of Mark Cavendish (right) and Peter Sagan (left) The bonus seconds won by the Swiss cost Cavendish's team-mate Tony Martin his first ever Tour leader's jersey as Cancellara took the maillot jaune in a sixth different Tours. Cue rancour and recriminations all round. • Curse of Cav continues: Five things we learned “It was a huge f--- up. It was an historical f--- up, the last 500 metres,” said Brian Holm, the Etixx-Quick Step sporting director. In the aftermath Cavendish not only appeared to hit out at his leadout, accusing Mark Renshaw of leaving him "too early", he also attacked the "imbeciles" who suggested that he might have taken his foot off the gas as he approached the line, costing Martin the yellow jersey. "Look at this photo," Cavendish tweeted, posting a screen grab of the final moments. "If I could hang on for 3rd, I could hang on for the win ... Some imbeciles think cycling is a computer game. Problem is, social media & TV are platforms for them to be heard. Gutted for @tonymartin85. Congratulations @AndreGreipel." Given the fact that one of those who suggested that Cavendish had stopped sprinting was none other than his team boss Patrick Lefevere, and given the fact that Lefevere was fuming at losing not only the race win but also the yellow and green jerseys, and given the fact that Cavendish is currently in contract negotiations with Etixx-QuickStep - with his estimated £2.1 million a year deal up at the end of the year - this was inflammatory stuff. "I am not happy at all," Lefevere admitted. "We lost yesterday [when Martin finished second in the opening stage time trial], we lose today and probably this was our last chance to take the yellow jersey. "We were ready for the stage win and the yellow jersey but Renshaw and Cav were too early at the front. Unfortunately Cavendish stopped sprinting and this costs Tony the jersey. "Cavendish?" he added. "I think he should be disappointed. We were the most hard-working team but we finish empty-handed." Cavendish was certainly disappointed, although not so much with himself. "I think Mark went too early and kind of left me hanging," he said. "The day Cancellara beats me in a sprint I’ve gone too long. I’ve gassed it." Further sprint opportunities await, potentially in Tuesday's cobbled stage to Cambrai, but more likely Wednesday's fifth stage to Amiens. Until Cavendish gets that monkey off his back, though, it will be tense. • Merckx backs Cavendish to beat his record of 34 wins As for Froome, the 2013 champion was delighted with how the day panned out. For much of the afternoon, torrential rain and heavy winds buffeted the fans lining the causeways of the small interlinked islands of Zeeland. So fierce was the gale, there were even suggestions that the race might need to be neutralised in the final kilometres. Thankfully that was not necessary. The riders did hit the storm around 50km from the finish, and for a few minutes it was absolute bedlam. First Quintana found himself the wrong side of a split, in a chasing group around a minute behind the leaders. Then, to Froome's delight, Nibali was dropped. Chris Froome, Tony Martin and Alberto Contador ride in the pack It was then just a question of how big the time gap would be. Froome had two riders - Ian Stannard and Geraint Thomas - with him for company. And while Sky remained content to let Etixx-QuickStep do the lion's share of the work, they also worked with Contador's Tinkoff-Saxo team and Tejay van Garderen's BMC to exploit the situation. By the end the gap was up to 1min 27sec. "It was chaos out there for a few minutes," Froome said. "One second he (Nibali) was right next to me and then ... I couldn’t actually believe it when I heard that he was distanced. But that’s the nature of the racing when you are in Holland. "Of course, G and Stannard ... this is their playground, this kind of classic-style race with the crosswinds and the rain. That’s what Yogi [Stannard] was born to do. "This is a huge advantage for us now," he added, "to sit in this position after one flat day. But it’s a three week race and things do change on a daily basis." Monday's 159.5km stage sees the riders cross into Belgium and ends with a punchy climb up the Mur de Huy, the famous ascent used each spring during the Fleche-Wallone one-day classic.

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Follow latest news, images and results of the third stage of the Tour de France on Monday July 6, 2015, from Antwerp &ndash; Huy

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Thursday is the first day of the NFL season. So, naturally, Tim Tebow snatched the headlines. Mets are signing Tim Tebow to a minor-league contract, an MLB source tells ESPN. Instructional League or Arizona Fall League next for Tebow. — Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 8, 2016 We have signed OF @TimTebow to a minor league contract. He will participate in the #Mets Instructional League. pic.twitter.com/I6gmW0b6hY — New York Mets (@Mets) September 8, 2016 As the New York Daily News reports, this means Tebow will head back to the state of Florida, as the Mets' Instructional League plays out of the team's spring training home in Port St. Lucie. So yeah, later this month, Tebow will again take The Sunshine State by storm. The internet went in on the Tebow signing. Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, Step right up and greet the Mets! https://t.co/xlOuTdfIuM — Joe Giglio (@JoeGiglioSports) September 8, 2016 Mets have signed Tim Tebow. Not only have they signed a guy who has never scored, but he's never even gotten past 1st base. — Not Bill Walton (@NotBillWalton) September 8, 2016 Minor League pitchers who will face Tim Tebow react to him signing with the Mets pic.twitter.com/sgJBCl7R7R — Shooter McGavin (@ShooterMcGavin_) September 8, 2016 I would hate to see Wilmer Flores Emotion after being replaced by Tim Tebow. — Bradley Craig Hinton (@Bradley_Hinton) September 8, 2016 Mr. Met reportedly furious about Mets hiring new mascot Tim Tebow https://t.co/BWLOxljRes — SportsPickle (@sportspickle) September 8, 2016 The Mets signed Tebow because he will apparently only play in blue and orange. — Tim Reynolds (@ByTimReynolds) September 8, 2016 The @Mets have zero to lose in signing @TimTebow Yes @MetsGM has been super in various deals he has made! https://t.co/aceUGPr2lm — Dick Vitale (@DickieV) September 8, 2016 If Mets really do give Tim Tebow a Minor League deal, they might as well sign Joe Hart and Jack Wilshere while they are at it — Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) September 8, 2016 hear tebow field was narrowed to 5 teams before he decided on mets. so interest was significant. — Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) September 8, 2016 The Mets only signed Tim Tebow to distract everyone from the fact that the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals. — RUSS BENGT$ON (@russbengtson) September 8, 2016 TEBOW: Before I sign I have one question.ALDERSON: Yes?TEBOW: Are Mr. Met and Mrs. Met really married?ALDERSON: — RUSS BENGT$ON (@russbengtson) September 8, 2016 Tebow as a baseball player? Total lottery ticket. Tebow as an attention-grabbing novelty? Total sure thing. Do not confuse the two. — Marc Carig (@MarcCarig) September 8, 2016 When the Braves are in the lead for the Tebow "sweepstakes" but a DIVISIONAL RIVAL saves you from the circus pic.twitter.com/BfisqIxdt1 — Demetrius (@fergoe) September 8, 2016 Tebow ready to make his Mets debut like pic.twitter.com/5sE5C9J20d — Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) September 8, 2016 HUH ? why is tebow willing to go to minor leagues to further baseball career when he was unwilling to play cfl/arena https://t.co/hNEVjhi2Pd — Mike Mayock (@MikeMayock) September 8, 2016 Well, at least now the Mets have a prayer. #Tebow — Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) September 8, 2016 This'll be worth it just to watch Tebow circumcise Mister Met. — Drew Magary (@drewmagary) September 8, 2016 The Mets win the Tebow Sweepstakes! We've just gone from pure luck to divine intervention — KFC (@KFCBarstool) September 8, 2016 With Tim Tebow and Bobby Bonilla at the heart of the order, no team will stand a chance. https://t.co/I2Ud6oNS2B — SportsPickle (@sportspickle) September 8, 2016 Haven't been this embarrassed to be Mets fan since it was revealed owner Fred Wilpon was using team as a Bernie Madoff slush fund. — Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) September 8, 2016 The Jets...then the Mets...you're up, Nets! https://t.co/PCyZ8JtvTg — Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) September 8, 2016 Tim Tebow has signed with the Mets. The natural next step in his baseball career is for his elbow to start hurting. — Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) September 8, 2016 For New York, this marks the unlikely return of Tebow. After his playoff run with Denver, in 2012, Tebow was shipped to the Jets, where he played 12 games, threw six complete passes and rushed for 102 yards. New York beat writers held nothing back reacting to the Tebow news of 2016. Tim Tebow once told Rex Ryan he was tired of being used only on up-the-gut draws. So Terry Collins, no up-the-gut draws. — Ian O'Connor (@Ian_OConnor) September 8, 2016 In the instructional league or the AFL, Tim Tebow isn't taking at-bats away from anyone with any more potential than he has. — Jared Diamond (@jareddiamond) September 8, 2016 Brodie Van Wagenen, Tim Tebow's agent, also represents Yoenis Cespedes. Just thought I'd point that out. — Jared Diamond (@jareddiamond) September 8, 2016 Can confirm that Mets have minor league deal with Tim Tebow. The man does love orange and blue. — Tyler Kepner (@TylerKepner) September 8, 2016 Tebow is ineligible for this postseason. He needed to join the organization before Sept. 1. https://t.co/AiBsGfItSd — Adam Rubin (@AdamRubinESPN) September 8, 2016 Most amazing athletic feat of Michael Jordan's career? Hitting over .200 in AA at age 30. Seriously. Long way to go for #Tebow. — Sweeny Murti (@YankeesWFAN) September 8, 2016 This was taped before Tebow signed with the Mets, but it needs to be seen: Jon Gruden: "I could get @TimTebow and come back to the league and win some games" (via @FirstTake)https://t.co/8Krys63mit — NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) September 7, 2016 -- Follow Jeffrey Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband. Baseball, Denver Broncos, Florida Gators, Football, Heisman Trophy, Instructional League, MiLB, Minor League Baseball, MLB, NCAAF, New England Patriots, New York Jets, New York Mets, NFL, Philadelphia Eagles, Tim Tebow

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Tim Tebow signs with the Mets and the internet voices its opinion on the former quarterback's baseball career.

http://web.archive.org/web/20111108222012id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2011/11/07/harvard-students-welcome-return-facebook-ceo/ZCquCbFgYEj9wcdhm29pbN/story.html

Harvard University senior Michael Wong, founder of an online calendar for the Harvard community, wouldn’t miss this opportunity. Neither would sophomore Zachary Hamed, who created a website that helps students prepare financial aid applications. Both will be among an invitation-only audience of 200 students to meet today with Mark Zuckerberg, the cofounder and chief executive of Facebook and perhaps Harvard’s best-known dropout since Microsoft Corp.’s Bill Gates. To recruit talent for Facebook, Zuckerberg is making his first official visit to Harvard since he left seven years ago for Silicon Valley. Since then, the social media site has become an Internet giant, and an example that has prompted students and faculty at Harvard to embrace technology entrepreneurship. “If you’ve seen the movie ‘Social Network,’ you know that when Zuckerberg attended a talk by Bill Gates it was a pivotal moment,’’ Wong said. “This could be another iteration of that. The next Mark Zuckerberg could be in the audience.’’ Zuckerberg famously founded Facebook in his dorm room, with the help of friends. Today’s Harvard students are more likely to refine their projects through events and classes offered by the school to foster future Zuckerbergs. Zachary Hamed gets his ticket to meet with Mark Zuckerberg from Hatie Kerwin in Harvard’s career services office. A number of projects are launched during the annual weeklong, midwinter “Hack Harvard’’ incubator program, when students are taught how to translate ideas into business models. A start-up competition, the Harvard Innovation Challenge, annually awards $10,000 to two projects. The introductory computer science course CS50 is now the second-most-popular class on campus, attracting more than 600 students. And in less than two weeks, the university is opening its Innovation Lab next to the Harvard Business School, with a mission to promote innovation and entrepreneurship campuswide. Hamed, 18, is one of the students Zuckerberg may be looking for. A computer science major, Hamed created AidAide.com, a “TurboTax for financial aid,’’ during his freshman year. Last summer, he partnered with a Chicago-based start-up called Alltuition.com and accompanied the larger site’s team to an “accelerator’’ event called 500Startups in Palo Alto, California’s white-hot center of technological innovation. “I loved it,’’ he said. “It was an infectious place to be.’’ At the end of the summer, Hamed could have stayed in Chicago and worked on his project. He decided to return to school. “I had more to learn here,’’ he said. One factor that kept him at Harvard was its expanded commitment to entrepreneurship. This year, for example, Hamed is serving as a student coordinator at the Innovation Lab. “It’s really a different environment from when Zuckerberg was here,’’ Hamed said. “He was working with his roommates in his dorm room; I’ve been able to work with an innovation lab. I’ve talked to venture capitalists; I’ve looked at term sheets. I have office space and people to work with. “If Zuckerberg were here today, I bet he would have stayed a little longer,’’ he said. Even the founder of Facebook might agree. Speaking at Stanford University last month, Zuckerberg said, “If I were starting now, I would have just stayed in Boston.’’ Zuckerberg did not respond to requests for comment. Wong, 21, could also be a strong candidate for Facebook. A physics and computer science major, Wong started EventPlease.com after he found it frustrating to publicize events across the campus. One problem, he discovered, was that Facebook does not offer a comprehensive guide to all campus events, just the ones that your Facebook friends are recommending. So Wong created a centralized portal where students can post events such as concerts and interest group meetings. Ultimately, the events can be saved to users’ Facebook accounts, further widening their exposure. Wong said he “isn’t quite happy’’ with EventPlease yet, but he’s already been contacted by two colleges that would like to implement it. “Sometimes I think that the idea might have potential,’’ he said. “There’s a lot of energy and community’’ around these kinds of projects at Harvard, Wong said. Students don’t have to study computers to follow the Zuckerberg path. Senior Seth Riddley, 25, literally woke up in the middle of the night with the idea for a website that encouraged students to have lunch with a randomly chosen fellow student as a way of getting out of a social rut. Riddley, who studies the history of science, figured out how to put the site on the Web. Then a favorable mention in the Harvard Crimson sparked hundreds of lunch requests. Versions of the site are now running at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. Working on the project, Riddley said, “thrust me inadvertently into the entrepreneurial community. Now I’m really interested in it.’’ After graduation, Riddley is hoping to work with a nonprofit organization that serves people with mental illness, he said. “It’s not techie,’’ he said, “but now that I’m learning how to start something and gain support for a project and pitch an idea, I’m going to approach it with that start-up spirit.’’ Two students who won’t be attending the Zuckerberg event are Axel Hansen and Jonah Varon, both 20, who are taking a year off to work on a project they developed during their freshman and sophomore years at Harvard: Newsle.com. Newsle is a social media site that allows users to track actual news events involving people you know, the kind of events that make it into newspapers, blogs, and newsletters, rather than wait for news to be posted by friends, as on Facebook. “One big change that came after Zuckerberg is that now it’s OK to start your own company as an undergraduate,’’ Hansen said. “We got a lot of encouragement,’’ Varon added. Last year, when they were sophomores, the partners won a $10,000 innovation grant from Harvard. After exams, they moved to San Francisco. They’re still there. As the summer came to a close, they decided to take the academic year off to work on their project. David L Ryan / Globe Staff Photo Zachary Hamed shows his ticket for the Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg. “At some point we made the transition from a student project to a start-up,’’ Varon said in a phone interview. “Since then, we haven’t been thinking a whole lot about school.’’ Both said that if they were still at Harvard, they would have tried to attend the Zuckerberg event, but that he would not have had much of a chance to woo them. In fact, they are looking to hire a programmer themselves - a big step for a potential next Facebook. But it’s tough to hire in San Francisco, where there is so much competition for tech talent. “It’s frustrating because they say hire from your network,’’ Hansen said. “And most of the people in our network are still in school.’’

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Mark Zuckerberg is giving a recruiting talk at Harvard, seven years after he dropped out to start Facebook. His arrival highlights the current state of technological entrepreneurship at Harvard.

http://web.archive.org/web/20121112074004id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/30-hour-wait-fuel-offers-plenty-intrigue-gas-article-1.1199283?

Downtown Ronnie Califano waited 30 hours on a Brooklyn gasoline line — and got no gas. The marathon started last Friday when Califano’s daughter told him a Gulf attendant on Bath Ave. and Bay Parkway said a gas truck was coming at 8 p.m. Saturday. “I figure I got the inside scoop so I got on line at 2 p.m. Saturday,” Califano said. “Figured I could make some calls for my doo-wop oldies Christmas show fund-raiser starring Jay Black at St. Athanasius Church on Dec 1. It’s sold-out, but still a million details for catering, security, parking, VIP seating. I set up my office for a few hours in my car on the gas line.” By 4:30 p.m. Califano, 60, said he knew which guys on line had prostate problems because they started scrambling for places to relieve themselves. “The Gulf station has a Dunkin’ Donuts and people sipped coffees. But the bathroom was locked, natch. So guys started looking for bushes, trees, big trucks to hide behind.” By 6:30, temperatures plunged and car heaters whirred. “That burns precious gas,” said Califano. “But everybody figures the magic Gulf truck will soon be here.” By 8 p.m. still no gas truck. “But a Shell truck makes a delivery across the street where there’s another line, which gives me hope,” Califano said. People turned off their engines, got out of their cars and formed cliques. The Town Car livery drivers talked shop. The truckers compared notes. “Neighborhood guys like me yakked about the old days in 1978 when Bensonhurst was all Italian and the owner of every station was a third cousin who filled your tank. Now gas stations are minisupermarkets with 800 area-code numbers they answer on another continent and nobody knows from nobody no more.” The gas line became an eight-block long small town that took on a life of its own. “I’m in six hours when I see a guy storm to the passenger window of the car two cars in front of me,” Califano said. “He reaches in, smacking the woman passenger, trying to drag her out the window. I’m ready to grab him, but he’s screaming at the driver to mind his business, that she’s his wife! The driver spins the wheel and burns rubber outta there with the wife half-hanging outta the window and her husband chasing after the car down Bath Ave. I gain one car length in six hours.” Just after 9 p.m. the first profiteers arrive, selling empty gas cans. “I ask, ‘How much,’ ” Califano said. “Guy says, ‘$35.’ I ask if he Simonizes my car for that, too. But people bought ’em right up. Now other guys come selling gas in 5-gallon Poland Spring water-cooler bottles for $60 — $12 a gallon — off the back of a truck with cardboard Jersey plates. I woulda paid $60 a gallon if I knew it was real gas but I have no idea if it’s gas, Log Cabin syrup or Vitalis in there. People bought it all.”

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Man who thought he had the inside scoop got in a Brooklyn gas line six hours ahead of a phantom 8 p.m. delivery, but it did not come. So, he waited and waited and waited some more. Conversations abounded, bladders gave out, car heaters whirred from overwork and a heated altercation ensued. And still no gas.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140521185629id_/http://time.com/107636/keyboard-shortcuts/

The # signs in the above shortcuts represent different hotkeys that perform certain. For instance, if you were using Internet Explorer on the PC, you could jump to the Facebook home page by pressing Alt + 2, then Enter. In addition, there are a few regular shortcuts that can make browsing Facebook even faster. j/k = scroll up/down between News Feed stories l = like or unlike a story c = comment on a story s = share a story p = post a new status update Typing a question mark will open the full list of Facebook shortcuts. Are you a fan of YouTube? We’ve recently started building more videos ourselves here at Buffer, so we’re excited to learn more about how everything works. We also love watching cool vids! Here are some ways we’ve found to watch even faster. 1 = jump ahead to 10% through a video 5 = jump ahead to 50% Any other single digit = jump ahead to a certain percentage through a video (e.g., 3 = 30%, 4 = 40%) 0 = starts the video over at 0:00 <Spacebar> = pauses/unpauses the video Here are even more shortcuts for YouTube, courtesy of Hong Kiat. Like most Google products, Google+ has some handy shortcuts for faster use. Try any of these from inside your Google+ account. left arrow = Navigates to the menu at the left side of the page (e.g., Home, Photos), and you can scroll this list with the up/down arrows. / = selects the search box at the top of the page j/k = moves up/down in the stream You can access the full list of Google+ shortcuts from any G+ page by typing a question mark. This is one of our favorite tips to use with Buffer. When you’ve installed the Buffer browser extension, you can activate your Buffer composer with a simple hotkey from any website at all. The shortcut is customizable in the Buffer extension settings, but it defaults to this: We use WordPress every day for composing our blog posts here at Buffer, so we’ve picked up a few tricks along the way. If you ever want to view the full list of keyboard shortcuts inside your WordPress editor, click on the question mark icon from the editor menu. Here are a few of my personal favorites: <Command>+ 2, 3, or 4 = Heading 2, 3, or 4 wherever your cursor currently is <Alt>+<Shift>+a = add a link <Alt>+<Shift>+m = insert an image (I use distraction-free writing mode when I’m composing in WordPress, and there’s a neat shortcut that lets you resize the width of the distraction-free editor. Press <Control>+plus/minus to change the width.) To see the full list of WordPress shortcuts, you can click the question mark icon in the menu bar of your post editor, or use the shortcut <Alt>+<Shift>+h. I’ve found Pocket to be an ideal part of my researching and reading habit, and it’s great to learn new ways to make this tool even more useful. Here are a couple. <Command>+1 = go to homepage <Command>+2 = go to favorites <Command>+3 = go to archive The complete list of keyboard shortcuts can be found here. We are pretty big Apple fans at Buffer. Our setups include Macbook Airs and Macbook Pros, and we’ve learned some pretty nifty tricks to fly through our workflows just as fast as possible. Here are a few of our favorite tips: <Command>+<Spacebar> = opens Spotlight search so you can search your Mac for anything (files, apps, etc.) <Command>+up/down = scroll to top/bottom of a page or document <Command>+h = hides the active window <Command>+<Tab> = switches between open applications <Command>+~ = switches between windows in the same app (e.g., multiple browser windows) <Command>+d = functions as the delete key <Command>+<Shift>+4, then <Spacebar> = the first part of this shortcut lets you take a screenshot of anything you see. Just press the hotkeys then click and drag the crosshair cursor over the area you want to grab. If you’d like to take a screenshot of an entire window, press spacebar once the crosshair cursor appears. Here is a huge list of even more shortcuts for Mac. Before joining Buffer, I worked at a company that exclusively used PCs, so I learned a number of different ways to work quickly in Windows. I get the sense that a lot of you might be on PCs, too, so if there are any favorite shortcuts I overlooked here, please add them to the comments! <Alt>+home/end = scrolls to the top/bottom of a window/page <Alt>+<Tab> = switch between open windows F2 = rename a selected file or folder <Windows>+<Print Screen> = take a screenshot ands save it to a “screenshots” folder in your pictures <Windows>+m = minimize all windows <Control>+scroll = in windows explorer, this cycles through viewing options and changes folder sizes There are tons more Windows keyboard shortcuts, too. When I’m not writing in WordPress, I’m writing in Google Docs. A lot of the most useful keyboard shortcuts in Docs are similar to the common ones you use in a lot of other places: copy, cut, paste, etc. That being said, here are three unique ones that save me a bit of time. <Command>+<Option>+m = insert a comment Here is the full list of Google Docs keyboard shortcuts. Most browsers can be sped up the same way with similar shortcuts across each. You’re likely familiar with a few of these. Any of your favorites that I missed? <Command>+n = opens a new window <Command>+t = opens a new tab <Command>+w = closes the current tab <Command>+<Shift>+t = opens the most recently closed tab(s) <Command>+<Shift>+n = opens a new Incognito window (great for seeing how someone else might experience a page if they’re not logged in as you) <Command>+l = places your cursor in the address bar <Command>+plus/minus = increases/decreases the zoom on the page (<Command>+zero resets everything to default) Dropbox has been a huge help for me to digitize parts of my life that used to take up boxes and boxes in my office. Now that there’s a whole bunch of files there, it’s been fun to figure out how to surf them even faster. Here are a few tips: left = go up a folder right = open a selected folder <Enter> = download or open a file F2 = rename a selected file You can access the full list of Dropbox keyboard shortcuts by typing a question mark within Dropbox. Feedly is a favorite integration for many of us who use Buffer, and it’s one of the most popular RSS readers out there. The keyboard shortcuts are really unique and interesting, too. These only require keying in a letter or series of letters. No Command, Control, Alt, or Shift needed! gg = view the magic bar (like a quick navigation to all your feeds + search) gl = go to saved articles m = mark as read s = save for later b = add to Buffer The complete list of Feedly shortcuts can be viewed at any time by typing a question mark. You might use Evernote for your curation or saving strategy. It makes clipping and saving from just about anywhere—browser, phone, photos, handwritten notes—super easy and useful. A number of us on the Buffer team use it regularly. Here are some top shortcuts: <Command>+n = create a new note <Command>+<Shift>+n = create a new notebook <Control>+<Command>+n = create new tag (Windows users try <Control>+<Shift>+t) Here are even more Evernote shortcuts, courtesy of dashkards. Do you listen to music while you work? Turns out there are a number of neat benefits in regards to music and the brain, so connecting with services like Spotify could help you work a little faster. Here are some quick tips: <Enter> = play selected row Click here to see the full list of keyboard shortcuts for Spotify. Soundcloud is another source of great music to optimize your brain for creativity; plus Soundcloud hosts a number of podcasts and unique audio tracks that are uploaded from users. Here are some ways to work with Soundcloud even faster: <Shift>+left/right = play next/previous track l = like the playing track r = repost the playing track You can see the full list of Soundcloud shortcuts by pressing H from inside Soundcloud. If you’re into Tumblr for visual content, memes, or laughs, you can browse through your dashboard lightning fast with these shortcuts. j/k = move forward/backward through your posts l = like the current post n = view notes for the current post arrow right/left = go to the next/previous page <Alt>+r = reblog the current post Even more Tumblr keyboard shortcuts and fun tips can be found here. Touch gestures in iOS are so fun and helpful to use, I just couldn’t help but place one here. An iPhone/iPad is not necessarily a big part of my workflow, but I definitely find myself looking for neat ways to use these devices better. Here is my favorite find so far: Double-click <Home> to bring up a card view of open applications, then touch a card and swipe up to close the app. You can also do a four-finger swipe up to pull up the same card view (the four-finger swipe is my go-to move). I’d love to hear any tips you might have in the comments. I’m always on the look out for more ways to work smarter!

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Little epiphanies like these are hugely satisfying when I’m trying to squeeze just a little more time out of each and every day.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140919213107id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/sep/10/architecture

Eileen Gray is the mystery figure of 20th-century modern architecture. How did the Irish-Scots aristocrat from Enniscorthy, County Wexford, become an originator of Parisian art deco? Even stranger, how, without any training as an architect, did she reinvent herself as one of the superstars of quite a different style, the architect of modernist buildings of a reticence so powerful they take the breath away? The answer must lie in Gray's exceptional contrariness as a woman and as an artist. "To create," she once said, "one must first question everything." There is a sense of metamorphosis in Gray's work. Her rooms are designed to be flexible, impermanent, responsive to the demands of the moment. Screens can be shifted to redefine the spaces. Little drawers pivot outwards to reveal their inner contents. A storage cupboard drops down to provide a writing surface. A mirror is suspended on a pole that swivels. All is movement, realignment, possibility. The same is true of Gray's life. She was a springer of surprises. To start with, Gray, who took the lead in redefining architecture as a plausible profession for her sex, derives her surname not from her father but her mother, who in 1895 inherited the Scottish title Baroness Gray in her own right. Her father changed his name to Smith-Gray by royal licence and the four children were from then on known as Gray. The unlikeliness continues with her choice of lacquer-making, an obscure oriental art that is technically hard to master, at a time when her contemporary craftswomen were concentrating on more conventional pursuits: bookbinding, weaving, embroidery, jewellery making. Nor was Gray ever involved in the arts and crafts guilds or supportive female groupings of the early 1900s. She always worked alone, and this fastidious apartness was the basis of her originality. She studied at the Slade School of Design, but did not stay in England long. She had a wonderful ability to pack up and leave with no sentimental waverings. Gray had first gone to Paris in 1901, with two friends from the Slade, to take classes in drawing and returned to Paris permanently five years later, moving into the apartment in rue Bonaparte that she kept all her life. She was soon more Parisian than the Parisians, developing a style of decoration that came to be seen as quintessentially French. Eileen Gray's work in Paris before the first world war is rarefied, exotic. She developed her skills in lacquer through meeting and learning from a young Japanese craftsman, Seizo Sugawara, who came from Jahoji, a village in northern Japan famous for its lacquer work. Gray filled her notebooks with colour recipes and methods of applying and layering the lacquer, seeing how she might draw on these ancient techniques to create a modern art form. Her screens and panels are abstract, with complex, swirling forms. The most marvellous of these, Le Destin (1914), is a four-fold screen in deep red lacquer on which a mysterious drama is enacted between two blue-grey naked youths and an old man wrapped in a misty silver shroud. Le Destin was acquired by the couturier Jacques Doucet, bibliophile and modern art collector, an early admirer of Gray's work. After the war her interiors still tended to the sumptuous, though never to the vulgar. Gray's art deco was never lush or louche. She had a deeply moral disapproval of the overdone, covering over the "disgraceful mouldings" in the apartment in the Rue de Lota she was commissioned to design for Madame Mathieu Lévy, who, as Suzanne Talbot, was one of the most fashionable modistes in Paris at the time. Gray had been excited by Bakst's designs for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and the salon in the Lévy apartment is her own Schéhérazade, a finely judged ensemble of lacquered panels, matt gold cushions, a red lacquer serpent chair and one of her most beautiful designs, the Pirogue boat-bed, burnished like a barque for Cleopatra in lacquer and silver leaf. (The Pirogue was the show-stopper in the V&A museum's art deco exhibition of 2003.) Very little is known of Gray's emotional life. Characteristically, she burnt all letters and personal mementoes in old age. But it seems that from her early years in France, Gray was on the fringes of the raffish intellectual Paris-Lesbos scene. She had a long, close friendship with Gaby Bloch, companion-manager of the American Marie Louise Fuller, alias Loïe, of twirling dance celebrity. She was later to be seen swanning around with Damia, the green-eyed, gravel-voiced singer whose popular "chansons dramatiques et tristes" had made her the Edith Piaf of her day. Gray escorted Damia to restaurants and nightclubs, elegant in her Poiret evening coats and Lanvin hats. She knew Nathalie Barney, Romaine Brooks and Gertrude Stein. But she never quite joined up with the Café Flore society of Americans in Paris. They were probably too raucous. The American photographer Thérèse Bonney recalled Gray's extreme inwardness: "Of all the people I knew in the world, she gave the feeling of complete consecration." Gray's rebirth as total modernist began in the mid-1920s. By now she had opened her own shop in Paris, in the fashionable Rue du Faubourg St Honoré. The shop was called Galérie Jean Désert, the name of an invented male proprietor and reference to Gray's then-recent desert travels in north Africa with the weaver Evelyn Wyld. A female furniture designer in Paris was a rarity, but a cognoscenti customer base of writers, politicians, artists and architects was gradually created. Jean Désert sold the abstract geometric rugs designed by Gray and woven in Wyld's Rue Visconti workshops. Her evolution was now recognised by other European modernists. Gray had her first major public showing in the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in 1923. Although the sombrely sophisticated Bedroom-Boudoir de Monte Carlo was described by one critic as suitable for Dr Caligari's daughter, Gray was heartened to receive an enthusiastic postcard from the Dutch modernist architect JP Oud, a founder of De Stijl. Her subsequent display at the Salon d'Automne was praised by her fellow exhibitors Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens. In 1924 the Dutch avant-garde magazine Wendingen referred to her as being "at the centre of the modern movement". She was seen as a designer with new visions for the future, demonstrating that "the formidable influence of technology has transformed our sensibilities". Gray was the model of the self-made architect: "I started really by myself, sort of making plans of buildings." Her architecture evolved without the training or the tradition of the large office. She was never the woman in the shadow of the maestro, as Charlotte Perriand was with Le Corbusier or Lilly Reich with Mies van der Rohe. Her first house, named cryptically E-1027, was designed in collaboration with and indeed for her sometime lover, Jean Badovici, the Romanian architect and writer. But she did not allow him to get the upper hand. The plan was credited to "Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici". When the design was shown in a later exhibition as the work of Badovici with furnishings by Gray, on the assumption that women were by nature merely choosers of the curtains, she was understandably enraged. E-1027 was built on the cliffs at Roquebrune, a clear white L-shaped house of exquisite simplicity. The south of France was then a favoured place for modernists, with its wild coast scenery and connotations of escape. Gray had loved the Riviera since she first discovered St Tropez, then quite undeveloped, on her early travels before the first world war. E-1027 developed as a "living organism", like the flora and fauna burgeoning around it. The furnishings were integral to the architecture, in Gray's apparently casual seaside "camping style". Most of the furniture for which Gray is now so famous - the Bibendum chair, the Transat chair - was designed for the new house. The E-1027 circular glass table, adjustable in height by means of a sliding pole, was evolved for Eileen's sister, who liked breakfasting in bed. Though E-1027 was startlingly modern in its day, Gray was never a doctrinaire modernist. She stood apart from the dogmatic male dominated Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). What she achieved was different, and it was her own. Colin St John Wilson, architect of the British library and a Gray aficionado, has defined her "unique gift for turning the practical into the poetic", her intense "perceptions of habitability". Gray took the forms of modernism and invested them with a perfectionist tendresse. In the hall of E-1027, "Entrez Lentement" was spelled out with a kind of gentle jokiness. When she used industrial materials it was with the lightest touch. This makes all the crasser Le Corbusier's later desecration of E-1027 by painting nine large, lewdly coloured frescoes on the pristine walls, an act Gray called violation. Le Corbusier reputedly added insult to injury by painting in the nude. Between 1932 and 1934 Gray built her own house, Tempe à Pailla, nearby at Castellar. She and Jean Badovici had by now parted. Gray continued planning buildings but little materialised. It was only in the 1970s that Gray was rediscovered. Retrospectives in London and New York revealed her as a designer of intrepid intelligence. She attracted younger fans, among them Bruce Chatwin, who tracked her down in Paris. He remarked on two gouache maps of Patagonia she had painted on the walls of her apartment. Gray, by then old, blind and fragile, said: "Go there for me." When Chatwin returned, he wrote In Patagonia. Gray died in 1976 at the age of 98. Can we really consider her as one of the giants of modernism on the strength of just two buildings? Gray herself, who regarded her late fame with a charming cynicism, would have said: "Mais c'est absurde." Yet her vision of the future - "the future projects light, the past only shadows" - was compelling. She humanised the architectural world. We need to see her as the precursor of such solo women architects as Eva Jiricna and Zaha Hadid. View Gray in broader terms as the builder of the home, literally the homemaker, and you have a potent image for the dawning feminism of the mid-20th century. · An exhibition of Eileen Gray's work is at the Design Museum, London SE1, from September 17. Details: 0870 833 9955.

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As visionary as she was contrary, Eileen Gray ranks among the giants of modernism, thanks to just two buildings.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150824112606id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/26/asian-shares-seen-mixed-ahead-of-japan-data-deluge.html

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index finished a tick above the flatline, throwing away earlier gains as the dollar-yen pulled back, but held on to a fresh 15-year high. The key stock index has finished at multi-year highs five times over the past six sessions. Among the raft of data released before market open, the closely-watched consumer inflation eased for a sixth straight month in January, pushing the Bank of Japan further from its 2 percent target. Stripping out the effects of a sale tax hike, the nationwide consumer price index (CPI) rose a less-than-expected 0.2 percent, down from 0.5 percent in December. Exporter stocks finished mixed; Automakers such as Honda, Suzuki Motor and Toyota Motor made losses between 0.5 to 1.2 percent, while Sony and Panasonic held on to gains of over 2 percent each. Yamaha Motor advanced 2 percent on news that it aims to start making and selling two-seater cars in Europe. Read MoreThink you're bullish on Nikkei? Check out Goldman China's Shanghai Composite index closed up 0.4 percent to a one-month high, as markets digested news that five Chinese city and rural commercial banks have been approved by the central bank to cut their reserve requirement ratio (RRR) by an extra 50 basis points late Wednesday. However, a broadly dismal picture in the financial sector capped the bourse's advances. Bank of China slid 0.7 percent, while Bank of Communications and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China shed 0.5 and 0.2 percent each. Founder Securities and Citic Securities lost over 1 percent each. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index closed down 0.3 percent. Major jewellery retailer Chow Tai Fook plunged over 5 percent after reporting weaker same-store sales during the recent Lunar New Year holiday. Chinese carmaker BYD lost nearly 3 percent after it posted a 21 percent drop in its 2014 preliminary full-year net profit late Thursday. Focus was also on shares of Standard Chartered, which rallied 2.4 percent, after news of a leadership shake-up.

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Asian equitiess were mixed on Friday, following an uninspiring lead from Wall Street, but Japanese stocks managed to overlook a mixed bag of economic data to settle at a new 15-year high.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150907201811id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/22/google-fiber-super-fast-internet-coming-to-more-cities.html

If you build it, the innovators will come. In 2011, Google announced it was launching its blazing fast Internet service to the Kansas City metropolitan area to boost the Midwest start-up scene. Now four years later as Google plans to expand the Internet service called Google Fiber to other U.S. regions, some small business owners report mixed results. But while the ramp-up process can take time for some, Google's expanded rollout for high-speed Internet shows the growing demand for faster connectivity. The U.S. broadly is playing catch up with other countries that already have super high-speed Internet services. Google Fiber is a high-speed fiber-optic network. Internet speeds on fiber optic cables are up to 100 times greater than the national average. Google is working to expand in 19 more cities in five metro areas including Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham. The Internet often features posts about consumers wondering if and when Google Fiber will come and turn their backyard into "fiberhoods." So what's at stake? Early anecdotes show some businesses are willing to relocate for faster Internet speed, and that costs savings associated with the new connectivity infrastructure can be substantial. Bottom line: more business at a quicker pace. Read MoreGoogle jumps into wireless biz: Report Cost savings related to faster Internet can be a particular game-changer for small businesses, said Marcelo Vergara, chief executive of Propaganda3, a website and app development company. Vergara said fast connectivity has allowed him to cut tech-related infrastructure costs significantly. "I can trust my network, thanks to Google's bandwidth," Vergara said. "I have reliability, and I have moved all of my internal services off to the cloud."

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Google Fiber will expand to 19 more U.S. cities. Why businesses are intrigued by the super fast Internet service.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150925021457id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/feb/10/art.shopping/amp

Peter Doig Tate Britain, London SW1, until 27 April The Peter Doig retrospective now filling several galleries at Tate Britain is easily the most enthralling show in town. Its achievement is to mystify even as it compels. Doig's paintings have always been singular - narcotic, yet intensely stimulating, beautiful yet way out on a limb - and they seem to grow more original and mesmerising by the year. A perpetual outsider, born in Scotland in 1959 but raised in Canada, then an expatriate in London and now Trinidad, Doig didn't show much until he was 30. But if he was a late starter, a few years older than the YBA generation with whom he studied, he survived the manic star-making of the Nineties by constantly deepening his art and the early paintings set the scene for the future. Frequently snowbound - ski-slopes, icy forests, deep drifts settling on the canvas or arriving like hale in twinkling spatters - they often included the lone figures that have come to symbolise his work. A boy on a frozen pond studies his reflection in the mauve-rippled surface, the paint - flecked, scribbled, stained, perilously thin - as unstable as the ice. A hooded figure in a mountain landscape turns his back to us, apparently sketching something we can't see but ominous as the dwarf in Don't Look Now. A man by the river's edge at twilight, the car headlights on behind him as if he might yet return to reality, is either mesmerised by the weird phosphorescence on the water or about to do away with himself. At another bend in the river drifts the canoe Doig has painted over and again like some deathless Raft of Medusa. A very early craft, unmanned, appears on an inky expanse that holds the reflection of the Milky Way with the eerie brightness of a basalt mirror. Another, becalmed on a stretch of burning blue, carries a bearded man who could as easily be Charles Manson or the Ancient Mariner, time having stopped like this vessel without oars; the picture is called 100 Years Ago. And out in the beating heat of the West Indian bay, palm trees all around, five spectral figures float away into the future. Or is it the past? One of them looks strangely like the young Paul McCartney. Every scene suggests an idée fixe, some sight or experience perpetually trapped in the mind that can never be exorcised. Doig's gift is for making these memories seem not just his own, but the viewer's as well, as if we, too, could not forget these peculiar moments in films, novels or scenes skimmed from life with a camera that keep flashing back on the mind's eye. The slow and distanced trance that characterises Doig's art comes in part from his use of the camera. Stills and snapshots and even album covers (the bearded man started out as a member of the Allman Brothers) form an aide-mémoire, a departure point. But the memories - not necessarily his own in the first place, and chosen with exceptional instinct for the universal - are obscured, overlaid, blended, corroded, lost and found again, quite altered, in the paint. You can see that happening, both literally and metaphorically, as figures on a shoreline darken into shadows behind flurries of snow accumulating on the canvas like aerosol graffiti, or in a vast diptych showing hundreds of skiers on the slopes. The people are melting into the snow, itself deliquescing into a pink twilight as if the sky had overwhelmed the earth below. Doig holds back the oblivion, every time, with a strong depictive touch. A painting that looks on the verge of abstraction will be held together with precise description - the puckering of water, the piebald dappling of sunshine, a striation of reeds along a riverbank that looks like a drawing catching fire: just enough to keep the scene plausibly real, before releasing it into the dreamy wilds. And they are quite wild, his paintings, veering between enchantment and fear. Who is this man who turns to meet your gaze with a dying pelican in his hand? Where is this wall apparently studded with jewels at which two costumed figures stand sentry beneath a performance of the Northern Lights? How did the little girl in the white pyjamas climb so high in that midnight tree? Doig seeks to fix in your mind whatever haunted his from the wondrous strangeness of the visible world. But he never lets you forget the strangeness of picturing itself - that a painting, unlike a photograph, is never really still and, in his case, quite the reverse. The whole surface of a Doig is a micro-life of incidents - focus pulls, jumps in scale, skittering-scattering brushmarks, encrusted impasto, veiled blurs and cross-fades, the leaching and streaking of paint, abrupt discontinuities between psychedelic colours and severe monochromes that seem to belong only to the world of painting. Lately, it's been suggested, the paint is taking over altogether and it might seem so when you consider the apparently empty expanse of an enormous canvas like Untitled 2006. But look closer into the wash of paint, thin as watercolour, and you'll see a figure high up a palm tree, a bird soaring across the pulsating lilac light and, as your eyes adjust, the spectral trace of an interloper: a stranger in paradise. If his art was always a bit trippy, reamed out with visions, it now approaches the hallucinatory: winged figures, hot shores, the canoe vanishing into the pale horizon. But Doig's style, by contrast, gets more disciplined by the year. His art is becoming grander and more formal with the decades, his latest paintings composed as distinctively as anything by Bonnard or Matisse. There are no false notes, the great scale is perfectly judged to hold all the perceptual incidents and maintain the balance between narrative and image. For in the end, no matter how much they invite interpretation, propose a backstory or riddle with the viewer's sense of mystery, Doig's paintings are about mood and atmosphere above all else. His great gift is for altering our state of mind through the mind's eye, for getting out of this world by inventing another through painting.

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Peter Doig may have been a late-starter but, as this major show reveals, he is a mesmerising artist, writes Laura Cumming

http://web.archive.org/web/20160202182108id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2016/01/27/pop-trio-wet-five-favorite-places-play-and-eat/6FmzlnBk6XUZGJ107b9uEO/story.html

For emotive electro-pop three-piece Wet, this year is all about new horizons. The Brooklyn-based band, comprising songwriter-vocalist Kelly Zutrau (a Boston native) and multi-instrumentalists Joe Valle and Marty Sulkow, is already acclaimed for mixing intimate lyrics with atmospheric production to craft laid-bare lost-love laments, a skill it has demonstrated across one self-titled EP and successive slate of heartache-heavy singles (“When you hold me, I still feel lonely,” Zutrau sighs on breakout track “You’re the Best”). Now, with Wet’s full-length debut, “Don’t You,” dropping Friday and the three-piece embarking on its first headlining tour across North America, Zutrau says one particularly exciting part of the months ahead will be showcasing an evolution in Wet’s sound. “The album’s more lush and much more complex than the EP,” she explains. “It’s not confined to romantic relationships — it has bigger ideas and explores other kinds of relationships, including as metaphor.” In addition to introducing new material, the trio is also excited to play at some favorite venues — and whet its collective appetite (sorry) at nearby restaurants for the all-important post-performance meal. Anticipating Wet’s sold-out show at the Sinclair on Monday, we asked about five stages (and savory stop-overs) the trio is looking forward to. Venues: The Mohawk, Empire Auto On Tamale House East: “In Texas, the Mexican food people usually rave about is Tex-Mex, but we found that the Tamale House is pretty authentic,” Sulkow says. On the Sinclair: “One of our favorite shows from the last tour was at the Sinclair,” Valle reports. “The sound in the venue is incredible, the staff was super professional and helpful, and the crowd was probably the most enthusiastic crowd we’ve ever played to, so we’re really excited to come back on Monday.” Venues: Baby’s All Right, Music Hall of Williamsburg On Baby’s All Right and Music Hall of Williamsburg: “We played on the opening night at Baby’s All Right in 2013,” says Valle. “It’s a great venue and has been instrumental in supporting new and emerging artists in New York City, like us, Empress Of, Porches, et cetera, so we love playing there. Music Hall of Williamsburg is another venue we’ve played several times, and is one of our favorite venues around the country. We’ve had some seminal shows there in the past few years so it has come to be a special place for us.” Restaurants: Taco Zone, Cafe Gratitude On Taco Zone: “A lot of times there aren’t many good food options once you finish loading out your gear after a show, so it’s always great to be in a city with food trucks,” Valle says. “We have a long list of taco trucks in LA, and Taco Zone is probably Number 1.” On The Fillmore: “That was probably one of the most supportive audiences we’ve ever played for,” Zutrau recalls. “I lost my voice onstage halfway through, and they were still on my side, it was really incredible.” Wet performs at the Sinclair, Cambridge, Monday. Sold out. 617-547-5200, www.sinclaircambridge.com

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Headed to the Sinclair for a sold-out show, the members of electro-pop trio Wet reflect on favorite venues for playing — and for post-concert noshing.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160523105435id_/http://www.theguardian.com:80/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/may/10/japan-megumi-igarashi-guilty-vagina-art?CMP=twt_gu

Every culture has its own complicated set of rules about sex. The fact that rules are made to be broken only adds to the fun. That is probably all we can conclude from the case of the Pussy Boat. The artist Megumi Igarashi, known as Rokudenashiko, has been found guilty of obscenity in Japan for publishing data from which it is possible to 3D print a replica of her vagina, to raise funds for a kayak inspired by her genitalia. To any westerner who has ever looked at Japanese art, it seems a startling verdict. Related: Is Nobuyoshi Araki's photography art or porn? For eyes trained by a Christian tradition freighted with anxieties about the sinfulness of sex, the happy eroticism of Japan’s shunga art is a delight. Many of the greatest Japanese artists lavished their skills on sensual imagery in woodblock prints made from the 17th to 19th centuries. My favourites include Hokusai’s 1814 print The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, in which a woman receives ecstatic pleasure from an octopus’s tentacles and beak, and another by Suzuki Harunobu, done in the 1760s, of lovers seen through a window. The erotic art of early modern Japan continues today in the photography of Nobuyoshi Araki, whose images of women tied up in varieties of ways are regarded by many as major works of contemporary art. That’s without even considering the pop art world of manga, with its sometimes seriously disturbing images of sexual violence and abuse. Japan really does have an extremely libertarian attitude to the visual depiction of sex. It was only in 2014 that it outlawed the possession of child abuse images. Manga and anime were specifically excluded from the ban, prompting a debate around child protection and artistic freedom that rumbles on today. How can it be OK for comics to publish underage pornography but illegal to invite people to 3D scan your vagina? Igarashi is exposing the illogicality and irrationality of Japan’s obscenity law – her vaginal kayak is a deliberate satire of a nonsensical set of rules. Yet no culture is rational about the sexual images and acts it licenses or forbids. Certainly, the west is in no position to look down on Japan, given its own strange and ever-changing attitudes. Related: The top 10 female nudes in art European and American ideas about art and sex are still haunted by Christianity. The nude remains a fraught and contentious arena – the painter George Shaw’s conflation of “artistic” nudes with pornographic magazines in his new exhibition at the National Gallery wittily plays on those anxieties. Getting my Guardian at the newsagent’s the other day, I was approached by an American couple who asked which paper had the “lascivious picture on page two”. After a moment’s hesitation – should I engage in a debate about sexism? – I told them it was the Sun, and it was page 3 they were looking for. They were disappointed. What they saw was “milder” than they were expecting. Perhaps they hoped for something more like Araki. That Japanese cultural mixture of extreme freedom and suppression, to which Igarashi has drawn attention, vindicates the French philosopher Michel Foucault. In his final work, The History of Sexuality, this controversial thinker argued that far from being the universal urge Freud identified, libido is shaped by “discourses” of sexuality that not only regulate but also shape and promote desire. Sex is not natural but cultural, a realm as strange as an octopus’s garden.

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The eroticism of shunga suggests Japan is as libertarian as they come. But this new case won’t change a country continually swinging between sexual freedom and suppression

http://web.archive.org/web/20160602111427id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/07/16/gawker/

It’s hard to be popular when you embarrass people and suggest your rivals sleep with swine. But Nick Denton, owner of Gawker Media, is trying to be liked all the same. After years of embracing the role of caustic outlaw, Denton is on a charm tour with his peers in the press—last month, he smoked a joint in front of a New York Times reporter—with the hope of showing everyone how he really, truly can play nice with others. A lot is riding on the outcome. The media industry is in a “get big or go home” phase, and Gawker is hoping to find a friend with deep pockets who has the backbone to stand behind his distinct, abrasive vision of journalism. In a recent chat with Fortune, Denton dropped hints about possible partners, shared his thoughts about Facebook and online advertising, and dispelled the idea that his newfound sunny disposition is the product of his recent marriage. “It’s not in the public interest to see Hulk Hogan’s weiner per se,” Denton tells me on a hot Friday afternoon in Gawker’s soon-to-be-vacated office in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. “But it is in the public interest to understand news stories. Like it or not, news and public life involves sex and drugs and other matters that people might find indecent. The only thing we find indecent is media that ignores stories people care about.” The Hulk Hogan example is not hypothetical. It instead reflects Gawker’s position in a Florida court case where the former wrestler is asking a jury to award $100 million because the website published a short clip of tape showing Hogan having sex with the then-wife of a minor celebrity. The trial was supposed to start next week, but an appeals court ordered a temporary halt over a procedural issue; meanwhile, a court ordered the FBI to disclose evidence–in the form of additional Hogan sex tapes–to Gawker’s lawyers. The trial, now set for October, still poses an existential threat to Gawker. But Denton sees the recent FBI ruling as a partial victory. He believes it validates his overall argument in the Hogan affair: That Gawker had a free-speech right to publish the tape not as titillation but as proof of the behavior of a self-aggrandizing celebrity who had already made his sex life public in a media narrative. As for the Hogan story itself, it’s classic Gawker-style journalism and one of the many bombshells published by the company’s namesake publications and its sister titles, which include Deadspin (sports), Jezebel (women’s interest), and Gizmodo (tech). Other stories published by the company have exposed the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto, the fictitious dead girlfriend of a football star, and quarterback Brett Favre’s below-the-belt selfies. If there’s a common thread here beyond male genitalia and stupidity, it’s Gawker’s willingness to report on powerful people even when others who have the same information will not. “I’m glad that organizations like us and BuzzFeed can provide some cover for newspapers that are more cautious. It’s sort of flattering and good for the eco-system as a whole,” Denton says. “We take the view that we’re not responsible for an original breach, but if information is out there and it’s interesting, we’ll absolutely run the stories.” Denton spoke well of BuzzFeed several times over the course of the interview, perhaps implying that his viral rival could be a strategic partner one day. The well-funded site (it’s raised nearly $100 million in venture capital since its founding in 2006) has some of the same digital brashness as Gawker, and recently lent legal support in the First Amendment fight over the Hogan tapes. BuzzFeed is also expanding quickly. It has acquired smaller companies and attracted interest from the likes of Disney, though it has not publicly expressed a desire to invest in Gawker or any other media company. “Let’s get through the Hogan trial first before we talk about that,” Denton said about his rumored search for investors. “[But] it’s clear that a robust media company needs a strong financial footing in order to face down illegitimate lawsuits like we’re fighting.” (After this story was published, Denton sent an email saying, “I’m an admirer of Buzzfeed’s evolution from viral marketing agency to media conglomerate. But I don’t envision us going into the journalism business together.”) Even for an unstable industry, 2015 has been a choppy ride for digital media. Smaller outlets have been wiped out (like my former employer Gigaom) or swallowed up (like Re/code, which was acquired in May by Vox Media, or TechCrunch and Huffington Post publisher AOL, acquired last month by Verizon). Recent technology trends, such as the spread of ad-blockers and readers’ ongoing embrace of smaller screens where advertising is more difficult to sell, pose new challenges to publishers’ business models. Denton is unfazed. He’s adamant, for example, that media companies should not grab the apparent lifeline offered by Facebook’s “Instant Articles,” which promise to bring publishers’ content to Facebook users faster by natively hosting it within Facebook. Early partners for the effort, such as the New York Times, are tempted by the prospect of a new revenue stream and the chance to reach Facebook’s FB vast audience. The catch? Facebook decides which articles will be seen. “So many media organizations are just playing to Facebook,” Denton said. “They’re just catering to the preferences … expressed in some algorithm that nobody understands. It’s almost like we’re leaving offerings for some unpredictable machine god that may or may not bless us.” Denton called the Denton added that the arrangement is not a true distribution partnership, but instead has forces media companies into a position of “abject surrender.” But does he have a better idea? Denton claims that Gawker is doing just fine without Facebook in part thanks to its “affiliate links” partnership with Amazon, whereby the retail giant offers a small payment if readers click a link to a product. He also says the traditional display ad business is doing fine, and that mobile readers offer an opportunity for growth—especially if publishers can get a cut of a booming market for app downloads, which Denton says is getting claimed entirely by Facebook and Twitter. And for anyone wondering about the true state of Gawker, Denton abruptly released the company’s private financial records earlier this month. It’s hard to guess his motives for doing so; the nominal explanation was that the release would serve to head off a bad story, but that could be puffery. Whatever the reason, the figures showed that, yes, Gawker is indeed making money, to the tune of $6.5 million in operating income last year. Denton has found his softer side, but you sure wouldn’t know it from his websites. A smattering of recent headlines reveals Gawker’s distinct brew of social criticism, gratuitous snark, and puerile distractions is still in full force: “Unidentified Dong Dangler Drapes Hundreds of Dildos Around Portland”; “No, Planned Parenthood is not Selling Aborted Fetal Body Parts”; “Inspiring: a Full 0.56% of Facebook’s 2013 Hires were Black.” But according to Denton himself as well as people who know him, he really has mellowed out. He’s at long last learned to delegate, take advice, and yes, be nice to people. “He’s not the Nick Denton I started working for in 2009,” said Gawker’s executive editor, Tommy Craggs. “It’s a very different company, which is a reflection of changes in his personality and a restructuring of the management group. There’s a willingness to listen to more voices.” Craggs suggested his boss’s transformation has a lot to do with his marriage in 2014 to actor Derrence Washington. It’s a popular refrain. Denton rejects the idea. “Everyone looks for a narrative and it’s a convenient narrative to pin someone’s personal transformation on an event that gets summed up in a sentence,” he said. “But in order to get the husband that I have I would have had to change before I met him rather than after.” Denton may have evolved on a personal level, but his professional mission is unchanged: He still wants to lampoon the smug and self-important, and tear down the clubby arrangements that allow insider groups – including journalists – to hoard information for themselves. Now, he just has to find someone with a big checkbook to do it with him. This story has been corrected to note the appeal court delay ruling was related to a procedural issue, not to the separate FBI-related court order.

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Gawker Media owner Nick Denton, who is facing Hulk Hogan in court, found time to share insights on media and his recent effort to be liked.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160614002702id_/http://www.forbes.com:80/2010/02/11/americas-most-miserable-cities-business-beltway-miserable-cities.html

The city of Cleveland has had a colorful history. The Cuyahoga River, which runs through the city, famously caught fire in 1969 thanks to rampant pollution, and it wasn’t the first time. In 1978 it became the first U.S. city to default on its debts since the Great Depression. Cleveland sports fans have had to endure more anguish than those in any other city. The city has been dubbed with a less than endearing nickname: the Mistake by the Lake. This year Cleveland takes the top spot in our third annual ranking of America’s Most Miserable Cities. Cleveland secured the position thanks to its high unemployment, high taxes, lousy weather, corruption by public officials and crummy sports teams (Cavaliers of the NBA excepted). Slide Show: America’s 20 Most Miserable Cities Misery was on the rise around the country last year. Sure the stock market was up big, but so were unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy filings. Meanwhile housing prices, the U.S. dollar and approval ratings for Congress continued their downward spiral. The widely tracked Misery Index initiated by economist Arthur Okun, which combines unemployment and inflation rates started 2009 at 7.3 and rose to 12.7 by the end of the year thanks to soaring joblessness. That is the highest level since 1983. Our Misery Measure takes into account unemployment, as well as eight other issues that cause people anguish. The metrics include taxes (both sales and income), commute times, violent crime and how its pro sports teams have fared over the past two years. We also factored in two indexes put together by Portland, Ore., researcher Bert Sperling that gauge weather and Superfund pollution sites. Lastly we considered corruption based on convictions of public officials in each area as tracked by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. We expanded the list of cities under consideration this year to include the 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas (in years past we’ve examined 150), which led to a shuffling in the ranks. Any area with a population of more than 245,000 was eligible. Cleveland nabbed the top spot as a result of poor ratings across the board. It was the only city that fell in the bottom half of the rankings in all nine categories. Many residents are heading for greener pastures. There has been a net migration out of the Cleveland metro area of 71,000 people over the past five years. Population for the city itself has been on a steady decline and is now less than half of it what it was 50 years ago. Cleveland ranked near the bottom when looking at corruption. Northern Ohio has seen 309 public officials convicted of crimes over the past 10 years according to the Justice Department. A current FBI investigation of public officials in Cuyahoga County (where Cleveland is located) has ensnared more than two dozen government employees and businessmen on charges including bribery, fraud and tax evasion. On the housing front Cleveland is dealing with thousands of abandoned homes. The city contributed to its foreclosure problem by providing down payments to many people that could not afford homes through the federally funded Afford-A-Home program. Cleveland led by Mayor Frank Jackson sued 21 large investment banks in 2008 who he felt were complicit in the subprime and foreclosure crisis that hit Cleveland hard. A federal judge dismissed the suit last year, but the city is appealing the ruling. A 19% decline in foreclosures last year is possibly a glimmer of hope that the housing situation is starting to improve, although Cleveland still ranks in the top third of all metros for foreclosure rates according to RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed property. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County were awarded $41 million last month from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This money will go towards demolition of homes, foreclosure prevention and the rehabilitation of homes. There are certainly bright spots in Cleveland. Downtown has experienced a revival over the past 15 years helped in part by the construction of three new sports venues for the city’s NFL, NBA and baseball teams. The Cleveland Clinic is one of the top medical centers in the U.S. and the largest employer in northeast Ohio. Mayor Jackson’s chief of staff Ken Silliman calls 2010 a very exciting year for Cleveland. He points to three projects in development for the city. The first is the Cleveland Medical Mart which is a convention center that targets the medical and health care industries. Next is a casino plan. In November Ohio voters approved casinos in four cities, and Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is leading a group that hopes to have a Cleveland casino up and running in three years. Lastly is the Flats East Bank project, which ran into funding issues during the financial crisis. The waterfront development will include an office tower, hotel and space for retail and dining. “Clevelanders over the years have developed a tenacity to deal with these kinds of situations, and we are very aggressive in attempting to solve our problems rather than awaiting someone else’s solutions,” says Silliman. Other cities on the list include Memphis, which came in third thanks to the second-worst rate of violent crime in the U.S. and an alarming rate of convicted public officials. Detroit, ravaged by the ailing auto industry was fourth. Flint, Mich., was fifth. Also on the list? Chicago (No. 10) and New York City (No. 16). Torturous commute times and nosebleed-inducing taxes are the high prices locals pay for the cultural opportunities and corporate headquarters located there. Our most miserable city last year, Stockton, Calif., nabbed the second spot on this year’s list. Unemployment and crime continue to be major issues. Stockton ranked seventh worst in both of these areas. Stockton residents have average commutes that are among the highest in the country and, like all Californians, they suffer from onerous sales and income taxes. Stockton Mayor Ann Johnston says the city is working to fix its problems. It has seen a reduction in crime in recent months as it targets troubled areas with an increased police presence. On the economic front, the city recently expanded the Port of Stockton, which it hopes will attract new companies. Stockton is an agricultural community, but the Mayor says the city is working to diversify its economic base and echoes Silliman’s comments about Cleveland. “We’re an All-American city,” says Mayor Johnston. “And it’s not because we sit on our hands and do nothing. It’s because we recognize our problems and work to solve them.” Slide Show: America’s 20 Most Miserable Cities Comments are turned off for this post.

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Cleveland leads a slew of Midwestern towns on our annual list, but thanks to high taxes New York and Chicago make it too.