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http://www.people.com/article/george-clooney-amal-alamuddin-italy-dinner
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http://web.archive.org/web/20140814180333id_/http://www.people.com/article/george-clooney-amal-alamuddin-italy-dinner
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George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin Share Romantic Dinner in Italy (PHOTOS)
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20140814180333
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Amal Alamuddin and George Clooney
on the menu during a recent night out for
in advance of their planned nuptials in Italy, dined at the Grand Hotel Villa d'Este at Cernobbio on Aug. 7 near Clooney's Lake Como home.
"George kissed Amal and she gave him a neck massage," an observer says. "They looked very much in love. After dinner the two took a stroll through the gardens arm-in-arm."
Clooney, 53, and Alamuddin, 36, also went for a boat ride before leaving town on a private jet.
George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin kissing at dinner
"After a long boat ride around Lake Como, George and Amal docked with family," the source says. "They looked very happy as Amal watched George tend to boating duties."
of his lawyer fiancée, "I'm marrying up."
Amal Alamuddin and George Clooney go boating in Italy
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The engaged couple dined with friends near Clooney's Lake Como home
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http://fortune.com/2014/08/14/new-york-clean-energy-bank/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20140816050913id_/http://fortune.com/2014/08/14/new-york-clean-energy-bank/
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A $1billion bet on clean energy
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20140816050913
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The solution to global warming is obvious—reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Accomplishing that goal, however, requires radical action. Few understand that better than Richard Kauffman, an ex–Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley banker whom New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed last year as the state’s first energy czar. Kauffman has visions of New York as a 21st-century clean-tech powerhouse. But for now, he admits, it remains more of a 20th-century energy dinosaur.
“We’re not on a sustainable path either environmentally or economically,” says Kauffman of his state. “We’re not installing enough renewables, and we’re not getting the economic-development boost that a transition to a new-energy economy can provide. We need to rethink what we do.”
To kick-start that process of reinvention, Kauffman has taken some radical actions of his own: Earlier this year he rolled out a state-owned financing startup with $1 billion in assets called N.Y. Green Bank. The hope is that, through strategic lending, the state can give the private sector the incentive to help transform New York State’s power system. If it works, the project could provide a template for other states to follow. According to the OECD, N.Y. Green Bank is only the second state-run institution of its kind in the U.S. Connecticut launched a green bank in 2011 but on a smaller scale, with $117 million in net assets.
“We want to be on the frontier of new markets, providing the necessary support to get the private sector fully engaged.” —Richard Kauffman, New york State’s energy czar.
New York’s list of energy challenges is long. It lags behind California and other big states in the adoption of renewables. Last year, for instance, the Golden State installed 2,621 megawatts of solar energy, compared with New York’s paltry 69 megawatts. New Yorkers pay some of the highest electrical rates in the nation. At the same time, the state’s utilities are struggling. Electricity demand is weak, and the cost to maintain an aging grid is rising. The price tag simply to keep New York’s antiquated grid running over the next decade is an estimated $30 billion.
Gov. Cuomo has given Kauffman the clout to make big changes. As New York’s chairman of energy and finance, he has the sway and the budget to push for change in almost every aspect of the state’s energy system. He has already launched a multi-front offensive. Kauffman is pushing for regulatory reform that would encourage the state’s utilities to run more energy-efficiency programs and make smart-grid investments to reduce load and the need to maintain expensive backup power plants. He’s also pushing for utilities to invest more in clean, distributed energy.
Other states have tried such measures with only moderate success. Although wind and solar power are growing quickly, their share of the nation’s total power generation is only about 4%. Kauffman is hoping the Green Bank can push New York way past that level in coming years. The bank, funded by a surcharge paid by utility customers, aims to help finance clean-energy projects throughout the state. The Green Bank plans to announce its first investments this fall.
When he took the energy czar job, Kauffman, 59, brought with him a strong belief that the government was lousy at picking winners and losers. (Consider the Energy Department’s disastrous $535 million investment in solar-panel maker Solyndra.) He began searching for private sector solutions to the state’s energy problems. “It’s going to be the markets that will give customers what they want,” says Kauffman. “I have no idea what new energy systems are best. Apple, for example, allows outside programmers to make apps for its products because that’s the way innovation happens—you open up competition.”
So the Green Bank will not dole out grants or fund risky clean-tech startups. Rather, it will offer “gap” financing. That means providing loans, debt guarantees, and other financial products to help private sector bankers fund more clean-tech deals—whether for solar, wind, smart-grid technology, battery storage, or energy-efficient buildings. Says Douglas Sims, the director of strategy and finance at the Natural Resources Defense Council and an adviser on the project: “They will provide comfort to private lenders who want to employ capital in this space. They’re enablers. To me, that’s the most radical thing about it.”
While large-scale wind and solar projects can typically get financing, Kauffman says that there are many smaller clean-tech projects that are viable but just can’t find the right debt structure. For example, universities, hospitals, and municipalities that want to install solar systems or energy-efficiency technology often have good credit ratings but don’t have the upfront capital. A bank might be willing to offer a 10-year loan, but the organizations might need a 15-year loan to make the debt service more affordable. So the Green Bank could step in and provide the financing for years 11 through 15. Another area where it could help is in solar installation. Companies such as SolarCity, Sunrun, and Sungevity have little trouble raising financing for residential customers who have top credit scores of around 700, but they find it much harder to raise money for leases or loans for those with scores of 650—even though these customers are considered creditworthy. The Green Bank could guarantee the financing on those deals.
Perhaps the biggest impact the Green Bank could make is in securitization. (Think mortgage-backed securities with better due diligence.) So far the bond market has been largely absent when it comes to financing renewables. Why? Big banks don’t like to dabble in small loans. The Green Bank plans to securitize clean-energy projects—bundling 40 or 50 solar loans, each worth about $1 million, into one security and then selling the $50 million bond to institutional investors. That would open an entirely new source of capital for the sector and spur growth, Kauffman believes.
As promising as the Green Bank sounds, some in the environmental community worry that even $1 billion in capitalization won’t be enough to turn New York green. After all, energy is an extremely capital-intensive industry.
But Kauffman believes that the first step is for the Green Bank to show that it can make money. If the bank is profitable, it will be self-sustaining, he argues. And it can leverage that $1 billion in a way that would have a significant, long-term impact on the clean-tech industry. “We want to get a market rate of return and then step out of the way,” says the energy czar. “We want to be on the frontier of new markets, providing the necessary support to get the private sector fully engaged.” And if that happens, Kauffman’s radical plan might make a real impact.
This story is from the September 1, 2014 issue of Fortune.
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With its new "Green Bank", New York aims to boost solar, wind, and smart-grid technology.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/08/16/when-rome-venice-florence/KadXVFHGjN9gai4sQ0rePL/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20140823102703id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2014/08/16/when-rome-venice-florence/KadXVFHGjN9gai4sQ0rePL/story.html
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When in Rome (or Venice, or Florence…)
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20140823102703
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As Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s tour in Michael Winterbottom’s upcoming “The Trip to Italy” demonstrates, there’s nothing like a visit to the title country for food, culture, dreamlike scenery, historical landmarks, illicit affairs, confrontations with one’s identity and/or mortality, funny little scooters and cars, and opportunities to hone your Sean Connery imitations.
Opening here on Aug. 29, “The Trip to Italy” picks up where 2010’s “The Trip” left off. But it makes its own way as well, sending its two food-reviewing Brits on a six stop gustatory tour of the title nation. They enjoy the savory cuisine, fine wines, and their own crude and witty conversation, but somewhere between the antipasti in Liguria and the grappa in Capri they learn something about life, about themselves, and about Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill.”
In short, if you take away the artillery fire, festering wounds, and chaotic battlefields, Coogan and Brydon are sharing the same experiences as those of the American ambulance driver played by Gary Cooper in the 1932 adaptation of “Farewell to Arms,” which is set on the Italian front in World War I. And long before there were movies, generations of visitors — poets, painters, aesthetes, and other troubled souls — roamed the Italian peninsula in search of . . . something. Sojourners, from Byron and Shelley to Ruskin and Henry James, not to mention public TV’s Rick Steves, have succumbed to the allure. Some find what they’re looking for — often to their regret. Most return profoundly changed, if they return at all. For viewers, though, it’s usually worth the trip, as it is in these big screen visits to Italy.
The first movie visitors to Italy did not find the accommodations pleasant or their welcome hospitable. Adapted from the dispatches of Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle, William A. Wellman’s masterpiece follows a company of dogfaces, led by the fatalistic, fatherly Captain Walker (Robert Mitchum) in a tour of duty that starts in North Africa and continues on to Sicily and the mainland, grinding northward from one hill and mountain to the next in the brutal Italian campaign.
Along the way, they view the ruins not from antiquity but from the modern battlefield. One devout soldier enters a shattered church and kneels to pray. But there are Nazis in the belfry and the war resumes. “A fine place to be killing men,” the soldier comments. He will later go insane after he finally gets a phonograph to work and can hear the recording of his little boy’s voice.
The only intact landmark is the 11th century monastery at Monte Cassino. Convinced it’s occupied by Germans, the Allies bomb it. They are wrong, but the rubble provides an excellent fortification for the enemy.
Filthy and living in caves, the soldiers climb the slopes and fight. Some return, and climb the slopes again. “Every step forward,” one says, “is a step closer to home.” But not for everyone.
Paramount Pictures via Getty Images
Realistic though it may have been, “G.I. Joe” could not be filmed on location because the war was still raging. Eight years later, though, William Wyler’s romantic comedy became the first Hollywood film shot entirely in Italy.
You’d hardly recognize the place — not a word is spoken nor a vestige seen of the recent cataclysm.
Audrey Hepburn can have that effect. Here she plays Princess Ann, visiting Rome as the goodwill ambassador of an unspecified country. One evening, after the princess has had a hysterical hissy fit after hours of wearing uncomfortable shoes while greeting dignitaries, her doctor injects her with a sedative. The tactic backfires as the loopy princess slips out of the embassy and onto the streets of Rome, incognito and in search of real life and her true identity.
Instead she encounters a non-G.I. Joe, played by Gregory Peck, another journalist, but no Pulitzer-prize winning war correspondent. A proto-paparazzi, he recognizes the princess and, in a variation of “It Happened One Night,” hopes to extract a scoop out of the situation.
He shows her the sites — the gag in which Joe sticks his hand into “La Bocca della Verità” (“the Mouth of Truth”) is the one everyone remembers. Joking aside, the truth won’t be denied, and both Joe and Ann must decide whether they will stick to their roles as hack and highness or do as the Romans do — discover their inner virtù.
Turin has a great film festival but doesn’t offer much as a movie location. As Henry James puts it in “Italian Hours,” his book of travel essays, “It has no architecture, no churches, no monuments, no romantic street scenery.” A century and a half later, it remains limiting, though it now has Fiat factories and the vestiges of the 2006 Winter Olympics.
And it also boasts the spectacular Autostrada A5, a motorway high in the mountains. That’s where Peter Collinson’s spoofy caper film opens with a Lamborghini Miura zooming around hairpin turns over mile-high drops until it comes to an unexpected halt.
The driver is a crony of Croker (Michael Caine), a Cockney criminal genius to whom he posthumously sends plans for a multimillion dollar heist. Patriotism motivates the operation as much as greed. Italy has risen from the ashes and now rivals Britain economically — the money comes from a trade deal with the Chinese, and a police convoy guards the delivery.
But Croker has a plan. He turns Turin into a Rube Goldberg device in which tiny cars drive up and down stairs, into churches, across rooftops and through sewers. And, inevitably, back to Autostrada A5. Few films have had as many cars plummet down cliffs and burst into flames. Of all the films made in Italy, “The Italian Job” probably best integrates the location into the story. (Note: This is distinctly not true of the 2003 remake, which didn’t have much of a story to begin with.)
If you must visit Venice, at least don’t get lost looking for an out-of-the-way restaurant. That’s one of the mistakes made by Donald Sutherland’s John Baxter in Nicholas Roeg’s trippy adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier story.
Baxter, an art restoration expert, and his wife Laura (a luminous Julie Christie) have recently lost their daughter in a drowning accident. They have taken their grief to Venice, where John is working on the renovation of the crumbling 12th century church San Nicolo Dei Mendicoli.
His wife, meanwhile, has been accosted by two sisters, one blind and psychic who claims to see the Baxter’s dead daughter. Though John himself has experienced instances of second sight, enhanced by Roeg’s kaleidoscopic, oneiric editing, and even has glimpsed in the clammy shadows a figure in the same red slicker that their daughter wore, he remains skeptical.
But still curious. Drawn like Oedipus to solving the mystery that is his undoing, compelled by grief and hope, he wanders the labyrinth of Venice in search of an elusive restaurant, and his destiny.
Nobody but Christopher Walken can bring out infinite nuances of perversity and terror by repeating a story that begins, “My father was a very big man. And all his life he wore a black mustache…”
He plays Robert, the stranger in Paul Schrader’s splendidly perverse adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel, who comes to the rescue of the British tourists Colin (Rupert Everett) and Mary (the late Natasha Richardson) when they get lost looking for a restaurant. Clearly they had not seen “Don’t Look Now,” or were not paying attention.
Robert, it turns out, owns a stunning villa on the Grand Canal, where he takes Colin and Mary to meet his wife Caroline (Helen Mirren). The tourists have an immediate distaste for the couple, especially when Robert begins to express opinions somewhat to the right of the fascists in “The Conformist,” demonstrates extreme misogyny and homophobia, and continues to tell that awful story about his father’s moustache. Nonetheless, they keep coming back for a visit.
Perhaps the opulent decadence draws them in. Though the outside of Robert and Caroline’s home is the real-life Palazzo Grassi, the interior is a movie set emanating subtle, serene depravity. This and the city itself, photographed by Dante Spinotti and evoking paintings by Turner, Whistler, and Sargent, might well have seduced them. Nonetheless, Mary is hard-pressed for an answer when a detective asks her, what were you looking for in Venice?
It takes a while for James Bond (Daniel Craig) to find his way to Italy in this revival of the 007 series. He leaves a trail of death from Prague, to Mozambique, to the Bahamas and Montenegro before finally arriving, chastened and smitten, on Italian soil.
And not a moment too soon. After nearly losing his mojo while being tortured by terrorist banker Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), he recuperates at a hospital on the shores of Lake Como, perhaps not far from George Clooney’s villa. There he acknowledges his love for MI6 accountant Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), and agrees to leave this dirty spy game and run away with her while he still has a vestige of a soul. Not to mention his unmentionables.
But then they had to visit Venice. This time the couple doesn’t even have to go looking for a restaurant to get in trouble. Combining elements of “Don’t Look Now,” “The Comfort of Strangers,” and perhaps “Titanic,” this film of many astounding action sequences uncorks its cavallo di battaglia, a donnybrook in a semi-restored palazzo that ends up sinking into the Grand Canal. Does Bond lose his soul? It doesn’t matter, because he has saved the franchise.
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For decades, travelers and tourists in movies have visited the Italian peninsula in search of… something. They’re following in the footsteps of generations of sojourners, from Byron and Shelley to Ruskin and Henry James, not to mention public TV’s Rick Steves. Some find what they’re looking for -- often to their regret. Most return profoundly changed, if they return at all. For viewers, though, it’s usually worth the trip, as it is in these big screen visits to Italy.
| 20.25 | 0.9375 | 21.3125 |
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http://fortune.com/2014/08/25/jobs-recovery-yellen/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20140825143244id_/http://fortune.com/2014/08/25/jobs-recovery-yellen/
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If this is a jobs recovery, we have a very low bar
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20140825143244
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Like everything, the temperature of the jobs market is relative.
In 2009, economists from Rutgers argued that it could take the economy until mid-2017, nearly 10 years from its December 2007 peak, to get back to full employment. Many people dismissed the estimate as way too pessimistic. But now, five years later, even with the jobs numbers on the rise, a return to full employment (at the time considered around a 5% unemployment rate) by August 2017, as the Rutgers economists predicted, is not looking so bad.
In 2011, the consensus estimate for the average number of monthly jobs the economy would add was 200,000. The actual number for 2011 was 174,000.
Recently, though, there has been a growing sentiment that the job market is kicking butt. On Friday, in a speech at the annual Jackson Hole Federal Reserve convention, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said, not once but three times, that employment was improving much faster than expected. She did have some caveats. But Yellen said if the labor market recovery continues to be “more rapid than anticipated” the Fed might have to think about raising rates pretty soon.
Anticipations, though, are all about when you measure them. For instance, just a few weeks ago, economists were predicting that the economy added 230,000 jobs in July. The actual number was 209,000. And that was well below the nearly 300,000 workers that employers added to their payrolls in June. Yes, the number of people working in the U.S. is now as high as it was before the economy tanked. But factor in all the colleague graduates and immigrants who have entered the work force since 2007, and the economy still has a gap of 5.7 million jobs, the Hamilton Project, a division of Brookings Institutions, estimates.
And that doesn’t count 7.5 million Americans who have taken part-time jobs, but would like full time work. That’s an additional 3 million more workers who were working part-time for so-called economic reasons than before the recession.
Closing those two jobs gaps — the growth in the population and the part-time work gap — would take an increase of roughly 360,000 jobs a month for three years. We’re well short of that.
So yes, things have improved this year. The economy has produced an average of 230,000 jobs a month. And, yes, that’s better than the 198,000 average that economists were predicting at the beginning of the year, according to newsletter Blue Chip Economic Indicators. But the economy produced an average of 194,000 jobs in 2013. The expectation was that the improvement in the jobs market in 2014 would be a meager 4,000 jobs a month.
By that measure we are doing better than anticipated. But go back five years and most people thought by the time 2014 rolled around we would be long recovered, or far closer than we are. After years of economic disappointment, the bar is pretty low. That could end up being one of the long-lasting legacies of the Great Recession, and something that Yellen and the rest of the Fed need to think hard before declaring that their job is done.
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Fed Chair Janet Yellen says the employment picture is improving faster than expected. Unfortunately, that's still not good enough.
| 26.521739 | 0.73913 | 1.869565 |
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http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/25/zaha-hadid-suing-qatar-article-2022-world-cup/print
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http://web.archive.org/web/20140826025215id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/25/zaha-hadid-suing-qatar-article-2022-world-cup/print
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Zaha Hadid suing New York Review of Books over Qatar criticism
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20140826025215
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Zaha Hadid, whose lawyer claims the article has exposed her to public ridicule. Photograph: David Levene
Leading British Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid is suing the New York Review of Books over an article she claims accuses her of "showing no concern" for the deaths of hundreds of migrant construction workers in Qatar, where she has designed a football stadium for the 2022 World Cup.
The award-winning architect filed a lawsuit in Manhattan supreme court last week, accusing the highbrow magazine and its architecture critic, Martin Filler, of defamation.
Her complaint centres on an article by Filler that was ostensibly a review of the book Why We Build by Rowan Moore, the Observer's architecture critic.
Filler took issue with comments Hadid made in London earlier this year when she said architects "have nothing to do with the workers" who have been dying in great numbers on ambitious building projects in Qatar following the controversial decision to allow the desert state to host the World Cup.
Hadid claims that passage was based on a February 2014 statement taken out of context, before work on the stadium had begun and that there were no worker deaths at the site. The topic had come up in a press conference she attended in London that followed an article in the Guardian revealing that almost 1,000 migrant workers, mainly from India and Nepal, had died on Qatar construction sites in the previous two years.
Despite Filler's article being about Moore's book, Hadid's lawyers point out that he repeatedly referred to Hadid in the article.
"Nearly all of those references are used to call our client's success into question or to characterise her personally as difficult. It is a personal attack disguised as a book review and has exposed Ms Hadid to public ridicule and contempt, depriving her of confidence and injuring her good name and reputation," said a statement from her New York lawyer Oren Warshavsky.
Warshavsky, a top US attorney and the lead lawyer to the trust trying to recover assets for clients defrauded by US financier Bernard Madoff, said construction was not due to begin on the football stadium designed by Hadid until 2015.
Hadid is seeking damages, a halt to the review's continued publication and a retraction.
Hadid, a dame of the British Empire, became the first female and first Muslim to win the most prestigious Pritzker Prize in architecture in 2004. She won the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011 and has featured on numerous media lists of the most influential people in the world.
Reuters reported last Thursday that Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, said he was unaware of the complaint and declined to comment .
The lawsuit prompted comments both positive and negative on social media. "Zaha strikes back!" read one comment on Twitter. But she was also mocked on Twitter for suing the magazine and Filler.
Paul Goldberger, the former architecture critic of the New Yorker and former dean of the prestigious Parsons design college in New York, now a contributor to Vanity Fair, sent out a tweet saying that her lawsuit was unwise and would gain her a reputation as "the architect who sues critics".
He further tweeted: "Zaha proves Goldberger's Law: the greater the success the thinner the skin."
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World Cup 2022 stadium designer claims magazine accuses her of 'showing no concern' for deaths of migrant workers in country
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http://www.people.com/article/chris-soules-new-bachelor
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http://web.archive.org/web/20140828011826id_/http://www.people.com/article/chris-soules-new-bachelor
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Chris Soules Is the New Bachelor
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20140828011826
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08/27/2014 AT 08:20 AM EDT
will be handing out the roses in the upcoming season of
The farmer from Iowa won over Bachelor nation last season on
with sweet letters and large declarations of love.
"It's still very surreal," Soules, 32, tells PEOPLE about stepping into the starring role. "It's going to be very difficult, but I just want to be very open-minded and have fun and get to know these women."
just before the finale "was tough, but that means it worked for me," he says. "I fell in love with Andi and got to a point where I really saw that potential ... the fact that it worked makes me confident that being the bachelor will work for me."
And though Dorfman had expressed concern about moving to Iowa, Soules says he's "open to compromise" when it comes to settling down with his future wife.
"First and foremost, I want to fall in love and find that person that is truly my soul mate," he says. "I'm willing to compromise, but I just have to find that person that I want to compromise for."
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The fan-favorite farmer will star in the newest season of The Bachelor, PEOPLE confirms
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http://fortune.com/2013/03/25/funny-money-has-officially-entered-the-real-world/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20140903225727id_/http://fortune.com/2013/03/25/funny-money-has-officially-entered-the-real-world/
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‘Funny money’ has officially entered the real world
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20140903225727
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FORTUNE – Remember those days when Monopoly money was just play cash that bought everything in the game from railroads to houses? When the game was over, the value of that colorful paper currency spiraled to zero. Now with online currencies, the game never really ends. The Internet never shuts off, so the value of money circulating through cyberspace is always worth something.
Last week, new U.S. government rules regulating online currencies affirmed the value of what was previously passed off as funny money. Now companies that issue or exchange online cash would have new bookkeeping requirements. For instance, transactions of more than $10,000 would have to be reported.
While one of the big draws of virtual currencies is that they’re independent and generally sheltered from the government’s watch, the new rules are unlikely to ruin their allure. If anything, they effectively pull the currencies offline and into the mainstream world of finance, making them infinitely more valuable.
MORE: Will rival bidders entice Michael Dell?
These new regulations come as the popularity of virtual currencies rise, fueled by online merchants that have come up with their own tender and forms of payment — indeed, a stark contrast from years ago when the European Union thought it was only wise to run the economy on a single currency, the Euro. Needless to say, big problems have followed, and many have wondered if the answer is having multiple competing currencies.
In 2011, Facebook FB launched Credits as the de facto form of currency. Though now largely defunct, it’s used for purchases made inside games hosted by the social networking site. Last month, Amazon AMZN unveiled Amazon Coins, a virtual currency that could be used for purchasing apps, games, and in-apps items on Kindle Fire.
As The Wall Street Journal notes, it’s unclear if the new regulations will impact Amazon. One thing is almost certain, though: It will regulate Bitcoin, the fastest-growing online currency. Launched in 2009, the online currency works almost like real money. It can be used to buy anything from upgrades on Reddit to pizza. And as Cyrus Sanati reported in December, it’s increasingly used to conduct all sorts of shady business, making the anonymous sale and purchase of everything from drugs to guns possible.
More specifically, the new regulations come at the urging of federal authorities. In April 2011, the FBI recommended that third-party exchanges of Bitcoins be forced to follow the same anti-money laundering rules that banks are supposed to follow.
MORE: Bitcoin looks primed for money laundering
In the coming years, expect more regulations, experts say. “The government is just catching up,” says Edward Castronova, a gamer and telecommunications professor at Indiana University.
The Chinese have been a step ahead of the U.S. In 2009, authorities issued new regulations aimed at restricting the trade and use of online money on worries that currencies used in online games had become so commonplace that they could impact, and possibly destabilize, the real economy.
In the U.S., future rules could either deepen the legitimacy of online currencies or destroy them entirely, depending where lawmakers go from here, Castronova says. Whereas the latest anti-money laundering regulations help their credibility by treating them similarly to traditional money-order providers, levying taxes and transaction fees obviously would hurt their value.
To be sure, the pot of virtual money is nowhere as liquid as traditional cash in the global financial system. But while they play a relatively small role, at least for now, bankers nonetheless view their rise as potentially dangerous to the health of the economy. Because virtual currencies aren’t backed by a central bank or controlled by a central administrator, their values are vulnerable to wild swings.
In 2011, the American Bankers Association asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to apply consumer financial protection laws uniformly, regardless of whether it’s a traditional bank or nonbank payment providers. The fact that bankers are watching online money signals they have potential to help or destroy all that exists in the real world.
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New federal regulations make online currencies act more like traditional forms of cash.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/09/03/state-panel-finds-proposed-partners-merger-will-raise-costs/5reR7Jf0S3NSRHuQPAilHK/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20140905070150id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/09/03/state-panel-finds-proposed-partners-merger-will-raise-costs/5reR7Jf0S3NSRHuQPAilHK/story.html
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State panel finds proposed Partners’ merger will raise costs
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Attorney General Martha Coakley is renegotiating a controversial settlement with Partners HealthCare after a state commission said Wednesday that a proposed takeover of two North Shore hospitals would raise costs and increase Partners’ already formidable market power.
Coakley’s deal would allow Partners to acquire South Shore Hospital in Weymouth and Hallmark Health System in Medford and Melrose, while setting price caps and other limits on Partners’ further expansion for several years. Coakley had structured the deal, announced in May, so that it could be revised based on findings of the Health Policy Commission, a watchdog agency.
The renegotiation began immediately after the commission endorsed findings that Boston-based Partners’ acquisition of Hallmark would raise costs up to $23 million a year and stifle competition, according to the attorney general’s office.
“Our office specifically retained the ability to reengage with Partners. Those negotiations begin today,” Brad Puffer, Coakley’s spokesman, said in a statement. He did not specify the changes Coakley would seek.
Coakley, a Democratic candidate for governor, has been criticized by political rivals, Partners’ competitors, and antitrust specialists for working out a deal with Massachusetts’ biggest health system instead of suing to block its bid to grow. Puffer maintained the settlement “will fundamentally alter Partners’ negotiating power and save costs across the entire network, accomplishing more than a lawsuit would have done.”
The settlement needs approval from a Superior Court judge. The next hearing is Sept. 29.
The commission studied Partners’ proposed acquisition of South Shore Hospital and Hallmark and said both deals would raise costs. In a final report on the Hallmark acquisition Wednesday, the commission said Partners failed to provide enough information to show the deal would improve care or lower expenses.
“This commission cannot function solely on hope,” Commissioner Wendy Everett said. “We do not believe this acquisition is really going to benefit the Commonwealth, and may even be to its detriment.”
Partners and Hallmark dispute the findings. They say their merger will lower medical costs by $21 million a year for five years, by delivering care more efficiently across various North Shore facilities.
“This transaction is a unique opportunity for us to work with Hallmark Health in order to improve patient care for Massachusetts residents living north of Boston,” Partners spokesman Rich Copp said in a statement.
The commission doesn’t have the power to block mergers, but it can refer them to the attorney general for further investigation. The panel has submitted its reports as part of the public comments the judge will review.
Commission chairman Stuart Altman said he hopes a final settlement will “eliminate or substantially reduce the likelihood that price increases will occur.”
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The state Health Policy Commission on Wednesday formally endorsed findings that Partners HealthCare’s proposed acquisition of two hospitals north of Boston would raise costs and expand the already formidable market power of Massachusetts’ biggest health system.
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Vice CEO on old media: ‘They can go to hell quite frankly.’
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FORTUNE — Born as an indie magazine, Vice Media has morphed into an irreverent digital media powerhouse, in large part, through the force of personality of its iconoclastic CEO-cum-on-air-personality, Shane Smith. Its approach to the news has been described as “More ‘Jackass’ than journalism.” Yet, Vice’s raw, in-your-face voice is resonating with an ever-growing global audience of young people hungry for something new. Like it or not, Vice has emerged as one of the savviest players in the burgeoning new media world that is finding success around YouTube (a trend that was the subject of a recent Fortune cover story, How YouTube changes everything).
In a wide-ranging conversation with Fortune, Smith discussed the keys to Vice’s success, offered advice to traditional media, and defended the North Korea stunt. This is an edited transcript of that conversation.
You’ve called Vice the “Time Warner of the street.” What do you mean?
It simply means that Time Warner [Fortune's parent company] TWX is a media conglomerate that does magazines, TV, movies, music, books. And so are we. We are the changing of the guard. We have magazines and records and books and online video and TV shows and movies that are more for Gen Y than for baby boomers.
So the “street” refers to the younger generation?
Vice describes itself as an all-digital network, yet as you have just said, you have all these other channels, including a show on HBO. What’s the interplay between TV and online for Vice?
We are all digital in the sense that that’s our focus. We create things first for online. If they go to TV, if they go to film, fine. That’s just another exploitation of that content, but we are online first.
A lot of the other YouTube or online channels aspire to “graduate” to television because the ad dollars are still much bigger there. You’re saying that’s not the case for Vice?
People want to migrate off of digital platforms because it is theoretically more lucrative, and there’s also [a sense] that TV is the gold standard.
I’ve said I want to be next ESPN, the next CNN and the next MTV rolled up into one. Well everybody says, “He’s a megalomaniac lunatic.” If you look at the numbers you can do on YouTube, if you look, for example at Machinima (an online video network for gamers) with 3.5 billion views a month, you wouldn’t be the next CNN. You would be the next CNN 10x. That’s what’s exciting for us.
If you want to use TV as a marketing tool for your brand, or it’s a margin builder because you have already paid for it digitally, fine. We do terrestrial TV in 23 countries, but it’s not core to our business. What’s core to our business is increasing our scale, increasing our reach and monetizing that in a meaningful way. The opportunities online are 10x what cable offered 20 years ago.
MORE: Katie Stanton: Twitter’s ambassador
Yet, while a lot of people are successfully building audiences on YouTube, many complain that monetization is still pretty challenging – that it’s digital pennies, compared with analog dollars. Machinima, which you mentioned, recently laid off 10% of its staff. Is the same not true for Vice?
For us, we’re lucky in that we work with some of the world’s biggest brands, and our capacity to sell outstrips our capacity to scale. We do things differently. YouTube’s monetization issues are no secret. But what you can do is start making innovative deals at the brand level. A lot of online content companies fail because they don’t go directly to the brand, they don’t make unique or creative monetization deals.
What’s an example of this?
Look at the Creators Project [a channel focused on the intersection of art and technology]. We made a deal at the brand level (with Intel). We’re going to make content that young people are going to enjoy, and it is going to help your brand. Then we make that content. We exploit that content. We have a TV show in China, we have mobile in India, we license it to TV in 23 countries in the world, we create a YouTube GOOG channel. It drives subscriptions, and it drives millions of video views. Intel INTC is happy because they are getting more ads at more scale globally. We get paid for the content before we ever put it on YouTube. Those are the types of deals that you have to make. Brands want scale. They want engagement. If you just wait for somebody else to make money for you, I don’t believe that’s going to happen.
And you are able to keep the editorial independence?Absolutely. We don’t do branded content. We do content that is sponsored by brands. And that’s no different than TV or radio or magazines.
Very. We have a rule that everything that we do has to make money.
We are growing at 100% a year without our big windfall deals that we are going to be announcing in Q4 or early Q1. We’re getting quite big, for us at least, in the dollars sense.
YouTube and online in general is typically short form. You’ve had success with longer content. Why?
Long form, I believe, is (viable) for the first time ever, because of bandwidth, because of young people consuming TV-length content online or through mobile or tablets. Gen Y people now consume whole movies online, so 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes isn’t too long. We’re in the right place at the right time.
Not everyone is a fan of your approach to the news. You’ve been roundly criticized for filming Dennis Rodman in North Korea. Around that time, your site proclaimed that “North Korea has a friend in Dennis Rodman and Vice.” What’s your response to the criticism?
First of all, any dialogue is good with any country especially if there’s aggression. Look, I’m not allowed to go to North Korea because I did two documentaries in North Korea and one outside North Korea on the slave labor camps in Siberia that were harshly critical of the regime. Vice has made no secret of our criticism of the North Korean regime.
Every time mainstream media says we are not doing it correctly, we say “Sure. We are doing it our own way.” We are also not saying we are the best in the world. We are out there, we are making content, and doing stories that young people resonate with. If that doesn’t satisfy the old guard, they can go to hell quite frankly.
MORE: 7 founders who wanted their companies back
What are you doing for an encore?
What we learned with the Rodman trip is let your content speak for yourself.
We have a big one that I can’t talk about. Look, Kim Jong-un is an absurdist character, from an absurdist country, and we went in for an absurd story. We know that. This is sort of similar, but I think it has much more geopolitical resonance.
More broadly, what’s next for Vice?
Look, it’s a great time to be a content provider. We are extremely happy and extremely lucky to be in the right pace at the right time. What I try to preach is that online is a better medium than TV. You can do a lot more with it. But the content that we make, in a lot of cases, doesn’t stack up against it. We have to challenge ourselves to be better. The content creators for the digital world have to be better than TV.
What’s your advice for traditional media execs who are trying to migrate online?
You can’t retrofit it. If there’s a bunch of old dudes in a boardroom that go, “OK. Let’s start making video,” what they try to do is hire pedigreed people. What you get is a shittier version of TV. You really have to rip out the pipes. You have to make things in a different way, hire people who have never worked in TV or commercials or film, get people straight out of schools, get people who don’t know what they’re doing, form your own school and train these kids. The reason I’m telling you all this, the reason I’m giving away my secrets, is that’s it’s nearly impossible to do.
If you think you’re going to raise $50 million or $100 million and go out and hire people who’ve done it before to do TV online, you’re going to fail.
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Shane Smith, CEO of Vice Media, talks about finding success online, his unorthodox approach to news, and filming Dennis Rodman in North Korea.
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Square raises $100 million
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Payments company Square has raised $100 million in new funding at a valuation of nearly $6 billion, according to a Delaware filing obtained by VCExperts.com and shared with Fortune.
The San Francisco-based company issued 6.4 million new Series E shares at around $15.46 per share, compared to the $11.01 per share paid for Series D shares back in late 2012. The company also had secured a $225 million credit line in April and, at around the same time, held a secondary share sale that valued the company at around $5 billion.
Square did not identify buyers of the new stock in its filing, but CNBC has previously reported that the company was raising up to $200 million from investors including Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC). It is unclear if it plans to sell the remaining $100 million, or if existing investors were involved in the disclosed sale.
Square was initially hyped for its merchant tools and card reader, but increased competition in the payments category has led to questions about its ability to compete. Paypal, Amazon, and Google have stepped up their efforts in the category, and this week’s announcement of Apple Pay, which had been rumored for months, introduces a new formidable competitor.
Square’s nosebleed valuation has been based on the fact that the company would be more than an aggregator of payment fees for small merchants, typically A low-margin business (the company) lost $100 million last year.) But with a series of missteps, including a consumer wallet app that never caught on, the company has had to refocus on more nuts-and-bolts merchant services. “Square has done a lot of risky if-it-works-it’ll-be-amazing stuff,” says a person close to the company. “But the current business is much more grounded and utilitarian, much less pie-in-the-sky.”
The company has reportedly been in the market for acquisitions to support that strategy, but only one has materialized: A high-end food delivery service called Caviar for a reported$90 million. Square has not yet returned a request for comment on the new funding.
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Square raises another $100 million, but may not be done yet.
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Peter Greenaway | Art and design | The Guardian
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Before we begin, Peter Greenaway would like to establish my credentials. "You are a film journalist?" he says. We are in Compton Verney, a stately home turned art gallery, which is hosting his exhibition, the Tulse Luper Suitcases, an accompaniment to his film of the same name.
I confess that I am not.
"But you have, perhaps, been to art school?" No, I say, I'm afraid I haven't. "Then what," asks the 54-year-old director, towering above me in his Dracula-black coat, face hanging like a moon, "is your specialism?"
He gives me a long, hard look.
Like a lot of people reputed to be crazy, Greenaway's view of the world adheres not to chaos, but to a complex set of codes, lists and systems. He doesn't believe in red herrings or non-sequiturs, but rather in the idea that everything is connected and thus relevant to the artist; no morsel escapes his despotic eye. As a result his films, which for 25 years have explored the relationship between order and disorder, have an eccentric quality - a habit of promoting the incidental to such a degree that, in Britain at least, they are often thought to be prohibitively difficult.
Tulse Luper is unlikely to reverse this trend. In the hands of a mainstream film-maker, it would chronicle a young man's adventures as he travels around the world accruing life lessons, a sort of Welsh Augie March. In Greenaway's hands, it's a succession of loosely connected episodes, non-sequential, sometimes non-verbal, governed by the number 92 (the atomic value of uranium - it uses the nuclear age as a backdrop) and is related to a slew of other Luper products that Greenaway has created: DVDs, plays, and the exhibition we are currently wandering around, which tells the story of the fictional Luper's life through the contents of 92 suitcases.
It is a monstrous project, a sort of arthouse equivalent to the spin-off and merchandising efforts of the big studios. "He's a cultural omnivore," wrote Pauline Kael, the New Yorker film critic, in 1991, "who eats with his mouth open" and Greenaway smiles garishly as he repeats it. "She's very witty," he says, "but of course hyper-critical." He is a firm believer in the principle that controversy validates quality.
We are in one of the exhibition rooms. Ninety-two suitcases hang from the ceiling. Sounding a little like Richard Burton doing Hamlet, Greenaway explains to me why his model of film-making is more realistic than that of his more traditional peers. "If you think about it," he says, "most cinema is built along 19th-century models. You would hardly think that the cinema had discovered James Joyce sometimes. Most of the cinema we've got is modelled on Dickens and Balzac and Jane Austen. But also, we have a deeply text-based cinema. So even if you want to make an original film, you've still got to have a text, because no one is going to have any confidence in you going to a studio or a producer with three paintings, four lithographs and some scribble on the back of an envelope. There's not that confidence in the notion of the image."
Given Greenaway's track record, this doesn't seem like an altogether unreasonable stance for the financiers to take. Of the scores of films he has made, he has had two critical and commercial successes, a murder mystery called The Draughtsman's Contract, and The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover, a brilliant study of greed and desire starring Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon.
"My biggest critical success was The Draughtsman's Contract, but then it wasn't the English who particularly thought so, it was the French, who are much more interested in Cartesian logic: in finding your way through more cerebral puzzle-making, if you wish. The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover earned about $28m in America and so obviously reached an audience of at least 10 million people. I can't command a Spielberg audience, but that's not too bad."
I ask if he ever looks back at his more obscure films - Prospero's Books, for example, a large proportion of which is devoted to John Gielgud dancing about in the buff - and wishes he'd put a few more conventional storytelling elements into them?
"I've never thought that, no. I always think that there is enough for people to hang on to, otherwise I wouldn't still be standing here talking to you after 25 years of film-making. People would have abandoned the pursuit of Greenaway a long time ago." I thought they had, more or less, certainly in this country. But Greenaway dismisses English attitudes to him as the product of failures in the education system. "English culture is highly literary-based. So much so that a French cinematographer like Truffaut would suggest that English cinema is a contradictory term."
Greenaway lives in Holland with his wife and three-year-old child. (And no, he insists, late fatherhood hasn't mellowed him). He has two daughters in their 30s from a previous marriage. He misses the "mysterious" English landscape, he says, with its hills and corners. He does not miss the English critics. He says, "Time after time people like yourself come, and we speak very pleasantly and then I find I've been stabbed in the back. I don't know why, perhaps you could supply the answer. I obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them. Maybe it's because I'm too goddamn clever. Maybe it's because I do my own exegesis and beat them to it. Maybe my sophistication is much, much greater than theirs so that irritates them."
We consider this for a moment. Maybe, I suggest, English people don't like him because he says un-English things such as, "People don't like me because I'm too clever." He looks puzzled.
Ken Russell once said that on the basis of his films, Greenaway apparently loathes the human race.
"Well he obviously hasn't understood, like the French and Italians do, that I come from the same country as Monty Python, that there is a great sense of humour in all this and a great sense of touching irony in it all. And people in these countries laugh long and loud and appreciate the sense of humour, but for some reason the English will refuse to jump that barrier. I have often been accused of being a misogynist too, which I think is deeply, deeply misplaced."
"I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory. It's full of enjoyments and ideas and it's rich in its textures and has a great excitement about living. And a lot of humanity. Some people would say again that my attitudes are cold and cerebral; I suppose if you're thinking about American sentimental movies I suppose they would be. Coleridge famously said, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, watch out, it'll stay there."
We move to a different room. There are more suitcases here, overflowing with Luper artifacts. It reminds me of one of those school projects in which in the interests of "living history", kids are made to collect bits of old junk and manufacture ancient manuscripts by staining paper with tea. There is a case of apples (92 of them). "The apple is about information, the fruit of knowledge and there are 92 events relating to apples in the film," says Greenaway.
There is a case of cigars, one of dead fish, train tickets, dolls, money, skulls, letters, etc, all zanily curated to illustrate Greenaway's theory of representation: that there are other, better ways of organising information than story-telling. But somewhere between the theory and the execution, Tulse Luper fails to come alive. Greenaway would attribute this to the philistinism of his audience, to the fact that we are conditioned to process information in straight lines only. But this doesn't quite get round the fact that theory without sentiment is what text books are for and that, as in so much of his work, the flashes of humour and pathos are never quite substantial enough to carry the intellectual weight dumped on top of them.
In the main exhibition hall, scenes from the film are projected on the walls. Over the noise, Greenaway says, "I believe there's no such thing as history, there's only historians, and in English we've got this word HIStory, but what about her story? So that, in the end, the history of the world would be a history of every single one of its members, but of course you could never get to grips with that. So we try and tell many many stories, in lots of fragmented ways, from lots of different viewpoints and by lots of different people." (This is an edited version; the actual speech is much longer.) I ask Greenaway if he isn't anxious that, in trying to tell too many people's stories, he winds up telling nobody's?
"Well, the actual import of that question is important to me, because if I'm going to demonstrate that the cinema is not the best place to tell narratives, then to tell you thousands of narratives almost implies that. Just consider your journey down to here, hundreds of thousands of things have happened to you, you sift all that out, you take what you want, and the rest is put in your memory, put on the back boiler."
Do you have any self-doubt?
"Ummmm. Well I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose? Ahh. I learned the other day that this exhibition was incredibly expensive, I'd no idea." He pauses. "So maybe twinges of, 'Have we done something here that's worthy of the efforts being put into it?'" His life's work, he says, has been about "organising, collating, trawling". And he talks for another 10 minutes or so, uninterrupted.
"OK," he says finally, "that is a long answer to your short question. But we're getting there."
· The Tulse Luper Suitcases exhibition is at Compton Verney, Warwickshire (tel: 01926 645541).
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He's made dozens of films but only two have been critical and commercial successes. And the latest - telling the life story of a young man through the contents of 92 suitcases - is unlikely to be the third. But Peter Greenaway doesn't mind - the English just don't understand him, he says.
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Tubular belles and all that jazz
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20140913195655
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Tamara de Lempicka Royal Academy, London WC2, until 13 August
Jack Nicholson owns one version, Donna Karan another, of a nude by Tamara de Lempicka. It is a painting of an odalisque, one arm lazily draped behind her head, reclining in careless rapture. The pose is traditional, high art, European. But the arm is a polished tube; and the body a gleaming auto with haunches like fenders and curvy hubcaps for breasts. Run your eyes over this model, the picture leers, inspect the bodywork of this streamlined beauty. No artist has ever made a more blatant equation between women and cars. Soft porn, hard chrome - that's the Lempicka nude in essence.
Now there are people who believe La Belle Rafaela, and the rest of Lempicka's art, to be terribly underrated. They include her biographers, her collectors (Barbra Streisand, Luther Vandross, Madonna, Hollywood), her dealers (one of whom has written a catalogue essay for this show) and now, it seems, the Royal Academy itself.
Commerce calls, to be sure - Lempicka is Art Deco in painterly form; Deco is having a second heyday. Merchandise can, and does, include crepe-de-Chine pyja mas, sunray powder compacts, diamanté earrings and so forth. But there is a hesitance to the Academy's puffing of Lempicka too. She is 'ambitious... colourful... instantly recognisable'. She is a Deco icon. She is of her generation. Imagine if that was the best you could say of Rembrandt: that he was of his era.
Lempicka's age was never fixed. She was born in Moscow in 1895 or 1898 - although she preferred Warsaw in 1902 - to a family of Polish-Russian aristocrats. In 1916 she married the wealthy tsarist Tadeusz Lempicki and they might have lived an entire life of sybaritic luxury if the Bolshevik Revolution hadn't exiled them to Paris. Which turned out to be the making of Lempicka's career, for she discovered everything she needed in that city - Italian masterpieces in the Louvre, Modernism in the cafes, ritzy clothes, Deco, suggestible patrons, high bisexual society. La Belle Rafaela is the exemplary Lempicka composite, painted in 1925 (and again in 1927 and 1929): lighting by Caravaggio, tubism by Léger, lipstick by Chanel, styling by Esquire out of Ingres.
Once Lempicka had fixed on that look she never let up. A new idea is the last thing you would seek in her art. She does what she does - society portraits and nudes - over and again without much adjustment to the formula. A typical Lempicka presents a single serpentine figure, occasionally two, twisting and turning up through the picture, filling the frame. The women come in two (instantly recognisable) types: dressed or undressed, sleek bob or shiny wood-shaving curls, plus tin-tack nipples and chrome-finish arms. The men have more interesting props (a test-tube full of patent indigestion remedy, in the case of one magnate) and less lubricious poses, though they all wear similar movie-star scowls.
Lempicka's palette, too, gets something from early Hollywood. The basics are black, white and silver, setting off a small combination of colours, distinctively her own - absinthe, crimson, arsenical green, royal blue and blood orange. Set inside their exquisite Art Deco frames of polished steel and silver, the effect can be of flashbulbs going off at a distance. The look is glamorous and glitzy and eye-poppingly bright, but deliberately cold and shallow.
Which is not something you can pull off without a rudimentary grasp of anatomy - which Lempicka seems never to have acquired. Depending on how many visitors are jamming the entrance to this show, the first thing you see could be a nude so wincingly inept - the body parts contorted in five opposing directions, like a maltreated Barbie - you may wish to cover your eyes.
This is not just an attempt at Modernism, which Lempicka thought 'untidy' (although she was not above throwing in the little she understood of Cubism, to keep up with the times, which amounted to weird little dissolves and fractured angles). It is that she has no idea where a knee joint occurs, how it hinges a leg, how a hand attaches to a wrist, or a neck to a shoulder. All of which is fairly crucial to her chosen genres.
And just as she is lousy at anatomy, so Lempicka is casual with her medium. Reproductions - and Lempicka is number one every time a Jazz Age image is required - suggest smoothness, sleekness, high polish. But in reality the paintings can be disappointingly coarse. The grounds are so hastily prepared it may not be all that long before the faces start to fall from her portraits. The pink tunic in the painting of that name has already reverted to dull orange.
What do her fans claim? That Lempicka's art is 'manifestly erotic' - about as erotic as a Vargas pin-up. That she has a penetrating eye for character, even though it is very nearly impossible to tell one of her tubular belles from another. That she has inimitable style, even though her style is pure imitation, a synthesis of other styles that comes very close, in the end, to the stylised bas-reliefs on fascist architecture.
That style was a thing embalmed. It would be easier to forge a Lempicka than just about any artist I can think of because her paintings are entirely composed of tics. They have no soul, no sincerity, no imagination and few appreciable differences one from the other. When the portrait market waned, she painted maudlin religious art. The Communicant , for instance, in which a dove is helping to primp up the young girl's veil. Or The Mother Superior with two glycerine tears glued to her cheeks. As Oscar Wilde said of the death of Little Nell, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
Jack Nicholson owns the best painting in this show: Grand Duke Gabriel, friend of the artist and one of Rasputin's assassins, a really chilling image of a proud, if slightly disorientated, exile - thick lipped, pale-eyed, the shadows beneath his eyes so dark you feel he can never have slept. But then you see that Nicholson also owns what is easily the worst in show - a horrendous dime-store picture of two flappers, livid eyeballs rolling heavenwards: the return of the living dead.
A joke? Who knows, although Lempicka was far too vainglorious for self-parody; the point is that there's too little distance between the best and the worst. Lempicka's range is from icy to cloying and back again, and all of it relentlessly fake. What interested her was what could be bought - pearl tie-pins, patent leather, Cartier emeralds, French manicures - and she had the skill to render and resell them in oil paint.
One wouldn't want to downplay her considerable graphic talent or her ability to get the cold gleam into satin with practised use of cadmium white by making inflated claims for Tamara de Lempicka as an original or natural artist.
El Greco National Gallery, London WC2, until 23 May Last chance to see electrifying works by The Greek.
Helen Chadwick Barbican Art Gallery, London EC1, until 1 August Sculptures, installations and photo-works.
Celia Paul Abbot Hall, Kendal, until 26 June Complex and profound: new portraits and prints by this marvellous painter.
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Art: Laura Cumming on Tamara de Lempicka at the Royal Academy
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A perfect pick and mix...
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20140914002006
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Artists' Favourites Act I ICA, London SW1, until 23 July Act II 30 July - 11 September
Artists curating other artists is always interesting - you have only to look at the unseemly row at the Royal Academy over Maggi Hambling's rejected picture of Michael Jackson. Here at the ICA the reasons behind the choices add an extra dimension to the works. It's a diverse and interesting collection, including sculpture, photography, video and a Jean-Luc Godard film in its entirety.
Paul McCarthy grew up in the Rocky Mountains and became obsessed with the Matterhorn. His choice is a tribute to that peak as immortalised by Walt Disney. So the core of his collection of images is Disney's 1959 working drawings for the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland, California, flanked by a vintage Swiss ski poster. Nearby in the upper gallery is Sarah Jacobs's Dexion Piece selected by Gustav Metzger. He first encountered the piece when he was at the Slade in 1997 and it made a huge impact. It makes a similar statement here.
Jacobs has scanned the text of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo on to acrylic panels that are then suspended in a framework; it pays lip service to Duchamp's Bride Stripped Bare. Pawel Althamer teaches art to students with multiple sclerosis in Warsaw and set his class to sculpt Queen Nefertiti. His choice is a jaunty little clay model by Jozef Skwarczewski. There's a great series of Sol Lewitt selected by John Baldessari and a wonderful Donald Judd big steel compartmented box, plus lots more.
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Art: Caroline Boucher on Artists' Favourites Act I and Act II at the ICA
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The Apple e-book antitrust case: The final four days
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FORTUNE — Eddy Cue, the alleged “ringmaster” of a conspiracy to raise e-book prices in 2010, returns to a Manhattan federal court Monday in the final four days of the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Apple AAPL .
Having sailed through a grilling Thursday by the government’s lawyer, the star witness of U.S.A. v. Apple will complete the friendly questioning that Apple’s chief counsel began Thursday afternoon.
Among the topics they are expected to cover Monday are a dinner with Macmillan’s CEO that the government finds suspicious and a “smoking gun” e-mail from Steve Jobs to Cue that the DOJ entered into evidence but which according to Cue’s testimony was never sent.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote will probably have a few questions for Cue, and the DOJ may re-cross, but then the government will rest its case, and it will be Apple’s turn to present its defense.
The witnesses on Apple’s list:
There isn’t much time to squeeze them all in. Thursday has been set aside for summations, and then Judge Cote will have to write her decision. The best estimate I’ve heard for how long she’ll need is three weeks, give or take a week.
For background on the case, see:
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The DOJ will rest its case. Apple will present its defense. Summations on Thursday.
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Diem Brown on Surrogacy Plans: 'I'm Going to Have My Family and My Dream Again'
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From left: Alicia Quarles, Diem Brown and Kara DioGuardi
09/16/2014 AT 08:00 AM EDT
has taken during her three battles with cancer over the past nine years, the hardest was the
The MTV reality star and
, 32, had previously gone to extraordinary lengths to freeze her eggs in hopes of someday experiencing
But when she was diagnosed with cancer
, that dream was lost.
"I fought for it so much, and I wasn't allowed to have it," she tells PEOPLE. "I'm not pitying myself, but there's a mindset that you can do anything, and that's what I'd always believed."
She adds: "I would love to be pregnant; I would love to feel a life growing inside me, but I know that's not an option anymore."
Instead, Brown, who is currently single, says when the time comes to start her family, she'll focus on an alternate route to motherhood: surrogacy.
"My big goal in life is to prove people wrong," says the activist, whose friends launched a
for her on MedGift, the registry she founded for those suffering from any illness. "You think I'm out? Watch: I'm going to get healthy, and I'm going to have my family and my dream again."
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"I would love to feel a life inside me but I know that's not an option anymore," she tells PEOPLE
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Britain's hoard of ancient coins
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"Completely unprecedented" ... the ninth-century gold coin depicting King Coenwulf of Mercia on display at the British Museum. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA
The British Museum today unveils the most expensive coin in history. The ninth-century coin depicts Coenwulf, the ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia from 796 to 821, and it is thought to be the oldest example of gold currency commemorating a British ruler - which helps to explain why the museum paid £357,832 to the anonymous person who found it near Bedford in 2001.
"It's completely unprecedented," says Gareth Williams, the museum's curator of early medieval coinage. "The most expensive single British coin before this was a gold penny of Henry III, which went for something like £145,000."
To put the find in context, there are only eight known English coins dated between 700 and 1250. This is the first to be found for more than 50 years.
Williams is particularly excited by the wording on the back of the coin, "De Vico Lvondoniae", meaning "From the trading place of London". "London is referred to as a vicus, part of Ludenwic and a centre of authority and it is striking that Coenwulf chooses to describe it in that way," says Williams. "I think he is imitating a coin of his contemporary, the Frankish emperor Charlemagne, who was the most powerful ruler in Europe. Coenwulf is basically saying, 'I'm as good as Charlemagne and London's as good as Dorestadt.' He's promoting London on an international trade coinage as a major trading centre."
Many ancient coins carry messages. Among the selection of notable British finds pictured is one found in Oxfordshire in 2003 that depicts Domitanius, a Roman emperor neglected by history. His coin informs us that he ruled Gaul and Britain in 271, as leader of the breakaway "Gallic" empire. Another, a King Alfred silver penny from c880, is, like the Coenwulf coin, a piece of Londoncentrism, intended to mark the Anglo-Saxons' recapture of the city from the Vikings. The odd monogram on one side makes up the letters "Lvndonia".
The museum also owns the earliest surviving English halfpenny, but it only cost a few thousand pounds. Why was the Coenwulf coin so much more expensive? "It's one of the most beautiful Anglo-Saxon coins anyone has ever seen. The halfpenny was historically interesting but it's small and grotty and silver. This one is gold and went into the ground in something close to mint condition, so it's a very collectable coin."
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The British Museum today unveils the most expensive coin in history. The ninth-century coin depicts Coenwulf, the ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia from 796 to 821.
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Alibaba shares spike in New York Stock Exchange debut
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20140929050646
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NEW YORK (AP) — Alibaba debuted as a publicly traded company Friday and swiftly climbed more than 40 percent in a mammoth IPO that offered eager investors seemingly unlimited potential for growth and a way to tap into the burgeoning Chinese middle class.
The sharp demand for shares sent the market value of the e-commerce giant soaring well beyond that of Amazon, eBay and even Facebook. The initial public offering was on track to be the world’s largest, with the possibility of raising as much as $25 billion.
Jubilant CEO Jack Ma stood on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as eight Alibaba customers, including an American cherry farmer and a Chinese Olympian, rang the opening bell.
‘‘We want to be bigger than Wal-Mart,’’ Ma told CNBC. ‘‘We hope in 15 years, people say this is a company like Microsoft, IBM, Wal-Mart. They changed, shaped the world.’’
The company’s online ecosystem stands apart from most e-commerce rivals because it does not sell anything directly, preferring to connect individuals and small businesses. It enjoyed a surge in U.S. popularity over the past two weeks as executives made sales pitches centered on Alibaba’s strong revenue and big ambitions.
Some key points about the people leading this e-commerce giant.
‘‘There are very few companies that are this big, grow this fast and are this profitable,’’ Wedbush analyst Gil Luria said.
Trading under the ticker ‘‘BABA,’’ shares opened at $92.70 and nearly hit $100 within hours, a gain of 46 percent from the initial $68 per share price set Thursday evening. Demand was so high that the company raised its price ahead of the debut.
Alibaba’s Taobao, TMall and other platforms account for some 80 percent of Chinese online commerce. Most of Alibaba’s 279 million active buyers visit the sites at least once a month on smartphones and other mobile devices, adding to the company’s attractiveness as online shopping shifts away from laptop and desktop machines.
The growth rate is not expected to mature anytime soon. Online spending by Chinese shoppers is forecast to triple from its 2011 size by 2015. Beyond that, Alibaba has said it plans to expand into emerging markets and, eventually, into Europe and the U.S.
The company does not compete with its merchants or hold inventory, serving more as a conduit that links buyers and sellers of all kinds.
‘‘The business model is really interesting. It’s not just an eBay. It’s not an Amazon. It’s not a Paypal. It’s all of that and much more,’’ said Reena Aggarwal, a professor at Georgetown.
Alibaba’s revenue from the quarter ending in June surged 46 percent from last year to $2.54 billion. Its earnings climbed 60 percent to nearly $1.2 billion, after subtracting a one-time gain and certain other items.
In its last fiscal year ending March 31, Alibaba earned $3.7 billion, making it more profitable than eBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. combined. As of Thursday, Amazon had a market value of about $150 billion, eBay $67 billion.
Based in Ma’s hometown of Hangzhou in eastern China, Alibaba began in 1999 when Ma and 17 friends developed a fledgling e-commerce business on the cusp of the Internet boom. Today, its main platforms are its original business-to-business service, Alibaba.com, consumer-to-consumer site Taobao and TMall, a place for brands to sell to consumers.
The IPO’s fundraising target handily eclipses the $16 billion Facebook raised in 2012, the most for a technology IPO. If all of its underwriters’ options are exercised, it would also top the all-time IPO fundraising record of $22.1 billion set by the Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. in 2010.
Yahoo stands to be a big winner. The U.S. company, which has been struggling to grow for years, is in line for a windfall of $8.28 billion by selling 121.7 million of is Alibaba shares. And founder Jack Ma is selling 12.75 million shares worth $867 million.
Some analysts think the pricing is conservative.
Wedbush’s Luria gives the stock a one-year price target of $80. Research firm PrivCo said the stock is worth $100 a share because of all of the private companies that Alibaba has taken stakes in.
Alibaba offered 320.1 million shares for a total offering size of $21.77 billion. Underwriters have a 30-day option to buy up to about 48 million more shares.
The company and its bankers avoided mishaps like those that plagued Facebook’s stock debut on the Nasdaq in May 2012. The social network’s first day of trading was marred by technical glitches. Despite an IPO that was hyped even more than Alibaba's, Facebook’s stock closed just 23 cents above its $38 IPO price on that first day and later fell much lower. The stock took more than a year to climb back above $38.
Gartner analyst Andrew Frank said Alibaba’s success shows that Chinese Internet companies are beginning to challenge Silicon Valley.
‘‘It’s not the first Chinese company we've seen in the Internet space but it’s certainly the biggest one that seems to be resonating,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s a symbol that the Internet dreams of wealth and power are not just limited to a few small cities in the West Coast in the U.S.’’
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Alibaba’s stock is rising 36 percent in the Chinese e-commerce powerhouse’s debut as a publicly traded company.
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Europe's banks toil towards closure on conduct scandals
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Like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the mountain, Europe’s banks are toiling to rebuild their reputations after the welter of scandals that has hit them in recent years.
Switzerland’s UBS AG UBS admitted Monday that it was in talks to settle allegations that its traders had rigged benchmark foreign exchange rates, saying it could face “material monetary penalties” from negotiations with regulators. It’s also facing class action lawsuits in U.S. federal courts from FX market participant who claim they suffered losses as a result of market manipulation.
UBS’s announcement follows on from reports on Friday that the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority had held talks with six of the largest banks caught up in the FX benchmark manipulation affair, indicating that it was looking to impose what would be record fines to settle the matter.
In addition to UBS, the FCA also held talks with Citigroup C , JP Morgan Chase & Co. JPM , Barclays Plc BCS , Royal Bank of Scotland Plc RBS and HSBC Holdings Plc HBC . Between them the six face fines of over $2.5 billion, according to media reports.
Those reports suggest that banks look to have failed in their efforts to head off a repeat of the disastrous scandal over manipulation of benchmark interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor. Deutsche Bank AG DB and Citi have already fired staff in relation to the investigation. Even the Bank of England has suspended an official as it looks into its role in the administration of sterling fixings.
The Libor scandal, meanwhile, keeps claiming more victims. Lloyds Banking Group Plc LYG , which has already been fined some $350 million for its role in the Libor scandal, said Monday it had fired eight employees implicated in manipulating rates, clawing back some $4.8 million in bonuses.
Lloyds didn’t name the people dismissed, and a spokesman declined to say how far up the bank’s hierarchy the measures had gone. All the employees affected still have the right to appeal.
Meanwhile, across the channel, BNP Paribs BNPQY announced at the weekend that Jean Lemierre, formerly president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, would succeed Baudoin Prot as chairman. Prot had announced he would stand down earlier last week, in the wake of a $9 billion fine from U.S. regulators for helping Iran, Sudan and others to get round U.S. sanctions over a course of years.
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UBS confirms risk of significant fines for manipulating FX markets, while Lloyds fires eight over Libor affair.
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Judge won't prevent sale of state office buildings
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20141002112759
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A San Francisco judge refused Friday to block the sale of 11 state office buildings and other properties, including the California Supreme Court headquarters, rejecting arguments that the deal - a long-term money-loser, according to one state assessment - is an illegal gift of taxpayer funds.
Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard also disagreed with opponents' claim that the sale of two court buildings requires advance approval from leaders of the state's judiciary. Joseph Cotchett, lawyer for two former state Building Authority members who challenged the deal, said he would ask an appeals court to intervene before Wednesday, when the sales are tentatively scheduled to close.
The properties include the courthouse on McAllister Street and the state Public Utilities Commission building on Van Ness Avenue, both in San Francisco, and offices in Oakland, Santa Rosa and Los Angeles. The Legislature voted last year to let Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sell the buildings and lease them back for state use for at least 20 years, generating $1.2 billion in short-term cash to reduce the mounting state deficit.
But the Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal analyst said the deal would worsen the deficit over a 35-year period, with a net loss of $1.4 billion in lease payments and the equivalent of 10 percent interest.
State Treasurer Bill Lockyer and Controller John Chiang opposed the sale, and it was contested in court by two members of the State Building Authority in Los Angeles who were removed by Schwarzenegger after voicing their opposition.
The lawsuit argued that the transactions violated laws against the waste of state funds and also amounted to an illegal gift of state assets.
"The terms of the transaction are so one-sided that it amounts to a guaranteed profit for the purchasers," said Anne Marie Murphy, another lawyer for the plaintiffs.
But Woolard agreed with the Schwarzenegger administration that state officials and lawmakers were entitled to decide whether the sale was in the state's interest.
She also said the sales of the two court buildings did not require approval from the Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the judicial branch, because it does not own the buildings.
Eric Lamoureux, spokesman for the Department of General Services, said the ruling confirmed the governor's and Legislature's decision that "we need to sell these office properties to generate revenue that is desperately needed now."
Lamoureux also said the 35-year period covered by the legislative analyst's forecast was "highly unpredictable and speculative," and that the department's own analysis found that the state would save $2 million over the 20-year minimum lease period.
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A San Francisco judge refused Friday to block the sale of 11 state office buildings and other properties, including the California Supreme Court headquarters, rejecting arguments that the deal - a long-term money-loser, according to one state assessment - is an illegal gift of taxpayer funds. Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard also disagreed with opponents' claim that the sale of two court buildings requires advance approval from leaders of the state's judiciary. The Legislature voted last year to let Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sell the buildings and lease them back for state use for at least 20 years, generating $1.2 billion in short-term cash to reduce the mounting state deficit.
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Disney postpones Iger's retirement party, extends CEO through 2018
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20141002234336
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Disney is riding high, and the entertainment behemoth wants its CEO’s ride to last longer than expected.
The Walt Disney Company’s board said Thursday that it is extending the contract of chairman and CEO Bob Iger through the end of June 2018, which is two years beyond the 2016 retirement date set in a previous contract extension he signed last summer.
The company’s stock price has more than doubled (214%) since Iger took over the CEO role from Michael Eisner, in 2005, while Disney’s DIS market value has more than tripled, to $150 billion. Iger had previously spent five years as Disney’s chief operating officer, a position that has remained vacant since he took the helm of the company. Iger is expected to name a new COO next year in a move that will likely allow him to anoint his own successor.
“I’m very excited about what lies ahead, including the release of our Star Wars films and the launch of Shanghai Disneyland, and I’m honored to continue working with our talented management team and the 175,000 dedicated people who make this company what it is today,” Iger said in a statement.
Under Iger’s watch, Disney has expanded its entertainment offerings with such major acquisitions as Pixar, in 2006, and Marvel Entertainment three years later. In 2012, Iger oversaw Disney’s $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm, which paved the way for a new slate of Star Wars films to be released in coming years. Disney has also recently turned around its iconic animation unit with the global success of last year’s Frozen, which became the highest-grossing animated film ever and spawned a lucrative line of merchandise.
In August, the company reported 22% lift in third quarter profits while the entertainment studio’s revenues jumped 14%. The parks and resorts unit saw a sales bump of 8%.
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The 'Mouse House' has more than tripled its market cap, to $150 billion, with nearly a decade of Iger at the helm.
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This is a warning
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20141005092538
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A man is falling. He's a black silhouette in empty space, and has spread out arms and legs like a skydiver, as if a vigorous pose might save him. The closeness of the poorly surfaced road and diagonal kerb tell you he has been photographed at the very end of his fall by someone at a window or on a rooftop high above: he's about to smash into the ground. Still, he can't quite believe that his actions, his posture, his personality make no difference.
Andy Warhol's painting Suicide (Silver Jumping Man) offers one very obvious reason why a man famous in his lifetime for portraying the famous, scorned by so many critics as the starstruck nemesis of serious art in America and dead now for two decades, is one of the most urgent artists of our time. He saw everything about our world when it was just a seed. He even saw the sky above New York full of falling bodies. Was the man who painted this someone who only cared about celebrity? Is it even possible to recognise a famous hostile characterisation of him as "the shallow painter ... whose entire sense of reality was shaped ... by the television tube"?
Twenty years have passed since Andy Warhol died during what was expected to be a routine gallbladder operation. He was 58, and his sudden end was neither a bang nor a whimper, but meaningless. Every year since, his art has become more perversely alive. Twenty years ago, most people probably pictured a soup can when they heard he had died. A measure of how much richer our taste in Warhol has become is the fact that the National Galleries of Scotland is about to open an ambitious retrospective of him without a single soup can among its silver floating pillows, stitched Polaroids, skulls, toys and films - and those electrically charged paintings. It is a tremendous exhibition in a beautiful venue: a spacious neoclassical hall on the Mound, where Warhol's art has air and light. American art of his era demands elbow room and gets it in a show that is nothing less than a passionate essay on why Warhol is a great artist.
Everyone's Warhol is here (including Brillo boxes instead of soup cans), starting with the most cliched, the artist of celebrity, with a surprisingly effective display of his Polaroid-based society portraits of the 1970s and 80s: Liza Minnelli with lipstick so shiny it could blind you; Grace Jones with a face like armour. There are Screen Tests, filmed portraits in which almost anyone who came to his Manhattan studio The Factory would be obliged to sit about three minutes in the unrelenting glare of a camera. These portraits are some of the most violent things Warhol ever did in their remorseless revelation of character. See Dennis Hopper give his most disurbing performance, as himself.
A really cynical view of Warhol's rise might be to say it reflects a change in us - the penetration of our culture by celebrity. Warhol used to inspire a sort of fascinated curiosity because he painted a world in which "stars" were more real than real people - serious people didn't think that way. Now everyone thinks that way, Warhol's worship of glamour is no longer odd. In fact, what's striking in his 1970s portraits of fame is how innocent they seem - how moral, almost. These are not portaits of "celebrities" for their own sake, but people who were good at something. Liza Minnelli was seen as a talent then. Debbie Harry and Joseph Beuys justify interest. In other words, Warhol doesn't share the idea he's renowned for, that anyone can be famous. He meant it as dark satire: the people he idolised had something to their credit. Here is his 1963 painting Double Elvis; not only has this homage not lost its immediacy, but it will explain to all future generations what it was people saw in Elvis. Warhol is the only pop artist of the 60s whose art makes the old seem new. All the rest of those painters are museum pieces.
What made him so different? It's there in his Elvis: the intensely personal, subjective transformation that doesn't stand outside pop culture, doesn't ironise or analyse, but worships Elvis for ... his body, which judders in the silver emptiness of Warhol's painting. Love and perturbation. Elvis has shaken Warhol, and Warhol shakes Elvis. The star becomes anyonymous, at once a gunslinger, a thug - whatever Warhol wants him to be.
Warhol's fascination with the famous turns out, on the slightest inspection, to be quite different from how conventional views of him would have it. In fact, this show offers, despite its welcome avoidance of a weary biographical trawl, a cogent view of his human progress as an artist. It includes drawings he made as a fashion illustrator in the 1950s that are far more explicitly gay than his later work. Warhol could never have become renowned for these images at that time. They epitomise a subculture. Instead, he realised he could make art about things every person in America was intimate with, but that does not make his pop paintings impersonal. Only a hostile witness can miss the endless permutations of the silkscreen method by which he transferred photographs to a porous screen and pressed paint through it. In Marilyn Diptych, no two of the 50 images of her are identical. As she fades to black and then to nearly nothing, her memory becomes ever more idiosyncratic.
And here we finally break through the veil of fame. This exhibition is a compassionate tribute to the most influential artist of the last half- century, and subscribes to what you might call the humanist view of Andy Warhol: it shows all but the most dogmatic visitor how much warmth there is, what a beating pulse, under the apparently chill demeanor of the mask Warhol wore. It's not only 20 years since his death but since his memorial service, when his friend John Richardson revealed Warhol had been a lifelong Christian who quietly worked in soup kitchens. There is a book by a nun that interprets Warhol as a religious artist; another that shows how important poetry was in the milieu of The Factory. Downstairs in this show are archives kept and dated assiduously by Warhol - "memory boxes" - packed with typescript poems by friends, along with the bills and news clippings. But this show hits the highwater mark of the humanist Warhol. It goes an inch too far in presenting him as a cuddly human being when it reconstructs an exhibition he made for children, with paintings of toys shown at the right height for six year olds to enjoy them. It will be interesting to see if this works for children, but it's a long way from the core of his achievement. For God's sake, keep your children away from the room that really does take you to his heart.
Try as you might to make Warhol a happy, well-rounded individual, exhibit his art for kids, paper a vast gallery with cow wallpaper, recreate his installation of helium-filled silver pillows - it's all fun, it's fine - none of it justifies seeing Warhol as a modern master. He only really becomes that when he indulges his obviously unhealthy obsession with violent death.
Just as Truman Capote, his literary hero, only achieved true grandeur when he plumbed American's shadowlands and his own in the true crime story In Cold Blood, there is not really anything in Warhol's lighter work that appraches the black majesty of his deathly visions. This exhibition doesn't include as many of his Death and Disaster pictures as it might - you can cover a lot of gaps with cow wallpaper - yet the one room it has of these horrible, beautiful paintings is enough. This gallery's resemblance to the Rothko Chapel is surely deliberate. At last, someone has noticed that Warhol is an abstract expressionist painter - which may seem an outrageous statement. The entire ideology of New York pop in the 1960s was a rejection of the emotive sweep of 1950s abstract painters like Rothko and Newman. Yet the power of Warhol's paintings comes from their exploitation of the monochrome painterliness of New York abstract art: all he adds is the image.
In Suicide (Silver Jumping Man), the image, once you've recognised it, merges into the abstract shadows. With Foot and Tire (1963-4), there's no danger of missing the journalistic horror story. A human being has been crushed under a colossal truck wheel and mercifully, all you can see of the remains is the sole of a shoe. As with the falling man, this is an image of immense, inhuman forces crushing - literally, as if it were a grotesque joke, and it probably is - the individual. Here is the little man ground down under the behemoth of mass society, and here is a real, factual incident so horrific it's almost comic - it's just unbelievable. But in this grossest of Warhol's gross-outs, the beauty of his art asserts itself: the repeated silkscreens of the terrible sight wash out into the mystical emptiness of the abstract setting, a panel three and a half metres long, much of which is empty linen. It is designed to hang in exactly the kind of noble space this exhibition gives it, and lends its nobility to a pathetic death. The same happens in Gangster Funeral (1963): repreated five times in a vertical stack in vibrant pink acrylic space, a photo of a crime family send-off becomes a tableau of loss. You find yourself staring at the blurred, little faces, trying to see what they feel.
There is something extraordinary about these pictures, but is that quality compassion? As a matter of fact, it's not hard to see religious meaning if you're looking for it. In Hospital (1963), a nun wears a prominent cross, and the baby the doctor is holding by its feet has its arms out in an upside-down cross - an image recalling Renaissance nativities in which the crucifixion is foretold. In the image of a truck accident, all that is visible, all that has endured of the victim, is the sole of a shoe: can this be a grotesque pun on "soul"? Even a repeated image of a man thrown from a car wreck so that his body hangs impaled on a tree, can easily be seen as a crucifixion. Yet we are like the man walking indifferently past this stunning atrocity - enjoying violence as art.
If you want to know why Warhol is so enduring an artist, look at his gravest images. Look at his blue-and-black portraits of Jackie Kennedy before and after the assassination in Dallas: as she takes the salute at JFK's funeral, the violence of Warhol's time is refuted in an elegy to a woman he sees as maintaining dignity in a world gone mad. In the biggest gallery, the one work of art that triumphs over the cow wallpaper is his doubled, colossal 1981 painting of a handgun. Warhol lived in a world becoming more randomly and coldly violent - and was himself shot and nearly killed in 1968. The literal and metaphorical violence of modern life has intensified this decade. Artists of the earlier 20th century joined the communist party, supported world revolution and thought utopia was coming. Andy Warhol said everything is actually getting worse, that America is sick, and America is the only place that matters (for he was utterly American). He described our world when it was only half-formed. He saw it all coming. He's the prophet of our crisis
Andy Warhol: A Celebration of Life ... and Death, National Galleries of Scotland, The Mound, Edinburgh, August 4-October 7. Details: 0131-624 6200. Jonathan Jones on Warhol's Screen Tests: blogs.guardian.co.uk/arts
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Andy Warhol famously flirted with celebrity, but his fascination with modern life contained a much darker edge. It is his obsession with violent death that teaches us the most about the spirit of our age, says Jonathan Jones.
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Jonathan Glancey meets architect Rem Koolhaas
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Rem Koolhaas has some photographs to show me. Not glossy shots of some earth-shattering new building he has created but small snaps of street life in the age-old courtyards of Beijing. Known as "hutongs", these are tight webs of hotchpotch homes and alleys gathered around wells.
"Most of them will soon be gone," says the architect, speaking in the Rotterdam headquarters of his company, Oma."The Olympics next year will find them old-fashioned and unsightly. Those who live there are being given new high-rise flats. These are well-equipped and clean, but people, I think, miss their old life down below in the courtyards." Yes, down below - with the fruit-sellers, public kitchens, urban bustle and banter, the travelling conjurors and steaming public laundries. All going to make way for the brave new Olympian world.
In their place, right in the changing heart of Beijing, no fewer than 300 air-conditioned office blocks and hotels are set to rise. The most dramatic of these hutong-gobblers will be the sensational new headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV), due in time for the Olympics next August, and a world away from the antique courtyards. Its architect? Rem Koolhaas.
This is exactly the kind of paradox this highly intelligent and self-questioning architect revels in. In public, he is the master of sock-it-to-me design; in private, he looks with affection at the people and places in his photographs, at an old way of oriental life likely to vanish.
And even as the heroic structure of the CCTV building, designed with visionary Arup engineer Cecil Balmond, climbs up noisily into the smog of Beijing, Koolhaas is working quietly on the discreet new headquarters for the banking arm of the Rothschild empire in the City of London. This will be the Dutchman's first major building in Britain. If you didn't know better, you would be hard-pressed to guess that it was from the same hand and eye as CCTV.
The CCTV tower is nothing if not ambitious. Some 230 metres high, designed in the shape of a 3D Chinese character, its steel structure forms a continuous spatial loop climbing up and around the volume of the building. Inside this complex structural web, there will be a "media village" (more like a city actually), complete with places to eat and play, and a sensational public viewing gallery. It is a rollercoaster of radical ideas.
And yet, for all this free-thinking design, the one thing CCTV lacks is freedom of expression. Daring new architecture, yes. Radical internal planning, sure. Sixteen channels broadcast by whizzy new digital technology, check. Yet, for all this, CCTV remains a sub-ministry of the government of the People's Republic of China, its news programmes controlled by the Propaganda Department.
Koolhaas may have designed some of the most challenging, controversial and critically acclaimed ultramodern buildings of the past decade - Seattle public library, Casa da Musica in Porto, the Dutch embassy in Berlin - yet I can't help thinking that, for all the excitement of working with CCTV, his heart belongs to a world closer to Beijing's hutongs, something altogether more exotic.
Koolhaas, born in Rotterdam in 1944, spent four years of his childhood in Jakarta. "The country was newly independent," he says. "I lived as if I was an Indonesian." He loves Indonesia as the British often adore India. His father, Anton, was a distinguished Dutch journalist, novelist and scriptwriter, who became a friend of Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, a one-time architecture and civil engineering student. Somewhere in the young Koolhaas's mind, I can't help thinking, a taste of the exotic was already mixing with a love of writing and of buildings and places that would lead him to work first as journalist, with the Haagse Post, and then as a scriptwriter in the Netherlands and Hollywood, before turning to architecture in 1968. That's quite a CV for any man, let alone one who had just turned 24.
In 1956, Koolhaas returned to Holland and eventually to his home city, Rotterdam. Anyone born in Rotterdam during and after the second world war might have thought of becoming an architect. From May 14 1940, the old city all but ceased to exist, after being targeted by 90 German bombers. Reports of how many people died varies, but 24,978 homes were lost, along with 24 churches, 2,320 shops, 775 warehouses and 62 schools. Some 80,000 people lost their homes. The Dutch government surrendered to the Germans that day, after just five days at war.
"Have you always been designing Rotterdam?" I ask, thinking how, as a young man, he might well have dreamed of rebuilding his native city, and how it must be hard to ever get the blitzed city out of his mind. He sits up. "You mean because I was first brought up in a city that, in a way, didn't exist?" Yes, so it had to be reinvented. And, if you look at Rotterdam today, the postwar city is dotted about with the kind of buildings you might find in China and the Middle East today. Koolhaas turns his pen over and over: "I know what you mean. We do design a lot of buildings in cities in something like the condition of 1940s Rotterdam: Beijing, where they're pulling down much of the old city to go modern; Dubai, a brand new city growing rapidly like a teenager from the naked desert where there were virtually no buildings before; Abu Dhabi ..."
He changes tack: "But, with buildings like Seattle and Porto and the embassy in Berlin, no, these belong to settled cities and draw their inspiration from what's around them as much as what's been planned to go inside them. The Casa da Musica [in Porto] is often described as being like a meteor that has collided with the city, but that's not what we intended; we designed it as a real part of the existing city, a challenging and a provocative player."
When Koolhaas says "we", he means his 230-strong Oma practice. This stands for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, founded in London in 1975, though the taxi driver who drops me at the bland Rotterdam office block where Oma has its headquarters, says that Oma means grandma in Dutch. This is also the home of Amo, Oma's research arm. Koolhaas has published fascinating and sometimes contrary reports and books on countless urban subjects since his first, very successful book, Delirious New York, in 1978. At Harvard, where he is a professor, his post-graduate students work up huge reports on Koolhaas's pet subjects, such as the way in which China's Pearl river delta, stretching from Hong Kong to Macau via Guangzhou, was becoming one continuous built-up area - and, more by default than design, effectively the biggest city in the world.
Another report looked at how shopping is fuelling urban growth, and changing development and design. So impressed was fashion designer Miuccia Prada with the findings - she has a PhD in political science - that she commissioned Koolhaas to design stores for her fashion empire in the US. The latest Harvard study focuses on Lagos, a city that, typically, intrigues Koolhaas because it is at once venerable and modern, messy and lyrical, rich and poor, energetic and corrupt, but above all alive in a way that his native Rotterdam, a ghost city in August, clearly isn't. "I like Rotterdam," he says. "We work here in a cheap office, out of the way with no distractions. We think for ourselves. We are in some ways outside the architectural loop. We do not follow fashion."
And yet Koolhaas is loved by the fashionable. He is one of those architects who receives star treatment in design magazines. Every month, Oma receives more than 1,000 applications from graduates all over the world hoping to work there. Koolhaas has received pretty much every award going. He roosts at the top of the architectural tree with the likes of Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Toyo Ito.
When he says he hates "celebrity" culture, he almost means it. Koolhaas, though, is nothing if not contradictory. A man who thrives on free thinking, he works happily for absolutist governments. An architect who claims to distrust fashions in design, he is responsible for some of the most eyecatching of all new buildings, the Casa da Musica and CCTV chief among them. He is also in the process of designing "anti-icons", buildings that are almost willfully bland or simplistic, in Dubai. He seems to find the growth of Dubai absurd, yet is very much involved there, with the design of ambitious office buildings (one designed to revolve), apartment blocks and convention centres. Some of Oma's Dubai designs, such as the proposed Ras-al-Khaimah convention and exhibition centre, look as if they've been culled from the pages of sci-fi comics; others seem like slab-sided 1960s office towers.
Koolhaas does indeed live at least two lives at once. A tall, wafer-thin man crackling with a quiet energy - he swims, he says, whenever and wherever he can - he has two homes with two women in two separate cities. In Rotterdam, he shares his life with his partner Petra Blaisse, an interior and garden designer; and, in London, he stays with his wife, the artist Madelon Vriesendorp, with whom he has a son and a daughter, both in their 20s. Just as Koolhaas can love the hutongs of Beijing and design the CCTV tower, it seems he can live a complex personal life. In any case, he says, London is the one city where he can happily do nothing.
Because he has been willing to take risks, and because he is unlike most architects (who are, on the whole, a more contained and singularly directed species), Koolhaas has had his professional ups and downs. When Oma's first major building project, a centre for art and media technology in Germany, fell through, Koolhaas worked on his eye-popping book S, M, L, XL, with graphic designer Bruce Mau. Published in 1995, this outlines Koolhaas's belief that the sheer bigness of cities and their buildings today means that the old classical and Modern Movement rules of design, proportion and planning are largely meaningless. Meanwhile, commissions for projects in exactly such cities poured in.
"The market economy thrives on spectacle and novelty," says Koolhaas. "Its buildings are ever more dramatic. It offers the promise of total freedom, but in architecture this quickly leads to the danger of grotesqueness. It is hard to do serious, disciplined buildings in such a condition. The media, of course, encourages this teenage architecture; it gives most attention to extreme capitalist buildings, to this ever- growing accumulation of architectural extravagance, to fanciful museums full of shops. We calculated that between 1995 and 2005, Oma was asked to propose designs for 34 soccer fields of new museums, all a product of market growth rather than culture. Perhaps there is still a residual nostalgia for refinement, but the pressure is on the other way."
Only too aware of the absurdities of the bigness of today's cities and their architecture, he nevertheless designs big "iconic" buildings himself, while decrying the practice and researching and designing smaller alternatives. Small wonder that, when I enquire what he plans to do next, he says: "Write more." Asked recently to remodel the Hermitage galleries in St Petersburg, Koolhaas suggested doing as little as possible, keeping modern architectural intervention to a minimum.
Rem Koolhaas is one of the world's most intriguing architects. He is also an acute observer of politics, economics, cities and the way buildings work. How he manages to balance the two is something of a wonder. Here is an architect who could happily sit down one day with God to design refined and purposeful public buildings knitted into the fabric of old cities, and the next with the devil to design the wayward architecture demanded by ultra-capitalism.
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Any self-respecting world city now needs outlandish buildings, but what about the past? Superstar architect Rem Koolhaas tells Jonathan Glancey why even he gets nostalgic.
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long-journey-a-memorable-one-for-refsnyders | FOX Sports
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In about 120 games over three seasons, Arizona outfielder Robert Refsnyder has taken his parents on a sports journey only loved ones could appreciate.
Baseball games galore. And yes, there are more to come. Jane and Clint Refsnyder don’t mind. They’re enjoying the trip and what has turned into a wild and memorable ride.
"We won the Pac-12, we won the regional and now we are in Omaha for the championship," Jane Refsnyder said over the phone from the College World Series. "That’s just amazing. Wow."
What a ride it’s been -- for nearly 21 years.
It’s been sports, sports and more sports -- or at least has felt that way -- for the Refsnyder family since they officially adopted their son, then a 3-month-old from Seoul, Korea.
Clint said his son, the Wildcats' starting right fielder and arguably one of their best hitters, showed promise and potential as a 5-year-old when he'd emulate athletes on television.
"If they would throw a football, he’d pretend to be throwing one," Clint said. "If someone was batting, he’d bat, too."
He hasn’t stop hitting since, helping lead Arizona (46-17) to the College World Series finals beginning Sunday against defending champion South Carolina. For the season, he’s hitting .357 with 63 runs scored (second on the team) and 64 RBIs (best on the team).
"I feel good; I’ve been hitting all year," said Refsnyder.
He goes into Sunday’s game hitting a team-high-tying .400 for the Series with a team-high nine total bases. Four of those bases came on a towering home run over the left-field fence in Arizona’s romp over Florida State to advance to the finals.
"A home run is a home run, but it was nice (and) special," Refsnyder said. "A home run is always a big moment, but you just want to win."
That’s what Arizona has been doing, winning nine straight in postseason play and 10 of 11 overall. It’s no shock that Refsnyder has been a big part of UA’s amazing run. Eleven games ago, he ran through third-base coach Matt Siegel’s stop sign to score the winning run on a Seth Mejias-Brean double in a 1-0 game against rival Arizona State.
"All I saw was (the coach) putting on the stop sign and this crazy kid not stopping," his father said, joking. "Had everything played properly, he would have been out."
But the baseball gods had other plans. Refsnyder scored and made probably the biggest baseball fan in the family more than ecstatic. Jane said she "lost five pounds" on the play alone, yelling and screaming her son home.
"When he was going from second to third, he had this madman look," she said. "I had this mental flashback when he was in sixth grade and it was field-day competition and it was the fastest girl and boy, and he had never lost. I saw that same look on his face, like, 'I’m not going to lose this.' I saw him run and said, 'My god, he’s going to go for this.'"
Arizona has lost just once since.
And the Refsnyders, from Laguna Hills, Calif., have seen every game since. They’ve seen most of them over the years, watching their son start nearly every game, whether it be in right field or at second base or at designated hitter. He’s that valuable at every spot. He’s only missed two starts in 173 games.
When she’s in the stands, Jane is a busy woman, keeping a scorebook for every game. And that’s all the hits, runs and errors, not just Robert's.
"It’s the way I stay into the game," said Jane, a self-proclaimed baseball nut. "Who is coming up and how we’d pitch to them. And the fathers of the pitchers always ask me what’s the pitch count."
Jane wouldn’t have it any other way. Baseball and softball, although she didn’t play organized sports as a youth, have long been in her blood. She kept score at the games for her daughter, Elizabeth, who's also an adopted Korean and played D-III softball at Kenyon College.
Even after watching three games on television over the course of a day, if there’s an opportunity to watch a movie at night, much to Clint’s chagrin, Jane will pick baseball again.
Clint loves baseball, but Jane REALLY loves it.
"Jokingly I say this, and I’ve also apologized to the man upstairs," Jane said. "If there is no ballfield in heaven, I don’t want to go. I always have a score book, and I’d rather watch the ballgame rather than anything else."
There have been no lightning strikes from above yet.
When Refsnyder was drafted in the fifth round by the
earlier this month, Clint was as thrilled as any father would be for his son. There was a downside, though, in the acknowledgment that at least part of him would have to become a Yankees fan.
Clint grew up in Allentown, Pa., and is a
"It’s really cool," Clint said of his son’s draft status. "I put the Yankee jersey on a little gingerly at first, being from Philly and New York being the evil place that it is (he laughed). But seriously, it’s a first-class organization. What else can you ask for but being drafted by the class of the league?"
Then he continued: "I’m over it. I’m still a Philly fan."
And they will always be Wildcats fans, specifically this weekend as they complete a long journey filled with frequent-flyer miles and many, many miles on the road to watch their son and his teammates attempt to fulfill their dream.
"Oh my," Jane said, reflecting on the entire experience. "I said to Mr. Farris (UA pitcher James' dad) that I’m afraid I’m going to wake up from this great dream. He said, 'Stay asleep.' ... Every time I think about (all this), I say, 'Oh my gosh.'"
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As UA's Robert Refsnyder thrives in Omaha, proud parents are there every step of the way -- as always.
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How Much It Cost : People.com
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Amal Alamuddin and George Clooney on the cover of PEOPLE
10/04/2014 AT 02:05 PM EDT
True love may be priceless. But a gorgeous destination wedding in Venice, Italy, with fine food, top-shelf vino and multiple celebrations? Not so much.
At the end of the day,
's three-day wedding weekend, including their
, cost about $1.6 million, or a million British pounds, PEOPLE has learned.
Speculative reports placing the price tag anywhere from $5 million to upwards of $13 million are erroneous, according to a source.
Additional reports claiming Alamuddin's family footed the bill for the wedding weekend – which included several fetes at the matrimonial home base, the
– are also inaccurate, PEOPLE has confirmed.
One place the couple did catch a break on the bill? The bar tab.
As a founder of Casamigos Tequila, Clooney and business partner and wedding guest Rande Gerber
of the brand's award-winning Blanco, Reposado and Añejo tequila from California to Italy for the wedding festivities.
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Reports of a $13 million price tag are erroneous, a source tells PEOPLE exclusively
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Hand-powered laptop for poorer countries wins design award
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Winner Yves Behar with his product - One Laptop Per Child. Photograph: Matt Crossick/PA
A laptop computer charged by hand-cranked power and designed specially for use in the developing world has won the inaugural Brit Insurance design award.
Yves Béhar, designer of the One Laptop Per Child, was awarded the prize at the Design Museum in London last night by inventor James Dyson. Other shortlisted designs included Hussein Chalayan's autumn/winter 2007 collection and the Penguin classics Deluxe Edition.
Béhar said the award was the "icing on the cake" for an ongoing project described by Deyan Sudjic, the Design Museum's director, as "a good deed in a cruel world".The computer uses 90% less power than standard laptops, and has a screen that can easily be read in sunlight. It has a wi-fi antenna and can be networked.
Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the laptop is part of a not-for-profit scheme. "The idea was to create something entirely different," said Béhar. "We wanted to focus on the needs and desires of children and at the same time make a shift in computer design, keeping it at a low cost." The production cost of the computer is $180 (£90).
Already 600,000 have been distributed in the developing world or are on order in Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Mongolia, among other countries.
Béhar said none of the technology was patented: there is nothing to prevent the adoption of similar low-energy computers on the western market. The prize judges praised One Laptop Per Child as "a feat beyond the design itself".
It and the other 100 shortlisted designs can be seen at the Design Museum until April 27.
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Hand-powered laptop designed specially for use in developing world wins inaugural Brit Insurance design award
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Caterpillar is absolutely crushing it
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FORTUNE — Caterpillar had a terrible problem in South America, and that’s where the company sent Doug Oberhelman. It was the early 1980s, in the depths of the Latin American debt crisis, when the region got economically clobbered. “We sold 1,200 machines a year in Argentina in the late ’70s,” recalls Oberhelman, 58, who took over as CEO of Caterpillar last July. “In 1981, ’82, and ’83, while I was there, we sold four total.” It was a miserable experience — his duties included putting PROPERTY OF CATERPILLAR decals on repossessed construction equipment — but its value has lately become evident. “It was a fabulous underpinning for business because it was how to survive in a depression,” he says. “I’d forgotten a lot of those stories — until the last couple of years.”
For anyone wanting to solve the apparent puzzle of Caterpillar’s recent run of success, Oberhelman’s experience managing in a devastated market is an important clue. The puzzle is worth solving for those trying to win in today’s global markets. The solution turns out to be valuable to managers in any kind of business.
The puzzle begins with this question: Why was Caterpillar the best-performing stock last year among the 30 companies in the Dow Jones industrial average? After all, the modern information-based economy favors a Dow component like Microsoft MSFT , which is burdened by few physical assets and makes a product – software — that consists of pure thought. Or pillmakers like Merck MRK and Pfizer PFE , which pack massive intellectual capital into tiny, high-priced packages. Yet outperforming them all, with its shares up 64% in 2010, was a company that requires huge sums of financial capital to manufacture multi-ton dirt-moving machines, many of them produced by unionized American workers in the Rustbelt. “Who would’ve thought, out of all those names?” marvels Oberhelman. Caterpillar is on such a tear that last year it even outran Wall Street darling Apple AAPL (not a Dow component), which was up a mere 53%.
The puzzle isn’t just a 2010 story. In April, Caterpillar announced first-quarter profits that walloped Wall Street’s expectations and pushed the stock to a new high some 30% above its previous all-time peak. Caterpillar dealers recently told Wells Fargo analyst Andrew Casey that demand is so strong that “Cat can sell anything it produces.” Profits this year look to be about 10% higher than the company’s 2008 record, by analysts’ consensus.
The puzzle’s solution is just as counterintuitive as the puzzle itself. It comes down to this: The financial crisis and recession, which caused the worst revenue plunge in the 86-year-old company’s history — worse than any year in the Great Depression — while wrenching, were the best thing that has happened to Caterpillar in a long time.
It’s not that Caterpillar was doing poorly before the downturn. It was and still is the world’s dominant maker of construction and mining equipment, as well as a leading producer of diesel and gas engines, industrial turbines (essentially jet engines that power equipment and generate electricity), and locomotives. No competitor can match the breadth of Caterpillar’s product line. Its largest rival, Japan’s Komatsu, will take in an estimated $25 billion in revenue this year compared with Caterpillar’s $50 billion. Other competitors include Volvo, John Deere DE , Doosan Infracore of South Korea, and China’s LiuGong — plus hundreds of small, local, specialized producers.
While none of those companies threatened Caterpillar’s dominance in the boom years, they were (and remain) tough competitors, and Cat, as the big, old, successful incumbent, faced the inevitable dangers of success: loss of strategic focus, weak discipline, and maybe someday being overtaken by an industry disrupter. The recession pushed Caterpillar off that road. “You really find out who you are, what your capabilities are, in tough times,” says CFO Ed Rapp, 54, a Caterpillar lifer, like most of its top leaders. “It forces you to reflect on what really differentiates you in the eyes of your customers.”
That corporate soul-searching paid off, sharpening Caterpillar’s focus and emboldening it to make major investments, including three strategically crucial acquisitions in the past year that investors love. (More on those later.) A crisis tends to magnify advantages and disadvantages, rewarding or punishing years of past behavior. As it turned out, Caterpillar got rewarded in big ways.
Planning carefully for a bust
To understand why Caterpillar’s post-crisis success has been so dramatic, one must examine the cyclicality of Caterpillar’s business and in particular the blitzkrieg suddenness with which the financial crisis struck. Because Cat machines are expensive investments that last for decades, it’s tempting to imagine that sales trundle slowly up and down over the years, in sync with changes in GDP. But in fact sales lurch wildly. When the economy is strong, customers always find money for new, cutting-edge earthmovers. But when corporate budgets tighten, the multidecade longevity of Caterpillar’s machines works against the company. It’s easy for a customer to put off buying a new locomotive or excavator in a downturn. And cash-strapped owners flood the market with used machines that have lots of life left in them. Here’s an example of how Caterpillar’s machine sales worldwide varied in this past cycle (for three-month periods ending in the month indicated vs. a year earlier): April 2004, up 43%; September 2009, down 52%; September 2010, up 53%. In this business a monthly sales chart can look like a photo of the Alps.
With that roller-coaster trend in mind, Caterpillar through the boom was planning carefully for a bust — much more carefully than in previous cycles. “This is something we’re very proud of,” says Oberhelman, who, just before becoming CEO, ran the company’s main businesses — machines and engines. “Jim Owens, my predecessor, worked very hard on a trough strategy.” In fact, he put Oberhelman in charge of it. They forced the managers of each business unit to model the worst trough in their history. “Let’s say you’re running mining, and sales drop 80% in two years,” says Oberhelman. “How are you going to react to make money? Well, you can imagine how popular that was in 2005. Nobody wanted to talk about it. But we forced them through the exercise.”
It didn’t hurt that Caterpillar saw the recession coming more clearly than most large companies. Top management, realizing the company’s susceptibility to GDP shifts, had once asked Cat economists to find a leading indicator. “We’ve got good news and bad news,” the economists reported, as CFO Rapp tells it. “The good news is, we found an indicator that predicts shifts in U.S. GDP with a lead time of six to nine months. The bad news is, it’s our own sales to users.” Using that metric, Cat anticipated the U.S. recession coming in the third quarter of 2007 and said so publicly, triggering a 2.6% one-day drop in the S&P 500.
But the company never foresaw how vertiginous the sales drop would be. As late as September 2008, all still seemed well. At a mining industry trade show that month, Rapp recalls, “There was only one plea from customers: more product, more product.” Then suddenly, over Thanksgiving week, “things really drove off a cliff,” he says. “In September of 2008 we were looking for 2009 sales of $55 billion to $57 billion. They actually came in at $32 billion.”
That’s why all those years of disaster planning proved so valuable. With a catastrophic sales drop looming and 2009 shaping up as a crisis year, “we didn’t have to scurry around,” Rapp recalls. “We said, ‘Pull the trough plans and do it now.’ “
Each business immediately went into crisis mode. The company got most of the pain and termination costs of layoffs (35,000 from a workforce of 120,000) behind it in January 2009. At headquarters, “trough teams” worked from a 13-point list of priorities: dealer health, supplier health, cash, counterparty risk, and others. The teams met every Wednesday; Rapp met with them every Friday; and he delivered decisions from the top-executive group to the teams every Monday morning. He also set out the company’s three crisis goals: Stay profitable with strong cash flow, maintain the credit rating, and maintain the dividend.
The company achieved all three. Its new managerial tactics — intensive disaster planning when times were good; disciplined, fast execution of the plans when times turned bad; and concrete crisis objectives — worked. Caterpillar came through the recession financially strong, a novel experience. “We weren’t in this position in the past, because we always came out weak,” says Oberhelman. “We didn’t get through those cycles so well in the ’80s and ’90s.” Thus, Cat faced an unfamiliar but important problem: how best to use its strong balance sheet in a feebly recovering economy. In deciding, it got help from a fortunate coincidence.
As the crisis year was winding down, in October 2009, Caterpillar announced that Jim Owens would retire on reaching age 65 the following year, in accordance with company policy, and would be succeeded by Oberhelman. Born near San Diego, Oberhelman had grown up in northern Illinois, where his father was a John Deere salesman. He studied finance at Millikin University, a small, Presbyterian-affiliated school in Decatur, Ill., across town from the plant where Caterpillar makes some of the world’s largest trucks. Immediately after graduating in 1975, he joined the company as an analyst in the treasury department. His career took him not just to South America but also to Japan, Florida, and Canada, then back to headquarters in Peoria in 1995. He speaks quietly and calmly, in a flat Midwestern accent.
“One of the really great aspects of that transition, which we’d never done before at Cat, was that the first six months [after the announcement but before taking over] I spent only thinking about strategy,” he recalls. He picked his top team, 16 people, and they “dissected the company,” he says. “We put everything on the table — good, bad, and ugly.” Realizing the danger of blurred strategic focus, they went deep: “We’ve gone into a lot of different businesses over the last 20 years. We said, ‘What really is our business model, and how do we want to make money?’ “
The 2009 experience had driven home the strength of the company’s basic model and especially the crucial importance of Caterpillar dealers. The model’s goal is simple: Ensure that customers make more money using Cat equipment than using competitors’ equipment. Though Cat equipment generally costs more than anyone else’s, the model requires it to be the least expensive over its lifetime, factoring in purchase price, maintenance costs, operating costs, uptime, life expectancy, and resale value.
For customers, maintenance and uptime are critical. Kenny Rush, vice president of Sellersburg Stone in Louisville, says that’s why he’s such a fan of the Caterpillar 992 loader his firm uses in a quarry. “We’ve run that machine since 1998, and it’s had 98% to 99% availability,” he says. “It cost $1.5 million. But we ran it 22,000 hours, which is about 10 years, before replacing any major components.” Dealers are key to those economics. A machine that breaks down can halt an entire job, and getting back under way in two hours rather than 48 hours means big money. Large, successful dealers that carry lots of parts, maintain skilled technicians, and move fast are thus a major selling point, and Cat’s dealer network is the undisputed best in the business.
A typical example is Gregory Poole Equipment, the Cat dealer in Raleigh, N.C. Its main site is a six-acre campus that stocks $6 million of parts and includes repair and rebuilding facilities for most of Caterpillar’s broad line of machines and engines. The company also maintains 20 other sites around the eastern part of the state and a fleet of 200 trucks for customer service. Total employees: 850. No Cat competitor has as large a dealership anywhere in the area. “If you need a part, we probably have it here,” says CEO Greg Poole, grandson of the dealership’s founder. “If we don’t, you can order it as late as 7 p.m., and we’ll probably have it here by 6 a.m. the next morning.”
The dealers are a key element in a virtuous circle that keeps Cat on top, what CFO Rapp calls the Caterpillar flywheel: Big, strong dealers help Cat sell the most machines; all those machines in the field bring dealers lots of revenue from parts and service, so much that they can survive in years when they don’t sell any new machines at all; and that financial stability enables dealers to grow bigger, attracting even more customers, and build a larger base of machines that need to be serviced.
“Our dealers — that has been the source of our Cat brand advantage more than most people really understand,” Oberhelman says. But the lowest-total-cost business model is under threat. “We can’t pretend Komatsu isn’t beating us on cost — they are,” he told employees last summer. Thus, one major initiative that came out of Oberhelman’s strategy exercise was to keep dealers strong by continuing to improve machine quality, designing machines for fast, effective maintenance, and finding more ways to lower total ownership cost.
Caterpillar’s strategists also realized that when you’ve got a lot of money to spend, you’d better spend it carefully. So they devoted months to identifying industries that are growing fast, in which customers are highly profitable, and in which Cat can capitalize on its dealer network or extend an existing business. Result: a decision to get bigger in mining, eco-friendly engines, and railroad equipment. Though Cat has been global for decades, the strategists also resolved to bulk up heavily where growth is greatest, especially in infrastructure — in other words, in China, India, and Brazil. And the strategy team made a further key decision: Invest early in this cycle, using Cat’s financial strength while others might still be recovering.
With the strategy exercise complete by spring 2010, the company began to move. On June 1, a month before Oberhelman officially became CEO, Cat announced it would pay $820 million for Electro-Motive Diesel, a major maker of locomotives, to combine with its Progress Rail Services business. In October it announced it would pay $810 million for MWM, a German maker of industrial engines that run on gases. “Natural, synthetic, methane, coal bed, landfill, you name it, they’ll burn it,” says Oberhelman. “It’s a great crown jewel 20 years from now. I love that business.”
Three weeks later Cat said it was buying Wisconsin-based Bucyrus International, a 131-year-old maker of mining equipment, for $8.6 billion. Bucyrus produces some of the few man-made moving objects that make a Caterpillar mining truck look small. Cat’s biggest truck carries 720,000 pounds of rock; Bucyrus’s biggest shovel fills it in three scoops. Before the deal, Cat figured it could sell mine operators 30% of the mobile equipment they needed; with Bucyrus it can sell them 70%.
Investors often dislike big acquisitions, fearing that the buyer is overpaying. But they seem fond of these deals. On the announcement of the biggest, Bucyrus, they actually bid Cat’s stock up, which is almost unheard of.
Besides acquisitions, Cat announced a multibillion-dollar series of new and bigger factories in China, India, Brazil, and the U.S. Investors liked those too, especially the investments in China.
Oberhelman knows that China is a giant long-term opportunity, but it’s also perhaps the greatest threat to Cat’s dominance in the future. Caterpillar is not China’s leading construction equipment company; LiuGong Machinery is, though overall it’s much smaller than Cat. But Oberhelman wants to be No. 1 in China by 2015, and he could do it. The company has been in the country for 36 years, developing a dealer network, investing in joint ventures, and building plants. In addition, Cat machines and engines carry a lot of high technology, which the Chinese don’t have. Of course, they’ll get it eventually. Oberhelman assumes that it’s only a matter of time before one of China’s equipment makers emerges as a major power with a global reach. That’s a big reason he’s in a hurry to become the leader in China and other developing markets where that inevitable Chinese rival hasn’t yet built a presence.
For now, Caterpillar is riding high. The stock’s epic run — more than quintupling in just over two years — will end; charts shaped like that can’t go on forever. In addition, it’s impossible to know how competitors will respond in coming years to Cat’s aggressive expansion. What’s certain is that in this case, a year of historic crisis sparked a more impressive performance than many years of prosperity ever did. Says CFO Rapp: “I’m absolutely convinced that down the road, we’ll look back on 2009 as the all-time great Caterpillar performance.”
Meanwhile, in booming China, the world’s fastest- growing major economy and largest market for virtually everything Caterpillar does, company managers are being forced to do the trough exercise, just in case.
More from the 2011 Fortune 500:
Best big companies to work for
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Thanks to prudent planning, the industrial equipment giant came blazing out of the downturn. Now, with its sales and stock soaring, Cat is expanding aggressively to stay on top.
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7 economists worth their weight in gold
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To put it mildly, you can say that the financial crisis has shaken the public’s faith in economics.
After all, how useful could this science be if it couldn’t predict or save us from a calamity of that magnitude? That question has been asked by economists and the economics press ad nauseum since 2008, with no satisfactory answer in sight. In short, macroeconomic forecasting is really difficult to do, and we shouldn’t expect to be able to predict when economic convulsions will happen.
At the same time, macroeconomic forecasting is just one small slice of what economists do. In a new book Trillion Dollar Economists, author (and economist) Robert Litan attempts to honor the many economists throughout the decades who have focused on helping businesses reach their customers more efficiently or teaching average individuals how to invest more wisely, to name just two examples. While macroeconomic forecasters get a lot of attention from the press because of both the political implications of their ideas and the gravity of the tasks they undertake, Litan argues that it’s these lesser-known economists who actually make the biggest contributions to the profession.
Here are seven examples of economists working in the private sector who helped transform how business is done in America:
1. Julian Simon: Simon helped revolutionize the airline industry by popularizing the idea that carriers should stop randomly removing passengers from overbooked flights and instead auction off the right to be bumped by offering vouchers that go up in value until all the necessary seats have been reassigned. Simon came up with the idea for these auctions in the 1960s, but he wasn’t able to get regulators interested in allowing it until the 1970s. Up until that time, Litan writes, “airlines deliberately did not fill their planes and thus flew with less capacity than they do now, a circumstance that made customers more comfortable, but reduced profits for airlines.” And this, of course, meant they had to charge passengers more to compensate.
By auctioning off overbooked seats, economist James Heins estimates that $100 billion has been saved by the airline industry and its customers in the 30-plus years since the practice was introduced.
2. Hal Varian: As Google’s chief economist, Varian joined a company that was already keen on using ideas from academic economics to make money. Google famously made use of the Dutch Auction for its 2004 IPO, and sold its ads using an auction style first designed by economist William Vickery, which caused the winner to pay one penny more than the second-highest bid, in order to encourage bidders to not fear overbidding. Varian helped fine tune these auctions as an adviser to the company in its early days, and when he joined the firm full-time he helped develop the Google Trends tool and the use of A/B testing to improve the launch of other new services.
3. Vernon Smith: An economic iconoclast, Smith won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for his contributions in helping economics become a more experimental science that relied on laboratory testing to understand human behavior. As Litan writes:
It is difficult to overstate the extent to which Smith’s work was long viewed to be out of the mainstream by the rest of the profession…. The notion that lessons could be drawn from a laboratory setting where individuals were given play (or even small amounts of real) money and then tasked with spending it or using it in some fashion or for purposes designed by the experimenters was … looked down on by many mainstream economists—until Smith was awarded the Nobel Prize, of course.
Smith’s ideas have influenced business leaders, who have used his ideas in focus group settings. Energy companies around the world have also used Smith’s work. His experiments proved that through careful deregulation of energy markets, electricity companies could become more efficient and still sell energy at fair prices. Such reforms were introduced in New Zealand and Australia in the 1990s, and by Ohio Edison in the U.S.
4. Frank Ramsey: One of the most important concepts in economics is the demand curve, which is basically a series of numbers describing what different people are willing to pay for the same product. When plotted on a graph, the demand curve usually slopes downwards, showing that more people are willing to buy a product when the price is low. In the 1920s, economist Frank Ramsey formally proved that rather than charging one price, firms ought to discriminate against customers based on where they fall on the demand curve. In other words, companies should charge the most any particular customer is willing to pay, rather than one price for all.
The results of the insight are seen everywhere in business today. One of the most salient examples of price discrimination is in the airline and hotel industries. These companies use all kinds of methods, like the time you purchase your seat or room to what sort of computer you’re using making the purchase, to estimate where on the demand curve you reside.
5/6. Lloyd Shapely and Alan Roth: These 2012 Nobel Prize winners were honored for their contribution to what economists call “market design.” As any businessperson knows, the market is a great way to match buyers and sellers of a product. But what is not necessarily apparent at first glance is that some marketplaces are much better than others. Shapley and Roth spent their careers working on how to design markets to attract enough buyers and sellers, to give those participants enough time and information to make rational choices, and to do it in a way that prevents fraud or the leaking of confidential information. Shapley and Roth’s work in market design has helped revolutionize the way we match buyers and sellers in many different markets, from the matching process of doctoral residents at hospitals, to pairing kidney donors with patients.
7. Burton Malkiel: Conventional financial wisdom holds that investors do better when they diversify. But this idea wasn’t always so widespread. In the early part of the 20th century it was often thought that successful investors picked one or two companies to invest in and then learned everything they can about those businesses. But as the decades wore on, financial economists worked to prove that an investor is better off diversifying. It wasn’t until economists and op-ed writer Burton Malkiel published the best-selling “A Random Walk Down the Street” that the idea really started to catch on.
Malkiel inspired entrepreneurs like Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, to write his senior thesis at Princeton on index funds, thinking that they would be a cheap way for the average investor to diversify. Bogle launched his first fund in 1976, and nearly 40 years later, index funds now play a major role in everyday investors’ portfolios.
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To put it mildly, you can say that the financial crisis has shaken the public's faith in economics. But economists do much more than make big picture forecasts. Here are seven examples of economists who have made a major impact on American business.
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Tired of the endless gridlock in Washington? Blame the primaries.
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The 2014 primary season has come to a sleepy conclusion, and the numbers are in: It had the worst voter turnout in history. Why should business care? Because the public’s lack of interest in primaries is a key factor behind corporate America’s inability to move the dial on issues it cares most about, from immigration, tax, and entitlement reforms to needed infrastructure spending.
The majority of Americans do vote on Election Day in presidential years—though even that has dropped from 57% in 2008 to 54% in 2012. History suggests there will be a 20% or so drop-off between a presidential election and the midterm two years later.
But the real action—the place where victors are decided—is increasingly in party primaries, where only a tiny fraction of voters go to the polls. Most congressional districts today are solidly Republican or Democratic, owing to advances in technology that enable legislatures to gerrymander congressional districts with impeccable precision. Veteran electoral analyst Charlie Cook has estimated that the number of swing districts declined from 168 in 1998 to just 99 in 2012. And there are even fewer this year.
The result? Whoever wins the primary in the predominant party will probably win the general election. Primaries have become a breeding ground in both parties for ideologues who resist compromise and refuse to govern. “If you combine low turnout with one-party districts, the primary is essentially the election,” says Curtis Gans, whose nonpartisan Center for the Study of the American Electorate calculates voting patterns. “An organized minority of 3% to 4% can propel someone into office.”
[cTHE INCREDIBLY SILENT MAJORITY In some states less than 1% of eligible voters help choose their party’s presidential nominee. The result? More extreme candidates.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce got its wake-up call in last year’s special election in Alabama, when it managed to stop a candidate who applauded the government shutdown, wanted to overthrow House Speaker John Boehner, and claimed that President Obama was born in Kenya. During this year’s primary season, the Chamber poured $15 million into creative media support for candidates facing similar challenges.
Scott Reed, the veteran GOP strategist recruited to run the Chamber’s blitz, refuses to apply the Tea Party label to the candidates it opposes, saying the Tea Party is an important part of a center-right coalition. Instead, he says, he’s going after candidates from the “caveman caucus.” “When you get [to Washington],” says Reed, “you have to be willing to govern.” That’s a new standard that Chamber strategists are using in assessing whom to support.
Primary candidates supported by the Chamber, along with other establishment GOP groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, won in 14 out of 15 races this year. “It allowed us to set the table with varsity candidates for general election,” said Reed.
Working with local chambers, the Washington office also mounted get-out-the-vote efforts to encourage more of Main Street to go to the polls. Still, the nationwide primary turnout has continued its steady decline. Gans estimates the national primary turnout this year to be in the 14% to 15% range, down from 18.3% in 2010.
That level of disengagement by most Americans, who trend toward the center, still leaves wide running room for politicians less interested in governing than in making a fiery point. The Republican right gets most of the attention on this score, but in Congress there is similar intractability on the left. Activists would have President Obama’s head if he dared raise the retirement age or cut the world’s highest corporate tax rate.
On the GOP side, Main Street dodged a bullet this year: There was no rerun of the 2012 debacles like Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock. But the caveman caucus will reemerge with well-funded ferocity in the 2016 presidential campaign. Once again, the primaries will be where the action is.
So the next time you feel like complaining about gridlock and dysfunction in Congress, look in the mirror—and then, come the winter of 2016, go plant a campaign sign in your front yard.
This story is from the October 27, 2014 issue of Fortune.
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As moderate-leaning voters disengage from primary elections, party nominees tend to be more extreme.
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Debunking the wisdom behind Citi's reverse stock split
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Are reverse stock splits the single biggest waste of corporate money? Big institutions that have seen their shares decimated for one reason or another occasionally employ this classic subterfuge to try and erase history. They rarely succeed.
This week’s offender: Citigroup C . On Monday, the beleaguered financial services conglomerate instituted a reverse 1-for-10 split, a transaction that instantly moved its stock price from just above $4 to over $40. Things must be on the up-and-up down there on Park Avenue! (Maybe even the same way they were at AIG AIG in July 2009, when the flailing insurance giant did its own 20-for-1 split.)
But, of course, nothing has changed for Citi beyond this fancy footwork.
Let’s run through (and debunk) the usual excuses for going into a reverse:
1) The stock is too cheap for big funds. This is the big Kahuna of excuses. Everybody uses it, and some journalists obligingly repeat it as if it were true: the idea that some institutional investors are prohibited from buying stocks that trade below $5 or $10 a share. I called three of the biggest institutions in the country yesterday: T. Rowe Price, Franklin Templeton, and BlackRock. Guess what? No restrictions. I then called the head of equities at a large investment bank, and he said none of his clients had that issue either. This excuse, in other words, is bogus.
An ancillary argument is that there are higher transaction costs for buying and selling low-priced stocks, and large long-term investors therefore merely choose not to buy them. Citi CEO Vikram Pandit told investors at the annual meeting that a desire for “a broader audience of investors” was one reason for the split, because some institutional investors just didn’t buy stocks under $10 a share. Really, Vikram? Would you mind telling us just who those institutional investors are? Because I can’t find any. And what’s a few pennies if you’re in it for the long-term? This argument only works if you’re talking about people trading in and out of your stock frequently. And aren’t those the people big companies say they want to avoid? Which brings me to my next point.
2) Reverse splitting will shoo away the speculators. A Wall Street Journal article this week suggested exactly that.
Citi shares had recently been most popular with hedge funds and high frequency traders, who were likely attracted by the potential for large percentage gains when the sub-$5 stock moved by even a few pennies.
The first part is true: high frequency traders have been attracted to the stock. But the argument as to why misses the mark.
Whoever has been trading in and out of Citi shares of late has been attracted by one of two things. First, and most obvious: the potential for large percentage gains in the event that the stock makes a large percentage move. Meaning, they think Citi will continue to be as volatile as it has been of late. And it has been very much so, with a beta of 2.56 — tops among its peers.
But Citi stock is volatile because no one knows what the heck is going on over at that place. That’s the same reason it was trading for under $5. It’s not volatile because it was under $5. Citi stock would still have been wandering aimlessly under $5 even if the high-frequency gang hadn’t shown up in the first place.
And even though the Journal proceeded to interpret light trading volume Monday as a possible indication that “the high frequency trading crowd may have already left the building,” it looks like they’ve already returned to the building. Trading on Wednesday and Thursday was well above the already massive 50-week volume average for this stock.
(That said, another article in the Journal on Thursday quoted an options trader saying that option volume will decline with the higher priced shares. Who knew?)
The second reason is more obscure, but apparently no less powerful. High-frequency traders get rebates sent to them by exchanges in return for sending them volume. Those rebates are calculated per share, so a lower-priced stock is actually more attractive to trade for that sole reason. But that’s a lot different than the argument that traders are attracted because it takes a smaller absolute move in a lower-priced stock to account for a large percentage gain. That, people, is mere math, and not a reason to buy or sell anything.
3) Having billions of shares is hard to manage internally, and reducing that amount will provide cost savings. The argument goes something like this: Administering Citi’s now-outstanding 2.9 billion shares is going to be materially cheaper than administering 29 billion of them. Guess what? It’s pretty much all electronic, folks. The costs are inconsequential.
There may be some savings from sending out dividend checks and proxy statements, but not enough to justify the costs of a reverse split, which I’ll get to in a minute. Why? Because it’s not like they’ll have 1/10th the number of shareholders. And what if those mythical institutional investors who so badly wanted to buy the shares but couldn’t bring themselves to buy under $10 a share actually show up? They might end up with more shareholders than before!
So why do companies do reverse stock splits? Optics, of course. A $40 stock looks better than a $4 stock. That’s it. That’s all you need to know. And a $0.10 dividend looks better than a $0.01 dividend, even though the yield remains the same. Citi has ducked into the men’s room, changed their tie, and come out claiming to be someone else.
I called Citi and received this statement from Vikram Pandit in response: “Executing the reverse stock split and our intention to reinstate a quarterly common stock dividend are important steps as we anticipate returning capital to shareholders starting next year. Taken together, we believe these actions will reduce volatility while broadening the base of potential investors. Now that we have established consistent profitability, we are working towards our next goal of responsible growth.”
I love the “taken together” part. Starting to pay a dividend will surely attract more investors. But that would happen with or without a reverse split.
The irony, of course, is that reverse stock splits cost money: they’re spending shareholder funds to make those shares look better. While the actual tab for Citi’s move depends on how many shareholders the company actually has and in what form those shares are held—physical or electronic. The cost can run all the way up to $25 per shareholder for those still holding physical certificates. We’re talking about $5 million or even more for a company with as many shares outstanding as Citi — not a backbreaker for Citi, but still a pretty expensive tie.
So, all other things being equal, Citi stockholders can feel a little better when they look at their individual shares — but they’re actually a little worse off than they were before.
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Citi did a 1-for-10 split this week. Investors should realize they’re paying for vanity not returns.
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Finland blames Apple for economic problems
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Apple AAPL has recently come under fire for “Bendgate” and “Hairgate.” Now, the company is being blamed for more a more serious matter: Finland’s troubled economic standing.
On CNBC this morning, Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb pointed to Apple as a major reason for the decline of the country’s largest export industries – paper and IT/mobile, and in particular, Apple’s effect on the outlook for cell phone maker Nokia. A former leader in the space, the company’s device and services business was officially acquired by Microsoft last spring. “Paradoxically, one could say that the iPhone killed Nokia and the iPad killed the paper industry, but we’ll make a comeback,” said Stubb.
It’s not often that you see a single company blamed for the economic struggles of an entire country. But Stubb, who was installed as prime minister at the end of June, has put Apple in the scapegoat position before. In July, he remarked at a press conference in Stockholm, “Steve Jobs took our jobs, but this is beginning to change.”
Last week, financial rating service Standard and Poor’s downgraded Finland’s sovereign debt rating to AA+ from AAA, bringing Stubbs opinions of Apple’s impact on the Finnish economic state once again to the fore. Stubb told Bloomberg he foresees it taking as long as four years for the country’s ranking to get bumped back to AAA.
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With "Hairgate" and "Bendgate" in the past, Apple's next problem? Finland.
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Apple and Facebook Will Pay for Employees to Freeze Their Eggs
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10/15/2014 AT 03:30 PM EDT
Apple and Facebook will now offer elective egg freezing as part of their employees' benefits package.
The social media giant recently began offering the benefit, while tech manufacturer Apple plans to institute the perk starting in January, reports
"Apple cares deeply about our employees and their families, and we are always looking at new ways our health programmes can meet their needs," the company said in a statement.
"We continue to expand our benefits for women, with a new extended maternity leave policy, along with cyropreservation and egg storage as part of our extensive support for infertility treatments."
The statement concluded: "We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families."
Egg freezing can be pricey – it costs at minimum $10,000, with an additional yearly fee for storing the eggs, according to
The companies have both said they will cover up to $20,000 in costs.
"This is a nice perk but of course it's a very personal decision for every working woman. When to time college, grad school, babies, starting a career, accelerating a career – all of these have huge ramifications in your life and that of your significant other," Women in Technology's Kellye Sheehan told
Added Sheehan: "Is the employer trying to tell us something? Agreed, working mothers have a lot to juggle. But you can't let your employer force you into something that doesn't fit your values or personal choices."
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Both tech companies will cover costs for the procedure up to $20,000
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Oil markets rattled as agency predicts weaker demand
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Oil prices tumbled Tuesday after the International Energy Agency revised down its demand projections for the rest of the year and into 2015.
The IEA said oil demand over the next two months would be 200,000 barrels per day lower than the amount it projected in the prior month’s report, falling to 92.4 million millions of barrels per day. Demand is expected to rise in 2015 to 1.1 millions of barrels per day, but that’s still about 100,000 millions of barrels per day less than earlier projections.
At the same time, the IEA reaffirmed a glut in the oil market driven by the shale boom in the United States and output from OPEC which surged to a 13-month high in September, led by “Libya’s continued recovery and higher Iraqi flows.”
Adding to the price woes: A recent decision by Saudi Arabia to accept a lower selling price for its customers in Asia and Europe. Saudi Arabia is the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the cartel which produces a third of the world’s oil supply and essentially keeps the balance of supply and demand in the market.
“There was no let-up in Saudi supply to global customers in September, according to tanker tracking data, with a modest pick up in shipments versus August,” according to the IEA report. “Riyadh appeared determined to defend its market share in the increasingly competitive Asian market — cutting its formula prices for a fourth consecutive month.”
The news of lower demand sent oil prices to their lowest level in four years.
Falling oil prices are good news for motorists, especially coming into the holiday travel season. Pump prices fell 1.3 cents to an average of $3.186 a gallon nationwide yesterday, according to AAA, the largest U.S. motoring group. Gas prices have fallen now for 18 days straight, according to the AAA, and were the lowest for a Columbus Day holiday since 2010.
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International Energy Agency revises down its demand projections for the rest of the year and into 2015.
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http://www.people.com/article/nikki-ferrell-dumped-juan-pablo-galavis
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Nikki Ferrell Dumps Juan Pablo Galavis
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20141028034534
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Juan Pablo Galavis and Nikki Ferrell
By Melody Chiu and Steve Helling
10/27/2014 AT 07:05 PM EDT
might be swearing off roses for awhile.
beau seven months after horrified viewers watched
refuse to say "I love you" to his final pick on the finale of the ABC show, sources confirm to PEOPLE.
"It's definitely over," says a source close to the couple. "It can't be saved and they're not even speaking anymore."
Viewers watched the pair battle over Galavis's inability to show affection on VH1's current season of
– and the source said Galavis's "disregard" for Ferrell's feelings and his "refusal to introduce her to his daughter as more than a friend" were but two of the many sticking points in the relationship.
Meanwhile, Galavis, 33, "was getting tired of her childish antics and temper tantrums," adds the source.
Though the two were seemingly
in their relationship while undergoing therapy, Ferrell "finally decided that she didn't want to keep up the facade anymore," says the source.
On Sunday, she unfollowed her ex on both Instagram and Twitter,
that fans speculated was aimed towards Galavis.
"Isn't it pathetic how we waste so much time on certain people and in the end they prove that they weren't even worth a second of it," she posted.
Galavis and Ferrell have not returned requests for comment.
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"They're not even speaking anymore," a source tells PEOPLE
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http://fortune.com/2010/12/01/nick-kroll-the-other-other-kroll/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141030100753id_/http://fortune.com/2010/12/01/nick-kroll-the-other-other-kroll/
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Nick Kroll: The other, other Kroll
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20141030100753
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Jeremy Kroll followed his famous father Jules into the family business of corporate investigations. His younger brother Nick is becoming famous the old-fashioned way—in Hollywood.
If the job of Jeremy Kroll is to keep a low profile as the CEO of K2 Global, a corporate investigations firm, the job of his brother Nick is to secure one as large as he possibly can. A comic actor, Nick is doing a pretty good job of achieving that goal. He’s in two television shows at the moment—playing Ruxin in FX’s fantasy football send-up The League and the voice of Stu on HBO’s cult animated hit The Life and Times of Tim. He’s had bit parts in a number of funny movies of late—Date Night, Get Him to the Greek, and Dinner for Schmucks. And he just filmed a one-hour stand-up and character special for Comedy Central that’s airing January 29. We caught up with Nick to ask what it was like growing up as a funny guy in a family that’s in a very serious business.
Your job couldn’t be further from your brother’s. In fact, the whole family has worked in the business except for you. Did you ever harbor dreams of being a private investigator yourself?
I had aspirations to do Dick Tracy the musical, but the yellow trench coat never fit right. Seriously, though, the only thing I think I am capable of is comedy. I worked as an intern at Kroll Inc while I was in college in Washington, DC. But I was so incompetent at digging up information—it took me two hours to get a phone number of a guy who worked at Johnson & Johnson JNJ —that I thought maybe I shouldn’t be a private investigator after all.
What’s the least funny part of growing up in your house?
The only time I ever remember any sort of physical presence was when Kroll Inc. was investigating Saddam Hussein’s money for the Kuwaiti government. We had a cop from Rye, NY parked outside our gate for a few months.
That’s obviously no laughing matter. What was?
My Dad and my brother both come across as very serious guys, but they are both very funny. In fact, I credit the two of them for my own sense of humor. When my Dad first got started, his first employee was my mother. And his second was a driver. He wanted to come off as being the real deal. That’s pretty funny, right? Of course, one time my Dad picked me up from school in a limo. That was not funny at all. In fact, there was nothing more horrific to me than that. It was embarrassing.
Does the family business inform your comedy at all?
It almost did. I was writing a script for Paramount that involved some wire transfer stuff and as we were structuring the story, the movie became very involved with the technical process of what would happen if $15 million came in from a country of shady origin. I was speaking to both Jeremy and my father about it, and in the process got way too involved in who at the Treasury would be alerted, and then who from the FBI. It got way too technical. All of a sudden my movie became Michael Clayton as opposed to Back to School. I had to back off of the real-life details of how something like that would happen.
What do you talk about over family get-togethers like this past Thanksgiving?
There are nine—almost ten—grandkids in our family right now, so it’s focused on them, obviously. It is great to see these families take on the character of my siblings.
Who is Jeremy closer to, Sherlock Holmes or Inspector Clouseau?
He doesn’t play the violin, but he does have a solid fashion sense. And while he doesn’t speak with a French accent, he did show me Dr. Strangelove. So he has the best qualities of both.
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Jeremy Kroll followed his famous father Jules into the family business of corporate investigations. His younger brother Nick is becoming famous the old-fashioned way—in Hollywood. by Duff McDonald, contributor If the job of Jeremy Kroll is to keep a low profile as the CEO of K2 Global, a corporate investigations firm, the job of his…
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http://fortune.com/2014/10/31/most-new-dads-take-time-off-without-calling-it-paternity-leave/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141031132140id_/http://fortune.com/2014/10/31/most-new-dads-take-time-off-without-calling-it-paternity-leave/
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Most new dads take time off, without calling it paternity leave
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20141031132140
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Dear Annie: I’m envious of the people who work for Change.org and other employers I’ve been reading about lately, since those employees can take time off for the birth or adoption of a child without feeling like they’re risking their careers. My wife and I are expecting our second baby soon, and my problem is, not only does my company have no formal policy that allows paternity leave, but I’ve heard my immediate boss make snarky remarks about it. His attitude is, you’re not the one having the baby, so why do you need time off? I’ve been here less than a year, so I’m pretty low on the totem pole and hesitate to make any special requests. But I would like to take a two- or three-week paternity leave when the time comes. Any pointers on how to ask for it? — Anonymous, Please
Dear A.P.: Good question. “American families are evolving, but lots of employers aren’t keeping up,” says Chris Duchesne, a vice president at Care.com. “There is definitely still a double standard when it comes to parental leave.” Even at companies that have formal policies permitting new dads to take time off for their families, he adds, “there has to be a culture of permission. If front-line managers and supervisors don’t set an example by taking paternity leaves themselves”—or, worse, if they diss the idea as your boss does—“then there might as well not be a policy at all.”
That’s too bad, because research on parental leave is piling up, and so far it’s unanimous on one point: Men who work for companies that have a “culture of permission” are far more loyal to their employers than men who don’t. At a moment when companies are worried about retaining talent, that matters.
Consider, for instance, a new report conducted by the Working Mother Research Institute and sponsored by Ernst & Young. Based on a survey of about 1,000 men at an average age of 39, the study says those with access to paternity leave and other kinds of work-life flexibility are happier, more productive, and get along better with coworkers than men who lack that option.
Almost three-quarters (74%) of men in a “culture of permission” said they’re satisfied with opportunities to develop their skills, versus fewer than half (48%) in other places. Satisfaction with career prospects, implying an intention to stick around, was markedly higher, at 72% versus 40%. Male employees with work-life flexibility are even happier with their pay (68% satisfied) than those without (40%). These figures suggest that “we have to shift our thinking to be more inclusive,” says Karyn Twaronite, global chief of diversity at EY. “Men are too often an afterthought in conversations about working parents.”
As a result, men who want or need time off for a new addition to the family often take it, but they do it on the down-low. “Even in many companies with formal policies allowing it, people worry it will make them look less dedicated or less serious about their careers,” says Chris Duchesne. So, especially with bosses like yours, a less risky approach is to piece together a leave using vacation time and any available personal days.
Duchesne points out that an 80% majority of new dads in a recent Boston College study chose this “informal” path to a paternity leave, but he also speaks from experience. At a previous employer with no paternity-leave policy, he took two weeks of vacation for each of his three children, now ages 4, 6, and 9. “I worked it out with my manager and team beforehand each time,” he says.
You need to do that too, just as you would for any other vacation, medical leave, or other planned absence. “Sit down with your boss and talk through how your work will get done, including whether you’ll be reachable at certain times, whether you’ll be checking email, and who has agreed to cover for you on which aspects of your job while you’re out,” Duchesne advises. “Demonstrate that you’ve thought this through. If you have a plan up front that covers all the bases, it will go a long way toward reassuring your boss that you do care about getting the work done, and that things aren’t going to fall apart.”
If you’re thinking about making any other changes in your schedule when you get back—working from home one day a week, or coming in early and leaving early, for example—this conversation is also the time to mention that. “Paternity leave is one event,” Duchesne says. “But you may need support later on for a continuum of different adjustments as your responsibilities change at home.”
For whatever it may be worth to you right now, Duchesne thinks organizations that are still clinging to your boss’s old-school attitudes toward fatherhood are going to have to catch up with the times.
About 40% of the workforce now is made up of Millennials who say they care more about having a life outside of work than they care about money or rank, according to various studies, and they’re quick to quit jobs that don’t offer them the flexibility they want. “Employers will have to respond to that, if they want to stay competitive,” he says. “Millennials are a much larger cohort than Gen X, and they’re going to have more and more influence over the next five to 10 years.” Here’s hoping.
Talkback: Does your company have a “culture of permission” toward paternity leave? If you’ve ever taken one, did you call it that, or use vacation time instead? Leave a comment below.
Have a career question for Anne Fisher? Email askannie@fortune.com.
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Even at companies with policies allowing paternity leave, requesting it can be tricky. Here's how.
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http://fortune.com/2013/03/29/the-u-s-militarys-miracle-scanner/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141101015559id_/http://fortune.com/2013/03/29/the-u-s-militarys-miracle-scanner/
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The U.S. military’s miracle scanner
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20141101015559
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FORTUNE — After years of testing, the U.S. Military is ready to implement a handheld device that detects brain bleeding immediately after a traumatic event, such as a vehicle accident or explosion. The Infrascanner 2000 uses infrared light to determine if a person has a brain hematoma or bleeding. Infrared light penetrates up to three centimeters into the head and detects the optical density, which is different for hematomas compared to a healthy brain. It gives a positive or negative reading in about two minutes.
Prompt medical care after a traumatic injury can be the difference between life and death — what’s known as the “golden hour.” That hour is even more precarious for soldiers injured in combat who may be far from a hospital. With the Infrascanner, combat medics can assess patients to see who needs urgent medical attention, possibly saving lives and resources. “We had no way of screening for a head injury in theater,” says Dr. Michael Given, the program manager for expeditionary medicine, combat casualty care for the Office of Naval Research. “It [the Infrascanner] fills a gap.”
With a blast, he says, it’s expected there will be some head injuries. Corpsmen and medics with the battalion can really only monitor the patient. “The Infrascanner takes a lot of the guesswork out,” Given adds.
Currently, the protocol for treating soldiers after a traumatic event is to send them all to a nearby hospital for CT scans, evaluation by doctors, and surgery if necessary; but this could result in someone with severe brain injuries not being treated in time to prevent damage or death. Providing all battalions with an Infrascanner 2000 would not necessarily result in fewer people going to the hospital after a traumatic event, but would allow combat medics to better assess the severity and urgency of each person before reaching the hospital, so the most gravely injured could be treated first. Medics could determine who would need to be life-flighted and who could be transported by vehicle.
MORE: This incredible face is the future of tech
“Time lost is brain lost,” says InfraScan CEO Dr. Baruch Ben Dor. “With brain bleeding, the time between injury and surgery is critical. The Infrascanner allows patients to be assessed and get to a definitive diagnosis faster than is available today. If you treat someone within the golden hour, the chances for survival are much better.”
The first generation of the device, the Infrascanner 1000, was field-tested by the U.S. Marines in Iraq in 2008. The 1000 model was a two-part device, one part being the PDA and the other was the scanner. In 2008, the project transitioned from being funded by the Office of Naval Research to Marine Corp System Command, and a ruggedized version was developed, which is the 2000. The 2000 model was tested in Afghanistan from 2011-2012. It is now a one-piece device that works on disposable AA batteries, which soldiers usually carry with them, and is about the size of an old-school cellphone. It can withstand vibrations, rain, dust, and being dropped. The field-studies conducted by Marines proved it to be a useful tool for the military.
In Iraq, more than 100 Marines and sailors were evaluated with the device. Three positive readings for brain-bleeding prompted expedited air evacuation and were later confirmed with a CT scan. In one instance, an Afghan boy was wounded in a suicide IED blast and was taken to the Marines corpsman for evaluation. The Infrascanner reading showed the boy had brain hemorrhaging, so he was transferred to a hospital for a CT scan (which proved the Infrascanner correct) where he underwent emergency surgery and survived. A Marine battalion was also able to save more than 20 helicopter flights. Instead of scrambling for a helicopter, soldiers who tested negative for a TBI were transported by vehicle to a hospital.
The Infrascanner 2000 will also lower the number of soldiers getting CT scans. Dr. Joseph C. Maroon, MD, professor and vice chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh and Medical Advisory Board member of civilian Infrascanner distributor, MedLogic, LLC., says CT scans produce 400 times the amount of radiation as a chest X-ray. Too much radiation can be harmful; however, infrared light is relatively harmless, he says.
MORE: China and Russia: Best frenemies forever?
Unlike surface injuries, traumatic brain injury, or TBI, can go undetected. Patients can seem completely healthy but can die hours later. This is called “Walk and Die Syndrome.” According to the U.S. Navy Casualty Care Statistics, 30% of all wounded in action have head injuries, of which 40% had brain hematomas. The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, in cooperation with the Department of Defense, reports that the number of TBIs sustained by service members since 2000 is 266,810.
The Infrascanner was first developed in the 1990s by Dr. Britton Chance at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Claudia Robertson at Baylor College of Medicine. Later, in 2004 with a grant from the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) through the Office of Naval Research, and later the U.S. Navy Marines, the company was able to launch the product and conduct clinical studies for FDA clearance at regular hospitals. The Infrascanner 2000 was FDA approved in January 2013. The Philadelphia-based company is called InfraScan and the device it makes is called the Infrascanner.
The Infrascanner was also evaluated by foreign militaries including the German Army, Spanish Military, Russia High Military Academy, Israeli Navy Seals, and Saudi National Guard. Currently, ADS Medical, the military distributor for InfraScan, is in contract negotiations with the U.S. Marine Corps to place 250 Infrascanners in the field. Each unit costs $18,000 for the military. The goal is to get one in every battalion aid station, which serves about 1,200 soldiers.
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The Infrascanner 2000 uses infrared light to determine if a soldier has a brain hematoma.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2014/10/29/obama-lookalike-blessing-and-curse/bIIsWAg5MOjx2NcYNfSdhP/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141102043222id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/television/2014/10/29/obama-lookalike-blessing-and-curse/bIIsWAg5MOjx2NcYNfSdhP/story.html
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An Obama lookalike’s blessing and curse
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20141102043222
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For many years Louis Ortiz sported a goatee. The whiskers were something of a reaction to his smooth-face years in the military.
In 2008, at the prompting of a friend, Ortiz shaved it off, and when he looked in the mirror, he saw Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, staring back at him. And that’s not all. “I saw dollar signs,” he says.
The fascinating documentary “Bronx Obama,” airing on Showtime at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday — and already available on several online platforms, including Amazon Instant and iTunes — chronicles Ortiz’s journey to become a successful presidential impersonator.
Directed by Holliston native Ryan Murdock, the 90-minute film is by turns funny and poignant, with several story lines operating simultaneously. It offers insights into the nature of family, show business, politics, and race in America. (The film began life as a piece on “This American Life” and then as a short film for The New York Times.)
From certain angles, Ortiz’s resemblance to Obama is truly uncanny. Even before Ortiz, who is Puerto Rican, begins adding makeup (including a Sharpie mole), hairstyling, and wardrobe to the mix, the smile, the ears, and the slim build are all there. Once he applies the outer accoutrements and begins working on his mimickry, it’s easy to see why at least a few of the people who encounter his Fauxbama believe they’re meeting the genuine article, if just for a few moments.
But the impersonation business is neither easy nor glamorous. As Ortiz goes from small-time gigs — low-rent music videos, hanging with Spider-Man and Smurfette in Times Square for tourists’ tips — to higher-paying jobs — corporate entertainment, conventions, political fund-raisers, even a Japanese film — the money increases only incrementally, the work is erratic, the accommodations sketchy, and it takes him far from his teenage daughter.
Ortiz also begins to feel some of the heavier toll of his artificially darkened skin tone: He jokes with people who have no compunction about using racial slurs, and he performs material that is borderline, and sometimes outright, racist. (Sample joke during a faux debate with Donald Trump and Mitt Romney impersonators: “I need to be reelected because you know how hard it is to throw a black family out of public housing.”) At one point, the exhausted Ortiz, on a seemingly endless minivan tour with an abusive manager, laments, “I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.”
Aware that his fortunes likely rise or fall with a second term for President Obama, Ortiz admits to nerves on Election Night. It’s to Murdock’s credit that even though we know the outcome, there is real tension as Ortiz awaits the news of his — and Obama’s — fate.
As presented by Murdock, Ortiz is a likable and decent guy, funny in his own right, and struggling to turn his impersonation into the realization of his own American Dream.
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The fascinating documentary “Bronx Obama,” airing on Showtime Thursday at 7:30 p.m., looks at the life of an Obama impersonator.
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http://fortune.com/2014/11/04/apple-launches-another-bond-sale-this-time-in-euros/
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Apple launches another bond sale, this time in euros
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20141106175614
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Apple has officially hit the bond market in Europe.
As was rumored yesterday, this morning the iPhone maker issued 2.5 billion euros in debt, the first time the company has offered bonds in a currency other than U.S. dollars. The Wall Street Journal reported the debt offering Tuesday morning.
A source close to the deal told Bloomberg that the half of the bonds are eight year notes, and the other half are for 12 years. Goldman Sachs GS and Deutsche Bank DB ran the sale.
This is Apple’s AAPL third bond sale in the past few years, with $12 billion raised in April of this year, and a $17 billion raised in 2013.
The Journal said the proceeds from the bond sales — which offer relatively low yield but are considered to be safe investments give Apple’s stability as a company — will be used to pay dividends and complete share buybacks.
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This is the tech giant's first non-dollar debt issuance.
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http://fortune.com/2014/11/06/wirelurker-a-new-breed-of-apple-malware-out-of-china/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141108181805id_/http://fortune.com:80/2014/11/06/wirelurker-a-new-breed-of-apple-malware-out-of-china/
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WireLurker: A new breed of Apple malware out of China
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20141108181805
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Compared with Android phones or Windows PCs, Apple’s products are relatively impervious to malware, which is what makes WireLurker so interesting.
According to Palo Alto Networks, a California company that sells firewalls to businesses, a new family of malware has been quietly infiltrating OS X and iOS devices for the past six months, gathering information and preparing for some kind of unspecified attack.
The researchers who discovered the plot called it WireLurker because it can infect even pristine, non-jailbroken iPhones and iPads through computer cables.
There are no reports of WireLurker infecting Apple devices outside China, and Apple says it has taken steps to prevent that from happening.
“We are aware of malicious software available from a download site aimed at users in China, and we’ve blocked the identified apps to prevent them from launching,” an spokesperson told Fortune. “As always, we recommend that users download and install software from trusted sources.”
The fact that someone found a way to do it has to be troubling news for Apple, which markets itself as the company that protects its users’ privacy and keeps them safe.
Getting through Apple’s defense systems wasn’t easy, and it required the breeding ground of hundreds of millions of jailbroken Chinese iOS devices to get started.
Researchers at Palo Alto Network’s panw Unit 42 traced WireLurker to a third-party Mac application store in China called Maiyadi App Store. There it “trojanized” 467 OS X applications, according to a white paper published Wednesday, and those apps were downloaded more than 356,104 times. In all, hundreds of thousands of users may have been affected.
To download the infected apps, users would have had to change the security settings on their Macs and ignore several pop-up warnings.
But once installed, the apps could make the leap to devices that followed all the rules.
From Palo Alto Network’s press release:
WireLurker monitors any iOS device connected via USB with an infected OS X computer and installs downloaded third-party applications or automatically generated malicious applications onto the device, regardless of whether it is jailbroken. This is the reason we call it ‘wire lurker’…
“WireLurker is capable of stealing a variety of information from the mobile devices it infects and regularly requests updates from the attackers command and control server. This malware is under active development and its creator’s ultimate goal is not yet clear.”
Security experts have long debated why it is that Apple’s computers were spared the waves of malware that have infected competing systems over the years. Was it because Apple’s systems were inherently more secure? Or because there weren’t enough Macs out there to make an interesting target?
In the post-PC era, with Apple selling hundreds of millions of devices per year, the “security by obscurity” theory may get put to the test.
Meanwhile, Palo Alto Networks offers some advice:
Link: WireLurker: A New Era in iOS and OS X Malware
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple AAPL coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
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Hundreds of thousands of Macs and iOS devices may have been affected.
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http://fortune.com/2014/11/12/jetblue-t5i-terminal-jfk/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141113115015id_/http://fortune.com/2014/11/12/jetblue-t5i-terminal-jfk/
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JetBlue unveils $200 million T5i arrivals terminal in New York
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20141113115015
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One of the least exciting parts of any international trip is arriving and going through customs. JetBlue JBLU wants to add some panache to arriving flights from the Caribbean and South America when it opens the doors to a new international arrivals terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on Wednesday.
The project, known as T5i, was two years in the making and cost $200 million. Previously, JetBlue’s international customers arrived at Terminal 4, missing out on the ambience of the airline’s T5, which opened to much fanfare in 2008 and is known not only for arrivals and departures, but for shopping, concerts (Taylor Swift and CeeLo Green are among the artists who have performed there), and connectivity. Think of it as an upscale mall with planes.
Want a surreal experience? Go to a U.S. Customs and Borders Protection arrival area when it’s completely devoid of passengers. The airline says that its inspections point will be able to accommodate up to 1,200 customers an hour. Touring the new facility last week, the arrivals terminal appeared sleek and modern, in sync with the other parts of T5. Light welcomes passengers in the concourse and jetways, and the terminal is airy and bright—even on a grey, dreary day like the one when I visited.
At the unveiling of T5i, JetBlue President Robin Hayes said that the new arrivals area will greet flights from 39 international destinations, and the airline plans to add three more by the end of next year. Additional plans for the facility include an outdoor park and dog walking area passengers will be able to access without going through security for a second time. “We love [our customers'] dogs,” he said. “It will give our dogs a much better experience.”
Officials at the event emphasized the economic boost JetBlue’s investment meant to the New York City area. “There are literally hundreds of thousands of jobs that are dependent on a continued investment at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark,” said Pat Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Kyle Kimball, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, recalled a few years back when he took a tour of the city with JetBlue executives and city officials to find a new neighborhood for the company’s headquarters (it moved from Forest Hills, Queens, to Long Island City in the same borough). “It’s really amazing to be here for the second chapter of JetBlue growing in the city,” he said. “The brand of New York is important for the brand of JetBlue.”
The first scheduled arrival to the new space came from Santiago in the Dominican Republic, at 8:48 a.m. on Wednesday. It’s unclear how excited the passengers will be to go through customs, but they definitely get bragging rights of being first.
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The airline's $200 million arrivals terminal in New York City opened on Wednesday.
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http://www.people.com/article/lunch-buddies-help-teen-with-autism
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141117205528id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/lunch-buddies-help-teen-with-autism
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A Lesson in Kindness: Seventh-Graders Form a Lunch-Buddies Club for Classmate with Autism
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20141117205528
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Kansas teen Tate Smith's diagnosis of autism at age 2 sent his mother, Lisa, scrambling for answers. But first came the dread.
"I saw Tate's future go down the drain right in front of my eyes," the mom of eight tells PEOPLE. "One of the fears was bullying. How will he be treated at school? Will he be miserable?"
Far from it, thanks to Tate's classmates, who for the past five years have formed a club of Tate's peers who take turns sitting with the seventh grader, now 13, during school lunches to patiently talk over topics from movies to video games and reinforce social skills that have helped him grow and fit in – interactions that, as his mom wrote on
, "make him feel like one of 'the guys.' "
"It's kind of easy, 'cause he likes everybody," one of his lunch buddies, Ethan Eckman, 13, tells PEOPLE. "He's just a good friend and he understands you." Adds Jordan Barth, 12: "Some people don't really listen to you when you talk, but Tate always seems to be listening to you. And he always knows the right things to say."
Their efforts have helped Tate thrive – and ease the burden of a grateful mom.
"The kids are just great," she says. "They've become Tate's therapists."
Tate is the second-youngest child of Lisa, 52, a stay-at-home mom, and Shawn Smith, 52, an HVAC contractor in Baldwin City, Kansas. Lisa Smith chronicles their life with Tate and a younger adopted daughter, Sydney, 10, who has special needs, on her
After Tate's diagnosis, "I started reading like a fiend," she says. And at a conference, she heard about buddy programs that involved children as peers for those with the autism. "I was like, 'What is this? Kids teaching social skills?' A lot of the moms were like, 'Oh yeah, this is the going thing.' "
She wrote her own booklet to explain Tate's disability to kids, and in kindergarten and first grade she shared it with his classmates in cooperation with teachers and classroom specialists. "If they don't know what the disability is, or that there is a disability, they just think the kid's weird," she says. "There's no understanding, and no real compassion. I don't think there's anybody that Tate goes to school with that doesn't know he has autism, and what autism is."
When Tate began second grade, she urged Tate's lunch-buddy program – initially overseen by a speech therapist – to be set up. Notes were sent home to parents with his classmates, asking if they wanted to rotate in. "They all wanted to do it," Tate's mom marvels.
Jessica Barker, a speech language pathologist who worked with Tate in fourth and fifth grades, recalls: "It's evolved quite a bit with Tate and his age and how far he's progressed. He's always had to be taught those explicit rules of social communication: to make eye contact, what tone of voice to use, that facial expressions and body language are important. Also, reciprocity: He's had to be taught that when someone asks you a question, you need to answer. Tate and I worked a lot on how not to kill a conversation. 'Lunch bunch' was a great way for him to take what we learned one-on-one and apply it."
Now, says Tate's mom, for part of his week at Baldwin Junior High School, Tate eats his unwavering sack lunch – peanut butter sandwich, no jelly, on white bread, with chips and cookies – at a table with peers and no adult. Other days he invites a friend or two to join him and a teacher to work on his skills.
His peers have seen the difference. "He's very funny," says Jayson Brown, 13, a lunch companion for the past three years. "He has his own personality. He's respectful toward others. He's changed quite a bit, just in his maturity. His manners are much better now, he's more comfortable in his talking, and I think we've helped him with that."
And Tate has helped them as well. "Being friends with him has taught me how to listen better and how to get into conversations better, and to explain better," says Jordan Barth. "We both like it when we talk to each other. We're just really good friends."
Says Tate's mom: "When I thank parents for loaning their children to me for all of these lunch periods, they often tell me that their chidden have learned more from Tate than Tate has learned from them. Compassion. Understanding. Perseverance. When they ask Tate a question, he doesn't always respond right away. He has to process the language. Sometimes they have to repeat the question. And they stick with him. They don't lose interest and give up on him."
"I don't want to make it sound like he's cured," she says. "He still has autism. But he's so much more socially aware of people around him. These kids, they just stepped up. They've helped Tate to navigate their world. It's helping him to live up to his potential."
In Tate's earliest primary grades, she says, she learned nothing about his days at school that didn't come from an adult. "Nowadays, Tate can come home and he might tell me that Ethan plays baseball and he has three more games before his season is over," she says. "It just blows me away. It makes me feel like Tate, who wasn't supposed to be able to form friendships, has friends. We defied the odds a little bit maybe."
And on those occasions when a negative comment about school is overheard from Tate's 16-year-old brother, Levi – "a great big brother" who is nonetheless "too cool for learning," says the boys' mom – Tate is ready with a comeback.
"What are you talking about?" Tate says. "School is a wonderful place."
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Help with social skills and conversation make Tate Smith feel "like one of the guys," says his grateful mom
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Nick Zammuto enjoys life after the Books
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The home studio at Nick Zammuto’s secluded property outside Readsboro, Vt., where he recorded his latest album, looks like a tractor shed. But it’s best described as a laboratory.
The Andover native, who studied an unlikely combo of chemistry and visual arts at Williams College before joining with cellist Paul de Jong to cofound the experimental duo the Books, is keenly interested in the physical properties of sound.
“Science was my real passion growing up and I really thought I was going to be a scientist,” Zammuto says, speaking from the road during a tour that brings him to Great Scott on Friday before wrapping up in North Adams the next night. “I got pretty far in my chemistry studies before I realized I couldn't exist in a corporation or an institution very successfully. I wanted to be a mad scientist. I didn't want to go for tenure.”
Over the course of four albums and assorted ephemera — including a handful of compositions commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture for use in its elevators — the Books inspired critical approval and a cult following, with video and audio collages reconstructed from found sounds and the contents of the duo’s extensive media libraries. The Books recorded their second LP, “The Lemon of Pink,” released in 2003, while living in North Adams; Zammuto debuted his solo band in that city two years ago.
Zammuto announced the breakup of the Books in 2012, simultaneously revealing that his new, eponymous project would release an album later that year. He says now that his working relationship with de Jong had deteriorated badly, and that the two have not been in touch since the split. He even considered quitting music at the time.
“It was difficult losing the Books,” Zammuto says. “That was my baby for so long. I just adored working on that project and was sad when it had to end. I wasn’t really expecting lightning to strike twice.”
But now, it seems he’s fulfilled that goal of becoming a mad scientist — or at least an alchemist of sound. As heard in the Books and his two albums made under the name Zammuto (the second, “Anchor,” was released in September), his work lands somewhere between art rock and EDM, embracing a postmodern cut-and-paste aesthetic colored by effects processing, samples, and clusters of fast drum patterns.
But some of those space-age sounds are made in surprisingly organic ways. A technique for creating electronic-sounding drum patterns includes carving notches into the inner, silent band of a vinyl record, and then playing the sound through a 10-foot PVC pipe. (You can hear the results from this technique on the new track “Great Equator.”)
“There’s something really human about taking electronic sound and then pushing it through air and then rerecording the results,” he says. “There’s something about the way that air processes sound that is so much more exciting than keeping it within the circuitry. There’s also this wind in the wires bit. There’s this subtle chaos in analog gear that’s washed away by the harsh logic of the circuitry in digital stuff.”
Zammuto designed and built the home where he lives with his wife and three sons, and his recording space is part studio and part workshop. (“I can build whatever I want,” he says. “If I have an idea for an object that makes sound, I can put it together.”)
Perhaps paradoxically, he is a forward-looking recording artist who is very comfortable with electronic sounds, but doesn’t have a mobile phone or television. His musical homesteading reflects a DIY lifestyle that transcends any mere hipster trend.
“It’s a love-hate relationship,” he says about technology and its capacity for distraction. “You have to use it to express something important, and not just increase the level of noise in the world.”
Though the first Zammuto record was largely born through solo studio tinkering at a low point in his creative life, the new release reflects the personality of his new touring band, built around the drum presence of Sean Dixon.
Nick’s brother Mikey, who plays in the four-piece known as Zammuto and previously toured as the Books’s bassist, says the new ensemble feels different. “From my perspective, I think it’s way more band-oriented and live-oriented,” he says. “That’s basically the way it’s changed the most — it’s really a band.”
The band leader also got a surge of confidence in his enterprise after a crowd-funding effort for the new record, which sought to raise $10,000, pulled in more than three times that amount.
“All of that terrible disappointment and anger I had after the Books broke up kind of dissolved into this wonderful, new, positive collaboration,” Zammuto says. “It’s not gangbusters. We’re not ever going to be the most popular band in the world. But people who like what we do have really stepped up to support it in a way that I’m really thankful for. It made me believe that being a middle class musician is actually possible. That’s all I would ever ask of this career, to be able to keep going and make the next record.”
At: Great Scott, Friday at 10 p.m. Tickets: $13, $15. 800-745-3000, www.greatscottboston.com
At: Elks Lodge 487, North Adams, Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $15, $20. www.billsvillehouseconcerts.com
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Leading an eponymous new band after the dissolution of admired duo The Books, instrumentalist Nick Zammuto embraces technology while eschewing its distractions.
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Female student 'led high school prostitution ring' in Florida
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John Michael Mosher was arrested by police. (Sarasota County Sheriff's Office)
Authorities in Florida say a 17-year-old high school student organised a prostitution ring of students from nearby high schools.
The teenager was arrested on Friday on felony charges of human trafficking of a person under 18.
Police say at least one act of prostitution took place, which led to the arrest of 21-year-old John Michael Mosher.
He's accused of paying $US40 ($A43) and a bottle of liquor to have sex with a 15-year-old girl.
Police Captain Tom Mattmuller told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune another arrest is expected on Tuesday.
Officials say the ring was uncovered when four students confided to administrators at Venice High School.
Documents indicate the teen and at least one other student concocted the plan over the summer to prostitute teens for money and alcohol.
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A high school prostitution ring has been uncovered in Florida, leading to at least one arrest.
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US couple has lucky escape after small plane crashes into home
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The Aero Commander 500 slammed into the front of the home in the early hours of Tuesday, killing its pilot. (AAP)
A small twin-engine cargo plane has crashed into a home on Chicago's southwest side, killing the pilot but sparing a couple who were asleep just inches away.
The Aero Commander 500 slammed into the front of the home in the early hours of Tuesday, punching through the ground floor into the basement and leaving about a third of the mangled wreckage, including the tail, exposed outside.
"It's very lucky. They were in a bedroom next to the living room and the living room is gone," Assistant Chicago Fire Department Commissioner Michael Fox said of the home's two residents.
Both told emergency services they were fine and refused any medical attention.
Authorities did not immediately release the name of the pilot, who crews were trying to remove from the wreckage.
No one else was on board.
The pilot, who was intending to fly to Columbus, Ohio, reported engine trouble shortly after taking off from Midway International Airport and asked to return to the airport.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
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Two residents at a Chicago house have had a lucky escape after a cargo plane smashed into their home.
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Solar energy expands on Cape, Vineyard
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The last section of one of New England’s largest solar developments was connected to the power grid this week, completing a project that will produce enough electricity to power more than 3,500 homes.
The solar panel arrays were built on a former landfill site in Chatham, one of nine sites developed to supply solar power to six towns on Cape Cod and two on Martha’s Vineyard. The arrays were connected to the power grid at various points over the past few months.
Solar power currently generates around 2 percent of the region’s electricity. More than 197 megawatts of solar power were installed in Massachusetts in the first eight months of 2014, compared to 227 megawatts installed in all of 2013, according to the state Department of Energy Resources.
“Extending our solar reach will build on our success by creating jobs and economic opportunity in an industry that will last for generations to come,” Governor Deval Patrick said in a statement. Last year, the Patrick administration set a goal of having 1,600 megawatts of solar panels installed in Massachusetts by 2020.
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New England’s largest solar development was dedicated Tuesday on Cape Cod.
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New Art Center shows works reflecting modern Southwest Asia
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“Far From Indochine,” the latest meaty offering at the New Art Center, looks at the Vietnam War and its legacies in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. At its core, the exhibition considers the economic, cultural, and political tensions between national powers and these countries — a dynamic that began with French colonizers, and continued with American intervention.
Curator Chu’o’ng-Dài Võ,who proposed “Far From Indochine” for the New Art Center’s consistently excellent Curatorial Opportunity Program for independent projects, creates a succinct but ambitious show that elegantly ties themes of history, economics, art, and power together in three works inspired by life in Southeast Asia today.
That’s a lot of content, but the installation’s great strength is in its lean formality, which at once pays tribute to modernism (which Võ, in her exhibition essay, links to colonialism, noting how early modernists were fueled by imagery and techniques from colonized regions), and invokes the fluid borders between Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The three works here all revolve around a long, narrow rectangle, yet in different ways they reach out to one another, interact, and overflow.
The rectangle in Patty Chang and David Kelley’s three-channel video “Route 3” is a panoramic screen. The video investigates the effects of a new international highway from Beijing making its way through previously rural areas. The Chinese are the latest economic force to hold sway in Laos.
Flitting from a beauty parlor, where one customer repeatedly mouths “There is an imaginary [sic] that if you move closer to the road, life will be better,” to a new casino, to more rustic areas, the film gravely portrays the impact of so-called progress on Laotians.
At the same time, it gets comically impudent, as it follows a large, boxy rectangle framed with curtains — almost a giant puppet — around countryside and city. It’s a visual metaphor for all the empty trucks rumbling up Route 3 with no other purpose than to make the road look busy.
Frédéric Sanchez’s painting “For My People” looms over “Far From Indochine.” A red monochrome, it’s modernist through and through, but it’s also a reproduction of a billboard Sanchez saw in northern Vietnam, which every few years is repainted with a new socialist message. Before the new message goes up, though, it gets a new coat of red paint — the color of communism, of the Vietnamese flag, and, for the Vietnamese, of fortuitous new beginnings.
Dewey Ambrosino’s installation “Hiding in the Light” has at its center a long curtain of reflective mylar, which billows and casts rivers of light and shadow up on the wall. Throughout the exhibition, Ambrosino has hung night-vision photographs of an insect farm in Cambodia.
It’s not easy to farm in Cambodia, which is still laden with landmines placed during the Cambodian Civil War in the 1970s. Insect farms are safe areas, where the mines have been removed. At night, fluorescent lights attract the bugs, which hit a plastic wall and drop into troughs of water to drown and be harvested for food. The mylar curtain here is brilliantly lit with stage lights, and viewers drawn close are blinded and hit with heat. Allure and danger go hand in hand.
These works fit together formally, and in their cautionary message about how political and economic interests can shape and sometimes heedlessly trample over entire peoples.
Then there is the earth itself, trampled by industry and demands for energy. Garth Lenz’s photographs of the Alberta Tar Sands and Canada’s magnificent boreal forest, which tar mining threatens, are on view at 555 Gallery.
Lenz often shoots from a plane, finding stunning patterns in the landscape below. “Boreal Forest and Wetland, Athabasca Delta, Northern Alberta” and “Tar Pit #3, Alberta Tar Sands” hang side by side. They sport similar snaking curves. But in “Boreal Forest,” those curves mark the contours of a startlingly blue river, coiling through golden autumnal woods, and in “Tar Pit #3,” they are mining roads, ribboning around sickly, orange-green pools and knobby, rutted, scarred earth.
Whether he’s photographing industry or landscape, Lenz gives his image massive scope, high-resolution detail, and a keen sense of shape, pattern, and texture — he seeks and finds abstraction in landscapes. “Tailings Pond in Winter, Abstract #1, Alberta Tar Sands” and “Aspen and Spruce, Northern Alberta” have the same sense of being covered in pale textures, interrupted by veined darkness — a spruce, in the first case, and in the second, dark oily strands among ice, sand, and wavering traces of water.
A Lisa Wiltse photograph from “Charcoal Kids of Ulingan.”
Like Lenz, Lisa Wiltse photographs impacts of the energy industry. She visited urban slums in Manila, where children are put to work gathering scraps of wood to make charcoal. One image in the “Charcoal Kids of Ulingan” series shows a little boy, no more than 5, pausing from his labor to wipe the soot from his face with his shirt.
Lenz depicts how our hunger for energy scars the earth; Wiltse’s photos of child labor, extreme poverty, and miserable working conditions reveal the human cost, and remind us — as “Far From Indochine” does — of how indifferent to ordinary people economic powers can be.
through Oct. 18. 617-964-3424, www.newartcenter.org
Garth Lenz: The True Cost of Oil
At: 555 Gallery, 555 East Second St., South Boston, through Oct. 4.
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A thought-provoking show at the New Art Center in Newtonville looks at the Vietnam War and its legacies in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia through contemporary works.
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American Music Awards 2014 best moments and highlights
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Taylor Swift performs onstage at the 2014 American Music Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Nov. 23, 2014, in Los Angeles. Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Last Updated Nov 23, 2014 11:58 PM EST
This year's American Music Awards honored familiar musical favorites Katy Perry, Beyonce and Luke Bryan. But the 2014 ceremony really put a major spotlight on newer and international artists One Direction, Iggy Azalea and Sam Smith.
One Direction picked up both the first and last honor of the night -- and one in between, for good measure.
The U.K. heartthrobs first scored favorite pop/rock band, duo or group, sending a "massive massive thank you" to all their fans.
"This has been a real perfect day...America feels like a second home to us," Liam Payne said. They later took the stage again to accept the award for favorite pop/rock album for "Midnight Memories." And the boys returned one more time for the night's biggest and final award -- favorite artist of the year topping Perry, Bryan, Azalea, Beyonce, Eminem, Imagine Dragons, John Legend, Lorde and Pharrell Williams.
It didn't take long for Azalea (the lead nominee with six nods) to waltz up to the stage for an award. The Australian star scooped up the favorite rap/hip-hop album honor (beating Eminem and Drake) for "The New Classic," presented by Jamie Foxx and his adorable daughter, Annalise.
"This award is the first award I've ever won in my entire life, and it means so much to me that it is for best hip-hop because that's what inspired me to move to America and pursue my dreams, and it's what helped me when I was a teenager to escape and to get through my life and to better times," Azalea said, adding, "It's what helped me as a teenager to escape...Thank you so much...T.I. for believing in me."
British sensation Sam Smith also won his first American Music Award, walking away with best male pop/rock artist. "Genuinely from my heart, I didn't think I was going to win this. This is unreal," said the "Stay With Me" singer, who topped Pharrell and John Legend in the category.
Katy Perry, who didn't attend the AMAs because of her world tour, ended up winning three honors, including single of the year for "Dark Horse."
Country music represented, too, with Bryan winning the prize for favorite male country artist. "I want to thank the fans out there to making it possible for me to win this award....Love you so much," he said. "Thanks for making my dreams come true."
Taylor Swift kicked off the American Music Awards Sunday with a live TV premiere of her new single "Blank Space," which appears on the 24-year-old pop songstress' No. 1 album, "1989." The energetic number found Swift grabbing hot male dancers and holding burning roses as she pranced around the stage in a shimmery gold fringe dress.
"In the four minutes she was on stage, she sold another 68 million albums," host Pitbull joked after the performance.
"We're going to be getting loose. We're going to be partying. We're going to be off the chain," he said at the start of the show.
There was definitely some letting loose in the audience throughout the night, particularly during Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj's performance of "Bang Bang." Swift, Smith, Lorde and more were all spotted getting down in the crowd.
Several of the hottest stars in music today performed -- Grande showed off her vocal chops with a slowed-down version of "One Less Problem" and "Break Free," while Wyclef Jean played with Magic! -- and the members of Imagine Dragons performed their new single "I Bet My Life."
Lorde sang "Yellow FlickerBeat," the theme from the weekend's No. 1 box office winner "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1." British songstress Charli XCX performed "Boom Clap" and "Break the Rules," and Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer brought some rock into the mix with a cover of The Romantics' "What I Like About You."
A host of other artists performed, including Mary J. Blige, Garth Brooks (via satellite from North Carolina), Fergie, Selena Gomez, Imagine Dragons, Lil Wayne with Christina Milian, Lorde, Nicki Minaj, One Direction and Smith.
Swift took the stage again -- this time in an emerald outfit -- to accept the first-ever Dick Clark Award of Excellence from Diana Ross, who said Swift "has taken the music industry by storm. We've fallen in love with her. She's really talented and beautiful."
Before Swift left her seat, she kissed and left some lipstick on the cheeks of her pals (and AMAs seat neighbors) Lorde, Gomez and Smith.
"I'm so blown away to just have received an award from Diana Ross," the "Shake It Off" singer said at the start of her acceptance speech.
"Music is valuable and music should be consumed in albums," said the singer, who recently pulled her music off streaming serivce Spotify. She also spoke about Clark's influence, calling him a "visionary" before thanking fans. "I'm so unbelievably happy that you want to have glimpse into my life," she said.
Presenters included Uzo Aduba, Jhene Aiko, Elizabeth Banks, Aloe Blacc, Lauren Cohan, Gavin DeGraw, Ansel Elgort, Jamie Foxx, Becky G, Brantley Gilbert, Danai Gurira, Lucy Hale, Ella Henderson, Julianne Hough, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner, Kira Kazantsev, Heidi Klum, Mary Lambert, Rose McGowan, Danica McKellar, Pat Monahan of Train, Olivia Munn, Kevin O'Leary, Pentatonix, Tracee Ellis Ross and Taylor Schilling.
The evening wrapped with a sultry and hot performance of "Booty" by Jennifer Lopez and Azalea.
The 42nd annual American Music Awards aired live Sunday night from the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live in Los Angeles on ABC.
Tell us: What did you think about the 2014 AMAs?
© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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A look at the winners and performances at this year's fan-voted event hosted by Pitbull
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Facebook video uploads reportedly overtake YouTube
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This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com
Facebook users uploaded more videos directly to their social media feed rather than pull videos from YouTube, according to new data that suggests Facebook FB is becoming the platform of choice for video sharing.
Socialbakers, a company that tracks social media data across 20,000 Facebook pages, observed a drop in the share of videos coming from YouTube as the number of videos coming directly from users increased, Business Insider reports.
For the first time, user-uploaded videos surpassed YouTube videos in November. The shift comes not long after Facebook tweaked its video playback feature so that scenes would begin playing automatically as the user scrolled through the page.
Read more at Business Insider.
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New data suggests users are bypassing YouTube and uploading videos directly to social media.
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Ford teams up with Blackberry to revamp its in-car technology
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You may have been surprised yesterday when Ford abandoned Microsoft and said its new Sync 3 telematics system would instead be run on an operating system from a company owned by Blackberry.
Blackberry? In a post-iPhone world, could Ford be any more unhip?
The surprise, though, is unwarranted. QNX, the company providing the operating system for the infotainment in Ford F vehicles starting next year, may be owned by Blackberry, but it has a history all its own when it comes to in-vehicle technology.
QNX is the operating system used by many other manufacturers, including General Motors GM , Audi and Mercedes. Plus, the company started as an independent outfit and has actually been purchased by Blackberry twice (the last time was when the Canadian telecom company BBRY was still known as Research in Motion.)
QNX is known for security and safety, according to IHS automotive senior analyst Mark Boyadjis. QNX’s history with autos makes the company particularly aware of these issues, while a company like Microsoft MSFT — which ran Ford’s old system — may not has as much experience in the area, said Boyadjis.
“There’s no such thing as a safety critical function in a tablet,” he said. He also noted that QNX has been able to “underpin things like collision notification and driving aids.”
So adding Ford is just another feather in QNX’s cap. They’ll be facing a lot of competition, though, including from big players such as Nokia NOK and Google GOOG . But there’s one company that Boyadjis doesn’t think we’ll see creating its own platform for automotive infotainment: Apple AAPL .
That doesn’t mean the company isn’t getting into the business at all. It has launched CarPlay, a software program that makes it easy to connect your phone and run apps through your car. But it likely won’t be developing its own operating system.
“Apple would have to say, ‘Yes, Mr. Automaker, or Mrs. Automaker, you can play with the software,'” he said. Or, a car company would have to let Apple completely control the system.
Or Apple would have to develop its own car, and while you never know what’s cooking in Cupertino, that scenario just seems unlikely.
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The deal is just the latest for subsidiary QNX.
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http://fortune.com/2014/12/09/how-to-run-a-corporation-like-a-start-up/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141215221631id_/http://fortune.com/2014/12/09/how-to-run-a-corporation-like-a-start-up/
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How to run a corporation like a start-up
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20141215221631
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In 2009, I took on a new job title—not a new position, but a new way of describing myself—that fundamentally changed how I worked.
At the time, I was a general manager at Intel Corporation INTL , and had been tasked with turning an education PC initiative into a for-profit business. The job included developing user-friendly products and establishing a market for Intel in the education sector. I recall describing my role during a talk I gave at Harvard Kennedy School, and someone said, “So you are an ‘intrapreneur?’” It was the first time I had heard the term, and I realized it described me perfectly, and the type of work I had been doing during much of my Intel career.
Five years later, after leaving Intel, I am now a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Claufield & Byers as well as Chief Business Officer at an education tech company, Coursera. I spend my days working with entrepreneurs — people with immense energy and big ideas, trying to change the world. I realize that my Intel team and I functioned much the same way; although we worked for a large company, we focused on doing new things.
Taking the inside track to entrepreneurship as an employee in a big company can be just as rewarding and exciting as leaping into the start-up world, and it can offer some great advantages. Keeping your corporate job may provide greater stability, while also enabling you to: leverage a strong corporate brand; recruit talent more easily within an organization where you already have relationships and share a common language; and concentrate more on achieving your vision than on tasks, such as securing venture funding, figuring out office space, and building a company infrastructure.
Intel is obviously a far cry from a scrappy start-up, but the company provided opportunities for me to follow my passions and turn ideas into projects with huge impact. Here are a few tips to becoming an intrapraneur that I learned along the way:
Be different. Take on new projects and pursue positions that broaden your experience. Early in my Intel career, I took a job in Japan working on DVD standards. One of my managers said it was a bad move — that I didn’t have enough experience and it would take me off the fast track toward the corporate C-suite. But I was effective in the job in part because I was different — no one expected a young American woman from the PC industry would be trying to open doors at consumer electronics companies like Sony, Panasonic and Hitachi, but that’s just what I did.
Through cold calling, finding introductions to the right people, speaking Japanese in business meetings, and generally being fearless, I was able to get Intel onto the committee that allowed us to advocate for DVDs to work on computers, not just living room devices. As it turned out, people did want to watch movies on computers.
Become your own CEO. Successful CEOs understand different parts of their company’s business and know how to work well with people. Many would-be entrepreneurs have a single, focused skill set. Maybe you’re a great engineer, but you know little about finance, manufacturing or communications. With the limited resources of a start-up, you have to be smart about hiring and the skills on your team. You need to wear many different hats, even when you’re not the expert. You also need to commit to being someone who never stops expanding your knowledge and skill set. There are so many resources out there, as well as mentors and peers from whom to learn and gain perspective.
Build your board of directors. Find an executive sponsor—someone who will serve as your sounding board, connect you to people in the company who can help you, and protect your organization to give you the time and space required to achieve your vision. My Intel executive sponsor functioned like a lead director or a good venture capitalist: he asked me the hard questions, highlighted the things I needed to think about, helped me recruit talent, and taught me the ropes in securing annual funding. The good news is that it’s much easier to build your board and rally support within an organization where you’re already known than it is to cold-call a venture capital firm.
Own what you are. Adopting the “intrapraneur” label at Intel gave me (and my team) an entirely new vocabulary. Suddenly we were able to explain what we were doing within a “start-up” framework that other people could better understand—a process that helped remove obstacles to new ways of doing business. As intrapreneurs, we took pride in being rebels, rolled up our sleeves, and got the job done.
You don’t need to be at a startup to innovate and have a huge impact. Often, all you need is creativity and the willingness to learn skills outside of your comfort zone to innovate right where you already are.
Lila Ibrahim is the Chief Business Officer of Coursera, an education technology company that offers massive open online courses. She is also an Operating Partner and Chief of Staff at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
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You don’t need to be at a startup to innovate and have a huge impact, says Lila Ibrahim, chief business officer at Coursera.
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http://fortune.com/2014/12/17/fedex-misses-expectations-but-increases-revenues/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141217144442id_/http://fortune.com/2014/12/17/fedex-misses-expectations-but-increases-revenues/
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FedEx misses expectations, but increases revenues
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20141217144442
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FedEx reported earnings today, and the shipping company saw increased earnings, though it fell below what analysts expected the company to report, with fully diluted earnings per share coming in at $2.14. Wall Street had expected $2.22.
Volume of packages were up both in the United States and worldwide, but revenue per package was down due to decreased volume and reduced fuel surcharges. Here are a few things to consider from today’s report:
What you need to know: Overall revenue for the three months ending Nov. 30 was up 5% from the same quarter of 2013 at $11.9 billion, despite the fall in revenue per package. Most of the improvement came through the FedEx Express segment, which grew 3%. FedEx Ground, which includes the e-commerce-driven Home Delivery operations, gained 8% despite the loss of a major customer for its SmartPost business. FedEx Freight grew 11%.
The big number: Net income jumped 23% year-on-year to $616 million from $500 million. It was largely due to higher volumes, and helped by lower fuel costs and lower pension obligations.
What you may have missed: Fuel surcharges are the bane of the existence of anyone who regularly ships packages. Next week, FedEx FDX will announce changes to its fuel surcharge structure for next year, according to the earnings release. The new tables will be announced on Dec. 23 and take effect in February of next year. That will reveal how much of the drop in oil prices FedEx will actually be passing on to customers, and how much it will keep to bolster profit margins.
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Lower fuel costs helped increase margins.
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http://www.people.com/article/man-elf-costume-arrested-drunk-driving
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141222032513id_/http://www.people.com/article/man-elf-costume-arrested-drunk-driving
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Man in Elf Costume Arrested for Drunk Driving : People.com
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20141222032513
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12/21/2014 AT 07:10 PM EST
Police say an elf on the sauce is facing drunken driving charges in New Jersey.
that 23-year-old Brian Chellis was found passed out in a car early Friday morning wearing an Elf on the Shelf costume.
Lt. James Macintosh says the Cedar Grove man was asleep behind the wheel of a van with its engine running, lights on and music blaring. He says Chellis was in a red shirt, red pants and white ruffled collar.
Macintosh says Chellis seemed confused about where he was and had an open can of beer in the car. He was issued a summons and released to a family member.
A message left Saturday seeking comment from Chellis wasn't immediately returned.
Catherine Butler in her Halloween costume
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Police say Brian Chellis, 23, was wearing an Elf on the Shelf costume
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http://fortune.com/2012/01/25/its-time-for-an-honest-tax-debate/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141224013120id_/http://fortune.com:80/2012/01/25/its-time-for-an-honest-tax-debate/
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It’s time for an honest tax debate
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20141224013120
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In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama reiterated his vision for a tax code in which the wealthy — “people like me and an awful lot of members of Congress” — pay their fair share.
It’s a conversation worth engaging: In this charged political season, who pays what in taxes has emerged as a stand-in for widespread worries about the growing concentration of wealth in America. But first let’s inject some honesty into the debate.
Most people that Obama deems “wealthy” — including the President himself and most members of Congress — pay the highest tax rates of anyone around. Even most “millionaires,” with all their deductions, pay higher rates than the middle class. And the top 120,000 households — the 0.1% of earners — pay 30%, twice the middle-class rate. As Roberton Williams of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center remarked in my Dec. 7 column, Why the GOP should hike taxes on the super rich: “The tax code is actually very progressive.”
President Obama, a millionaire from his book sales, paid a 2010 tax rate of 25%; the 271 non-millionaire members of Congress — those who rely on salaries ranging from $174,000 to $193,000-plus for House and Senate leaders — pay just under 23%. By contrast, middle class households pay average rates in the teens.
But, as I noted in that Dec. 7 column:
There is one class of wealthy people who arguably don’t pay their fair share — a relatively small class of investors that Warren Buffett has labeled the “super rich.” Their incomes have more than quadrupled in the past two decades, while their effective rates have plummeted to below what many in the middle class pay. They make most of their money from dividends and capital gains on investments, which are taxed at much lower rates. Contrast a capital gains rate of 15% with the top individual rate of 35%.
The higher you move up the income chain, the more likely you are to earn your income from investments rather than salary. The average taxpayer earns three-quarters of his income from a salary; for the top 400, it’s 8%, according to IRS numbers crunched by the Tax Policy Center.
Williams calculates that the 400 richest Americans, averaging $270 million a year, paid an average 18% tax rate in 2008. Even worse, these big time investors aren’t subject to payroll tax, which everyone else has to pay until their salary hits $106,800. Neither are their investment gains subject to the 1.45% Medicare tax that the rest of us pay.
But for others that President Obama has labeled wealthy, it’s a different story. The system is actually quite progressive — and fair. “It’s really about investors versus workers,” Williams notes.
The White House tries to spin its case for higher taxes on all rich by advertising facts like this: “165,000 households making over $1 million paid less than 30% of their income in taxes.” But 30% compared to what? That’s far higher than average rates paid by much of the middle class—which is how our progressive tax code is designed.
Super-rich investors are the biggest income winners over the past two decades, even as their tax rates have dropped. Williams says the IRS numbers on the Forbes 400 show that their incomes have quadrupled since 1995, even as their tax rates have dropped to 18%. The average earner has seen his income rise by only 77% while tax rates have gone up.
GOP candidate Mitt Romney stepped into this morass when he released tax returns showing that he paid just under 14% in taxes. (Full disclosure: My husband is a Romney adviser.) But it’s up to Congress and the President to change the law if Americans deem the system unfair.
There are arguments on all sides worth airing. Raise rates on investment income? Maybe, but that could also discourage investment and risk-taking, and supporters of a low rate argue that investment income has already been taxed at the 35% corporate tax rate before being paid out to individuals.
A narrowly tailored Buffett Rule — in the form of a minimum tax that acknowledges that the “millionaires-escaping-taxes” story is really an exception to the rule – may make sense. So too would a simpler, lower-rate tax code that doesn’t pick winners and losers. When the Harvard Business School asked 10,000 alumni for policy suggestions to make American more competitive, the most popular was “simplify tax code.”
Let’s have the discussion—but without the politically-opportune myths.
Washington Columnist Nina Easton is currently a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
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The discussion on tax reform has become too politically charged, pushing the facts to the background. The wealthy pay high taxes already, it's the super rich that need to pay more.
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http://www.people.com/article/immigrant-mom-living-in-church
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141224031434id_/http://www.people.com/article/immigrant-mom-living-in-church
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A Philadelphia Church Is Home for This Immigrant Mom Trying to Avoid Deportation
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20141224031434
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Angela Navarro has spent more than 10 years staying ahead of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, moving from house to house along with her husband and their two children.
Fed up with the nomad lifestyle, she picked up her family one last time in November – and moved in to a Philadelphia church.
Navarro, 28, isn't the only illegal immigrant to have done this. In fact, she's the eighth person this year who's sought refuge in a house of worship, according to
. There, she's safe from the ICE – who generally won't pursue enforcement actions inside a church – while she fights the decade-old deportation order.
"The hardest part has been leaving my life behind – leaving my house, my job, the inability to do normal family things, like going out for a walk or going shopping," she told
Navarro's family has moved into the West Kensington Ministry in North Philadelphia as well, despite the fact that they are all U.S. citizens. But that's okay, says her 9-year-old daughter, Mariana Mendoza, who just wants her mom to stay safe "because if she didn't move [into the church], maybe they could deport her."
The mother of two first moved to the U.S. when she was 17. Caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2003, she was allowed to stay with her parents, who were already living in Philly. A judge ultimately ruled against her and she was told to leave the country. She didn't.
It was Navarro's mother who first suggested the idea of staying in a church.
"When my mom first told me about this I thought, 'No,' because I didn't know how I could leave my house and my work," she told Al Jazeera America.
But she was at her breaking point. "Everything you have to do with kids – going to a hospital, going to school, when you have to represent them – every time I have to write my name, I have all this stress. Should I write it? Should I not? Because maybe ICE will come," she said.
Living in the church has its own downsides. Her family is confined to a cramped playroom. They don't even have their own kitchen. And Navarro can't set foot outside of church property.
"If [living in the church] ends my deportation," Navarro told
, "I'll be free to do everything afterward."
In the meantime, she spends her time playing guitar and praying.
For his part, church leader Adan Mairena is doing everything he can to help Navarro. "It's a way for us to act out our faith," he told the AP.
Attorney Patricia Camuzzi Luber recently filed paperwork asking officials to review Navarro's case and suspend her deportation order in the wake of her marriage to her husband, a truck driver, as well as President Barack Obama's executive actions granting legal status to millions of immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors or who have American children.
For now, she'll have to wait – and the family is looking at the positives of their situation.
Navarro's daughter says, "I'm happy here," Mariana told the AP. Before, she only saw her mom in the mornings because she was busy working late hours as a restaurant cook at night. "Now, every day I can always see her."
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Angela Navarro sought refuge with her family at the West Kensington Ministry in November
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http://www.9news.com.au/world/2014/12/11/18/20/truck-driver-s-simple-trick-for-getting-out-of-a-parking-ticket
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141225030938id_/http://www.9news.com.au:80/world/2014/12/11/18/20/truck-driver-s-simple-trick-for-getting-out-of-a-parking-ticket
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Truck driver's simple trick for getting out of a parking ticket
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20141225030938
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A British truck driver has come up with an ingeniously simple way of getting out of a park ticket — using the wipers to stop the inspector sticking the ticket to the window.
In the cheeky video posted to YouTube yesterday, the London lorry driver sits in the darkness of the cab while the traffic warden approaches.
The truck is parked half on the footpath, half on the narrow London street — a plainly illegal park — while picking up a load.
The warden starts writing out the ticket for the truck before approaching its windshield to stick it on the front.
"Look at him writing the pounds. Look. 'Oh, there'll be a bonus here, coming up to Christmas,'" the driver says, mocking the inspector and giving him the finger as he takes a photo of the truck.
But as the inspector tries to stick the ticket to the window the driver flicks on his wipers, preventing it from staying place.
The inspector pleads with the driver who has erupted into fits of laughter.
But then even the inspector has a little chuckle about being outwitted by the wipers.
It is unclear whether driver was stuck with the parking violation in the end.
Source: annahill3001 - YouTube Author: Nicholas McCallum, Approving editor: Chloe Ross
Do you have any news photos or videos?
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A British truck driver has come up with an ingeniously simple way of getting out of a park ticket — using the wipers to stop the inspector sticking the ticket to the window.
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http://fortune.com/2011/02/28/google-ventures-next-big-bet-weather-insurance/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141225052344id_/http://fortune.com:80/2011/02/28/google-ventures-next-big-bet-weather-insurance/
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Google Ventures’ next big bet: Weather insurance
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20141225052344
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Together with Khosla Ventures, Google announced an investment of $42 million into WeatherBill.
Over 90% of crop loss is due to inclement or unexpected weather conditions. With climate change in full swing, more and more agricultural businesses are at risk for unpredictable weather conditions.
WeatherBill uses an algorithm to calculate risk and sell insurance online against unpredictable weather.
WeatherBill’s flagship product, Total Weather Insurance (TWI) is a the first full-season weather protection program for U.S. farmers designed that addresses the adverse weather conditions they face every season. WeatherBill’s TWI provides the U.S. agriculture industry with a private-sector supplement to government-subsidized crop insurance.
Today Google GOOG Ventures is investing.
“Google Ventures’ mission is to identify and fund big ideas — and WeatherBill’s vision of helping farmers adapt to climate change aligns perfectly with that mission,” said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures, in a press release (bel0w). “WeatherBill’s founders, CEO, David Friedberg, and CTO, Siraj Khaliq, are ex-Googlers, so it’s understandable that they are working on turning the big problem of climate change into a big opportunity. Google Ventures is excited to support the WeatherBill team as they take on big data challenges and create products to protect a foundational global industry: agriculture.”
Existing investors include NEA, Index Ventures, Allen & Company, Atomico, First Round Capital and Code Advisors.
WeatherBill® Raises $42 Million to expand Technology Platform that Helps Farmers Worldwide Adapt to Climate Change
Khosla Ventures and Google Ventures join existing investors in Series B financing of disruptive technology company delivering personalizable weather insurance products for the $3 trillion global agriculture industry
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 28, 2011 – WeatherBill, the technology pioneer that has made weather insurance a reality for millions of people and businesses affected by the weather, today announced that it closed a $42 million round of Series B funding with new investors Khosla Ventures and Google Ventures joining NEA, Index Ventures, Allen & Company, First Round Capital, Atomico, and Code Advisors in the financing round. The capital will support WeatherBill’s aggressive product and sales expansion in the U.S. and internationally.
“With a firm belief that technology can create new markets and address vital global challenges, Khosla Ventures immediately recognized the potential of WeatherBill to fundamentally change the risk profile of the global agriculture industry,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “WeatherBill is one of those rare companies that has the leadership and vision to apply new technology to an ancient and daunting problem – weather’s impact on agriculture. Now WeatherBill can help farmers globally deal with the increasingly extreme weather brought on by climate change.”
“Global agriculture production is more than $3 trillion per year, and it is at risk today from extreme weather conditions, as evidenced by the recent droughts in Russia and China and extensive flooding in Australia, which have decimated global commodity supplies,” said David Friedberg, CEO and co-founder of WeatherBill. “More than 90 percent of crop losses are due to unexpected weather and climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events. Dedicated to addressing this global concern, WeatherBill is applying the use of our technology platform to become the first company to provide every farmer – from the developing world to the technologically sophisticated – with a simple and effective solution for removing weather-related risk from their financial profile, in order to support and ensure the sustainability of the global food supply.”
“Nine years ago we had a very dry growing season in rural Ohio. A year later we experienced 14 inches of rain in 10 days. The flip flop of weather from one year to the next is the biggest challenge farmers face,” said Steve Wolters, a farmer growing corn, soybean and wheat in Celina, Ohio. “It makes sense to me to take advantage of WeatherBill’s automated weather insurance programs that pinpoint the weather conditions expected to affect my land and pay me if they happen. Protecting my seasonal profits with this product, before I even plant a seed, greatly reduces the risk I take every year and allows me to invest in improving my growing operation.”
Google Ventures’ mission is to identify and fund big ideas – and WeatherBill’s vision of helping farmers adapt to climate change aligns perfectly with that mission,” said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures. “WeatherBill’s founders, CEO, David Friedberg, and CTO, Siraj Khaliq, are ex-Googlers, so it’s understandable that they are working on turning the big problem of climate change into a big opportunity. Google Ventures is excited to support the WeatherBill team as they take on big data challenges and create products to protect a foundational global industry: agriculture.”
WeatherBill’s unique technology platform continuously aggregates enormous amounts of weather data from many disparate sources, and combines sophisticated statistical analyses to run large-scale weather simulations in a proprietary cloud-based computing environment. The system enables completely automated and easy-to-use, personalized weather insurance products. As part of its current expansion, WeatherBill is adding to its team of world-class software engineers, mathematicians, climatological agronomists and product managers to build out its platform on a global scale.
In 2010, WeatherBill launched its flagship product, Total Weather Insurance™ (TWI), the first full-season weather protection program for U.S. farmers, designed to address the adverse weather conditions they face every season. WeatherBill’s TWI provides the U.S. agriculture industry with a private-sector supplement to government-subsidized crop insurance. Created with insight from agronomists and growers nationwide, TWI enables growers to lock in profits and protect their businesses against poor weather, which is the cause of 90 percent of crop loss each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). As with all of WeatherBill’s products, TWI pays out automatically based on measured weather conditions, requiring no claims process and no waiting for payment.
To learn more about WeatherBill, visit www.weatherbill.com, and to join the WeatherBill team, check outwww.weatherbill.com/careers
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Together with Khosla Ventures, Google announced an investment of $42 million into WeatherBill. Over 90% of crop loss is due to inclement or unexpected weather conditions. With climate change in full swing, more and more agricultural businesses are at risk for unpredictable weather conditions. WeatherBill uses an algorithm to calculate risk and sell insurance online against unpredictable…
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/12/06/developer-joe-fallon-follows-his-vision-reshape-waterfront/SYeG1Dl0mY0LUVNgKvgDgO/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20141230062541id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/12/06/developer-joe-fallon-follows-his-vision-reshape-waterfront/SYeG1Dl0mY0LUVNgKvgDgO/story.html
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Developer Joe Fallon follows his vision to reshape a waterfront
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20141230062541
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Not one of the many buildings Joe Fallon has developed bears his name. He prefers to avoid the media spotlight. He pays his bills, keeps his commitments, and stays out of court.
Fallon, the founder and chief executive of the Fallon Co., has made a career and virtue of keeping a low profile, building his company into one of Boston’s biggest developers through the simple strategy of getting things done. Over the course of his firm’s 21-year history, Fallon has overseen the construction of billions of dollars in buildings and done more to reshape the South Boston waterfront than perhaps any other developer.
He was among the first to see the potential of the old industrial district of factories, warehouses, and parking lots, building the first hotel in area and later taking on and pushing forward the stalled Fan Pier development — even through the worst national recession in 70 years. Today, three of seven towers are complete, standing over 200 feet tall, and three others are under construction. The total cost of Fan Pier, when completed over the next decade, will be almost $4 billion.
Those who know Fallon said he works hard, hires good people, and knows his business, whether at home poring over financial details or inspecting a construction site. He adheres to old-school principles, like sealing deals with handshakes and letting his actions speak louder than his words.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh recalled negotiating a broad labor agreement with Fallon for construction work on Fan Pier several years ago when he led the Boston council of building trade unions. It was the only time, Walsh said, he negotiated such an agreement with a developer without a lawyer in the room.
After Walsh became mayor this year he asked Fallon to contribute to help pay the expenses of the Dorchester Eagles, a Pop Warner football team traveling to Florida for the national championship. Fallon pitched in $10,000 to cover the hotel bill for more than 30 players and their chaperones, Walsh said.
“He doesn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It’s always, ‘What can I do?’ ” said Walsh. “He has done things quietly all over the city.”
In a rare interview, Fallon, 62, credited his success to following two basic rules: Keep your commitments, because you’re nothing without credibility; and, if it doesn’t make money, don’t agree to it. He could get along just fine, he added, without any attention from the media.
“It’s part of the job,’’ he said. “I’d just as soon not talk about anything.”
Erik Jacobs for The Boston Globe
Joe Fallon on the marine deck at Twenty Two Liberty, a luxury residential building currently under construction at Fan Pier.
Fallon grew up as one of five children in Milton. He worked for his father’s general contracting business in high school and studied architecture and civil engineering at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. After graduating, he took a job with the South Shore developer Thomas J. Flatley, working with neighbors and other residents in various communities to smooth the way for Flatley’s projects.
Flatley, who died in 2008, built a $1.3 billion suburban real estate empire across much of New England. Fallon, who still calls him “Mr. Flatley,” said many of Flatley’s values, such as the importance of credibility, were ingrained into him. There was one important difference, though.
“He didn’t want to come into the city,” said Fallon. “That’s when I separated because I felt the opportunities were in the city.”
Boston didn’t appeal to Flatley because he didn’t like dealing with the many groups that doing business in the city entailed, Fallon said. But Fallon enjoyed meeting, talking to, listening to, and working with neighbors, local pols, and other interested parties. Recently, when his company proposed a redevelopment plan for Somerville’s Union Square, Fallon appeared before a citizen’s panel rather than send a lawyer or an executive.
“There’s probably only a handful of people who can get things done but there are a thousand people who can kill a project,” said US Representative Stephen Lynch, a South Boston Democrat. “You’ve got to be fairly adept and skilled to keep everybody happy, or at least content.”
Fallon started his company in 1993. At first, the projects were small: 30,000 feet of commercial space here, 50,000 there. But during the Big Dig, the city’s massive transportation project, Fallon said, he realized the waterfront’s access to highways and public transit would make it an ideal place to build a neighborhood.
His first project was the Park Lane Seaport apartment towers, approved in 2002, at the eastern end of the waterfront. Later, he helped revive the stalled Westin hotel project near the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
Roger Berkowitz, president of Legal Sea Food restaurants, said Fallon’s vision of a bustling neighborhood was contagious. He helped Berkowitz see the potential of the Seaport, even when it was still desolate. Berkowitz opened the first Legal Test Kitchen in one of Fallon’s buildings in 2005.
“I really had no intention of doing it,” said Berkowitz. “But the more he talked, the more he sold me on it.”
It has taken more than enthusiasm to develop Fan Pier. The project was on the drawing board for about two decades when the late Mayor Thomas M. Menino pressured the property owners, the Chicago-based Pritzker family, to sell. In 2003, the Pritzkers put Fan Pier on the block, only to have two prospective buyers back out.
Spotting an opening, Fallon and two financial backers paid $115 million in 2005 for the 21-acre expanse of parking lots. Fallon broke ground in 2007; that December, the recession hit — and only got worse.
The risks for Fallon were huge. Instead of financing the construction wholly through debt, Fallon put his company’s equity on the line. He also had made promises to retailers and restaurateurs in his buildings that people would flock to their businesses. Calling it quits would have meant losing more than money; his credibility was at stake.
As the economy recovered, the space started to fill. Fish and Richardson, a law firm, moved into 124,000 square feet. Vertex Pharmaceuticals paid $1.1 billion for a 15-year lease of two buildings.
Some have attributed Fallon’s success to his connections to Menino. But Michael Vaughan, a real estate consultant and former project manager for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, dismisses such talk. “There’s 10,000 guys who would be friends with Tom Menino,” he said. “But not everyone would do what Joe did.”
Fallon is not without critics — particularly architectural ones. His Fan Pier buildings have been criticized as glass-heavy and uninspiring. The architecture critic Robert Campbell wrote in a recent Globe article that the area had “all the charm of an office park in a suburb of Dallas.”
Fallon responded that people should withhold judgment until Fan Pier is completed, confident his buildings are right for Boston.
“Some people were sending me architecture of some crazy Guggenheim design, saying maybe people would be happy with that,” said Fallon, referring to the modern art museum in New York. “But they’d be empty. I’m not going to do that. I’m trying to create life.”
Fallon and his wife, Susan, will call Fan Pier home when they move from Belmont into a condo to be finished in 2015.
But Fallon, who works 12-hour days, has no plans to retire. He is looking to build in New York, Miami, and Washington. Already, he said, he’s spending about a quarter of his time — and soon a quarter of his money — on developments beyond Boston.
Fallon said the cities are different from Boston, but they share a sense of vitality and growth, as well as a noisy process involving planners, neighbors, advocacy groups, politicians, and various boards and commissions. And he’s ready to work through it, carefully, deliberately — and quietly.
“In New York and D.C., everyone’s very vocal, just like they are in Boston,” he said. “We meet with the neighborhoods. We talk to the communities so that there’s no surprises. And we listen.”
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Joe Fallon, the founder and chief executive of the Fallon Co., has made a career and virtue of keeping a low profile, building his company into one of Boston’s biggest developers through the simple strategy of getting things done.
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Toddler Accidentally Shoots and Kills Woman in Walmart
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12/30/2014 AT 04:15 PM EST
A 2-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed a woman after he reached into her purse at a northern Idaho Walmart and her concealed gun fired, authorities said Tuesday.
The woman was shopping with several children, and it is unclear how they are related, Kootenai County sheriff's spokesman Stu Miller said. Authorities originally said the boy was the woman's son.
The woman, whose identity was not released, had a concealed weapons permit.
Miller said the shooting was accidental and occurred in the Walmart in Hayden, Idaho, a town about 40 miles northeast of Spokane, Washington.
The woman and the children were in the back of the store near the electronics area when the shooting occurred, authorities said.
reports that witnesses and video surveillance from the store helped deputies determine the shooting was accidental.
The store closed after the shooting and was not expected to reopen until Wednesday morning.
Hayden is a politically conservative town of about 9,000 people just north of Coeur d'Alene in Idaho's northern panhandle.
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A toddler found a gun in a woman's purse and accidentally fired at her in an Idaho store
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Bodies, debris and plane 'shadow' found
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Wreckage, dozens of bodies and a plane-like shadow on the seabed have been found in the search of the missing AirAsia jet, prompting raw scenes of emotion from sobbing relatives of the 162 people aboard.
The Airbus A320-200 disappeared en route from Indonesia's second largest city Surabaya to Singapore during a storm early Sunday.
All indications now are that it crashed in the Java Sea southwest of the island of Borneo, with debris and dozens of bodies retrieved so far.
An air force plane saw a "shadow" on the seabed believed to be of the missing Flight QZ8501, National Search and Rescue Agency chief Bambang Soelistyo told a news conference in Jakarta.
Relatives of the 162 missing hugged each other and burst into tears in Surabaya as they watched footage of one body floating in the sea on a television feed of Soelistyo's press conference.
An Indonesian warship had recovered more than 40 bodies from the sea "and the number is growing", navy spokesman Manahan Simorangkir said shortly afterwards.
AirAsia's flamboyant chief executive, Tony Fernandes, expressed his grief over the first fatal incident to hit the region's biggest budget airline.
"My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501," Fernandes said on Twitter, adding that he was rushing to Surabaya.
Initial news of the debris dimmed the faint hopes of relatives of those missing.
"If that news is true, what can I do? I cannot bring him back to life," said Dwijanto, 60, whose son was on the plane along with five colleagues.
"My heart will be totally crushed if it's true. I will lose a son," he said.
Search chief Soelistyo said all efforts were now being concentrated on the location where the "shadow" and debris had been found, about 160 kilometres southwest of the town of Pangkalan Bun in Central Kalimantan on Borneo island.
The town has the nearest airstrip and is not far from the plane's last known position.
President Joko Widodo was expected in Pangkalan Bun shortly before heading to Surabaya to meet the relatives, officials said.
Indonesian officials had already been preparing relatives for the worst, with Soelistyo saying Monday it was likely the plane was at "the bottom of the sea", based on its estimated position.
The aircraft lost contact early on Sunday about 40 minutes after take-off, after the crew requested a change of flight plan due to stormy weather.
In his last communication, the pilot said he wanted to avoid a menacing storm system, before all contact was lost.
The crash comes at the end of a disastrous year for Malaysian aviation.
Flight MH370 disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March with 239 passengers and crew, and in July another Malaysia Airlines flight - MH17 - was shot down over unrest-hit Ukraine, killing all 298 on board.
Do you have any news photos or videos?
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The search for the missing AirAsia plane is focused on an oil slick off Belitung Island; an Indonesian student from Monash university was on board.
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http://www.people.com/article/britney-spears-contest-win-trip-concert-las-vegas
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Win a Trip to See Britney Spears in Las Vegas!
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Now that the holidays are over, you might be having a case of post-Yuletide blues.
But for the biggest (and most creative!)
fan out there, we have a 2015 jump-start just for you: an unforgettable getaway to Las Vegas to see her
The winner of our Britney Spears
will get: Two tickets to see her show, a hotel room for two nights, two round-trip plane tickets to Las Vegas and
prize package valued at $500.
So how are we picking her Biggest. Fan. Ever.?
Tweet why you love Britney (photos, videos, etc., are all welcome, so let those imaginations run free and "Work, B----h!") with the hashtag: #PEOPLEHeartBritney
See the official rules below (the contest is open to anyone 21 and older):
1. HOW TO ENTER: This contest begins 12:01 A.M. EST on Jan. 2, 2015 and ends 11:59 P.M. EST on Jan. 9, 2015. To enter online, go to Twitter and tweet why you love Britney Spears (photos and videos are welcomed) with the hashtag: #PeopleHeartBritney. Limit one entry per person. Sponsor is not responsible for lost, late, illegible or incomplete or entries not received for any reason. Entries become sole property of Sponsor and none will be acknowledged or returned. By entering, Entrant warrants that his or her entry (1) is original and does not infringe the intellectual property rights of any third party, (2) has not been published in any medium or (3) has not won an award. Entrant must provide valid email address or phone number upon request.
2. JUDGING: All entries will be judged by PEOPLE editors based on the following criteria: Creativity (25%); Overall Charm and Appeal of Submission Entry (50%) and Appropriateness to Contest Theme (25%). Incomplete and/or inaccurate entries and entries not complying with all rules are subject to disqualification. Decisions of judges are final and binding. Winner will be notified by phone or email by Jan.15, 2015.
3. ELIGIBILITY: Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 21 years or older at time of entry (âEntrant(s)â). Void where prohibited by law. Employees of Sponsor and its promotional partners and their respective parents, affiliates and subsidiaries, participating advertising and promotion agencies (and members of their immediate family and/or those living in the same of household of each such employee) are not eligible.
4. PRIZES AND APPROXIMATE RETAIL VALUE: One Winner will receive two tickets to Piece of Me in Las Vegas ($99 each), two-night stay (in one room) at a local-area hotel ($500), round-trip economy-class airfare for One Winner and One Guest from the major airport nearest Winnerâs residence (Winner will be given two $500 gift cards to be used to book their airfare directly) and an Intimate prize package (valued at $500). Total approximate Retail Value of the winnings: $2,200. All other expenses not specified herein are the responsibility of the Winner. ALL TAXES ARE THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WINNER. The prize is awarded without warranty, express or implied, of any kind.
Travel arrangements, hotel accommodations and any other prize component subject to availability and chosen at Sponsorâs sole discretion. Certain blackout periods and other restrictions may apply. All travelers must possess valid travel documents. Each Winnerâs Guest (if necessary) must complete, sign and return the Publicity Waiver (where legal) and Release Forms prior to travel, or the Guest cannot accompany the Winner. Applicable show dates are January 28, 2015 to Aug. 26, 2015 (subject to availability; some dates may be sold out). Arrangements for hotel rooms and concert tickets must be made at least 21 days prior to departure. Winner and Guest(s) must travel on the same itinerary. Once scheduled, the itinerary cannot be altered. Actual value of prize may vary based on timing and point of departure. Winner is responsible for all taxes and all other expenses not included in the prize package, including, without limitation, ground travel, parking, meals, room service, souvenirs, phone calls, incidentals tips, and other personal expenses.
In the event the Piece of Me concert is cancelled or postponed for any reason, Sponsor reserves the right to award the remainder of the prize with no further obligation to the Winner.
5. CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION: No transfer, assignment, or substitution of a prize permitted, except Sponsor reserves the right to substitute prize (or prize component) for an item of equal or greater value at Sponsorâs sole discretion. Nothing in these official contest rules shall obligate Sponsor to publish or otherwise use any entry submitted in connection with this Contest. All federal, state and local laws and regulations apply. Entrants agree to be bound by the terms of these Official Rules and by the decisions of Sponsor, which are final and binding on all matters pertaining to this Contest. By entering, Entrant represents that materials submitted as part of Entrantâs Contest entry are original and will not constitute defamation or an invasion of privacy or otherwise infringe upon the rights of any third party, and that the Entrant owns or has the rights to convey any and all right and title in such materials. In addition, by entering, Entrant grants to PEOPLE a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to edit, publish, promote, republish at any time in the future and otherwise use Entrantâs submitted materials, along with Entrantâs name, likeness, biographical information, and any other information provided by Entrant, in any and all media for possible editorial, promotional or advertising purposes, without further permission, notice or compensation (except where prohibited by law). Potential Winner, as a condition of receiving any prize, also may be required to sign and return an Affidavit of Eligibility, a Liability Release and where legally permissible a Publicity Release and confirmation of a license as set forth above within 7 days following the date of first attempted notification, certifying, among other things, the following: (a) entry does not defame or invade the privacy of any party; (b) entry does not infringe upon the rights of any third party; and (c) the photo, essay, etc. and other materials submitted are original and have never been published and entry has never won an award. Failure to comply with this deadline may result in forfeiture of the prize and selection of an alternate winner. Return of any prize/prize notification as undeliverable may result in disqualification and selection of an alternate winner. Acceptance of the prize constitutes permission for Sponsor and its agencies to use Winnerâs name and/or likeness, biographical information, videos, photographs or other materials submitted for advertising and promotional purposes without additional compensation, unless prohibited by law. By entering and/or accepting prize, Entrants and Winners agree to hold Sponsor and its promotional partners, its directors, officers, employees and assigns harmless for liability, damages or claims for injury or loss to any person or property, including death, relating to, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, participation in this Contest, the acceptance and/or subsequent use or misuse, or condition of any of the prizes awarded, or claims based on publicity rights, defamation or invasion or privacy. False or deceptive entries or acts will render the Entrant ineligible. Sponsor, in its sole discretion, reserves the immediate and unrestricted right to disqualify any entrant or prize winner, if either commits or has committed any act, or has been involved or becomes involved in any situation or occurrence which the Sponsor deems likely to subject the Sponsor, entrant or winner to ridicule, scandal or contempt or which reflects unfavorably upon the Sponsor in any way. If such information is discovered by Sponsor after a winner has received notice of his prize and before the prize is awarded, Sponsor may rescind the prize in its entirety. If a portion of his/her prize has already been awarded, Sponsor may withdraw the remainder of the prize that has been fulfilled. Decisions of the Sponsor are final and binding in all matters related to this paragraph. Sponsor is not responsible for any typographical or other error in the printing of the offer, administration of the contest, or in the announcement of the prize.
The winner may also be asked to document their weekend to be published by PEOPLE.
6. INTERNET: Sponsor is not responsible for lost or late entries nor for electronic transmission errors resulting in omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operations or transmission, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to or alterations of entry materials, or for technical, network, telephone equipment, electronic, computer, hardware or software malfunctions or limitations of any kind, or inaccurate transmissions of or failure to receive entry information by Sponsor or presenter on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any Web site or any combination thereof. If for any reason the Internet portion of the program is not capable of running as planned, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes that corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of this Contest, the Sponsor reserves the right at its sole discretion, to disqualify any individual who tampers with the entry process, and to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Contest. Sponsor reserves the right to select winners from eligible entries received as of the termination date. CAUTION: Any attempt by a contestant to deliberately damage any Web site or undermine the legitimate operation of the game is a violation of criminal and civil laws and should such an attempt be made, Sponsor reserves the right to seek damages from any such contestant to the fullest extent of the law. If there is a dispute as to the identity of the Entrant, the prize will be awarded to the authorized account holder of the email address. The âauthorized account holderâ is defined as the natural person to whom the email address is assigned.
7. GOVERNING LAW: This Contest is governed by the internal laws of the state of New York without regard to principles of conflict of laws. All cases and claims pertaining to this Contest must be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction in the City of New York, without recourse to class action suits.
8. SEVERABILITY: If any provision of these Rules is found to be invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction or appointed arbitrator, such determination shall in no way affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision herein.
9. SPONSOR: The Sponsor of this Contest is TI Media Solutions Inc., 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020.
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Enter now to win a getaway – plus some other goodies! – to Las Vegas to watch the pop star perform
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http://www.people.com/article/chris-hemsworth-matt-damon-bromance
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Chris Hemsworth and Matt Damon's Bromance Will Make You Jealous
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20150104015208
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Chris Hemsworth and Matt Damon
12/15/2014 AT 01:45 PM EST
Now that's one sexy friendship.
Chris Hemsworth and former Sexiest Man
have quite the bromance going, as
's David Katz for the magazine's January issue.
"We became friends around the time I started to work, and I've really benefited from watching how he handles himself," he told the magazine.
Added Hemsworth: "Matt's just a normal guy who has the movie-star thing figured out."
This isn't just your run-of-the-mill Hollywood friendship, however. In the course of the interview, Hemsworth, 31, and Damon, 44, come off like an old married couple.
"You guys bring water? I totally forgot to get you some water," Damon asked as Hemsworth and the interviewer headed out for a bike ride (on bikes they borrowed from Damon).
"I would have been okay if you hadn't said
," answered Hemsworth. "Now I'm dying of thirst."
They even made coffee and pancakes together for their guest. "I think this is the most romantic interview I've ever done," Hemsworth noted.
We should've known: After all, Hemsworth credited Damon with
"I learned everything there is about being sexy from Matt," Hemsworth told Jimmy Kimmel in November.
Chris Hemsworth on the cover of GQ
As for his real-life brother, 24-year-old
star is extremely protective of him.
"I've watched Liam do things I did at his age, like being in
, or being reckless just to prove a point," he said. "And I had no empathy. My mom had to remind me I was the same way."
For Hemsworth, however, the partying days are over. With
at home, these days he and wife Elsa Pataky are elbow-deep in diapers – and he's not shy about his skills at changing them.
"I'm good, man," he said. "Depends on how messy it is. Sometimes you gotta give 'em a hose-down."
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"Matt's just a normal guy who has the movie-star thing figured out," Hemsworth said of his buddy
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California marks start of nation’s first bullet train
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FRESNO, Calif. — California’s high-speed rail project reaches a milestone Tuesday as officials mark the start of work on the nation’s first bullet train, which is designed to whisk travelers at 200 mph between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours.
The ceremony in Fresno comes amid challenges from Central Valley farmers and communities in the train’s path who have sued to block it and from Republican members of Congress who vow to cut funding for the $68 billion project. Opponents also say the state can’t deliver the sleek project as it was first promised.
Dan Richard, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, acknowledges the authority has been slow to buy up most of the land needed for laying track, but he is confident the system will be built, making California a model for high-speed rail across the country.
‘‘The voters are going to get exactly what they asked for,’’ Richard said. ‘‘We have never ever stepped away from that vision, not one inch.’’
Californians in 2008 approved a nearly $10 billion bond for the train, and in 2012 the Obama administration dedicated $3.3 billion in stimulus funds. The state Legislature last year dedicated to the project a portion of the greenhouse gas fees collected under the state’s cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gases.
Governor Jerry Brown, a staunch advocate of the train, is expected to attend the groundbreaking along with hundreds of other dignitaries.
Bullet train systems in other countries generate revenue, and California officials are banking on this one to entice private investment as well as generate money from advertising and development around the stations.
To make way for tracks, some demolition started last year in Fresno, but officials say work this year will be more intensive along the project’s first segment — a 28-mile stretch from Fresno north to Madera. A second phase of work will occur along the 114 miles from Fresno south to Bakersfield. Plans call for completing the first 520 miles linking San Francisco and the Los Angeles Basin by 2029.
Representative Jeff Denham, a Central Valley Republican and outspoken critic of high-speed rail, vows to block any federal money for the trains because he doesn’t believe they will be as fast or carry as many riders as initially promised. Without funding, he said, the project won’t move beyond an initial stretch in the Central Valley.
‘‘It’s hard to celebrate breaking ground on what is likely to become abandoned pieces of track that never connect to a usable segment,’’ Denham said.
Officials say design and planning already has created 632 jobs and that workforce will rise to 20,000 over the next five years.
Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, a Republican, said she backs the rail system. In addition to putting construction workers on the job in the short term, Swearengin said the rail project will connect the Central Valley agricultural region with other sectors of the state’s economy.
‘‘We’re stuck right in the middle, and it’s difficult to get in and out,’’ she said. ‘‘It fills a deficit for central California.’’
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State officials marked the start of work on the nation’s first bullet train, which is designed to whisk travelers at 200 mph between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours.
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Louis Boston to close after more than 85 years
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In its prime, Louis Boston was the clothing store that politicians like Ted Kennedy and Kevin White trusted to dress them in three-piece tailored suits made of fine fabrics imported from Italy.
Its buyers had a knack for finding young designers, such as Giorgio Armani, before they became household names. The longtime and late owner, Murray Pearlstein, hired the now famous designer Joseph Abboud as a salesman when he was 18.
The high-end store became a Boston institution, surviving 86 years in a retail industry in which three decades is considered an extraordinary lifetime. But all things must eventually come to an end: Louis, as the store is known now, is slated to close in July.
“That’s unbelievable. It’s overwhelming to me,” Abboud said when he learned of the closing. “It was the foundation of everything that has ever happened to me. Louis in its day was legendary.”
The store’s closing follows its move in 2010 from its longtime home in the Back Bay to Fan Pier. Debi Greenberg, Pearlstein’s daughter and owner of the store, said Fan Pier developer Joseph F. Fallon plans to build on the store’s site and offered to relocate Louis to 22 Liberty, a 111-unit luxury condominium building next door. But at age 59, Greenberg said she didn’t want to commit to a long-term lease and instead elected to retire.
No other family members were able to carry on the retail tradition, which began at a Roxbury pawn shop owned by Greenberg’s great-grandfather. A spokeswoman for Fallon declined to comment.
“There are things that I have been wanting to do that I have never had the time to do,” Greenberg said. “With retail you cannot do it half way. You have to be here, and you have to be involved. I’ve been working for a long time. I don’t really want to be working at 70.”
Debi Greenberg said she was not interested in a new long-term lease.
Louis is widely credited by analysts with pioneering Boston’s luxury retail market, although it grew from humble beginnings.
Greenberg said her great-grandfather, the pawn shop owner Louis Pearlstein, refurbished used clothing from immigrants and resold it. Her grandfather, Saul Pearlstein, and great-uncle later opened a high end store, Louis, in 1929 to exclusively sell top-of-the-line men’s clothing.
Murray Pearlstein took over in 1950 and led the store through what many in the industry consider to be it’s heyday, from the late ’60s through the ’80s. Abboud said the store was among the top five retailers in the country then.
Pearlstein was one of the first men’s retailers in the United States to travel to Europe and import clothing. Abboud began working for him in 1968 and said they often went to Italy to find high-quality fabrics and design clothing that would later appear in the store.
He said Pearlstein took chances on new designers, a risk that put the store on the cutting edge of fashion and drew customers from all over the world.
“He had creative courage,” Abboud said. “The store was so well curated that you would see the newest and most wearable and intelligent product mix. It was displayed beautifully. The environment was rich and luxurious. The clothing was impeccable.”
The Louis store moved to a new development on the Fan Pier in 2010.
Gary Drinkwater, the owner of the upscale menswear store Drinkwater’s Cambridge, also got his start at Louis. He said Pearlstein often met with Italian designers and insisted that they adjust suit sizes to fit American men.
“He was a visionary who saw a bright light in some creative person who had something that he thought was real,” Drinkwater said. “He put a face on that person.”
But not all of the store’s risks paid off.
At its peak, Louis had stores in Boston, Chestnut Hill, and New York. Pearlstein opened the New York store in 1989 and closed in 1991, facing stiff competition from established New York merchants such as Barneys and Bergdorf, high rents, and tight margins, said Michael Tesler, a retail professor at Bentley University in Waltham. The Chestnut Hill store, which opened in 1973, also closed in 1991.
Greenberg made her own gamble in 2010 when she moved the store from expensive Newbury Street to less costly space on the waterfront and bet that Louis would become a destination in an up-and-coming area. Critics said the store would never receive enough foot traffic to survive.
Greenberg said she moved to the waterfront to help the store connect with the modern consumer in an area that has since become populated by young people. The store also expanded to offer more lifestyle goods, such as home décor.
Greenberg said her gamble was paying off as the store enjoyed steady year-over-year sales growth. But Tesler said the store lost something as it adapted to changing tastes: The local politician and business executive types that had been loyal customers for decades.
“The merchandise isn’t for them now. That’s not who [the shoppers] are,” Tesler said. “It had to evolve in some ways and she did her best.”
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Louis the high-end fashion clothing store that helped establish the city’s luxury retail scene, is closing. The store, owned by Debi Greenberg, first opened more than 85 years ago.
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http://www.people.com/article/girls-season-4-review-lena-dunham-hbo
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Lena Dunham Returns in HBO Series : People.com
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20150113014643
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From left to right: Lena Dunham (as Hannah), Jemima Kirke (as Jessa), Zosia Mamet (as Shoshanna) and Allison Williams (as Marnie) on Girls
01/10/2015 AT 05:30 AM EST
HBO has provided only the first five episodes of season 4 of writer-actress
, premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. ET – otherwise known as the time when the Golden Globes are airing on NBC – but so far the show is biting, funny, touching and surprising.
In short, it's an absolute delight, and possibly even better than the landmark first season. That's the one that ended with Elijah (
) with this putdown of her dress: "Hello,
Of course, Dunham, who stars as desperately ambitious Brooklyn writer Hannah Horvath, has in the past shown an almost willful tendency to let go of the leash and allow the show to bolt off and run away like an undisciplined Labrador pup.
But that hasn't happened – not so far, anyway – in this new season.
Having failed to crack the New York publishing world, she enrolls in the famous Iowa Writers Workshop. Here we discover two things: First, Hannah's colossal yet endearingly naïve sense of her own talent and personal needs annoys people everywhere, not just in New York City.
Second, there are many people who are even more annoying than Hannah, and they do not live in New York City. There are jerks all across this great land. Some are shopping at Costco, others are living in self-sustained solitude the woods, and a disproportionate number can be found in Hannah's writing class. This is a fine, democratizing lesson for young viewers.
) has always seemed potentially the smartest of the group, but also the most eccentric. She looks like a small, elegant bird and races through her dialogue as if she were the lost child of
Now she is trying to enter the work force, and we realize that we've been observing this rare creature only in an incubated state. The professional world has no idea what to make of her, and vice versa. This is another important lesson: Adulthood is like being put on an ice floe and sent downriver toward the land of the polar bears. Shoshanna now realizes this.
I found myself imagining a reboot of
starring Shoshanna, but that's beside the point.
After wasting a lot of time trying to succeed in New York's art-gallery scene, Marnie is committed to a music career with Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). The songs they write and sing together are pleasant, folk-tinged and fairly pointless, but Marnie seems to regard them as a token of their love, even if Desi is merely the latest in a line of faux-sensitive creeps she has been involved with. Marnie is becoming a sad, lost, pretty character – if she were French, we'd call her
, which is even prettier. The lesson here is that female folk singers are best when they are blue.
should never go this route. For Marnie, it may prove to be her salvation.
It's a perfect name, attached to the perfect character. You'll see – episode 5.
premieres Sunday on HBO at 9 p.m. ET.
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Leaving New York may be the best thing that ever happened to Lena Dunham's Hannah Horvath
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Tail of crashed AirAsia jet lifted from seabed without black box recorders
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20150113035212
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Crews float the jet's tail on the surface before recovery. (AFP)
The tail of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea has been lifted to the surface using floating balloons, but apparently without the crucial black box recorders, Indonesian authorities say.
The Airbus jet, carrying 162 people, went missing in stormy weather on December 28 as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, and all aboard died.
The tail, which is where the black box data recorders were kept, was found in the seabed 30 metres below the surface and was finally lifted on to a vessel today using giant floating balloons and a crane.
"We have lifted the tail onto the ship. It's red and white and a big part of the AirAsia logo can be seen," Navy spokesman Manahan Simorangkir said.
On board the KRI Banda Aceh, one of the Indonesian navy vessels involved in the search effort, sailors cheered as the tail first emerged at the surface.
The tail is the biggest part of the plane's wreckage found and could give clues to why it crashed.
Indonesian navy divers arrive on boats after conducting operations to lift the tail of AirAsia Flight 8501. (AAP)
But the black boxes, which are crucial to explaining the disaster as they should contain the pilots' final words as well as various flight data, had likely been dislodged from the tail, according to S.B Supriyadi, a director with the National Search and Rescue Agency.
Pings from the boxes were detected yesterday, raising hopes of quickly retrieving them.
But the search took a frustrating twist when authorities realised the pings were likely coming from elsewhere than the tail, and the boxes appeared to be buried deep into the sea floor.
After the tail was found, Supriyadi said authorities remained confident the black boxes remained underwater.
"There's a team examining the tail again to see if the black boxes are not there," he said.
"But the chances they might find anything there are slim. We still strongly believe that the black boxes are in the sea and our divers are still searching for them."
National Search and Rescue Agency personnel carry seats from AirAsia Flight 8501. (AAP)
Meanwhile, search efforts also involving foreign naval ships continued for other parts of the plane's wreckage, as well as for the bodies of the passengers and crew.
Just 48 bodies have been found so far, according to Indonesian authorities.
All but seven of those on board were Indonesian.
The non-Indonesians were three South Koreans, one Singaporean, one Malaysian, one Briton and a Frenchman - co-pilot Remi Plesel.
The Indonesian meteorological agency has said weather was the "triggering factor" for the crash, with ice likely damaging the engines of the Airbus A320-200.
Before take-off, the plane's pilot, Captain Iriyanto, had asked for permission to fly at a higher altitude to avoid a major storm.
But the request was not approved due to other planes above him on the popular route, according to AirNav, Indonesia's air traffic control.
In his last communication, the experienced former air force pilot said he wanted to change course to avoid the storm.
Then all contact was lost, about 40 minutes after take-off.
An Indonesian air force soldier holds pieces from AirAsia Flight 8501 at Disaster Victim Identification room at Pangkalan Bun. (AP)
Do you have any news photos or videos?
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Indonesian divers have been unable to find the black boxes from the crashed AirAsia plane despite pings from the flight recorders being detected.
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http://www.people.com/article/amanda-berry-gina-dejesus-memoir-book-kidnapping-ariel-castro
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Cleveland Kidnapping Victims' New Memoir : People.com
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Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus
01/13/2015 AT 04:00 PM EST
It has been nearly two years since
broke through the boarded front door at 2207 Seymour Ave. where Berry,
were held captive, ending a decade the three had spent in chains enduring sexual torture at the hands of
. Knight's memoir of their experiences
; now the other two women are ready to share their story.
"Our story is not just about chains, lies and misery. That was Ariel Castro's world. Our story is about overcoming all that," they say in their book,
, written with Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, which goes on sale April 28.
Each woman tells the story of her abduction by Castro and how he psychologically, emotionally and sexually abused them.
"For years we could see on TV that our families were looking for and praying for us. They never gave up, and that gave us strength," they write. "We videotaped news coverage of them holding vigils and replayed those tapes on our most desperate days."
Their days seemed never-ending. They lived in fear, chained to beds with little food and occasional access to the bathroom, but still, the women managed to celebrate birthdays, holidays and even the birth of Berry's child, Jocelyn, now 8.
After the women and Berry's daughter escaped on May 6, 2013, Castro was quickly arrested and charged with life in prison plus 1,000 years for his guilty plea to 937 counts including kidnapping and rape. He
Since then, the women have attempted to rebuild their lives. Most recently, Berry and DeJesus were given a
where they met the president and vice president.
They have parted ways with their fellow captor Michelle Knight because, Knight told PEOPLE last year, they're all healing, but there's no bad blood. "I love them and they love me. Hopefully we'll all get back together again."
For now, Berry and DeJesus want the world to know they're better. "We survived, we are free, we love life. We were stronger than Ariel Castro."
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Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus want world to know they "love life"
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http://fortune.com/2015/01/16/bp-catches-a-break-as-federal-court-cuts-spill-damage-estimate/
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BP catches a break as federal court cuts spill damage estimate
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BP Plc ”BP” will face a maximum fine of $13.7 billion under the Clean Water Act for its Gulf of Mexico oil spill, several billion less than feared, after a judge found on Thursday the size of the spill was smaller than the U.S. government claimed.
The ruling by federal magistrate Carl Barbier put the size of the worst offshore spill in U.S. history in 2010 at 3.19 million barrels.
That was well below the government’s estimate of 4.09 million barrels, which could have led to penalties of up to $17.6 billion.
BP’s shares rose 2.3% in early trading Friday in London, as investors worried about the size of potential penalties breathed a sigh of relief. The shares were also helped by a rebound in crude oil prices after the International Energy Agency put out a moderately encouraging forecast for the oil market this year.
Under a “gross negligence” ruling Barbier issued in September, BP could be fined a statutory limit of up to $4,300 for each barrel spilled, though he has authority to assign lower penalties.
A simple “negligence” ruling, which BP sought, caps the maximum fine at $1,100 per barrel.
In his ruling on Thursday, Barbier said BP’s response to the disaster was not grossly negligent, but stuck to his earlier opinion that it was grossly negligent leading up to the Macondo well blowout.
Penalties will be assigned after the third and final phase of the company’s non-jury trial, which starts on Tuesday in New Orleans. BP lawyers are expected to argue for a small fine per barrel.
“BP believes that considering all the statutory penalty factors together weighs in favor of a penalty at the lower end of the statutory range,” a BP spokesman said.
The first two phases of the trial, over the degree of negligence and the size of the spill, have concluded.
The Clean Water Act penalties would come on top of more than $42 billion the oil major has set aside or spent for clean-up, compensation and fines. About 810,000 barrels were collected during clean-up.
Even after the Clean Water Act fines are set, BP may face other bills from a lengthy Natural Resources Damage Assessment – which could require BP to carry out or fund environmental restoration work in the Gulf – as well as other claims.
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Court says "only" 3.19 million barrels spilled after Gulf of Mexico disaster, 20% less than thought by the U.S. government.
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Inside Their Rekindled Romance : People.com
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20150119230401
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01/15/2015 AT 07:15 AM EST
The third time wasn't the charm for
, but perhaps the fourth will be.
at the Chateau Marmont on Saturday, the singers – who have split three times in the last two years – looked every bit the loved-up couple, holding hands and sharing kisses at the table.
"They are in love," a Perry insider tells PEOPLE of the pair, who have been having sleepovers and low-key
. "They missed each other."
in their last go-around, "they seem very happy about being back together again," says another source, who notes the duo have always had great chemistry together.
For now, Perry, 30, and Mayer, 37, are enjoying spending time together, but the insider says the two still have to figure out how to balance their personal and professional lives.
"They have to make time for each other and figure out how they can be together in a smooth relationship," the source says.
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"They missed each other," a source tells PEOPLE of the reunited pair
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http://fortune.com/2015/01/20/5-ways-to-build-jumpstarting-innovation-into-your-business/
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5 ways to build jumpstarting innovation into your business
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Business stagnation left unchecked leads to lower employee productivity, decreased consumer interest and smaller profit margins. The antidote is ongoing innovation of new and creative ideas that make possible high levels of business success. Business owners must realize that innovation requires more than just passion and hard work. To help get you started, here are five ways to keep innovating your business for optimal effectiveness:
Whether it’s from a customer, a distributor, an employee or your family, you’re bound to hear a few negative comments about your business is run.
“Rather than dismiss negative feedback defensively as unworthy of your time, take a moment to really listen to all ideas, and consider making changes as appropriate,” says Brandon Perton, owner of the Old School Game Vault.
You won’t take every suggestion you get but every sincere suggestion is a good start to a conversation about how to improve things. Keep all ideas on the table.
Related: 4 Cool-Headed Strategies for Responding to Negative Comments Online
Brainstorming sessions are one of the most effective ways to be innovative and to generate new ideas for your business. Schedule brainstorming every month or six weeks, or as appropriate for your business. Gather the leaders of your company and encourage them to throw out every idea they can imagine, regardless of how crazy it may seem. Work as a team to select and implement the best ideas.
Study the companies that lead the pack in workplace innovation. Consider Google GOOG , which provides areas for napping for its employees, or Salesforce.com, which had an annual sales growth rate of 36.6 percent. Borrow and adapt the polices and practices of companies you respect as particularly effective, successful or creative. It’s not like they’ve trademarked it.
If you are fresh out of ideas to improve your company, start asking your employees and customers questions. Use social media sites to run contests and host discussions asking customers what they want to see. Ask how your brand could be improved upon. This will give you a great opportunity both for generating ideas and connecting with your customers in a meaningful way.
Innovation is about generating ideas and putting those ideas into action in ways that haven’t been done before. According to Benedictine University’s blog on entrepreneurial pursuits, once you clearly define a problem that needs a solution, brainstorm to come up with something creative that solves customer pain points in ways that improve upon whatever solution they’re currently using. Of course, you must also be able to explain your product in terms that are easy to understand in order to get investors to back you.
Innovating your business often takes the equivalent of a mental full court press. Leave no stones unturned. Collect ideas from leaders in the industry or even rivals. Schedule brainstorming sessions. Listen to feedback from employees. Engage customers on social media. Once you’ve collected ideas, it’s time to put together a plan to make them happen. Meet with the people in your company who will put these ideas into practice and get on the same page. Then, hopefully, watch as your business becomes more successful.
How to Tell Your Business Story in 60 Seconds or Less
Where Does Innovation Come From?
How to Make a Personal Connection with Customers
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Innovation results from the ideas we have and the ideas we encourage other people to share.
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http://fortune.com/2011/09/21/why-more-managers-need-to-relinquish-control/
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Why more managers need to relinquish control
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By Anand Pillai, guest contributor
In mid-2009, as it became painfully evident that the global recession would be sustained and deep, my company, HCL Technologies, faced a significant dilemma. We’d been telling our 55,000 employees that they were the key to our success. But to reduce operational costs, it seemed certain that we were going to have to lay off hundreds of them.
That’s when CEO Vineet Nayar told all employees point-blank that we had to cut expenses by $100 million, or cut jobs substantially. Faced with this challenge, it was our employees — not the executive team — that did something truly amazing. They banded together and developed 76 ideas to save the company $260 million with no layoffs. One significant idea was to abolish flextime hours, which led to a massive savings on electricity and transportation costs. This was the epitome of the “open source” leadership model in action.
Two years later, organizations around the world have come to appreciate that the latest addition to the workforce — often referred to as Generation Y or Millennials — are equipped with an irrepressible energy and the ability to suggest new and often radical ideas to attain success during times of great challenge. The example above underscores one key point — employees sometimes just need to be asked for their opinion. For this reason, I believe that hierarchical leadership structures where ideas almost exclusively come from the very top are ill equipped to tackle today’s organizational challenges as they discourage innovation, creativity, and accountability.
The message is seemingly simple: we must adapt to meet the aspirations of the upcoming generations if we intend to fully take advantage of, develop, and retain talented employees.
Consider Facebook. Organizationally, it is the vanguard of a dismantled traditional hierarchy. Instead of specific individuals holding leadership positions, different people step forward to lead, depending on the situation and their individual talents. The traditional leader at the apex then is given the critical responsibility of encouraging new leaders at every level.
Wikipedia is another great example of a prominent collaborative forum. Who would have believed that it could become a lifeline of knowledge, despite all attempts by academia to question its credibility?
Creative Commons, Scribd, Project Gutenberg, Copyleft are all built to enable young leaders to emerge with ideas and solutions that stand to change the world. A growing legion of workers is flourishing in work cultures that encourage taking risks and speaking out.
So how do other organizations embrace this kind of behavior? They must redefine their organizations to enable employees to collectively tackle the challenges of the future. I am convinced that this shift will be modeled after “open source” software development, which has yielded tremendous progress and innovation on a global scale.
Here’s how to start the transformation to an “open source” management model:
1. Transfer the responsibility of change from the CEO to the company’s employees
When the CEO steps back and places the onus of organizational change onto the employees, they start to think like entrepreneurs. Even if only 10% of employees participate, this is a massive amount of energy. To do this, we created a social network called “My Blueprint” that allows managers to share plans for their specific business areas and receive feedback from another 8,000 colleagues, including those both above and below them in the hierarchy.
2. Create a culture of inclusiveness
All employees must feel valued and know their ideas are heard and considered, regardless of their title, department, and number of years at the company. In 2007, we launched a tool called Value Portal that connects HCL employees and customers. In this forum, participants can share ideas and give feedback and approval. The best ideas are chosen and then showcased to customers through the portal.
3. Be transparent with your employees
Transparency can come in several forms, but it requires a free and open system of sharing information so that employees feel their company has nothing to hide. When an employer is open and direct with their staff, employees can more easily trust their managers. Some companies share detailed financial information. Some disclose employee salaries and contributions, while others publish performance reviews on a company wiki.
We created an annual event, Directions, at which our senior leadership team meets in person with all employees to discuss strategy and direction. Each employee is encouraged to ask any question to understand his or her contribution to the company. We also use a blogging forum called U&I that allows employees to make suggestions directly to our CEO. Questions, concerns, and comments and their responses are visible to everyone.
As a first step, managers need to overcome the fear of losing control.
Anand Pillai is the global head of talent transformation at HCL Technologies
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To accommodate the aspirations of the latest generation of workers, more managers ought to allow their employees to collectively tackle today’s organizational challenges.
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http://fortune.com/2011/09/14/the-church-of-b-school/
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The Church of B-school
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20150127041222
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FORTUNE — About an hour into a leadership class at Columbia Business School, all 50-odd students were sitting rail-straight with their eyes closed. A blonde research associate with the slightest hint of a German accent cooed instructions at the front of the class. “Notice the sensation of your shoes,” he said.
Personal Leadership & Success, which is taught by leadership expert Hitendra Wadhwa, is considered one of the “softer” offerings at Columbia, especially when compared to “hard” courses such as finance. The idea behind it is that good leadership begins with self-knowledge, hence the meditation exercise.
It may seem far out, but there are similar classes at business schools across the country. Stanford has offered a class called “Touchy-Feely” since 1966. And a class at Harvard Business School takes this idea of self-knowledge through group learning a step further.
The class, developed by former Medtronic MDT CEO and Harvard management professor Bill George, runs on the premise that groups of business-minded leaders can offer better leadership guidance than other networks, including family and friends. For this class, Harvard MBAs from different backgrounds are put into small groups where they complete coursework together and share deeply personal experiences.
Those shared experiences can fill an unmet need for community. Americans have become less social, George argues in his recently published book True North Groups. He cites the work of fellow Harvard professor Robert Putnam, whose research has shown that Americans’ participation in groups outside of work, such as rotary clubs or religious groups, has plummeted. According to Putnam’s research, the number of people attending meetings of any kind of club in the U.S. dropped by 58% from 1975 to 2000.
That’s where some business schools are starting to step in, and students are responding. Personal Leadership & Success is one of the top 10 most popular electives for second-year MBA students at Columbia out of about 200 elective courses. Since 2008, over 600 students have applied every year for the 240 spots in Bill George’s class at Harvard (George now teaches a version for executives). This year, the Personal Leadership & Success program for MBAs is expanding to take on 60 more students per year.
Some students say they are attracted to these kinds of courses because they feel like they are learning to lead in a vacuum. According to Rye Barcott, a Duke Energy DUK employee and Harvard Business School alum who took George’s class, the problem with many leaders today has little to do with their ability to crunch numbers, but rather a lack of values. “When you think about the biggest failures of corporate executives, they’re not necessarily technical failures, but ethical ones, ” Barcott says.
Programs like George’s class can help sharpen those ethics in future executives, says HBS alum and film executive Peter Bisanz: “I think that if our business leaders had insight into their own strengths and weaknesses, we would not have had the excessive greed that would have led to the financial crisis.”
Granted, both of these men were star students in the class and they believe in the methodology. But they both opened up to their peers in ways that may seem, at first glance, out of place in a business school setting.
The crux of George’s class is the students’ identification of a “crucible” moment, described in True North Groups as sharing with their groups “the singular experience that has tested you to the limits and impacted your life.” Some choose to open up in front of everyone, and these crucible moments can be intense — one person stood up and came out as a homosexual in front of the whole class, Bisanz says. Bisanz himself shared his experience with alcoholism.
It can be tough to have the kind of intimate interactions with personal friends that are necessary to grow as a leader, George argues in his book. Barcott agrees: “How do you bring up what the crucible moment is in your life without sounding like a tool?”
The program is no stand-in for therapy though, George insists, and some topics should stay out of these discussions. For example, in his book, he refers to a married couple in a True North group that wanted to talk about issues they had been having as swingers. It was disruptive.
But students likely to be at Harvard Business school could use the self-reflection a True North group requires, perhaps more than anybody, says Bisanz. “A lot of them haven’t had to be subjected to deep personal examination of their lives,” he says, because their paths have led to a top business school, so they’ve been pretty successful by most standards. But he thinks that makes business-oriented soul searching even more necessary. “When those people are tried and tested, they’re going to have to decide who they are and what they believe in.”
A generation in search of purpose?
This idea that your beliefs should guide your career resonates among younger students and employees. Take Ben Austin, one of the students in Wadhwa’s class at Columbia. He used to work for film crews in Hollywood, fetching lattes, he jokes, but actually scoping out promising films at festivals. He hopes Wadhwa’s class will help him hone his sense of purpose and match that to his career goals. He isn’t so much looking for a job as a skill set, he says.
Millennials tend to, on the whole, crave jobs with a greater purpose. In a survey by consulting firm Mercer, young jobseekers ranked a company’s good reputation as one of the most important draws for a job, although salary still held the No. 1 spot. More than other workers, “Millennials are looking for a value congruence — it’s very important for them that the company they work for reflects their values,” says Jason Jeffay, a senior partner at Mercer consulting firm.
Clearly, that’s not true for all young people. Plenty of MBAs are strictly salary-driven, and both George’s and Wadhwa’s classes are electives, so they select for a population that’s searching for this kind of guidance. It’s unclear whether coursework like this could ever be mandatory, George says.
When work and personal life become one
At its core, these courses try to teach “social intelligence,” otherwise known as compassion mixed with common sense. Being a decent, fulfilled person will help you become a better leader and manager, the thinking goes.
In truth, the business and personal worlds are collapsing in on each other. Many of us carry work with us wherever we go and spend more time with colleagues as the workday grows longer and longer. So it makes sense that business schools are turning into places where students want to learn how to be good at life in general.
Ben Austin said as much. He suggested that this article open with a description of the students meditating, then continue to describe how no, this wasn’t a scene at a temple of worship but rather [dramatic pause] “Columbia Business School: a temple of commerce.”
Austin has a point. The lines between where we go for moral guidance and where we go to learn how to balance a budget are growing blurrier these days.
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Sharing pieces of your emotional past sounds more like the stuff of support groups than MBA programs, but schools are recognizing a need to add these experiences to their curriculum.
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http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/tim-tebow-s-winning-shot-phoenix-open-pro-am-012815
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Tim Tebow's winning touch strikes again at Phoenix Open pro-am
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20150131183745
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Updated JAN 28, 2015 8:42p ET
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- It's often been said that his innate ability to win trumps his football skills. Well, Heisman-winning quarterback Tim Tebow was up to his old tricks during Wednesday's pro-am events at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
Maybe Tebow's NFL career didn't pan out, but he's still got some mojo. Tebow won the Phoenix Suns Charities Shot at Glory, where a number of familiar faces competed on the 16th hole to land a tee shot closest to the cup.
With former Florida and current Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer by his side, Tebow nailed a shot 11 feet, 3 inches from the hole.
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One thing Tim Tebow has always done is win. He was up to his old tricks during Wednesday's pro-am at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
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http://fortune.com/2012/07/23/changewave-interest-in-buying-the-iphone-5-is-off-the-charts/
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ChangeWave: Interest in buying the ‘iPhone 5′ is off the charts
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20150201183153
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FORTUNE — Two findings jump out of the latest ChangeWave Research survey of future smartphone buying plans.
When 4,042 American consumers were offered brief descriptions of the latest Samsung model and the features Apple AAPL is considered “likely to include” in its next generation “iPhone 5″ (larger screen, improved camera, 4G/LTE capability, etc.) …
To underscore his point, Carton offers a chart comparing the latest likely-to-buy responses with those offered in October 2011 for the iPhone 4S, which was, according to him, “the most successful smart phone in history.”
To get the full survey you have to be a ChangeWave member. See here.
Below the fold: The Samsung fever chart.
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Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy S III is seeing another "huge surge of momentum"
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http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/is-job-hopping-losing-its-bad-rap/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150205031837id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/02/02/is-job-hopping-losing-its-bad-rap/
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Is job hopping losing its bad rap?
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20150205031837
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People used to frown on hopping from job to job. If you were a career nomad, hiring managers were liable to dismiss you as damaged goods. Maybe you didn’t play well with others or you slacked off on your duties. Perhaps you just couldn’t hold down a job.
Today that logic is as outdated as not being a job gypsy. If you haven’t noticed while cruising LinkedIn for your next opportunity, switching jobs every few years is the new norm nowadays. And a recent employment survey recently conducted by Accountemps only affirms the growing career chameleon trend.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based global temp staffing firm found that 57 percent of millennial workers (people between the ages of 18 and 34) think changing jobs often is good for your career.
Meanwhile, the older workers Accountemps polled aren’t clinging to old beliefs on long-term employer loyalty as much as you’d expect. Still, they don’t seem eager to throw their arms around job-leapfrogging either, with only 38 percent of professionals between the ages of 35 and 54 surveyed viewing frequently changing jobs as beneficial. The older the respondents were, the less likely they were to share millennials’ enthusiasm.
For more statistics on where people stand on the job-hopping trend, take a look at Accountemps’ infographic survey companion below, you know, when you’re not too busy scoping out your next gig:
10 Reasons You Have to Quit Your Job
Why I Left the ‘Coolest Job in America’ for a Startup
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Changing jobs every couple of years is the new norm and it might even benefit your career. Just ask a millennial.
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Treasure hunting with... Deepa Sood, founder and CEO, Cuff
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20150208031620
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About 30 minutes into our stroll through the Alameda Point Antique Faire—the fancy name for the monthly, gargantuan flea market that puts this former Naval Base on the map for many Northern California lovers of vintage everything—Deepa Sood tells me I’ve become her flea market talisman.
In relatively short order, she has found a wide silver mesh bracelet and the mechanical innards of a hand-cranked, 19th century Thorens gramophone.
“It’s kind of exactly what I was looking for,” she says about the bracelet, which she’ll use to inspire her next line of sensor-enabled jewelry. Sood launched her startup, Cuff, in 2013 after observing her husband and his friends geeking out over a fitness-tracking bracelet he’d recently acquired. “The first thing I did when I tried it on was hide it behind my jewelry,” she says. An idea was born.
Cuff puts a feminine spin on wearable technology—a single sensor, which contains an accelerometer to track activity and is paired wirelessly with the user’s smartphone using Bluetooth—that fits into a range of bracelets and pendants, allowing the wearer to change her look day to day. The sensor also powers some handy applications, such as alerting the wearer when she receives a call or text from an important contact, thereby helping her kick the constant-phone-checking habit. It also has a safety alert function, which, through a push of a bottom, sends a call-for-help text and her GPS coordinates to selected friends or family.
We’ve come to the flea market because it’s where Sood’s path to Cuff began a decade ago. A longtime tinkerer, she liked to repurpose her vintage finds into furniture—”Anything can be turned into a table!” she exclaims—and sell them in a friend’s eclectic home furnishing shop. (Her day job, by the by, was lawyering at the San Francisco firm Latham & Watkins.) One fateful day, Gary Freidman, the CEO of Restoration Hardware, wandered in and spotted one of Sood’s creations. He hounded her until she agreed to join the home furnishing retailer, where she served as vice president of product development. When she decided to leave RH and launch Cuff, her experience “presenting stuff in a way that people find appealing” came in quite handy, she says.
As we walk through the expansive open-air bazaar, Sood deftly divvies her attention between our shop-talk and the stalls. Outfitted in a sleek faux fur vest, black sweater, black slacks, and brown wedge boots—and, of course, a healthy dose of rings and bracelets—Sood hardly looks the part of a flea market rat, but she knows what to look for and how to negotiate. She is stymied only once, when a vendor refuses to go lower than $5 a piece for three large key-rings laden with rusting skeleton keys. We move on.
Sood started out tweaking the concept of jewelry and its purpose but ended up, almost accidentally, running a technology platform. While she certainly does not shy away from technology—she made the first Cuff prototypes using a 3D printer in her garage, with her kids—she finds Silicon Valley’s embrace of technology for its own sake off-putting. “Technology and fashion make strange bedfellows,” she says.
But that amalgam has not only led to strong demand for Cuff products (they’ll start shipping early this year) but it has thrust the young company into product co-development talks with a range of major accessory brands, including Kate Spade and Montblanc. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Richline Brands, a maker of branded jewelry sold in department stores nationwide, announced an exclusive distribution deal with Cuff.
As we saddle up to a table with a hodgepodge of old musical devices and the vendors shows how to wind up the spring that powers the Thorens, Soods’ eyes light up. The turntable will serve as a merchandising platform in the new product shots. Later, she and I talk about how the seller, after explaining in detail how the mechanism works, balks at our talk about modern digital devices. “Nothing I’m doing now would be possible” without early strides in analog technology, she says.
It’s not just the contrast of old and new that draws out Sood’s creativity. “I’m into juxtapositions. I love clean lines, but I also love some things that are incredibly embellished,” she says.
We’re both fiends for a flea market, but as we try to extract ourselves from aisles of vintage ephemera, we have to cop to the downside of the collecting compulsion. “I have more chairs in my garage,” Sood deadpans, “than I have friends.”
For more stories in our Rendezvous series, click here.
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Driving hard bargains and pondering the links between adornment and function with the founder of smart jewelry company Cuff.
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Mountain From 'Game Of Thrones' Breaks 1,000-Year-Old Viking Strongman Mark
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By Mr. Madden Pro Sports Daily
Gregor Clegane (The Mountain) from HBO's Game Of Thrones is the largest, strongest and most feared swordsman in all of the Seven Kingdoms. It only makes sense that the actor portraying The Mountain would also be the strongest man in the world ... in real life.
Hafthor Bjornsson is actually HBO's third version of The Mountain and this time I think they may have gotten it right. The Icelandic monster stands 6'9" and weighs in at a staggering 430 pounds. He already holds the European Strongman Championship and his recent attempt to win the title as World's Strongest Viking was a rousing success.
Bjornsson broke a world record that had stood for 1,000 years. What did he do? He took five steps while carrying a log over 30 feet long that weighed 1,433 pounds.
Obviously, Bjornsson won the Viking title and now has his eyes firmly set on the World's Strongest Man. He has competed in the World's Strongest Man event four times ... finishing sixth in 2011, third in 2012, third in 2013, and second in 2014. Now, I'm no analytics expert but I think I'm seeing a trend that could end in the ultimate strongman prize later this year.
It would just be weird to be that strong. My mind goes to the Skittles commercial where everything the dude touches turns into Skittles. If feel like if you were that strong that is what your life would be like ... normal everyday things just crumbling in your hands. Eating a hard-shelled taco would be almost impossible.
Touch the rainbow, taste the rainbow.
If only "The Red Viper" had been able to put his ego aside and just finish the job ... Mr. Bjornsson wouldn't have to worry about his acting gig anymore. He'd have a lot more time to focus on his strongman pursuits.
More From Pro Sports Daily: -- Alex Morgan Gets Married -- Dude Perfect Super Bowl Edition featuring Odell Beckham Jr. -- Gronk Reads Passage From Erotic Novel Based On Him -- Shaquille O'Neal Presents Some Simple Easy-Bake Oven Recipes
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Tom Brady's Super Bowl 49 Presser
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By Mr. Madden
Pro Sports Daily
Gregor Clegane (The Mountain) from HBO's Game Of Thrones is the largest, strongest and most feared swordsman in all of ...
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Israeli medical tech startup MediSafe relocates to Boston
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MediSafe, an Israeli medical software startup whose app uses personal and automated reminders to encourage people to take their medication, will be moving to Boston.
The 12-person company, whose app has been downloaded by 1.3 million people worldwide, will start hiring business development staff in the United States, although its software developers will remain in Israel, said Ariel Shore, a spokeswoman for the company. MediSafe also said Tuesday that it had raised $6 million from a group of venture capitalists.
The US is currently the company’s largest market, said Shore, but it would focus on growing its presence here.
“In the near term, we are focusing our efforts in the US, given the dynamics and the speed of mobile technology adoption in this healthcare market,” said Omri “Bob” Shor, MediSafe’s chief executive. Shor will relocate to Boston, where he will join Jon Michaeli, the company’s executive vice president of marketing and business development.
MediSafe has created an app that allows caregivers, family members, and doctors to reach out and remind people when to take their medicine. According to the company’s website, it also will offer the service to people without a smartphone this year through automatic calls and text messages.
The company recently completed its Series A financing round. The largest investor in the round was Pitango Venture Capital, based in Israel. 7wire ventures also took a stake in the company, and previous investors also increased their holdings.
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MediSafe, a 12-person company, said it made the move to grow its budding healthcare business in the United States.
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'She Was Crying Out for Help,' Say Parents of Teenage Girl Fatally Shot by Two Police Officers
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The parents of a mentally ill 17-year-old girl, who was
in Texas, say they're going to do everything in their power to get her the justice she deserves.
Kristiana Coignard walked into the lobby of the Longview Police Department at about 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 22 in Longview, Texas.
She picked up a lobby phone that rings directly to police dispatch and said that she needed an officer.
and viewed more than 800,000 times, shows Coignard being confronted by three officers, and shot by two.
From left: Arabella Coignard, Austin Canales, Elizabeth Canales-Coignard, Erik Coignard, Kristiana Coignard
"It's very clear that she was asking for help," her mother, Elizabeth, 42, from San Antonio, Texas, tells PEOPLE. "She didn't walk into that police department looking to hurt anyone."
Elizabeth says that just a few hours before she was killed, her daughter texted her.
"She said how much she loved me. She seemed fine," she says. "Kristiana was so excited for her future."
Although the family won't elaborate on her mental condition, they admit that she was taking medication daily and was going to counseling.
"Whenever she felt like she needed help, she would reach out," she says. "She would pack her backpack with the things that meant the most to her and bring it with her."
When Kristiana walked into the police station, she was wearing that backpack.
"Those police officers easily could have calmed her down or restrained her," she says. "They didn't have to do what they did. That was my baby girl."
"Every day after school she would come home and bring me a fresh-picked flower because she knew how much I loved them," says Elizabeth of her daughter. "She would walk into the house and say, 'Mom, I brought you a new flower.' "
Her father, Erik, 43, says there's one memory he will cherish forever.
"She bought me tickets to go to the ballet with her own money," he tells PEOPLE. "And she also bought herself a dress and shoes. She was so proud to have done that all on her own. We had the most amazing night."
The Coignard family has hired a lawyer as they try to get all the facts of what took place.
"We are trying to piece together what happened that day," lawyer Tim Maloney tells PEOPLE. "And if anything good can come out of this, it's going to be that we improve the mental-health system."
Maloney and the family want to stress to people that officers need to have background training in crisis intervention.
"Without that training, a tragedy like this is sadly going to happen again," he says.
Longview residents are also speaking out and about 60 members of the community held a protest on Feb. 7 outside of the police department, the
"I know they've got a tough job, but a 100-pound girl they can't take a baton to her ribs? And just to shoot her four times?" David Glenn, of Longview, told the newspaper. "I'm surprised there's not more people here."
Kristiana "did not deserve to die," local resident Matthew Sherman told the newspaper. "Maybe she's lost. Maybe she doesn't know what is going on. She needed somebody to talk to her. Why should we be a-feared of the law? They are supposed to be here to serve and protect us."
Longview Police Department public information officer Kristie Brian tells PEOPLE the case is "still an ongoing investigation." She added, "But she was holding a knife in a threatening matter."
In a press release on Jan. 28, the police department said that Kristiana was shot four times after they tried to use a taser that had no effect.
After the incident, all three officers were placed on leave, but since then, one has returned to work.
The investigation of Kristiana's death, which has been ruled a homicide, is now being handled by the Texas Rangers, a division of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
"We just want people to know how great she was," her mom Elizabeth says. "She was the person who took care of people when they were sick. She was loving and caring and this shouldn't have happened."
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"Our daughter needed help, not violence," Elizabeth Coignard tells PEOPLE about her daughter Kristiana, who was shot and killed by police
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Angie Everhart Marries Carl Ferro
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Carl Ferro and Angie Everhart
12/07/2014 AT 08:00 PM EST
swimsuit model Angie Everhart got married in a very fitting location over the weekend: the beach!
The actress, 45, wed Carl Ferro, president and co-founder of meal delivery service Sunfare, in a sunset ceremony on Saturday evening, her rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.
Everhart was walked down the aisle by her
, Kayden, while Ferro's daughter JoAnn served as flower girl. The coupled exchanged vows they wrote themselves and a sand ceremony joined the family unit.
The nuptials were caught on camera for David Tutera's
, airing on WE tv in early 2015.
on their second anniversary as a couple in April, when Ferro proposed in an elevator – the same spot where they shared their first kiss.
My family is in town.. So good to see my sister. Happy to become a Mrs. F ... He is my Man
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The couple wed Saturday in a sunset ceremony on the beach, her rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively
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Anna Kendrick makes ‘The Last Five Years’ memorable
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It’s possible that some actors are born at the wrong time. Anna Kendrick has been a petite, sharp-edged presence in movies for more than a decade now, able to navigate comedy or drama as necessary. She’s a scene-stealer (and Oscar nominee) in supporting roles, a reliable pleasure when she gets a lead. Yet if you saw her in 2003’s “Camp,” in which the 18-year-old Kendrick positively murdered Sondheim’s “The Ladies Who Lunch,” you know that the girl was put on this earth to sing.
Sadly, we live in a time in which movie musicals aren’t bread-and-butter entertainment but occasional exotica. Kendrick has lucked out more than most: She was in the 2012 a cappella hit “Pitch Perfect” and plays a winsome Cinderella in the current “Into the Woods.” Still, when “The Last Five Years” opens on a forlorn Cathy (Kendrick) at the end of her marriage, her voice trying to soar and failing as she sings, “Jamie is over and Jamie is gone/ Jamie’s decided it’s time to move on/ Jamie has new dreams he’s building upon/ And I’m still hurting” — it’s as if a wandering talent has found its way home.
“The Last Five Years” is a pretty good movie expansion of a pretty good stage musical; what bumps it up into contention and makes it of interest beyond devotees of musical theater — you know who you are — is Kendrick, who plays the more neurotic half of a young couple with her emotions out there on her skin and in her voice. In this through-sung story of a starter marriage, you grieve for only one of the parties, and there’s a reason for that.
The musical, first staged in 2002, was written by Jason Robert Brown, and it rests on a sub-Sondheim gimmick: Cathy’s scenes (and songs) play out in reverse order, from breakup to new love, while her husband, Jamie (Jeremy Jordan, best known for Broadway’s “Newsies,” American Repertory Theater’s “Finding Neverland,” and TV’s short-lived “Smash”), has his scenes unfold in the usual direction. The couple only meet, chronologically speaking, at the show’s center, like two people gazing at each other through a revolving door.
On stage, this concept is easy to illustrate (and fudge) through lighting and blocking. In a movie — at least the movie that adapter-director Richard LaGravenese has made — realism demands that the action be brought out into actual apartments, parties, book readings, subway cars, and even outdoors. Sometimes this works: the first two numbers, the aforementioned “I’m Still Hurting” (Cathy) and “Shiksa Goddess” (Jamie), exchange the stage’s formal frame for the unexpected intimacy of movie close-ups. And sometimes it doesn’t: the third song, “See, I’m Smiling” (Cathy), takes place on a sunny lakefront, and the realism grimly exposes the self-conscious artifice that can plague modern musical theater.
“The Last Five Years” rights itself from there; the movie’s short, the songs are good (if too similar), and Kendrick throbs like a plucked string. The movie’s imbalance comes mostly because we connect with her character and less with Jordan’s Jamie. I’m not sure this is entirely the actor’s fault; if anything, his voice is a more flexible dramatic instrument than Kendrick’s, which threatens to go up her nose every so often. But “The Last Five Years” is about a marriage between one partner who makes it and one who doesn’t — Jamie’s a novelist who finds quick success and Cathy’s an actress who never gets past summer stock (viz., the very funny “Summer in Ohio”). Our sympathies tend toward the underdog even when she’s not played this vibrantly.
It’s also hard to buy Jamie as a Great Writer when nothing we hear of his work is very impressive and when Jordan’s performance is sensitive but ultimately shallow. Or is it because the backward/forward conceit of “The Last Five Years” allows us to see him as a cad from the start? Whatever the case, Jordan comes out of this movie respectably, while Kendrick comes out of it a star. In fact, she’s potentially the first great movie musical star of her generation. That and a MetroCard gets her on the subway.
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“The Last Five Years” review: A pretty good movie expansion of a pretty good stage musical, with Anna Kendrick, who plays the more neurotic half of a young married couple.
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You can now barter for goods on Amazon
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This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com
Amazon announced a new “Make an Offer” feature on Tuesday that enables shoppers to negotiate a lower price with sellers over email.
Amazon AMZN said the new button will appear alongside 150,000 items for sale in Sports and Entertainment Collectibles, Collectible Coins and Fine Art. Hitting the button will give the shopper an option of suggesting a new price to the seller. The seller, who sees the new price over email, can accept, reject or reply with a counteroffer.
“In a recent survey of our sellers, nearly half of the respondents told us that the ability to negotiate prices with customers would be important to drive more sales on Amazon,” Peter Faricy, Vice President of Amazon Marketplace said in a statement announcing the new feature.
“‘Make an Offer’ delivers that functionality and makes customers feel confident they are getting an item they want at the lowest price possible.”
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Now you can make Amazon sellers an offer they'll probably refuse.
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Kanye West Talks Kim Kardashian, North West in BET Honors Speech : People.com
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02/24/2015 AT 02:50 PM EST
had the greatest acceptance speech of all time.
"I think maybe for one of the first times in my life I understand how it is to feel humbled," he joked after receiving the Visionary Award at the 2015
, which aired Monday night.
The rapper spoke eloquently about race, wealth and his marriage to
, asking the crowd if he could "go Chicago for a second."
"At the barber shop and everything, I used to hear like people always talking about, 'Man, you know when an entertainer get on, of course you know he gonna go and get a white girl ⦠and the white girl gonna go get a rich black dude.' But I wanna say that my wife has dated broke black dudes," he joked as Kardashian West laughed in the audience. "So ain't got nothing to do with the money."
But West, 37, turned serious while defending his biracial relationship with the reality TV star, recalling a story she told him about her father, O.J. Simpson defender Robert Kardashian, discovering his Bentley had been vandalized with the slur "N---- lover."
"She stood there crying and said, 'Dad, why are you going so crazy?' And he said to her, 'One day, you may have a black child. A beautiful, beautiful, beautiful black child, and it's gonna be hard. You're gonna see how are it is,' " West said. "So true enough, we deal with racism. ... The micro of it is that we focus on the different races, as opposed to the macro, which is the human race."
The late attorney's prediction, of course, came true: The couple welcomed little
in June 2013, and Kardashian West has said raising a black daughter
West also discussed how wealth and success don't automatically lead to equality.
"Harriet Tubman said she could have freed so many more ... if they only knew they weren't free," he said. "So don't think that because we can afford this custom Balmain suit that we're free. And don't think that because we can buy a $300,000 car that we're free. And don't think that because 3 percent of a gated community has colored people in it that we're free. It's the mentality, the slave mentality, where we all eventually become slaves to that car, slaves to the perception, slaves to the idea of being cool."
Watch the full speech above (Warning: some NSFW language).
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The rapper poignantly discussed how racism is alive and well in America
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Gabrielle Union Airs Beef With The NBA, Demands Punishment For James Harden
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Two seasons ago Dwyane Wade lost $150,000 in fines plus forfeited salary as punishment after he kicked Ramon Sessions in the groin.
So when James Harden pulled a similar move on Wade's former teammate and good friend LeBron James, Wade's wife, actress Gabrielle Union, set out to make sure the punishment was the same.
In a series of tweets Monday, Union laid out her case for why Harden should be suspended for a game. She notes that the NBA is in a tough position because the Houston Rockets are playing the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday in a matchup between two of the league's best teams. Ratings might not be the same with Harden, an MVP candidate, on the bench.
? If the NBA doesn't suspend Harden a game lk @DwyaneWade will he get $ bk since they pullin a Goddell & administering punishment unevenly?
— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) March 2, 2015
Making comparisons to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, it seems, has become the worst insult one can hurl these days.
If that's the case cuz it would suck not to have Harden vs the Hawks... D would happily take the hypocrisy in cash please
— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) March 2, 2015
It's not about Bron vs Beverly. NBA set a precedent of discipline 4 an even less obvs infraction in an untelevised game so #whattheygonnado
— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) March 2, 2015
I personally wanna see Harden play against the Hawks, like most ppl. But w/out Harden, ratings for that game go down soooo #whattheygonnado
— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) March 2, 2015
As is the case when a celebrity takes a strong stand, Union got lots of spiteful tweets. She responded with a bit of humor:
To all the thumb thugs, either unfollow or meet me behind the 7-11. I'll be the one takin off my earrings & applyin vaseline
— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) March 2, 2015
In the end, Union got what she wanted. The NBA on Monday suspended Harden without pay for Tuesday's game between Houston and Atlanta.
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Hannah Davis: Before The SI Cover
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Two seasons ago Dwyane Wade lost $150,000 in fines plus forfeited salary as punishment after he kicked Ramon Sessions in the groin.
So when James Hard...
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Best Buy and four other blockbuster corporate turnarounds
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Best Buy’s investors are reaping the rewards of a turnaround at the electronics retailer.
The chain has reported two consecutive quarters of growth in U.S. same-store sales, the first time that’s happened in nearly five years. The company also unveiled plans to reward shareholders by raising its dividend and buying back shares.
For their patience, Best Buy’s shareholders are certainly benefiting. The stock has greatly outperformed the broader market since Best Buy brought on Hubert Joly as CEO in 2012.
Best Buy BBY has turned around its U.S. operations., shed assets abroad and trimmed expenses to help lift profitability. Those efforts aren’t completely outside-of-the-box thinking. But Joly’s success comes at a challenging time for brick-and-mortar retailers, in particular those that sell gadgets. Circuit City? Gone. RadioShack? Filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. In an Amazon.com-dominated world, Best Buy could have been toast too. But it isn’t.
If Best Buy continues to perform well, it could become another example of a turnaround “success story.” Fortune took a look at four other companies that have pulled themselves out of a deep ditch, often following the arrival of new leadership, new products and a lot of luck. Here they are:
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Starbucks, Apple among the top business comebacks in recent memory.
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GE's bestselling jet engine makes 3-D printing a core component
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The bestselling aircraft engine General Electric ever conceived is one that doesn’t enter production until later this year and is considered the first passenger jet engine to use 3-D printed fuel nozzles.
Close to 8,000 orders valued at more than $80 billion have been placed for GE’s new Leap engine, currently being developed by CFM International, a joint company with split ownership between GE GE and France-based Snecma. While its capitalistic credentials are noteworthy, it’s the 3-D printing process—otherwise known as additive manufacturing—by which the engines’ fuel nozzles are produced that make the Leap a cut above. Every Leap engine contains 19 nozzles, each of which has to withstand temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And where 20 separate parts were once machined together to construct the nozzle’s interior passageways, there is now only one piece built up by a layering of powdered metals melted and fused together through a direct metal laser melting, or DMLM, process—making each nozzle five times stronger than those made through milling, welding, and other subtractive manufacturing processes.
“I think what additive gives us is a whole different degree of freedom on how we think about component design,” says David Joyce, CEO and president of GE Aviation. “We no longer have to understand what the limits of machining are.”
Indeed, GE is making a big bet on additive manufacturing, in large part because of the new Leap engine: By 2020, GE Aviation will be manufacturing well in excess of 100,000 parts via additive manufacturing for the Leap and other aircraft engines. The company, which cleared revenues of $22 billion in 2013, plans to make a $3.5 billion investment in additive manufacturing over the next five years. Some of that push is to bring about cost-savings in the manufacturing process. The other part: build out factory and employee capacity to create a wider suite of engine components that can’t be machined through traditional manufacturing processes.
“The real power of additive is taking six parts and designing it into one. You can create geometry that you can’t make it any other way,” says Greg Morris, the business development manager of additive technologies at GE Aviation.
Not to mention having the ability to test a design, fail quickly, and re-test a new design quickly. “You can iterate quickly, find out what’s working and not working, change designs, and you can do that many more times than what traditional technologies would allow people to do in the past,” says Morris, who says it took about 50 different iterations to finally have a working Leap engine fuel nozzle design.
So what does GE’s big push into additive manufacturing look like? Part of it is a $50 million investment that started last year to beef up a production facility in Auburn, Alabama, by installing hulking 3-D printers—like those produced by worldwide e-manufacturing company EOS—and hiring as many as 300 full-time employees. That’s in addition to the close to $140 million GE has invested into its GE Aviation Additive Development Center near Cincinnati, Ohio. Formerly Morris Technologies, GE acquired the company in 2012 to lead its push into an additive future.
It was Morris Technologies that began working in secret with GE early last decade to 3-D print a fuel nozzle for the Leap engine. Today, close to 90 people are employed by GE Aviation in Cincinnati, a number that stands to increase rapidly over the next several years, doing prototyping and low-rate initial production on a variety of 3-D-printed parts, including the Leap engine’s fuel nozzle. Once a fully tested part looks like it’s headed for general production, the GE Aviation team in Cincinnati does an initial slug of production-quality components, and then hands off their work to the additive manufacturing team in Auburn.
“That’s the end game,” says Morris, who joined GE after his eponymous 3-D technology company was bought three years ago. “From an additive perspective, the [Leap] engines that are going to enter the service in the next few years here are going to have the fuel nozzles be the additive component in those engines. As time goes on and we get a little further along in material characterization and geometry, we’ll probably find other parts that we can add into engine.”
As for cost-savings, Morris says that’s a story “still being written,” and probably won’t be fully understood by the company until the early part of the next decade. “We’re in the ramp process, although we’ve made thousands of parts,” he says. “When we’ve hit full capacity, that’s when you get a good idea of cost reduction.”
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Twenty parts were once machined together to construct part of the CFM Leap engine. Now there's only one piece—and it's five times stronger.
| 31.551724 | 0.896552 | 3.241379 |
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http://fortune.com/2015/03/06/george-foreman/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150307205919id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/03/06/george-foreman/
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George Foreman: Still knocking 'em out
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George Foreman’s business philosophy can be reduced to three words: Never say no.
“Don’t ever stop earning,” he says. “It’s a curse to think you have enough. There is never enough. George Foreman, Bill Gates—anyone. Money has to be spent. It is not made to be saved.” Hence, it must be replenished, and replenish it Foreman does. You want to pay him $10,000 to share some tales with your business group of his days as heavyweight champ? He’s there. “I remember my first million-dollar check for a boxing match,” Foreman says. “What a joy. And then my first $5 million check. What a joy. But today I can go out and get a $5,000 check, and the joy is as great. Because I’m earning.”
At 66, Foreman could stop. He has already cycled through at least four careers in a life that defines the word “reinvention”: Muscled, scowling boxing champ; born-again minister; genial, flabby comeback king; and pitchman for Nike NKE , McDonald’s MCD , Meineke, and most famously, the namesake grill whose rights earned him a $137 million lifetime deal.
Foreman at his home, outside Houston.Photograph by Ben Sklar
Foreman may still have a few more acts in him. In 2013 he started a boxing-promotion business. And now he’s preparing to launch a whole new enterprise: an online butcher’s store, because, of course, people need meat to cook on their George Foreman grill.
He is often in motion but rarely in a hurry these days. Foreman lives on a gated 45-acre property not far from Houston. On a mild February day he offers a tour via golf cart. He points out the tennis court—which he has never used—and the stables. (Foreman keeps most of his 50 horses on his ranch in Marshall.) He opens a garage that boasts 38 cars. Ferrari, Porsche, Maybach, Tesla TSLA —you name it, he has one. Foreman says the best model he ever owned was a 1977 VW Bug; that’s in there too. Does Foreman really need such big collections? No, he admits, but the horses keep breeding (“You’ve heard the expression ‘Be fruitful and multiply’?”), and he’s easily sold on cars: “I see these commercials and say, ‘Boy, I’ve got to have that …’ I need to stop.”
At a professed 255 pounds, Foreman is still at his (comeback) fighting weight. He insists he works out daily, but there are as many toys (they belong to his grandkids) littering the floor of his workout room as there are weights. There’s also a huge George Foreman grill—which he says he uses right after he exercises—a few feet away.
Foreman stays plenty busy. His only day of rest is Monday. On Tuesdays, he says, “I try to take care of whatever business I have.” Wednesdays he ministers and tries to stop by the youth center that he founded 30 years ago. On Fridays he and his wife head to the ranch, where he raises horses and Black Angus cattle. When the couple arrive at the ranch, he says, his wife feels “instantly relaxed. But after two days I say, ‘Let’s leave!’ ” On Saturday evenings and Sundays he preaches and teaches Sunday school. The preaching is a job. Speeches, endorsements—those are jobs too. “The best thing that can ever happen to a human being is a job,” he says. “You don’t have a job, you’re going to die!”
Foreman was initially wary of hawking products, but an unexpected phone call in 1990 changed that. He was in an Atlantic City hotel, early on in his boxing comeback, when Bill Cosby called out of the blue. Decades before, Foreman had appeared on The Dating Game with Cosby’s brother Bob. Foreman told Cosby he was getting endorsement offers but said, “I don’t want to be on TV saying this and that.” Cosby admonished him, he says: “Come on, man. You’re no different from any other boy. You want to be on television; you want to be known. If you don’t take them, I’ll take them.” From then on, Foreman was all in as a pitchman.
Foreman at a McDonald’s in Houston in 1991.Photograph by David Scarbrough — AP
Now, of course, he has his own ventures. Coming soon: George Foreman’s Butcher Shop, an online meat company—Omaha Steaks for the Internet age. It will sell all-natural Black Angus beef from small family farms, with an emphasis on quality and healthfulness. “These days,” Foreman says, “you want to know about the cow’s brother, sister, the spot he stood on. The grill was about health. And now I can spell it out to people with this food.”
Meanwhile, Foreman—“Big George”—has been in business with three of his five sons, all named George. George IV (“Bigwheel”) is his dad’s publicist and is working on the meat company. Two years ago Big George and George Jr. launched Foreman Boys Promotions, which has partnered with Bob Arum’s Top Rank to put on seven fights in Macau and a few in Texas. Arum was Big George’s promoter for his comeback, and he says Foreman is evidence that complete reinvention is possible. When Foreman first called him in 1987, Arum says, “I was not enthusiastic, realizing what a horrid person he had been.” Arum says Foreman’s personality was so altered that he suspected a con. “But it wasn’t a con,” Arum says he came to realize. “He had really changed.”
Foreman is happy as an entrepreneur, the boxing mostly an ancient memory for him. But every now and again, he says, he’ll cue up a tape of the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 classic in which the fearsome young incarnation of Foreman was knocked out, in one of boxing’s great upsets, by Muhammad Ali.
Foreman on the mat in the Ali fight.
“If I watch it 100 times,” Foreman says, “each time I still think I’m going to win.” He eventually transformed that haunting defeat into a new life, and he’s healthy today, while Ali is burdened by Parkinson’s. Improbably, perhaps, the two are now friends. On Foreman’s last birthday, he says, one of Ali’s daughters FaceTimed him and held the phone up for Ali. “He doesn’t talk much now,” says Foreman, “but when she says, ‘Look, Dad, it’s George!’ then he looks up, and all he has to do is raise those eyes, and everything else comes to life. The guy is still a star. I love this friendship.” Foreman grins. He’s earned it.
For more great business stories in our ongoing Pro-Files series check out both Fortune.com and SI.com
This story is from the March 15, 2015 issue of Fortune.
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The ex–heavyweight champ, current minister and pitchman, is testament to the power of reinvention. And he isn’t done yet.
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http://fortune.com/2014/02/24/morgan-creeks-vc-team-spins-out/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150309051911id_/http://fortune.com:80/2014/02/24/morgan-creeks-vc-team-spins-out/
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Morgan Creek’s VC team spins out
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20150309051911
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FORTUNE — Morgan Creek Capital Management, the North Carolina investment firm led by Mark Yusko, is about to lose its venture capital fund-of-funds team.
The group — led by Greg Bohlen, Patrick Cairns and John Spilman — plans to spin out into an independent management company called Union Grove Partners. It will raise its next two funds under the Morgan Creek brand, including a new vehicle that just secured a $100 million cornerstone commitment from a public pension system in Illinois. The group also will continue to manage its existing portfolio of limited partner stakes in venture capital firms.
“The partnership with Morgan Creek is important for us and we believe it will yield a best of breed fund,” said Greg Bohlen, in a statement provided to Fortune. The strength of relationships Morgan Creek brings to the table will enhance the value to all the investors going forward. We are pleased Illinois and others have recognized the importance of a continuing partnership.”
Morgan Creek’s debut VC fund-of-funds has exposure to such firms as August Capital, Battery Ventures, Foundation Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund and Tiger Global Management.
Sign up for Dan Primack’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com
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Group will continue to raise Morgan Creek-branded funds, but will operate independently.
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http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/splash-marketing-software/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150314154949id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/03/11/splash-marketing-software/
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Splash raises $6 million for 'experiential marketing' software
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Ben Hindman doesn’t consider Splash, his event planning software, a competitor to Eventbrite.
To the end user, it certainly feels like one. Both companies power email invites, ticketing, and RSVP lists for all manner of events. But to the customer—the people throwing events and sending the invites—the platforms are different. Where Eventbrite, which has raised $200 million in venture funding and processed more than $3 billion in gross sales, is positioned as a ticketing platform, the much-smaller Splash positions itself as a marketing platform for brands. “I would rather we were lumped with [marketing software company] Hubspot than Eventbrite,” says Splash CEO and co-founder Ben Hindman. He believes there is a difference between ticketed events, which begin and end with the event, and marketing events, which have larger goals like social awareness or community-building.
“Marketers get it,” Hindman says. “Eventbrite emails come from Eventbrite. That’s not cool if I’m a marketer.” Splash’s invites are customizable down to the font. Brands like Oakley and L’Oreal use Splash to create online “experiences” that mirror the care and branding that goes into the real-life events they represent. Afterwards, the Splash pages contain social content to keep the party alive. Hindman notes that marketers have sophisticated tools to manage things like social media and email. Splash provides tools for experiential marketing, which is in fact a thing. Advertising Age defines it as “messaging you can touch, feel or view in a physical space,” noting that ad budgets for this sort of thing are creeping upwards.
To spread the word about his platform, Hindman has raised a round of funding worth $6 million, led by Spark Capital. The company previously raised $1.7 million in funding. Splash recently hired Melissa Wallace as its vice president of marketing. Previously, Wallace helped build social media marketing platform Buddy Media, which sold to Salesforce.com CRM in 2012 for $689 million.
In its first three years, Splash grew by word-of-mouth adoption. Last month, Splash powered 20,000 events, a 144% increase over the prior February. Further, the company processed $1.3 million worth of ticket sales last month, a 121% year-over-year increase. The company has hosted more than 350,000 total events on its platform over the last three years. In 2014, Splash had north of $10 million in total revenue.
Splash makes money by charging a subscription fee to brands that regularly use its event-planning software. Anheuser-Busch ABI will use Splash for 80,000 events this year, Hindman says. Spotify will use it for hundreds of events. At this week’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Splash will power 200 events. Pricing is based on the size of the brand’s community, and Splash has more than 100 subscription contracts with brands. As noted above, the company also makes money on ticket sales.
Hindman is no stranger to a good event. He previously the director of events at Thrillist, the New York-based media operation. He’s brought that vibe to his startup, which now has a team of 32. Splash’s internal content management system is hooked up to the office’s lighting system so that every time the company makes a sale, the lights turn green.
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The latest trend: Online "experiences" that mirror the care and branding that goes into real-life events.
| 29.590909 | 0.772727 | 4.590909 |
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http://fortune.com/2015/03/13/uncovering-historical-artifacts-for-the-kleiner-perkins-trial/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150315230604id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/03/13/uncovering-historical-artifacts-for-the-kleiner-perkins-trial/
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Uncovering historical artifacts for the Kleiner Perkins trial
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20150315230604
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For a while now I’ve been encouraging people interested in the explosive gender discrimination trial being heard in San Francisco to read two articles I published years ago in Fortune Magazine. The first is a long look at how Kleiner Perkins got into “green” investing, as well as some of the generational succession issues the firm faced in 2008. Ellen Pao, Ajit Nazre, Randy Komisar, Trae Vassallo and others make appearances in this article. The second article is an investigation that Katie Benner and I conducted into Ellen Pao and her husband, Buddy Fletcher, at the time she filed suit against Kleiner. The topic of the Pao-Fletcher family finances became germane Thursday, as Fortune‘s Kia Kokalitcheva explained.
For whatever reason, it hadn’t occurred to me until now that I also wrote an earlier 2008 article with Marc Gunther about Kleiner and its market-based plans to save the world. The article was a Fortune exclusive, handed to us by Kleiner Perkins, about Al Gore joining the firm as an investing partner. We called the article, Al Gore’s next act: Planet-saving VC. I read it late Thursday and was surprised by a few of the nuggets I found.
People following the trial carefully will first want to read this paragraph [with emphasis added where appropriate]:
Doerr asked a younger Kleiner partner, Ellen Pao, who recently had been hired to make consumer Internet investments, to organize a meeting of 50 environmental thought leaders so that the partners could brainstorm with them about opportunities. They met in May 2006 at the San Francisco Four Seasons. R.K. Pachauri, whose UN Global International Panel on Climate Change later would share the Nobel with Gore, was there. So was Jose Goldemberg, a Brazilian scientist who spearheaded his country’s push into sugarcane-based ethanol.
The only reason Marc and I would have written that statement about Ellen Pao, whom I don’t think I met until later in 2008, was because John Doerr told us so. At trial, the issue of what Pao was hired to do has chewed up hours and hours of testimony. She says she always intended to be an investor; Kleiner says they always thought of her as someone destined for an operational role outside of Kleiner Perkins. The thought-leader conference Doerr referenced to Marc and me also came up at trial as an example of a praiseworthy but non-investing achievement of Pao’s. Whatever the documents say or whatever people recall, Doerr told Fortune more than seven years ago that Pao had been hired to make consumer Internet investments.
Some other tidbits in the story are merely interesting. Consider this:
In front of a group, Doerr’s style is part motivational speaker, part grad school seminar leader. At the end of one meeting FORTUNE attended, Doerr suggests that everyone brainstorm about the questions the partnership should consider at its December offsite. Doerr’s aide de camp, Wen Hsieh, who holds two technical Ph.D.s from Caltech, scribbles the questions on an easel with a magic marker as Doerr directs the conversation around a long conference table. Doerr himself wants to know how Kleiner’s green-tech initiative can have the most enduring long-term impact. Gore wonders how to serve Americans who want to live “off the grid,” a favorite topic. Kleiner partner Ted Schlein wonders how Kleiner will react if the price of oil falls dramatically. Partner–and biotech expert–Brook Byers brings up the most immediate concern: “Should we,” he asks, “be hiring more people with expertise in the energy field?” Looking around the room, it’s obvious that Kleiner employs a plethora of brainiacs and Ph.D.s, but not a single individual with a deep background in energy.
This is interesting merely to show that Marc and I witness a man, Wen Hsieh, taking notes during a meeting. Hsieh’s duties compared with Pao’s have been a big issue in the trial, as have Pao’s testimony that she and Trae Vassallo resented being asked to take notes during various meetings.
Another new twist: The capital requirements in the energy business are massive compared with what’s needed to start a software or Internet company. So while Kleiner’s cash can help companies get going, building power plants or cars requires complex financing that’s well beyond what it can offer.
Doerr understands the complexity of what’s ahead. Most venture capitalists are judged on return on investment alone. Asked how he’ll judge the success of the green initiative, he reels off five measures: “the company we keep, the quality of the companies we help grow, the quality of the partners we add, returns on the investments we make, and by the CO2 that’s taken out of the atmosphere.”
Looking back, it’s fascinating to see not only the obvious obstacles Kleiner faced, but also Doerr’s emphasis on the quality of the partners Kleiner would add through its “cleantech” explorations as being one of the best measures of firm success. That last one might well be considered a case closed.
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A 7 year-old Fortune Magazine story helps shed some light on the ongoing gender discrimination case between Ellen Pao and Kleiner Perkins.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/20/james-p-mitchell-is-dead-at-63.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150402101201id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/20/james-p-mitchell-is-dead-at-63.html
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James P. Mitchell Is Dead at 63
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20150402101201
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James P, Mitchell, Secretary of Labor in the Eisenhower Administration, died yesterday in his suite at the Astor Hotel after a heart attack. He was 63 years old.
Mr. Mitchell, whose home was in Hillsborough, Calif., came here on a business trip and registered at the hotel Saturday night.
When President Eisenhower left office in 1961, Mr. Mitchell returned to his native New Jersey and ran unsuccessfully for Governor on the Republican ticket. That same year he joined Crown Zellerbach Corporation as a consultant and director. The next year he became vice president of industrial relations for the West Coast pulp and paper company.
Last December he was elected senior vice president for corporate relations for the company —the post he held at his death. Mr. Mitchell, a tall, big‐boned man with sharp blue eyes and great personal charm, was appointed Secretary of Labor in the fall of 1953 at a time when the Administration's prestige with labor was low. Seven years later, Mr. Mitchell was honored at a huge labor union dinner in Washington for his “deep understanding of and concern for the welfare of the nation's working men and women.”
In an administration characterized by a large number of former businessmen holding high positions, Mr. Mitchell represented a liberal influence that helped to balance the scales and. tread a middle of the road course.
He was opposed to right‐towork laws, supported labor's right to organize, sought to improve the conditions of such marginal workers as migrant farm workers, older workers and the handicapped, demonstrated an early and understanding concern about the nation's manpower problems, and was in the forefront in attempting to better the opportunities for Negroes.
On one occasion he was described as “the social conscience of the Republican party.” In reply to this descrition, he said:
“The job of the future is to demonstrate here at home that we can conduct our affairs in freedom.and to demonstrate abroad that we are a free nation, believing in God, believing in the dignity of the human soul.
“As of Jan. 20, 1961, I will be embarking as a private citizen on a dedication to improve civil rights, farm labor, and labor‐management relations in this country.”
At a dinner for Mr. Mitchell in 1960, President Eisenhower praised his Cabinet member for his courage, honesty, integrity, realism and ability to get at the facts
“No man has ever been more dedicated,”PresidentEisenhower said, “to the idea that what is good for the United States is good for labor than has Jim Mitchell.”
Mr. Mitchell brought to the Labor post a somewhat new philosophy. Often in the past the Secretary had been regarded as the representative of labor, but Mr. Mitchell, although liberal in viewpoint, felt that the Secretary should serve the public in general, not just the working class or organized labor, in particular.
He viewed himself as a spokesman of, but not a “mouthpiece” for, the wage earner.
In his role as an adviser to the President on labor matters he was considered responsible, in part at least, for a shift away from frequent Government interference in major labor disputes during the Eisenhower Administration.
Mr. Mitchell was identified with the moderate element in the Republican party and had often challenged the views and thinking of Senator Barry Goldwater and the conservatives,
“All hell broke loose from the G.O.P. Right in 1958” When the Secretary spoke out against state and national right‐to-work laws, a former aide of Mr. Mitchell's recalled. Only last month, Mr, Mitchell said that he could not support the Goldwater‐Miller ticket “under any circumstances.”
James Paul Mitchell, a secondgeneration American of Irish Catholic background, was born in Elizabeth, N. J., on Nov. 12, 1900, the son of the late Peter J. and Ann Driscoll Mitchell. His uncle, the late Thomas Mitchell, the actor, was brought up with him.
After his graduation from Battin High School in 1917, Mr. Mitchell went to work in a grocery store after failing to win an appointment to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Subsequently, he opened two groceries of his own, one in Elizabeth and one in Rahway, N. J., but in 1927 both business failed and he lost his money.
In his later years, when someone would question his understanding of the laboring man's point of view, he would say, “I know.what it is to be jobless and broke.”
After his business failure he worked over a two‐year period in a lumber yard as a checker, as a truck,driver and as a salesman.
Then Mr. Mitchell went to work at the Western Electric Company in Kearny as an expeditor. He was. transferred the following year to.the personnel department of Western Electric and after that, in one way or another, had been dealing with personnel and labor‐management problems.
In 1932 in the midst of the Depression, Mr. Mitchell was
In 1940, General Somervell went to Washington to direct the Army construction program. He took Mr. Mitchell with him and put him in charge of labor relations—as director of the In dustrial Personnel Division of the War Department.
During this period he worked out a no - strike agreement with 19 building trade unions to stabilize wages, hours and working conditions on all Army construction jobs. He and Joseph D. Keenan, secretary of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, toured the nation in old DC-3's in 1941 trying to sell the stabilization agreement to some reluctant locals.
“I remember particularly one day in St. Louis,” Mr, Mitchell recalled later, “when (we) had to wave the American flag until we really wore it out; But I learned then that in time of crisis the free trade union movement of America can be depended upon to meet the crisis in the national interest.”
Returning to the business world after the war, Mr. Mitchell became director of personnel and industrial relations at R. H. Macy & Co. here. Then in 1947, he became vice president in charge of labor relations and operations at Bloomingdale Brothers, continuing in that post until called back to Government service in 1953 as Assistant Secretary of the Army in charge of Manpower and Reserve Forces Affairs.
Five months later President Eisenhower named Mr. Mitchell Secretary of Labor to succeed the late Martin P. Durkin, who had resigned.
As Secretary, Mr, Mitchell increased the influence of the post, strengthened the department generally and made recommendations for some of the top jobs in such agencies as the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, National Labor Relations Board and National Mediation Service.
Although disinclined to intervene in labor disputes, Mr. Mitchell, drawing on his own long varied experience, often played an informal and effective role behind the scenes.
In 1956, Mr. Mitchell came to New York at a crucial point in negotiations in the steel industry and at a meeting at the Plaza Hotel persuaded three top leaders of the industry to make an offer to the steel union that averted a strike.
In 1959, however, efforts to avert a steel strike were unsuccessful, but Mr. Mitchell, working closely with Vice President Richard M. Nixon, played an important part in effecting a settlement of the 116-day walkout on Jan. 4, 1960. Actually, Mr. Mitchell receded into the background at the time, giving Mr. Nixon the spotlight, but those close to the negotiations said that the Secretary's role was vital to the agreement that put the nation's economy back on the track.
In the waning days of the Eisenhower Administration, Mr. Mitchell was thinking in terms of a return to private life. The President, however, had told his associates that he hoped many of them Would continue to participate in Government.
At one of the last Cabinet meetings, a former associate of Mr. Mitchell recalled yesterday, the President said that he understood New Jersey Republican leaders were putting pressure on Mr. Mitchell to run for Governor.
At that point, the Mitchell associate said, the President threw a $100 bill on the table and said, “There's your first campaign contribution.”
Mr. Mitchell agreed to run in 1961, was successful in winning the Republican nomination and conducted a strenuous campaign, part of it on crutches after he broke his leg. He was defeated, however, by the current Governor, Richard J. Hughes.
Numerous friends and former associates of Mr. Mitchell issued statements praising his career. Among these were President Johnson, General Eisenhower and Governor Rockefeller.
Mr. Mitchell is survived by his widow, the former Isabelle Nulton; his mother, Mrs. Peter J. Mitchell of Elizabeth; a daughter, Mrs. Frank Natchez of Brunswick, Me.; three” sisters, Miss Anna Mitchell of Elizabeth, Mrs. Richard Schleck of Essex.Fells, N. J., and Mrs. Michael Bockwith of Arlington, Va., and three grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements were uncomplete last night.
This article can be viewed in its original form. Please send questions and feedback to archive_feedback@nytimes.com
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Dies, 63; por
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http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/27/mitch-dobrowner-iris-d-or-photographer-year
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150403172537id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/27/mitch-dobrowner-iris-d-or-photographer-year
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Mitch Dobrowner wins L'Iris d'Or photographer of the year award
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20150403172537
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Last night, at a lavish ceremony at the Hilton Park Lane, London, the US photographer Mitch Dobrowner won L'Iris d'Or photographer of the year at the 2012 Sony world photography awards for his extraordinary shots of storm systems in Tornado Alley in the Appalachian mountains. He was selected from a shortlist of 120 photographers, whittled down from more than 112,000 entries.
WM Hunt, the chair of the judges, said: "He is the best of what is classic and what is contemporary in photography. He brings a sense of its history and enormous skill in his craft while pushing his imagination and, even, physical strength. The work offers a visceral rush while being wonderfully well made. I think he is an exceptional choice."
Other winners included Peter Franck, from Germany, who triumphed in both the commercial and fashion categories, and Britain's Simon Norfolk, winner of the photojournalism and documentary: people category. The outstanding contribution to photography award went to William Klein, the American pioneer of street and fashion photography, whose book New York was described by Martin Parr as "perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century". Klein expressed his surprise that Sony had "eaten up" the world of photography, adding: "More power to Sony!"
The Sony awards also incorporated the Kraszna-Krausz book awards. The best photography book award went to Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs (Getty), edited by Weston Naef and Christine Hult-Lewis. The National Media Museum first book award was won by Anne Sophie Merryman for her collection of family postcards, Mrs Merryman's Collection. The British independent publisher Dewi Lewis was the recipient of the outstanding contribution to publishing award.
The prizes were attended by the great and the good of the world of photography, alongside various Sony executives including Tatsuya Akashi, vice president of digital imaging at Sony Europe. The minister for culture, Ed Vaizey, was also in attendance and made a speech in praise of the British photography industry. The full list of winners can be viewed here.
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US photographer credited with 'enormous skill in his craft' for shots of storm systems in Appalachian mountains
| 20.789474 | 0.789474 | 3.105263 |
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http://fortune.com/2012/05/08/how-is-amzn-worth-13-aapls/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150404041248id_/http://fortune.com/2012/05/08/how-is-amzn-worth-13-aapls/
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How is AMZN worth 13 AAPLs?
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20150404041248
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FORTUNE — I know that comparisons, as Shakespeare’s Dogberry put it, are supposed to be odorous, but this one is beginning to stink.
How can Apple AAPL , with $110 billion in the bank, annual sales of $140 billion and earnings that nearly double every year, be valued so much lower than Amazon AMZN , which has $6 billion in the bank, sales of $50 billion and earnings that fell 35% last quarter?
This is a question that reader Jeff Forsberg has been asking for nearly a year. On Friday he sent the chart above, an updated version of the coiled spring visual metaphor he introduced last June, when Amazon’s price-to-earnings ratio was 81 and Apple’s was 16.
A year later, it’s only grown worse.
As of Friday, Amazon was selling for 184 times earnings and Apple for 13.8, a 13-to-1 gap that grew even wider in Monday’s trading.
“This is getting hard to understand,” Forsberg writes. “It’s almost as if Wall Street is pricing Amazon on the basis of Apple’s earnings performance. There’s more upside with Apple’s median price target than Amazon’s, and yet Apple’s P/E’s is compressed to a level that strains credibility. By comparison, there’s hardly any coil left in Amazon’s spring. What gives?”
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There seems to be a growing disconnect in Wall Street's valuations
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http://www.nbc.com/allegiance/blog/cast-qa/margarita-talks-episode-9
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Margarita Talks Episode 9
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20150405205827
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On Allegiance, Margarita Levieva plays Natalie O'Connor, Alex's superspy older sister who can break a man's heart just as easily as she can break his neck. Each week, Margarita will answer a few questions about her character as well as give insights into the high-octane spy thriller. And don't forget to check in on NBC.com every Thursday at 7/6c for all-new full episodes of Allegiance.
Q: Natalie and Mark have a heart-to-heart while cleaning Michelle's apartment, where it's clear Mark is devastated at what he and Katya have put their family through. Do you think Natalie has a greater understanding of her parents now? Can she forgive them?
MARGARITA: I think that the conversation with dad is definitely an opportunity for Natalie to see his humanity and vulnerability. It's a reminder that this situation has caused him and continues to cause him much suffering. Feeling his love and care, knowing that he has made choices that he now might regret, makes Natalie feel bad and sorry for him. But she is aware that in this moment she can't fully go there with him and quickly finds a way to make him feel better. It absolutely makes it easier to understand, although forgiveness is not something that is easy.
Q: Victor realizes he can't risk losing Natalie the way Alex lost Michelle and, at Alex's behest, decides it's time for him and Natalie to make their escape. Do you think this is the right decision, or should Natalie stand by her family? How can she leave when her brother is being framed for murder? How hard do you think it is for her to leave them, especially Sarah? Will she be able to leave her past behind?
MARGARITA: One of the hardest choices Natalie is faced with is leaving her family behind. It's an incredibly challenging time for everyone, and the stakes are higher than they've ever been. But the walls are closing in on them, and Natalie is very aware of the possible outcomes for the situation they're in. Seeing the body of someone her brother loved, wrapped in plastic, the grief and the level of pain it's taking him to, is not only heartbreaking for her as a sister but is also a reminder of one of her greatest fears: losing Victor in the same way.
When Victor says they're leaving now, she is completely thrown off. So many things are weighing on her. It's extraordinarily difficult to leave her parents and Alex, but at least they're adults. They're aware of the dangers of their daily lives. They made choices that could have possibly gotten them here. However, leaving Sarah, an innocent victim, who is completely clueless and innocent, with so much to look forward to, is beyond comprehension for Natalie. Unfortunately, the moment with Victor is so unexpected and sudden, that in that split second moment, she decides that perhaps this is the only way. Maybe she's somehow better off to her family alive rather than dead.
Q: How do you think seeing her little brother suffer at the loss of his girlfriend has changed Natalie? Do you think it's made it harder or easier to run away with Victor?
MARGARITA: Seeing her brother go through this has absolutely made it easier to leave. Being faced with death in such a way instilled Natalie with the kind of fear that would allow running away in hopes of starting over and finally having a life where she is safe and away from everything that has hurt for all those years. A life where, hopefully, for the first time in her life, she feels loved and protected.
All-new full episodes of Allegiance are available on NBC.com every Thursday at 7/6c.
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Margarita Talks Episode 9 On Allegiance, Margarita Levieva plays Natalie O'Connor, Alex's superspy older sister who can break a man's heart just as easily as she can break his neck. Each week, Margarita will answer a few questions about her character as well as give insights into the high-octane spy thriller. And don't forget to check in on NBC.com every Thursday at 7/6c for all-new full episodes of Allegiance.
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http://fortune.com/2015/04/09/maven-wants-to-turn-your-smartphone-into-a-womens-health-clinic/
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Maven wants to turn your smartphone into a women’s health clinic
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20150409184325
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Doctor appointments are time-consuming, difficult to schedule, and these days, increasingly expensive. What if, instead of cooling your heels in the waiting room, you could get some face time with a primary care doc, or even a doula, lactation consultant, or nutritionist, using your smartphone?
That’s the idea behind Maven, a digital clinic that connects patients and health care providers. The service, says founder Katherine Ryder, is designed to bridge the gap between non-essential office visits and the typical alternative—Googling for advice online. Maven is specifically geared toward female users, with a wide range of providers who specialize in women’s and children’s health. Using the company’s free iOS app, available Thursday, women can schedule virtual appointments and video chat with the practitioner of their choice. (Disclosure: Ryder has contributed articles to Fortune in the past.)
Here’s how it works: App users enter information about their medical request or question, and are matched with a series of providers from an appropriate specialty. Most providers have detailed bios, some with video. “We want people to find providers they like and develop relationships with them,” says Ryder. Users also have the option to create profiles, though those who want to remain anonymous can do so.
The video sessions start at $18 for 10 minutes with a nurse practitioner, $25 for 20 minutes with a nutritionist, and $35 for 10 minutes with a doctor.
The intention is not to replace in-person medical exams, says Ryder. Instead, Maven can help out when someone has a non-urgent medical need, such as a question about birth control or a prescription refill.
The service does have drawbacks. For one, providers do not have access to the details of users’ medical history, and must rely solely on what patients tell them. Users’ regular doctors are also left out of the loop. Maven does document all sessions, but patients who use the app will be responsible for sharing the advice or treatment they get from Maven docs with their offline providers.
Maven enters the telehealth market at an interesting time. Though still relatively small, the industry is growing at an impressive clip. Telehealth revenues are expected to increase by roughly 45% this year, hitting $585 million by year-end, according to IBIS Market Research. What’s driving that growth? Technology improvements, certainly. Rising healthcare costs are also a factor. Americans with health insurance through their employers paid an average of $707 in out-of-pocket healthcare costs in 2013, up from $662 the previous year.
The New York-based startup has received $2.2 million in funding from investors including Great Oaks Venture Capital, The Box Group, Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, and Susan Lyne, former CEO of Gilt Groupe. Ryder, who was previously an early stage investor at Index Ventures, a London VC firm, says she’s gotten particularly good responses from female investors. “Women VCs just got it,” she says.
Providers, who pay a fee to be listed on the app, are screened by a practitioner advisory committee. The process includes interviews, reference checks, and a written assessment and case study, says Ryder. About 80% of those who apply are approved. The majority are female.
Rebecca Callahan, a women’s health nurse practitioner in New York, has been working as a Maven provider during the company’s beta phase. She says she appreciates how the app allows her to control her schedule, and believes it’s a helpful educational tool for her patients. “Women have constant questions about their sexual and gynecological health,” she says. “This is a way to empower women to take control instead of Googling in the middle of the night.”
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A new telehealth app allows users to video chat with OB-GYNs, midwives, lactation consultants and other women's health specialists.
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http://www.people.com/article/little-big-town-karen-fairchild-beach
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Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild Talks Romantic Beach Trip with Husband : People.com
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20150412233321
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updated 04/10/2015 AT 08:25 AM EDT
•originally published 04/09/2015 AT 04:50 PM EDT
is taking the stage at Fort Lauderdale's beachside Tortuga Music Festival on April 12, and lead singer Karen Fairchild says: Bring. It. On!
"It's the first festival that we're playing this year and we always look forward to festival season," the singer tells PEOPLE. "It's just like a big ol' party out there. Plus, this being on the beach makes it even better. We're very excited!"
So in the spirit of this weekend's big ol' beach party, we asked the singer all about her beach cred. Here's what she told us:
"I'm at a beach right now! I'm actually in the Bahamas."
"Oh gosh. When [husband and bandmate] Jimi [Westbrook] and I went to The Tides in Playa del Carmen. It was just a very romantic trip. They have these little thatched roof huts and you have your own little swimming pool outside of your room and there's candlelight dinners at night and it's just super quiet ... That was definitely a romantic trip, for sure."
"He was 5 months old and we went to Rosemary Beach in Florida. We realized quickly that lugging a little guy around makes the beach a lot different. We were worn out! We didn't have it down yet as new parents. It took us the next beach trip to get it together."
"'Toes' by Zac Brown. I don't think there's a better beach song than that one. I mean, I know there's Buffett and so many Kenny [Chesney] songs that are great, but I just love that one and it's also sentimental. When that song was out we were touring with Zac Brown and our kids were little and they used to sing that song all the time. They didn't know that it said 'a--' so they would always sing, 'I got my toes in the water, toes in the sand ...' [Bandmate] Kimberly Schlapman's little girl would sing the, 'Life is good today, life is good today,' all the time. That song's just kind of special."
"Skinny margarita on the rocks. No salt."
"I think a beach day with
would be really fun. We've never done that with them. We could count on good drinks and yeah, a good time for sure!"
"Oh goodness. I have to say my husband or I'd be in trouble."
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As Florida's Tortuga Music Festival approaches, Fairchild gets into beach mode with PEOPLE
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Eddie Murphy to Be Awarded Top Humor Prize at the Kennedy Center
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20150413003031
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04/09/2015 AT 05:00 PM EDT
He's come a long way from
will receive the prestigious Mark Twain Prize in American humor, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced on Thursday.
Murphy, 54, will receive the prize at the 18th annual gala performance in October, which will be broadcast.
The Kennedy Center's announcement called Murphy "the most commercially successful African-American actor in the history of the motion picture business, and is one of the industry's top-five box-office performers overall."
Previous recipients of the prize include Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, Carl Reiner, Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin,
, Carol Burnett and Jay Leno.
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The former SNL cast member will receive the 18th annual Mark Twain Prize
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http://www.people.com/article/lea-michele-matthew-paetz-one-year-since-met-instagram
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150422192421id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/lea-michele-matthew-paetz-one-year-since-met-instagram
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Lea Michele Celebrates One Year Since She Met Boyfriend Matthew Paetz
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20150422192421
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Lea Michele and Matthew Paetz
04/19/2015 AT 10:25 PM EDT
It's been a year of happiness for
on Sunday of her and boyfriend Matthew Paetz, 29, celebrating one year since they met on the set of her music video
Michele, 28, captioned the sweet photo "This guy's pretty great too," with a heart.
Michele, who is working on the new Fox series
, also Instagrammed a pic of the
The photo is captioned "'Dinner last night with these lovely folks! Celebrating one year since @hannahluxdavis directed me in my video On My Way! #TimeFlies #BestFriends".
, an aspiring actor and model, nearly a year after her boyfriend and
The couple, whom are often seen hiking together in Los Angeles,
last September, four months after they met.
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The Glee star posted a shared photo of the couple on Instagram
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/04/19/monday-business-agenda/C0TY53ME9VM2fgcc8TR6JI/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150422221512id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/04/19/monday-business-agenda/C0TY53ME9VM2fgcc8TR6JI/story.html
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Monday’s business agenda
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20150422221512
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Gas prices have remained mostly flat over the past month, rising only a penny last week to $2.34 a gallon. New prices will be released Monday by AAA Northeast.
The Greater Boston Referral Networking Group is a group of entrepreneurs and business owners who host five or six networking events each month. The next one will be Monday, 6 to 9 p.m., at Del Frisco’s Grille, 33 Boylston St., Chestnut Hill Plaza, Chestnut Hill. $5 to $10.
This month’s meeting of the CleanTech and Energy Special Interest Group, hosted by TechSandBox, will focus on the growth and practices of the geothermal power industry. Tuesday, 5:30 p.m., TechSandBox, 105B South St., Hopkinton. $25 to $35.
General Assembly is holding a free class to introduce newcomers to the world of Boston technology and innovation. Tuesday, 6:30 to 8 p.m., General Assembly Boston, 51 Melcher St., Boston.
Mark Hurd, the chief executive of Oracle Corp., will speak at the Boston College Chief Executives Club luncheon. His speech will be titled “Survive, or Thrive? How Will You Modernize Your Business?” Wednesday, noon to 1:45 p.m., Wharf Room, Boston Harbor Hotel, 70 Rowes Wharf, Boston. Members only.
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Geothermal power, startups, and more notable events and things to know.
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http://fortune.com/2015/04/24/what-stands-in-the-way-of-a-trans-pacific-partnership-deal/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150425105046id_/http://fortune.com/2015/04/24/what-stands-in-the-way-of-a-trans-pacific-partnership-deal/
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What stands in the way of a Trans-Pacific Partnership deal
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20150425105046
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed free trade agreement spanning a broad range of countries in the Asia Pacific and the Americas, is now at a critical juncture. The TPP agreement remains a key strategic tool in President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia, and the stars appear to be aligning.
Last week, a bill was introduced that would give the president “fast-track authority” on the TPP. If that passes, Congress could vote only up or down on the deal, not amend it, giving the president added power to strike an agreement.
The TPP has been years in the making. Its origins can be traced as far back as 2002 to initial discussions between Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore. By 2011, the broad outlines of the agreement were penned by nine nations: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. Canada and Mexico joined the TPP negotiations in October 2012 and Japan in April 2013. Altogether, the 12 TPP countries account for $27.8 trillion, or roughly 37.5% of world GDP, and a market of 799 million people.
While most Asia-Pacific countries seek an ambitious agreement, and are firmly committed to making strong progress in the negotiations with the hope of a timely conclusion, the devil is now in the details as each country tries to see that its major concerns are addressed. Progress had stalled in the U.S. as Democratic leaders, such as Harry Reid (D-Nev) voiced concerns about job losses with the TPP. In January 2014, Reid, who was senate majority leader at the time, said, “I’m against fast-track.” The Democrats’ Senate loss in November 2014 actually renewed momentum as a result. On April 16, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, announced he had finally reached an agreement with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) on legislation to renew Trade Promotion Authority.
Other events have coincided to ratchet up the pressure over the past weeks, in particular China’s finalization of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). A number of countries have signed on as AIIB members, including traditional U.S. allies such as the U.K., Australia and South Korea, with the U.S. voicing significant concerns. The U.S., Canada and Japan have stayed on the sidelines. The pressure for the U.S. and Japan to quickly resolve their remaining differences on TPP issues is now at a critical stage, as is the need for President Obama to finalize the deal before the focus shifts to the 2016 election.
The biggest obstacle to concluding the negotiations thus far has been the differences between the U.S. and Japan. Although Canada, Mexico and Japan are the top three U.S. goods trade partners, Japan is the only country in the top three with which the U.S. does not have an existing free trade agreement (FTA).
Challenges have centered on autos and agriculture.
During the negotiations, the U.S. auto industry has pointed to its negligible market share in Japan, which dropped from 1.6% in 1996 to only 0.3% in 2011. The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association countered by highlighting that 70% of the vehicles Japanese companies sold in the U.S. were built in North America, and that, as of 2011, Japanese automakers had invested $35 billion in U.S. plants, employing 388,000 U.S. workers. The U.S. auto industry and a significant number of members of Congress and the Senate responded by raising concerns about non-tariff barriers and currency manipulation.
Agriculture has been the other key issue. Reducing Japan’s agricultural tariffs is important to the U.S. as well as a number of other countries. The U.S., Australia and Vietnam, for example, have an interest in greater access to Japan’s rice market, which is the most sensitive of all its commodities. Although Japan has strong protectionist sentiments in the agricultural sector, other countries do too, including the United States. Even though the U.S. would like greater access to Japan, it has to keep in mind its other interests. It can’t ask Japan and Canada, which have very high tariffs on dairy, to open their dairy markets without countries like New Zealand and Australia asking the U.S. to do the same.
As in the U.S., the stars appear to be aligning in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a staunch supporter of the TPP negotiations, won a snap election in December 2014. His ruling coalition now has 325 of 475 seats in Japan’s House of Representatives and has the legitimacy to advance the TPP. On December 19, 2014, Akira Amari, Japan’s Minister of Economic Revitalization, said, “Japan and the United States have made a lot of progress. I can’t give you specifics, but I can say that we are close to reaching our goal.”
The big win for U.S. trade with Japan, which is America’s second largest services trade and investment partner, as well as with countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, may be in the services industry. The U.S. is keen to gain greater access to sectors such as banking, insurance, legal services, and telecommunications and wants the provisions to be as broad as possible so as to capture the greatest value from future entrants. Developing countries, meanwhile, are wary of liberalizing services because of concerns over job losses.
Vietnam poses a unique challenge for more developed TPP countries such as the U.S., which has retained tariffs on goods such as textiles, apparel and footwear for a longer period of time in existing free trade agreemeents. Vietnam could end up being a major winner under a TPP. Being a low-wage country, it is seen as a growing export hub, and the TPP would open up new markets for its products. The TPP negotiations are also grappling with how to deal with state-owned enterprises like those in Vietnam. Resolving these issues could make it easier for more countries, notably China, to join the TPP in the future.
Should the TPP countries reach an agreement, each country will still need to ratify it. Some ratification issues continue to exist for a number of countries. For the U.S., the biggest hurdle to ratification is achieving fast-track authority.
Challenges also appear to exist in Australia,New Zealand and Malaysia. In both Australia and New Zealand, if highly protected sectors in other countries such as agriculture are not opened up, this will be a major stumbling block. In terms of ratification, Graeme Thomson, a former chief negotiator for Australia notes that because the “Australian Government does not command a majority in the Senate, ratification would require support from the opposition Labour Party.” For New Zealand, Daniel Kalderimis, a partner at Chapman Tripp notes, the “main issue for the domestic ratification process will be whether one can point to sufficient market-access gains to justify the potential interference with domestic autonomy in other areas, including IP, procurement and investment.” Malaysia may also encounter resistance to its policy of giving preferential treatment to ethnic Malays in activities such as government procurement and reserving ownership stakes in listed companies .
Sustained progress during the upcoming weeks will be critical to achieving a successful outcome. The first test will come during hearings that have commenced on fast-track authority. A second test will follow shortly, namely during the U.S.-Japan summit to be held on April 28 in Washington. If President Obama can bolster support within the ranks of Congressional Democrats, he can secure the part of his foreign policy agenda that may be the most important for Asia’s leadership.
Shom Sen was the 2014 Jack Wadsworth Fellow at the Asia Society. He previously served as Assistant Deputy Minister at the Ministry of International Trade in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. The views expressed are his own.
Watch more business news from Fortune:
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While the trade agreement involving nearly half the world’s economy is making good progress, the official sign-off will largely depend on the U.S. and Japan.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2015/04/23/days/8jybJ7wItcN8v0kdQag0LO/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20150427012148id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2015/04/23/days/8jybJ7wItcN8v0kdQag0LO/story.html
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‘24 Days’ recalls anti-Semitism in 2006 Paris
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20150427012148
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Eight years before the horrific attack on Charlie Hebdo and the subsequent massacres of Jews in Paris by Islamist terrorists, a similar brutal crime outraged Paris. On Jan. 20, 2006 a gang kidnapped 23-year-old Ilan Halimi (Syrus Shahidi), a Jewish cellphone store clerk, held him prisoner, and tortured him for 24 days. During that time they tormented his family with hundreds of phone calls with erratic demands for ransom, threats, and insults. They picked Halim because he was Jewish, ostensibly because “Jews have money.” It was the first such anti-Semitic crime in France since the Holocaust.
In her book, “24 Days: the True Story of the Ilan Halimi Affair,” Ilan’s mother, Ruth Halimi (Zabou Breitman), wanted his story to be “a wake-up call” to those who think the days of such racially motivated violence are a thing of the past. Subsequent events have proven her right.
Nonetheless, Alexandre Arcady’s adaptation of the book awkwardly connects the issue of rising anti-Semitism to this particular crime. He suggests that had the police acknowledged and publicized the racist motivation from the beginning, the case would likely have been resolved. By insisting on keeping the Halimis and other members of the Jewish community silent, and by attempting to psychologically manipulate the kidnappers, the film argues that police blew the case.
Perhaps. But how this might have been accomplished is not explained. The head of the kidnapping gang, “Django” (Tony Harrisson), is a psychopath beyond reasoning. His minions are riff-raff from the slums motivated by greed, sadism, and fear. According to the police, given the instability of the circumstances, and the lack of information, publicity would have been disastrous.
Not only does Arcady not make clear what the alternative to the official strategy might have been, he films their procedures like a top-notch episode of “Law and Order” — right down to the scene-ending two-note punctuation. What viewer of that show, or “CSI,” is going to doubt that the police know what they’re doing? Ilan’s father, Didier (Pascal Elbé), thinks they’re right and fully cooperates with them, but then he’s been divorced from Ruth and estranged from the family for 20 years — a detail inadequately developed. Perhaps he was a dupe. But Ruth’s outbursts of rage and recrimination and occasional defiance don’t seem to help much, either.
As a suspenseful true crime story, “24 Days” succeeds. As a warning against the ever present dangers of anti-Semitism, it is eloquent and disturbing. It’s in combining the two that Arcady mishandles the case.
|
“24 Days” review: In 2006 the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi, a Jewish store clerk, shocked France because of its anti-Semitism. The crime has proven to be a sign of things to come.
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