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http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/19/jeff-koons-drawing-statuary-series/amp | http://web.archive.org/web/20151001162217id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/19/jeff-koons-drawing-statuary-series/amp | Jeff Koons on drawing as a means of articulating an idea | 20151001162217 | Art is about profundity. It's about connecting to everything that it means to be alive, but you have to act. If you have an idea, you have to move on it, to make a gesture. Drawing is an immediate way of articulating that idea - of making a gesture that is both physcial and intellectual.
I've always enjoyed this drawing. It was made at the very end of 1985 when I was making decisions on my stainless-steel Statuary series. I was trying to decide whether to make an inflatable rabbit or an inflatable pig. I was going back and forth in my mind about which one I should make, so I have a drawing that's half rabbit, half pig.
There are other pieces here on the napkin: the Italian woman, the bust of Louis XIV. And there's a small shape here which is, I think, a little Bob Hope trophy. There's one piece that I didn't make, which has an "X" through it. They were doves. I scratched that idea out.
"Complete" is a note to self to go forward. "Best" means I believe in it. At the bottom I wrote "GROUP INTELLECTUAL CHEMICAL". I was thinking about how art makes you feel, how it makes your body secrete different chemicals depending on its colour, texture and surface.
I always try to stick to my initial ideas but there are problems you have to work out along the way. If I'm making a sculpture, at a certain point I will have to make sure it can stand up properly, but I always try to keep the finished object as close to that original idea as possible.
I like my drawings to be direct. I don't generally work on them for too long, but that doesn't mean that they are not works in their own right. I might sketch an idea for a sculpture, like this one, or a painting, and the sculpture or painting themselves might take a few years to be completed, but those initial drawings are complete. They have a certain openness - space for the viewer to fill in with their own mind and thoughts. If I try to articulate every little detail in a drawing, it would be like missing the forest for the trees, so it's just about getting the outline of the forest.
• Jeff Koons is represented by Gagosian | Art star Jeff Koons reveals the genesis of his stainless steel Statuary series | 35.923077 | 0.692308 | 1.307692 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/04/louvre-lens-review-france | http://web.archive.org/web/20151001235329id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/04/louvre-lens-review-france | Louvre-Lens - review | 20151001235329 | Imagine, for a moment, that the National Gallery sent some of its most famous works – The Arnolfini Marriage, say, or The Rokeby Venus – off for a long stay in a depressed and not especially accessible ex-mining town. Barnsley, say. The paintings would be placed in a big metal box on top of an old coal mine, not in the town's centre. And the National Gallery would, in this fantasy, be merged with the British Museum, so there would be classical antiquities along with the old masters.
This, almost precisely, is what the Louvre has done in creating its new outpost in Lens, in northern France. Here, on a site overlooked by conical slag heaps, by modest workers' houses and a friterie somewhat bemused by its grand new neighbour, in a structure which typologically though not aesthetically resembles a cheap booze shed on the approach to Calais, will be shown such works as De la Tour's Mary Magdalene with a Night Light and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. They are still being installed, pending the museum's opening to the public on 12 December, but to see the Magdalene already there is like happening on a celebrity in a roadside diner.
The Louvre is not the first museum to dispatch its name and some of its works to another, deprived, place. The Guggenheim did it in Bilbao, and the Pompidou opened a branch in Metz. But there has not previously been such an extreme contrast between the majesty of the art and the humbleness of the location. The closest Britain has come is with the Hepworth in Wakefield, but fine though its 20th-century collection is, it's not the Louvre. Only the latter's most sacred treasures – Mona Lisa level – are barred from making the trip to the bassin minier.
The surrealism of the concept is compounded by the architecture, by the Japanese practice SANAA. They have made, as the new museum's largest, most memorable space, a 125 metre-long hangar called the Galerie du Temps. Here six millennia of art, from the prehistoric to the 19th century, are shown in chronological sequence, in such a way that comparisons can made be across cultures, from Persian to Roman, or Islamic to Renaissance. Not only are they are in a single vast room but its walls, outside and in, are made of aluminium, finished with a softly reflective surface.
This is curatorial heresy, such works being usually set against stone, plaster, or damask, rather than the material of aeroplanes and cooking foil. True, they are not placed directly against the aluminium, but on sober plinths and low walls by the exhibition designer Adrien Gardère, within the greater space, but it is still a sensational choice.
The hangar is one of five approximate cuboids in a loose linear sequence that the architects compare to boats moored in a river. In the centre is a glassy entrance pavilion, a variation on the pyramid at the Paris Louvre, within which are further glassy enclosures for a cafe, shop and so on, such that the interior is an enveloping shimmer of reflections and transparencies.
Off one side of the reception pavilion is the Galerie du Temps, which then leads to another gallery, for works from the neighbourhood of Lens, in the form of a glass box. Off the other side is another shed, not quite so big, containing temporary exhibitions in more conventional enfilades of rooms. On the far end of this is an auditorium.
The five boxes, sleek, shiny and simple, are placed on a raised level formed by the detritus of mining. Around them will be a garden by the landscape architect Catherine Mosbach: still a long way from complete, this will have groups of trees and clearings, interspersed with grass mounds, pools, areas of moss and winding concrete paving. In keeping with her belief that as little as possible should be removed from the site, low walls will be made of the local orange earth, and blackish mining debris will be visible in the spaces between the concrete.
All of which, from the provocative location to the aluminium walls, could be one gigantic €150m attention-seeking stunt, except it isn't. I don't know if they will hit their target of 500,000 visitors a year (though my bet would be that they will exceed it), and I suspect that hopes for regeneration that usually accompany such projects won't turn out quite as planned, because they usually don't. But, if you want to spread the bounty of museums like the Louvre to less favoured places, you should do it with the conviction shown here.
The architecture, meanwhile, has a certain magic. The Galerie du Temps recalls another aluminium shed, the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia, which was an early masterpiece of Norman Foster. But, where the art there was somewhat dwarfed by the space, here it flourishes. The experience is more like Lina Bo Bardi's Museum of Art in São Paulo, another big hall, in which each painting was placed on a vertical sheet of glass, such that they collectively formed a grove of art.
In the space made by SANAA and Gardère, as in Bo Bardi's, the works occupy space rather than being fixed to the perimeter wall, and you wander between them. This makes them a little more as they would have been to their artists, in a studio. They become more physical and animate – they are things made by the action of artists rather than objects you just look at. Other viewers are part of the scene: you look at art and at other people looking at art.
The reflective walls amplify. Mirrorings of art and viewers recede into an infinite mist and, because the apparently straight walls are actually subtly curved, the warped reflections are all the more dreamlike. The floor, also unexpectedly, slopes gently, following the fall of the land before the building arrived. It reminds you of solid ground and, because it feels different from walking on the flat, of the presence of your own body.
You are simultaneously taken into a metallic cloud, and returned to earth. The works are removed from the contexts in which you are used to seeing them – the spaces like palaces or temples of traditional museums – and put into a new context made of art and people playing off one another. The effect is to make each work more immediate, more violent, fragile, erotic, mysterious – whatever their artists intended – than it did before. Henri Loyrette, the president of the Louvre, says that that the gallery enhances the art as a diamond can be lifted by its setting. He's right, except that art is more interesting than diamonds.
Then there is the relation of the building to its surroundings, a composite of nature, ordinariness and Unesco-recognised industrial relics which the architects declare to be "very beautiful". At first sight the shiny boxes, made of time-proof materials, seem alien. But, when the landscape is complete – and this much has to be taken on trust – we are promised an interplay of artifice and nature, organic and lifeless, dirty and clean, that will be weird, but impressively so. It will be mediated by light – falling through trees, reflecting off walls, filtering through glass.
Kazuyo Sejima, of SANAA, says that "it is not the building alone that is important, but the people, the art, the landscape, the whole ensemble", and it will be as an ensemble that her building succeeds or fails. By choosing materials so distant from both Lens and the old Louvre, SANAA have added another to the already extreme contrasts of the situation, and raised the difficulty of achieving this ensemble, but in doing so could also make its ultimate success more powerful. The discovery of unlikely affinities is a part of art.
"There is," wrote Joseph Conrad, "as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds." The Louvre-Lens sets out to interpret this line in ways he won't have imagined. | An outpost of the Louvre among the slag heaps of northern France is bold and brilliant, writes Rowan Moore | 78.9 | 0.7 | 1.2 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/08/bacon-lover-auctioned-sothebys/amp | http://web.archive.org/web/20151002032514id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/08/bacon-lover-auctioned-sothebys/amp | Portrait of Francis Bacon's violent lover to be auctioned at Sotheby's | 20151002032514 | He could be astonishingly violent, had a sadistic streak and was a raging alcoholic, but Peter Lacy was the great love of Francis Bacon's life and the artist is clearly expressing his feelings in a powerful and tender portrait not publicly exhibited for 40 years.
"This picture was very much painted as a eulogy for his friend and lover," said Sotheby's expert Oliver Barker. Study for a Portrait of P.L. is to be auctioned in New York with an estimate of between $30-$40m (£20-£26m) and can be seen at Sotheby's in London next weekend.
It is the most important painting of Lacy by Bacon and is all the more poignant because it was painted in 1962 just months after Lacy's alcohol-related death in his adopted home of Tangier."We are incredibly excited about this sale," said Barker, the auction house's senior international specialist in contemporary art. "Not only because Francis Bacon is, commercially speaking, arguably the most enticing artist of the current time. But to have a painting of this importance and of an iconic figure in Bacon's own personal life is a wonderfully poetic combination."
Bacon, whose eight-year relationship with merchant banker Eric Hall had ended, was drawn to violent men and that certainly applies to the dashing Battle of Britain pilot he met in Soho's Colony Room in 1952. Art critic John Richardson wrote in the New York Review of Books that after one attack in which Lacy threw the artist through a plate-glass window, "his face was so damaged that his right eye had to be sewn back into place. Bacon loved Lacy even more. For weeks he would not forgive Lucian Freud for remonstrating with his torturer."
After this, Lacy moved to Tangier, where Bacon would often join him, part of a set that sometimes included Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Joe Orton. It was here that Lacy was drinking himself to death and the glass of red wine he holds in the portrait is an allusion to that."
Bacon heard about his death on the opening day of the 1962 Tate retrospective dedicated to him at the same time he was receiving telegrams of praise and adulation. That was something eerily replicated in 1971 when he learned of the suicide of his next great love and muse, George Dyer, at the opening of his big show at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Barker said it was a powerful work. "When you stand in front of the painting, the scale of the figure is clearly designed to be somewhat overawed by the environment in which he is seated and I think that is totally deliberate. This is very much a picture about the vulnerability of Peter Lacy, and nowhere is that more poignant than in the glass of wine. It is packed with meaning and different layers of interpretation."
The painting is also important, said Barker, because "compositionally and aesthetically" it represents "a radical departure for the artist.
The mid- to late-1950s was Bacon at his most creatively uncertain "but you suddenly feel in this picture a renewed energy and a kind of real direction in his work which would last the course of his entire career. You see Bacon here at a very strong period of his life."
It was painted in 1962 and bought almost straight away, but then was out on loan to various exhibitions in Eindhoven, London, New York, Chicago, London again and Dusseldorf. . The lastknown public exhibition was in 1972 at London's Lefevre gallery.
It has always been privately owned and has belonged to the current seller since the mid-2000s, said Sotheby's.
Study for a Portrait of P.L. will be sold on 14 May and goes on display at Sotheby's in London from 12-16 April | Francis Bacon's powerful painting of Peter Lacy just months after his death will go up for auction on May 14 | 34.47619 | 0.904762 | 1.761905 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/09/19/04/48/pistorius-hopes-for-parole-as-panel-review | http://web.archive.org/web/20151002091452id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/09/19/04/48/pistorius-hopes-for-parole-as-panel-review | Pistorius hopes for parole as panel review | 20151002091452 | Oscar Pistorius is sentenced on October 21, 2014. (Getty)
A South African parole board has met to determine whether Paralympian star Oscar Pistorius should be released early from a prison, but made no announcement by the end of the day.
The double-amputee sprinter, 28, was sentenced in October to five years in prison for killing model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day 2013, after a trial that attracted global headlines.
He was found guilty of culpable homicide - a charge equivalent to manslaughter - after saying during the trial that he shot her through a locked bathroom door because he mistook her for an intruder.
Pistorius was due to leave prison last month to serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest, but Justice Minister Michael Masutha blocked his release and referred the case to the parole review board.
Even if he is freed, Pistorius could find himself back behind bars for a minimum of 15 years if an appeal by prosecutors is successful.
They are pursuing a murder conviction and a longer sentence, saying Pistorius deliberately killed Steenkamp after an argument.
Shooting victim Reeva Steenkamp. (AAP)
If the parole review board decides that Pistorius should be released from prison, the athlete might be able to leave jail immediately, his lawyer Brian Webber told AFP, but there was no indication on Friday of when that decision would be made.
Whatever the outcome of the parole decision, the Supreme Court of Appeal will hear the prosecution's appeal in November.
Oscar Pistorius grabs his head in shock as images of a bloodied Reeva Steenkamp are shown at his murder trial in Pretoria High Court. (Getty)
Do you have any news photos or videos? | A South African parole board is yet to determine whether Oscar Pistorius should leave jail, weeks after the justice minister blocked his release. | 13.16 | 0.92 | 2.6 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/11/jack-bogle-accept-market-return-for-what-it-is.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151002200229id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/11/jack-bogle-accept-market-return-for-what-it-is.html | Jack Bogle: Accept market return for what it is | 20151002200229 | Bogle, who is No. 9 on CNBC's First 25 List, said owning part of a business is very appealing because whatever is left after the dividends are paid out is reinvested back into the company, thus furthering its growth.
Read MoreGrowing Stock Market Bullishness Not A Concern Yet
Despite the recent upswing in market all-time highs, global retail investors are holding up to 40 percent of their assets in cash, according to research conducted by State Street's Center for Applied Research. This number is up from 31 percent just two years ago.
However, Bogle's not buying that figure. "I'm extremely dubious about the 40 percent figure….it's probably 20 percent maybe."
Read MoreJack Bogle: Why investors shouldn't fear flash trading | Investors are better off investing in stocks versus commodities or gold for the long run, Vanguard founder Jack Bogle said. | 6.727273 | 0.409091 | 0.5 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/george-zimmerman-tweets-phone-number-of-man-friends-worried | http://web.archive.org/web/20151002234810id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/george-zimmerman-tweets-phone-number-of-man-friends-worried | George Zimmerman in Twitter War : People.com | 20151002234810 | updated 10/01/2015 AT 12:00 PM EDT
•originally published 10/01/2015 AT 01:55 PM EDT
In the two years since George Zimmerman was
for shooting Trayvon Martin, he has become increasingly vocal on social media, often becoming combative with people who disagree with him.
Zimmerman's increasingly bizarre social media activity has concerned his friends and family. "I do hope that he'll step away from the computer and live his life," a source close to Zimmerman tells PEOPLE. "The Twitter thing isn't doing him any favors."
According to the source, Zimmerman spends a lot of time on social media, seeing what people are saying about him. "Twitter is a delusional thing," says the source. "You get a false sense of who your supporters are. And I feel like he's falling into that trap."
Zimmerman did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.
Late last month, he drew fire
of Martin's dead body. The tweet was later deleted.
But Zimmerman hasn't curtailed his social media activity, and has now begun tweeting the personal cell number of a Tennessee auto worker, claiming that the man is behind in his child support.
In other tweets, Zimmerman posted the man's personal cell number as his own, and encourages people to contact him "for media inquiries."
But the man, Micah Williams, says that he doesn't know Zimmerman. "There is no relationship, business or personal, between Mr. Micah Williams and George Zimmerman," he says in a statement. "George Zimmerman is attempting to badger Mr. Williams by publicizing Mr. Williams' phone numbers as his own." Williams referred any further questions to his attorney.
It's an interesting turnaround for Zimmerman: when actress Roseanne Barr had
in 2012, the family sued the actress for $637,000. (The case was later thrown out.) | "The Twitter thing isn't doing him any favors," says a source close to Zimmerman | 20.388889 | 1 | 7.444444 | medium | high | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/12/australian-dollar-tumbles-after-china-weakens-yuan-guidance.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151003142618id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/12/australian-dollar-tumbles-after-china-weakens-yuan-guidance.html | Dollar falls after China moves cast doubt on Sept. Fed rate hike | 20151003142618 | Analysts also said that traders, aiming to reduce risky bets, repurchased the euro after "shorting" or betting against the currency, which in turn drove the euro higher.
"Now that traders have been a little bit overexposed on the short side for the euro, they're going to take some chips off the table," said Axel Merk, president and chief investment officer of Palo Alto, California-based Merk Investments.
Read MoreHow to anger Asia, Fed in one shot: Devalue the yuan
In China, the spot yuan fell to 6.4510 per dollar, its weakest since August 2011. In international trade it touched 6.5943 yuan per dollar, its lowest since early 2011.
The PBOC surprised markets on Tuesday by aggressively lowering its guidance rate, pushing the yuan down nearly 2 percent.
The Aussie, widely considered a more liquid proxy for China plays, was last up 0.89 percent against the dollar at $0.7352, after plunging to $0.7217, its lowest since mid-2009. The New Zealand dollar was last up 0.96 percent against the dollar at $0.662, after hitting a six-year low of $0.6468.
The euro was up 1.07 percent against the dollar at $1.1163. The dollar was last down 0.71 percent against the Japanese yen at 124.17 yen. The dollar was last down 1.37 percent against the Swiss franc at 0.9746 franc. | The U.S. dollar fell on Wednesday to its lowest in about a month against a basket of major currencies. | 13.15 | 0.65 | 0.75 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/10/02/16/32/african-preacher-outed-as-fraudster-after-walking-on-air-with-help-of-off-camera-aide | http://web.archive.org/web/20151004081843id_/http://www.9news.com.au:80/world/2015/10/02/16/32/african-preacher-outed-as-fraudster-after-walking-on-air-with-help-of-off-camera-aide | African preacher outed as fraudster after ‘walking on air’ with help of off-camera aide | 20151004081843 | An African preacher, who claimed to have walked on air in an an “exclusive” video “filmed live”, has been outed as a sham by eagle-eyed YouTuber users.
A video of “Prophet” Shepherd Bushiri’s apparent miracle was uploaded to YouTube on Sep 21, where it has since been viewed more than 282,000 times.
The video shows Mr Bushiri descending a stairwell, before panning across the room to indicate there is no one else in the immediate vicinity.
Mr Bushiri then steps down from the stairwell only to be suspended, the camera zooming on his feet as they tread air above the floor.
Countless YouTube users have decried the display as smoke and mirrors.
“The door on the right hand side is not in the same position at the end of the video then it was at the beginning of the video,” user Riekus Wessi said.
“When you analyse the shadows when he [Mr Bushiri] is ‘floating’ you can see multiple shadows.
“When his feet touch the ground you can see one of the shadows disappearing to the right. You can hear the door being opened and closed.”
All evidence points to Mr Bushiri being lifted by an off-camera assistant – creating the illusion he is walking on air.
Mr Bushiri is credited as the founder of the Enlightened Christian Gathering Church and the Shepherd Bushiri Ministries International.
His Facebook page lists his personal interests as ‘Spending time with God’, while the biography suggests his birth may be the product of divine intervention.
“[Mr Bushiri’s] birth was mysterious and there were so many issues surrounding his birth such that after he had been safely delivered, his mother called him Shepherd, acknowledging that the Lord is her Shepherd,” it reads.
Do you have any news photos or videos? | An African preacher, who claimed to have walked on air in an an “exclusive” video “filmed live”, has been outed as a sham by eagle-eyed YouTuber users. | 9.888889 | 0.805556 | 10.916667 | low | medium | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2009/06/16/when-do-you-tell-your-boss/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20151006213713id_/http://fortune.com/2009/06/16/when-do-you-tell-your-boss/ | When do you tell your boss? | 20151006213713 | There have been several kerfluffles around my office recently, all revolving around the same issue: What do you tell your boss and when? This would seem to be a simple question, but it’s not. First, it depends on the boss. Some guys (and in that category I, as always, include women guys) want to know nothing until it rears up and bites them in the butt, and then you should have told them. Others want to know what color tie or scarf you’re planning to wear next Thursday. And the target moves. On Monday, Chet may want to know everything. On Tuesday, you can’t rouse him from his slumber.
So what’s a poor employee to do? Take this quiz and see how sensitive you are. How you score may determine whether or not you have a future.
1. You have a big party coming up and you’re trying to decide what canapes to serve. Do you tell the boss?
b. Of course! She likes to know every little detail!
c. Not really, except I make sure to have those little empanadas she likes so much.
2. You’re going on vacation next month. Do you tell the boss?
a. No. My life is my own!
b. Of course. He likes to know every detail.
c. I’m going to check the dates to make sure it coincides with his vacation as much as possible, but in the end I’m going to do what I have to do, making sure that he and his assistant know what my plans are.
3. You’re going to have a meeting with a bunch of people about something that may or may not happen sometime in the future. Do you tell the boss?
a. No! I’ll tell him about it when he needs to know.
b. Of course. I don’t floss without telling him everything.
c. Yeah, I’ll shoot him an e-mail, just an FYI. Some people are attending who may mention it to him and then he’ll feel like he’s out of the loop. He hates that.
4. Your division is about to make a big deal with another company. It’s going to be announced next Tuesday. Do you tell the boss?
a. I’ll tell her Tuesday morning. You know, give her a “heads-up.”
b. I’ll tell her about the whole thing right now, before we even talk to Law and Public Relations. She’s going to want to go over this thing from top to bottom!
c. I’ll get all the moving pieces started, and then dial her in, probably on Friday. That will give her the weekend to go over the paper and think about what we might have missed.
5. You’re getting a divorce. Your life is a shambles. Do you tell the boss?
a. Definitely! He’ll feel really sorry for me!
b. I’ll mope around until he asks me what’s wrong. Then I’ll tell him everything. For a LONG time.
c. I’ll mention it. Since it’s not about him, he’ll have limited interest in it, but he ought to know in case I flake out a little bit in the coming months.
SCORING: Score yourself 1 point for every a. answer, which is a low score because you’re a really stinky communicator and a bad employee. Score yourself 2 points for every b. answer, because while you’re a suckup, you’re erring on the right side by reaching out and trying to make your boss aware of things. You’re likely to be a pretty big pain in the a**, though. Keep that in mind. Score yourself 3 points for every c. answer, because you’re clearly trying to address the issue with subtlety and modulation. You may not get it right every time, but you’re trying to play it a situation at a time and neither tell too much or too little. So good for you.
As always, the higher you score, the higher your score. Give yourself a point for trying. Trying counts. | There have been several kerfluffles around my office recently, all revolving around the same issue: What do you tell your boss and when? This would seem to be a simple question, but it's not. First, it depends on the boss. Some guys (and in that category I, as always, include women guys) want to know… | 12.044118 | 0.970588 | 32.5 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/14/reuters-america-update-2-greek-pm-faces-biggest-party-revolt-yet-as-bailout-approved.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151008041842id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/14/reuters-america-update-2-greek-pm-faces-biggest-party-revolt-yet-as-bailout-approved.html | UPDATE 2-Greek PM faces biggest party revolt yet as bailout approved | 20151008041842 | * Parliament easily passes bailout bill
* Tsipras likely to call confidence vote after Aug 20-officials
* Vote reveals widening revolt within Syriza
* Euro zone ministers to meet to approve deal
ATHENS, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faced the widest rebellion yet from his leftist lawmakers as parliament approved a new bailout programme on Friday, forcing him to consider a confidence vote that could pave the way for early elections.
After lawmakers bickered through the night on procedural matters, parliament comfortably passed the country's third financial rescue by foreign creditors in five years thanks to support from pro-euro opposition parties.
That clears the way for euro zone finance ministers to approve the first batch of aid from the 85-billion-euro package later on Friday, though deep doubts remain in major creditor Germany about whether Athens will fulfil its pledges.
"I do not regret my decision to compromise," Tsipras said as he defended the bailout from euro zone and International Monetary Fund creditors that comes at the price of tax hikes, spending cuts and tough economic reforms. "We undertook the responsibility to stay alive over choosing suicide."
But the vote laid bare the depth of anger within Tsipras's leftist Syriza party at austerity measures as 43 lawmakers - or nearly a third of Syriza deputies - voted against the bailout deal or abstained.
It also left the government with support from within its own coalition below the threshold of 120 votes in the 300-seat chamber, the minimum needed to command a majority and survive a confidence vote if others abstain.
In response, government officials said Tsipras was expected to call a confidence vote in parliament after Greece makes a debt payment to the European Central Bank on Aug. 20 - a risky move that could trigger the collapse of his government and snap elections.
A senior lawmaker, Makis Voridis, from the opposition New Democracy party said his party would not vote in favour of the government, raising the odds that Tsipras's coalition could be toppled.
Still, some of those who rebelled against Tsipras on Friday could still opt to support the government in a confidence vote - as could other pro-European parties like the centrist Potami and the centre-left PASOK, leaving unclear the final outcome.
The vote was only the latest in a series of events highlighting the deepening rift within Syriza, which stormed to power this year on a pledge to end austerity once and for all, before Tsipras accepted a bailout under threat of a euro exit.
The leader of Syriza's far-left rebel faction, former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, took a step toward breaking away from the party on Thursday by calling for a new anti-bailout movement.
"The fight against the new bailout starts today, by mobilising people in every corner of the country," said a statement signed by Lafazanis and 11 other Syriza members.
The rebels insist the government should stand by the promises on which it was elected, to reverse the waves of spending cuts and tax rises which have had a devastating effect on an already weak economy over the past few years.
Adding to Tsipras's troubles, parliamentary speaker and Syriza anti-austerity hardliner Zoe Konstantopoulou snubbed a request from Tsipras to speed up handling of the bailout bill.
Instead, she raised a long series of procedural questions and objections which held up proceedings that were due to be wrapped up on Thursday, infuriating lawmakers. The delay forced Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos to miss the vote because he had to depart for the euro zone finance ministers' meeting in Brussels.
As talks in parliament dragged on through the night, tempers flared, with the conservative opposition accusing Tsakalotos of making "provocative" comments and warning him not to take its support for the deal for granted.
With the bill's passage, focus turns to a meeting of euro zone ministers in Brussels who now must approve the deal so aid can be disbursed before Athens must make a 3.2 billion euro debt payment to the European Central Bank on Aug. 20.
Athens is keen to get ratification so it can avoid having to take a new bridge loan to make the payment - a prospect Tsipras called a return to the country's crisis days.
But Germany - the biggest contributor to Greek bailout programmes - remains deeply sceptical that Athens will live up to pledges to reform its economy and political system, raising doubts about whether it will seek to hold up approval.
Other more long-term concerns also remain. The IMF has made clear it would participate in the programme only if Europe agreed to ease Greece's huge debt burden.
But Berlin opposes writing off any Greek debt, although it is open to the idea of extending grace periods before Athens has to start paying interest and principal on its bailout loans.
Tsipras has long argued Greece cannot repay all its debts and demanded a partial write-off. The creditors have agreed to consider the issue only after a review in October of the government's implementation of its side of the deal.
(Writing by Deepa Babington; Editing by Peter Graff) | ATHENS, Aug 14- Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faced the widest rebellion yet from his leftist lawmakers as parliament approved a new bailout programme on Friday, forcing him to consider a confidence vote that could pave the way for early elections. That clears the way for euro zone finance ministers to approve the first batch of aid from the 85-... | 15.234375 | 0.953125 | 30.203125 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/jul/11/exhibition-picks-scotland-ireland | http://web.archive.org/web/20151008060649id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/jul/11/exhibition-picks-scotland-ireland | Pick of the week: Exhibitions | 20151008060649 | Willie Doherty Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh Last chance to catch Doherty's video installations. Quite beautiful, despite the grimness of their subject: the political tensions of his native Northern Ireland.
Raphael To Renoir National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh Some 500 years of European drawing on loan from the collection of Jean Bonna. Includes graphic gems by Rembrandt, Ingres, Cézanne and Degas.
Ian Hamilton Finlay Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh Undoubtedly one of the most inventive creative individuals of modern day Scottish culture, Finlay was a concrete poet, conceptual sculptor and formal gardener.
Helen Baker-Alder Corn Exchange Gallery, Edinburgh Baker-Alder's paintings appear like walls on to which abstract dreams have been projected. Pictures to gaze at again and again and drift off into.
Terry Winters Irish Museum Of Modern Art, Dublin Intricate and highly systematic paintings that take their abstract vocabulary from barcodes, maps, charts, circuit boards and radar screens. | Scotland and Ireland: Willie Doherty | Raphael To Renoir | Ian Hamilton Finlay | Helen Baker-Alder | Terry Winters | 8 | 0.772727 | 2.045455 | low | low | mixed |
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/list/201510/best-nfl-stadiums-tailgating-fans-grill-food-beer | http://web.archive.org/web/20151008154401id_/http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/list/201510/best-nfl-stadiums-tailgating-fans-grill-food-beer | Best NFL Stadiums For Tailgating | 20151008154401 | Ready for some good old-fashioned American football? Now that football season is here, we thought it be only be fair to give our readers an inside look at what the top NFL stadium have to offer to tailgaters.
To narrow our list, we used three criteria: The number of lots provided for tailgating by each stadium, the tailgating rules and restrictions it applies, and the number of times a stadium has appeared on other round-ups of best tailgating venues. Those mentioned repeatedly as one of the best for tailgating got major points; on the other hand, stadiums that don't permit alcohol or RVs in their lots lost points.
Some go above and beyond the average tailgating traditions. You've probably heard of beer-can chicken, but do you know about the infamous Pittsburgh mobile tailgating unit?
When we discuss what each stadium has to offer, it usually involves something along the lines of parking lots, foods or booze. Heinz Field is one of the only stadiums on our list that provides something no other stadium provides: A fan-based, mobile tailgating unit, or MTU, out of a repurposed ambulance.
Pittsburgh tailgaters ride in style, with pizza, beer, and burgers on board. An added bonus: There are bathrooms on board. The only downside is that other RVS are not allowed on the stadium's property.
There's an outdoor area near the parking lot that's dedicated to Ralph Wilson tailgaters, but that's not the main attraction for Bills fans. The real party is at The ADPRO Sports Training Center -- not officially part of the stadium, but adjacent to it.
With plenty of people, pizza, and (of course) Buffalo wings, this pre-game venue offers the biggest indoor tailgate party in the league.
If you're planning on attending a Chiefs game, get plenty of rest. The pre-game party here attracts football fanatics as much as five hours before game time, making it pretty much an all-day affair. The most important components at this tailgate are the two B's: Beer and bacon.
It doesn't matter whose tent you visit, the food is always served with bacon, if not wrapped inside it. An Arrowhead Stadium tailgate is a full-blown bacon extravaganza that attracts visitors from all around the country.
Only the most diehard football fans are willing to bear a blizzard for their beloved team, so you know how dedicated the tailgaters of Gillette Stadium are. Besides, what better way to stay warm than by bundling up and sipping that famous New England clam chowder?
The spread of clams, scallops and other delicious seafood present at Patriot parties is impressive, but the restrictions against tailgating in some lots kept Gillette Stadium from stealing a spot in the top three.
Lincoln Financial Field allows tailgating on all lots. Despite two Super Bowl losses, the relationship between this team and its fan base has become stronger and stronger. Though the Eagles fans are always hoping for a W, the scoreboard doesn't play a role in the atmosphere of these pre-game parties.
No matter what the outcome of the game is, there is always plenty of pizza, pretzels and taste-bud-tingling cheesesteaks for everyone to enjoy.
Who cares about the wind? This hardy tailgate is known for fans facing the cold and grilling some of the best steaks around. Solider Field is near the top of our list because it provides the best of both worlds, including lots with absolutely no restrictions and two family-friendly lots that welcome children.
You can bring whatever you want to eat or drink, but Chicago is famous for its grilled Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Yes, you read that right. What could be better?
Before you start talking about the Browns unimpressive record, hear us out. This team's continuous losing streak is one of the main reasons it has snagged our No. 1 spot. Ohio natives take the game of football very seriously, no matter how their team may play. The Browns losing streak allows their fans to give their undivided attention to food, booze, and unique tailgating traditions.
Chili, fried turkey and Bloody Marys fill the tents of Cleveland football fanatics, making this one of the heartiest tailgates around. If you're ever lucky enough to experience a tailgate at here, be sure to try the famous beer-can chicken, a whole bird roasted with a can of beer in its cavity.
For the complete list of the Best NFL Stadiums for Tailgating go to TheDailyMeal.com.
More From The Daily Meal: -- Healthy Alternatives to Your Favorite Stadium Food -- The 8 Healthiest Beers to Pack in Your Tailgate Cooler -- Healthiest Foods to Bring to a Tailgate -- 10 Myths About Your Favorite Sports Drinks
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Buffalo Bills, Chicago Bears, Cleveland Browns, Food, Football, homegating, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots, NFL, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Tailgating, The Daily Meal | The Daily Meal
Ready for some good old-fashioned American football? Now that football season is here, we thought it be only be fair to give our reader... | 29.242424 | 0.909091 | 22.363636 | medium | medium | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/17/office-envy-inside-methods-san-francisco-workspace.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151009050614id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/17/office-envy-inside-methods-san-francisco-workspace.html | Office Envy: Inside Method's San Francisco workspace | 20151009050614 | It's a Monday morning in Method's San Francisco headquarters and approximately 40 employees gather in the lobby for their weekly all-staff meeting.
But it's not like most corporate meetings.
Known as "the Monday Morning Huddle," employees scatter everywhere from the floor to sofa stoops, while a staff member makes announcements. During the meeting, music blasts as an employee stands up to be awarded for a recent project she accomplished. She spins a wheel which lands on a section, winning her a gift card.
Method was founded in 2001 and designs and manufactures hand wash and cleaning products. Its San Francisco office has more than 100 employees and Method recently opened a 30-million dollar factory in Chicago. | Inside Method's San Francisco office, the "people against dirty" show their innovative office space. | 7.210526 | 0.631579 | 1.263158 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/25/oxford-dictionary-adds-sext-meh-twerk.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151009093022id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/25/oxford-dictionary-adds-sext-meh-twerk.html | Oxford dictionary adds 'sext,' 'meh,' 'twerk' | 20151009093022 | Who said the Oxford English Dictionary was behind the times?
The nearly 200-year-old definer of words added newcomers to its official ranks on Thursday, ranging from jeggings to staycation to photobomb—making sentences like I photobombed that sext of you in jeggings on our staycation totes legit. (Tweet This)
But not just any neologism can become a word in the online Oxford English Dictionary; a word generally has to have been in use in news stories and fiction for at least 10 years. That often means diligently tracing the roots of words like twerk, which can stretch back more than two centuries before it was destined to conjure up images of Miley Cyrus.
Read MoreEmojis: The death of the written language?
In fact, the word stretches back to 1820 (originally spelled twirk) to describe 'a twisting or jerking movement,' before it was adopted by the New Orleans 90's 'bounce' music scene, according to the Oxford English Dictionary's latest blog post. Other words inevitably have far younger roots, like sext, which the dictionary cites as a blend of sex and text. | The online Oxford English Dictionary officially crowned new words on Thursday, including 'sext,' 'jeggings,' and 'twerk.' | 8.192308 | 0.884615 | 2.038462 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/18/reuters-america-update-2-russian-bank-vtb-swings-to-profit-as-provisions-cut.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151009102506id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/18/reuters-america-update-2-russian-bank-vtb-swings-to-profit-as-provisions-cut.html | UPDATE 2-Russian bank VTB swings to profit as provisions cut | 20151009102506 | (Updates with comments by CFO, analyst; updates share price)
MOSCOW, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Russian bank VTB reported a return to profit in the second quarter because of lower loan-loss provisions and a recovery in margins, but remained cautious on the outlook for the rest of the year as the economic downturn weighs.
VTB, the country's second-largest lender by assets, is along with Russia's other state-cntrolled banks a target of the Western sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine that has restricted the bank's access to international capital markets.
It made net profit of 1.2 billion roubles ($18.3 million) in the second quarter following losses in each of the previous two quarters.
Despite beating analysts' expectations for a small net loss, its latest result was 74 percent down on the profit it made in the same quarter last year of 4.6 billion roubles.
Its shares were down 0.5 percent by 1149 GMT, when the Russian market's MICEX index was down 0.9 pct.
"We are going to try to show a positive financial result at the end of the year, even if it might be small," VTB Chief Financial Officer Herbert Moos told a conference call.
Loan-loss provisions fell to 31 billion roubles in the second quarter from more than 48 billion roubles in the first quarter.
That was the main reason the bank was able to turn a profit, according to Gazprombank analyst Andrey Klapko.
"We are not yet confident that pressure from provisions is over. VTB could still see a spike in the second half as the risks are still there," he said.
VTB's net interest margin improved to 2.5 percent in the second quarter from 1.7 percent in the previous quarter, helped by the central bank cutting its main lending rate from 14 percent to 11.5 percent over the period.
Meanwhile, it continued to rein in lending.
Moos said he saw signs of the demand for loans picking up and that he expected the trend to strengthen, allowing the bank to increase its corporate loan book by up to 10 percent by year-end.
The bank's business in Ukraine, a source of heavy losses last year, would not exert such a significant effect on this year's results, Moos added.
VTB's Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio stood at 10.1 percent of assets at the end of the reporting period, up 0.4 percentage points in the second quarter. ($1=65.5000 roubles)
(Reporting by Alexander Winning; Editing by Maria Kiselyova, Greg Mahlih) | MOSCOW, Aug 18- Russian bank VTB reported a return to profit in the second quarter because of lower loan-loss provisions and a recovery in margins, but remained cautious on the outlook for the rest of the year as the economic downturn weighs. VTB, the country's second-largest lender by assets, is along with Russia's other state-cntrolled banks a target of the... | 6.689189 | 0.972973 | 34.243243 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/30/10-stocks-ready-to-pop-in-the-second-half.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151009235915id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/30/10-stocks-ready-to-pop-in-the-second-half.html | 10 stocks ready to pop in the second half | 20151009235915 | The recent selloff in a certain group of stocks could be setting up a nice trading opportunity for the second half of the year.
In the first half of 2015, interest rate-sensitive stocks such as utilities and REITs were pummeled on fears a rate hike by the Federal Reserve later this year would start to make bonds a more attractive option than the healthy dividend yields these equities offer.
Since reaching all-time highs in January, the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLU) and the Vanguard REIT Index Fund (VNQ) are both down more than 16 percent, trading Tuesday around the lowest level this year.
But as these stocks stall, an increasing number of traders are taking a contrarian approach, scooping up the shares.
"We are making the case for increasing exposure to utilities and REITs," wrote Carter Worth, head of technical analysis at Cornerstone Macro, in a recent note to clients Monday. | The recent selloff in high-yield stocks may be overdone, setting up this group for a potential rebound as investors step in to buy those shares. | 6.172414 | 0.655172 | 1.206897 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/14/after-hours-buzz-apollo-sabra-software-more.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151010032411id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/14/after-hours-buzz-apollo-sabra-software-more.html | After-hours buzz: Apollo, Sabra Software & more | 20151010032411 | Check out which companies are making headlines after the bell Monday:
Apollo Education Group - Shares of the for-profit educator fell in after-hours trading after the company said the U.S. Department of Education would review its administration of federal student financial aid.
Peregrine Pharmaceuticals - The biopharmaceutical company reported a fourth-quarter loss of 6 cents a share on $6.5 million in revenue. Analysts expected an EPS loss of 7 cents on $5 million in sales. Its shares rose in after-hours trading.
Sabra Software - The provider of management software declined in after-hours after it released selected financial metrics and reiterated that it was working on finishing audits for prior periods and fiscal year 2014. | Check out which companies are making headlines after the bell Monday: Apollo, Sabra Software & more. | 7.105263 | 0.842105 | 7.894737 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/08/trader-nyse-halt-unnerving-but-dont-panic.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151010123614id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/08/trader-nyse-halt-unnerving-but-dont-panic.html | Polcari: NYSE halt unnerving, but don't panic | 20151010123614 | Despite a technical glitch that led to the NYSE trading floor halt Wednesday, the markets are robust and the problem will be contained, trader Kenny Polcari said.
"The market is very robust," the director of O'Neil Securities told CNBC's "Halftime Report" on Wednesday.
"In that sense, it's robust because there are alternative venues where stocks can trade and in fact that's what you see happening now."
Read MoreTrading halted on NYSE floor
Trading in all symbols was halted on the New York Stock Exchange floor around 11:32 a.m. ET on Wednesday due to an apparent technical issue. The exchange was investigating the issue that caused the halt, Reuters reported, citing a source.
"NYSE/NYSE MKT has temporarily suspended trading in all symbols. Additional information will follow as soon as possible," the NYSE said in a statement on its status page.
Read More United Airlines flights restored after worldwide groundstop
"It's just a NYSE issue at the moment," Polcari said. "In that sense it shouldn't raise the panic level."
He explained that the NYSE is no longer the only marketplace where trades can happen. Due to technology, trades happen across several venues, most of which are electronic.
"Our markets are robust, they are stable," he said. "Stocks in this country have not come to a standstill."
The real question, he said, is how mutual funds and ETFs will price stocks at the closing bell.
"So many mutual funds and ETFs price off the listed closing price which has always been the New York Stock Exchange. On Nasdaq, it's the Nasdaq closing price. For listed securities it's always been the New York Stock Exchange. So that's going to be the question as we move closer to 4 p.m. If they are unable to, for whatever reason, to get it up and running again, how are they going to do that?"
—CNBC's Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report. | Despite a technical glitch that led to halted trading on the NYSE floor, the markets are robust and the problem will be contained, a trader said. | 13.517241 | 1 | 7.206897 | low | high | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/22/are-expat-packages-a-thing-of-the-past.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151010185702id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/22/are-expat-packages-a-thing-of-the-past.html | Are expat packages a thing of the past? | 20151010185702 | A decade ago, when companies were quickly building a presence in Asia, doling out incentives to lure top talent was the norm. However, with Asia's economic resilience and multinational companies attributing increasing strategic importance to the region, there's little no shortage of talent willing to relocate.
On top of this, Asian companies prefer local professionals, so international candidates often have to negotiate a local package.
Read MorePriciest city also among the poorest
"What is clear is that there is no one-size-fits-all for an expat package anymore and today businesses are taking a more cost-effective approach. Traditional components like housing and schooling are no longer standard for all postings," said Mark Hall, vice president and country general manager at Kelly Services Singapore.
"Expat packages are becoming more limited to senior executives and individuals with very niche skill sets," he added, pointing to industries such as biotechnology, environmental and energy science.
Employees have a better shot of landing an expat package if they are posted abroad by their current company.
"Within the financial services sector, being mobilized by your current firm at director level or above, you can still expect to be given allowances such housing and international schooling," said Paul Evans, director at recruitment firm Astbury Marsden.
Read MoreTransfer to Beijing? Why expats are saying 'no thanks'
This is a contrast from pre-global financial crisis days where expat packages would frequently include allowance for housing, school, car, various club memberships – including the purchase of debentures to secure priority access to waiting lists – as well as two flights home per year for the employee and their family, according to Astbury Marsden.
"If you're moving internationally to a city like Singapore or Hong Kong with a new company, oftentimes they won't offer an expat package. However, we have seen a number of firms offering support through paying relocation costs; initial flights out, shipping [of belongings] and up to 4-6 weeks serviced apartment accommodation" he said.
While getting expat benefits is becoming more competitive, recruiters say full-fledged packages are still offered in 'hardship postings' to emerging and frontier markets.
"The more traditional types of package are more likely to be offered with perceived hardship postings. If a senior professional is required to relocate, for example, to Myanmar or Indonesia where public transport is very limited it is highly probably they would be provided with a car and a local driver," said Hall.
Read MoreBacklash stirs in US against foreign worker visas
"A typical expat package is tied to a short-term international posting of approximately three to five years. If the employee wishes to stay on after this period of time their remuneration package will usually be localized and we are seeing this happen regularly," he added. | In the good old days, a job posting to Asia's financial hubs commonly included a lavish benefit package but those days are gone. | 21.153846 | 0.576923 | 0.653846 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/25/mysterious-stock-cynk-plummets-after-reopening.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151010200454id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/25/mysterious-stock-cynk-plummets-after-reopening.html | Mysterious stock CYNK plummets after reopening | 20151010200454 | Experts told CNBC the week of the SEC halt that they expected CYNK to fall precipitously after reopening, and its first day of trading is proving those predictions correct. When it was halted, the stock was worth just less than $14 per share, and is now below $3 a share after briefly hovering around $5 earlier Friday morning.
An OTC Markets spokeswoman told Reuters that CYNK's shares were not trading on its platform, but were occurring over the phone.
Earlier this week Reuters reported that OTC's CEO did not expect CYNK to trade on its platform at all after reopening, as no brokerages would file the required paperwork for the stock to trade on their exchanges.
Read MoreCynk suspension ending, but shares unlikely to trade
An SEC spokesman said that the organization cannot comment on the status of a company after a suspension period ends, citing an online explanation of the process. That document notes that broker-dealers may not solicit investors to trade the previously suspended OTC stock until they satisfy several regulatory requirements.
The SEC warned, however, that "unsolicited" trading may occur after a reopening—as CYNK is now seeing— but "even though such trading is allowed, it can be very risky for investors without current and reliable information about the company." | CYNK Technology, the OTC stock that once broke a $6 billion market cap, dropped sharply in its first trades after an SEC halt. | 9.185185 | 0.592593 | 0.888889 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/02/24/pot-how-two-cities-are-handling-it-differently.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151012102400id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/02/24/pot-how-two-cities-are-handling-it-differently.html | Pot: How two cities are handling it differently | 20151012102400 | Garden City was founded by a bootlegger named A.F. Ray. When Prohibition ended, and Greeley remained dry, Ray decided to incorporate his own town.
And now history is repeating itself.
In January, Garden City saw its first legal retail sale of recreational pot in northern Colorado, at the soon-to-be-named XG Platinum. More than a dozen customers waited outside before doors opened.
XG is one of four marijuana dispensaries in a town less than a mile long. The largest one is Nature's Herbs and Wellness Center, owned by John Rotherham. He says Garden City has stayed true to its roots.
"They embraced medical marijuana when it came along. My wife and I went to 14 different cities, and everyone was placing moratoriums on them. Garden City—they were one of the very first ones to embrace it and license it," Rotherham said.
With 45 workers, he is the largest employer in town. It's a bustling family business, where his mother, father, aunt and uncle gather to trim bud.
Rotherham, a small businessman who once ran grocery stores and restored automobiles, says he never expected to become a marijuana mogul.
"It's really surprising to hear your mother say, "Boy, we have really nice buds today," he said.
He has had to build a new greenhouse just to keep up with the demand he's expecting from recreational marijuana. Over the coming year, he plans to triple or quadruple in size.
"I never planned on being this big. But you just have to grow with the demand."
Each joint and edible sold means tax money for the state and towns like Garden City, where taxes levied on medical marijuana already fund a third of the budget. With new retail sales, the mayor expects that number to rise.
The blue collar town is putting that money toward revitalization. Among other initiatives, it's offering matching renovation grants to homeowners and businesses. The mayor points to the new facade at the historic White Horse Bar as one example of a business that has taken advantage of the resources.
A windfall like that would tempt most town leaders, but not in Greeley.
"To have a community based on a tax structure that depends on the sale of marijuana, I think, is inappropriate," Greeley Mayor Tom Norton said.
While Garden City cashes in, Greeley has decided the wages of sin aren't worth the trouble.
Garner says he understands the arguments that marijuana is safer than alcohol, but he still has serious concerns about legalization.
"I've already got one legal intoxicant out here that's causing all kinds of problems in society," the police chief said. "Now I'm going to have another one out there. So what kind of mayhem is that going to cause?"
And for those who might view him as old-fashioned and out of touch with the new reality, Garner insists this isn't a question about personal morality—it's about public safety.
"I have no religious compunctions that marijuana is the devil's weed, it's evil and all that. My job is to keep people safe," he said. "And I worry that people are going to be less safe in my city, the city I'm responsible for because it's easier to get access to marijuana."
—By Na Eng, special to CNBC.com | About 60 miles northeast of Denver a battle between legal marijuana is going on. While Greeley, Colo., is shunning marijuana, neighboring Garden City is celebrating it. | 21.612903 | 0.677419 | 0.935484 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/10/reuters-america-corrected-wrapup-2-china-deflation-risks-grow-foreign-central-banks-on-alert.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151012225245id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/10/reuters-america-corrected-wrapup-2-china-deflation-risks-grow-foreign-central-banks-on-alert.html | CORRECTED-WRAPUP 2-China deflation risks grow, foreign central banks on alert | 20151012225245 | (Corrects throughout to show that events happened on Thursday, not Wednesday)
* Offshore yuan posts biggest daily gain on record
* New Zealand cbank governor warns on China risks
* Cites exported deflation, worries about falling yuan
* China producer prices down most in six years in August
* Premier Li says economy faces pressure but no hard landing
BEIJING/WELLINGTON Sept 10 (Reuters) - The risk of deflation in China is growing, data suggested on Thursday, as policymakers tried to reassure markets that the economy can stay on track and state banks were suspected of intervening in offshore markets to bolster the yuan.
Some foreign central banks are increasingly worried about the impact falling Chinese prices and a weaker yuan could have on their economies, following a surprise devaluation in the currency last month.
Since then investors have been betting the yuan, or renminbi, could fall further, reflected in a wide spread between the offshore and more-tightly controlled onshore rates.
On Thursday afternoon though a surge of buying sent the offshore rate up more than 1 percent, in what market sources said was a move by Chinese state-owned banks to curb speculation against their currency.
Sliding Chinese stock prices and currency have rattled global markets and prompted a flurry of policies and intervention by authorities to steady the world's second-biggest economy.
Earlier, New Zealand's central bank governor Graeme Wheeler said the yuan devaluation had left them concerned about the risk China may let it slide further.
"We've seen authorities basically say they want to stabilise the renminbi, but if there were to be a very substantial depreciation in the renminbi it would certainly export deflation around the rest of the world, so everybody is looking closely at China," he said at a press briefing following an interest rate cut in New Zealand.
The deflation threat was underlined by data showing that Chinese manufacturers cut prices at their fastest rate in six years, with the producer price index (PPI) down 5.9 percent in August from a year earlier, though consumer prices are rising for now.
"The risk for China is still deflation, not inflation," said Kevin Lai, chief economist for Asia, excluding Japan, at Daiwa.
"PPI deflation will eventually filter down to affect CPI, and aggregate demand will continue to be weak," he added.
A growing worry for overseas central banks like the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) is that falling Chinese factory gate prices coupled with a weaker yuan mean the price of exports from China will fall sharply, feeding downward price pressures into their economies.
Wheeler's comments came despite attempts by Chinese policymakers to reassure global markets that the yuan will remain stable and China's economic growth, whilst slowing, is still set to be around 7 percent this year.
"The RBNZ...verbalised it but this is probably an underlying concern shared by policymakers around the region," said Sim Moh Siong, foreign exchange strategist at Bank of Singapore.
Since the devaluation, China has scrambled to keep the yuan steady, running down its foreign exchange reserves by a record amount in August to stabilise the onshore rate.
Thursday's rise in the offshore yuan was the clearest indication to date that China will also try to stop speculation against its currency outside of the mainland.
"The big picture is that policy makers are doing everything they can do to dampen expectations that the yuan will depreciate much," said Mark Williams, an economist at Capital Economics in London.
The offshore yuan spot rate strengthened more than 1 percent to 6.39 per dollar from 6.4698 earlier in the day.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, for the second day running, used a speech to tell business leaders and investors on Thursday that China does not want a currency war and that the slowdown in its growth rate will be modest. The economy grew 7.3 percent last year.
"China's economy will not see a hard landing" he told a gathering of the World Economic Forum in Dalian in northeastern China.
"Once there are signs of economy slipping out of the reasonable range, we will be fully capable of handling (the situation)."
The economic signs are gloomy. After Li spoke, a report showed auto sales in China were flat in the first eight months of the year, raising the spectre of the market's first contraction since the late 1990s.
Global markets' worries about Beijing's handling of the economy and its currency have been exacerbated by China's attempts to stem the slide in its equity markets. Despite a barrage of policies to support stock prices and push out speculators, its equity markets have fallen around 40 percent since June.
The past two days though have seen Chinese stocks push higher, with the positive sentiment feeding into other major equity markets around the world. Still, that optimism was waning on Thursday, with share prices back in the red.
The CSI300 index of the biggest stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen ended down 1.23 percent, while the Shanghai Composite Index was 1.45 percent lower.
(Additional reportying by Winni Zhou, Xiaoyi Shao and Kevin Yao in Beijing, Nathaniel Taplin in Shanghai, Masayuki Kitano in Singapore, Ian Chua in Sydney, Gerry Shih in Dalian; Michelle Chen in Hong Kong; Writing by Rachel Armstrong; Editing by Neil Fullick) | *New Zealand cbank governor warns on China risks. *China producer prices down most in six years in August. BEIJING/ WELLINGTON Sept 10- The risk of deflation in China is growing, data suggested on Thursday, as policymakers tried to reassure markets that the economy can stay on track and state banks were suspected of intervening in offshore markets to bolster the... | 15.343284 | 0.970149 | 27 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/16/no-need-to-beef-up-security-after-paris-obama.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151012231306id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/16/no-need-to-beef-up-security-after-paris-obama.html | No need to beef up security after Paris: Obama | 20151012231306 | "As technology develops, as the world moves on, we should try to avoid the safe havens that could otherwise be created for terrorists to talk to each other," Cameron said.
Messaging services like Snapchat make it difficult for authorities to track communications. The prime minister previously indicated British authorities might want to crack down on such encrypted communications.
"Because this is a whole new world ... the laws that might have been designed for the traditional wiretap have to be updated," Obama said.
The president said during the news conference that "social media and the Internet" are the "primary ways" way terrorist organizations are communicating.
Still, Obama said that U.S. authorities maintain a framework for respecting privacy rights.
"For the most part, those who are worried about Big Brother sometimes obscure or deliberately ignore all the legal safeguards that have been put in place to assure people's privacy and make sure that government is not abusing these powers."
Coinciding with Cameron's visit, the U.S. and U.K announced that they will be holding cyber war games later this year that include simulated attacks on financial institutions.
Beyond the digital realm, fighting terrorism remains a chief concern for the two countries—especially in light of the recent attacks by extremists in Paris.
"We will do everything in our power to help France seek the justice that is needed," Obama said Friday.
The two leaders spoke with the media from Washington after a morning meeting on a wide range of topics.
The White House had said the discussion covered economics, cybersecurity, terrorism, Ebola, Russian involvement in Ukraine and more.
Economic growth is also a key issue for the two nations—both of which have seen some gains on that front amid a tepid global environment.
Friday's was the 12th official meeting of the two national leaders. | Authorities do not need to change course on balancing security and privacy, President Barack Obama and British PM David Cameron said. | 15.608696 | 0.652174 | 0.913043 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/19/investors-to-get-taste-of-new-china-via-shenzhen-trading-link.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151013005633id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/19/investors-to-get-taste-of-new-china-via-shenzhen-trading-link.html | Investors to get taste of new China via Shenzhen trading link | 20151013005633 | "Investors would love to see Shenzhen come online," said Nick Ronalds, head of equities at the Asia Securities and Investments Financial Markets Association. "Shenzhen is home to smaller, newer, more exciting companies."
Undeterred by the slow start of Stock Connect, Beijing policymakers are rushing to get the new connection in place as quickly as possible to boost the chances of having Chinese shares included in the MSCI emerging market index, the main benchmark for emerging market stocks.
If China were to be included following the MSCI bi-annual index review due in June, billions of foreign dollars would flow into Chinese stocks from fund managers who model their portfolios on the benchmark.
Shenzhen, a metropolis of 14 millions within commuting distance of Hong Kong, is best known for being at the center of Deng Xiaoping's 1980s experiment with capitalism.
Since then, the port city - a center of the salt trade in imperial China - has positioned itself at the bleeding edge of financial market reform, culminating in 2009 with the launch of the ChiNext growth board for high-growth companies.
The index, which boasts industrial robotics champion Siasun, movie studio Huayi Brothers and a host of dynamic biotechnology, aviation and software companies, has outperformed the Shanghai Composite Index in 11 out of 18 quarters since 2010.
That could attract foreign funds wary of investing in the state-owned financial giants that dominate larger rival Shanghai, said Ding Yuan, an accounting professor at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai who also runs a hedge fund.
Shanghai stocks, which surged more than 40 percent in the last quarter of 2014, tumbled nearly 8 percent on Monday as financial shares took a beating after regulators tightened rules on trading with borrowed cash. The ChiNext fell 0.5 percent, while the broader Shenzhen market dipped more than 3 percent.
Despite its attractions, the Shenzhen stock market, home to some of the most speculative Chinese investors, is not for the faint-hearted.
For one thing, the smaller size of most of the companies makes them intrinsically more volatile on a price basis than big blue chips - one reason domestic speculators prefer them. | Investors may should soon be able to directly trade stocks in Shenzhen, but the high valuations and extreme volatility may limit early inflows. | 16.52 | 0.48 | 0.56 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/15/bond-yields-climbing-ahead-of-fed.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151013041351id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/15/bond-yields-climbing-ahead-of-fed.html | Bond yields climbing ahead of Fed | 20151013041351 | "Does it tell you people think the Fed will raise rates or does it tell you people don't want to put money to work ahead of the Fed? I think it's more of the latter," said Briggs. "I think some of the move you're seeing is buyers might be reluctant to step in ahead of the Fed and they think there might be better levels on Thursday."
Yet, the two-year note yield, the most reflective of Fed hiking, jumped to 0.8 percent for the first time in four years.
Read MoreThis might be the worst Fed option
"There's a lot of selling going on. The markets are very thin and either someone is unwinding positions or someone is making a little bet that the Fed is going to raise rates. We've seen a few large trades on the front end," said Justin Lederer, rate strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Strategists also pinned the action, where there was a big move higher in stocks and selloff across the yield curve on asset allocation trades. The 10-year yield for instance, also moved higher to 2.27 percent.
"The market just felt heavy all day, and there was a lot of selling going in on the front end in the last few days. There were more sellers there today. If you think the Fed was going to go, you would expect the curve to flatten, but it's done anything but that," Lederer said. | Bond yields ripped higher ahead of the Fed's Thursday meeting at which the central bank could raise rates for the first time in nine years. | 10.481481 | 0.666667 | 2 | low | low | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/23/global-leaders-pay-respects-to-saudi-king.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151013080551id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/23/global-leaders-pay-respects-to-saudi-king.html | Global leaders pay respects to Saudi King | 20151013080551 | "One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond. The closeness and strength of the partnership between our two countries is part of King Abdullah's legacy."
The U.K. government also offered their condolences with Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond both releasing statements. The latter said that King Abdullah had served the kingdown for many years with "great dignity and dedication."
"His contribution to the prosperity and security of the Kingdom and the region will long be remembered," he added.
Meanwhile back at Davos, Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said that King Abdullah "was loved by his people and will be deeply missed," according to a statement.
Early on Friday morning, state television in Saudi Arabia confirmed that King Abdullah had died of pneumonia. He was admitted to hospital on December 31, state media reported at the time, and his brother Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz has now succeeded him as the new ruler.
Saudi Arabia is the world's top exporter of oil and one of the biggest producers and the news is likely to mean investors will be keen to see what the succession means for the commodity which has fallen by over 50 percent since mid-June last year.
"I don't think a change of leadership in Saudi Arabia will have a long-term impact on the oil price," Mark Malloch-Brown, a special adviser for FTI Consulting, told CNBC in Davos.
Daniel Yergin, IHS vice chairman, added that while the succession was "orderly" and "well planned," geopolitical risk in the region was now something to watch.
"In terms of the oil price, it is remarkable that a year ago, politics was in the price and now there is no geopolitics in the price and some of that may come back."
Brent crude oil rose on Friday amid uncertainty following the death of King Abdullah. Brent futures were last trading at $49.27 a barrel, around 75 cents higher on the day while WTI crude futures were at $46.28, dipping 3 cents.
Saudi Arabia is seen as a major ally to the U.S. in the Middle East and in the immediate term there is unlikely to be any disruption in that relationship, according to Stephen Yates, the CEO of DC International Advisory.
Nonetheless, he told CNBC Friday that with any transition there are always questions. | Investors will be keen to see what the succession means for the price of oil, which has fallen by over 50 percent since mid-June last year. | 16.1 | 1 | 11.533333 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/jared-bernstein-and-joe-hurley-debate-obamas-529-tax-plan.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151013085947id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/jared-bernstein-and-joe-hurley-debate-obamas-529-tax-plan.html | Real beneficiaries of 529 tax? The debate is on | 20151013085947 | President Barack Obama's plan to tax 529 college savings account withdrawals will largely benefit low-to-middle income families trying to pay for their kids' education, according to Vice President Joe Biden's former chief economist.
Jared Bernstein said in an interview with CNBC's "Power Lunch" on Monday the president's proposed tax will help low- to middle-income families by taking away a tax cut from people who do not need it and helping families that do.
"I have two [529 savings accounts] and I love them, so this is going to hit me," he said. "My kids will go to the best college they can get into regardless of the 529 and many people in upper-income classes can say that."
Read More UPenn leader backs call for affordable college ahead of Obama plan
Nevertheless, others believe Obama's plan will hurt the middle class rather than help it. "I was both surprised and disappointed by [the president's announcement]," said Joe Hurley, CEO of Savingforcollege.com, a 529 account planning site. "We have millions of working families using these 529 plans to save for college and it offers a way for mostly middle-income families to invest tax-deferred and mostly tax-free to keep up with college tuition."
Read More How to ease the burden of student debt
Obama presented his 529 tax plan during his last State of the Union address. The plan consists of raising $1 billion over 10 years by taxing capital gains realized in withdrawals from 529 savings accounts. According to surveys cited by the White House, 70 percent of 529 account assets are held by families earning over $200,000 per year.
On "Power Lunch," Hurley said this tax will deter people from using 529 plans. "Taxing 529 plans won't pay for any other initiative because people will no longer be using 529 plans," he said. "You can't raise revenue when you don't have any contributions going into these plans."
The plan faces an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled Congress.
—CNBC's John Harwood contributed to this report. | President Obama's proposed tax on 529 college savings accounts is stirring up debate about whether it would help or hurt the middle class. | 16.64 | 0.76 | 1.64 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/achievementsaward/judging-criteria | http://web.archive.org/web/20151013094104id_/http://www.theguardian.com/achievementsaward/judging-criteria | Judging criteria | 20151013094104 | The Guardian International Development Achievement Award aims to honour the unsung heroes of international development; those who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to make a positive difference to the lives and livelihoods of some of the world's most marginalised people.
Nominations are welcome for individuals of any nationality and based anywhere in the world, who - through achievements in work or life - have made an exceptional contribution to efforts to alleviate poverty in the developing world.
Nominees for the Award will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
• The extent to which their activities and achievements have had a demonstrable and positive impact on poverty alleviation – either directly or indirectly • The sustainability of their achievements in terms of longevity, legacy and impact• The extent to which the nominee's activities and achievements have changed social situations, public attitudes, structures or policies that may be behind the poverty, exclusion or disempowerment of the people affected • The ways in which the nominee has demonstrated inspirational leadership | Details of the judging criteria | 37.2 | 0.6 | 1 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/13/chart-of-the-day-the-google-food-shortage-indicator.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151016195824id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/13/chart-of-the-day-the-google-food-shortage-indicator.html | Chart of the Day: The Google food shortage indicator | 20151016195824 | Call it the food shortage barometer because, it turns out, Google tends to be a very reliable gauge of pinpointing when people are interested in information about products running out.
After news of a Velveeta shortage hit last week, fans of the missing cheese rushed to Twitter and Facebook to lament the scarcity amid NFL playoff season and the upcoming Super Bowl.
They also flocked to search engine giant Google to learn more.
For example, news of a Velveeta shortage hit Jan.7. Instantly, Google search interest jumped to all-time highs for the Kraft Foods product. | Call it the food shortage barometer because, it turns out, Google tends to be a very reliable gauge of pinpointing interest in product scarcity. | 4.074074 | 1 | 18.111111 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/kardashians-continue-asking-prayers-for-lamar | http://web.archive.org/web/20151018142918id_/http://www.people.com/article/kardashians-continue-asking-prayers-for-lamar | Kris Jenner and Liza Morales Ask for Prayers : People.com | 20151018142918 | 10/17/2015 AT 09:10 AM EDT
's condition appears to have improved, his friends and family are asking for continued prayers.
and Liza Morales, the mother of
Destiny and Lamar Jr., reached out on social media Friday, asking fans continue to pray for Odom, 35.
"The TRUTH is God is good. All the time. Continued prayers for my children and their father. Thank you for the support and well wishes," Morales
The TRUTH is God is good. All the time. Continued prayers for my children and their father. Thank you for the support and well wishes.
for "our fighter" earlier this week, posted a Bible verse on
. The verse, Mark 11:24, read, "Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them."
Jenner, 59, captioned the photo with a series of hashtags including, #pleasepray #ourfighter #RP #prayforlamar
A source tells PEOPLE the former NBA star's
"This is the most positive stuff we've had since it happened," the source said. "We've been on pins and needles. We've got a little bit of hope now."
Doctors are said to have told the family Odom's CAT scan came back clean and he was even able to respond when with a nod when estranged wife | Despite small improvements, the family continues to as for prayers | 24.727273 | 0.545455 | 0.727273 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/30/artist-lucy-orta | http://web.archive.org/web/20151020103340id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/30/artist-lucy-orta | Artist of the week 58: Lucy Orta | 20151020103340 | A British artist who moved to Paris in the early 90s, Lucy Orta is perhaps not as well-known in this country as she ought to be. Her installations sit somewhere between art, fashion, architecture and ecological concerns. She has designed a survival kit for the modern nomad (essentially a high-tech synthetic coat that transforms into a backpack and a tent), fashioned coffins from nylon and created ready-to-wear outfits designed for an atomic winter.
When Orta exhibited these beautifully constructed pieces at the Barbican's Curve Gallery four years ago, it looked as if she was preparing for the apocalypse: the entire gallery had become a flat-packed refugee centre, replete with rows of wearable boiler suits with stretchers stitched into the middle of the fabric, like an all-in-one field-hospital transportation unit. Situated amid the brutalist architecture of the Barbican, these semi-futuristic designs recalled the paranoia of the cold war and referenced 1950s Hollywood sci-fi, with its eccentric proclivity for silver-suited scientists and stark graphic imagery.
Born in Sutton Coldfield in 1966, Orta trained as a fashion designer at Nottingham Trent University, but has been working as a visual artist since 1990. She also collaborates with her husband Jorge on artworks that confront environmental issues, including water pollution, global warming and population control.
In March 2007, the duo travelled to Antarctica, and the resulting film and sculptural installations represented this inhospitable terrain as a mysterious land populated by a band of nameless individuals. In the film, the Ortas offer few clues as to why these people are there, although shots of a flickering flag covered in the emblems of many different nations suggest that it is a scientific expedition. Even when the camera enters a cargo plane crammed with individuals silently staring at one another, we are left with an uneasy sense of this being the last plane out of Saigon (albeit much colder than Vietnam), or a group of migrants escaping to the ends of the earth.
It is the Ortas' ongoing investigation into the world of border controls that leads them to come up with such odd Heath Robinson contraptions as OrtaWater (mobile water units fabricated from boats and old vans) and their Antarctica Village tents, decorated with flags, rubber gloves and face masks – social sculptures for a world in a constant state of flux.
Why we like her: For the disquieting performance Fallujah – Peace Intervention at the V&A in 2004, in which people lined the museum's sculpture gallery dressed in Orta's gold and brown boiler suits, their faces covered in hoods with eyeholes cut out.
Hand-me-downs: Orta says her love of fashion came from a "style-crazy grandmother". Her first outfit was a lilac tartan pinafore kilt.
Living sculptures: The philosopher Nicolas Bourriaud describes Orta's artworks as "operational aesthetics", because her Refuge Wear and Habitents have been used by homeless people living in Paris and Munich. | With her nylon coffins and refugee fashion, this British-born artist fuses ecology and art into sculptures for a world on the verge of apocalypse | 21.111111 | 0.888889 | 1.481481 | medium | medium | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/oct/07/saatchi.gallery.opening | http://web.archive.org/web/20151023094402id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/oct/07/saatchi.gallery.opening | Is it third time lucky for Saatchi gallery? | 20151023094402 | It is fair to say the 205-year-old military barracks in Chelsea, the Duke of York's headquarters, have never housed anything quite like it.
Behind the tall doric columns of the building's grand entrance yesterday were large skeletons of imaginary mutant monsters and models of naked migrant workers hanging from the ceiling. The installations were at Charles Saatchi's much delayed, but undeniably ambitious, gallery which will open to the public on Thursday.
It is the art collector's third London venue: the first Saatchi gallery in a disused paint factory in St John's Wood opened in 1985 and often showcased Young British Artists. The second, in County Hall on the South Bank, ended in rancourous eviction after two years in 2005.
The third gallery has taken three years to get right, about a year longer than planned, and opens with an exhibition devoted to contemporary Chinese art - all of it new to the UK.
Saatchi has clearly spent a small fortune - one which he refuses to put a figure on publicly - and has been involved in all aspects of the building and the art in it.
He was there yesterday despite the presence of so many of the types he normally tries to avoid: journalists. But exactly where, was another question.
"He's around yes, but no Charles won't be talking to the press," said Rebecca Wilson, the gallery's director. "That's what I'm here for."
Wilson accepted the gallery had taken longer than planned. "There have been quite a few delays, she said.
"Because it's a Georgian building there were all sorts of things we had to respect and couldn't do but actually the great thing about Georgian architecture is that its perfect for displaying art.
"There are very clean lines, it's very unfussy, so we've maintained the proportions."
It certainly is a big space, about 70,000sq ft, with 15 gallery spaces.
"It's absolutely massive, it really is, you feel like you're walking into a museum," said Wilson. "It's like walking in to the Guggenheim and if you think of what Boundary Road [Saatchi's St John's Wood space] and County Hall were like, it is has gone up several layers in terms of the scale of it and what we can actually do here."
Saatchi has supervised all the hanging. In a Q&A for the Sunday Times, earlier this week, he revealed how he does it. "I just go by what shapes and colours work together in a room," he said. "The poncey way some curators try to demonstrate their 'vision' by highlighting connections gives me the collywobbles."
Wilson was slightly more diplomatic. "The rooms have been curated by Charles. He really hangs everything, it's all his eye," she said. "There is a feeling now that curators almost see themselves as on a par with artists don't they? It's the curator's vision which is meant to lend some great kind of light and often it's a really spurious illumination of the work. It's much more about the work. There's no message except these are 24 really interesting artists from China."
All the work comes from Saatchi's collection of about 2,500 pieces and the next 10 or so exhibitions are already being organised. The next show will be an exhibition of Middle Eastern art and in the pipeline are a big sculpture show next year and others featuring new American and British artists.
Wilson admitted it was a relief to be open and the final hurdle is in sight. There is a party for London's great and good tonight. Saatchi is not expected but his wife Nigella Lawson is - and the public will enter for free from Thursday.
While many have fond memories of Saatchi's Boundary Road gallery (he hosted exhibitions by the likes of Cy Twombly, Richard Serra and Jeff Koons as well as the YBAs), not many have good memories of County Hall. It was not a good exhibition space and the tenancy ended when a judge ruled that Saatchi's company had shown a "deliberate disregard" to the rights of the landlord. | Chinese artists take centre stage as star collector curates opening show | 74.181818 | 0.454545 | 0.454545 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/bernie-sanders-open-legalizing-marijuana-end-war-drugs | http://web.archive.org/web/20151023162144id_/http://www.people.com/article/bernie-sanders-open-legalizing-marijuana-end-war-drugs | We Have Got to End War on Drugs : People.com | 20151023162144 | 10/22/2015 AT 01:10 PM EDT
Wednesday night (or was it
? Who can tell anymore?) and said some things that will no doubt delight marijuana smokers across the country.
When Kimmel asked the Vermont senator, 74, how he feels about legalizing pot nationwide, Sanders replied, "Here's my stance – and this is a really serious issue. We have more people in jail today than any other country on earth. We have large numbers of lives that have been destroyed because of this war on drugs and because people were caught smoking marijuana and so forth."
"I think we have got to end the war on drugs," he said, drawing cheers from the crowd.
Citing Colorado and other states that have successfully legalized marijuana, Sanders concluded, "I am not unfavorably disposed to moving towards the legalization of marijuana."
In June, the Democratic presidential hopeful revealed in an interview with
that he tried marijuana twice but it "didn't quite work" for him. "It's not my thing, but it is the thing of a whole lot of people," he said at the time.
Sanders is also a champion of the
to joke that if elected, the senator could have postal carriers deliver marijuana to people.
"That'll get rid of the federal deficit pretty quickly, won't it?" Sanders quipped in response. | "I am not unfavorably disposed to moving towards the legalization of marijuana," Bernie Sanders said Wednesday | 14.263158 | 0.947368 | 9.263158 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/02/reuters-america-update-2-murdoch-favourite-brooks-returns-to-run-british-newspapers.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151029091448id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/02/reuters-america-update-2-murdoch-favourite-brooks-returns-to-run-british-newspapers.html | UPDATE 2-Murdoch favourite Brooks returns to run British newspapers | 20151029091448 | LONDON, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Rebekah Brooks will return to her old job running Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers, one year after she was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in one of the biggest media and political scandals to hit the country.
Brooks, who worked her way up from the lowest rung on a newsroom ladder to become a Murdoch protege and one of the most influential people in Britain, will resume oversight of the Sun and Times of London papers on Monday in a remarkable comeback.
A close friend to the last three British prime ministers, Brooks quit in 2011 after the News of the World tabloid she had once edited admitted hacking into thousands of phones to generate stories, including the phone of a murdered schoolgirl.
The admission sparked an uproar that engulfed Murdoch's media empire, forcing the closure of the 168-year-old tabloid and a televised grilling in parliament of the Australian-born tycoon and his son James, who apologised.
A year-long public inquiry also exposed the close ties between senior News Corp executives, the police and leading politicians, with many apologising for failing to hold each other to account.
"I am delighted to return to News UK," said Brooks. "It is a privilege to be back amongst the most talented journalists and executives in the business."
The return marks one of the most stunning comebacks in British public life. It comes after prosecutors said only last week that they were still looking at whether they could bring a corporate prosecution against the company.
Brooks was found not guilty of conspiring to hack into phones, conspiring to bribe public officials for stories and conspiring to pervert the course of justice following an eight-month trial which itself became front-page news.
Back in her old job, she will have to tackle the slide in sales of the Sun, Britain's biggest-selling newspaper. She will also have additional responsibilities for the acquisition of digital assets.
Revealing a wider overhaul at the business, News Corp said it had also appointed Tony Gallagher, currently deputy editor at the Daily Mail, a rival to the Murdoch titles, as editor-in-chief of the Sun.
Analysts said Brooks would have to decide whether to retain the Sun's online pay wall, after the Sun website fell far behind the Daily Mail.
Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster, said Brooks' return would be awkward for politicians who had previously acknowledged they had become too close to her when she was at the height of her powers.
"It's another reason for questioning the judgment of Murdoch himself, because he must surely appreciate the political embarrassment caused at the time by her and those close to her," he said.
(Additional reporting by Paul Sandle, editing by Estelle Shirbon, Larry King) | LONDON, Sept 2- Rebekah Brooks will return to her old job running Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers, one year after she was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in one of the biggest media and political scandals to hit the country. Brooks, who worked her way up from the lowest rung on a newsroom ladder to become a Murdoch protege and one of the most influential people in... | 7.676056 | 0.971831 | 31.507042 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2010/12/30/Where-The-Jobs-Are.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151029163158id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2010/12/30/Where-The-Jobs-Are.html | Where The Jobs Are | 20151029163158 | The jobs picture is finally starting to brighten: The number of job listings is on the rise, companies are making hiring announcements and more hiring managers say they plan to hire full-time workers in 2011 than in the past two years. “We’re seeing encouraging signs that a recovery is underway,” said Rony Kahan, the co-founder and chief technology officer of job-listing site Indeed.com.Twenty-four percent of hiring managers said they plan to hire full-time workers in 2011, up from 20 percent this year and 14 percent in 2009, according to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com.One obvious sign that hiring is picking up: The number of job listings for recruiters, the people who do the hiring, is up 20 percent in the past six months, according to Indeed.com. And, in their latest Industry Employment Trends Survey, all 12 of the major industries they track showed at least 30 percent more job postings in November from January and eight of those industries were 50 percent or more. So where are the jobs? Click through to see six of the industries with the biggest pickup in hiring, which companies are doing the most hiring in those sectors, and some of the positions they’re looking for. By Cindy PermanPosted 30 Dec 2010 | So where are the jobs? Click to see six industries with the biggest pickup in hiring, which companies are doing the most hiring in those sectors, and some of the positions they’re looking for. | 6.25641 | 1 | 23.051282 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/19/arab-millionaires-fight-to-crush-radicalization.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151103052852id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/19/arab-millionaires-fight-to-crush-radicalization.html | Arab millionaire's fight to crush radicalization | 20151103052852 | Ghandour's influence is important in part because many of his initiatives are in Jordan. This Arab nation is a critical U.S. partner in the Middle East, a tiny country of 8 million that has absorbed more than 700,000 Syrian refugees and is now stepping up its military campaign against Islamic State.
Through Ruwwad, Ghandour helps disadvantaged communities overcome marginalization. Ruwwad offers programs like jobs training and civic engagement sessions and helps its communities obtain resources like, in East Amman, a police station and health clinic. It also provides scholarships to youth, many of whom come from families displaced by the region's violence.
In 2013, Ghandhour started working with the United National Development Program to fund microbusinesses to help the country respond to the Syrian refugee crisis.
The pilot program has funded 142 businesses, which are expected to create 500 to 600 jobs, from diaper makers to dry cleaners with investments up to $9,000. The program uses a cutting-edge approach called microequity that requires businesses to pay investors only if they succeed.
Read MoreArab Spring 2.0: The rise of women entrepreneurs
For a world-class entrepreneur from one of the toughest regions of the world, Ghandour is surprisingly not an intimidating man. Six feet tall, the 55-year-old smiles broadly, laughs often—"laughter is always good," he said—and has the nervous habit of squeezing a rubber ball during conversations.
In an interview in Amman, he talked with CNBC about what drives him as a leader. | Aramex's founder Fadi Ghandour is opening community centers throughout the Middle East to build a stronger civil society in the war-torn region. | 10.923077 | 0.5 | 0.884615 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/25/reuters-america-your-money-the-dharma-of-dollars-what-buddhism-says-about-money-and-meaning.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151103072118id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/25/reuters-america-your-money-the-dharma-of-dollars-what-buddhism-says-about-money-and-meaning.html | YOUR MONEY-The dharma of dollars: What Buddhism says about money and meaning | 20151103072118 | (The writer is a Reuters contributor. The opinions expressed are his own.)
NEW YORK, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Buddhism, which holds that wealth is temporary and no path to happiness, might not sound like the best source for money wisdom.
Not so, says Ethan Nichtern, the prominent Buddhist teacher, who has written a new book, "The Road Home," on self-awareness and spiritual seeking.
Money is unavoidable and it is people's attitude to it that causes worry and stress, says Nichtern, who sat down with Reuters to discuss how money fits into a spiritual approach to the world.
Q: Can we escape our connection to money - or should we?
A: We need to have some kind of system for measuring how we consume, produce, and share. So there will always be money in any complex society. And any human who wants to pay the rent has to learn the rules of budgeting.
But it's not just a necessary evil. Money can also be spiritual or divine, by powering whatever positive activity you want to engage in.
Q: You were raised in money-centric New York City. Did that shape your views?
A: Growing up on the Upper West Side and in the East Village, I certainly realized how important money was. It determines so much of the structure of our world, and it also brings so much stress along with it. Especially in New York, people feel burdened by the need for the security and status that money brings. That's why we all need to open up and have this conversation. I've never had the (billionaire) Koch Brothers in my class, though - that could be awkward.
Q: Why is money seen as the solution to all our problems?
A: In life, we are all wandering around in circles, thinking that our next stop will be exactly what we have always been looking for. But we never arrive - it's an illusion of an oasis. It is the same thing with materialism: The idea that 'If I get the right stuff, I will finally feel at home.' But we can never acquire enough stuff.
Q: Why are we so dependent on something so abstract?
A: First money was gold coins, then it was paper, and at a certain point it just became computer files. Money has become more and more abstract, and we are basically just agreeing that this is the way things are. But that doesn't make it any less powerful. Even though it is abstract, we cling to it as part of our identity.
Q: People's foremost money worry is retirement. How can we deal with that anxiety?
A: Buddhism teaches about cause and effect. So by all means, prepare for retirement. There is nothing wrong with that. But the other way to look at it is, if the mind is insecure, then no amount of money will ever make us feel safe. Even if you saved $50 million, you would just worry about something else, like getting cancer or having a car accident. Just try to remember that everyone else on earth has a similar anxiety. Then you won't feel so alone. So plan well, and then let go.
Q: How can people use money as a positive tool?
A: We are taught to use money in ways that isolate us. But money is an exchange. If there was only one person in the world, you could be a trillionaire, but it wouldn't even matter because all that money would be worthless.
Think about how money connects you to other people. From a Buddhist standpoint, you should think about how to use that money to empower others.
Q: Any final messages about the possibilities of money?
A: You can be an awakened human being, and also make a living at the same time. When people say money is dirty, then they are just leaving it all to people who don't have any spiritual practices or values. That is an abdication of our responsibilities. Those of us with compassion actually need to go deeper into these arenas. With money, we can empower some very meaningful things in the world.
(Editing by Lauren Young and Bill Rigby) | NEW YORK, Aug 25- Buddhism, which holds that wealth is temporary and no path to happiness, might not sound like the best source for money wisdom. Not so, says Ethan Nichtern, the prominent Buddhist teacher, who has written a new book, "The Road Home," on self-awareness and spiritual seeking. Q: You were raised in money-centric New York City. | 11.118421 | 0.986842 | 24.986842 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/23/vinyl-frontier-old-music-formats-make-comeback.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151105133440id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/23/vinyl-frontier-old-music-formats-make-comeback.html | Vinyl frontier: Old music formats make comeback | 20151105133440 | U.K. music aficionados aren't alone in getting their hands on these nostalgic goods. Last year, the sales for vinyl in the U.S. saw a 32 percent increase and globally, physical records (CDs, vinyls and cassettes) still made up 51.1 percent of the music revenue in 2013, from reports made by IFPI and Nielson Soundscan.
While sales in cassette tapes aren't stealing the limelight away from CDs and mp3 downloads, a desire to resurrect the cassette tape has increased since 2013.
Read MoreForgetSpotify! Cassettes are making a comeback
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the cassette, and worldwide people celebrated through Cassette Store Day on September 7th 2013, which saw the release of more than 50 albums in cassette form. So popular was the event that this year's Cassette Store Day had 300 albums on cassette.
Furthermore, an ICM Group survey this year revealed that 1 in 10 young people purchased a cassette tape, the BBC reported.
It's this appeal to younger audiences and shoppers that is behind the resurgence in old-school formats. In 2012, U.K Music Retailer HMV managed to bounce back from a recession problem, by attracting customers by increasing stocks in vinyl.
Independent record labels and artists like Haim, Daft Punk and The National have been releasing their music as a cassette or vinyl L.P.
Head of Public Relations at the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Lynne McDowell said that in a recent poll by BPI, they discovered that in the U.K., 35 to 44 year olds were the largest consumer group, whilst the L.P attracts younger audiences to with over a third aged under 35 (35.3%).
She added that the main reasons that drove vinyl sales were "the enjoyment of the process of playing a record, the quality of sound, and the cover art", demonstrating that people are still "craving tangibility and something with soul."
Since the start of 2014, the U.S has sold 4 million vinyls, whilst the U.K have sold almost 800,000 units. However, digital track sales are still the favorite with the U.S having already bought 593.6 million singles in 2014 (Nielson Soundscan), and the U.K having bought 175.6 million in 2013 (Official Charts Company).
Read MoreDid Taylor Swift's op-ed hit a flat note?
Hollywood has also played a leading role in promoting nostalgic music formats. The soundtrack to 2014's box office hit Guardians of the Galaxy made great use of 70s and 80s classics, with the soundtrack staying at number one for two weeks in the Billboard 200 charts during this summer.
On Wednesday, Marvel announced they would release an exclusive limited edition of the Guardians of the Galaxy Compilation onto a cassette tape in late November this year.
What's next? The resurgence of the photograph or Polaroid? | Nearly 30 years after their demise at the hands of CDs and downloads, 20th century music formats - vinyl LP and cassettes - are staging a comeback. | 18.551724 | 0.689655 | 1.103448 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/luke-schemm-latest-high-school-football-death | http://web.archive.org/web/20151105224904id_/http://www.people.com/article/luke-schemm-latest-high-school-football-death | Luke Schemm Becomes Latest High School Football Fatality : People.com | 20151105224904 | 11/05/2015 AT 12:55 PM EST
Luke Schemm, a Kansas teenager and his family's "beautiful gift from God," as his father described him, has become the latest high school football player to die this season. He was just a month shy of his 18th birthday.
"A beautiful gift from God was taken away from Lisa and I last night," David Schemm
Wednesday. "Luke Schemm suffered trauma to the brain, causing it to swell an shut off blood flow to the brain."
Luke, a senior player for Wallace County High School in rural Sharon Springs, collapsed on the sideline after being tackled as he reached the end zone for a two-point conversion following a long touchdown run in the third quarter of Tuesday night's game between Wallace County and Otis-Bison, his father said,
Gary Musselman, the Kansas State High School Activities Association executive director, told
that game officials didn't see Luke suffer any head or neck injuries during the game.
David Schamm fought back tears Wednesday as he addressed reporters outside the Denver-area hospital where his son was airlifted after the injury, describing him as hardworking and humble and eager for the future.
"The last thing I did to him before I left for my meetings, and I still give my boys when I see them, is a kiss on the forehead and I tell them I love them before they go to bed," he said.
David Schamm also said he hopes Luke's football team continues to play with the "passion" his son possessed.
"Luke gave his all on the field," he said. "He lived life with a passion, and that's what we want to see the team do. I told the coach, 'I don't care if you win or lose. I want these boys and I want these kids to lay it all out there on that field.' "
The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research said this is the 11th reported death in high school football in the U.S., per
Earlier this month, a 9-year-old
after collapsing during football practice in Ohio. Wyatt Barber's coaches called 911 after they found him lying face down in the grass. He was pronounced dead before he could be put on an emergency medical flight. His cause of death was related to a heart condition, according to reports
in various parts of the country collapsed and died in a single week. | Luke Schamm's father told reporters he hopes his son's football team continues to "lay it all out there on that field" | 19.16 | 1 | 4.2 | medium | high | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/24/reuters-america-china-fears-wipe-230-billion-euros-off-leading-european-shares.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151108153027id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/24/reuters-america-china-fears-wipe-230-billion-euros-off-leading-european-shares.html | China fears wipe 230 billion euros off leading European shares | 20151108153027 | * FTSEurofirst 300 down 2.8 percent, Euro STOXX 50 down 2 pct
* Miners, financial services bear brunt of selling
* Every stock in index falls
LONDON, Aug 24 (Reuters) - European stocks fell sharply at the open on Monday, wiping hundreds of billions of euros off the region's top share index, which hit a seven-month low after a rout in China unnerved global markets.
The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 was down 2.8 percent at 1,382.46 points by 0755 GMT, wiping around 230 billion euros ($264.04 billion) off the index.
The STOXX 600 Basic Resources Index, comprising mainly miners, and the oil & gas sector fell 5.5 percent and 3.2 percent respectively, as commodities slumped to multi-year lows on the weakness in China, the world's top metals consumer.
Also sinking were fund managers, which are sensitive to market turmoil that could hit returns. The STOXX Europe 600 Financial Services index, down 3.6 percent.
"We are in the midst of a full-blown growth scare... (and) China is at the epicentre" strategists at JP Morgan Cazenove said in a note, adding that recent investor worries might be overdone.
The VSTOXX, a volatility index which is a crude gauge of investor unease, rose 4 points to hit its highest level since October 2014.
Concerns over China knocked the FTSEurofirst 300 last week as it posted its biggest weekly drop since August 2011, and it hit its lowest level since January in early deals on Monday.
Top euro zone shares on the Euro STOXX 50 fell 2 percent. Germany's DAX and France's CAC fell 2.2 percent, with Spain's IBEX and Italy's FTSE MIB down 2 percent.
Asian stocks earlier dropped to 3-year lows as a slump gathered pace in China, where equities posted their biggest daily fall since the financial crisis, hastening an exodus from riskier assets.
Stocks slid after Beijing offered no big policy move at the weekend to support equities, as was widely expected after last week's 11 percent plunge.
Every stock on the FTSEurofirst 300 was lower. Top fallers were miners Anglo American, Glencore and BHP Billiton, highlighted by Societe Generale in a basket of China-exposed stocks.
"China's equity market and thus the SG (basket) should continue to be under downward pressure on renewed fears of a hard landing in China," SocGen strategists said in a note, adding more substantial support from authorities may be forthcoming.
"(Policy loosening) could come sooner rather than later given fast-rising concern about the economic outlook."
Europe bourses in 2015: http://link.reuters.com/pap87v
Asset performance in 2015: http://link.reuters.com/gap87v | LONDON, Aug 24- European stocks fell sharply at the open on Monday, wiping hundreds of billions of euros off the region's top share index, which hit a seven-month low after a rout in China unnerved global markets. The STOXX 600 Basic Resources Index, comprising mainly miners, and the oil& gas sector fell 5.5 percent and 3.2 percent respectively, as commodities... | 7.166667 | 0.986111 | 32.486111 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/khloe-kardashian-drank-heavily-after-her-fathers-death | http://web.archive.org/web/20151112182721id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/khloe-kardashian-drank-heavily-after-her-fathers-death | Khloe Kardashian Nearly Landed in Rehab After Dad Robert Kardashian's Death : People.com | 20151112182721 | 11/10/2015 AT 11:30 AM EST
There were a few bumps in the road on
, including a stretch of time filled with bingeing, she reveals in her new book
Kardashian said that she began to party and drink heavily after the 2003 death of her father, Robert Kardashian Sr., according to
. The reality star said she had a tough time accepting the attorney's passing.
"At the funeral, though, when I saw my father in his casket, I completely fell apart. I don't remember the details, but apparently I was an emotional wreck, and I'm told that I was so distraught I actually passed out," she wrote. "At one point I fell to the floor kicking and screaming, and I had to be sedated. It was really intense. I refused to believe my father was gone. I just wanted to believe it was all just a bad dream. That's when the partying started."
London Entertainment / Splash News Online
Kardashian was 19 at the time and "drowned [her] sorrows in drink."
"The partying soon got out of hand," she said. "I was underage and behaving recklessly in clubs and at private parties."
The binge drinking became binge eating, the product of being freely offered club access and beverages.
"I didn't end up in rehab or anything because [my sister]
put her foot down and forced me to take control of my life, but I probably came close," confessed Kardashian, now 31.
details Kardashian's complex relationship with eating and fitness. She said leaving her "mindless" and "comfort" eating habits behind wasn't easy.
"This is the only body I have," she wrote. "Why am I treating it so badly? And what am I going to do about it?" | Kardashian reveals how she reacted to her dad's 2003 death in her new book | 24.333333 | 0.8 | 1.733333 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/11/11/00/58/cave-s-son-on-lsd-when-he-fell-off-cliff | http://web.archive.org/web/20151112211017id_/http://www.9news.com.au:80/world/2015/11/11/00/58/cave-s-son-on-lsd-when-he-fell-off-cliff | Nick Cave's teenage son on LSD before fatal cliff fall | 20151112211017 | Arthur Cave died after falling from a cliff in the UK. (Sussex Police)
The teenage son of Australian musician Nick Cave fell to his death after taking the hallucinogenic drug LSD, an inquest in England has heard.
Arthur Cave, 15, suffered a "catastrophic" head injury after plunging from a cliff in Brighton, East Sussex, on July 14.
Witnesses described seeing the student "walking, staggering and zig-zagging" before standing "dangerously" close to the cliff edge moments before he fell.
A note left at the scene. (Solent)
Arthur and a friend - who can't be named for legal reasons - had earlier taken LSD, also known as acid, an inquest in Brighton was told.
Members of the public tried to resuscitate him after he was found lying on the underpass of Ovingdean Gap without any shoes or socks, but he died later at Royal Sussex County Hospital.
Veronica Hamilton-Deeley, senior coroner for Brighton, on Tuesday recorded a conclusion of accidental death.
Musician Nick Cave with his wife Susie Bick arrive at the Coroners Court in Brighton. (AAP)
She said: "I expect the decision and planning to take LSD, or a hallucinogenic drug likely to be LSD, was made on the spur of the moment."
"It's clear he could not know what was real and what was not real. It's completely impossible to know what was in Arthur's mind and what he was seeing," she said.
Cave and his wife Susie briefly walked out of the courtroom before graphic details of their son's injuries were read out from a post-mortem examination report.
The coroner said the cause of death was "unsurvivable head injuries due to a witnessed fall from a cliff".
Susie Bick and Nick Cave with their children Earl and Arthur in 2012. (Getty)
A contributory factor was the recent ingestion of a hallucinogenic drug.
The boy who took LSD with Arthur said he researched online about the effects of the drug but had not read anything about the "darker side".
The pair had arranged to take the drug on a grassy area near Rottingdean Windmill in Brighton.
In a summary of the boy's statement, Detective Constable Vicky Loft the court: "Arthur was hesitant but said if they were worrying about things it would have an effect on the trip and make it a more negative experience."
"They decided to take one together at the same time. They took a tablet each, placed it on their tongue and waited for the effects to start," she said.
The boy said he and Arthur took three tablets between them and they were initially in "good spirits and happy", but he then started having "vivid hallucinations", including seeing patches of oil on the grass and shapes and colours in the sky.
Det Const Loft said: "(The boy) became paranoid and felt like people were staring at him in cars. He couldn't tell what was real and what was not real."
"He thought he could see Arthur covered in vomit but wasn't sure if it was real."
The boy said he was not sure if he and Arthur walked off together but he recalled they went their "separate ways".
Cave, who clutched a tissue during the inquest, hugged his wife after the hearing.
In a statement issued later the Cave family thanked the coroner, medics who treated Arthur and members of the public who helped at the scene.
They said they'd been overwhelmed by the many messages of support since.
"Arthur was a wonderfully unruly, creative and free-spirited young man with an infectious, happy, funny daredevil nature," the family said.
"He loved his friends and family, idolised his twin brother Earl and was never far from his side. And we loved him back - to his core - and we miss him deeply." | Nick Cave's teenage son Arthur was on LSD when he fell from a cliff onto an underpass in England's south in mid-2015, an inquest had been told. | 25 | 0.870968 | 1.645161 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/11/stock-buybacks-expected-to-jump-18-in-2015.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151112224956id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/11/stock-buybacks-expected-to-jump-18-in-2015.html | Stock buybacks expected to jump 18% in 2015 | 20151112224956 | While it's not particularly good news for those looking for organic economic growth, it probably does bode well for hopes of a continued bull market run.
Read MoreWhat can stop the rally?
"Positive macro and micro drivers have jointly supported the 9 percent surge in the (S&P 500) index during the past few weeks," Goldman strategist David Kostin and others wrote in a note to clients. "We expect both trends will persist. Investors should own firms with high U.S.-revenue exposure and those with high repurchase yields."
Companies that focus more on buybacks have outperformed those that focus on capital expenditures for most of the recovery, but a divergence showed during the spring and summer when capex won out. However, that trend has reversed since September, and Goldman expects it to continue.
"Since the start of (the fourth quarter), a sector-neutral basket of 50 stocks with the highest buyback yields has outpaced the S&P 500," Kostin wrote. "From a strategic perspective, buybacks have been the largest source of overall U.S. equity demand in recent years."
Read MoreDilemma: Should companies reinvest or buyback stock?
In relative terms, buybacks are expected to increase 18 percent in 2015 to $707 billion, according to Goldman's projections. Though the current annualized pace for capex—at about $2.1 trillion, according to the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis figures—outpaces the aggregate total for buybacks, the buyback pace is far ahead.
After popping 9.7 percent higher in the second quarter, the pace of the capex increase slowed to 5.5 percent in the third quarter. Goldman expects declining oil prices will sap capex activity at energy firms, resulting in just a 6 percent gain for 2015 even as nonfinancial companies sit on nearly $1.9 trillion in cash.
The pace of stock buybacks actually had declined through the first half of 2014, amounting to $539.3 billion but falling 1.1 percent annualized for the second quarter, according to FactSet. That was the first annualized drop in repurchases in nearly two years and the biggest quarterly decline, at 22.9 percent, since the fourth quarter of 2011.
Read MoreInside baseball: The 'Moneyball' stock method | Buybacks probably will increase 18 percent to $707 billion next year, according to an analysis from Goldman Sachs. | 20.095238 | 0.809524 | 1.952381 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.9news.com.au/World/2015/11/16/16/59/Sneaky-cats-steal-the-show-at-G20-Summit-in-Turkey | http://web.archive.org/web/20151117163443id_/http://www.9news.com.au/World/2015/11/16/16/59/Sneaky-cats-steal-the-show-at-G20-Summit-in-Turkey | Sneaky cats steal the show at G20 summit | 20151117163443 | There’s been a major CAT-astrophe at the G20 summit in Turkey.
As world leaders unite to discuss serious issues a group of felines snuck passed tight security.
The outrageous video appears to show three felines tiptoeing one-by-on onto the main stage in Antalya.
Reporters quickly shared the footage on social media, with amused Twitter users joking the cats were there to capture the “rats” in their presence.
Earlier in the day, a bizarre mystery man sparked a range of online theories after he was filmed lurking near US President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Vladamir Putin.
Turkey is hosting the G20 Summit in Antalya on the November 15-16 and is chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Discussions will include the current state of the global economy, sustainable growth, development and climate change, as well as investment, trade and energy. | There’s been a major CAT-astrophe at the G20 summit in Turkey. | 12.071429 | 0.928571 | 12.071429 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/father-finds-daughter-bound-dead-long-island-home | http://web.archive.org/web/20151121181627id_/http://www.people.com/article/father-finds-daughter-bound-dead-long-island-home | Father Finds Daughter Bound and Dead in Long Island Home | 20151121181627 | The house where Suzanne Goldfarb was found dead
11/20/2015 AT 09:40 AM EST
Police on Long Island, New York, are investigating the death of a woman who was found bound and gagged in her home on Wednesday.
The body of Suzanne Goldfarb, 48, was discovered by her father after she missed a scheduled dinner with her parents,
reports. He went to her house in Merrick to check on her and found her deceased in her bed.
Officials have said the Goldfarb died from asphyxiation, according to
. Her death has been ruled a homicide.
There were no signs of forced entry into the home, which investigators say indicates that Goldfarb likely knew her killer. "We're gonna explore every possibility that this person responsible may have been granted entry into the house," said Nassau County Police Chief Kevin Smith. "That he may have had access, possibly a key and that possibly this person was known to her victim."
Goldfarb's death has left her neighbors shocked. "From what I gather, she was tied up and strangled in the most horrific way," Mona Rivera told
. "She's the sweetest woman. I couldnât even speculate who would want to kill her."
Added the owner of a nearby deli: "This isn't what normally happens around Merrick. I mean, she was a very nice lady. She came in all the time, and there would be no inkling of something like this. She didn't run with a bad crowd. Total surprise." | Suzanne Goldfarb died from asphyxiation, according to authorities | 33.222222 | 0.888889 | 4.444444 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2015/11/24/mit-tribute-concert-attests-schuller-versatility/sJvwMc9e970RkruJkqEwVN/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151125160937id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2015/11/24/mit-tribute-concert-attests-schuller-versatility/sJvwMc9e970RkruJkqEwVN/story.html | MIT tribute concert attests to Schuller’s versatility | 20151125160937 | CAMBRIDGE — MIT’s celebration of Gunther Schuller on Sunday night, culminating a day and month of area concerts commemorating the composer, conductor, performer, educator, and advocate who died in June, came complete with relics. A tabletop shrine in the Kresge Auditorium lobby displayed Schuller’s tools and talismans: scores, recordings, awards, a flamboyant sport coat. Onstage was a golden idol: Schuller’s own French horn. The concert itself, however, organized by MIT conductor (and Schuller student) Frederick Harris, eulogized Schuller in more provocatively indirect ways.
Classical repertoire gave oblique homage. The Romanticism of César Franck’s Violin Sonata — transcribed for flute by Michael Faust, played by him and pianist Randall Hodgkinson, reprising their recording for Schuller’s label, GM — was far from Schuller’s interrogatory style, but channeled a straightforward eloquence. Later, Richard Todd lifted Schuller’s horn from its perch, joining pianist Christopher O’Riley and former Juilliard String Quartet violinist Joel Smirnoff for the last movements of Brahms’s Horn Trio (Op. 40): an expansive Adagio, a white-knuckled Finale.
Living composers offered appropriate tribute. Peter Child’s slyly stately “G.S. 75” (wittily dispatched by violinist Young-Nam Kim) was followed by “G.S. In Memoriam,” luring Schuller’s favorite 12-tone row into lyrical, sinuous shadows. (Kim was joined by his son, Daniel, on viola.) Equally lovely was “For Gunther,” a piano meditation by idiosyncratic jazz master (and self-proclaimed Schuller disciple) Ran Blake: a stained-glass cortège of glowing, crushed harmonies.
Two of Schuller’s works were absorbingly dark in divergent ways. The Borromeo String Quartet (violinists Nicholas Kitchen and Kristopher Tong, violist Mai Motobuchi, and cellist Yeesun Kim) dug deep into Schuller’s Quartet No. 4 (2002), a brooding, bruising high-modernist requiem, gray and steely by turn. Harris led a part-professional, part-student chamber orchestra in “Lament for M,” a memorial for Schuller’s wife, alternating noir glamour with dangerous free-jazz outbursts (from saxophonist George Garzone, bassist Bruce Gertz, and drummer Garrett Parrish): stages of grief, in unresolved counterpoint.
The evening then fully pivoted to jazz. A special guest, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, offered sincere testimony, then joined Gertz, saxophonist Don Braden, pianist Alain Mallet, and Schuller’s sons — bassist Ed Schuller and drummer George Schuller — for a deeply playful up-blues. Marsalis exited; Garzone, Todd, and Nicole Kämpgen-Schuller entered for Ed Schuller’s “Big Daddy’s Magic Row Blues,” the same row Child referenced now seeding a fractiously fun jam. And then Denzil Best’s “Move,” from Miles Davis’s 1949 album “Birth of the Cool” — which, of course, featured a young Gunther Schuller on French horn.
It was one more sharp turn in an evening full of them. But the program’s unwieldiness was, perhaps, the ultimate evidence of Schuller’s versatility, his ecumenical mentorship, his everlasting curiosity. Three hours of variety only scratched the surface of Schuller’s genius. The most telling relics were invisible: threads of influence, stretching in every imaginable direction.
GUNTHER SCHULLER: Celebrating a Life in Pursuit of Beauty
At: Kresge Auditorium, MIT, Sunday | Organizer Frederick Harris, unannounced guest Wynton Marsalis, and others paid appropriately eclectic tribute Sunday to Schuller. | 34 | 0.684211 | 1.315789 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/joey-feek-plays-dress-up-with-daughter-indiana | http://web.archive.org/web/20151201184753id_/http://www.people.com/article/joey-feek-plays-dress-up-with-daughter-indiana | Joey Feek Plays Dress-Up in Cute Matching Pigtail Hats with Daughter Indiana | 20151201184753 | Joey Feek and daughter Indiana
12/01/2015 AT 09:00 AM EST
to get out of bed, Joey Feek is still having fun with her 21-month-old daughter Indiana.
, modeled a homemade princess crown and long, brunette braids, while Indiana donned the blonde version – and the result was positively adorable.
The photo, shared to Joey and Rory's
, also shows Indiana riding a pink tricycle and is captioned, " ... hand-made pigtails and a second-hand tricycle."
The country singer's husband, Rory Feek, shared an update on Joey's mindset and health via his blog
"... She is so sharp and clear and her pain, for the most part, is so under control by the medicine that talking to her, you would think she's her normal self," wrote Rory, 50. "[She is] thinner. Much thinner. And with a hip new hairdo. But she is beautiful. So so so beautiful."
Joey Feek with daughter Indiana
As Rory explained, Joey, 40, has unfathomable strength and "will to live" – not just for herself, but also for Indiana, who "gets excited every morning to see her."
"There isn't a day that goes by that [Joey] doesn't look me and her family in the eye and say, 'I'm gonna beat this,' or, 'I'm getting better, I believe that.' And she asks me if I believe it, and I do. I choose to," Rory wrote.
According to Rory, their family and Joey's doctors sometimes "believe that the time must be very near," but then she'll experience an upturn. | Despite her cancer, the singer shows her playful side wearing matching wigs with her daughter | 21.125 | 0.5625 | 0.6875 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/10/reuters-america-corporate-earnings-management-linked-to-accountant-hiring-study.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151203064948id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/10/reuters-america-corporate-earnings-management-linked-to-accountant-hiring-study.html | Corporate earnings management linked to accountant hiring -study | 20151203064948 | NEW YORK, Aug 10 (Reuters) - When it comes to hiring accountants, U.S. public companies tend to favor people who show a willingness to flatter corporate profits by massaging the numbers, researchers have found.
In a study that suggests fighting corporate number-fudging is not just a matter of tweaking a few rules, accounting experts at the University of South Carolina said they surveyed 41 executive recruiters and 57 finance and accounting executives.
The participants were asked to choose between two candidates for an accounting job opening with similar backgrounds, but sharply contrasting values.
Nearly 88 percent of those surveyed chose candidates viewed as more congenial to bending the rules to achieve corporate goals, such as smoother earnings, according to the study.
"The selection process in firms may populate accounting positions with individuals who are predisposed to manage earnings," the study said.
"No amount of regulation may significantly curtail earnings management under such circumstances," it said.
Accounting researchers have speculated for years that individuals prone to earnings management are the most likely to rise to positions of power in corporate accounting departments.
Earnings management is a long-standing issue among U.S. corporations, which are sometimes held to account by regulators for it. For instance, some companies book excessive litigation reserves and later use those to smooth their reported profit.
In the study, candidates were often chosen who were inferior in just about every aspect of management, except their ability to remove roadblocks to reporting profit, the study found.
The authors said their research provided the first evidence that hiring contributes to persistent earnings management.
"It tells an important story about how the culture of earnings management perpetuates itself through the employee selection process," said Joel Owens, one of the authors of the report and now an assistant accounting professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The study was being presented this week at the American Accounting Association's annual meeting in Chicago.
It was authored by University of South Carolina accounting professor Scott Jackson and colleagues.
(Reporting by Dena Aubin; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Matthew Lewis) | NEW YORK, Aug 10- When it comes to hiring accountants, U.S. public companies tend to favor people who show a willingness to flatter corporate profits by massaging the numbers, researchers have found. In a study that suggests fighting corporate number-fudging is not just a matter of tweaking a few rules, accounting experts at the University of South Carolina said... | 6.029851 | 0.970149 | 28.014925 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/10/reuters-america-global-markets-stocks-dip-on-growth-concerns-but-oil-rebounds.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151203090344id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/10/reuters-america-global-markets-stocks-dip-on-growth-concerns-but-oil-rebounds.html | GLOBAL MARKETS-Stocks dip on growth concerns, but oil rebounds | 20151203090344 | * Europe dips as world stocks fall for first time in 3 days
* Wall St climbs on Apple, energy rebound
* Kiwi dollar drops as NZ central bank signals more cuts
* Brazil's real tumbles after downgrade
(Updates to U.S. market open, changes byline, dateline, previous LONDON)
NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Global equity markets outside the U.S slipped Thursday after days of gains as concerns about the economies of China and Japan cast a cloud over the world growth picture, though Wall Street rose, and oil prices rebounded after slumping a day earlier.
The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was set to snap a three-day rally with a drop of of 1 percent, following a disappointing session in Asia.
Wall Street went against the grain with an advance as Apple shares rebounded and the rise in oil prices boosted the energy sector.
The dollar was was down 0.14 percent against a basket of major currencies as investors continued to mull whether recent volatility, stemming from a slowing China and other world markets, would prevent the U.S. Federal Reserve from raising U.S. interest rates next week.
"Investors are in wait-and-see mode before the Fed meeting and nobody is going to take big bets before that," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities.
"We also need to see more positive government action from China. They have all these levers to pull which they aren't, even as data gets more negative."
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 62.67 points, or 0.39 percent, to 16,316.24, the S&P 500 gained 7.61 points, or 0.39 percent, to 1,949.65 and the Nasdaq Composite added 32.80 points, or 0.69 percent, to 4,789.33.
The latest policy responses to signs of stuttering global growth came as the Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut its benchmark rate by 25 basis points and signaled more would follow if China's economy slows further. That sent the Kiwi dollar down 1.75 percent to $0.6274.
Risks concerning Chinese growth had already been highlighted as producer prices in China fell for a 42nd straight month and car sales dropped, highlighting the strains on the world's No. 2 economy.
MSCI's all-country world stock index slipped 0.12 percent.
Japan's main gauge of capital spending also unexpectedly fell for a second straight month, data from July showed, highlighting its economic struggles.
Tokyo's Nikkei fell 2.5 percent. Chinese stocks ended down also, falling more than 1 percent each. Hong Kong and Australian stocks both lost more than 2 percent.
The emerging market woes were not confined to Asia.
Standard & Poor's stripped Brazil of its investment-grade credit rating on Wednesday, further hampering President Dilma Rousseff's efforts to regain market trust and pull Latin America's largest economy from recession.
That put Brazil stocks on course for big falls and financial markets are betting that Russia, South Africa, Turkey and Colombia could all be next in line for "junk" debt status.
The Brazilian real tumbled to the lowest since 2002 and was last at 3.8715 per dollar.
MSCI's all-country gauge of Asia Pacific shares outside of Japan lost 1 percent while its emerging markets index lost 0.6 percent.
Brent crude oil, which has halved in price in little over a year, gained 0.9 percent to $48.03 per barrel and WTI U.S. crude climbed 2 percent at $45.03 a barrel.
(Additional reporting by Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Bernadette Baum) | NEW YORK, Sept 10- Global equity markets outside the U.S slipped Thursday after days of gains as concerns about the economies of China and Japan cast a cloud over the world growth picture, though Wall Street rose, and oil prices rebounded after slumping a day earlier. The dollar was was down 0.14 percent against a basket of major currencies as investors continued... | 10.104478 | 0.970149 | 34.283582 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/12/04/tips-owning-selling-home-remotely/fsqg2vXegPiuHirqRoyGBP/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151207223357id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/12/04/tips-owning-selling-home-remotely/fsqg2vXegPiuHirqRoyGBP/story.html | Tips on owning, selling a home remotely | 20151207223357 | ■ Update your homeowners’ insurance policy to reflect the occupancy status, either as a vacancy or rental, advise Maggie and Paul Butler, who moved from Lowell to Virginia. It helps decrease liability when large volumes of people are on-site for open houses, they say. Sarah Kaempfe, a Californian who owns two Brighton condos with her husband, Scott, also suggests getting a home warranty for remote rentals, one that covers regular wear and tear on appliances, plumbing, and electrical, as well as installation.
■ Good news for buyers: Homes owned remotely are probably priced to sell. Most people who own remotely want the transactions to be as speedy as possible because they’re probably looking for homes in their new locations, say Marjorie Youngren of RE/Max Leading Edge in Lynnfield and Debi Benoit, a principal at Benoit Mizner Simon & Co. Real Estate.
■ Giving tenants a break on the rent in exchange for keeping the rental tidy can help when it comes time to sell, Kaempfe says. “In the grand scheme of things, losing a couple thousand doesn’t matter if the rental sells for $5,000 or $10,000 more and stays in the market for a shorter period of time.”
■ If there’s no property manager, connect with good contractors before leaving just in case. The Kaempfes use the same contractors as their neighbors and asked for other referrals and pictures of previous work. If a contractor won’t communicate with a timely text or e-mail, they won’t work with them, they say. | Tips from homeowners on owning and selling a home remotely. | 27 | 0.636364 | 0.818182 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/12/08/merger-falters-staples-next-step-won-easy/j3WL1vmtPGCVO9McKyFt4J/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151211173156id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/12/08/merger-falters-staples-next-step-won-easy/j3WL1vmtPGCVO9McKyFt4J/story.html | As merger falters, Staples’ next step won’t be easy | 20151211173156 | Staples Inc. needs a Plan B as federal regulators move to block its merger with rival Office Depot Inc., analysts said Tuesday. But whatever that plan turns out to be, it won’t be as simple as pressing the big, red “Easy” button that once dominated Staples’ advertising.
Staples’ next step — assuming its challenge to the Federal Trade Commission is unsuccessful — is to continue to do what it has been doing: Revamp its online operation, close stores, and seek new products and services to generate revenues, analysts said. And the Framingham company must do all that in the face of competition from Amazon.com Inc., other big-box chains such as Walmart, and a host of upstarts.
“It’s a tough slog,” said Rajiv Lal, a professor of retailing at Harvard Business School. “There are some very special challenges.”
Staples, the number one office supplies retailer, has watched sales and profits slide in recent years. It also has trumpeted its $6.3 billion takeover of Office Depot, the second-largest office-supplies retailer, as a major component of its turnaround plan.
But on Monday the FTC took legal action to kill the deal, saying such a merger would “eliminate beneficial competition” that helps keep the cost of office supplies low. Staples has vowed to fight the commission in court, but such decisions are rarely overturned, Lal said.
The companies say they’ll fight the ruling, but the odds of the $6.3 billion deal going through are uncertain.
After dropping nearly 14 percent Monday, Staples stock fell another 5 percent Tuesday, closing at $10.08 a share, its lowest in more than a decade. Staples declined to comment.
Diminishing demand in the digital age for Staples’ core products such as paper, ink, and toner has reduced foot traffic in stores, forcing the company to close stores, cut costs, and emphasize online and mobile sales.
Sales for the third quarter were $5.6 billion, down 6 percent from the third quarter of 2014. Since 2011, the company’s annual sales have declined 9 percent, to $22.5 billion from $24.7 billion. By the end of this year, Staples has said, it will have closed 240 stores, more closings than it previously predicted.
The company employs 44,000 full-time and 34,000 part-time workers and remains the fourth-largest ecommerce player behind Amazon, Apple Inc., and Walmart. In a Nov. 18 call with analysts, Staples’ chief executive Ron Sargent said the acquisition of Office Depot was needed to accelerate Staples’ reinvention. He detailed efforts by Staples to expand into other markets, such as schools, restaurants, and doctor’s offices, and improve the shopping experience on its website and mobile app, including offering a buy-online, pick-up-at-store option.
“Our top priority is to get the [Office Depot] deal done,” Sargent said.
But with the merger in limbo if not dashed, Staples’ strategy must evolve further and faster, said Ani Collum, a partner and retail consultant at the Norwell firm Retail Concepts.
Collum said Staples offers a broad assortment of products, but perhaps too many, as consumers seek better curated sites that make selections easier. And, she said, Staples lacks the flair and fashion of newer companies that want to grab its market share.
The retailer Poppin, a 115-employee company based in Manhattan, is a good example, Collum said. It sells everything from tape dispensers to office furniture in modern styles, all of which can be ordered in a variety of colors and customized to a person, theme, or event.
“The big traditional, boring office supply retailers are struggling because there are other options that are potentially more appropriate for this new age of companies that are starting up,” Collum said. “People are realizing that [Staples and Office Depot] aren’t the end-all, be-all.”
Wayfair Inc., the Boston home decor e-retailer, is also branching into the office supply market, she said. And W.B. Mason Co. Inc. of Brockton is another savvy and growing office supply company with a growing business delivery fleet, she said.
Collum said Staples has made improvements, offering designer office supplies, such as its line created by New York sportswear and accessories designer Cynthia Rowley. The collection includes floral-patterned staplers or gold-patterned pencil sharpeners.
Lal, the Harvard Business School professor, said Staples is in a similar position to electronics retailer Best Buy Co. Inc. a few years ago, which was also struggling with competition from Amazon and other nimble retailers.
Best Buy executives moved the company out of a deep hole, Lal said, by selling some of its products exclusively online and offering specialized services, like the Geek Squad, to help customers at home.
Staples, Lal said, could benefit from new arrangements that would make its stores showrooms for manufacturers, charging those companies to showcase their merchandise,
Any reinvention of Staples would begin with a fundamental question, Lal said: What should a modern day office supply store look like?
“It would not look anything like what [Staples founder Thomas Stemberg] started” in 1986, Lal said. “Or what current stores look like.”
CEO Ron Sargent said the merger would boost Staples’ reinvention. | The Framingham company must revamp its online operation, close stores, and seek new products and services to generate revenues, analysts said | 43.25 | 1 | 17.333333 | high | high | extractive |
http://www.foxsports.com/florida/story/florida-state-seminoles-second-half-rally-beat-miami-hurricanes-111514 | http://web.archive.org/web/20151212110729id_/http://www.foxsports.com/florida/story/florida-state-seminoles-second-half-rally-beat-miami-hurricanes-111514 | No. 3 Florida State Seminoles again comes alive in 2nd half once more, holds off Miami Hurricanes | 20151212110729 | MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) -- Nothing seems to bother Florida State.
Distractions off the field, deficits on the field, nothing has derailed the Seminoles for 26 games and counting. And after yet another comeback, the defending national champions are squarely in the mix for another title.
Dalvin Cook ran for two scores, including the go-ahead touchdown with 3:05 remaining, and the second-ranked Seminoles rallied to beat Miami 30-26 on Saturday night for their fifth straight win over their archrival and the fifth straight time they have won on Hurricane turf.
"Just the way we do things at Florida State," Seminoles coach Jimbo Fisher said.
Amid another batch of twists and turns -- uncertainty over Cook's status early in the week because of a sore hip, and then a Friday report in The New York Times about how starting cornerback P.J. Williams was ticketed but not charged after briefly leaving the scene of a car accident last month -- Florida State (10-0, 7-0 Atlantic Coast Conference, No. 3 CFP) remained unscathed.
Jameis Winston completed 25 of 42 passes for 304 yards for the Seminoles, who clinched the ACC's Atlantic Division title earlier in the day when Clemson lost.
They were down 16-0 and 23-7 before outscoring the Hurricanes 23-3 in the final 2 1/2 quarters.
"That's how we're built," Florida State receiver Rashad Greene said. "At the end of the day, we don't panic, we don't point fingers, we don't blame anyone. We make it possible."
Brad Kaaya threw for 316 yards and two touchdowns for Miami, which got to the Florida State 43 on its final drive but fell short when Jalen Ramsey intercepted a fourth-down pass with 39 seconds left.
Duke Johnson rushed for 130 yards and a touchdown for the Hurricanes (6-4, 3-3), who were eliminated from the ACC's Coastal race. Phillip Dorsett and Clive Walford caught scoring passes for Miami.
"We're 6-4," Johnson said. "The four losses we have are basically self-inflicted."
With that, the cardiac `Noles saw their chances of a second straight unbeaten run to a national title live on.
"They love each other and it gets down to that," Fisher said. "They play for each other. They don't panic. This is a heck of a Miami football team. Give them credit ... but our kids just execute when they have to."
The stadium was packed -- a rarity for Miami -- and filled with star power. Former Miami coach Howard Schnellenberger was on the sideline pregame, as was Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton.
They all got what they came to see: another Miami-FSU classic.
"That's what this game should be like," Miami coach Al Golden said. "This game should be like this every year."
Down 13 at the half, Florida State got a huge break to get the comeback rolling.
Facing a third down at the Miami 11, Winston dropped back and had his throw deflected by the Hurricanes' Tyriq McCord, whose hand sent the ball flying high into the night.
Karlos Williams caught the carom in stride, waltzed into the end zone and just like that it was a one-possession game, Miami's lead down to 23-17.
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"We were right there," Kaaya said.
The Hurricanes rolled up 320 yards in the first half, and then got just about nothing going after halftime, with two punts and a fumble on their first three possessions after returning from the locker room.
Meanwhile, Florida State chipped away. Roberto Aguayo connected from 37 to get the Seminoles within three, and after Michael Badgley tacked on a field goal on for Miami, Aguayo answered again with a 53-yarder.
"Best kicker in the game," Winston said.
Trouble signs were there early for Florida State, which punted twice in the game's first three minutes. Then again, early issues are commonplace for the Seminoles, who have faced second-quarter deficits in seven of their last eight games.
By now, that's no big deal for Florida State.
Kaaya found Dorsett with a perfect 27-yard strike, Johnson got in from a yard out late in the first and Miami was soon up 16-0 for its biggest lead over Florida State since 2003.
It was 23-7 after Kaaya and Walford connected on a 61-yard catch-and-run with 11:37 left in the second.
The Hurricanes' roll stopped there.
The rest of the night was all Florida State.
"I'm real proud of the effort," Golden said. "I think there's no question that they prepared believing and knowing they were going to win. We were just a couple plays short, at the end of the day." | Dalvin Cook ran for two touchdowns, including the go-ahead score late in the fourth, and No. 2 Florida State continued its season of rallies by erasing a 16-point deficit and topping Miami 30-26 on Saturday night. | 22.522727 | 0.818182 | 3.181818 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/NFL-owners-will-ponder-L-A-move-maybe-6668707.php | http://web.archive.org/web/20151213113857id_/http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/NFL-owners-will-ponder-L-A-move-maybe-6668707.php | NFL shifts criticized crew of officials to earlier game | 20151213113857 | The NFL has moved referee Pete Morelli’s crew off the Sunday night game between Indianapolis and Pittsburgh.
Instead, the crew will work an afternoon game between the Eagles and Patriots.
Morelli’s group was heavily criticized by both sides after the Cardinals-49ers game Sunday. Arizona head coach Bruce Arians said the officials “can’t count to three.”
There were a combined 20 penalties (13 on the 49ers) in the game. During Arizona’s first series of the second half, San Francisco committed five penalties, including four pass interferences and an illegal hands to the face, as the Cardinals reached the end zone on their way to a 19-13 win.
“This is supposed to be a man’s game. Be a man,” 49ers guard Alex Boone said after the game. “That’s what (ticks) me off, because guys like that work in this league and work on that field, and we have to deal with it. Whatever.”
Briefly: Rob Gronkowski suffered a bone bruise and sprain of his right knee during the Patriots’ 30-24 overtime loss to the Broncos on Sunday. There is no timetable for his return. ... Arizona placed Chris Johnson on the injured reserve/designated to return list with a broken tibia. ... Cleveland quarterback Josh McCown is done for the season after breaking his collarbone Monday night. ... A person familiar with the agreement says ex-Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor is expected to sign with the Browns as a wide receiver. | NFL shifts criticized crew of officials to earlier game During Arizona’s first series of the second half, San Francisco committed five penalties, including four pass interferences and an illegal hands to the face, as the Cardinals reached the end zone on their way to a 19-13 win. Rob Gronkowski suffered a bone bruise and sprain of his right knee during the Patriots’ 30-24 overtime loss to the Broncos on Sunday. A person familiar with the agreement says ex-Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor is expected to sign with the Browns as a wide receiver. | 2.675926 | 0.953704 | 30.861111 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/11/09/07/09/us-mcdonald-s-employee-baits-homeless-man-with-food-in-cruel-prank | http://web.archive.org/web/20151215203554id_/http://www.9news.com.au:80/world/2015/11/09/07/09/us-mcdonald-s-employee-baits-homeless-man-with-food-in-cruel-prank | US McDonald’s employee baits homeless man with food in cruel prank | 20151215203554 | A McDonald’s worker in the US is being shamed after he was caught on camera apparently luring in a homeless man with the offer of free food before soaking him in water.
The young man can be seen working at the drive-through of a Detroit McDonald’s in the clip posted to social media site LiveLeak.
He was being filmed by a customer in a car parked at the window, who laughed throughout the interaction.
The worker is seen in the video baiting a homeless man out of frame.
“Hey Willy, come here, do you want a sandwich?” he said to the man.
“Come on man, I’m going to give you a sandwich man, come on man.”
The employee leaves the window momentarily and returns with a McDonald’s burger box, which he holds out for the homeless man.
Behind the window ledge he can be seen holding a cup of water.
As the homeless man approached and reached out for the burger the employee snatched it back and threw the cup of water over him instead, as passengers in the waiting car laughed along.
The video has been viewed more than 62,000 times since it was shared three days ago with hundreds of users calling for the employee to be identified and reprimanded.
“That was assault. The worker should be fired,” one user wrote.
“This is Detroit in November. You soak some poor homeless dude at night like that.....hypothermia is a VERY real possibility if he has no access to an adequate heat source or shelter,” another pointed out.
“Baits him over with food only to humiliate a man who already has nothing. If they don't fire this morally bankrupt punk there's something wrong,” said another.
McDonald’s have not yet commented on the incident. | A McDonald’s worker in the US is being shamed after he was caught on camera apparently luring in a homeless man with the offer of free food before soaking him in water. | 10.757576 | 0.909091 | 25.515152 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/12/16/mass-officials-approve-tax-breaks-for-projects/IHHNwQ6OBjp23cLzy2YqQP/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20151219045015id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/12/16/mass-officials-approve-tax-breaks-for-projects/IHHNwQ6OBjp23cLzy2YqQP/story.html | Mass. officials approve tax breaks for 17 projects | 20151219045015 | The state’s Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved tax breaks Wednesday for 17 companies’ projects. The expansions and new buildings are expected to lead to as many as 1,000 new jobs in the state and spur nearly $500 million in construction and other private investments.
The council meets on a quarterly basis to approve applications for state tax incentives as well as local property tax breaks that have already been approved in cities and towns.
“Investing in businesses across Massachusetts as they expand helps to create job opportunities for hard-working residents while growing the state economy,” state Housing and Economic Development Secretary Jay Ash said in a prepared statement. “We remain dedicated to supporting communities and businesses across Massachusetts as they grow and prosper.”
Here’s a rundown of the latest recipients, according to Ash’s office:
• Associated Environmental Systems Inc., Acton, is spending more than $3 million on a new facility in Acton, more than doubling its space and creating 65 jobs. The town approved a special tax assessment valued at $126,750 over five years, and the state council approved $236,500 in tax credits.
Officials are hoping to entice the Cambridge biotech to build a $100 million drug manufacturing plant there.
• Krohne Inc., Beverly, is spending $20 million to buy a 95,000-square-foot facility and create 54 jobs. The city approved a 10-year property tax break valued at $111,615, and the state council approved $320,000 in tax credits.
• Webco Chemical Corp., Dudley, is expanding its existing factory, spending $6.9 million, and creating 15 new jobs. The town approved a 10-year property tax break valued at $80,388, while the state council approved $136,000 in tax credits.
• Cold Chain Technologies Inc., Franklin, plans to consolidate locations in Franklin and create 55 jobs, spending $12.5 million on the project. The town approved an 11-year tax break, valued at $149,087, and the state council awarded CCT $550,000 in tax credits.
• International Container Co., Holyoke, is adding to its building and spending as much as $500,000 on new equipment. The project will create 5 new jobs. The city approved a five-year tax break valued at $30,546 and the state council awarded $62,500 in tax credits.
• Oyo Sportstoys Inc., Marlborough, is investing $8 million in a new 65,000-square-foot facility in Marlborough, a relocation from Acton. The company expects to create 100 jobs as a result. The company received $480,000 in tax credits from the state and a 10-year property tax break valued at $140,853.
• New England Ice Cream Corp., Norton, is consolidating its Taunton and Avon operations into a new 65,000-square-foot plant in Norton. The company is investing $10 million and plans to create 20 new jobs. The town approved a 15-year tax break valued at $1 million and the state council awarded $100,000 in tax credits.
• Falvey Linen Supply Inc., Springfield, plans to spend $8.6 million to buy an abandoned building for a second laundry plant and create 125 jobs. The city approved a five-year tax break valued at $139,572 and the state council awarded $625,000 in tax credits.
• Boise Cascade Co., Westfield, plans to spend $8 million to build a warehouse in Westfield, creating nine jobs. The city approved a $226,057 property tax break, over five years, and the state council approved $67,500 in investment tax credits
• D.W. Clark Inc., Brockton, is investing $6 million in its plant and will create 25 new jobs. The city approved 15 years of tax breaks valued at $1.2 million.
• EMD Millipore Corp., Burlington, is relocating from Billerica into a new facility in Burlington. The company, a division of Merck KGaA, is investing $165 million into the project. The town of Burlington approved a 15-year tax break valued at $3.1 million.
• Demoulas Super Markets Inc., Lynn, is leading a $22 million project to renovate an abandoned industrial site for use as a new supermarket and other improvements. The project will create 75 jobs. The city approved $3.7 million in property tax and personal property tax breaks.
• Shuster Corp., New Bedford, plans to spend $140,000 on a new space in New Bedford, doubling its warehousing and office space and adding 4 new workers. The city approved a five-year tax break valued at $169,914.
• Alnylam US Inc., Norton, plans to spend $100 million on a new plant in Norton and is expected to create 220 jobs. The town approved a 13-year tax break valued at $7.1 million.
• Horner Millwork, Somerset, is expanding its manufacturing plant in Somerset by 20,000 square feet and installing a solar panel facility. The company is spending $7 million, creating 15 jobs, and received a 12-year tax break from the town valued at $647,568.
• China CNR Corp., Springfield, is spending $107 million to develop a 213,000-square-foot facility in Springfield, creating 150 jobs, to make new Red and Orange Line trains for the MBTA. The company received a 10-year break from the city of Springfield valued at $9.8 million.
• G&G Medical Products, Ware, is spending $1.5 million to buy American Disposables and move its manufacturing operations from China to Ware, creating 71 jobs. The town approved a 10-year tax break, valued at $42,106. | The state’s Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved tax breaks Wednesday for 17 companies’ projects, with the hope that the expansions will lead to as many as 1,000 new jobs in the state and spur nearly $500 million in construction and other private investments. | 22.382979 | 0.957447 | 17.212766 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/chrissy-teigen-instagrams-cinnamon-rolls-fablife-show | http://web.archive.org/web/20151220230500id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/chrissy-teigen-instagrams-cinnamon-rolls-fablife-show | Chrissy Teigen Instagrams Making Cinnamon Rolls for FabLife Show : People.com | 20151220230500 | 12/18/2015 AT 10:35 AM EST
swimsuit model makes cinnamon rolls, obviously the biggest question on everybody's mind is, "Which is sexier, the model or the cinnamon rolls?"
We are now plagued with this exact dilemma, since
documented her glamorous journey to cinnamon roll heaven on
, Teigen, 30, wears a black dress with a very plunging neckline and a striped jacket on top. She poses mid-cinnamon sprinkle, with a long stretch of dough spread out in front of her and a jar of cinnamon in hand.
"Cinnamon rollllllsssssss!!!" is the photo's fittingly excited caption.
of her dousing the finished cinnamon rolls with a huge ladle of icing.
"Bringing some goods to the @fablifeshow holiday party," Teigen captioned the video, making us all jealous of her talk show's cast and crew.
While tantalizingly spreading the icing, Teigen says, "Oh, baby! Merry Christmas to us," and starts making ...
before the video cuts off.
We're just hoping the recipe to those amazing-looking cinnamon rolls is in her | The mom-to-be documented the mouthwatering process of making cinnamon rolls on Instagram on Thursday | 11.944444 | 0.666667 | 0.777778 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/21/opec-wont-cut-production-to-stop-oil-slide-pros.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160102083913id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/21/opec-wont-cut-production-to-stop-oil-slide-pros.html | OPEC won't cut production to stop oil slide: Pros | 20160102083913 | Workers check the valves at the Taq Taq oil field in Arbil, Iraq, in this Aug. 16, 2014 photo.
Chad Brownstein, chief executive of Rocky Mountain Resources, thinks the real reason OPEC won't cut production is because of issues between Sunnis and Shiites and Iran and Saudi Arabia.
However, he added, "they have U.S. markets on their heels right now. You are going to see our rig counts go down. The corporate boardrooms in America are stagnant not knowing where oil is going to go."
Read MoreOil traders increase bets on OPEC action
Amandio expects oil to drop a "couple dollars" if his prediction comes true. He also thinks many traders agree with him because of a telling sign he saw in late Friday in the oil future's market.
"Puts, which are the right to get short, got very high, which is telling me that they're already fearful of a gap open lower on bearish news from OPEC," he said.
Read MoreUS oil manages to settle higher after brief dip
Brownstein said not only will lower prices be the norm, but the U.S. booming shale business will see some consolidation.
"You are going to see a big M&A strategy in 2015. You're going to see a rig count down 10 to 15 percent," he said.
"There still will be meaningful production but it's certainly not going to be at the rate it was at in 2014." | Here's what will happen if OPEC does not cut production at its next meeting in response to low oil prices, two pros told CNBC. | 10.555556 | 0.518519 | 0.592593 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2015/12/31/girls-guns-and-glory-ring-new-year-with-hank-williams-tribute/RKekTqDNoIh1Sk02lPxbtO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160102192703id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2015/12/31/girls-guns-and-glory-ring-new-year-with-hank-williams-tribute/RKekTqDNoIh1Sk02lPxbtO/story.html | Girls Guns and Glory ring in New Year with Hank Williams tribute | 20160102192703 | There’s a sparse poetry in Hank Williams’s lyrics that separates “the Hillbilly Shakespeare” from his fellow jukebox heroes of the ’40s. His was the poetry of the honky-tonk’s quiet men: the last American cowboys, the stoic vets, the post-Depression wallflowers. Men for whom that lonesome whistle blows, who hear robins weep, who dream about mama and never knew daddy. Men whose heart will always fall at the feet of the old flame they pass on the street.
It’s a cowboy poetry that speaks to Ward Hayden — that much is clear from listening to the 34-year-old sing Williams’s tunes.
Hayden doesn’t cover these songs; he shakes with them, almost bleeds them. They roll through him like prayer through a Southern preacher who just happens to sound like a cross between Chris Isaak and Lyle Lovett.
Hayden is the frontman for the Boston-based Girls Guns and Glory, a roots-rock quartet rounded out by guitarist Chris Hersch, bassist-pianist Paul Dilley, and drummer Josh Kiggans. Winner of a 2013 Boston Music Award, GG&G isn’t a tribute act, having recorded four albums of originals. But each year on the anniversary of Williams’s death — Jan. 1, 1953 — Hayden & Co. pay homage to one of their greatest influences with a series of rollicking tribute concerts.
Joined by Jason Anick on fiddle, the band rings in ’16 with its Sixth Annual Tribute to Hank Williams in Cambridge tonight, and continues to celebrate tomorrow in Fall River. Hayden, a Scituate native, talked about his passion for Williams’s work in a recent interview.
Q. So what sparked your love of Hank Williams’s music?
A. I’d grown up with Williams, but his music didn’t resonate with me until I was 20 or so. I remember being 4 or 5 years old, and “Hey, Good Lookin’ ” was on an I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter commercial or something. It was background to me. In high school, I was much more interested in punk and ska, a lot of stuff happening on the local Boston music scene.
Then I borrowed my mom’s Hank Williams tapes one day when I was in college, and it turned me on to a whole new style of song. The songs spoke to me in a way that no other style of music had done before. He was saying things that I didn’t know could be put into words. Around that time, I’d had my first heartbreak, and suddenly, his lyrics came alive — the resentment, the disappointment, the despair. In a lot of ways it was cathartic, to know someone else had been there. To drive around and put on his music, you don’t feel quite so alone.
Q. What are a few of your favorite Hank songs?
A. I really like “The Old Log Train” (a tribute to his father.) He grew up not knowing his father too well. There’s a song that Hank didn’t write but recorded, “Rocking Chair Money,” that resonated with me because of the way he played it — you can hear the groundwork of rockabilly rock ’n’ roll. He didn’t live to see the day, but in a lot of ways, he was the grandfather of that style of music.
Q. You were touring France during the Paris attacks.
A. We were a few hours outside Paris while that was going down, playing a concert in Bourg-en-Bresse. The day following the attacks we had a concert slated in La Balme-de-Sillingy and had about 150 cancellations. It was awesome that 100 or so people came out who weren’t going to be scared. From moment one, there was a connection between us and the people in the audience, this feeling that we’re all in this together. By the time we played [the Williams hit] “I Saw the Light,” people were on their feet. It was unifying.
Q. We tend of think of honky-tonk country as uniquely American. Are there lots of Hank fans in Europe?
A. This was our ninth European tour, we go often to France and Spain, and people were hugely supportive of country and rock. One thing that impressed me in Spain is that 1950s American rock ’n’ roll never fell out of fashion — we’ve walked into clubs in Spain where Chuck Berry is on and people are on the floor doing “The Twist.” France leans more toward country. They lump our style of country in with modern country, but we’re not going to argue, because they dig it.
Q. You also played Gillette Stadium Dec. 20 for a Patriots pre-game concert.
A. It was a blast. It was pretty cold, but was so much fun and the Pats won. This is our seventh time doing a pre-game concert, and they’ve won every time we’ve played. I like to think we have something to do with that.
At the Sinclair, Cambridge, Friday
at 8 p.m. Tickets $18. 617-547-5200, www.sinclaircambridge.com; At Narrows Center for the Arts, Fall River, Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets $25, advance $22. 508-324-1926, www.narrowscenter.org | Once a year, the award-winning Boston roots-rock band Girls Guns and Glory pays tribute to Hank Williams on the annversary of his passing. | 35.482759 | 0.827586 | 2 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/12/30/13/58/islamic-state-hit-by-double-blow | http://web.archive.org/web/20160103023358id_/http://www.9news.com.au:80/world/2015/12/30/13/58/islamic-state-hit-by-double-blow | Islamic State hit by double blow | 20160103023358 | US-led forces have killed 10 Islamic State leaders in air strikes, including individuals linked to the Paris attacks, a US spokesman says.
The air strikes are part of a double blow dealt to the militant group, after Iraqi forces ousted it from the city of Ramadi.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi planted the national flag in Ramadi after the army retook the city centre from IS.
"Over the past month, we've killed 10 ISIL leadership figures with targeted air strikes, including several external attack planners, some of whom are linked to the Paris attacks," said US Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led campaign against the Islamist group also known by the acronym ISIL.
One of those killed was Abdul Qader Hakim, who facilitated the militants' external operations, Warren said. He was killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on December 26.
Two days earlier, a coalition air strike in Syria killed Charaffe al Mouadan, a Syria-based IS member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris on November 13 which killed 130 people, Warren said.
Air strikes on IS's leadership helped explain recent battlefield successes against the group, which also lost control of a dam on a strategic supply route near its de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria on Saturday.
"Part of those successes is attributable to the fact that the organisation is losing its leadership," Warren said.
He warned, however: "It's still got fangs."
The Iraqi army's seizure of the centre of Ramadi on Sunday is its first major victory against the hardline Sunni Islamists that swept through a third of Iraq in 2014, and came after months of cautious advances backed by coalition air strikes.
Ramadi was the only city to have fallen under IS control since Abadi took office in September 2014.
The retaking of Ramadi suggested Abadi's strategy of heavy US air support while sidelining the Shi'ite militias could be effective. The militias have served as a bulwark against IS but drawn objections from Washington.
Coalition spokesman Warren said casualties to Iraqi forces during the battle for Ramadi were in the low double digits. He and Iraqi officials put IS casualties in the hundreds.
The government has designated the mostly Sunni city of Mosul, 400km north of Baghdad, as the next target for Iraq's armed forces. | Islamic State has suffered a double blow as the city of Ramadi falls to Iraqi forces, and 10 of the militant group's leaders are killed in air strikes. | 15.096774 | 0.935484 | 2.096774 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/married-first-sight-exclusive-sam-role-shutting-down-marriage-neil-bowlus | http://web.archive.org/web/20160106005609id_/http://www.people.com/article/married-first-sight-exclusive-sam-role-shutting-down-marriage-neil-bowlus | Is Sam Over Her Marriage Already? : People.com | 20160106005609 | 01/05/2016 AT 04:05 PM EST
would be easy, but is Sam Role already calling it quits on her marriage to Neil Bowlus three weeks after saying "I do"?
In an exclusive sneak peek at Tuesday night's episode of
and her compliance specialist husband sit down for a session with Dr. Pepper Schwartz (one of the experts who matched them together) to discuss the state of their marriage.
"Sometimes I feel like you're too laid-back for what, I guess, can tolerate," says Role. "I'm shutting down at this moment."
While Bowlus wants marriage where both spouses cook, clean and work, Role says she wants to be the "less dominant figure" in a relationship.
Asked by Dr. Schwartz if they are still committed to the marriage, Bowlus says "I am" without hesitation, while Role claims to be "indifferent."
, produced by Kinetic Content, airs Tuesdays (9 p.m. ET) on FYI. | "I want the good to outweigh the bad, and right now the bad is extremely outweighing the good," admits Sam Role | 7.68 | 0.56 | 0.8 | low | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2012/05/18/punny-business-when-words-collide/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20160108044534id_/http://fortune.com:80/2012/05/18/punny-business-when-words-collide/ | Punny business: When words collide | 20160108044534 | FORTUNE — “When it comes to puns,” John Pollack has written, “many people consider all of them — no matter how clever — to be foolish, irritating, subversive, or worse.”
Pollack is definitely not one of those people. He’s the author of The Pun Also Rises, a book that begins with an account of how Pollack won the 18th annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships in 1995 and goes on to link punning, causally, with the dawn of civilization.
I heard him speak last spring at a Mexican restaurant on the south side of Austin. It was the night before the championships (happening again this year on May 19), and some of the contestants had gathered to exchange warm-up puns, drink a little, eat a lot (the tables were groaning too), and honor Pollack as Punster of the Year.
Pollack has pale skin; hardly any hair; shifty, sparkling eyes; and a sudden, winning grin that cuts from ear to ear. He told a story about the time he was one of two finalists for a job as speechwriter for President Clinton. “The decision memo put down these various things,” Pollack said, “but the only thing that President Clinton circled was that I had won the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships. In the margin he wrote ‘Good!,’ and I got the job.” Pollack’s fellow punsters cheered him as if he were a rock star.
The next day at noon I went downtown to watch the contest on the lawn behind the O. Henry Museum, named for the writer, who lived here for a time and who was fond of wordplay. Pollack, wearing a straw fedora, was on hand to help judge the first event, Punniest of Show. It’s a set-piece format: 90 seconds to rip off as many puns as you can (quantity trumps quality) on a theme of your choosing. The judges score on a scale of one to 10, Olympics-style.
This year’s winner was Gracie Deegan, a petite, brown-eyed 25-year-old rookie who works at the concierge desk at Whole Foods. “I was bagging groceries,” she told me, “and someone handed me a box of mushrooms, and I said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t have mushroom left!'”
Deegan took the stage in khaki shorts and a sleeveless yellow tunic. “WMgeez, y’all,” she began, “I am really worried about the Middle East. This threat is constant and ample. I mean, this is a Syria situation, for Shah! And if we don’t find a solution Sunni, I Farsi that the Shiite is really gonna hit the fan!”
Afterward I sought out Deegan’s boyfriend, Justin Haak. (“It’s German for ‘bad cough,'” Deegan told me.) I asked him, “You don’t compete with her in this arena?”
“Hell, no!” Haak said. “I don’t compete with her in any arena. I’m just trying not to screw up.”
The crowd grew slowly throughout the afternoon in anticipation of the main event, the punslingers competition. It features two or more contestants per single-elimination round; one topic, randomly chosen in the moment; puns parrying puns at maximum five-second intervals until somebody draws a blank. There’s no keening when the end comes, just a dreadful silence.
Back to defend his crown was Ben Ziek, 35, a night auditor at the Burbank Marriott in California and a self-described “game-show geek” who has been on Win Ben Stein’s Money (“I did not, unfortunately”) and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (“In a way, yes. In a way, no.”)
Ziek — competing in jean shorts, T-shirt, and a black fedora — made it to the final round, together with Dav (don’t call him Dave) Wallace and Jason Epstein. The topic was fairy tales.
“Well,” said Ziek, early in the final round. “I got asked if I have to use the bathroom or if I have to enter the door, so I said, ‘Pee? No. Key? Yo!”
Wallace didn’t miss a beat: “Growing up my mother thought I was gay,” he said. “Fairy? God, mother!”
Epstein smiled appreciatively. “So I have a blow-up cousin,” he began. “And I….” The spectators were groaning. Ziek was looking at him sideways, and Wallace was shaking his head. “Okay, can I finish? I carry her around in my pump kin carriage.”
I was ready to crown Epstein champion. But when his turn came back around, he was done. “I have nothing,” he said sadly, and stepped away from the microphone.
Ziek and Wallace sputtered on, Ziek complaining of a “Disney spell” and Wallace admitting that things were “getting Grimm.” Finally Wallace delivered what seemed like a knockout blow. “Well,” he said, “if I don’t get this one right, after all the insults I’ve given my wife, she’s gonna hit me in the Peter Pan.”
Ziek just smirked. “But I know that you’re a crafty man,” he replied instantly. “She’ll never, never land a punch.” Game over.
At this point you might be wondering, What possible connection does any of this have to the world of business? I was wondering the same thing. I asked Pollack to help me out.
When you make puns, he began, “you have to choose your moments, and you have to be willing to let them go if someone doesn’t get your humor. That’s okay. It’s hard when someone doesn’t appreciate it, but if you just let it go gracefully…”
“Most puns are failures,” I said, encouragingly.
“Yes. But so are most scientific ideas, so are most artistic projects. So are most businesses!” Pollack was on a roll. “In the end we don’t decry people for attempting to start businesses or attempting to make art. It’s an act of creation, and that’s bound to have a high failure rate. That’s the essence of evolution, where all these mutations fail and only a very few succeed. That is the nature of life.”
Why, yes. Life is like business. That’s why they call it buyology.
This story is from the May 21, 2012 issue of Fortune. | At the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships, there are no sea urchins. Because with friends like these, who needs anemones? | 51.076923 | 0.769231 | 2.538462 | high | low | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/george-clooney-adds-his-adopted-dog-to-his-casamigos | http://web.archive.org/web/20160109042509id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/george-clooney-adds-his-adopted-dog-to-his-casamigos | George Clooney Adds His Adopted Four-Legged Daughter to His Casamigos : People.com | 20160109042509 | 01/05/2016 AT 08:45 PM EST
's daughter, you're included in everything the A-list actor does – even if you are a
Clooney personally added his floppy-eared friend, Millie, to his Casamigos, "House of Friends," over the holiday.
In a photo, taken by Clooney himself, the 4-year-old pup sits on a rug wearing a Casamigos Tequila baseball cap turned sideways as she gives the camera her best puppy dog eyes.
star and his wife Amal Clooney adopted Millie from the
in October, just weeks after she was found searching for food scraps outside of a local restaurant.
After an hour and a half "meet and greet" with the dog, during which she was introduced to their other rescues, Millie became the newest member of the Clooney clan.
"Millie found her forever home and Clooneys have a new best friend," Jennifer Clarke, the shelter's social media coordinator told PEOPLE at the time. "They all left together as one big happy family!" | Clooney took a new picture of the pup as he added her to his "House of Friends" | 10.526316 | 0.842105 | 1.789474 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/brett-eldredge-drunk-on-your-love-video-premiere | http://web.archive.org/web/20160115174124id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/brett-eldredge-drunk-on-your-love-video-premiere | Brett Eldredge "Drunk on Your Love" Video Premiere Exclusive : People.com | 20160115174124 | updated 01/14/2016 AT 06:15 PM EST
•originally published 01/14/2016 AT 11:15 AM EST
was looking for a little more freedom when it came time to shoot the clip for
"I had that crazy idea for 'Lose My Mind,' not realizing I painted myself into a corner of having to actually
the straitjacket for the whole shoot," the singer-songwriter tells PEOPLE with a laugh. "I wanted to do something different for 'Drunk on Your Love' – it's a
and I wanted the video to reflect that."
Directed by Joel Robertson and shot in Charleston, South Carolina, the clip takes its inspiration from the 1996 film
's character is cloned until the duplications eventually overwhelm him.
"We came up with the idea of multiple versions of me competing against myself for the attention of this beautiful, sweet, girl," Eldredge, 29, explains. Playing a florist, a cop, a chef, a musician and a taxi driver, the shoot required "a lot of different locations and wardrobe changes." So which setup was
? The one that featured a cameo from his older brother, Brice.
"I loved being the cop and arresting my brother. They told Brice, 'Act like you're resisting' so I got to rough him up a little bit too and give him some jabs back," he jokes. "I had to cuff him – I tried to act like I was legitimately arresting somebody, but I could not figure out the handcuffs to save my life. We were all laughing – that was my favorite, being Officer Brett for a minute."
While staging scenes for the video the day prior to the shoot, Eldredge took his florist persona to heart.
"I started walking down the street in Charleston and thought, 'I'm going to see how many people will take a flower if I pass them out.' We had a camera crew with us and they caught up and followed me. I would say 95 percent of people loved getting a flower, whether they knew me or not," he tells PEOPLE. "It was just crazy to
on people's faces – a little thing to make their day better or make them smile. I'm trying to figure out ways to spread the love a bit more this year."
Not everyone was impressed, though. "One girl was on her cellphone and didn't have time to take a flower. Maybe one day I'll find her again," jokes Eldredge.
When he's not busying himself with bouquets, the musician is preparing to hit the road again in support of
. A European leg this spring will be followed by
, and Eldredge is looking forward to both.
"I've never been to Europe – it's all brand-new to me. I always hoped one day I would have the chance to see the world as part of my music. When I was growing up in Paris, Illinois, I never thought people would be buying tickets to my show in Dublin or I'd be playing in London," he says.
"And then Keith asking me to tour with him again ⦠he really took me under his wing and believed in me. It's thanks to people like Keith who helped me get here. If you told me 10 years ago that I'd be playing with this guy and able to call him an actual friend, I wouldn't have believed it. He's so down-to-earth you forget that he's this icon. I'm so grateful."
In addition to its PEOPLE.com premiere, "Drunk on Your Love" will make its television debut Friday morning on CMT. | "I tried to act like I was legitimately arresting somebody, but I could not figure out the handcuffs to save my life," the singer jokes to PEOPLE | 23.322581 | 1 | 16.419355 | medium | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2012/10/25/the-best-buy-out-just-got-harder/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20160116023438id_/http://fortune.com/2012/10/25/the-best-buy-out-just-got-harder/ | The Best Buy-out just got harder | 20160116023438 | FORTUNE — Best Buy shares took a beating today, after the electronics retailer announced a management shakeup and warned that third quarter earnings would be significantly worse than previously expected. Shares were off more than 10% to finish the day at $15.17 a piece, which represents a market cap of just $5.7 billion.
To some, this means that Best Buy BBY is just one step closer to being acquired by company founder Dick Schulze. But I wouldn’t be quite so sure.
For starters, where is the offer? On August 27, Minneapolis-based Best Buy said that Schulze could see the company’s books and put together an investor group (something otherwise permitted by Minnesota law). He then would have 60 days to put together a fully-financed offer. According to the Gregorian calendar (otherwise known as the Outlook calendar), today is Day #60.
A source close to Best Buy says that Schulze now actually has until sometime in mid-to-late November, but was unclear as to exactly why. Perhaps he asked for, and received, a 30-day extension (as we mentioned was possible at the time). Or maybe the deal was reworked or the clock actually started later. All I know is that Best Buy had been quite adamant that it didn’t want the process bleeding into the holiday shopping season, so I can’t imagine that Schulze has until mid-November and then could get a 30-day extension from that point (unless its recent stock woes have destroyed is leverage).
But leaving due dates aside, conventional wisdom seems to be that Schulze’s job gets easier the worse Best Buy performs. It’s a pricing argument. The lower Best Buy’s stock sinks, the less outside capital Schulze needs to raise.
What it forgets, however, is that Schulze isn’t only propositioning private equity partners like Leonard Green and TPG Capital. He also needs to secure billions of dollars in leveraged loans, and banks pay more attention to credit risk than to the check size.
Best Buy already was a junk bond deal before the latest financial guidance, which means that today it smells even worse. I’ve been hearing from private equity sources that many banks have expressed serious doubts — outside of Credit Suisse CS , which is working with Schulze — and that today’s news could be the final straw. And, given the amount of debt we’re talking about (in excess of $5 billion), Schulze needs several banks to step up.
To be sure, Schulze is under a lot of pressure to put something on the table. He’s a business icon in Minneapolis, and put his credibility on the line by initially negotiating with Best Buy via press release. But, in the end, it may not be up to him.
Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com | There's more to it than just a slumping stock price. | 46.5 | 0.666667 | 0.666667 | high | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2010/05/12/htc-counter-sues-apple/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20160117162606id_/http://fortune.com/2010/05/12/htc-counter-sues-apple/ | HTC counter-sues Apple | 20160117162606 | Asks the U.S. to halt the importation and sale of all iPhones, iPads and iPods
Making its first formal response to a pair of Apple patent infringement suits, Taiwan’s HTC Corporation filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission on Wednesday charging Apple AAPL with violating five of its patents.
“As the innovator of the original Windows Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should be driven by healthy competition and innovation that offer consumers the best, most accessible mobile experiences possible,” said Jason Mackenzie, vice president of North America, HTC Corporation, in a prepared statement. “We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones.”
HTC has not said publicly which of its patents it believes Apple has violated. The complaint is its answer to two suits Apple filed in March. In those suits, Apple claimed that HTC had infringed on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.
The action in March was the first time in memory that Apple had initiated, rather than respond to, patent suits, and it was accompanied by an unusually harsh statement from Steve Jobs:
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it,” Jobs said. “We’ve decided to do something about it.”
It was widely assumed at the time that Apple’s real target was Google’s GOOG Android operating system, not HTC’s phones.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped] | Asks the U.S. to halt the importation and sale of all iPhones, iPads and iPods Making its first formal response to a pair of Apple patent infringement suits, Taiwan's HTC Corporation filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission on Wednesday charging Apple with violating five of its patents. “As the innovator of the… | 5.213115 | 0.967213 | 12.967213 | low | high | extractive |
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/apr/07/david-norrish-obituary/amp | http://web.archive.org/web/20160123214339id_/https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/apr/07/david-norrish-obituary/amp | David Norrish obituary | 20160123214339 | My partner, David Norrish, who has died aged 64 after a quad bike accident, farmed on the southern slopes of Dartmoor in the parish of Dean, Buckfastleigh. He was a man of exceptional rural skills, including animal husbandry, and knowledge of traditional and increasingly rare building techniques using stone, lime and oak. In 2006, after restoring the roof of his family’s 16th-century manor house, he was awarded the Edward Morshead prize for his contribution to the heritage of Dartmoor.
David was born in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, to Reginald and Marjorie. His father was a tenant farmer who brought up his sons in the tradition of hands-on hard work, raising sheep and cattle among the tors and slopes. In 1958 came the opportunity to buy a farm and the family moved to Addislade, Dean Prior. Addislade is mentioned in the Domesday Book and began life, it is thought, as a smallholding in the 12th century.
After leaving school at 15, David went into partnership with his father. They bred sheep and a herd of renowned south Devon cows, and ran a small herd of wild Dartmoor ponies on the moor above the farm. When his father died in 1995, David, who had by now diversified into building, realised that the house, which holds a Grade II* listing, was in danger.
English Heritage gave one of their last building grants to Addislade for the restoration of what is known as a “scantle” roof. They allowed David to do the work, and over two years he replaced rotten oak beams and restored the roof in the traditional peg-and-lime style – using sand extracted under ancient rights from the moor and slates from Cornwall. The term scantle refers to a vernacular slating style of the south-west of England and is the subject of academic research. The project was monitored by webcam and its progress was viewed all over the world. David was commended by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings for his work.
David was a rare man of great talent who valued simplicity. Like many farmers, he could set his hand to anything. He steeped hedgerows, built stone walls and laid cobbles. He had a wide range of skills that might sadly be lost, not least the long tradition of stopping along the lanes and having a good “yap” with those walking by. He loved hard work, as well as laughter and rugby.
He is survived by his children, William, Gemma and Robert, from his marriage to Lorraine, which ended in divorce, by Marjorie, his brother, Ken, and me and my children, Daniel, Rose and Patrick. | Other lives: Farmer with great rural skills including in rare old building techniques | 36.928571 | 0.714286 | 1 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/jennifer-lopez-all-i-have-after-party | http://web.archive.org/web/20160124023312id_/http://www.people.com/article/jennifer-lopez-all-i-have-after-party | All the Details on Jennifer Lopez's "All I Have" Vegas After-Party : People.com | 20160124023312 | Jennifer Lopez at opening night of Las Vegas residency
01/21/2016 AT 07:00 PM EST
came out all guns blazing for the debut of her
in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
And after the show is the after-party!
After wowing her audience, the entertainer changed out of her
into a plunging white dress as the celebrations continued at Mr. Chow at Caesars Palace.
Just outside the Planet Hollywood concert,
film crew shut down part of the Strip to shoot scenes.
PEOPLE has learned Lopez, 46, and boyfriend
arrived late around 12:45 a.m. and headed into a private room with their A-list friends including her BFF
The couple "were so cute and super PDA all night," an on-looker tells PEOPLE. "Casper just kept kissing her, and telling everyone how proud he was." After the show, PEOPLE caught up with Smart, who called it "the best show not only in Vegas, but anywhere."
If performing a 90-minute show wasn't tiring enough, J Lo and her pals partied all night, well after 2 a.m.
And let us introduce you to her party people in the club who got on the floor.
was dancing non-stop with his entourage, drinking champagne and doing dance moves with several ladies.
was all smiles supporting his
costar. "He kept saying how excited he was for her," an eyewitness tells PEOPLE.
Hoda Kotb may have been on assignment for the
show but work and play mixed as the co-host was in total fangirl mode taking selfies with Lopez. "Hoda was so excited to see J Lo and was saying her outfit was channeling her inner J Lo," a partygoer tells PEOPLE.
was spotted limping, she broke her right foot before Christmas. "She loved her walking cane and excited to see J Lo but so over having a hurt foot."
Bieber, 21, was a couple of miles away at Light nightclub inside the Mandalay Bay for a boys' night out. Donning his new purple do, the singer sipped on 50 Bleu and 1942 Don Julio as Baauer and Ty Dolla $ign performed for the hyped crowd.
A-listers also in attendance at Lopez's first show were
"All I Have" is slated for 40 shows throughout 2016 and for the next three years. | "All her friends were there and they were celebrating until late, after 2 a.m," an on-looker tells PEOPLE. | 18.28 | 0.8 | 3.84 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/04/upscale-dairies-grow-in-india-promising-safer-milk.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160124224042id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/04/upscale-dairies-grow-in-india-promising-safer-milk.html | Upscale dairies grow in India, promising safer milk | 20160124224042 | On a 26-acre farm a couple hours' drive inland from Mumbai, hundreds of black-and-white Holstein-Friesian cows laze around, dining on seasonal greens and listening to a custom playlist of rap, pop, classical and even devotional music. They are treated to a routine medical checkup before heading to a "rotary milking parlor," where their udders are gently squeezed, until the cows step away, at will.
Within a day, the milk — never touched by human hands — is bottled and whisked away to hotels, restaurants and homes in nearby cities.
The dairy, Pride of Cows, is one of the largest players in the growing business of farm-to-table milk, part of India's new crop of organic, fair-trade and artisanal food products. While cows have long been revered in India, the country's dairy industry has only recently started buying into the belief that happier heifers breed healthier milk — and potentially bigger profit.
Read MoreMeat: Would you give it up to save the planet?
Devendra Shah, the chairman of Pride of Cows' parent company, Parag Milk Foods, regularly uses the word "love" to describe his operation, referring to his cows as "pampered and cherished."
This new marketing approach targets an increasingly health-conscious and brand-savvy Indian consumer, a growing niche within an already swelling middle class that has the means to afford costlier products. But the appeal of this milk is as much about food safety, after a milk adulteration scandal shocked the nation.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India found in 2012 that nearly 70 percent of the milk samples it tested nationwide did not meet food safety standards. A majority of samples were diluted with water or contained impurities like urea, liquid formaldehyde and detergent solution.
Read MoreFood companies to keep gobbling up rivals
In a country where dairy is considered a fundamental life force, let alone most people's main source of animal protein, the revelations struck many as surreptitious sacrilege. This past January, India's Supreme Court strongly suggested that states around the country join Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal in amending their penal codes to punish milk adulteration with possible life sentences.
Indian entrepreneurs have responded to regular milk's troubled reputation by leasing farms and opening dairies that pledge fresh, 100 percent pure milk.
Nikhil Vora, a former managing director at a market analysis firm in Mumbai, said that the so-called farm-to-home market accounted for less than 1 percent of the $70 billion market for milk, cheese, yogurt and other dairy products. But the segment is forecast to increase by more than 20 percent a year.
Read MoreFrugal US consumers make it tough for food companies to raise prices
Pride of Cows provides 10,000 liters daily to customers through its subscription service in Mumbai and nearby Pune, including five-star hotels and a French crêperie called Suzette. The milk costs about 75 rupees ($1.24) a liter, almost double the rate for pasteurized milk at a neighborhood store.
Pride of Cows reaches customers much the same way a new winery or brewery might. The company regularly attends food exhibitions and invites potential or existing customers to the farm for guided tours. Pride of Cows has also expanded its outreach into schools, mostly private, hosting workshops on nutrition and enrolling 150 students for a planned 45-day internship this summer through which participants "will get hands-on experience in the various aspects of Pride of Cows' business operations," according to a company spokeswoman.
The Parisian who runs Suzette, Jérémie Sabbagh, said he tried Pride of Cows' milk at a food exhibition and was struck by the "huge difference in taste." "We realized at some point that many of our customers were already their customers," he said.
Read MoreThe age of the Asian consumer has arrived
The appetite for upscale food products in India's metropolitan areas is also reflected in the proliferation of grocery stores like Nature's Basket and Modern Bazaar, whose shelves are filled with imported brands. Ashmeet Kapoor, founder and chief executive of I say Organic, an organic foods subscription service in Delhi, said that his company had grown in particular among "those that have moved back" to India from abroad.
"It's mostly those who've just started a family and want to make sure that they are eating the healthiest possible food," Mr. Kapoor said. "These are well-placed professionals who may be influenced by the organic food movement abroad."
The push into such premium products comes even as the broader economy shows signs of weakness. Chakradhar Gade, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management who quit his job as a financial analyst, sees the dairy business as recession-proof.
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About a year and a half ago, Mr. Gade and a business partner subcontracted a farm just outside Delhi, with around 50 cows, to form Country Fresh Milk. He went door to door in Delhi's sprawling technology suburb of Gurgaon, and found a receptive consumer base of young professionals, new families and recent arrivals from rural communities who missed the taste of farm-fresh milk and were skeptical of regular milk's purity. | On an Indian farm, cows listen to a custom music playlist. They are checked before their udders are gently squeezed, until the cows step away at will. | 33.677419 | 0.935484 | 5.064516 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/George-Seifert-Bill-Walsh-had-forbidden-Eric-6794221.php | http://web.archive.org/web/20160130024527id_/http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/George-Seifert-Bill-Walsh-had-forbidden-Eric-6794221.php | George Seifert: Bill Walsh had forbidden Eric Wright’s legendary tackle | 20160130024527 | Photo: George Rose, Getty Images
Eric Wright intercepts a pass during a 20-17 loss to the Saints at Candlestick Park in 1985.
Eric Wright intercepts a pass during a 20-17 loss to the Saints at Candlestick Park in 1985.
George Seifert: Bill Walsh had forbidden Eric Wright’s legendary tackle
As it turns out, there’s an entertaining back story to one of the most important plays in 49ers history: Eric Wright’s back-of-the-shoulder-pad tackle of Drew Pearson in the 1981 NFC Championship Game.
The game, of course, is famous because of The Catch, but Dwight Clark’s grab wouldn’t be immortalized if not for The Tackle.
First, the 34-year-old background: Two plays after Clark skied over Everson Walls, Cowboys quarterback Danny White fired a 31-yard over-the-middle pass to Pearson. As Pearson caught the ball in-stride, Carlton Williamson and Ronnie Lott collided and Pearson appeared to be off to the end zone … until Wright reached out with his right hand and saved the game with a horse-collar tackle, a takedown that’s illegal today.
George Seifert, then the team’s defensive backs coach, has said he would have been fired if not for Wright’s right hand.
And Seifert provided this great nugget today: Five months earlier, an angry Bill Walsh had told Wright and the rest of the defensive backs to never tackle an opponent by the back of the shoulder pads.
Walsh’s scolding had come after a 31-28 preseason loss to the Chargers on Aug. 15, 1981, at Candlestick Park. San Diego won on a 73-yard touchdown pass from Ed Luther to wide receiver Dwight Scales with 1:27 left. Scales had outraced a group of defenders to the end zone, a pack that included Wright, a rookie second-round pick who whiffed on a horse-collar tackle attempt.
“After that, Bill was livid,” Seifert said. “He came into our defensive-back meeting room, grabbed me by the back of the neck, shook the back of my shirt and told all the defensive backs he didn’t ever want to see one of them try to horse-collar a guy again to try to make a tackle. And, lo and behold, that’s what saved that championship game.”
Seifert laughed: “I’m sure that’s one time Bill was happy about somebody not paying attention to him.”
Did Seifert ever mention the preseason tongue lashing to Walsh?
“I may have somewhere along the line,” Seifert said. “That part I don’t recall. I didn’t know if would do that because I wouldn’t want to embarrass Bill. I may have said something jokingly. But there’s no question it saved a lot of butts.” | [...] the 34-year-old background: George Seifert, then the team’s defensive backs coach, has said he would have been fired if not for Wright’s right hand. Five months earlier, an angry Bill Walsh had told Wright and the rest of the defensive backs to never tackle an opponent by the back of the shoulder pads. San Diego won on a 73-yard touchdown pass from Ed Luther to wide receiver Dwight Scales with 1:27 left. Scales had outraced a group of defenders to the end zone, a pack that included Wright, a rookie second-round pick who whiffed on a horse-collar tackle attempt. He came into our defensive-back meeting room, grabbed me by the back of the neck, shook the back of my shirt and told all the defensive backs he didn’t ever want to see one of them try to horse-collar a guy again to try to make a tackle. | 3.038674 | 0.955801 | 35.165746 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/11/mcdonalds-tests-waiters-in-the-netherlands.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160130123804id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/11/mcdonalds-tests-waiters-in-the-netherlands.html | McDonald's tests waiters in the Netherlands | 20160130123804 | Jock Fistick | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Customers exit a McDonald's restaurant in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The move is aimed at making the chain more welcoming and flexible for diners. It is unusual for McDonald's, which has built its fast-food empire based on speed and doing away with waiters seen more typically in full-service dining.
McDonald's did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment about the test.
Click here to read more about the test (source article in Dutch). | Fast food giant McDonald's plans to test table service at some locations in the Netherlands, a local news agency reported. | 4.347826 | 0.608696 | 0.695652 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/love-story-reunion-ali-macgraw-ryan-oneal-meet-again-at-harvard | http://web.archive.org/web/20160202120604id_/http://www.people.com/article/love-story-reunion-ali-macgraw-ryan-oneal-meet-again-at-harvard | Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal Meet Again at Harvard : People.com | 20160202120604 | 02/02/2016 AT 01:30 AM EST
That seems to be the case here. Actors
reunited on Monday, visiting Harvard University's campus more than 45 years after their film
And it looks like history may be repeating itself for the onscreen lovers. MacGraw, 76, and O'Neal, 74, are starring alongside each other in a travelling play titled
, described as an "enduring romance about first loves and second chances."
In the play, the duo portray two friends who "can't let go of each other" and communicate through notes, cards, and letters, despite their marriages to separate people.
"It feels so great to be reunited," MacGraw told PEOPLE in July. "Our chemistry has not changed. We sill feel the same about each other."
The national tour is currently in Boston, where it will stay for one week – just a stone's throw away from the campus that brought them together.
, MacGraw and O'Neal arrived at the university in a vintage MG convertible, reminiscent of the car used in
, before participating in a discussion about their careers moderated by journalist Alicia Anstead. | The pair made a stop at Harvard during their national tour for the play Love Letters. | 13 | 0.705882 | 0.941176 | low | low | abstractive |
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/04/race-build-mobile-audiences-developing-nations/W8UHPngrBiEVgolhh6oEBI/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160205091820id_/https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/04/race-build-mobile-audiences-developing-nations/W8UHPngrBiEVgolhh6oEBI/story.html | Race to build mobile audiences in developing nations | 20160205091820 | One of the fastest-growing mobile apps in Boston is available for Android phones. But they don’t want you as a user.
Instead, Jana is focused on places like Brazil, Indonesia, India, and 90 other emerging economies where some 1.3 billion people own Android smartphones, but don’t typically buy data plans to go with them. Jana built an app, called mCent, that allows them to earn credits they can use to access the mobile Internet for maps, instant messaging, or web searches.
The catch? To get the credit, you need to be willing to interact with marketing messages, or sample other apps. Install an app to listen to streaming music, read the news, or connect with friends, and you’ll get a few rupees deposited in your mobile account that can defray your data charges. It’s a trade plenty of people are willing to make; within 18 months of mCent’s launch, the company says, it has 30 million users.
Many other companies — including Facebook — are taking similar approaches to reach consumers in less-developed countries. Sometimes it is known as “sponsored data” or “zero-rating,” and it can be controversial. Back to that in a minute.
As an MIT faculty member, Jana chief executive Nathan Eagle worked on projects in Kenya that relied on mobile phones to gather information about things like blood supply levels at hospitals. But he observed that something as simple as sending a few texts about the supply levels “was a big fraction of a nurse’s salary for the week.” To deal with that, he wrote the software that made it possible to reimburse the nurse for the cost of a text message — 10 Kenyan shillings (which included one shilling extra to say thanks.)
That idea, he says, eventually led to mCent, launched in 2014. The app is basically a marketing mechanism to get users to download and try other apps, or redeem digital coupons for products, rewarding them with money in their mobile account. For every megabyte of data they use accessing an advertiser’s content, he explains, an mCent user earns at least one additional megabyte that can be used to access any content.
“Our members want to use Google, they want to instant-message, they want to use the Internet on their phones like we use the Internet,” says Eagle.
And in the 93 countries where people can use mCent, Eagle explains, “We are going after the wealthiest 10 percent of consumers, since they are the ones who have smartphones.” These consumers are also the most attractive to advertisers and app developers — even if they are sensitive to the cost of data plans.
Jana has 80 employees, all in Boston. Since many work directly with Jana’s partners around the world, they speak languages like Mandarin, Tagalog, Portuguese, and Bahasa. Jana has raised nearly $40 million in venture capital, some of it from Boston-based Spark Capital; Eagle says he has set his sights on becoming “a profitable, $1 billion business.”
Another Boston company, Aquto, is taking a different tack to the problem of subsidizing data usage on smartphones. Aquto started in the United States and Europe, working with mobile carriers to create these kinds of free data offers, which come directly from the carriers as opposed to an app, like Jana’s.
“More eyeballs are on mobile than any other devices,” says Aquto chief executive Susie Riley.
Trying to reach those eyeballs in developing countries is one reason that Google is working on something called Project Loon, testing high-altitude balloons that are designed to blanket large areas with free LTE wireless signal — the same high-speed stuff you pay AT&T or Verizon for. (Loon is run by Mike Cassidy, an MIT and Harvard Business School alumnus who started two companies in Massachusetts before heading west.) What will people use that free bandwidth for? Perhaps accessing Gmail, YouTube, or Google’s search engine.
Facebook also is interested in supplying free access to mobile phone users; in 2013, it launched a project called Internet.org, with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg calling connectivity “a human right.” The initiative, since renamed Free Basics, has provided free access to a hand-chosen collection of sites — including Facebook, of course — in countries like Columbia, Senegal, and India. “Their future growth isn’t in North America or Europe,” Eagle says of Facebook. “This is critical for their business.”
But India’s telecom agency may be on the verge of banning Free Basics this month, if it determines that Free Basics is anti-competitive and breaches consumer privacy by pulling in gobs of information from users.
Facebook spokeswoman Eliza Kern says Facebook has opened the Free Basics service to other sites and app developers and the service is intended as an “on-ramp to the Internet,” encouraging users to eventually start paying for their own data usage and accessing anything they please. She says half of Free Basics users start doing that within a month of going online for the first time.
Facebook doesn’t release user numbers for the Free Basics service. But Eagle boasts that his company’s mCent app has “many times more daily or monthly active users than Facebook — close to a million daily active users,” referring to the social network’s Free Basic service.
As Jana, Facebook, Aquto, Google, and others race to build new on-ramps to the digital realm, it will be a years before we know whose strategy works best. Maribel Lopez, who follows the mobile industry for Lopez Research in San Francisco, says we’re witnessing new business models taking shape “that will get the rest of the world access to apps” and the wider Internet. It will also supply companies and advertisers with access to vast populations of consumers and their data.
Be skeptical when you hear publicly traded companies talking about Internet access as a human right. “Nothing is free,” Lopez observes. “Someone pays somewhere.” | Facebook, Google, and Boston-based Jana pursue strategies to connect consumers in emerging economies to mobile Internet -- and advertisers. | 49.125 | 0.875 | 1.791667 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/01/26/wednesday-business-agenda/CbbzqPGHdm0PSCkoyvMw8H/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160205222520id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2016/01/26/wednesday-business-agenda/CbbzqPGHdm0PSCkoyvMw8H/story.html | Wednesday’s business agenda | 20160205222520 | Massachusetts-based companies Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., State Street Corp., Hologic Inc., EMC Corp., Biogen Inc., and Santander Bank are all expected on Wednesday to release earnings reports for the fiscal period ending December 2015. California-based Facebook Inc. is also expected to release earnings reports Wednesday.
The Female Funders, an organization dedicated to empowering women to become angel investors, is having its annual breakfast networking event featuring talks from prominent female investors such as Betty Francisco, founder and president of FitNation Ventures. Wednesday, 8 to 10 a.m., Serafina Boston, 10 High St., Boston. $52.24.
In an event hosted by tech law firm Gesmer Updegrove LLP, attendees will learn the best way to pitch an emerging business to investors. By developing a company “origin story” and learning the science behind decision-making, attendees will better understand how to communicate a company’s business objectives. Wednesday, 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m., 40 Broad St., Boston. $291.12 for individual registration, $196.17 each for 2-4 registrants from the same company.
The Massachusetts Biotech Council on Thursday will have contract and intellectual property lawyers speak at an event for scientific researchers and businesspeople to help explain the legal jargon commonly found in contract agreements. MassBio, Thursday 8 to 10 a.m., 300 Technology Square, 8th Floor, Cambridge. Free.
The New England Society of Association Executives is meeting for its annual conference Thursday and Friday in Danvers. Attendees will hear a state of the industry presentation and learn communications, marketing, and outreach strategies. Thursday 11 a.m., to 6 p.m., Friday 7 a.m., to 3:30 p.m., Doubletree by Hilton Boston North Shore, 50 Ferncroft Road, Danvers. $250 for members, $325 for non-members. | Earnings releases, female angels, and more notable things to know | 28.25 | 0.5 | 0.666667 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/angela-big-ang-raiola-health-update-twitter | http://web.archive.org/web/20160212054858id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/angela-big-ang-raiola-health-update-twitter | Angela 'Big Ang' Raiola Thanks Fans During Cancer Battle : People.com | 20160212054858 | 02/10/2016 AT 10:00 PM EST
is thanking fans and friends for the "overwhelming" love and support she's received after being hospitalized for
the latest episode of her VH1 show
on Wednesday, and also gave an update on her condition.
"I am resting & will try to write with you all as best I can tonight," Raiola, 55, wrote in her series of tweets. "Just know that I will be watching with you & reading as much as I can."
Wednesday night's episode gave fans a look into her cancer battle as cameras followed her and husband Neil to a doctor's appointment, during which Raiola finds out she has a nodule on her lungs that could cancerous.
I am resting & will try to write with you all as best I can tonight. Just know that I will be watching with you & reading as much as I can.
Not looking forward to reliving this moment right now. But it is part of my journey and people need to be educated on it for their health.
"Not looking forward to reliving this moment right now," she wrote on Twitter. "But it is part of my journey and people need to be educated on it for their health."
in March, and then underwent surgery again in June.
I know I've said it before, but I just want to make sure it's always known... Thank you ALL for the concern, support, love, & well wishes.
Your messages aren't going unnoticed, just understand it's all very overwhelming. I truly love you all.
Earlier this month, Raiola's sister Janine Detore publicly revealed Raiola's recent hospitalization for stage 4 brain and lung cancer, and how treatments have not been working, prompting her to set up a
to raise money for alternative treatments. (The page surpassed its $25,000 goal in two days.)
"I know I've said it before, but I just want to make sure it's always known... Thank you ALL for the concern, support, love, & well wishes," the
star tweeted. "Your messages aren't going unnoticed, just understand it's all very overwhelming. I truly love you all."
Raiola and her family, including sister Janine, recently taped an exclusive interview for the
, which will air on Feb. 16.
"Watch as we embark on this journey with my sister @biggangvh1 as she fights the biggest battle," Detore wrote on | "I know I've said it before, but I just want to make sure it's always known... Thank you ALL for the concern, support, love, & well wishes," Raiola tweeted. | 12.2 | 1 | 34.35 | low | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2012/10/03/now-hiring-president-of-ivy-league-institution-star-power-a-plus/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20160213075438id_/http://fortune.com/2012/10/03/now-hiring-president-of-ivy-league-institution-star-power-a-plus/ | Now Hiring: President of Ivy League institution, star power a plus | 20160213075438 | Now Hiring: President of Ivy League institution. Pays $1 million, give or take some perks. Nice place to live, big office, best seating at faculty club.
Sounds like a great gig, right? But the smaller print includes: must be good at fundraising and glad-handing; dealing with self-absorbed, cloistered tenured faculty; fending off meddlesome elected officials; fending off even more meddlesome parents; managing tight budgets in a challenging economy; figuring out how to continue expanding globally; and harnessing new technologies that also threaten the very business model of higher education. Oh and one other thing: you’re probably not even the top dog on campus in compensation. Those who invest the college endowment or have a lucrative specialty at the medical school or are a business-school celebrity may earn more.
It may be no wonder, then, that three schools in the Ivy League — Dartmouth, Princeton and Yale — are all looking for new presidents these days. And there are other elite institutions — the University of California-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and Smith College — looking for leadership as well.
At the three Ivies, the vacancies are likely coincidental. Richard Levin, 65, has been president at Yale for almost 20 years. At Princeton, Shirley Tilghman, 66, has run things for more than a decade. And at Dartmouth Jim Yong Kim, 52, left in the spring, after barely three years, to head the World Bank. Levin and Tilghman are leaving (next year) because they’ve had enough. The ambitious Kim left for greener pastures or at least a change of scenery. But it’s not like any of them were wildly disenchanted with the job; as education administrators, it’s a great bully pulpit and it represents the capstone to any career in academe.
And that may be why there are apparently lots of folks interested in the Ivy presidencies. Until finalists are actually interviewed — or a job offer is made — search committees and the firms they hire are good at keeping the names of candidates, and prospective candidates, secret. No do would-be aspirants let on publicly. But names get out — either from those in the know, those floating a name, or those who want the job themselves. Herewith, a scorecard of some of the possible players for the Ivies:
Hillary Clinton, 64: She graduated from Yale law school (after Wellesley) and has said she’ll leave her post as secretary of state even if President Obama wins re-election next month. And she surely has star power, as well as management experience at the top of a large organization. But her potential presidential bid in 2016 would be a liability. Yale trustees don’t want their university to be a way station the way Columbia was for Dwight Eisenhower before he ran for, and won, the White House in 1952.
Barack Obama, 51: If he loses re-election, he’ll still be rather young — and if he doesn’t merely want to write books, give speeches, and sit on boards, the Yale presidency might be attractive. The punditocracy would love the notion of an Obama-Clinton battle to reign in New Haven, however unlikely such a battle would be.
MORE: Why lawyers are still fighting over 9/11
David Petraeus, 59: Currently director of the CIA, Petraeus, after West Point, got a master’s degree in public affairs and a PhD in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton in the 1980s. Petraeus’ name has come up because of an article in the Princeton student paper — accompanied by a winsome photograph of him playing outfield in jeans and a T-shirt, which then last week was cited by The New York Times. The Princetonian cited sources saying Petraeus was interested. Responding to speculation, Petraeus surprisingly did not attempt to shut the speculation entirely down. He noted in a statement that for the moment he was “living the dream here at CIA,” but “I think I’ve made my respect and admiration for…Princeton University very clear, and I will reiterate that now.” Petraeus could have the same problem as Clinton: He’s also been mentioned as a presidential candidate for 2016. Plus, generals running universities—see Eisenhower—don’t always go well.
Tim Geithner, 51: He’s now the Treasury secretary and, according to the rumor mill in Hanover, N.H., the best-known contender to become Dartmouth president. A third-generation legacy, he graduated in 1983. The question about Geithner is whether his unquestionable experience as a Cabinet member in this administration would hurt as much as help him in the eyes of the Dartmouth trustees. Another, less likely, Treasury and Dartmouth alumnus: Hank Paulson, 66, who was Geithner’s predecessor, as well as chief executive of Goldman Sachs.
Morty Schapiro, 59: He’s the current president of Northwestern and he’s proven he doesn’t mind packing up the U-Haul. He got a bachelor’s degree from Hofstra, a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, then joined the faculty at Williams, left to chair the economics department at USC and later become a VP, then went back to Williams at president in 2000, then left for Northwestern three years ago. Pffew! Any of the Ivy jobs could be considered a bump up. Schapiro has expressed no interest publicly, but that hasn’t stopped The Great Mentioner from including him on lists like these.
MORE: Ding Dong vs the Ho Ho: Hostess labor fight continues
Don’t bet your Apple AAPL stock on any of these names. Famous business or political or military leaders are not the ones normally chosen to become college presidents, especially at elite institutions. Most leaders come from within the ranks of academe: They’re already provosts or deans or department chairs. At the end of the day, that’s probably how it ought to be. But it’s sure fun to speculate. | Several high-profile institutions are looking for new leadership. Tim Geithner, David Petraeus, and Hillary Clinton are among the potential candidates. | 44.5 | 0.846154 | 1.615385 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/09/wednesday-business-agenda/QnYILnsqVqhloH0l6UfKYN/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160213181102id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2016/02/09/wednesday-business-agenda/QnYILnsqVqhloH0l6UfKYN/story.html | Wednesday’s business agenda | 20160213181102 | Twitter Inc., Hubspot Inc., Tesla Motors, TripAdvisor Inc., and Charles River Laboratories are expected to release earnings reports for the fiscal year that ended in December.
The Cambridge Big Data Analytics Meetup will convene for a speaker series sponsored by Hewlett Packard. Speakers include JB Huang of the Game Show Network, Harvard computer science professor Stratos Idreos, and Ben Vandiver from Hewlett Packard’s data analytics arm, Vertica. Wednesday, 6 to 8 p.m., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 150 Cambridge Park Drive, Cambridge. Free.
The Harvard Ed Portal, a collaboration between Harvard University and the City of Boston, is having an event for job seekers considering a career in health care. Attendees will have the chance to learn about various career options in the industry and hear about current job openings. Wednesday, 6 to 8 p.m., Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Ave., Allston. Free.
JVS CareerSolution is having a LinkedIn clinic. Attendees will get help tailoring their profile to land a job and learn about how to use the social media platform for networking. Thursday, 3 to 4:30 p.m., JVS Boston, 75 Federal St., third floor, Boston. $25.
The Massachusetts eHealth Institute will host a panel of experts in digital health. They will discuss topics such as launching a health care startup. There will be opportunities for networking. Thursday, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., Venture Café, One Broadway, fifth floor, Cambridge. Free. | Earnings releases, Big Data, and more notable things to know. | 21.538462 | 0.615385 | 0.923077 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2011/04/15/bofa-calls-in-adult-supervision/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20160222113432id_/http://fortune.com:80/2011/04/15/bofa-calls-in-adult-supervision/ | BofA calls in adult supervision | 20160222113432 | Another day, another executive suite shakeup at foundering Bank of America.
The biggest U.S. bank said Friday it hired Gary Lynch, a former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement chief, to oversee legal and regulatory relations. It is a big job, as BofA’s bac legal costs are soaring and its relationships with its regulators are in tatters, as evidenced by the bank’s painful scrape with the Fed over its dividend plans.
Lynch was a London-based vice chairman at Morgan Stanley ms . He has had a long career on Wall Street and if anyone can undo the damage Moynihan and his crack team have done, it is probably him.
“Gary’s global legal and regulatory expertise and relationships will be a valued addition to our leadership,” Moynihan said. “We are delighted he has chosen to join Bank of America and help guide the execution of our customer-focused strategy.”
BofA also said Charles Noski, who was named chief financial officer just a year ago, will step aside due to family illness. He will become vice chairman.
Bruce Thompson, BofA’s chief risk officer, will replace Noski as finance chief when Noski gives up that job at the end of the second quarter. A year isn’t long to stay in a highly visible post like CFO, but the bank says the change came at Noski’s request.
“We value Chuck’s judgment, counsel, and experience,” said Moynihan. “I am very pleased he has accepted this leadership position, which also enables him to attend to important personal matters.”
But his departure hardly comes as a surprise, after reports this week that Moynihan bypassed him in making the filing last month that advised investors the Federal Reserve had quashed his lunatic plan to increase the bank’s dividend in the second half.
And let’s face it, someone’s head had to roll after the sorry performance BofA has been putting up lately. Its shares have lost a third of their value over the past year, and recent quarters have brought repeated unhappy surprises for investors.
BofA reported an unexpected fourth-quarter loss in January under the weight of a $2 billion home lending writedown, a $4 billion mortgage dispute settlement and $1.5 billion in litigation costs.
On Friday, the bank returned to profitability but missed analyst estimates. BofA noted in Friday’s first-quarter earnings release that it took an $847 million hit to pay for representations and warranties claims – covering mortgages that investors and others demand the bank buy back because corners were cut.
That story is far from over, as BofA – thanks to the Countrywide acquisition masterminded by Moynihan’s Ahabesque predecessor, Ken Lewis – has the biggest, ugliest mortgage book in the Western hemisphere.
And of course Lynch will have his hands full with legal issues tied to Lewis’ other signature deal, the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, which was a big player in the abuse-laden subprime debt market that belatedly is getting the authorities’ attention again lately.
Friday’s moves come two months after Moynihan hired Terry Laughlin from OneWest Bank to run off some of the worst subprime dross. No word yet on how that’s going, but Friday’s shakeup shows Moynihan is, at last, aware the clock is ticking on his reign.
Follow me on Twitter @ColinCBarr. | Another day, another executive suite shakeup at foundering Bank of America. The biggest U.S. bank said Friday it hired Gary Lynch, a former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement chief, to oversee legal and regulatory relations. It is a big job, as BofA’s legal costs are soaring and its relationships with its regulators are in tatters,… | 10 | 0.984375 | 25.953125 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/02/24/15/19/us-teens-arrested-after-six-week-old-puppy-shot-18-times-with-bb-gun | http://web.archive.org/web/20160225095157id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/02/24/15/19/us-teens-arrested-after-six-week-old-puppy-shot-18-times-with-bb-gun | US teens arrested after six-week-old puppy shot 18 times with BB gun | 20160225095157 | Two teenagers in the US have been arrested after a six-week-old puppy was shot 18 times with a BB gun. (Facebook)
A Labrador puppy is in recovery after he was shot 18 times with a BB gun in South Carolina.
Police were called to an apartment complex in Rock Hill on Sunday after a worker in the building discovered the six-week-old puppy “bleeding heavily” on the ground, the Myrtle Beach Herald reports.
The worker told police he saw around 15 to 20 juveniles surrounding the dog and went to check on it as soon as they dispersed.
Police spoke with the juveniles who denied hurting the puppy.
The Rock Hill Police Department have since arrest a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old for animal cruelty in relation to the shooting.
The teenagers could face up to a five year sentence.
Brody is too young to undergo the operation required to have the pellets removed, but he may be able to heal with them still inside him. (Facebook)
The puppy was taken to the Ebenezer Animal Hospital were 18 BB pellets were found inside him.
“He seems like he’s going to pull through,” co-owner April Splawn said.
“He’s a strong little boy. He’s really, really sweet.”
The employees at the clinic have named the puppy Brody.
Dr Jay Hreiz from the clinic said that in his eight years of practicing, Brody’s wound were the worst he has seen in an animal cruelty case.
“You don’t really know how to respond to something like that,” he said.
“There’s just no excuse for torturing a small, defenceless animal.”
Brody is in recovery and will soon go up for adoption at a local non-profit operation. (Facebook)
Dr Hreiz said because of Brody’s age it is too risky to put him under anaesthesia and take out the BB pellets, but as they’re not lodged in vital organs, they may not need to be removed.
“He’s really young, so he has a remarkable ability to heal at his age,” he said.
“Brody may be able to live a healthy normal life with all those BBs in him.”
Once he has recovered Brody will be put up for adoption through Project Safe Pet.
“He’s going to be a very good companion for somebody,” Dr Hreiz said.
“He’s so far showing a remarkable recovery given what’s going on with him.” | A Labrador puppy is in recovery after he was shot 18 times with a BB gun in South Carolina. | 27.666667 | 0.888889 | 5.444444 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/24/apple-said-working-iphone-even-can-hack/1x2x4JonjAZu9lt8Mb5XtM/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160226091725id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/24/apple-said-working-iphone-even-can-hack/1x2x4JonjAZu9lt8Mb5XtM/story.html | Apple is said to be working on an iPhone even it can’t hack | 20160226091725 | WASHINGTON — Apple engineers have already begun developing security measures that would make it impossible for the government to break into a locked iPhone using methods similar to those at the center of a court fight in California, according to people close to the company and security experts.
If Apple succeeds in upgrading its security — and experts say it almost surely will — the company will create a significant technical challenge for law enforcement agencies, even if the Obama administration wins its fight over access to data stored on an iPhone used by one of the killers in last year’s San Bernardino, Calif., rampage. The FBI would then have to find another way to defeat Apple security, setting up a new cycle of court fights and, yet again, more technical fixes by Apple.
The only way out of this, experts say, is for Congress to get involved. Federal wiretapping laws require traditional phone carriers to make their data accessible to law enforcement agencies. But tech companies like Apple and Google are not covered, and they have strongly resisted legislation that would place similar requirements on them.
“We are in for an arms race unless and until Congress decides to clarify who has what obligations in situations like this,” said Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution.
Companies have always searched for software bugs and patched holes to keep their code secure from hackers. But since the revelations of government surveillance made by Edward Snowden, companies have been retooling their products to protect against government intrusion.
Apple built its recent operating systems to protect customer information. As its chief executive, Timothy Cook, wrote, “We have even put that data out of our own reach, because we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business.”
But there is a catch. Each iPhone has a built-in troubleshooting system that lets the company update the system software without the need for a user to enter a password. Apple designed that feature to make it easier to repair malfunctioning phones.
The FBI wants to exploit that troubleshooting system by forcing Apple to write and install software that strips away several security features, making it much easier for the government to hack into the phone.
Last week a federal judge magistrate issued an order to Apple to write and install the code sought by the FBI. Apple’s lawyers have until Friday to file its opposition in court.
FBI Director James Comey signaled this week that he expected Apple to change its security, saying that the phone-cracking tool the government sought in the San Bernardino case was “increasingly obsolete.”
Apple says the case could set a precedent for forcing company engineers to write code to help the government break any iPhone. | Apple engineers have already begun developing security measures that would make it impossible for the government to break into a locked iPhone using methods similar to those at the center of a court fight in California, according to people close to the company and security experts. | 10.75 | 1 | 48 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-vision-of-moneys-digital-future-from-cash-to-code-1449679041 | http://web.archive.org/web/20160227025655id_/http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-vision-of-moneys-digital-future-from-cash-to-code-1449679041 | A Vision of Money’s Digital Future, From Cash to Code | 20160227025655 | Finance has always been driven forward by technology, from the invention of double-entry bookkeeping by a Renaissance monk to the 20th century quants who served up securitization, derivatives and high-speed trading. The next few years will be dominated by an attempt to reimagine money itself.
Money has typically been based on a tangible, scarce and portable substance—often gold—or on tokens backed by the full faith and credit of a government. Today, proponents of the digital currency called Bitcoin urge that money can be...
Finance has always been driven forward by technology, from the invention of double-entry bookkeeping by a Renaissance monk to the 20th century quants who served up securitization, derivatives and high-speed trading. The next few years will be dominated by an attempt to reimagine money itself.
Money has typically been based on a tangible, scarce and portable substance—often gold—or on tokens backed by the full faith and credit of a government. Today, proponents of the digital currency called Bitcoin urge that money can be nothing but computer code housed in a distributed network of heavy-duty servers, many of them in reassuring places like Inner Mongolia.
Are people about to entrust their life savings to a software project that can presumably be hacked? It sounds fanciful, but the World Wide Web began as an alien, leaderless network, and quickly emerged as the possessor of our most intimate secrets, from our financial details to our fantasies, licit and not. For the next few years, sensible folk will trust the Federal Reserve to manage the supply of dollars and protect their value. But if Bitcoin comes packaged with seductive conveniences, it could eventually rival traditional currencies. Are people willing to surrender privacy to Google or Facebook ? If it makes life simpler, faster or even just funnier, they are.
The chief promise of Bitcoin is the “blockchain,” a system for establishing a tamper-proof digital record of who owns what. When you buy a house using dollars, you can pay lawyers to check that the seller really owns it. But suppose there was a rock-solid online record of who has title? When you buy a standard financial instrument, somebody has to register your ownership and monitor the flow of payments. Suppose that this was better automated, cutting costs and the risk of malfunction? The blockchain promises cheaper and more reliable transactions, and a smaller role for governments, lawyers, and those who manufacture trust.
Recently the establishment has woken up. The European Union’s highest court has recognized Bitcoin as a currency. The Bank of England has praised the potential of the blockchain. Nasdaq has started to experiment with it, and more than two dozen global banks have banded together to forge common blockchain standards for financial services. Perhaps Bitcoin’s innovations will be co-opted by the old guard; or perhaps Bitcoin itself will win out. Either way, the money in your (digital) wallet will function differently from any we have known.
Sebastian Mallaby is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. | Sebastian Mallaby, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on currency’s coming transition. | 31.052632 | 0.894737 | 4.789474 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2005/08/2008410135057530612.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160227160742id_/http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2005/08/2008410135057530612.html | Ingushetia premier survives blasts | 20160227160742 | The explosions in Ingushetia on Thursday, which officials said also killed a driver and wounded two others, were the latest sign of growing violence across the restive North Caucasus.
Ingushetia region Prime Minister Ibragim Malsagov was hospitalised after the attack in the city of Nazran, but his life was not in danger, Kremlin regional envoy Fyodor Shcherbakov said.
Malsagov, the region's second highest-ranking official, was wounded in the hand and the leg, said spokesman Nikolai Ivashkevich of the southern regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
Malsagov's driver was killed and two others were injured, he said, but did not give further details about the other victims.
The two explosives, placed about 10-15 metres apart, detonated within 10 seconds of each other near one of the city's outdoor markets as the prime minister's motorcade passed, the top regional police official Interior Minister Beslan Khamkhoyev said.
Russian television networks showed footage of what appeared to be Malsagov's black Mercedes, its rear window a maze of cracked glass, and of a deep crater by the roadside.
Nazran is the main city in the Ingushetia region, which has suffered frequent spill over violence from neighbouring Chechnya to the east, as well as attacks by its own rebels and criminal gangs.
International terrorism Some 90 people were killed in an assault against police last June
Some 90 people were killed in an assault against police last June
The top prosecutor for southern Russia, Deputy Prosecutor
General Nikolai Shepel, said in televised comments that the
attack seemed to have "the same signature" as other terrorist attacks that have struck the North Caucasus, adding: "I mean the international organisations that unfortunately are present in the south of Russia."
Russian authorities are eager to link their fight against rebels in the North Caucasus with the international war against terror, and often point to alleged international involvement in attacks in the region.
Government critics say flawed Kremlin ethnic policy and
corruption among regional leaders are major causes of the
Last week, Nazran police chief Dzhabrail Kostoyev was
wounded when unknown assailants detonated a radio-controlled land mine as his car was passing.
The republic's police and security forces were also
targeted in a devastating overnight assault by rebels in
June 2004, in which some 90 people were killed. Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for that attack and for the hostage crisis that killed more than 330 people last September at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, which borders both Chechnya and Ingushetia.
The republic on Chechnya's eastern border, Dagestan, also
has been plagued by frequent bombings and other attacks
targeting government and law enforcement officials.
Authorities in other republics of the North Caucasus have
battled rebels and analysts have expressed concern that major violence could break out in the region even as Russian and local government officials assert that life is returning to
normal in Chechnya, devastated by two separatist wars in | Two bombs have exploded on a roadside in the mostly Muslim republic bordering Chechnya, wounding its prime minister in an apparent assassination attempt. | 22.72 | 0.64 | 0.96 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/02/2008410134450869724.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160227181115id_/http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/02/2008410134450869724.html | Profile: Dr Harith Sulayman al-Dhari | 20160227181115 | He was born in Baghdad in 1941. He earned his first degree in Sharia in 1967 from al-Azhar Islamic University in Cairo.
He belongs to al-Dhari clan, who live in Khan Dhari, about 25 miles west of Baghdad. He is a descendant of Shaikh Dhari who became a national hero when he managed to kill a colonial British officer, Colonel Gerard Leachman in 1920, triggering a massive revolution against the British occupation of Iraq.
He earned post-graduate degrees in Sharia and Hadith (sayings of prophet Muhammad). He lectured in several Arab universities before returning to his home country after the US-led occupation of Iraq in 2003.  | Dr Harith al-Dhari is considered Iraq's most notable Arab Sunni scholar. | 7.9375 | 0.4375 | 0.8125 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/after-first-contests-attention-turns-to-more-diverse-states-in-2016-primary-race-1453844862 | http://web.archive.org/web/20160227191532id_/http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/after-first-contests-attention-turns-to-more-diverse-states-in-2016-primary-race-1453844862 | After First Contests, Attention Turns to More Diverse States in 2016 Primary Race | 20160227191532 | Hispanics and African-Americans will have their first chance to notably shape the presidential race when voters in South Carolina and Nevada cast ballots in late February.
The predominantly white electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire have played key roles for decades. But since 2008, South Carolina and Nevada have injected racial, ethnic and geographic diversity into the early rounds of the process.
The top finishers in those contests will be well positioned for the flurry of a dozen states, many of them in the South, that will vote on March 1.
In South Carolina, the GOP primary will be Feb. 20, while the Democratic contest will be Feb. 27. Nevada will host a Democratic caucus on Feb. 20 and a GOP caucus on Feb. 23.
For Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, South Carolina’s large black population could serve as a crucial firewall if Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wins in Iowa or New Hampshire. In 2008, African-Americans made up 55% of the Democratic voters there and overwhelmingly backed Barack Obama over Mrs. Clinton to help elect the first black president.
In the 2016 campaign, Mrs. Clinton has earned strong support from African-Americans and posted commanding leads over Mr. Sanders in South Carolina. “If you are going to win black votes in swing states like Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, South Carolina is where you hone those skills, and there’s still a lot of organizing left to be done,” said Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina lawmaker backing Mrs. Clinton.
Republican Tim Scott, the first African-American senator from South Carolina, said he is skeptical the Democratic nominee will be able to match the record-setting black turnout for Mr. Obama. “In a post-Obama political world, the field is more open for Republicans to attract African-American voters,” said Mr. Scott, who has hosted forums with at least a dozen Republican presidential candidates. “Some Republicans think it’s too high of a hill to climb, but I believe in 2016 we have legitimate chance to double or quadruple the numbers from 2012.”
A Democratic nominee hasn’t won South Carolina since Southerner Jimmy Carter in 1976, while Nevada has swung back and forth, making its booming Hispanic population a coveted voting bloc. The Hispanic share of the general election vote grew to 18% in 2012 from 10% in 2004, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Mr. Obama overwhelmingly won the Hispanic vote in Nevada and nationwide, prompting the Republican National Committee to step up its minority outreach after the 2012 election.
But some Hispanic Republicans say Donald Trump ’s disparaging remarks about immigrants could thwart their efforts. Mr. Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers when he announced his GOP campaign in June, and has called for massive deportations of undocumented workers.
“His message has been basically that you’re not accepted in his country, and we are going to get rid of you,” said Fernando Romero, president of a nonpartisan, Nevada-based group called Hispanics in Politics that aims to involve the community in the political process. He was registered as a Democrat for many years but joined the Republican Party earlier this year and has endorsed Cuban-American Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. He said Mr. Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric cuts both ways in the Hispanic community.
“It makes it very difficult to convince people that the Republican Party is going to do the right thing, and it behooves party leaders to speak out against Trump,” he said. “I also think Trump will unite voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts among Latinos because the best response is to try to stop him.”
Mrs. Clinton is by far the most organized on the ground in Nevada, said Las Vegas-based Democratic consultant Dan Hart. Former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto could help her by rallying Hispanic voters around her campaign to be the first Latina elected to the Senate.
Mr. Rubio and former Florida Sen. Jeb Bush are also reaching out to Hispanic voters, Mr. Hart said. “If they don’t do well in earlier primary states, Nevada could be a stopgap for either of them,” he said.
Write to Beth Reinhard at beth.reinhard@wsj.com | Hispanics and African-Americans will have their first chance to notably shape the presidential race when voters in South Carolina and Nevada cast ballots in late February. | 27.827586 | 1 | 29 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/02/29/03/55/at-least-eight-killed-in-somalia-blasts | http://web.archive.org/web/20160229094827id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/02/29/03/55/at-least-eight-killed-in-somalia-blasts | Islamists kill 30 in twin Somalia blasts | 20160229094827 | Somalia's al-Shabaab Islamist group has bombed a busy junction and a nearby restaurant in the town of Baidoa, killing at least 30 people, police and the group say.
Al-Shabaab often carries out such suicide attacks in the capital and elsewhere in its bid to topple Somalia's Western-backed government. The group wants to impose its strict version of Islamic rule in the Horn of Africa nation.
"The restaurant and the junction were very busy," Police Major Bilow Nurr told Reuters from Baidoa on Sunday, which lies about 245km northwest of Mogadishu.
Police Colonel Abdi Osman said the death toll was 30, with 40 others injured. A hospital officials said many of the bodies it received were charred beyond recognition.
A police officer said a suicide car bomb blew up at the junction on Sunday while a second blast - possibly a bomb that had been planted or a suicide bomber - struck the restaurant.
"We targeted government officials and forces," al-Shabaab's military operation spokesman Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab told Reuters, adding there was a police station nearby.
Ismail Olad said the two locations were full of civilians and security forces.
"I heard a huge crash at the busy junction and as I ran, I heard another blast at a restaurant ahead of me. The whole place was covered by smoke," he said.
The blasts follows a car bomb attack in Mogadishu near a park and hotel on Friday that killed 14 people, police said. He said three militants from the al Shabaab group were also killed. | Suicide bombs at a restaurant and a busy junction in Somalia have left at least eight people dead. | 16 | 0.736842 | 1.368421 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/03/09/17/14/car-bomb-kills-at-least-3-somali-police | http://web.archive.org/web/20160310105605id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/03/09/17/14/car-bomb-kills-at-least-3-somali-police | Bomb kills 4 outside Somali police academy | 20160310105605 | Three police officers and one civilian have been killed in a car bombing outside a police academy in the Somali capital, and a spokesman for an Islamic extremist group says it has repelled an attack by international forces.
A suicide car bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle outside a cafe near the academy in Mogadishu on Wednesday, General Ali Hersi Barre said.
There was no claim of responsibility for the blast, but it bore the hallmarks of al-Shabaab.
The Islamic extremist group said on Wednesday its fighters had foiled an attempt by foreign forces to raid an al-Shabaab-held town in southern Somalia during the night.
Spokesman Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu Musab told a militant-run online radio that unidentified foreign forces with two helicopters tried to launch a ground attack on a military station in Awdhegle town in Lower Shabelle region before they were repelled.
Al-Shabaab fighters pressed the foreign forces dropped off by helicopter to retreat with casualties after more than 30 minutes of clashes.
No country has said it carried out the attack alleged by the group.
The Pentagon has said US forces carried out air strikes on a training camp run by al-Shabaab on Saturday, killing more than 150 of the group's fighters.
Despite being ousted from Mogadishu and surrounding regions, al-Shabaab continues to launch guerilla attacks across the Horn of Africa country.
The group has also carried out many attacks in neighbouring Kenya, whose military involvement in Somalia is opposed by the Islamic extremists. | Al-Shabaab militants have claimed responsibility for a car bomb that killed at least three Somali police officers in Mogadishu. | 13.045455 | 0.772727 | 1.409091 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/06/russia-and-iran-strike-oil-for-food-agreement.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160311065000id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/06/russia-and-iran-strike-oil-for-food-agreement.html | Russia and Iran strike oil-for-food agreement | 20160311065000 | After eight months of talks, Russia and Iran have yet to agree concrete details of a large oil-for-food deal, highlighting the difficulties the two major energy producers face in overcoming sanctions from the West.
On Tuesday, Russia puzzled markets when it first said the landmark deal had been agreed with Iran - but later withdrew the statement.
On Wednesday, a new statement gave no indication of volumes or the timeframe of the deal: "Based on Iran's proposal, we can participate in arranging crude oil shipments, including to Russia... Volumes are to be determined by market needs."
In January, sources told Reuters Iran and Russia were negotiating an oil-for-goods swap worth $1.5 billion a month that would enable Iran to lift oil exports substantially, undermining Western sanctions.
Under the proposed deal Russia would buy up to 500,000 barrels a day or a third of Iranian oil exports in exchange for Russian equipment and goods, sources have said.
But as talks progressed, the figures of potential oil sales kept edging down. Traders said Iranian oil sales to Russia made no economic sense and were technically difficult as Russia has no refineries next to big ports which could process oil.
If Russia marketed Iranian crude for sales to third countries, it would still violate sanctions, traders have said.
On Wednesday, business daily Kommersant cited sources as saying the latest figures discussed at talks were in the area of 2.5-3.0 million tonnes a year (50,000-60,000 barrels per day) or a tenth of the original plan.
The energy ministry declined to comment on the specifics of the deal. Kommersant said supplies could be organized via a Russian state-controlled trader.
Tehran's oil exports have been slashed to some 1.0-1.5 million bpd from 2.5 million bpd two years ago after the West imposed thought sanctions in a stand-off over Iran's nuclear program.
Since January, Moscow itself came under heavy Western sanctions for the annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and what the West sees as funding and weapon supplies to rebels in eastern Ukraine who fight pro-Western government forces.
Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia with supplies amounting to up to 5 million bpd, relies on energy for half its budget revenues. | Russia and Iran have yet to agree on details of an oil-for-food deal, highlighting global pressures on both countries. | 17.6 | 0.88 | 3.92 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/jessa-duggar-gets-baby-advice-sister-jill-mom-michelle-duggar-baby-spurgeon | http://web.archive.org/web/20160311111045id_/http://www.people.com/article/jessa-duggar-gets-baby-advice-sister-jill-mom-michelle-duggar-baby-spurgeon | Jessa Duggar Gets Baby Advice from Sister Jill, Mom Michelle on Son Spurgeon : People.com | 20160311111045 | updated 03/10/2016 AT 01:45 PM EST
•originally published 03/10/2016 AT 10:00 AM EST
As she adjusts to her life as a new mom,
has her family to support her.
star relies especially on her big sister
for advice on parenting baby
, her 4-month-old son with husband
Jessa (Duggar) Seewald and Ben Seewald with baby Spurgeon
When it comes to Michelle, 49, who has raised 19 kids of her own, Jessa says the
matriarch "has a lot of wisdom."
"She has raised just about every personality type, so I really enjoy learning from her," Jessa, 23, tells PEOPLE in this week's issue.
"But my baby is really still young, so most of my questions these days are about breastfeeding and when to change diaper sizes," she adds. For more on the Duggars' lives these days, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday
Nancy Reagan on the cover of PEOPLE
As for her sister, the communication might not be face-to-face as Jill, 24, continues her
in Central America, but it's just as valuable.
"I have the opportunity to
," says Jessa of Jill, who has an 11-month old son,
, 26. "[We] catch up and talk about
and [I'll] ask her a question about having a little baby. She is a really great resource for me."
) on Nov. 5 after an
"I can't believe he's really ours," Jessa
exclusively at the time. "It is so amazing. He's a miracle."
In the months since, the proud parents have shared several
, including a sweet slideshow of his
Their experience as proud, happy new parents will continued to be documented when
returns March 15 at 9 p.m. ET on TLC. | Jessa (Duggar) Seewald and her husband Ben welcomed their son Spurgeon in November | 24.933333 | 0.866667 | 2.866667 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/kendra-on-top-season-5-trailer-debuts | http://web.archive.org/web/20160313112456id_/http://www.people.com/article/kendra-on-top-season-5-trailer-debuts | Kendra on Top Season 5 Trailer Debuts on Kendra Wilkinson's Twitter : People.com | 20160313112456 | Kendra Wilkinson on Kendra on Top
03/11/2016 AT 07:30 PM EST
It's almost time for more
debuted the fiery season 5 trailer on Twitter Friday – and it's a doozy.
and her own mother Patti in the trailer.
Here we go again. Season 5 of #KendraOnTop airs April 1st and no it's not a joke. pic.twitter.com/nbnwzIG7wU
Of her mother, she says, "She took my tears off my face and sold them.
Wilkinson also continues to slam Madison's memoir, saying, "What Holly wrote in that book is pure bull----." (Wilkinson
to attempting to discredit the book, which is critical of
and her time at the mansion.)
And others who stand in her way, beware, because as she says at the end of the trailer, "This is f---ing war."
returns Friday, April 1 at 9 p.m. ET on WEtv. | Kendra on Top returns April 1 | 30 | 1 | 2.333333 | medium | high | mixed |
http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/after-debt-ceiling-deal-a-sense-of-futility-grows-in-congress-1446223337 | http://web.archive.org/web/20160315161325id_/http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/after-debt-ceiling-deal-a-sense-of-futility-grows-in-congress-1446223337 | After Debt-Ceiling Deal, a Sense of Futility Grows in Congress | 20160315161325 | WASHINGTON—Congress ended an 11th-hour showdown when the Senate passed a bill Friday that raises the debt ceiling for the last time during Barack Obama ’s presidency.
Many policy makers wish it could be the last such standoff in a long-running drama over the nation’s borrowing limit.
The brinkmanship has grown so routine that budget analysts and some lawmakers say it’s time to consider changes to the debt limit that do a better job of enforcing budget discipline without using the threat that the nation won’t pay its bills on time. So far, that threat has provided poor leverage because many believe the consequences of missing payments could sharply raise borrowing costs, making the nation’s finances bleaker.
The debt limit is “flunking a cost-benefit test at this point,” said former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist who runs a center-right think tank and has advised many Republicans.
The Treasury Department bumped up against the debt limit in March but has used emergency cash-management measures since then to avoid breaching it. Treasury officials had warned of exhausting those measures by next Tuesday. Independent analysts said the Treasury could have run out of cash at some point the following week, a development that would have triggered havoc across financial markets and damaged the nation’s economic reputation globally.
In private and increasingly in public, lawmakers are conceding the recent fights have been ineffective.
Congress should pursue policies “that lead to a balanced budget and living within our means,” said Rep. French Hill (R., Ark.), who served in the Treasury Department under President George H.W. Bush and who voted against the latest deal. “Those long-term reforms are where we should devote our time instead of using the debt ceiling as a political club.”
Many lawmakers still relish the opportunity to rail against federal borrowing and mounting debt. Some say the tool remains a good way to enforce spending discipline.
Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who opposed the budget deal, said at Wednesday’s presidential debate that Republicans could have done more to use the debt limit as “leverage to try to reform government.”
Mr. Paul pointed to the 2011 budget agreement that produced spending caps set in law. That deal ended a debt-limit standoff at the last minute, but the damage included Standard & Poor’s downgrading the nation’s credit rating for the first time ever.
Since then, the White House has said it won’t negotiate policy changes for an increase in the debt limit. Raising the limit allows the nation to pay for things Congress has already agreed to fund and doesn’t on its own authorize new spending programs. To smooth passage of the debt-limit increase this time, GOP leaders in Congress paired the measure with a two-year budget framework that overhauled some benefit-spending programs. The deal suspends the debt limit, currently at $18.1 trillion, until March 2017. After that, the limit will be set higher to include any new debt.
Spending curbs produced by debt-limit standoffs in 1985 and 2011 have ultimately been rolled back by Congress as the bite of those cuts deepened. Supporters of the debt limit “misread the evidence that it has ever been an effective tool of fiscal restraint,” said Philip Wallach of the Brookings Institution.
Various proposals this year have outlined fixes to avoid paralyzing standoffs, including one published recently by the Government Accountability Office. The ideas include:
— Requiring Congress to vote to raise the debt limit when it approves spending measures or annual budget resolutions.
— Allowing the debt limit to rise in step with gross domestic product, requiring Congress to raise the limit only if debt issuance outstrips economic growth.
— Giving the executive branch the authority to raise the debt limit while Congress reserves the power to stop the increase by passing a joint resolution. This would allow lawmakers to register political protest without invoking the threat of default.
The debt limit as it exists today came into being between the first and second world wars. Before 1917, Congress authorized every new debt issuance. By 1939, it had delegated nearly full authority to the Treasury to issue debt by setting an overall cap.
“It was a convenience for Congress,” said Tony Fratto, a Treasury and White House official in George W. Bush ’s administration. “Now it’s being used as a cudgel on administrations, plural.”
Both parties use the debt limit to cause headaches for the other party that controls the White House. Last year, for example, the debt limit was extended with 55 senators voting in favor, none Republican. In 2006, under a Republican administration, 52 Republicans approved the debt-limit increase with no Democratic votes. Then-Sen. Barack Obama voted against raising it. So did Joseph Biden, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.
During his time at the Treasury Department, the debt limit was “the worst thing we had to deal with,” said Mr. Fratto. “It is a dumb concept. It’s not a restraint on spending at all and wasn’t intended to be.”
The problem now, Mr. Fratto says, is that more lawmakers are skeptical about the fallout from failing to raise the borrowing limit, raising the risk that Congress one day allows the government to fail to pay its bills.
In recent standoffs, investors have avoided purchasing short-term U.S. debt that matures when the debt limit expires, which is remarkable because Treasurys are considered among the safest investments.
Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com | Congress ended an 11th-hour showdown when the Senate passed a bill Friday that raises the debt ceiling for the last time during Barack Obama’s presidency, and many policy makers wish it could be the last such standoff in the long-running drama. | 22.354167 | 1 | 19.75 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/adam-sisman-1458324972 | http://web.archive.org/web/20160318225122id_/http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/adam-sisman-1458324972 | Adam Sisman - WSJ | 20160318225122 | 1. The memoirs of one of America’s greatest playwrights have many of the qualities of his drama. At their heart is the scene in which Miller, newly married to Marilyn Monroe, is subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Like his character John Proctor in “The Crucible,” he is willing to give a detailed account of his own political activities, but when asked to provide the names of friends and colleagues, he refuses to comply, explaining, “I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him.” He is, as a result, sentenced for contempt of court, fined and blacklisted and has his passport withdrawn. Miller tells his story without pride or rancor: The plain dignity of the narrative reflects the steely integrity of the man. The book is chronological, in that it begins when he is young and ends when he is old; but within that structure, Miller roams forward and back in time. As in his great play “Death of a Salesman,” so in his autobiography: “Memory keeps folding in upon itself like geologic layers of rock, the deeper strata sometimes appearing on top before they slope downward into the depths again.”
2. Richard Holmes has written several very fine books, but I have chosen this—one of his lesser-known—because it showed me the way forward. With “Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage” Mr. Holmes proved to me that a book about a book could be exciting. He unpicks Johnson’s life of the poet Richard Savage to demonstrate that biography can be as ambitious as the novel, posing the largest imaginative questions: How well can we know our fellow human beings? How much can we learn from someone else’s struggles about our own? What do the intimate circumstances of one particular life tell us about human nature in general? “Whenever modern biographers set out on the long journey of research and writing,” writes Mr. Holmes, “somewhere behind them walk the companionable figures of these two 18th-century presences, talking and arguing through a labyrinth of dark streets, trying to find a recognizable human truth together.”
3. Michael Holroyd is probably the greatest living biographer, one whose work has set a standard for those who have come after him. In “Basil Street Blues” he provides a kind of autobiography, following a precept of one of his heroes, the critic and biographer Hugh Kingsmill, that a biographer ought to provide “some account of his or her own life as a passport for travelling into the lives of others.” But Mr. Holroyd is too self-effacing to gaze directly into the mirror. Biography, he tells us, has provided an “exit from myself,” a means of “stepping from my own life into other people’s where there seemed to be so much more going on.” In his autobiography he has restricted himself to what he calls “a good walk-on part.” Notionally a memoir, his book is as much the story of his family—“distressed, not-so-gentle folk, downwardly mobile, indeed charging downhill, led nobly by my grandfather”—as it is of himself, told with wry humor and gentle affection. He brings to it all the wisdom and skill he has learned in a lifetime of writing about other people.
4. Anthony Blunt was an eminent art historian, director of the Courtauld Institute and Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. He was also a homosexual, a Communist and a Soviet agent. For most of his life he managed to keep these strands separate, so that no one could claim to know all of him, not even lovers or close friends. On paper, as in person, he remained cold and impersonal. Even after he confessed to MI5, there was little change in his routine. But in 1979 he was exposed as a spy, and his world fell apart. He was publicly disgraced, stripped of his knighthood and hounded out of academic institutions, despite furious opposition from those who believed that he should be allowed to retain marks of scholarly distinction. Miranda Carter’s biography tells the story of Blunt “as a particular type of Englishman in whom almost all emotional effort was diverted into the denial of feeling.” Her narrative is sure-footed and dispassionate; the book is all the more remarkable for being her first.
5. This is the epic of how V.S. Naipaul, the child of indentured laborers, born to rural poverty in colonial Trinidad, overcame disadvantage and discrimination and through single-minded determination turned himself into one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Yet the achievement came at a cost, as Patrick French shows. In his introduction he writes that “the aim of the biographer should not be to sit in judgement, but to expose the subject with ruthless clarity to the calm eye of the reader.” He reveals Mr. Naipaul to be a monster—arrogant, bigoted, deceitful, exploitative, vindictive and cruel. Mr. French’s achievement is to explain the apparent paradox, of how such an unpleasant man can be such a fine novelist. To have written such a candid book while Mr. Naipaul was still alive required courage on the part of the biographer and compliance on the part of the subject. Mr. Naipaul’s acceptance of his biographer’s demands, Mr. French writes, was “at once an act of narcissism and humility.” | Five Best: Adam Sisman on biographies and memoirs | 115.777778 | 0.444444 | 0.444444 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1861/06/10/news/new-jersey-troops-camp-olden-troops-good-health-spirits-gov-olden-innocent.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160319143834id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1861/06/10/news/new-jersey-troops-camp-olden-troops-good-health-spirits-gov-olden-innocent.html | NEW-JERSEY TROOPS AT CAMP OLDEN. | 20160319143834 | Correspondence of the New-York Times.
TRENTON, Saturday, June 8, 1861.
The three regiments of New-Jersey troops now stationed at Camp Olden are in excellent health and spirits, and will shortly proceed to the seat of war. Camp Olden is situated about three miles from the City of Trenton, and located in one of the healthiest places near the town. It was found necessary to have the camp removed the distance above named so that the troops might have less associations with the city, as it was discoved that when they paid Trenton a visit results of a very serious consequence, prejudicial to their health, were sure to ensue.
That the rum-shops of the city had purposely manufactured unwholesome and impure drink especially for them has been too apparent, from the dangerous illness with which many of them had been suddenly attacked; and it has been discovered that, so heartily did they indulge in the adulterated stuffs prepared for them, their lives were in great danger.
This has taken place on several occasions, and to so serious a height had the evil complained of arisen, that it became the bounden duty of the authorities to interfere and put an end to such wicked proceedings.
The matter was taken up by many of the New York and other newspapers, and false representations were made against Gov. OLDEN and the officers of the regiment. The misstatements reflected very severely on the Governor and the heads of the troops; but the false and unfounded accusations are now put at rest by the letter of your correspondent, who visited Camp Olden on Friday last, and returned on Saturday.
He states that neither Gov. OLDEN nor any of the regimental authorities were in the slightest to blame, but the hawkers of filthy and spurious drinks, which in themselves were sufficiently calculated to destroy the health of the troops, and, if indulged in to any extent, would result in death itself. The authorities and officers having obtained information on this head, have issued the most stringent orders upon the subject, and the troops of the throe regiments now encamped outside Trenton are in excellent condition, the camp itself being in a most salubrious and delightful neighborhood.
Your correspondent discoursed freely with many of the men, and their own statements strongly confute the formerly published libelous misstatements. The food they receive is excellent and substantial, and in abundance. They have no complaints to make, only that they evince a strong wish to be off to the scene of hostilties, so that they may be ready to take their part in the operations which the Government have determined to take against the Southern rebels, who have brought the country to its present alarming position.
The men are kept very close to drill duty. This is the more requisite, not only that they may be kept at good exercise, so necessary to those who have been accustomed heretofore to hard work and constant employment, but also that when they reach the scene of action, they may be the more fully prepared to take their place creditably amongst the mighty-phalanx who have nobly volunteered their services in behalf of supporting the honor, dignity and glory of theUnion. In this parade work they have attained to a high degree of perfection, and will not be a whit behind their brother New-Jersey companions, who have gone before them.
I hope the foregoing will have the effect of exonerating Gov. OLDEN and the military authorities, as well as of doing fair and impartial justice to the men themselves, who are steady, sober and obedient in every respect. A word now in regard to their equipments.
The great obstacle to the movement of the men to the war arises from the fact that they have not yet been fully equipped, nor received their necessary arms and clothing. The clothing will be furnished during the present week, and the Government has given orders that it shall be of the best quality.
The Government has contracted for three thousand muskets under the newest alterations, and made in the most approved manner; and to render the men completely efficient, they will not be permitted, under any circumstances, to leave until they are fully clothed, equipped and armed, so that on their arrival to take their part in the glories in which they will be called upon to share, they may be ready to at once enter upon the performance of their arduous duties.
Additional drill-ground has been taken, and the men are kept close to drill every day. They attract much attention, and are highly thought of by the people with whom they commingle. They appear to well understand the responsibilities of the enterprise upon which they have entered, and will, I am gratified to believe, when they join the other hosts, be a highly creditable auxiliary. | The three regiments of New-Jersey troops now stationed at Camp Olden are in excellent health and spirits, and will shortly proceed to the seat of war. | 30.5 | 1 | 30 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/matt-bomer-montgomery-clift-legacy-biopic-movie | http://web.archive.org/web/20160323044101id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/matt-bomer-montgomery-clift-legacy-biopic-movie | Actor Talks Hollywood Gay Icon : People.com | 20160323044101 | Matt Bomer (left) and Montgomery Clift
Michael Buckner/Getty; Silver Screen Collection/Getty
03/21/2016 AT 05:30 PM EDT
, he immediately felt as though his connection to the Hollywood icon was more than skin-deep.
"I kind of saw myself in him," Bomer told PEOPLE on the red carpet for the PaleyFest tribute to his series
Of course, their physical resemblance is uncanny – something even Bomer noticed long ago.
"Even as a young kid – before obviously I knew anything about him, or even myself – I saw him on screen and I thought, 'Oh wow he actually looks a lot like my brother,' " said Bomer.
But it was Clift's story away from the big screen that really captivated Bomer.
"He was one of those really early screen icons for me to start with," Bomer, 38, said. "Then once I learned the circumstances of his life, I realized how he was someone who did not want to be relegated to the times he lived in and was so progressive in so many ways."
One of the earliest and best-known proponents of the immersive, naturalistic "Method" school of acting alongside Marlon Brando and James Dean, Clift quickly went from Broadway sensation to Hollywood leading man, headlining now-classic films like
But Cliftâs movie star good looks were marred by a 1956 car accident that, despite cutting-edge plastic surgery at the time, altered facial features and left him with chronic medical conditions as well as drug and alcohol dependencies.
Emotionally, Clift also struggled with his sexual orientation during the repressive era, compounded by his place in the spotlight and an intense desire to keep his personal life private. Even as he wrestled with personal demons and his emotional conflicts, he added more compelling performances – including Judgment at Nuremberg and The Misfits, which marked the last screen appearances of both Clift and his friend and costar Marilyn Monroe – before his death of a heart attack at age 45 in 1966. "He had to deal with so many things that we don't have to deal with as much these days," explained Bomer. "So I thought it was an important story for people to remember."
actor said he wants another generation to know just how much of a pioneer Clift was in his own era.
"It's crazy how many people I talk to, especially under 30, who don't know who Montgomery Clift is. What?" he revealed. "I feel like someone is responsible for letting people know how important he was – culturally, socially, but most importantly as an artist."
Bomer reveals that the long-gestating screenplay is still underway, with the project having found a home at HBO last year.
"It's a hard story to tell, which is why we haven't had his biopic yet," he said. "But it's going great. It's in development. We're just not going to make that movie unless it's the right movie and it's told right and done right." | They share good looks and industry acclaim, but Matt Bomer was most moved by Montgomery Clift's personal struggles | 30.05 | 0.7 | 1.1 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/actor-stephen-dorff-lists-new-york-penthouse-for-3-million-1458830302 | http://web.archive.org/web/20160324202927id_/http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/actor-stephen-dorff-lists-new-york-penthouse-for-3-million-1458830302 | Actor Stephen Dorff Lists New York Penthouse for $3 Million | 20160324202927 | Actor Stephen Dorff is relisting his downtown Manhattan penthouse for $3 million.
Mr. Dorff, 42, purchased the condo in 2006 for $1.65 million, according to public records. Located in a prewar building in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, the one-bedroom, two-bath loft has roughly 12-foot ceilings, according to the listing with Jared Seligman of Douglas Elliman Real Estate. A private roof terrace has an outdoor shower. The unit was recently renovated, according to the listing.
The property was last on the market with Mr. Seligman in 2009 for $2.65 million, but it was taken off the market.
A former child actor, Mr. Dorff played a vampire in “Blade” in 1998, which led to a string of bad guy roles. More recently he’s done independent films like Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere,” and is set to appear in the horror film “Leatherface.”
Write to Candace Taylor at Candace.Taylor@wsj.com | In the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, Stephen Dorff’s loft has tall ceilings and a private roof terrace | 9.15 | 0.95 | 2.05 | low | high | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2016/03/22/shonda-rhimes-takes-fun-frothy-approach-with-new-show-the-catch/TWiMh1aD3KMfIiV661SQKM/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160325075117id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/television/2016/03/22/shonda-rhimes-takes-fun-frothy-approach-with-new-show-the-catch/TWiMh1aD3KMfIiV661SQKM/story.html | Shonda Rhimes takes fun, frothy approach with new show ‘The Catch’ | 20160325075117 | Shonda Rhimes is no stranger to mixing business with pleasure on the small screen — at this point, one could call her an authority on the subject. The ABC-based superproducer’s trinity of sleek, soapy dramas – “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal,” and “How to Get Away With Murder” — all feature high-powered, fiercely intelligent women, for whom resolving clients’ sometimes ethically murky predicaments is child’s play compared to taking on their own, messy personal affairs.
Alice Vaughan (Mireille Enos), the steely heart of her new ABC show “The Catch” (premiering Thursday night at 10), fits snugly into the same mold as Rhimes’s past heroines. A private investigator and security expert catering to the business elite, she’s a force to be reckoned with on the job, foiling all manner of thieves and con artists without so much as breaking a sweat, despite possessing fighting skills that are also, predictably, top-notch. And yet, like Olivia Pope and Annalise Keating before her, Alice also turns out to have a very unfortunate blind spot.
That would be the dashing, duplicitous Christopher (Peter Krause, a long way from “Parenthood”), Alice’s handsome fiancé who seems too good to be true because, well, he is. On the eve of their wedding, the groom-to-be absconds with Alice’s life savings, taking a whole lot of confidential client information with him. Shocked into turning her honed skill-set on her own love life for the first time, Alice quickly realizes she’s been both jilted and conned by the very criminal her firm has been struggling to catch: a slippery mastermind they’d previously known only as Mr. X.
The take-no-prisoners game of cat and mouse between Alice and Christopher (real name: Ben) that kicks into high-gear serves as the show’s main thrust — and its central attraction, given how perfectly cast Enos and Krause are in the lead roles. The former, so despondent throughout AMC’s rain-soaked police drama “The Killing,” is near miraculous in the way she makes Alice’s lightning-fast transition from wounded to wrathful feel not only natural but earned. The part is a much lighter role for her, and the actress, sporting slinky dresses and a seductive smile, plays it with conviction. And Krause, as a charismatic cad with lingering feelings for Alice, makes a good case for this chase’s continuation. Employing just the right blend of suavity and sentiment, Krause’s depiction of Christopher/Ben/Mr. X suggests a scalawag cut from Thomas Crown’s designer cloth.
The other actors are all serviceable if badly served by the pilot, which favors intensifying the charge between Alice and Christopher over establishing what roles their respective colleagues will occupy (one is a lawyer with oddly impeccable hacking skills, another is a cold-hearted con artist none too happy about Christopher’s inability to break away from Alice cleanly). And though the series may flesh them out in subsequent episodes, which will likely lean more into a case-of-the-week structure familiar to the Shondaland crowd, “The Catch” seems to have been both conceived and executed as a two-hander.
Given the show’s magnetic leads, and their unusual attract-and-repel dynamic, that’s a good thing. The pilot is a slick, constantly entertaining hour of programming, directed by Julie Anne Robinson with hell-for-premium-leather pacing and a surplus of stylized, split-screen transitions. From the outset, “The Catch” is a lighter and frothier concoction than Rhimes’s other shows, filled with fun, rat-a-tat banter and fast-moving heist sequences set to toe-tapping pop songs.
It remains to be seen how the show’s gloss and glamour, paired with a palpable tension between its leads that’s fueled as much by ardor as acrimony, will hold up as the show’s procedural element comes into play. The pilot, moving swiftly and focusing almost exclusively on Alice’s newly galvanized pursuit of Mr. X, leaves precious few clues about how “The Catch” will function as a week-to-week series. Still, with Rhimes on board as a producer, and Shondaland vet Allan Heinberg serving as showrunner, no one’s questioning that the series is in capable hands. And as far as introductions go, this one’s polished and playful enough to warrant a more extensive investigation.
Starring Mireille Enos, Peter Krause. On ABC, Thursday at 10 p.m. | The central character in the entertaining new ABC drama “The Catch” fits snugly into the same mold as Rhimes’s past heroines. | 35.52 | 0.96 | 6.72 | high | high | mixed |
http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-twist-on-tosca-1458936397 | http://web.archive.org/web/20160326034542id_/http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-twist-on-tosca-1458936397 | A Twist on ‘Tosca’ | 20160326034542 | Scarpia is the villain of Puccini’s opera “Tosca,” its libretto based on a melodrama by Victorien Sardou. But as Piers Paul Read remarks in an endnote to this novel, Sardou’s play is poor history, being inaccurate and partisan. Baron Scarpia, chief of police of the Papal States, is presented as a “sadistic agent of reaction,” while the republicans are liberal heroes. Puccini did more than justice to the story of Floria Tosca, the passionate peasant girl who becomes a famous singer. Yet Mr. Read, drawing on a study of the opera by scholar Susan Vandiver Nicassio, presents a more convincing—and more...
Scarpia is the villain of Puccini’s opera “Tosca,” its libretto based on a melodrama by Victorien Sardou. But as Piers Paul Read remarks in an endnote to this novel, Sardou’s play is poor history, being inaccurate and partisan. Baron Scarpia, chief of police of the Papal States, is presented as a “sadistic agent of reaction,” while the republicans are liberal heroes. Puccini did more than justice to the story of Floria Tosca, the passionate peasant girl who becomes a famous singer. Yet Mr. Read, drawing on a study of the opera by scholar Susan Vandiver Nicassio, presents a more convincing—and more interesting—version of Scarpia.
Italy was not yet united in the second half of the 18th century. Venice was an independent republic, but most of the north was ruled or controlled by the Austrian Habsburgs. Rome and central Italy were the Papal States. The south was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, whose Bourbon king was married to an Austrian princess. The French Revolution disturbed everything. Liberals welcomed it; conservatives regarded it with horror and the French as enemies of the church and true religion. Successive French invasions led to civil wars and atrocities committed by both sides.
In Mr. Read’s telling, Scarpia is a man with his fortune to make. After adventures in Spain, he arrives in Rome poor and with no prospects. He is lucky enough to find a patron in the treasurer of the Papal States, the future Cardinal Ruffo, who secures Scarpia a commission in the Papal army; the army is incompetent, but Scarpia distinguishes himself.
Mr. Read excellently renders how Scarpia, being handsome as well as brave, meets with success in Roman society. He falls in love with a beautiful, intelligent young aristocrat. To make marriage possible, he is ennobled as a papal baron. The marriage is happy at first, and children are born, but politics divide Scarpia and his wife. They are caught up in the great gale loosed upon the world by the revolution in France. His wife and her brother are both liberals; Scarpia is loyal to the establishment of church and king. As Ruffo becomes famous—or infamous—as commander of a Bourbon army against the French and Neapolitan liberals, Scarpia continues his ascent.
Mr. Read is fair to both sides in his account of the terrible wars that ensue. He recognizes that when, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it, two groups seek to make “inconsistent kinds of worlds,” there is “no remedy except force.” Each side thinks its cause good; each side, in defense of virtue, acts viciously. Mr. Read’s understanding of the nature, and consequences, of ideological wars makes this a historical novel for grown-ups.
And what of the marvelous diva, Tosca herself? Mr. Read contrives two earlier meetings between her and Scarpia, one in Venice, the other in Sicily. Both are charged with beauty and a lyrical, restrained eroticism. Then we arrive at what is the climax of the opera: In Puccini’s version, Scarpia attempts to exhort Tosca’s sexual favors in return for his freeing her lover from a firing squad planned for the next day. Is Mr. Read faithful to this or does he give it a different twist? Reviewers shouldn’t cheat readers of the pleasures of suspense.
And what a pleasure it is to read a novel by an author who knows precisely what he is doing and how to achieve his aim. Mr. Read has no time for the tyranny of creative writing schools, with their insistence that you should “show, not tell.” He knows that there is a time for showing and a time for telling, that a narrative is first a thing told or recounted and that showing tends to slow the story. Piers Paul Read is one of England’s most accomplished novelists, and “Scarpia” is among his finest novels. I would rank it alongside his first masterpiece, “The Junkers” (1968), and my favorite of his middle period, “A Season in the West” (1988). If his reputation is less than he deserves, this is perhaps because he always sets himself new challenges and doesn’t repeat himself. | Allan Massie reviews “Scarpia,” a novel by Piers Paul Read. | 66.928571 | 0.785714 | 1.928571 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/nhl-playoffs-rangers-penguins-blues-wild-canadiens-senators-042515 | http://web.archive.org/web/20160329173803id_/http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/nhl-playoffs-rangers-penguins-blues-wild-canadiens-senators-042515 | NHL playoffs: Rangers serve notice, eliminate Penguins | 20160329173803 | Best game: Rangers 2, Penguins 1 (OT). The Rangers made an unexpected run to the Stanley Cup Final last season behind goalie Henrik Lundqvist's brilliance and incredibly balanced scoring. There will be no sneaking up on anyone this season for the Presidents' Trophy winners, but a five-game series win over Sidney Crosby and the Penguins, in which all five games were decided by one goal, continued a season-long trend of defensive dominance. New York finished the regular season with the third-best goals-against average, but the Rangers have turned it up a notch in the postseason, allowing just 1.6 goals per game in this series. Penguins star Evgeni Malkin was held without a goal while Sidney Crosby and Patric Hornqvist accounted for half of Pittsburgh's meager eight goals. Carl Hagelin scored the overtime winner on Friday as New York took one step closer to ending a 21-year Cup drought.
Best stat: Nine shots, six goals. The human highlight reel that is St. Louis forward Vladimir Tarasenko scored for the sixth time in the Blues' first-round series with Minnesota, early in Game 5. The sixth goal came on his ninth shot of the series. Best omen: Make what you will of this. The Rangers scored first in all four games they won in their series against Pittsburgh. All four of those goals came in the first period. All four of those wins ended with the score of 2-1. Someone smarter than us should figure out what this means.
Best at being worst: Maxim Lapierre, F, Pittsburgh. Few players engender the kind of fan-wide hatred that Penguins forward Max Lapierre does, so it was no surprise to see Lapierre taunting Rangers defenseman Dan Boyle in Game 5 by flapping his arms like a chicken to suggest Boyle is afraid of him. You might remember this is the same guy who put Boyle on a stretcher with an illegal hit from behind, earning a five-game suspension. Look, we know anything goes in the playoffs when it comes to intimidation tactics, but respect and sportsmanship should be part of the game. Lapierre exhibited neither. He deserves a good talking to from Gary Bettman, but the commissioner may have his hands full with that little Katy Perry problem. Maybe someone should send Max's mom the tape.
Best visual: Erik Karlsson's wink. How did Karlsson feel about the Senators' 5-1 win in Montreal that kept Ottawa's season alive and drew the team within 3-2 in the series, heading back to the nation's capital? A GIF is worth a thousand words.
Best impending offseason introspection: Pittsburgh. The blue line was minus Kris Letang, Christian Ehrhoff and Olli Maatta and there weren't enough top-six forwards to fill those top-six spots, but how much longer will Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin wait in Pittsburgh? With Friday's series-ending, overtime loss in New York — the Penguins' sixth consecutive playoff overtime loss — Pittsburgh is six seasons removed from the 2009 Cup it thought would be the first of many with the world's best player. Crosby will turn 28 this summer. He's in the prime of his career. The Penguins have to rethink everything from top to bottom, lest they waste one of the greatest players ever to grace this game.
Best impression of a yo-yo: Devan Dubnyk, G, Minnesota. Dubnyk allowed three goals on 26 shots in a Game 2 loss at St. Louis. He rebounded with a 17-save shutout in Game 3, then got lit up for six goals on 17 shots in Game 4. Game 5? You guessed it. Dubnyk stopped 31 of 32 Blues shots. Following Friday's win in St. Louis, Minnesota is 11-1-2 this season after a loss with Dubnyk in net.
Best quote via Sportnet: "He has a history of being a real good goalie in crucial games in the playoffs. I don't know why anyone's surprised." — Ottawa coach Dave Cameron on Craig Anderson's 45-save effort in a 5-1 win over Montreal. Anderson had a career save percentage of .930 in 25 career playoff games before Friday's effort.
Best thing to look forward to Saturday: The growing Capitals-Islanders blood feud. Tom Wilson's freight train impersonation on Islanders defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky got it started. Some late-game antics in Game 5 escalated it. What will Game 6 bring in a series in which the Islanders once looked superior but now look subdued by the more physical Caps?
Follow Craig Morgan on Twitter | The Rangers made an unexpected run to the Stanley Cup Finals last season behind goalie Henrik Lundqvist's brilliance and incredibly balanced scoring. There will be no sneaking up on anyone this season. | 25.228571 | 0.971429 | 18 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/merrick-garland-things-to-know-supreme-court-nominee | http://web.archive.org/web/20160403202447id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/merrick-garland-things-to-know-supreme-court-nominee | Things to Know About the Supreme Court Nominee : People.com | 20160403202447 | 04/01/2016 AT 04:05 PM EDT
We learned all about Merrick Garland's
when the 63-year-old judge was
earlier this month. But now it's time to get to know the chief judge in the Washington, D.C., appeals court on a more personal level.
Cheryl Weiner, a close friend of the Garland family, shared the following fun facts about the man who could become the United States' 113th justice.
When Garland's daughters, Jessie and Becky, were in high school, he drove them to school every morning, and on the way they would all sing along to Swift albums. The only problem? "All three of them are relatively tone-deaf," Weiner says. "In high school he was cast as the only non-singing part in
Merrick Garland with his daughters
Garland's daughters grew up reading the
series and the whole family got in on the fun – including the judge, who was a pro at voicing the various characters.
In 2008, Garland, who served on the committee that helped select Harvard's commencement speaker that year, was instrumental in bringing
to his alma mater to deliver her viral commencement address. "He met J.K. before she spoke, noticed her large stone ring, and asked her if she was wearing was a 'Horcrux,' " Weiner explains. "He proudly recounted to his family that she laughed and said she had never thought of it but that he was right and it did look like a Horcrux ⦠He describes this as one of his proudest moments."
Merrick Garland with his wife and daughters
"His daughters had to put a lock around the ice cream pints to keep him from ploughing through them. He laughed when he discovered the lock but jokingly threatened that there was a loophole – he could just cut a hole in the bottom of the carton to get to the ice cream if desperate," Weiner says.
One April Fools' Day, Garland's family pranked him by cleaning out the garage, which was typically too messy to park a car in, and hiding his car in it. He panicked, thinking it had been stolen, and ran around the block to see if he had parked it on the street and forgot. He was about to call the police when his family opened the garage door to reveal the car.
Garland is notorious in his family for winning board games on technicalities – because he's the only one who actually reads the rules.
One time, when he was losing a game of Risk to his daughters, he fell silent and began studying the rule book. "His daughters became suspicious – and rightfully so," Weiner says. "Because he found some rule that if he eliminated one player he would get all their pieces. And then he proceeded to do so." | Merrick Garland is also a big Harry Potter fan | 61.222222 | 0.444444 | 0.666667 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/30/state-street-buy-asset-management-for-million/gJAolzZ2LsM78cGbq3y59I/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160404032357id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2016/03/30/state-street-buy-asset-management-for-million/gJAolzZ2LsM78cGbq3y59I/story.html?p1=Article_Related_Box_Article | State Street to buy GE Asset Management for up to $485 million | 20160404032357 | State Street Corp. has been spending a lot of time cutting costs. Now it’s going to spend some money in a bid to boost profits.
The Boston-based custody bank and asset manager said Wednesday it agreed to acquire GE Asset Management, the pension arm of General Electric Co., for as much as $485 million in cash.
The deal will add $100 billion in assets to State Street’s investment unit, State Street Global Advisors. General Electric’s pension plan, covering 500,000 workers, accounts for roughly half the new money.
A spokesman for GE, an industrial giant that is moving its headquarters to Boston from Fairfield, Conn., said the company will deposit the net proceeds from the sale into its pension trust.
For State Street, which manages $2 trillion in investments for pensions, endowments, and other large institutions, the deal is relatively small. But it adds more profitable, active management expertise at a time when the company is under pressure from Wall Street to boost its earnings.
The Boston-based financial firm wants to become more tech-driven and less reliant on faxes and manual trades.
The deal comes amid a period of prolonged cost-cutting and efforts to make State Street more digital. The company recently told investors it would shed up to 7,000 of its 32,000 jobs globally by 2020 and save $550 million in expenses. It has already announced hundreds of job cuts in the Boston area since the fall.
Jay Hooley, State Street’s chief executive, called the GE business “while not huge, very complementary to our strategy.” For instance, the group has active stock and bond management talent, as well as investors in real estate and private equity, he said.
State Street said it would keep GE Asset Management’s Stamford, Conn., office and its 275 employees, although overlapping functions could be pared in the future.
State Street said it would gain fee revenue of $270 million to $300 million in the first 12 months after the GE purchase, which is slated to close in the third quarter. Costs of integrating the companies will run $70 million to $80 million through 2018.
Hooley, in an interview, described the changes State Street is looking to implement as a response to demand from its customers — mutual funds, pensions, and hedge funds — which want access to more electronic data that is well curated to help them manage money and control risk.
In addition to overseeing investments, State Street has a massive business handling accounting, recordkeeping, and other services on $28 trillion in assets on behalf of clients. New systems under development at the company are aimed at providing real-time data and analysis, Hooley said.
“We think we’ve got a leg up” on the competition, he said. “But now the next phase of that is to truly digitize our internal environment.”
In addition to rooting out thousands of faxes and manual trades that still come through the company, State Street rolled out for investors in February such changes as pricing securities for mutual fund clients as markets close around the world, rather than waiting to do it all after 4 p.m., when US markets close.
The company also predicted it could help actively managed mutual funds compete with exchange-traded funds by pricing every half hour, instead of only once, at the end of the day.
State Street shares rose less than 1 percent to $58.52 after trading as high as $59.90 earlier in the day.
Half the major Wall Street analysts tracked by Bloomberg have a “hold” rating on the stock. One of those is Erik Oja of S&P Global Market Intelligence. In a research note, he said of the GE acquisition, “We see this deal as a positive” for State Street. | The deal will add $100 billion in assets for the Boston-based fund manager. | 43.470588 | 1 | 5.941176 | high | high | mixed |
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/12/cramer-build-new-portfolio-with-these-5-stocks.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20160408085041id_/http://www.cnbc.com:80/2014/03/12/cramer-build-new-portfolio-with-these-5-stocks.html | Cramer: Build new portfolio with these 5 stocks | 20160408085041 | However, if you are willing to put in the time and effort, then Cramer thinks you can do quite well, but only if you also practice diversification.
Specifically, Cramer believes that no more than 20% of your portfolio should ever be in the same sector. "Otherwise you're putting too many eggs in the same basket. That's a mistake."
Because of Cramer's 20% rule, a diversified portfolio necessarily contains at least 5 stocks, but it also contains no more than 10, otherwise you'll hold too many to do effective homework. And to execute Cramer's strategies, you'll need about $10,000 for investment, otherwise investment fees may be too large as compared to your total capital.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Bullish declines? Cramer says yes! Growth bulls for rent 2 stocks that deserve more attention -----------------------------------------------------------------
Now, if you're ready to do the homework, and if you're willing to practice diversification and if you've saved $10,000 for the sake of investment, you're ready to invest like Jim Cramer.
Following is how Cramer would put money to work, right here and right now.
1. EOG – Energy sector: "I would hold an oil and gas stock as a way to play the American energy renaissance. I like EOG Resources, which has been hammered of late," he said.
2. Google or Salesforce.com – Tech sector: "Not only would I hold a tech stock, but I would hold something that's riding the wave of social, mobile and the cloud. I think you can't go wrong with Google. Or if you're feeling more aggressive look at Salesforce.com," Cramer said.
3. Johnson Controls – Industrial sector: "I believe the global economy is now in recovery mode therefore I'd own an industrial. I like Johnson Controls very much because I believe it could unlock a tremendous amount of value by breaking itself up."
4. Costco or Whole Foods – Retail sector: Cramer believes that this sector presents many opportunities, broadly. However, if you were to start a position immediately, Cramer likes Costco on the current pullback or Whole Foods which he calls a long-term bet on "the all-powerful natural and organic trend."
5. Merck or Gilead – Health Care sector: "If I wanted to be conservative, I'd go with Merck, a big pharma company that has a solid 3.1% yield and major restructuring going on. Or, if I wanted to be more aggressive, I'd buy Gilead," as a bet on the companies promising new treatments.
Alt: If one of the categories above doesn't resonate with you, Cramer has an alternate idea. "I'd think about owning an entertainment stock, something like CBS or Viacom or Time Warner, or Cramer-fave Disney."
Just one note: Market dynamics are always shifting so if you're reading this article after March 12th, the day this Mad Money segment first aired, Cramer's outlook may have changed. | If you’ve got $10,000 for investment, here’s how Cramer would put that money to work, right here and right now. | 23.038462 | 0.884615 | 5.653846 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/kirsten-dunst-brad-pitt-throwback-photo-interview-vampire | http://web.archive.org/web/20160411021343id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/kirsten-dunst-brad-pitt-throwback-photo-interview-vampire | Kirsten Dunst Posts Amazing Throwback Photo with Brad Pitt : People.com | 20160411021343 | Kirsten Dunst and Brad Pitt
04/08/2016 AT 12:55 PM EDT
In case you forgot how intensely dreamy
is here to remind you. Â
actress, 33, shared a classic pic with her swoon-worthy costar, now 52, from the set of the 1994 supernatural drama
– and it is truly out of this world.
Mimicking his character's perpetually dreary mood, Pitt serves up a pensive stare underneath bleached locks, a stark contrast to the smiling young actress.
Pitt turned out to be the then 11-year-old's very first kiss – an onscreen lip-locking that predated her first real-life smooch while she was on an eighth grade field trip – and it turns out she was not exactly thrilled with the experience.
"I thought it was disgusting," she recalled to
While it's unclear whether she keeps in touch with her hunky costar, Dunst has revealed that another well-known costar,
, sends her a "Cruise Cake" every Christmas – and it happens to be the greatest thing ever.
"It's the best coconut cake I've ever had in my life," she told British chat show host Graham Norton. | An 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst locked lips with Brad Pitt in the 1994 film – and declared it "disgusting" | 10.454545 | 0.818182 | 1.454545 | low | medium | abstractive |
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