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http://www.people.com/article/cole-swindell-cmas-2014-new-artist | http://web.archive.org/web/20141104005552id_/http://www.people.com/article/cole-swindell-cmas-2014-new-artist | Cole Swindell New Artist : People.com | 20141104005552 | 11/03/2014 AT 04:15 PM EST
has come a long way – from selling T-shirts for fraternity brother
to being nominated for a CMA Award.
But he hasn't forgotten the lessons he learned while manning Bryan's merch table. "I went from selling merch to having my own merch, and to see all that change over the past seven years, I'm just thankful," says the singer, 31, who went on to open for Bryan on his recent tour. "Hopefully one day I'll be able to be where Luke is and be able to help a new guy."
Swindell's own musical taste is a blend of classic country like Randy Travis and pop hits (
gets plenty of airtime on his iPod) – perhaps not surprising for a guy who co-wrote songs like
's "This is How We Roll." Here, the "Chillin' It" singer fills us in on the artists and songs that have made a mark on him:
. I don't remember how old I was but I know I was young enough to be driving my mama crazy by putting 'Chattahoochee' on repeat. I didn't even know what half of it meant but it sounded cool and Alan Jackson was one of my favorites. He's a Georgia boy like I am and with that crazy guitar riff, everything about that song sounded cool."
"The first time I ever saw
in Atlanta when I was in college. I bought some tickets on eBay for a lot of money. I had three tickets and I had a buddy going with me and was trying to find a girl to go with me but didn't so I gave the extra ticket to Luke, cause he was in town playing a show. But seeing Chesney live and seeing him work that stage, it was like, 'This is the best entertainer I've ever seen.' It was a big part of me wanting to move to Nashville and be on that big stage."
"I didn't grow up singing, but I did do karaoke when I was 17 or 18 in Panama City, Florida ⦠I did
and people were like 'You're pretty good,' so that kind of started it. I played the bars in college in Georgia and our first gig was me and a buddy of mine, just acoustic and I was so nervous I could barely breathe or sing. The first song I ever sang was 'Don't Happen Twice,' by Kenny Chesney."
. When I first heard that album, it made me realize I want to write my own songs because it was the best stuff I heard at the time. It will always be one of my favorites."
"I just bought the new
. I've always been a huge fan and it's exciting to get to hear his new music. And the great thing is that he just announced I'm going to be on tour with him next year."
"Any new country stuff, like Jason's new album or the
. We like to listen to what our buddies are putting out and also we'll play anything on the top 100 playlist. I like to know what the top songs are to see what everybody is doing in different genres."
lately – that "Maps" song and the "Animals" song. I'm digging some Maroon 5. It just fires you up. It's totally different from the music we make but it's just cool to hear. Anything with a good beat gets us pumped up."
. I like to jam that one out. The beat is just different from anything I do and it's just a cool song."
, 'My Last Name.' It's talking about how important his last name is to him and it's kind of all he's got and there's a twist at the end when he's asking the girl to marry him. It's a cool song and I'm proud of my name so I can relate."
air live on Wednesday, Nov. 5, on ABC. | The Georgia singer's musical taste mixes traditional twang (Alan Jackson and Randy Travis) with pure pop (Katy Perry and Maroon 5) | 30.884615 | 0.769231 | 1.076923 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/george-clooney-amal-step-out-new-case | http://web.archive.org/web/20141107011451id_/http://www.people.com/article/george-clooney-amal-step-out-new-case | George and Amal Clooney Step Out in London - and She Reveals Her Next Legal Case | 20141107011451 | 11/06/2014 AT 02:45 PM EST
They both have crazy-busy work schedules, but newlyweds
are still making time for romance.
enjoyed a date at London's Savoy hotel Wednesday afternoon, leaving fellow diners starstruck at their surprise arrival.
"I think I was in a parallel universe!" says an onlooker, who was dining with her 80-year-old father at the time. "They just walked through the lobby and disappeared into another bar."
Another diner at the 125-year-old London landmark added on Twitter: "Tea at the Savoy, first a
actor walks in, then Stephen Fry topped off by George Clooney & new wife ..."
But Amal Clooney, 36, has
besides tea and cakes. The
has taken on the case of Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who has been incarcerated in Egypt since December for what Amal describes as "simply reporting the news."
In a statement released through her law firm Doughty Street Chambers in London, Clooney claims the Al Jazeera reporter's trial was "fundamentally unfair" and that his imprisonment is "a travesty of justice."
Worse, she says his 7-year prison sentence has become "a great danger to his health" – partly because Fahmy suffers from the liver disease hepatitis C and cannot obtain the specialist treatment he requires from behind bars.
"He has also suffered a permanent disability in his right shoulder due to an injury exacerbated during his detention," Clooney adds. "He will require a series of complicated correctional bone surgeries that also require extensive recovery and support not readily available in prison."
Clooney and her colleague Mark Wassouf are waiting to hear if Fahmy will be released on compassionate grounds so that he can receive the treatment he needs. His appeal is scheduled for Jan. 1.
Meanwhile, George Clooney, 53, is prepping for two upcoming movies –
, about a financial guru held hostage, and
, the Coen brothers' next comedy (plus he's producing
) – so it'll be a very busy holiday season for the couple. | The human-rights lawyer is defending a journalist imprisoned in Egypt | 33.583333 | 0.583333 | 0.75 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/ben-affleck-matt-damon-project-greenlight-winner-jason-mann | http://web.archive.org/web/20141109044412id_/http://www.people.com/article/ben-affleck-matt-damon-project-greenlight-winner-jason-mann | Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Introduce Project Greenlight Winner Jason Mann : People.com | 20141109044412 | From left: Ben Affleck, Jason Mann and Matt Damon
11/08/2014 AT 07:45 PM EST
be mentoring onscreen for the next several months? Meet Jason Mann, the winner of season 4 of HBO's
producer Marc Joubert says Mann was "light-years beyond what we had in seasons 1, 2 and 3."
Affleck adds, "Jason was, by far, the best, and we were really, really impressed by him and we really feel confident that he's going to do something special for us and HBO."
The show, which premieres in spring 2015 after a 10-year hiatus, will capture the entire process of Mann directing a feature-length film. Mann was chosen via Facebook and a panel of judges.
Though the A-listers were expected to announce the winner, technically Affleck and Damon were beaten to the punch. Mann explains, "There was this moment where the projector showed 'the winner,' and I assumed it might be a mistake, or there were options [laughs], and that was maybe one that was being projected at the time."
Affleck jokes, "Technology is not up to the point where the projector would wait for us to announce the winner before they projected the winner."
, which first premiered in 2001, follows the winner through the entire filmmaking process, from pre-production to casting to post-production. The documentary series launched the career of well-known filmmakers, such as Pete Jones (
) and Patrick Melton (the
The show was cancelled in 2005, but Affleck and Damon saw the opportunity to revive it now that technology has advanced. "It was ahead of its time in the sense that the technological demands that we placed on our company when we did it the first time proved to be a little bit much. When we thought about bringing it back, we thought that the world has come to a place where it's going to be much easier for us to do this," the director of the 2013 Oscar Best Picture winner,
"Jason should be doing this, this is what he is meant to do, and he's really, really good at it," Damon says, applauding Mann. "I think he's somebody who, in 25 years, we'll look back and he'll have made a lot of wonderful movies, all kinds of different movies, and we'll say, 'Of course this is the guy that got that job!' " | "We really feel he's going to do something special," says Affleck | 32.333333 | 1 | 4.333333 | medium | high | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/11/08/ebolafilm/BY3Va2qm6eSJZw35LpMjkK/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20141109221405id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/11/08/ebolafilm/BY3Va2qm6eSJZw35LpMjkK/story.html | Ebola virus refuses to stick to the script | 20141109221405 | When I was 14, I saw a movie called “The Andromeda Strain,” based on novelist Michael Crichton’s first big seller. Remember that one? It was about a virus from outer space that could turn human blood into veins of clotted powder within seconds, and it scared the hell out of me.
But it also reassured me because it said that humanity could be prepared even in the mind-bogglingly random event of a killer alien microbe hitching a ride to Earth on a US satellite. No, not “could be” prepared — was prepared.
There was a top-secret high-tech quarantine bunker beneath the sands of the Nevada desert and it was staffed by Nobel prize-winning doctors and scientists in hazmat suits. And they would take care of it. They would always be able to Take Care Of It.
This is the fiction we tell ourselves over and over, in movies and miniseries like “Outbreak” (1995), “Pandemic” (2007), and “Contagion” (2011). It goes back, arguably, to 1950’s “Panic in the Streets,” in which heroic doctor Richard Widmark saves New Orleans from an outbreak of pneumonic plague carried by Jack Palance and Zero Mostel.
And it helps explain why the Ebola crisis — which is, to date, a genuine crisis in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone and nowhere else — has had so many people in a tizzy over the past few months, lying awake through the night like that woman in the Roz Chast cartoon.
The 1971 film “The Andromeda Strain” painted a reassuring picture of humanity’s ability to survive a crisis.
The anxiety in this country has ebbed in recent weeks and “Ebola” is no longer trending, either on Twitter or in the more atavistic corners of our brains. Dallas is uninfected; Kaci Hickox has left the building. Still, it will take only one new case popping up in, say, San Diego or Peoria for the fear machine to whip back into gear, prompted simply by our inability to predict outcomes.
There’s no script here. And we need our scripts.
Actually, at this point, I’d say we’re addicted to them. In part this is human nature, the urge to order the chaos of reality according to organizing principles of beginning, middle, and end. Making stories allows us to tell ourselves (or fool ourselves) that this is how the world works. But it’s also because we live in a popular culture that sells fictions to us around the clock.
We spend the majority of our days in front of screens of varying sizes, and those screens pour forth narratives, shaped and delivered via TV shows and movies, newspapers articles and blog posts, even the haiku of our briefest online communications. Every tweet tells a story, as Rod Stewart didn’t sing.
There are times, of course, when reality decides to not play fair, and our fears metastasize in the absence of a governing narrative. Natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or the 2011 Japanese tsunami offer instructive examples.
We recoil in fear from unimaginable destruction and only later retell versions of the tale to include hope and resolution, like 2012’s “The Impossible,” a movie in which a white European family miraculously survives the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that killed 228,000.
The current Ebola outbreak is the latest example, one that taps into our panic about invisible killers that can seep, undetected, into our bodies. To date, the virus is estimated to have infected 14,000 and killed 5,000,all of those except one in West Africa. The exception was Thomas Eric Duncan, who arrived in Dallas from Liberia and died Oct. 8.
Some perspective: The Centers for Disease Control estimates that influenza kills 3,300 to 49,000 people in the United States per year; statistics are much debated, but the point is that they’re more. Bubonic plague — the Black Death of the Middle Ages — reached London around Nov. 1, 1348; by February, 200 people were dying per day. The 1918 influenza epidemic that killed 30 to 50 million worldwide landed in Boston at the end of August; by the end of October, 195,000 Americans had died.
But we never see movies about the 1918 influenza epidemic, and bubonic plague exists in the cultural memory banks mostly as a gag in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (“I’m not dead”). Too scary; too unkind to our need for soothing clichés of biomedical heroes conquering all.
Instead, we subsume those fears into fantasies of zombie pandemics, which are, quite tellingly, everywhere these days.
From “World War Z” in movie theaters to “The Walking Dead” on TV to the billboard I saw for a Halloween fright-fair that offers the chance to “shoot real zombies,’’ the living dead are on us from all sides. Is that because the dead dead are too frightening to contemplate?
What has been revealed over the past two months is how skittish and profoundly insecure we feel, as individuals and as a species, and how fear is a brushfire easily fanned, by memories of best-selling books like Richard Preston’s 1994 “The Hot Zone” — soon to be a television miniseries, directed by Ridley Scott! — and by the fear-mongering of news media and politicians like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Most unnerving is that the virus isn’t conforming to popular expectation. A doctor in the full hazmat regalia still got infected? That’s not supposed to happen. The CDC proving to be as fallible as any human organization? Who’s writing this thing?
Well, no one is. That’s how reality works. Things fall apart and get put back together — or not — in ways you wouldn’t believe. Entropy happens.
What also happens is that we learn, adapt, and use trial and error to combat the problems that don’t play according to the shopworn story arcs in our heads.
And by “we,” I mean the real heroes in the struggle to contain the Ebola virus: the flawed medical professionals laboring amid the sick and dying, the scientists and policymakers working to find a cure and mass-produce a vaccine.
There will be an ending to this crisis, but it won’t be written by Hollywood. If that scares you, maybe you should ask yourself why. | In movies and miniseries like “Outbreak” (1995), “Pandemic” (2007), and “Contagion” (2011), a scary virus could always be contained. Whatever it was, it could be conquered, quickly. Maybe that helps explain why the Ebola crisis has had so many people in a tizzy over the past few months. There’s no script here. And we need our scripts. | 15.6125 | 0.95 | 13.175 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/Ahmad-Brooks-forces-fumble-to-set-up-49ers-OT-5882212.php | http://web.archive.org/web/20141110094452id_/http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/Ahmad-Brooks-forces-fumble-to-set-up-49ers-OT-5882212.php | Ahmad Brooks forces fumble to set up 49ers’ OT win in New Orleans | 20141110094452 | Photo: Jonathan Bachman / Associated Press
New Orleans Saints center Jonathan Goodwin (55) watches as players converge on a Drew Brees fumble, which was recovered by the San Francisco 49ers, in overtime of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. The 49ers won 27-24. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
New Orleans Saints center Jonathan Goodwin (55) watches as players...
San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (9) is congratulated by tackle Joe Staley (74) after kicking the game winning field goal in overtime of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. The San Francisco 49ers won 27-24. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (9) is congratulated by...
Niners outside linebacker Ahmad Brooks knocks the ball loose as he sacks Saints quarterback Drew Brees in overtime.
Niners outside linebacker Ahmad Brooks knocks the ball loose as he...
Coach Jim Harbaugh saw his 49ers open up a 14-0 lead in the first quarter, but the team needed overtime to beat the Saints.
Coach Jim Harbaugh saw his 49ers open up a 14-0 lead in the first...
New Orleans Saints center Jonathan Goodwin (55) and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Justin Smith dive for a Drew Brees fumble, recovered by the 49ers, in overtime.
New Orleans Saints center Jonathan Goodwin (55) and San Francisco...
Phil Dawson congratulates teammates following a game winning field goal in overtime against the New Orleans Saints at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on November 9.
Phil Dawson congratulates teammates following a game winning field...
San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (9) is congratulated by tackle Joe Staley (74) after kicking the game-winning field goal in overtime.
San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (9) is congratulated by...
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin celebrates his touchdown reception in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin celebrates his...
Chris Culliver defends a pass intended for Benjamin Watson of the New Orleans Saints during the fourth quarter.
Chris Culliver defends a pass intended for Benjamin Watson of the...
Eric Reid is congratulated by Chris Culliver following a defensive stop during the fourth quarter.
Eric Reid is congratulated by Chris Culliver following a defensive...
Jimmy Graham catches a pass as time expires. The play was negated due to an offensive pass interference call on Jimmy Graham.
Jimmy Graham catches a pass as time expires. The play was negated...
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox (20) lies on the turf at the end of regulation, after New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham was called for pass interference, negating a touchdown reception.
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox (20) lies on the turf at...
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree pulls in a 51 yard reception in front of New Orleans Saints cornerback Corey White (24) to set up an eventual field goal to tie the game late in the second half.
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree pulls in a 51...
Jimmy Graham is defended by Chris Culliver of the San Francisco 49ers during the third quarter.
Jimmy Graham is defended by Chris Culliver of the San Francisco...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a pass as San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) and free safety Eric Reid (35) try to tackle him in the second half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a...
Carlos Hyde breaks a tackle by Rafael Bush #25 of the New Orleans Saints for a touchdown during the first quarter.
Carlos Hyde breaks a tackle by Rafael Bush #25 of the New Orleans...
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) shoves the face of New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) after Graham scored on a touchdown reception in the second half.
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) shoves the face...
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham pulls in a touchdown reception as San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) covers in the second half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham pulls in a touchdown...
Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints is brought down by Chris Borland during the third quarter.
Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints is brought down by Chris...
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) catches a touchdown pass in front of San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox.
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) catches a touchdown...
Anquan Boldin catches a touchdown pass in front of Keenan Lewis during the second quarter.
Anquan Boldin catches a touchdown pass in front of Keenan Lewis...
Anquan Boldin is brought down by Corey White #24 and Kenny Vaccaro #32 of the New Orleans Saints during the second quarter.
Anquan Boldin is brought down by Corey White #24 and Kenny Vaccaro...
Frank Gore is pursued by Rafael Bush #25 of the New Orleans Saints during the second quarter.
Frank Gore is pursued by Rafael Bush #25 of the New Orleans Saints...
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) is congratulated by quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) after scoring on a touchdown carry in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) is congratulated...
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) scores on a touchdown carry past New Orleans Saints cornerback Corey White (24) in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) scores on a...
San Francisco 49ers strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) intercepts a pass intended for New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) intercepts a...
New Orleans Saints running back Mark Ingram (22) is tackled by San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) and strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) in the first half.
New Orleans Saints running back Mark Ingram (22) is tackled by San...
Anquan Boldin #81 of the San Francisco 49ers catches a touchdown pass in front of Keenan Lewis.
Anquan Boldin #81 of the San Francisco 49ers catches a touchdown...
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) celebrates his touchdown reception in the second half of an NFL football game against the San Francisco 49ers in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) celebrates his...
NEW ORLEANS, LA - NOVEMBER 09: Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers runs during the fourth quarter of a game against the New Orleans Saints at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on November 9, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
NEW ORLEANS, LA - NOVEMBER 09: Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San...
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin (81) pulls in a touchdown reception in front of New Orleans Saints cornerback Keenan Lewis.
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin (81) pulls in a...
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde (28) celebrates his touchdown with Bruce Ellington in the first half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde (28) celebrates his...
Anquan Boldin celebrates a touchdown with Vance McDonald during the second quarter.
Anquan Boldin celebrates a touchdown with Vance McDonald during the...
Keenan Lewis #28 of the New Orleans Saints is injured on a play during the second quarter.
Keenan Lewis #28 of the New Orleans Saints is injured on a play...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a pass reception in front of San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a pass reception in front of San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox (20) in the first half.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a...
Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers looks to pass against the New Orleans Saints during the first quarter.
Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers looks to pass...
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde (28) carries for a touchdown in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde (28) carries for a...
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) carries past New Orleans Saints strong safety Kenny Vaccaro.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) carries past...
Brandin Cooks catches a pass in front of Tramaine Brock during the second quarter.
Brandin Cooks catches a pass in front of Tramaine Brock during the...
Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers congratulates his team following a touchdown during the first quarter.
Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers congratulates...
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) is congratulated by teammates after scoring on a touchdown carry.
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) is congratulated...
Colin Kaepernick takes the field for a game against the New Orleans Saints at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
Colin Kaepernick takes the field for a game against the New Orleans...
Drew Brees drops back to pass against the San Francisco 49ers during the first quarter.
Drew Brees drops back to pass against the San Francisco 49ers...
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick passes in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick passes in the...
New Orleans Saints fans celebrate in the first half.
New Orleans Saints fans celebrate in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis (85) is tackled by New Orleans Saints cornerback Corey White (24) and nose tackle John Jenkins (92) in the first half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)
San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis (85) is tackled by New...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks, right, celebrates his touchdown reception with tight end Jimmy Graham in the first half.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks, right, celebrates...
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde carries for a touchdown in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde carries for a...
Carlos Hyde celebrates a touchdown during the first quarter.
Carlos Hyde celebrates a touchdown during the first quarter.
Colin Kaepernick drops back to pass against the New Orleans Saints during the first quarter.
Colin Kaepernick drops back to pass against the New Orleans Saints...
Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers watches action during the first quarter.
Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers watches action...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks (10) pulls in a pass reception over San Francisco 49ers cornerback Tramaine Brock.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks (10) pulls in a pass...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) drops a pass as San Francisco 49ers free safety Eric Reid (35) pursues in the first half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) drops a pass...
San Francisco 49ers nose tackle Ian Williams (93) is carted off the field in the first half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
San Francisco 49ers nose tackle Ian Williams (93) is carted off the... | NEW ORLEANS â" In 2010, Ahmad Brooksâ father, former NFL defensive lineman Perry Brooks, died and was buried near his hometown of Bogalusa, La., which is about 70 miles from New Orleans. In 2013, the 49ersâ outside linebacker returned and appeared to make a game-winning play, but his sack of quarterback Drew Brees was wiped out by a disputed personal-foul penalty in a loss. On the next play, Phil Dawson made a 35-yard field goal with 5:14 left in overtime to give the previously reeling 49ers a heartstopping, darn-near-must-have 27-24 win over New Orleans. Since Brooksâ sack counted this time, defensive coordinator Vic Fangio termed it âpoetic justiceâ and Brooks said another teammate told him it was âkarma.â The 49ers (5-4) were feeling good â" and relieved â" after Brooksâ big play prevented the first three-game losing streak of the Jim Harbaugh era and ended the Saintsâ home winning streak at 11 games. [...] the Saints took their only lead of the game, 24-21, on Breesâ 2-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jimmy Graham with 1:52 left. [...] though, the defense did it, getting its only two sacks of the game on the Saintsâ final possession. The difference between four or five wins might seem inconsequential, but the 49ersâ history shows a monumental difference. Since joining the NFL in 1950, the 49ers have won four of their first nine games 13 times and made the playoffs only once in that scenario (1972, when they began 4-4-1 but finished 8-5-1 and won the NFC West). Subbing again for Patrick Willis, the third-round pick had 17 tackles (he has 35 in his past two games) and recovered Drew Breesâ fumble, one play before Phil Dawsonâs game-winning field goal. | 6.479564 | 0.517711 | 0.79564 | low | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2013/03/11/why-intrade-failed/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141110100104id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/03/11/why-intrade-failed/ | Why Intrade failed | 20141110100104 | FORTUNE — So it’s the obvious joke.
The one thing that Intrade.com, the company that up until Sunday night allowed its traders to bet on everything from Saddam Hussein’s capture to the next American Idol or Pope or U.S. president, did a very poor job of predicting, it seems, was its own demise.
Although it kind of did, or at least its founder did. John Delaney, who Fortune profiled along with Intrade back in 2005, regularly complained that U.S. regulators had it out for his company, which was based in Ireland, because either Americans are generally prudes when it comes to gambling, or regulators didn’t like people betting on U.S. elections or a combination of the two. The official explanation from the CFTC, which effectively banned U.S. citizens from using the site in November, was that Intrade’s contracts kind of looked like futures contracts and we have decided that in the U.S. things that kind of look like futures contracts should be regulated (except, of course, the type of bespoke credit derivatives that blew up in the financial crisis, which Wall Street continues to argue are too special to be regulated).
So if it’s a witch hunt that finally did in Intrade then perhaps it’s for the best that Delaney didn’t get to see it. The founder of Intrade died climbing Mount Everest, reportedly within 50 yards of the summit, nearly two years ago.
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Those who believe in rational markets and the so-called Wisdom of Crowds, which is what Intrade and prediction markets in general are based on, have taken a beating in the last few years. First there was the financial crisis, which neither the robust market for subprime mortgage bonds or the stock market in general saw coming. Then there was the rise and quick demise of the so-called Twitter hedge fund, which had planned to beat the market by analyzing millions of tweets and deciding whether people were feeling good or bad about the world. It lasted less than a year. Now comes the end of Intrade.
But the rise of Nate Silver and his FiveThirtyEight blog was perhaps the biggest blow to Intrade. In 2009, a study found that Silver, who uses statistical models, rather than markets, to predict elections, did a better job forecasting the outcome of the 2008 U.S. presidential race than Intrade. During the last election, the predicted chance of Mitt Romney winning on Intrade skyrocketed after President Obama’s poor performance in the first debate. Silver’s statistical model barely budged. One guy proved to be a whole lot smarter than the crowd.
But Intrade allowed traders to bet on many more things that just elections. And other events, like the naming of a Pope, which Intrade got right the last time around, might be much harder to build statistical models around.
Joe Weisenthal over at Business Insider essentially lets Intrade off the hook for its miscalls. He says that Intrade, like all markets, reflects conventional wisdom, and gives you the ability to bet for or against it. But that misses the point. The theory behind prediction markets is that they would do a better job than conventional wisdom. As more people placed their bets the market would move toward what the actual outcome would be.
MORE: How Citigroup won (and Goldman lost) in the Fed’s stress tests
But that’s often not how it worked out, though it’s not clear why. Intrade’s biggest failure was perhaps predicting that Obamacare had an 80% chance of being struck down by the Supreme Court, up until the moment it was announced that it was upheld. It’s worth noting that failure happened a little over a year after Delaney died.
While he was alive, Delaney was able to make a cogent argument why Intrade was good for the world and not a den of thieves. (Intrade, on Sunday, said that the site had to close because of “financial irregularities,” so Delaney and Intrade may end up being remembered as the latter.) Delaney reasoned that what people were doing on Intrade should not be considered gambling. That seemed to keep U.S. regulators at bay, for a while. But nonetheless, Intrade’s legality was always in question, which kept some users away and made it a less successful market than it could have been.
So the real reason Intrade failed may not be because prediction markets don’t work. But because, based on our current laws, it’s still more profitable and unquestionably legal for people like Nate Silver to use their statistical models to launch blogs than to spend their time and efforts on Intrade. Until that changes, we are all probably better off without it. | Intrade failed not because markets aren't rational, but because the rational people chose not to participate. | 47.736842 | 0.842105 | 1.052632 | high | medium | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2012/04/16/3-essential-ways-ceos-can-innovate-now/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141113125816id_/http://fortune.com:80/2012/04/16/3-essential-ways-ceos-can-innovate-now/ | 3 essential ways CEOs can innovate now | 20141113125816 | By Scott D. Anthony, contributor
FORTUNE — Leaders often perceive innovation as the province of the few, isolated to white-lab coat wearing research scientists or “out-of-the-box” thinking marketers. That’s not right. In today’s quickly changing world, innovation should be a corporate-wide capability.
Isolating innovation hurts a company’s ability to compete. After all, shrinking product life cycles driven by globalization and rapid advances in communications technologies means that competitive advantage is increasingly a transitory notion. Companies like Yahoo! YHOO go from darlings to also-rans seemingly overnight. Widespread innovation capabilities improve a company’s ability to incrementally improve today’s offerings and create tomorrow’s offerings.
Further, it isn’t just the way in which companies compete that needs to change; it is the way in which people fundamentally do their work. Think about the rise of communications technologies such as Yammer (the corporate equivalent of Twitter) and WebEx or collaboration tools like Campfire. It seems as soon as you master a new tool, a new one starts to emerge. A corporate-wide innovation capability helps an organization’s employees more readily adopt and adapt to these new technologies.
Companies like Apple AAPL and Amazon.com AMZN seem to have innovation in their DNA; others like Procter & Gamble PG and General Electric GE have spent decades developing systems to support innovation. If you are just starting your innovation journey, consider the following three tips.
MORE: How Microsoft grew into a giant
Forming and spreading a common language of innovation. While innovation discussions often carry mystical tones, innovation is really nothing more than finding new ways to solve problems. But when people define innovation differently, it inhibits an organization’s ability to have productive discussions on the topic. And makes it more difficult to identify, understand, and respond to innovation challenges — or opportunities.
Here’s a simple test to determine if your organization is lacking a common language. Ask a group of people to write down and read out their definition of innovation. Odds are there are material differences in the definitions, which can lead to confusion and frustration. Beyond a basic definition, consider detailing the different types of innovation strategies you plan to follow. For example, P&G has four distinct types of innovation strategies, ranging from commercial (marketing and promotion methods to drive trial and use of existing offerings) to disruptive (ideas that have the potential to create entirely new categories). Precise definitions of each strategy help bring clarity to innovation efforts.
Once you have a common language, spread it through formal and informal mechanisms. Agrichemical giant Syngenta SYT demonstrates the payoff that can come from an investment in a common language. In 2006, a small team of dedicated trainers created an innovation course targeted at project and leadership teams. The course’s goal was to provide language and tools that would help the company improve the productivity of its $1 billion annual investment of R&D. Over the course of five years the training spread to all of Syngenta’s geographic regions, helping the company reorganize its product groups while launching geographical units focused on finding solutions to specific customer, climate, and crop problems in each region.
The result has been an explosion of new products that not only boosted land productivity but also the personal productivity of farmers. Syngenta benefited not from just one or two new products but from a repeatable way to bring to market successful new hybrid seeds and new ways to protect soy, barley, wheat, sugarcane, corn, apples, and flowers from droughts and disease. Between 2006 and 2011 revenues increased by 45%, net income doubled, with new products contributing $700 million in global revenue at twice the company’s overall growth rate.
MORE: The future of innovation
Frame specific innovation challenges There’s a misbegotten notion that chaos and innovation are friends. In fact, the best way to accelerate innovation is to constrain it. That is, to tightly define the problems that you are seeking to solve. These problems can be broad strategic challenges, such as “How do we win in China?” They can also be tactical challenges, such as “How do we make the process of filling in time sheets less onerous?” The more specific the problem definition, the better.
Then determine which employees are best equipped to handle the problem. Some challenges are ready-made for “spare time” thinking from broad groups of employees. Others require a more dedicated approach. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming complicated challenges involving the creation of new business models can be solved by people in a fraction of their time. Most new businesses fail, and that’s with an entrepreneur spending every minute of every day thinking about a problem.
Many companies think that the best way to get employees to participate in innovation is to give them financial incentives. However, research summarized in Daniel Pink’s helpful book Drive shows that financial incentives actually decrease performance on creative tasks. Pink instead counsels giving people autonomy, providing them opportunities to develop mastery, and instilling a sense of purpose in their work.
Role-model desired behaviors Innovation is an unnatural act at many companies. Leaders need to regularly role model desired behaviors to help shape their organization’s culture.
MORE: Computing’s next milestone is “thinking”
Consider prudent risk taking. While innovation is more predictable than many perceive, not every innovation effort is going to work out. The best innovators follow a process of careful experimentation, and accept that course-correction and failure are natural parts of the innovation process. However, it is hard to follow that process if people perceive that they will get punished if things don’t pan out. Leaders can help to encourage the right behavior through the way in which they drive disengagement from projects, how they treat managers who work on commercial flops, and how they humanize the topic by describing their own failures.
For example, noted entrepreneur Jeff Stibel created a “failure wall” in his company. The wall combined memorable quotes about failure with personal examples describing individual failures and lessons learned. Stibel himself detailed three of his most memorable failures — and signed his name to those failures. You don’t get clearer signals from leadership than that.
Innovation is the challenge, and the opportunity, of our times. Developing a common language, framing pertinent innovation challenges, and role modeling desired behaviors are straightforward ways to help make innovation a more widespread capability in your organization.
Scott D. Anthony is Managing Director, Asia-Pacific, of Innosight, an innovation and strategy consulting firm. He is the author of The Little Black Book of Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). | Leaders often perceive innovation as the province of the few, isolated to white-lab coat wearing research scientists or “out-of-the-box” thinking marketers. That's not so. | 33.842105 | 0.947368 | 30.473684 | medium | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/11/14/behind-the-apec-summits-landmark-deals/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141114140900id_/http://fortune.com/2014/11/14/behind-the-apec-summits-landmark-deals/ | Behind the APEC Summit’s landmark deals | 20141114140900 | The outcome of this week’s APEC summit meeting between U.S President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping was better — much better — than most observers had anticipated.
The two leaders managed to downplay their differences and celebrate their common interests, striking three bargains and issuing a joint statement of intent. The agreements covered the waterfront —a decision to reduce or eliminate tariffs on information technology products, a plan to extend the term of visas, a promise to develop rules of the road for maritime and air encounters in the western Pacific, and a commitment on the part of both countries to take action to address climate change by reducing their carbon emissions. Whatever acrimony might have emerged over issues, such as Hong Kong or cyber, was kept under wraps in favor of a positive message of expanding the common ground between the two countries.
What accounts for this important, albeit surprising, progress? Undoubtedly, a number of factors — countless hours of negotiation by exhausted Chinese and American officials, domestic imperatives on trade in the United States and clean air in China, and above all, a confluence of interest at the very top: President Obama’s legacy and President Xi’s ambition.
Since 2011, President Obama has made the pivot or rebalance to Asia a U.S. foreign policy priority: reinvigorating U.S. leadership in the region, reassuring U.S. allies of Washington’s security commitment, working to foster good governance in emerging democracies such as Myanmar, and promoting free trade through the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And a central element of the pivot is engaging China in these same trade, security, and governance norms. With only two years left in his tenure, a robust U.S. presence and rising influence in Asia, coupled with a China that is largely within the U.S. tent, will be an important element of his foreign policy legacy.
Xi Jinping, in contrast, is at the beginning of his presidency—just on the cusp of his third year in office in what will likely be a 10-year tenure. For Xi, the Asia Pacific is China’s backyard and a natural platform for Chinese leadership. His vision of a “new relationship among major powers” with the United States represents an understanding that regional leadership will need to be shared for now but also a belief that over time, all roads will lead to Beijing.
Xi’s cooperation with the U.S. on climate, security and trade at the APEC summit are part of a short-term strategy to maintain regional stability and earn the respect of the region as a cooperative and constructive player. At the same time, Xi is laying the foundation for Chinese leadership in the future by promoting new Chinese-designed institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area, and an Asian security architecture — all of which compete with pre-existing or proposed institutions that are led by the United States or other actors in the region.
President Obama’s desire for a positive legacy and President Xi’s ambition for greater Chinese influence moving forward may well be enough to support further positive growth in the relationship. Indeed, the two countries have already committed to moving more aggressively to achieve a Bilateral Investment Treaty over the next year or so, and to work together on a range of issues such as promoting stability in Afghanistan, denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, and cooperating on law enforcement
Of course, obstacles remain. The U.S. has adopted an almost reflexive negative response to any institutional innovation proposed by Beijing. Washington, for example, has actively opposed the Chinese establishment of an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), perceiving it (correctly) as a challenge to the U.S. and Japan-supported Asian Development Bank (ADB). Yet rather than refusing to join and encouraging others to boycott membership in the AIIB, Washington should accept Beijing’s offer to participate and then work from within to ensure that the AIIB adopt environmental, labor, and governance standards equal to those of the ADB and other development banks. In this instance, rather than exerting positive leadership in the region, Washington appears to be undermining a potentially very useful initiative merely because it is driven by China.
For China’s part, President Xi has stoked a particularly virulent form of Chinese nationalism that has the potential to undermine both relations with the United States and his own vision and ambition for Chinese regional and global leadership. Under Xi, the Internet is being strangled, artists and intellectuals stifled, and Western political and cultural ideals demonized. This insidious form of nationalism, if not brought to a halt, will eat away at Xi’s ability to portray China as able to articulate a vision shared by much of the rest of the world. After all, it will be difficult to win over the hearts and minds of the very people whose ideals and values are being condemned.
President Obama and President Xi each have a strong personal incentive to make real advances in the U.S.-China relationship over the next two years. Each will have to make room for the others’ ideas and institutions — understanding that the more that short-term interests can be aligned today the better the chance for longer-term coincidence of interest. While the APEC summit did not represent a reset for the U.S.-China relationship, it could well represent the beginning of a rethink.
Elizabeth Economy is the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director in Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also the author of “China’s Imperial President” in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. | China’s unexpectedly easy cooperation with the U.S. on climate change, security and trade says a lot about the interests at the very top: Barack Obama’s legacy and Xi Jinping’s ambitions, says Elizabeth Economy, director in Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. | 20.705882 | 0.862745 | 4.509804 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2013/07/15/the-lowdown-on-chinas-slowdown-its-not-all-bad/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141118090041id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/07/15/the-lowdown-on-chinas-slowdown-its-not-all-bad/ | The lowdown on China’s slowdown: It’s not all bad | 20141118090041 | FORTUNE — For China, 2013 is becoming the year of the credible shrinking GDP growth target. Earlier in the year, the old 8% norm was shaved down to an official estimate of 7.5% by China’s State Council. Last week, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei moved that to 7%, and said an even lower number was possible.
China’s slowdown is real — but relative. While President Xi Jinping has told China’s officials to worry less about GDP and more about quality of life, investors still focus on the crude indication. The official target of a 7.5% increase would already have created China’s slowest growth since 1990. The official acceptance of a lower number shows that the old received wisdom — anything below 8% puts China at risk of rising unemployment and social unrest — has been discarded.
For China-watchers, 6% growth sounds bizarre. It was not that long ago that double digits were normal. But by the standards of the other middle-income countries, China is still doing exceptionally well. The International Monetary Fund expects 3% GDP growth this year in both Latin America and the Middle East.
MORE: The CEO who caught the Chinese spies
It has three causes. First, demand for exports from China is slowing. June’s 3% decline is especially weak, but the average increase over the last twelve months is the slowest rate since the beginning of 2010. A strong currency hurts, as does weak demand. But as China gets richer, it’s natural that the currency rises and that exports based on cheap labor fade away.
Second, economic gravity is catching up. The Chinese workforce is no longer increasing and the pace of urbanization is slowing because so many people have already left the farms. Of more concern is the decreasing efficiency of investment. A few years ago, only one yuan of investment was needed to add a yuan to GDP. Now it takes almost four yuan.
Finally, the authorities are not trying to fight gravity. The government knows about stimulus; it did a huge one in 2009. With a fiscal deficit of just 2% of GDP and total control of the big banks, it has the means. It also controls the statistics, so can basically report whatever number suits. Clearly, the authorities are comfortable with lower GDP growth numbers.
China’s growth has been fueled by borrowing. But there’s no sign that the slowdown has been created by a credit crunch. The official effort to rein in “shadow banking,” loans that do not appear on banks’ books, may hurt; and total social financing, the government’s favored measure of new money pumped into the economy, has come down recently. But the six-month average of social financing, a good measure of what’s affecting GDP today, is rising.
MORE: Why crowdfunding hasn’t caught on in Asia
Still, there’s a monetary problem. Because profitability is falling and leverage has risen, companies have to put more of their profits into servicing debt and less into investment. The government does not seem too bothered. Officials seem to have learned the lesson of the last stimulus: mandated mega-lending leads to wastage and recklessness.
The key issue is not pace of growth, but the effect on society. There is a good argument that by that standard China’s recent growth has been too fast. The all-out pursuit of more production led to grave environmental degradation and probably encouraged a lax attitude towards corruption.
A slower-growing economy could allow for more investment in things that make China a happier, healthier place over the long run. Those would include cleaner production, genuine innovation and human capital. But some recently announced projects — the world’s largest free-standing building, the longest under-sea tunnel, a flamboyant space program — suggest old habits die hard.
Investors’ talk of a hard landing in China is unhelpful. Even GDP growth of 2% a year would be quite acceptable, as long as employment remained adequate and social unrest low. Conversely, 7% growth with a spike in labor-related protests and bankruptcies would be tough.
MORE: China and Africa: What the U.S. doesn’t understand
Perhaps the best test of a hard landing is whether the authorities appear to remain in control. Deducing that is largely a question of parsing political rhetoric. It’s encouraging that Premier Li Keqiang says growth hasn’t fallen below the minimum acceptable rate, whatever that is.
What seems most likely is that policymakers are biding their time. The tools they have — forced lending, currency depreciation, vast infrastructure mandates — are powerful but they are also rough, and come with uncertain consequences. For now, the mentality of “best left alone” looks about right.
Read more at Reuters Breakingviews. | A slower-growing economy could allow for more investment in things that make China a happier, healthier place over the long run. | 37.28 | 1 | 25 | high | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/11/18/facebooks-newest-app-lets-you-chat-in-small-groups/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141118223125id_/http://fortune.com/2014/11/18/facebooks-newest-app-lets-you-chat-in-small-groups/ | Facebook’s newest app lets you chat in small groups | 20141118223125 | This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.
Facebook introduced on Tuesday a standalone app for Groups, an existing Facebook feature for sharing messages with small numbers of contacts.
The Groups app was built “with the people who use Groups the most in mind,” such as those who use it communicate with coworkers, fellow students or distant friends, according to Facebook’s press release.
The Groups app features a list of user’s Groups on a single screen, in addition to a notifications page providing updates on what’s going on throughout all of a user’s groups. There’s also a discovery feature to suggest groups of interest based on a user’s likes or friends.
Unlike Facebook Messenger, which Facebook FB moved entirely to a standalone app, the Groups function will still be available in the main Facebook app. All told, the Groups app appears similar to WhatsApp, a group messaging app that Facebook purchased in October in a deal worth about $19 billion.
The Groups app is a product of Facebook Creative Labs, a Facebook initiative to designs apps that facilitate new ways of communication. Facebook has also recently released standalone apps for chatting anonymously and for sending self-destructing messages.
Groups is now available for free download on iPhone and Android devices. | But don't worry — Groups will still be accessible from the main Facebook app. | 15.875 | 0.5625 | 2.1875 | medium | low | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2014/11/18/stock-market-record-close-health-care/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141118230139id_/http://fortune.com/2014/11/18/stock-market-record-close-health-care/ | Stocks, buoyed by health sector, set another record high | 20141118230139 | A strong showing in the health care sector and positive economic news from overseas spurred the U.S. stock market to record heights once again on Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 40 points, or 0.2%, to hit yet another record close of 17,688. UnitedHealth Group UNH was among the biggest gainers in the Dow Jones, rising 1.8%. Last week, the Dow Jones established three new record closes in just five days.
The S&P 500 also closed at a record high — the index’s fourth straight — rising 0.5% to 2,052 points. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq composite recovered the moderate losses the index suffered on Monday, gaining 0.7% to finish at 4,702 points. The Nasdaq remains at its highest levels since 2000.
In addition to UnitedHealth, other members of the health care sector to boost the market on Tuesday included Medtronic MDT , which gained 4.7%. Actavis ACT , which said yesterday that it plans to buy Botox-maker Allergan for $66 billion, got an 8.7% bump to its share price on Tuesday. Allergan AGN , meanwhile, jumped 2.2% in the wake of the deal, which comes after months of the company fighting off the dual takeover attempt by Valeant Pharmaceuticals and activist investor Bill Ackman.
The market also received a shot in the arm from positive news out of Japan, where that country’s prime minister announced plans to delay a tax hike by 18 months as part of efforts to pull the country out of a recession.
The U.S. market is coming off four straight weeks of weekly gains, which was the market’s best four-week stretch since 2011. | Dow Jones and S&P 500 both hit new record closing highs. | 25.916667 | 0.75 | 1.25 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/11/25/no-sign-of-major-opec-cut-as-ministers-haggle-before-meeting/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141125185407id_/http://fortune.com/2014/11/25/no-sign-of-major-opec-cut-as-ministers-haggle-before-meeting/ | No sign of major OPEC cut as ministers haggle before meeting | 20141125185407 | Ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are gathering in Vienna for what is being billed as their most important meeting in decades.
The cartel that produces a third of the world’s oil has to decide whether to let prices continue to fall, under pressure from surging output in North America, or to cut output to bring it back into line with global demand. If they choose the latter, then they will also have to thrash out the highly tricky question of who will bear the brunt of the output cuts.
The meeting will have ramifications far beyond the 12 countries that make up the cartel.
Crude prices have fallen 28% since the summer to their lowest level in over four years, shaking oil companies and producer countries out of the cozy thought that prices would stay at or above $100 a barrel forever, according to analysts at Barclays.
If OPEC can agree on how to share the pain, it can squeeze price back up to $100 a barrel, but if not, then producers and companies will have to get used to a new reality, and cut their cloth accordingly. For Russia, that could mean abandoning grandiose new plans for rebuilding its armed forces. For Big Oil, it could mean lower dividends and investment.
The current oversupply has pushed gasoline prices in the U.S. below $3 a gallon. In the U.S., and across much of the world, that slump is acting as a de facto tax cut, creating additional disposable income out of nothing, says Graham Martin, managing director of Optima Fund Management, which has $4.4 billion in assets under management.
From China to Europe, that’s an important prop to economies that are all either slowing down or flirting with recession.
By the same token, countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Russia, which are big producers of oil, but which aren’t members of the cartel, will be hoping that OPEC will take the strain rather than allow a free-for-all that would eat into their budgets and current accounts.
It’s precisely that kind of free-riding that OPEC’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, has taken offense at in recent months, slashing its prices for Asian customers in an effort to defend its market share.
Oil Minister Ali Naimi struck a nonchalant tone on arrival in Vienna, saying only that “it’s not the first time the market is oversupplied,” according to Reuters.
Naimi met later with officials from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, but there was no sign of any agreement of a coordinated cut in production. As a result, crude futures fell to within a whisker of a new four-year low at $74.31/bbl.
Low prices are less of a problem for Saudi Arabia and other low-cost producers such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates than they are for Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria (and Russia and Brazil), all of whom have to spread their export revenues across larger populations.
Reuters quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the kingdom, with its large currency reserves, was prepared to withstand oil prices as low as $70-$80 a barrel for up to a year. By contrast, says Craig Botham, chief emerging economist at Schroders in London with $464 billion under management, Russia needs an average oil price of $114/bbl this year to balance its budget, and can’t access western debt markets to fill any deficit that arises.
Over and above the budget arithmetic, Botham noted that Russia needs a high price to maximize its geopolitical leverage, a key concern as it tries to stake its claim to influence in neighboring Ukraine, while Mexico could use a high price to improve the bid levels when it auctions new exploration blocks in the near future.
For Big Oil, the situation is less acute. Barclays analysts reckon that most majors can live with $70/bbl for two years and $80/bbl for three, without compromising their dividends and still have enough money to invest in new production. The big unknown is how quickly U.S. shale oil production (believed by many to be the ultimate target of Saudi Arabia’s price war) will slow down at those price levels.
Barclays reckons OPEC needs to cut output by 1.5 million barrels a day from its current level of just under 31 million b/d to balance the market. But news agency reports from the preliminary meetings in Vienna suggested that nothing on that scale was going to be agreed.
Instead, the cartel may agree just do what it has done many times in the past–promise to do a better job in respecting the current output quota (they currently pump almost 1 million barrels a day more than agreed, according to Bloomberg) and call that a cut.
The market has generally seen through that kind of wordplay in the past and it seems likely to do so again. | Crude oil futures fall on reports that any "cut" in supply will fall well short of what's needed to stop prices falling. | 35.884615 | 0.653846 | 0.653846 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/asu-arizona-drop-in-cfp-rankings-111814 | http://web.archive.org/web/20141126204718id_/http://www.foxsports.com:80/arizona/story/asu-arizona-drop-in-cfp-rankings-111814 | ASU, Arizona drop in CFP rankings | 20141126204718 | Updated NOV 18, 2014 9:38p ET
Arizona State, essentially eliminated last week from consideration for the inaugural College Football Playoff, remains ranked in the new top 15, as does rival Arizona.
ASU fell seven spots to No. 13 in the poll released by the CFP selection committee Tuesday night. The Sun Devils (8-2, 5-2 Pac-12) had previously been ranked No. 6 following a marquee win over then-No. 10 Notre Dame, but they succumbed to a struggling Oregon State team in Corvallis on Saturday.
The Wildcats (8-2, 5-2) dropped one spot to No. 15 after sneaking past Washington at home on a last-second field goal.
The new top four in order: Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, Mississippi State. TCU and Ohio State came in fifth and sixth, respectively. Elsewhere in the Pac-12, UCLA came in at No. 9, Utah at No. 17 and USC at No. 19.
Oregon (9-1, 6-1) represents the Pac-12's remaining hope of a spot in the Playoff and only needs to win its remaining games to secure a spot. Should the Ducks be upset in the Pac-12 Championship Game -- they could face ASU, Arizona, USC, UCLA or even Utah -- the winner of that game would likely be a two-loss conference champion with little appeal to the selection committee, barring absolute chaos from the teams near the top of the rankings.
ASU and UA still have much to play for but need help to win the Pac-12. Each has a different rooting interest Saturday, with the Sun Devils wanting USC to win and the Wildcats needing a UCLA victory
Follow Tyler Lockman on Twitter | ASU and UA each fell in the newest College Football Playoff poll but remain in the top 15 chasing the Pac-12 South title. | 14 | 0.791667 | 1.625 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.nydailynews.com/actress-leighton-meester-movie-headlines-brooklyn-film-fest-article-1.2016947 | http://web.archive.org/web/20141128190723id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/actress-leighton-meester-movie-headlines-brooklyn-film-fest-article-1.2016947 | Actress Leighton Meester movie headlines Brooklyn film fest | 20141128190723 | The fifth-annual Williamsburg Independent Film Festival kicks off Thursday with a New York story acted out by a rock star, a former Gossip Girl and a sitcom darling.
“Like Sunday, Like Rain” headlines the four-day movie fest set to screen 58 flicks at the Wythe Hotel.
It’s the fourth Gotham-based feature for showbiz vet Frank Whaley.
“The film was made in 20 days, and we shot in all five boroughs last summer,” the writer, director and actor told the Daily News. “It was completely New York-made.”
The movie stars ex-Gossip Girl Leighton Meester as a struggling musician from Brooklyn who befriends a 12-year-old cello prodigy (newcomer Julian Shatkin) who is growing up among the one-percenters on the Upper West Side.
Debra Messing plays the mother of the boy, and Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is Meester’s ex-boyfriend in the film.
It took Whaley six years to pull together the financing, and he said there are a dwindling number festivals like Williamsburg for today’s small-budget filmmaker.
“It’s getting more and more difficult to get these films seen in the indie film festivals,” he said.
Not that Whaley, with more than 70 movie and TV credits, is an unknown. He played starstruck rookie Moonlight Graham in “Field of Dreams,” and his “Pulp Fiction” character died a memorable death after asking “What?” one too many times for Samuel L. Jackson’s taste.
Strangers still call out “Say what again, I dare you!” when they see him.
He’ll be at the Wythe on Thursday night with his young star, Shatkin, to introduce “Like Sunday” and answer questions.
The festival, which runs through Sunday, includes a new batch of movies each night.
Skeet Ulrich (Scream) is making his directorial debut with “The Girl on the Roof,” which screens Saturday.
This will be the first year in the Wythe after spending the first four years at the now-closed IndieScreen, a festival organizer said.
“It’s actually a more controllable venue,” said festival co-director Peter Bloch. “It’s hipper. It’s more fun.”
For a full festival schedule and tickets, visit willfilm.bpt.me. | LIGHTS, CAMERA, Brooklyn! The fifth-annual Williamsburg Independent Film Festival kicks off Thursday with a New York story acted out by a rock star, a former Gossip Girl and a sitcom darling. | 12.052632 | 0.947368 | 27.052632 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/bill-cosby-children-wife-family-real-cosby-kids | http://web.archive.org/web/20141129163320id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/bill-cosby-children-wife-family-real-cosby-kids | Bill Cosby's Children: The Troubles and Tragedy of a Famous Family | 20141129163320 | , who has been called "America's Dad," has had five children of his own with wife Camille: Erika, Erinn, Ennis, Ensa, and Evin. And the 77-year-old entertainer's family life has been touched by difficulties – and tragedy.
Cosby's daughters, and his wife of more than 50 years have always been fiercely private, and they have not spoken publicly on the current controversy surrounding the comedian, who
The couple's only son, Ennis, was murdered in 1997. He was shot to death at age 27 during an attempted robbery on a Los Angeles freeway ramp as he tried to change a flat tire.
Diagnosed with dyslexia in 1988, he became determined to help others with similar learning problems after his graduation from Atlanta's Morehouse College in 1992. At the time of his death, Ennis had earned a master's in education and was pursuing a doctorate at Columbia University.
on Father's Day to pay tribute to his late son.
"Ennis William Cosby was our gift. And his gift is for you," he captioned a photo of him and Ennis, dressed in suits and bow ties.
Cosby had a difficult relationship with daughter Erinn, now 48, who struggled with drug abuse.
A September 2014 biography of Bill Cosby written by Mark Whitaker with the entertainer's cooperation details Erinn's story. According to
, she developed a drug problem as a teenager and in the middle of her sophomore year at Spelman College, she informed her parents that she intended to drop out.
According to Whitaker, Cosby and Camille then decided that Erinn "needed to learn to grow up the hard way."
, Cosby described his relationship with Erinn at the time as "estranged."
"She can't come here," he said. "She's not a person you can trust."
"This particular daughter appears to be the only one who is really very selfish," he also said. "She's never held down a job, never kept an apartment for more than six months. She never finishes anything. She uses her boyfriends. She wants the finer things but can't stand anybody's else's dirt, which is important."
According to Whitaker's book, for the next few years Erinn crashed with friends in New York, spending most of her time partying. One night, she went home from a nightclub with Mike Tyson, who "closed the door and came at her," writes Whitaker.
According to the book, Erinn escaped and told her parents what had happened. Cosby reportedly "loosed his lawyers on the heavyweight champion," who informed Tyson he would face charges unless he sought psychiatric counseling.
Bill Cosby and his family on the cover of Ebony magazine in 1977
According to Whitaker, Erinn got treatment for her drug problem. She later moved to Miami Beach, keeping a low profile promoting parties and working in a gift shop. She reconciled with her father only after the Ennis tragedy.
, Erinn currently lives in Philadelphia and is pursuing a PhD in educational psychology at Temple University. She was the still photographer for the 2013 TV concert special
Cosby's three other daughters have led private lives, but have often contributed to their father's work.
, Cosby wrote his 2003 children's book
in search of a way to remember Ennis, and asked his oldest daughter, Erika, to illustrate the book.
Erika, now 49, earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University and received a master's degree in painting from the University of California at Berkeley.
, she lives and works in New York and has served as an adjunct art professor for NYU's Steinhardt School since 2007.
in Washington, D.C., includes a painting done by Erika,
Cosby's other daughters have contributed to their father's successful TV show,
: Ensa, now 41, starred in a 1989 episode playing a girl at a party, and his youngest daughter, Evin, now 38, used to help the stylists on the show.
, Evin said she always helped her dad "pick out his clothes for his shows back in the day."
She attended Atlanta's Spelman College for two years before transferring to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where she says her father warned her "she would graduate by folding napkins." After her parents suggested she start her own business, she opened a boutique store called PB & Caviar in the Tribeca neighborhood of N.Y.C. She has two children.
When asked what her father was like growing up, she answered: "He's basically what you see, or what you saw on
has recently been active in defense of Bill Cosby, retweeting a
Tweet claiming she was not taken advantage of by Cosby, and a Nancy Grace Tweet that Cosby had never been charged with any crime in connection with the sexual assault allegations.
Cosby's attorney Martin Singer released
calling the recent wave of new accusations "unsubstantiated [and] fantastical." | The comedian's daughters, and his wife of over 50 years, Camille, have always been fiercely private | 48.85 | 0.95 | 4.25 | high | high | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/29/felix-dennis-archive-eric-gill-sothebys | http://web.archive.org/web/20141129203435id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/29/felix-dennis-archive-eric-gill-sothebys | Courtesy of the man from Oz and Viz, the outrageous Eric Gill’s finest art | 20141129203435 | They were both outrageous, controversial, brilliant figures: one a self-made multimillionaire and supreme un-ashamed hedonist, the other an artist whose private sex life was as morally disgraceful as it’s possible to get.
The two men are Felix Dennis, the larger than life magazine publisher who died earlier this year, and Eric Gill, one of the most significant British artists of his generation, who died in 1940.
Next month auctioneer Sotheby’s is to sell Dennis’s enormous collection of Gill’s work, an archive containing thousands of prints, sculptures, books and artefacts that covers all aspects of the artist’s wide practice.
It is a significant sale. “This is the finest Gill collection in private hands that we know of,” said Philip Errington, a director of books and manuscripts at the auction house. “It has been amassed by a collector with a real eye for this material and a dedication to this material.
“It includes all facets of Gill’s career, and of course the interesting thing is that Gill has many parts. There’s the typography, the engraving, the prints, the books. Anyone who starts to collect Gill might be daunted by the number of fields in which he worked, but it doesn’t seem to have daunted Felix Dennis at all. He embraced it.”
Gill was one of the greatest artist-craftsmen of the last century, but his personal reputation suffered a big blow when Fiona MacCarthy published a 1989 biography that laid bare his voracious and criminal sexual appetite. He slept with a dizzying number of women: wives of friends, maids, his sisters and his two daughters. Even the family dog did not escape his clutches.
Dennis was aware of that as he obsessively collected Gill. He wrote: “I have been lucky enough, over the years, to amass one of the largest collections of his work still in private hands. He may have led a reprehensible private life (in truth, there is no ‘may’ about it, he most certainly did!), but as a sculptor, wood engraver, illustrator and typographer, he stands very high in the recent history of the creative arts in Britain.”
Dennis, like many others, adored Gill because of his artistic brilliance. “He was drawn for the same reason as a lot of art collectors are,” said Simon Hucker, a modern British art specialist at Sotheby’s. “Wit, imagination, quality, fineness. People come back to the art because it is still fine art, regardless of his private life. It is the work that you see, it is the work that you respond to and it is unique. Gill is like nobody else.”
The two men also shared a publishing connection. Dennis made his fortune from a stable of magazines that included Maxim, Viz, PC World and The Week. Gill, meanwhile, was one of the most important typographers of the last century, responsible for Perpetua and Gill Sans which is still seen everywhere today, including in the BBC logo.
In his day, Gill was one of Britain’s most famous and sought-after artists. His work can be seen in many places – his sculptures outside Broadcasting House in central London, his Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral, his sculptures and reliefs at the Midland hotel in Morecambe, and his Creation of Man bas-relief in the lobby of the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
Gill was an outrageous, colourful figure – adjectives that could also be applied to Dennis. He first came to prominence as a publisher of the counter-culture magazine Oz, and was jailed for nine months in 1971 for “corrupting the morals of children” after the longest obscenity trial in British legal history. After his release Dennis went on to build his magazine empire and his fortune and was unembarrassed by stories of his excess – hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on crack cocaine and drink and, he boasted, “14 naked hookers catering to my every whim”. In his later years he became a popular poet and indulged his passion for trees by conceiving and paying for what is now the Heart of England Forest.
The 9 December sale has only 99 lots but they include thousands of items. The highest values are on works such as the 1924 Brighton Plaque, which was a commission to design a plaque to mark the homes of distinguished residents of the Sussex seaside resort. It has an estimate of £25,000-£35,000. Other works include small boxwood carved figures, numerous designs for bookplates, nude self-portraits, wood engravings and books.
Errington said it was the variety and scale of the collection that was remarkable. “If this had just been a collection of Gill prints it would have probably been the finest collection in private hands, but it’s not, it’s books as well, it’s sculpture, it is everything. It is all-encompassing and in that respect it is outstanding.”
A lot of the works were on walls, but Dennis also created a Gill archive with a paid archivist.
Hucker said he was sure that Dennis would still be collecting Gill today if he were alive. “I’m sure there is more Gill material, but how much further could Felix have got?” he wondered. | Multi-millionaire publisher Felix Dennis was an obsessive collector of the great artist-craftsman, who also became infamous for his voracious sexual appetite. Now his archive is up for auction at Sotheby’s | 27.702703 | 0.810811 | 1.459459 | medium | medium | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/09/09/mettel-acquires-thrive-networks-from-staples/gkWChK5aW0Wpn3QfFkLa6O/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20141204023425id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/09/09/mettel-acquires-thrive-networks-from-staples/gkWChK5aW0Wpn3QfFkLa6O/story.html | MetTel acquires Thrive Networks from Staples | 20141204023425 | Staples is closing some stores as it focus more on Internet retailing.
MetTel, a New York City telecom services company, has agreed to buy Thrive Networks, a Tewksbury unit of the office supply giant Staples Inc. that provides information technology services to businesses. MetTel did not disclose financial details about the sales agreement. Thrive’s 71 engineers will remain in Tewksbury, MetTel said. MetTel, with 254 employees, projects 2014 revenue of about $300 million. Thrive was founded in 2000 and acquired by Staples in 2006. Staples is reinventing itself as it faces intensifying competition. | MetTel, a New York City telecom services company, has agreed to buy Thrive Networks, a Tewksbury unit of the office supply giant Staples Inc. that provides information technology services to businesses. MetTel did not disclose financial details about the sales agreement. Thrive’s 71 engineers will remain in Tewksbury, MetTel said. MetTel, wth 254 employees, projects 2014 revenue of about $300 million. Thrive was founded in 2000 and acquired by Staples in 2006. Staples is reinventing itself as it faces intensifying competition. | 1.135417 | 0.979167 | 47.041667 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/11/21/senate-spars-with-goldman-sachs-over-commodities/Yfc9FI2f6n1N9wrabjfKIJ/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20141205233027id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/11/21/senate-spars-with-goldman-sachs-over-commodities/Yfc9FI2f6n1N9wrabjfKIJ/story.html | Senate spars with Goldman Sachs over commodities | 20141205233027 | WASHINGTON — Goldman Sachs executives spent Thursday locked in a public face-off with members of Congress, fighting suggestions that the bank had taken too large a role in the commodities market.
In a hearing in Washington, Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, hammered away at Goldman’s ownership of aluminum warehouses in Detroit, coal mines in Colombia, and a uranium trading company in London, which he said put the firm in position to influence the prices of common commodities.
The hearings also touched on the large commodities businesses run by JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, but executives from both banks emphasized that they were generally planning to wind down their ownership of assets like power plants and oil tankers.
Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, has said it is not planning to exit the business. At the hearing, the firm’s representatives rejected criticism of their operations, leading to verbal sparring matches with Levin.
The biggest fireworks of the day came during the first of the hearing’s three panels, which focused on Goldman’s practices at aluminum warehouses it owns in Detroit.
The Senate subcommittee released a 400-page report Wednesday, saying that Goldman had devised policies that made it hard to get aluminum out of the Detroit warehouses, which, in turn, pushed up the price of aluminum for American companies.
Christopher Wibbelman, the chief executive of the Goldman-owned warehouse called Metro International Trade Services, and Jacques Gabillon, a Goldman executive, both refuted the basic assertions in the report.
Later, two executives from the aluminum industry said that Goldman’s practices were unusual and were costing aluminum users. “The warehouse issue is having a profoundly negative impact on our customers’ businesses,” said Nick Madden, the chief supply chain officer at Novelis, a producer of rolled aluminum. | Goldman Sachs executives spent Thursday locked in a testy public face-off with members of Congress, fighting suggestions that the bank had taken too large a role in the commodities market. | 10.323529 | 0.970588 | 20.264706 | low | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2011/01/25/who-really-runs-americas-best-wireless-data-network/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141209140013id_/http://fortune.com:80/2011/01/25/who-really-runs-americas-best-wireless-data-network/ | Who really runs America’s best wireless data network? | 20141209140013 | AT&T, Verizon and Sprint all say their data network is the best. Which one is right?
The conflicting ads are everywhere. AT&T t claims to have “the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network.” Verizon vz Wireless says it has the “best network.” And Sprint Nextel s brags that its early rollout of “4G” technology gives it “industry-leading mobile data services.”
In fact, there’s not a lot of real-world difference between the three, according data in a new report from Akamai AKAM . An Akamai survey based on a huge number of wireless downloads toted up the speeds of the big three U.S. carriers and found barely a dime’s worth of difference in the three networks’ average and peak download speeds.
Mobile download speeds in the third quarter of 2010 averaged 1 megabit per second on the big three U.S. mobile networks. (While Akamai doesn’t say which network is which, it hardly matters, since the differences were so small. The precise average speeds of the three networks, in megabits per second, were .97, 1.06 and 1.08.) Similarly, peak download speeds were also tightly clustered, averaging 3.5 megabits per second, with a low of 3.3. and a high of 3.7).
This does not mean that AT&T customers’ complaints about poor wireless phone service, such as this recent Jon Stewart rant, are necessarily unfounded. Part of the way all networks have managed to boost data speeds is by limiting the capacity of their older voice networks. The Akamai tests say nothing about the dropped calls that Stewart parodied.
The new report, which also described the continued growth and speeding-up of the wired Internet, is based on a unique look at the health of the worldwide network. As the globe’s largest “content distribution network” Akamai increasingly sends web pages, songs and videos to the world’s mobile networks. The company’s servers then record the speed of those downloads, giving it an unusual and independent view of the changing wireless world. | AT&T, Verizon and Sprint all say their data network is the best. Which one is right? The conflicting ads are everywhere. AT&T claims to have "the nation's fastest mobile broadband network." Verizon Wireless says it has the "best network." And Sprint Nextel brags that its early rollout of "4G" technology gives it "industry-leading mobile data… | 5.356164 | 0.876712 | 7.753425 | low | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2014/12/12/why-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-should-stop-refinancing-mortgages/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141212194523id_/http://fortune.com/2014/12/12/why-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-should-stop-refinancing-mortgages/ | Why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should stop refinancing mortgages | 20141212194523 | As mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac near a deal that could lower barriers and restrictions on borrowers with weak credit, it’s hard not to wonder if Americans have learned anything from the 2008 financial crisis.When the nation’s housing market crashed, these companies owed the U.S. government $187 billion.Clearly, it had become far too easy for borrowers with bad credit to get approvals for mortgages and for families to borrow more than they could afford. Virtually everyone agreed that officials needed to fix this problem so that it never happened again. In a column for the National Post on July 12, 2008, David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, cleverly summed up the sentiment at the time when he wrote:
“The shapers of the U. S. mortgage finance system hoped to achieve the security of government ownership, the integrity of local banking and the ingenuity of Wall Street. Instead, they got the ingenuity of government, the security of local banking and the integrity of Wall Street.”
Given such sentiment, few would have imagined that during the next six years Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would continue to provide the vast preponderance of the new single family mortgages being issued in this country. Rather than wind down their role, while operating under conservatorship, their market share has increased and there have been few real changes to the housing finance system. In fact, the concept of “qualified mortgages” in the Dodd Frank bill, which was supposed to ensure that banks retain some of the risks for the mortgages they wrote, has now been watered down to the point where the only mortgages for which banks need to retain a risk position on their balance sheet are those where borrowers are paying more than 43% of their income. And once again, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are guaranteeing mortgages with as little as a 3.5% down payment.
We would like to propose, as have some others, that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Freddie and Fannie, take a significant step and begin to get these companies out of the business of refinancing home mortgages. By doing so, the agency will reduce, over time, the $5.3 trillion they currently guarantee, focus on the home ownership and job creation sides of their activities and offer the private sector an attractive new market. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, over 50% of the single family mortgages these agencies purchased the last 15 years were to refinance existing mortgages.
What is the appropriate role for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Some people say the mortgage market would behave better privatized than propped up by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Others cite the fact that since these agencies control such a large share of the present mortgage market, it would be disastrous to phase them out.
A number of people have put forth thoughtful proposals for reforming the housing finance system, including the Bipartisan Housing Commission and its Mortgage Finance Reform Working Group. These proposals try to deal with fundamental flaws in our system such as the fact that the private sector continues to push virtually all of the risk onto U.S. taxpayers. However, because we are not in crisis and because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have repaid their loans and are operating profitably, serious efforts at reform are not gaining much traction.
Without taking sides in this debate, continuing to allow these agencies to make new loans to facilitate purchase of a person’s prime residence seems an idea that should be acceptable to both sides. As long as these agencies continue to exist, a good case can be made that helping people purchase homes serves a useful public purpose and helps create jobs. In this role, these agencies can also ensure that there is adequate capital and liquidity in the mortgage market.
In contrast, there is little public purpose in refinancing most home mortgages. Why should Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the U. S. taxpayer subsidize homeowners who want to lower the mortgage rate on their home from 5% to 4%? And why should they subsidize homeowners who want to pull money out of their house by taking on a bigger mortgage? It is noteworthy that, in a single quarter in 2006, borrowers pulled out $84 billion dollars of net equity in cash-out refinancings, some portion of which became part of the $187 billion bailout. By guaranteeing the mortgages in a refinancing, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are both subsidizing the homeowners and taking on greater risk.
Even with this relatively simple proposal, there are a number of issues that will require further discussion. For example, should Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to finance second homes or refinance mortgages to enable borrowers to make significant home improvements? Should they guarantee loans that might help a homeowner avoid foreclosure?
While refinancing may have limited public purpose, it seems like an ideal product for the private market. Banks can still process these loans and then securitize them to institutional investors. We believe institutional investors would love a security backed by mortgages made to homeowners with stellar track records of on time payments, especially if this pool of mortgages offered a slightly higher rate than a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac pool. If the rate or terms were too onerous, the homeowner could stay with the existing mortgage.
Will this proposal to phase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of the business of refinancing home mortgages fully protect U.S. taxpayers? No. But it might significantly reduce the potential losses. By narrowing the scope of Fannie and Freddie’s activities, it will ensure that we are no longer responsible for borrowers who overleveraged through cash out refinancing. Ideally, as the private sector gets more involved in the mortgage refinancing market, it will set the stage for greater involvement in other areas of the housing finance market.
Few people believe that the current mortgage finance system is sustainable over the long run. And fewer still believe that the government has taken the steps necessary to protect the U.S. taxpayer from another bailout. While the next disaster may not be the same as the last one, we believe that action needs to be taken. As Mark Twain warns us, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
John Vogel is an adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he teaches courses in real estate and entrepreneurship in the social sector. Bill Poorvu is an adjunct professor in entrepreneurship emeritus at Harvard Business School. | By guaranteeing mortgages in a refinancing, America’s mortgage giants are both subsidizing the homeowners and taking on greater risk. | 55.727273 | 0.954545 | 7.045455 | high | high | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2014/12/15/could-lower-oil-prices-mean-cheaper-airline-seats/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141215180927id_/http://fortune.com/2014/12/15/could-lower-oil-prices-mean-cheaper-airline-seats/ | Could lower oil prices mean cheaper airline seats? | 20141215180927 | According to Senator Chuck Schumer, you’re paying too much for your airplane ticket home this holiday season.
The New York Democrat put out a statement this morning saying prices should reflect the lower fuel costs airlines have been paying due to the drop in oil prices.
“At a time when the cost of fuel is plummeting and profits are rising, it is curious and confounding that ticket prices are sky-high and defying economic gravity,” he said in the release. “So I’m urging the feds to step in and do a price investigation on behalf of consumers who must buy holiday travel tickets that can break the bank. The industry often raises prices in a flash when oil prices spike, yet they appear not to be adjusting for the historic decline in the cost of fuel; ticket prices should not shoot up like a rocket and come down like a feather.”
Oil prices are currently sitting at around $60 per barrel, the lowest they’ve been in years. Schumer notes that fuel costs can account for up to half of an airlines costs, meaning that the drop in fuel prices could be having huge impacts on their bottom lines.
Airlines for America, a trade organization representing major US carriers, said that falling fuel costs meant that airlines could reinvest in the business, and that lower fuel costs didn’t mean as much as Schumer made them out to:
“While fuel prices have abated from their historic highs, fuel is just one cost, and it’s important to note that for the first nine months for the nine publicly traded U.S. passenger carriers, operating expenses rose 3.1 percent in 2014,” the statement reads. “This is a capital-intensive business, and airlines are making significant investments, including taking delivery of 317 new planes this year alone.”
Requests for comment from American Airlines AAL and Southwest Airlines LUV were not immediately returned. United Continental UAL referred Fortune to the statement from Airlines for America.
Bob McAdoo, an airlines analyst with Imperial Capital LLC, doesn’t think anything legislative will come from Schumer’s challenge, noting that the government hasn’t controlled the airline business beyond safety regulations since the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978.
“From time to time the government has talked about re-regulating pricing,” he says. “Every time its come up its been fairly sounded rejected in Congress.” | Senator Chuck Schumer wonders in wake of falling fuel costs, should ticker prices be going down? | 25.444444 | 0.722222 | 1.388889 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/james-franco-pot-howard-stern-doesnt-smoke | http://web.archive.org/web/20141216034630id_/http://www.people.com/article/james-franco-pot-howard-stern-doesnt-smoke | Reveals to Howard Stern Why He Doesn't Actually Smoke : People.com | 20141216034630 | 12/15/2014 AT 07:10 PM EST
Despite a convincing performance in
In an interview with Howard Stern on his SiriusXM radio show Monday,
, 32, revealed that his
costar "doesn't smoke weed at all."
"I just havenât done it in a long time," Franco, who joined Rogen on the radio show, told Stern. "There's just no need."
If he were to actually indulge, Franco, 36, says he likely "couldn't function" while working and admits that the scenes in which his character was high in
Working alongside pal and frequent smoker Rogen, allows the
to "get high by proxy," though.
Recently, Rogen smoked before doing a scene in Franco's
, a small movie about filmmaking in the 1970s.
"Seth was great in that scene,"
reveals that it's often hard to tell when Rogen is high while filming, adding that marijuana's distinct aroma is never obvious on set.
Rogen agreed, saying that while he likes to indulge when shooting and directing, he keeps his pot use from disrupting his workday and believes smoking isn't essential to his creative process.
"Being on set high is something you have to get used to, especially when you're one of the people in charge," the Canadian actor says.
Although he prefers to pass on weed, Franco doesn't judge Rogen's hobby.
"I don't think it's any different than somebody having a glass of wine or something at lunch for Seth," Franco says. "But other people can't handle it." | "There's just no need," the actor and director said on The Howard Stern Show | 17.611111 | 0.888889 | 3.111111 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2012/05/16/facebook-increases-ipo-size-again/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141218113052id_/http://fortune.com/2012/05/16/facebook-increases-ipo-size-again/ | Facebook increases IPO size (again) | 20141218113052 | FORTUNE — Facebook has significantly increased the size of its initial public offering, just two days before it is expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ.
According to an amended registration document, Facebook FB will now offer over 421 million shares to investors. That is around 83.8 million shares more than originally offered, which would work out to another $3.19 billion in proceeds if Facebook prices at the top of its $35-$38 per share offering range.
The entire offering now would raise over $16 billion at the $38 per share price, which would make it the largest-ever technology IPO. The current leader is AT&T Wireless, which raised over $10 billion in 2010. It also would become the third-largest IPO ever on a U.S. exchange, following Visa’s V $19.65 billion offering in March 2008 and General Motors GM raising $18.145 billion in November 2010.
Facebook also increased its “green-shoe” — or the number of extra shares underwriters can sell if the deal is oversubscribed — from 50.61 million to 63.19 million. Expectations are that there is enough demand that underwriters will use most, if not all, of their over-allotment.
It is worth noting that the share increase would not affect Facebook’s valuation, as the extra shares are simply being reallocated out of the company’s existing share count. More specifically, certain insiders are selling more. Venture capital firm Accel Partners, for example, has increased its number of shares being sold in the IPO from 38.19 million to 49 million. DST group from 26.25 million to 45.66 million, while its Mail.ru affiliate has bumped its number from 11.27 million to 19.6 million.
T. Rowe Price remains Facebook’s largest institutional holder to not sell any shares via the IPO.
Facebook’s amended filing does not mention yesterday’s news that General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook, after determining that paid ads on the site were not influencing customer behavior. GM spent around $10 million last year on Facebook ads.
Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com | Facebook adds 25% more shares. | 57.285714 | 0.571429 | 0.571429 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/bill-clinton-at-SI-sports-illustrated-sportsman-of-year | http://web.archive.org/web/20141226021449id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/bill-clinton-at-SI-sports-illustrated-sportsman-of-year? | Bill Clinton Talks About Big Plans for His Granddaughter at Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year Awards | 20141226021449 | 12/10/2014 AT 06:25 PM EST
will use any opportunity to drop a mention of
The former president was on hand Tuesday night at
to honor Little League champ Mo'ne Davis, baseball MVP Madison Bumgarner, L.A. Laker legend Magic Johnson, and Pete Frates, the former baseball player who started this summer's viral fundraiser, the
But Clinton managed to get in a few mentions of daughter Chelsea's daughter, Charlotte, who was
When talking about Sportsman of the Year, San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner, he envisioned taking Charlotte to Cooperstown to learn about the game when she's "old enough to go."
Madison Bumgarner on the cover of Sports Illustrated
And during his introduction of SportsKid of the Year Mo'ne Davis, the first girl to earn a win and to pitch a shutout in Little League World Series history, he hinted at a future in sports for his first grandchild.
"I saw Mo'ne Davis pitch several times and it was awesome – and now that I have a granddaughter, who so far is in the 95th percentile in size for her age," noted the President, before returning to the honoree and adding, "She is a remarkable young woman."
As for Davis, who is just 13, now that baseball is done for the year, she's gearing up for basketball and indoor soccer season. "I hope to be in the WNBA some day, so hopefully that will come true," the young star told PEOPLE.
Clinton's granddaughter isn't the only woman in his life whom he's envisioned on the field. "I got in a lot of potentially bad habits when Hillary had that traveling job and I was home alone all the time. I watched all that guy stuff, you know, sporting events and movies," he joked, referring to his wife's former position as U.S. Secretary of State.
"Hillary was actually impressed that I was watching a teenage girl throw a baseball. And I said, 'You'd be impressed too. If you could have done that at her age, you'd be in a different line of work!'" | He offered kind words for athletes Madison Bumgarner and Mo'Ne Davis – and for 2-month-old Charlotte Mezvinsky | 21.684211 | 0.631579 | 0.947368 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2013/09/24/5-reasons-republicans-should-support-janet-yellen/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141227063212id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/09/24/5-reasons-republicans-should-support-janet-yellen/ | 5 reasons Republicans should support Janet Yellen | 20141227063212 | FORTUNE — Rumors run rampant that President Obama will soon announce his intention to nominate Janet Yellen to be the next chair of the powerful Federal Reserve Board. Yet, the question remains whether enough Republicans will support her nomination to secure Senate confirmation, given their concerns over her support for the Fed’s aggressive monetary interventions commonly known as quantitative easing, or QE. While I share the GOP’s concerns over QE infinity, here are five reasons why I think GOP Senators should nonetheless support her:
1) With a decade of experience in Fed leadership positions, Yellen is supremely well-qualified. This is the same reason everyone else should support her. Moreover, her record suggests that she is not an ideologue. Yes, she puts great weight on reducing unemployment (if only this Administration and Congress had the same clarity of purpose), which gives heartburn to Republicans worried about the potential inflationary impact of the Fed’s monetary accommodations. But, any candidate this President puts forward is going to give priority to reducing unemployment. Yellen’s record also suggests she has a good dose of common sense and is open to arguments that the Fed’s policies have reached the point of diminishing returns, contributing more to asset bubbles and system instability than any possible reduction in the unemployment rate. Noted critics of the Fed’s monetary policies such as Stanford’s John Taylor and Richmond Federal Reserve Bank head Jeffrey Lacker have publicly vouched for Yellen’s open-mindedness and willingness to listen to competing views.
2) She will be independent of the White House. In any administration, Republican or Democrat, we need leadership at the Federal Reserve who will operate independently of political considerations and base his or her decisions on what is needed to promote a stable, healthy financial system, not on propping up the economy long enough to get through the next election cycle. Though Yellen is a Democrat who once worked for Bill Clinton, most of her career has been spent in academia or at the Fed. She has visited the Obama White House exactly once during her tenure. One can only assume she will operate independently of the Administration’s political aspirations, particularly after being put into an embarrassing public competition with White House confidante Larry Summers for the Fed’s top job.
MORE: Behind the Fed’s major stimulus blunder
3) She may well be best equipped to get us back to a time when savers earned a decent interest rate and the Fed followed monetary policies which were based on well-understood rules and conventions. For several years now, Yellen has participated in the meetings, looked at the data, and listened to the arguments of her fellow governors and Fed regional bank presidents over the Fed’s extraordinary monetary actions. She knows the landscape as well as anyone and, as such, is best equipped to eventually navigate us out of it.
4) Opposing her would be harmful to the party. This will be an historic nomination. She would be the first woman to head the Federal Reserve. To be sure, a Larry Summers nomination would have been a gift to the Republicans. As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote before Summers pulled out:
“Every Republican will see an opportunity to hammer the administration’s policies on stimulus and housing. And that’s before anyone gets to scandals in Summers’ past, like the comments on women in the sciences or the Shleifer affair, not to mention the consulting and speaking fees he’ll need to report on his financial disclosure forms.”
Yellen, however, has none of this baggage. Nothing in her past suggests harmful financial conflicts or lapses in ethical judgment. On the contrary, she has demonstrated good judgment and principled conduct throughout her life. And by blocking her, the GOP will risk the public perception that they oppose her because she is outside the male-dominated Wall Street club.
MORE: Did inflation delay the Fed’s taper?
5) The GOP has very little leverage in stopping her from becoming the next Fed chair. It is important that our next Fed chair has full legitimacy through the Senate confirmation process. However, even if the GOP blocked her confirmation, as vice-chair, she still succeeds Ben Bernanke when his term is up at the end of January 2014. If the President wants her as the next Federal Reserve Board chair, he can get his way no matter what the Senate does.
Yes. Yellen’s past suggests that she is a so-called “dove” on monetary policy. However, as I have previously argued, for those who disagree with the Fed’s current monetary policies (and I am one), the best strategy is to focus on the vacancy for vice-chair for monetary policy, which will be created if Yellen is elevated to the top spot. Pressing for a vice-chair nominee who will bring greater diversity of views on the wisdom of quantitative easing would be a smart GOP move. On the other hand, blocking this well-qualified woman and creating uncertainty and weakness in an agency as important as the Federal Reserve would not be a wise course to follow. | Yellen's record suggests that she is not an ideologue. | 88.727273 | 0.909091 | 7.454545 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/chris-rock-divorce | http://web.archive.org/web/20141228220003id_/http://www.people.com/article/chris-rock-divorce | Chris Rock & Wife Malaak Compton-Rock Split | 20141228220003 | Chris Rock and Malaak Compton-Rock
12/28/2014 AT 03:05 PM EST
and his wife are divorcing after nearly 20 years together.
"After much contemplation and 19 years of marriage, Chris and I have decided to go our separate ways," Malaak Compton-Rock, a philanthropist and founder of the nonprofit styleWorks, said in a statement Sunday. "Being fortunate enough to lead a life of service by working with those most vulnerable makes me well aware of life's blessings, even when faced with difficulties.
"While recognizing that this is a significant change, my children remain at the center of my life and their well-being is my top priority. It is in this spirit that I sincerely ask that their privacy and the privacy of our family be respected during this transition in our lives."
Rock's attorney, Robert S. Cohen, confirmed the couple has split.
"Chris Rock has filed for divorce from his wife, Malaak," Cohen said in a statement. "This is a personal matter and Chris requests privacy as he and Malaak work through this process and focus on their family.â
star, 49, wed Compton-Rock, 45, in 1996. They live in Alpine, New Jersey, with their two daughters together, Lola Simone, 12, and Zahra Savannah, 10.
that Rock had fathered another child out of wedlock. Three years earlier, the stars defended their "happy" relationship and "beautiful family" amid
"The best part is just having a partner," Rock
of being married. "There is no real worst part. I'm not going to say there's a worst part. I mean, I'm a comedian – comedians like to work alone. So maybe I'm not the ideal guy to be married to, in that sense." | The comedian and philantropist have been married for 19 years | 35.6 | 0.8 | 1 | high | medium | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2014/12/15/cracker-berkeley-bakersfield/eeQD1NrXXVIBqtLKQ0lvZJ/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20141228222721id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2014/12/15/cracker-berkeley-bakersfield/eeQD1NrXXVIBqtLKQ0lvZJ/story.html | Cracker, ‘Berkeley to Bakersfield’ | 20141228222721 | The 73 minutes of music on Cracker’s new double album would fit comfortably on a single disc, but “Berkeley to Bakersfield” is an intentional act of musical centrifuge that separates the band’s rock and country elements into separate containers. The first, “Berkeley,” mates various shades of guitar rock (and, on lead-off track “Torches and Pitchforks,” a bit of coffeehouse folk) to recurring moments of economic populism and songs replete with references to that titular city. The “Bakersfield” disc trades guitar crunch for pedal steel whine, serving up straight shuffles, rowdy country-rock, and mournful balladry as it shifts its lyrical focus southward. Wherever they’re situated, though, the songs still find plenty of room for vintage Cracker scabrous wit and commentary (“if you want a view of the Golden Gate, go marry a banker while you still look good”) alongside celebrations that encompass both an urban mohawked punk rocker who’s grown up to be a boho coffeeshop owner (“Beautiful”) and a libertarian “red-state union man” who’s known as “the king of Bakersfield.” (Out now)
ESSENTIAL “Beautiful,” “King of Bakersfield” | Cracker splits its rock and country impulses on separate discs, but “Berkeley to Bakersfield” still adds up to a compelling whole. | 9.32 | 0.76 | 2.76 | low | low | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/03/15/for-most-prudential-shopping-center-businesses-two-day-blackout-means-lots-red-ink/jwCmO9URKdW7ZJzoihUaAN/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20141230062500id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2012/03/15/for-most-prudential-shopping-center-businesses-two-day-blackout-means-lots-red-ink/jwCmO9URKdW7ZJzoihUaAN/story.html | For most Prudential shopping center businesses, two-day blackout means lots of red ink | 20141230062500 | As the blackout at the Prudential Center extended deep into Thursday, businesses and merchants began counting up the losses from the power outage that shut down one of Boston’s largest office and retail complexes.
After keeping products on ice for nearly two days, Legal Sea Foods managers - working with flashlights in the dark - began dumping pounds of fish into trash bags Thursday afternoon because they could no longer maintain proper temperatures at the chain’s restaurant in the shopping mall.
Luciano Manganella, who owns specialty shop 344, said he has lost at least $12,000 in business since the blackout forced the closure of his busiest store.
“It’s been a total disaster,’’ Manganella said. “I am shocked that one of the busiest shopping malls is without power in Boston. It should have been a priority.’’
The Prudential Center, with more than 3 million square feet of office and retail space and about 8,000 employees in the Prudential Tower and adjacent buildings, was the last major property without power Thursday as a result of a substation fire that left more than 20,000 NStar customers in the dark Tuesday. Some Prudential Center tenants, including the Sheraton Boston Hotel and Shaw’s supermarket, switched to generator power, while others, such as the law firm Ropes & Gray LLP, temporarily moved part of their operations. Partners HealthCare, meanwhile, had employees work from home or at the chain’s hospitals.
Laura Marchisi Sesody, a spokeswoman for Boston Properties, which operates the Prudential Center, said Thursday afternoon that the company worked with NStar to restore power as quickly as possible. Adjacent buildings at 101 and 111 Huntington Ave. ran on generators supplied by NStar, but The Shops at Prudential Center - the mall’s official name - remained closed for two days because of the outage.
Guests at the Sheraton Boston Hotel on Dalton Street navigated halls with flashlights and glow sticks and went without hot showers for two days. But limited power from backup generators and others provided by NStar made it possible for the Sheraton to avoid moving guests to other hotels.
Kitchen workers have not been able to prepare food in-house, however, so the hotel brought in pastries and boxed lunches for meetings, several of which were relocated to rooms with more natural light.
To make up for the lack of amenities, the staff tried to provide guests with extra perks, such as providing more sightseeing tips, said marketing manager Michael Pereira.
“At the end of the day, the guests are what is valuable to us,’’ he said, adding that he did not know if the hotel would offer discounts or refunds.
“We have some guests that are upset,’’ Pereira acknowledged.
Many questioned how one of Boston’s biggest commercial hubs could be among the last to get electricity back.
Ropes & Gray, the city’s largest law firm, was forced to shut down its Prudential office, with about 900 employees. In addition, its voicemail was down for part of Thursday. The company managed to get phone calls redirected to its New York office, and lawyers used backup facilities in Marlborough or worked from other offices.
“While we’re disappointed it has taken so long for service providers to restore telephone and power, in this day of cellphones and remote computer access, we continued to be able to serve clients throughout the service outages,’’ said Tim Larimer, a spokesman for the law firm.
Jay Yada, general manager at Haru, stayed at the sushi restaurant until 2 a.m. Wednesday to wait for dry ice to arrive so he could preserve perishable food. Haru, which runs on the same electrical switch as the Prudential, estimated losses of nearly $16,000 because of the two-day shutdown.
“Being closed has been more stressful than being open,’’ Yada said.
Legal Sea Foods projected losses to total tens of thousands of dollars at the Prudential mall location, its second busiest store. Two of the company’s other restaurants - in Copley Place and Park Square - were also affected by the blackout.
Deborah Rosati, the chain’s quality assurance officer, said workers iced fish and other food for as long as possible, but ended up throwing most of it away at the Copley and Prudential sites.
“You have to make the decision at some point that the product does not meet our standards anymore, and we just need to start over,’’ Rosati said. “We’re a bit surprised it’s taken so long for the power to come back. We expected the Prudential to be restored first.’’ | As the blackout at the Prudential Center extended deep into Thursday, businesses and merchants began counting up the losses from the power outage that shut down one of Boston’s largest office and retail complexes in Boston. For example, after keeping products on ice for nearly two days, Legal Sea Foods managers began dumping pounds of fish into trash bags Thursday afternoon because they could no longer maintain proper temperatures at the chain’s restaurant in the shopping mall. | 10.47619 | 0.988095 | 27.22619 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2014/12/27/sebastian-smee-picks-for-best-art/jrN11rRdrEZrrtLsrOffwK/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20141230202453id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/theater-art/2014/12/27/sebastian-smee-picks-for-best-art/jrN11rRdrEZrrtLsrOffwK/story.html | Sebastian Smee’s picks for Best of Art 2014 | 20141230202453 | ■ Best show “Goya: Order and Disorder,” Museum of Fine Arts
■ Best contemporary Mika Rottenberg, “Bowls, Balls, Souls, Holes,” Rose Art Museum, Waltham
■ Best 20th-Century show Franz West from the Hall Art Foundation, Mass MoCA and Williams College Museum of Art, North Adams and Williamstown
■ Best 19th-Century show “An American in London: Whistler & the Thames,” Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover
■ Best Old Master show “Donatello, Michelangelo, and Cellini: Sculptors Drawings From Renaissance Italy,” Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
A critic’s-eye view toward new openings and advances, controversial practices, lamentable departures, and promising developments.
■ Best single work TIE: Ragnar Kjartansson, “The Visitors,” Institute of Contemporary Art and William Kentridge, “The Refusal of Time,” Institute of Contemporary Art
■ Best group show TIE: “Fiber: Sculpture 1960-present,” Institute of Contemporary Art and “Sight Specific: A Selection of American Perceptual Paintings,” Concord Art Association, Concord
■ Best local show of local artist “Jon Imber: Carry On,” Danforth Art, Framingham
■ Best out-of-state show of local artist “Nicholas Nixon: Forty Years of the Brown Sisters,” Museum of Modern Art, New York
■ Best design show “California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way,” Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
■ Best American “Calder and Abstraction: Avant-Garde to Iconic” Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
■ Best historical “Tell It With Pride: the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial,” Massachusetts Historical Society (organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
■ Best collective effort Bernard Langlais Art Trail in Maine, coordinated by Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
■ Three most disappointing shows “Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take,” Institute of Contemporary Art; “Jamie Wyeth,” Museum of Fine Arts; Romare Bearden, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H.
■ Best pairing “Matisse Drawings: Curated by Ellsworth Kelly from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation Collection,” Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley.
■ Best new permanent collection installations TIE. Three new ancient Greek galleries, Museum of Fine Arts and Kunstkammer gallery, Museum of Fine Arts | Sebastian Smee’s picks for the year’s best (and most disappointing) shows, across a broad variety of categories and styles. | 19.56 | 0.52 | 0.6 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/cameron-diaz-marries-benji-madden | http://web.archive.org/web/20150106041236id_/http://www.people.com/article/cameron-diaz-marries-benji-madden | Cameron Diaz Marries Benji Madden | 20150106041236 | Benji Madden and Cameron Diaz
updated 01/05/2015 AT 09:00 PM EST
•originally published 01/05/2015 AT 03:00 PM EST
sure are off to a sweet start in 2015. The two "were married this evening in an intimate ceremony at their home in Los Angeles," their rep confirms exclusively to PEOPLE.
"We couldn't be happier to begin our new journey together surrounded by our closest family and friends," the couple tell PEOPLE.
"Getting married is the next step when you are totally in love and comfortable with someone," a source tells PEOPLE. "Cameron has found true happiness."
Over the weekend, the couple hosted an intimate rehearsal dinner at their Beverly Hills pad for family and friends, including
, a source tells PEOPLE.
The pair were also spotted at Il Cielo Saturday night, where "they were with a small group and had a really romantic table setting with rose petals and candles," says a restaurant onlooker. "It looked like they were celebrating."
Diaz, 42, also celebrated her impending nuptials with a bachelorette party over the weekend, says the source. Diaz spent Sunday night at a Los Angeles-area hotel with her girlfriends.
Party rental trucks and bunches of white flowers began arriving Monday morning to the gated community where Diaz and Madden live. And celebrity wedding planners
and Stefanie Cove (who planned the couple's rehearsal dinner and has planned weddings for
and Diaz's close friend Barrymore) were also spotted arriving at their home Monday.
A huge tent was put up on Diaz's property for the ceremony and reception – the latter dimly lit with lots of candles and mostly white flowers. Witherspoon and
were among several celebrity guest in attendance. Benji's twin brother,
, was also spotted arriving at their home in the early afternoon.
"There is a lot of security and they are trying to keep the wedding hush-hush by telling neighbors that Cameron is having a pre-Golden Globes party tonight," another source tells PEOPLE. "It will start past dark tonight. They are setting things up in the lush backyard."
The wedding, held in front of 90-plus guests, took place inside the home while the reception was held under a tent.
"It was a big wedding, but they still managed to make it feel very personal. Only their families and very special friends attended. It all felt very down-to-earth and sweet. Guests arrived smiling and almost seemed giddy. Everyone was excited to be a part of the wedding." | The couple wed at their Beverly Hills home on Monday | 45.181818 | 0.909091 | 2.181818 | high | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2015/01/05/startups-should-pay-close-attention-to-reddit-notes/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150107181116id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/01/05/startups-should-pay-close-attention-to-reddit-notes/ | Startups should pay close attention to Reddit ‘notes’ | 20150107181116 | When social news site Reddit raised $50 million in venture capital funding last fall, it said that it wanted to allocate around 10% of its overall equity to active users. Then, in December, it announced that the equity would take the form of something called “Reddit notes.” From a blog post:
To celebrate all of you and your contributions, we plan to give away reddit notes in a random lottery. As of this point, it looks like we’re going to have approximately 950,000 reddit notes to divide among active user accounts. There aren’t as many reddit notes as there are accounts, so if you get one, lucky you! Eligible recipients of reddit notes will be determined based on activities before 9/30/14, and we plan to give them away in the fall of 2015.
No additional details yet, except that Reddit has repeatedly suggested that it is planning to leverage some sort of crypto-currency — with notes being transferable between users. But, from my perspective, successful execution could have repercussions far beyond the Reddit community.
In an era where companies are staying private longer, and in which consumer loyalty to one tech platform over another can be paramount, the concept of sharing equity with users is likely to be replicated by other startups. Basically the privately-held version of Virgin America VA letting top frequent fliers participate in its IPO — but even more exclusive since there is no generally-available security 24 hours later.
If I were a VC-backed entrepreneur right now, I’d be paying very close attention to how Reddit structures its “notes” — with an eye toward copying and improving on it.
Sign up for Term Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on deals and deal-makers. | Reddit may be blazing a new financial path for consumer-facing startups. | 24.071429 | 0.571429 | 0.714286 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2015/01/08/stock-market-rebound/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150108162004id_/http://fortune.com/2015/01/08/stock-market-rebound/ | Stock rebound continues as Dow turns positive for 2015 | 20150108162004 | The U.S. stock market continued its sharp rebound Thursday following a second day of gains in Europe.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was recently up more than 300 points, or 2%, turning positive for the year. All 30 companies on the index were up in early trading, putting the Dow Jones on pace for its second straight day of gains after rising 213 points on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite also continued their own surges one day after they each halted five-day losing streaks. The S&P 500 was recently up 30 points, or 1.5% and the Nasdaq gained 75 points, or 1.6%.
While the euro continues to lose value against the U.S. dollar, European markets surged again on Thursday as pressure mounts for the European Central Bank to introduce new stimulus measures to invigorate the region’s economy. Both London’s FTSE 100 and Germany’s DAX jumped more than 2% in trading for the day as investors bet on the prospect of a government bond-buying program from the ECB.
The European gains provided a further boost to U.S. stocks, which were also bolstered by Wednesday’s minutes release from the mid-December meeting of the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC). The Fed gave no indication that it would change plans to be “patient” when it comes to interest rate hikes that are likely to come sometime later in 2015.
The latest market rally comes after a rough start to 2015 as stocks were dragged down by sinking oil prices and concerns over the European economy. The price of crude oil inched higher on Thursday, but prices still remain under $50 per barrel — a 5 and 1/2 year low. | After a rough start to the year, the stock market has rebounded for two straight days. | 17.833333 | 0.777778 | 2.222222 | medium | low | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2013/08/26/in-post-crisis-penalties-morgan-stanley-stands-alone/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150108175021id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/08/26/in-post-crisis-penalties-morgan-stanley-stands-alone/ | In post-crisis penalties, Morgan Stanley stands alone | 20150108175021 | FORTUNE — Nearly five years after the fall of Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley has earned some bragging rights. It’s the only major bank that hasn’t paid a federal fine related to the financial crisis.
Morgan Stanley MS hasn’t even been accused of breaking the law. Neither have any of its bankers.
On its website, the Securities and Exchange Commission has a list of firms that have paid fines for financial crisis-related crimes. Wells Fargo WFC is on the list, as is Goldman Sachs MS . Bank of America BAC , Citigroup C , and JPMorgan Chase JPM are all on the list twice. There are also a number of foreign banks, including Credit Suisse CS , RBC and UBS UBS , and some smaller firms, like Jefferies, all of which played a minor role in selling mortgage bonds and the financial crisis in general. In all, the SEC has charged 161 firms or individuals, generating $2.7 billion in fines. Morgan Stanley is not on the list.
MORE: Big banks legal tab: $66 billion and growing
Deutsche Bank DB is the only firm that comes close to Morgan Stanley’s clean record. It, too, isn’t on the SEC’s list. But Deutsche has been sued by the Justice Department. Last year, the German bank agreed to pay a $202 million fine to settle charges that it deceived the FHA into insuring faulty mortgages.
Morgan Stanley was one of the largest underwriters of mortgage bonds in the run-up to the financial crisis, including some that were backed by loans made by such subprime lenders as New Century, which itself employed three executives who were charged with fraud.
Morgan Stanley also underwrote $37 billion in collateralized debt obligations, the type of deals that lead to a $550 million fine for Goldman. Citigroup and JPMorgan have both also paid fines related to CDOs.
In 2010, Morgan Stanley did agree to pay $102 million to the state of Massachusetts to end a probe relating to Morgan Stanley’s relationship to New Century. No official charges were ever filed. And earlier this year, Morgan Stanley paid $227 million to the Fed. But that was related to foreclosure abuses that took place after the housing bust.
MORE: Morgan Stanley strategist: More trouble for emerging markets ahead
A case against Morgan Stanley could still materialize. Regulators seem to have recently stepped up their efforts to prosecute financial-crisis-related crimes. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says the Justice Department is on the verge of bringing more cases.
But there’s no sign the Justice Department is targeting Morgan Stanley. JPMorgan recently added a disclosure to the legal section of its financial filings saying its mortgage operations are under investigation by the Justice Department. Morgan Stanley says it too has been involved in reviews or investigations by the government. But the wording of those disclosures haven’t changed in three years.
And here’s some more evidence that Morgan Stanley may be in the clear: All banks estimate how much money they could owe in legal fees and fines. JPMorgan says it could owe $6.8 billion. Goldman’s estimate is $3.5 billion. At Bank of America, the number is $2 billion. Morgan Stanley’s estimate: zero, or close to it.
The Justice Department declined to comment. An SEC spokesperson said that it does not comment on cases it hasn’t brought. Morgan Stanley declined to comment as well.
One possible explanation is that Morgan Stanley didn’t do anything wrong in the run up to the financial crisis.
Investors in dozens of deals who have sued the bank seem to disagree. “I have seen no evidence that Morgan Stanley is less culpable than other firms,” says a lawyer who has worked on several cases on behalf of investors who lost money in Morgan Stanley deals. “Having spent the last four-and-a-half years litigating these deals, that’s not what I have found.”
MORE: What does Nasdaq meltdown mean for future IPOs?
E-mails and other documents uncovered in a case brought by Washington state’s King County, which lost money on a structured investment that Morgan Stanley helped put together, showed bankers at the firm knew the deal was riskier than they were telling investors. According to one e-mail, a Morgan Stanley banker wrote he was seeing more loans being made to individuals who had bought numerous homes and run up a lot of debt. Other loans looked to have been made on the basis of stated incomes that were not reasonable given the borrowers’ credit scores. “Bottom line,” wrote the banker in an e-mail to colleagues at the bank, “there is not a lot of ‘common sense’ being used when approving these loans.”
Nonetheless, most of those loans, according to King County’s suit, made it into the deal. According to documents filed in the case, one of the loans Morgan Stanley included in the final deal was for $143,000 to buy a vacant lot. An independent broker valued the property at $11,000, according to court documents. Yet Morgan Stanley said the land was worth $183,000.
In April, Morgan Stanley settled the case with King County for an undisclosed amount. It’s a settlement the government might want to take a second look at. | Despite a slew of private suits, the government apparently can't find anything wrong with Morgan Stanley. | 48.761905 | 0.52381 | 1 | high | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2015/01/08/auf-wiedersehen-yall-mercedes-moving-u-s-headquarters-south/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150108184952id_/http://fortune.com/2015/01/08/auf-wiedersehen-yall-mercedes-moving-u-s-headquarters-south/ | Auf Wiedersehen, y’all: Mercedes moving U.S. headquarters south | 20150108184952 | Mercedes-Benz’s U.S. headquarters will pull up stakes from outside of New York City, where it’s been for half a century, and relocate to a new building in Atlanta— mirroring recent moves southward by other foreign automakers in the U.S.
In Paris, the French automaker Peugeot SA said it was closing its headquarters in the city and moving to the suburbs in a move to cut costs. Last year, Toyota’s U.S. sales headquarters said it was closing its Torrance, Calif., offices and reopening in Plano, Texas.
Peugeot has been struggling financially while Daimler AG, the German parent of Mercedes-Benz, is on an upswing since weathering the global financial crisis.
Mercedes-Benz USA is located in Montvale, N.J. and employs a thousand people. NJ.com reported that the company paid nearly $1 million last year in property taxes on its 37-acre campus in Bergen County. The maker of luxury vehicles was No. 1 in the category in the U.S. until last year, when it was displaced by BMW. The U.S. is Mercedes-Benz’s biggest single market worldwide.
Moran said that Steve Cannon, the chief executive of Mercedes-Benz’s U.S. operations, met with Gov. Chris Christie in December. New Jersey subsequently offered the automaker an incentive package to stay.
Rob Moran, a spokesman for Mercedes-Benz, said “this move positions us for growth and marks a trajectory for our next half-century.” Among several factors for the decision are proximity to a Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Alabama and port facilities near Jacksonville, as well as the expense and congestion of the metropolitan New York area – on top of Atlanta’s rising attraction as a cosmopolitan enclave for international corporations and its lower cost of living.
NJ.com reported that the automaker received an incentive package worth about $50 million. Mercedes-Benz has declined to discuss financial incentives.
He said Atlanta offers numerous international flight connections, including a direct flight to Stuttgart, Germany, Daimler’s home. The southern metropolis also has “an urban experience for young people and great suburbs for families and those want it. Other automakers that have changed U.S. locations have told Mercedes that usually about 40% of the staff moves with the company, Moran said.
Some Mercedes-Benz workers will shortly begin to set up operations in temporary offices in Atlanta. A new building, to be constructed in an as yet undisclosed location, will open in 2017, Moran said.
The southern United States has evolved into a center for the international automobile business over the past few decades as Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Hyundai and KIA have opened factories, office and research laboratories. Nissan announced in late 2005 that it was leaving suburban Los Angeles for Nashville, which is near one of its assembly plants. As non-U.S. automakers have expanded their U.S. facilities, the South has proven attractive because of the relative weakness there of the United Auto Workers union, whose relations with Detroit automakers often have been rancorous.
In the past half dozen or so years, Mexico has displaced the South as the hemisphere’s latest hot bed for auto manufacturing. Mexico offers lower costs than the southern U.S. and favorable trade agreements that facilitate vehicle exports.
Moran, the Mercedes-Benz spokesman, said he and others have begun practicing their use of the expression “y’all.” | After half a century in New Jersey, company is pulling up stakes and moving to Atlanta. | 36.166667 | 0.888889 | 1.888889 | high | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2015/01/09/oil-prices-shale-fracking/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150109100607id_/http://fortune.com/2015/01/09/oil-prices-shale-fracking/ | The shale oil revolution is in danger | 20150109100607 | The shale oil revolution is providing a great gusher of profit, jobs, and swaggering entrepreneurship. It epitomizes the optimism surrounding America’s economic recovery.
Indeed, the rise of hydraulic fracking from Montana to Texas to Pennsylvania has lifted U.S. oil production mightily, from 5.6 million barrels a day in 2010, to a current rate of 9.3 million. And until late last year, it was widely accepted that our output would keep rising in 1 million barrel-plus annual leaps for years to come.
The recent drop in oil prices poses a major challenge to the frackers. But oil producers, Wall Street analysts, and most industry experts claim the setback will be brief and minor.
The basic economics of fracking—what it costs to drill versus what oil now sells for—spells big trouble for the shale boom. At best, today’s producers may be able to hold production close to current levels. What’s gravely endangered is the advertised bonanza that virtually everyone deemed inevitable just a few short months ago.
Shale oil production is totally unlike drilling in any other part of the global market. In conventional wells, whether in the Middle East, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea, the wells operate on extremely long cycles. Typically, the amount of crude oil they produce declines at between 2% and 5% per year. Hence, a well that generates 2,000 barrels a day in the first year will yield between 95% and 98% of that quantity in year two. Since the output falls so gradually, wells typically keep pumping for 20 years or longer.
The wells’ long lives help account for the extreme volatility in oil prices. Naturally, producers plan their projects expecting to recoup the upfront investment required to find the oil and install the well––their “fixed costs”––and the “variable” or “marginal” costs of extracting the oil year after year, notably labor and electricity. In a business where the risks stand as tall as the rigs, companies only invest when they forecast future prices far above the total outlay of fixed and variable costs, in hopes of pocketing big profits. The rub is that energy prices frequently fall far below what’s required to return their full costs, let alone make a decent return. That was the scenario from the mid-1980s until early 2002, when oil prices averaged $20 a barrel.
When prices drop, however, almost all conventional wells keep pumping. That’s because the variable cost of lifting the crude is still far lower than the prices it fetches on the world market. Ten-year old wells often have variable costs of just $20 to $30 a barrel, so their owners keep on producing at prices of $60 or $80, even though it would require $100 oil to generate a good return on their total investment. In other words, what they spent to drill the well becomes irrelevant. All that matters is the cash they can generate over and above what’s required to suck out the crude every day. “What drives the business is the marginal cost, not the total cost,” says Ronald Ripple, a finance and energy business professor at the University of Tulsa. “Even at low prices, the production is still contributing something to cover the upfront investment.”
As a result, the global supply of oil is what economists call “inelastic.” Even if prices crater, the oil majors and sheiks keep pumping more or less the same quantities. They’ll only stop when prices drop below the variable cost—and for most wells, they seldom sink that far.
So, the primary determinant of oil prices, especially right now, is demand. Since supply won’t typically drop with a fall in the world’s thirst for oil, a decline in demand generates big, exaggerated downdrafts in prices. Naturally, wars and upheavals in oil producing countries can cause temporary shortages that mask falling consumption, but when production inevitably returns to normal levels, weak demand takes charge and prices crater.
That’s what is going on today. Oil consumption in the U.S. has fallen by over 8% since 2010, and the shrinkage in Europe is far greater than that. Meanwhile, China and India have not proven nearly as voracious as forecast. The drop in oil prices from over $100 in May to $48 has not, and will not, cause a major or even minor drop in production. That’s true even in high-cost areas such as the tar sands of Canada. In those forbidding fields, major energy companies have invested billions on plans to produce for 50 years, and even though they’re losing money on their total investment, they’re more than recouping their variable costs. So, as prices wobble, drilling will proceed smoothly.
Except for fracking. Unlike conventional projects, shale wells enjoy an extremely short life. In the Bakken region straddling Montana and North Dakota, a well that starts out pumping 1,000 barrels a day will decline to just 280 barrels by the start of year two, a shrinkage of 72%. By the beginning of year three, more than half the reserves of that well will be depleted, and annual production will fall to a trickle. To generate constant or increasing revenue, producers need to constantly drill new wells, since their existing wells span a mere half-life by industry standards.
In fact, fracking is a lot more like mining than conventional oil production. Mining companies need to dig new holes, year after year, to extract reserves of copper or iron ore. In fracking, there is intense pressure to keep replacing the production you lost last year.
On average, the “all-in,” breakeven cost for U.S. hydraulic shale is $65 per barrel, according to a study by Rystad Energy and Morgan Stanley Commodity Research. So, with the current price at $48, the industry is under siege. To be sure, the frackers will continue to operate older wells so long as they generate revenues in excess of their variable costs. But the older wells—unlike those in the Middle East or the North Sea—produce only tiny quantities. To keep the boom going, the shale gang must keep doing what they’ve been doing to thrive; they need to drill many, many new wells.
Right now, all signs are pointing to retreat. The count of rotary rigs in use—a proxy for new drilling—has fallen from 1,930 to 1,881 since October, after soaring during most of 2014. Continental Resources, a major force in shale, has announced that it will lower its drilling budget by 40% in 2015. Because of the constant need to drill, frackers are always raising more and more money by selling equity, securing bank loans, and selling junk bonds. Many are already heavily indebted. It’s unclear if banks and investors will keep the capital flowing at these prices.
Still, the future of fracking is extremely hard to predict. Continental, for example, pledges to raise production in 2015 despite the fall in its drilling budget. It would be a mistake to underestimate the ingenuity of the entrepreneurs who led the shale revolution. They will exploit new technologies that combine vertical and horizontal drilling to lower their costs. In the boom times, equipment rental, trucking, and labor were all priced at huge premiums; at $100 a barrel oil, producers put sinking the next well far ahead of fretting over their fat payrolls. Now, those costs are falling.
So it’s difficult to know where all-in costs will settle. If oil stays at around $50, a group of super-efficient producers may still be able to make money. Bruce Everett, who teaches petroleum economics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, is optimistic. “There will undoubtedly be some tailing off in U.S. drilling activity,” he says, “but I expect continued development drilling in major new areas, particularly the Bakken, even at $50.”
If demand rebounds—and it may—prices may very well rise above $60 once again, and fracking will once again become extremely profitable. But it’s not clear if the famous foe of fracking, Saudi Arabia, will let that happen. The Saudis have invested heavily to gain extra capacity of 2 million barrels a day. The Saudis may use that cushion to hold prices around $50, just out of range—at least today—for most shale oil producers.
Then again, the shale industry’s ability to hike production quickly could put a cap of $50 or $60 on oil prices. If prices rise much higher, either the Saudis will intervene, or more shale supplies will flood the market, stabilizing the price. “Because shale wells have short lives, allowing production to come on and off more quickly, fracking could moderate price fluctuations so they’re less volatile than in the past,” says David Kreutzer, an economist at the Heritage Foundation.
But the numbers are still daunting. It’s easy to get financing when your costs are $65 and you’re selling at $100. But when the price is $50, where will the producers find the funds to keep sinking those new wells? It will take a lot of new drilling just to keep production where it is now. A steady but no-growth shale industry is not what America has been counting on. The spread of rigs and jobs that seemed such a certainty, and such a staple of our recovery, may be a fading vision. | Oil producers and Wall Street analysts claim the setback in the fracking industry brought on by the collapse in oil prices will be brief and minor. Don’t believe them. | 57.4375 | 0.84375 | 2.53125 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2015/01/06/amy-poehler-career-highlights/4euLHFvMlSJDAW939n33RO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150109215256id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/television/2015/01/06/amy-poehler-career-highlights/4euLHFvMlSJDAW939n33RO/story.html | Amy Poehler’s career highlights | 20150109215256 | Burlington native Amy Poehler was named Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ Woman of the Year on Tuesday, Jan. 6. The actress, who graduated from Boston College, stars in the critically-acclaimed show “Parks and Recreation” and recently published a book, “Yes Please.”
Poehler was promoted to a full cast member in the middle of her first season on “Saturday Night Live.” She spent eight seasons on the NBC sketch comedy show.
Poehler (right) played a backup singer to Tom Brady (center) when he hosted “SNL” in 2005.
In the 2004-2005 season of “Saturday Night Live,” Amy Poehler co-hosted the “Weekend Update” segment with Tina Fey. It was the first all-female “Weekend Update.”
After Fey left “SNL,” Poehler co-hosted “Weekend Update” with Seth Myers. Pictured (below): Poehler and Meyers (left) performed a skit with Sarah Palin (right) during an episode.
One of Poehler’s most acclaimed roles on “SNL” was as Hillary Clinton to Fey’s Sarah Palin (below).
With a temperament that ranges from warm to fiery to sarcastic, the Burlington native is one of today’s most likable comics.
Again with Fey, Poehler co-starred in the 2008 movie “Baby Mama” (below).
In 2009, “Parks and Recreation” premiered on NBC, starring Poehler as Leslie Knope (below), an eager worker in a fictional town’s parks department. She won an Emmy award for her role in 2014.
Poehler has hosted the Golden Globes twice with Tina Fey, and is set to host again this year on Sunday, Jan. 11.
Poehler starred with Paul Rudd (below, left) in the movie “They came Together” in 2014.
Poehler produces “Broad City,” a show on Comedy Central about two women in New York. She is pictured below center with the show’s stars, Ilana Glazer (left) and Abbi Abrams.
Poehler produces and has a recurring role in the NBC show “Welcome to Sweden” with her brother, Greg, who is also a comedian.
Poehler (below, speaking at ELLE’s Women in Hollywood event in 2014) created the nonprofit organization “Smart Girls” to encourage young girls to be themselves.
Michael Buckner/Getty Images for ELLE
Poehler’s memoir, “Yes Please,” was published in 2014. In it, she tells tales of growing up in the suburbs, scooping sundaes at Chadwick’s in Lexington, and partying at Boston College.
In 2008, Poehler (below) hosted an event at the Burlington Mall benefiting local organizations.
Poehler has remained connected to Boston College. In 2006, she greeted a student (below, left) after an interview on the program “Inside the BC Studio.”
Poehler addressed the Harvard University graduating class of 2011 during Class Day ceremonies.
• Book review: ‘Yes Please’ by Amy Poehler
• Amy Poehler is Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year | Burlington native Amy Poehler was named Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ Woman of the Year. | 33.388889 | 0.944444 | 8.944444 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/apr/16/thomas-bewick | http://web.archive.org/web/20150110001749id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/apr/16/thomas-bewick | Thomas Bewick's cheeky woodcuts | 20150110001749 | How small they are: each of these worlds could fit into the palm of your hand. There are two on each sheet of paper, one above the other, lining the walls of the Ikon gallery in Birmingham in their dozens. From a distance, they look like little grey smudges or blotted clouds. I get up close, squinting. A gallery assistant brings a magnifying glass, and the scene suddenly looms in all its detail. Farms and villages, rocks and rivers, the walled estates of the rich, the hovels of the poor.
Populated by a cast of fools and drunks, fishers and hunters, Thomas Bewick's late 18th-century/early 19th-century Tale-pieces are full of disconcerting, captivating incident. An infant pulls the tail of a gigantic horse, while mother screams from too far away; a man precariously fords a river on stilts. A beggar at the gate of a splendid mansion gnaws a bone while his dog looks hungrily on; the peacock nearby would make a better meal, but it's a rich man's pet. A glutton vomits at his table, and a drunk spews from every orifice while a barrel spurts him with beer. Each scene is a small and often comic revelation. Sometimes you smirk and laugh - then the next image has you mesmerised.
Printed on yellowing paper, these modest black and white woodblock images take my breath away - and with it everything around me: the gallery, the people, the backache I'm getting from stooping. By the late 18th century, the woodblock was the poor relation to steel or copper engravings. Bewick brought the medium back to life, at the end of each long day's work printing money for the Bank of Northumberland. He also found time to produce an enormously popular General History of Quadrupeds, as well as a two-volume History of British Birds, in which these Tale-pieces originally appeared (their name is a play on the fact that they are tail-pieces, decorative squibs designed to fill up space at the end of a text).
There is enormous pleasure in these tiny images, sketched on paper then transferred to a bit of Turkish box-wood, which Bewick then engraved, using little tools he mostly made himself. He imagined image after image, right up until the day he died in 1828. It is surprising he kept his sight. Sometimes he even drew on his thumbnail, licking the images off with his tongue when he wanted to draw another. He would have made a wonderful animator.
The harder you look at these prints, the less there seems to be on the paper. One might almost suspect a trick. Even the rough ovoid shape seems to coalesce out of blankness and drift into nothingness at its edges. The imagination fills in the gaps, the colours and the textures. I smell the green water and the pigs in the midden, hear the geese overhead and the wretched squeals of a dog, hanged by a child in imitation of the dead man swinging on a gibbet in the distance. Another man watches the torment, curious about the plight of the dog, and savouring the cruelty of the boy. It is an image of horrible vicariousness; we look, too, finding ourselves in this vile company.
Then there are the anglers, studying the water or casting the fly. A ragged-looking bloke cowering in the freezing rain could be me. Born in 1753 in Northumberland, Bewick was William Blake's exact contemporary. He died the same year as Goya. An uneducated country boy luckily apprenticed to an engraver, Bewick worked all his life in Newcastle (save for a short, miserable few months in London) and died in Gateshead. Famous for his prints of animals and birds, he was as inventive as he was observant, as funny and bleak as he was exacting and faithful to the things he saw around him.
The Tale-pieces are like ballads or snatches of folk song; but at their best they offer much more. In one, an entire scene is obliterated by Bewick's inky thumbprint, carefully drawn and engraved between a cottage and an approaching rider. A visual equivalent to the sorts of authorial gags Laurence Sterne played in Tristram Shandy, it is a marvellous, timeless, magical joke ·
• Thomas Bewick: Tale-pieces is at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, until 25 May. Details: 0121-248 0708/ikon-gallery.co.uk | Thomas Bewick's woodcuts of louts, fools and rascals from 18th-century rural life are miniature masterpieces. Adrian Searle is captivated by their cruel humour | 30.535714 | 0.607143 | 1.107143 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/01/09/harvard-pilgrim-acquires-health-coaching-firm/C5NFtec107owmFj88uWi1O/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150112003450id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/01/09/harvard-pilgrim-acquires-health-coaching-firm/C5NFtec107owmFj88uWi1O/story.html | Harvard Pilgrim acquires health coaching firm | 20150112003450 | Harvard Pilgrim CEO Eric Schultz
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, the state’s second-biggest health insurer, said Thursday that it has purchased a national health coaching company that employers hire to help their workers quit smoking, lose weight, and manage chronic diseases.
The acquisition of TrestleTree Inc. is part of Harvard Pilgrim’s plan to expand its national footprint and tap into growing efforts by employers to control costs by nudging workers toward healthy regimens, hoping to prevent serious medical problems that require expensive care.
Terms of the deal, which closed Wednesday, were not disclosed.
“This directly responds to what the marketplace is looking for, and that’s tools and services to stay healthy,” said Eric Schultz, chief executive of Harvard Pilgrim. “This goes straight to the heart of putting quantifiable value around wellness.”
Employer wellness programs have grown more popular in recent years, especially among big companies that insure employees themselves by setting aside money to pay claims. Many employers are investing in wellness programs with the hope of saving on overall medical spending.
For Harvard Pilgrim, the TrestleTree acquisition is part of a strategy to build the customer and revenue base by expanding nationally. The insurer offers health plans in four New England states but also sells services, such as claims processing, to employers in 46 states. These services are a small, but growing part of Harvard Pilgrim’s business.
TrestleTree provides another service that Harvard Pilgrim can sell to large employers, typically those with 500 or more workers. The nonprofit insurer is still considering whether to integrate the coaching service into its health plan products, which make up 87 percent of its business.
TrestleTree, founded 14 years ago and based in Fayetteville, Ark., has customers in all 50 states.
The company uses algorithms and coaches trained by doctorate-level psychologists to design wellness plans tailored to individuals. The coaching is designed to help people who want to change their behavior but are hindered by problems at work or at home.
“It’s that messiness that oftentimes gets in the way of people moving forward with good intentions,” said Ted Borgstadt, president of TrestleTree.
According to company data, users of the coaching service who have a chronic disease lost an average of 7.9 pounds, while 63 percent of participants lost an average of 17.1 pounds.
Some employers give health insurance discounts to workers who sign up for TrestleTree coaching, Borgstadt said.
“We do believe there’s an opportunity to work together [with Harvard Pilgrim] to improve health and costs for employers across the country,” he said. | Massachusetts’ second-biggest health insurer this week purchased TrestleTree Inc., a health coaching company that employers hire to help their workers quit smoking, lose weight, and manage chronic diseases. | 14.647059 | 0.941176 | 13.941176 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/report-tiger-woods-could-return-to-phoenix-open-this-year-010715 | http://web.archive.org/web/20150114213449id_/http://www.foxsports.com:80/arizona/story/report-tiger-woods-could-return-to-phoenix-open-this-year-010715 | Report: Tiger Woods could return to Phoenix Open this year | 20150114213449 | Updated JAN 07, 2015 3:14p ET
Tiger Woods last played in the Phoenix Open in 2001. But the sport's biggest name could finally return later this month.
Golf.com cited two sources saying Woods "has signaled that he will enter the Waste Management Phoenix Open." One source told the site "Woods has reserved his courtesy car for the event, which has (tournament) officials cautiously optimistic that he intends to play."
The tournament begins Jan. 29 at the TPC Scottsdale.
Woods skipped the high-profile PGA Tour stop the past 13 years after a series of incidents involving the tournament's famously large and raucous galleries, particular in the 16th green.
Woods notched a hole-in-one on the infamous 16th hole in 1997.
Two years later, though, a fan who was heckling Woods was found with a gun. And in 2001, a fan threw an orange onto a green while Woods putted.
Woods played the event only three times but registered two top-five finishes, including third place in 1999. | Golf.com cited two sources saying Woods "has signaled that he will enter the Waste Management Phoenix Open." One source told the site "Woods has reserved his courtesy car for the event, which has (tournament) officials cautiously optimistic that he intends to play." | 4.163265 | 0.836735 | 11.897959 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/02/arts/jazzy-collages-by-romare-bearden-at-the-brooklyn.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150121154916id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1981/10/02/arts/jazzy-collages-by-romare-bearden-at-the-brooklyn.html? | JAZZY COLLAGES BY ROMARE BEARDEN AT THE BROOKLYN | 20150121154916 | AS retrospectives go, ''Romare Bearden, 1970-1980'' at the Brooklyn Museum is selective to the point of austerity. A listing of works in the catalogue reveals that during the 10 years in question, Mr. Bearden produced 342 collages, 128 oils on paper, 122 watercolors, 24 drawings, 25 prints, 5 tapestries, 4 murals and mosaics, and a number of illustrations, designs for film and theater, magazine covers, record covers, book jackets, banners and quilts. Every one of these is carefully listed in the catalogue, which also includes a lengthy and fascinating essay by Albert Murray on Mr. Bearden's general development and a brief art-historical summary by Dore Ashton.
The exhibition was organized by the Mint Museum in Mr. Bearden's hometown of Charlotte, N.C., and is sponsored by Philip Morris and the National Endowment for the Arts. It consists of rather more than 50 collage paintings. One of them - ''The Block'' (1971), owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art - is very large indeed, 48 by 216 inches. But most of them are sitting-room size - large enough to accommodate a great quantity of deftly scattered detail, but small enough for us to monitor the movement of the artist's hand as it forms and re-forms the image, adding and subtracting with many a kingfisher's flight of fancy.
It is in the nature of collage that it leaves every option open. There is literally nothing -no mode of expression, no physical substance, no cross-reference however bizarre - that cannot be made to work. But in saying that, we presuppose a master's hand.
Collage as a way of making great art has been around for 70 or so years. Not only is it part of the lingua franca of 20th-century art, but it also seems almost to have been bred into us, like table manners or brushing our teeth. For this reason, the fallacy is now widespread that almost anyone can make a good collage if he puts his mind to it.
Mr. Bearden has been making collages since 1963. Initially, he thought of them as a way of bringing ready-made subject matter back into his paintings after a period, 1954-61, of largely non-objective work. But it is important to know that the collage medium was not an alternative to painting, in Mr. Bearden's case, but an extension of it. He had indeed been working for years with photostats, with layer on layer of color on rice paper of varying thicknesses and with images torn over and over until a motif emerged to tempt him.
There was also a social momentum behind the collages. Ever since he grew up in Harlem as what Albert Murray calls ''an inquisitive, gregarious and devilishly mannish adolescent with good standing in most social circles,'' Mr. Bearden had it in mind to memorialize the black culture of which he and his family were a part. His mother was founder and first president of the Negro Women's Democratic Association. Collage, with its versatility, its speed of wit and its echoes of the jerky disjunctive movement of old silent film was ideal for his purpose.
There was also the fact that Mr. Bearden is not a naive or primitive artist but a man of wide and deep culture. Close person al acquaintance with Stuart Davis and George Grosz, the habit of making careful free copies of the Old Masters, a fruitful sojourn in Paris and day-by-da y study of the classics of European art literature -all these gave he ft and direction to his activity.
There was also - and no one could describe this better than Mr. Murray - the influence of classical jazz in its heyday. Not merely the sound of jazz, but its motivation, its procedures and its esthetic are fundamental to Mr. Bearden's collages. Add to all these elements a life lived to the full in North Carolina, Pittsburgh and New York, and you end up with an autobiographical art that is almost unmanageably rich. Like a parakeet with a college education, Mr. Bearden skips from branch to branch in a forest of form and color. Never still, he dares us to define him once and for all.
H ere and there the final effect is glib and gabby, as if manic energies had got out of hand. But most often, the charge of feeling is warm enough, and the basic image compellin g enough, for us to takethe complications as quite natural. Mr. Beard en the teller of tales is at his best in many of these collages. Som etimes the tale is told straight, sometimes it's a matter of allegory and metaphor. Either way, these are very endearing images. They ca n be seen through Nov. 29; a related show of oils and collages by Mr . Bearden can be seen atCordier & Ekstrom, 417 East 75th Street, thro ugh Nov. 7.
Concurrently at the museum, there is a show by Jay Ells, ''A Book Project,'' that is well worth a visit. The project is for a children's book in 23 drawings called ''Head Like a Bear - Wings Like an Eagle,'' and it brings fresh life to the conventions of the genre.
Other current shows of interest include: Donald Judd (Leo Castelli Gallery, 142 Greene Street): The most remarkable new work of art to be seen in Manhattan at this time may well be the huge new piece by Donald Judd that occupies the whole of the long north wall at 142 Greene Street. It's a wooden piece, and at first glance it looks like a set of mammoth bookshelves that has somehow gone all wrong. Some of the shelves are set so close together that you could hardly get your hand between them. Others tilt outward and downward so that anything put on them would immediately fall off. Sometimes the shelves come racked up in batches.
But if the piece makes no sense as shelving, it works wonderfully well in terms of Mr. Judd's skills as a variationist. Every one of the 10 sections of the work has the same basic set of themes. There is a tight formal slit, and there is a boxlike space that has been cut across diagonally. Between these two extremes, other spatial possibilities are explored.
Given the gigantic scale on which the work is executed, we also get into variations of light and dark, closed and open, in and out. No two sections are the same, though all are closely related, and the final effect is that of a colossal blast on an old-style pipe organ with no electronic nonsense about it. We don't hear the music, but we feel the wind in our bones. (Through Oct. 17.)
Josef Herman (Terry Dintenfass Gallery, 50 West 57th Street): For just on 50 years, Josef Herman has devoted a long steady patience to the theme of men and women at work in a given landscape. Polish by birth, he works in an Expressionist idiom that once was common currency all the way from Eastern Europe to the Belgium of Constant Permeke. And although he is the least flashy of men, he has acquired with age a new daring in his use of color and a new kind of shorthand in his drawing of the human figure. This is his first show in New York. (Through Oct. 15.)
Illustrations: photo of 'Out Chorus' | AS retrospectives go, ''Romare Bearden, 1970-1980'' at the Brooklyn Museum is selective to the point of austerity. A listing of works in the catalogue reveals that during the 10 years in question, Mr. Bearden produced 342 collages, 128 oils on paper, 122 watercolors, 24 drawings, 25 prints, 5 tapestries, 4 murals and mosaics, and a number of illustrations, designs for film and theater, magazine covers, record covers, book jackets, banners and quilts. Every one of these is carefully listed in the catalogue, which also includes a lengthy and fascinating essay by Albert Murray on Mr. Bearden's general development and a brief art-historical summary by Dore Ashton. The exhibition was organized by the Mint Museum in Mr. Bearden's hometown of Charlotte, N.C., and is sponsored by Philip Morris and the National Endowment for the Arts. It consists of rather more than 50 collage paintings. One of them - ''The Block'' (1971), owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art - is very large indeed, 48 by 216 inches. But most of them are sitting-room size - large enough to accommodate a great quantity of deftly scattered detail, but small enough for us to monitor the movement of the artist's hand as it forms and re-forms the image, adding and subtracting with many a kingfisher's flight of fancy. | 5.390977 | 0.992481 | 102.278195 | low | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2015/01/20/farm-to-table-scores-funding/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150122063604id_/http://fortune.com/2015/01/20/farm-to-table-scores-funding/ | Veggies gain ground as farm-to-table chain scores funding | 20150122063604 | Farm-to-table restaurant chain Dig Inn Seasonal Market has raised $15 million in its Series C round, bringing its total funding to $21.5 million since launching in 2011.
The round was led by Wexford Capital, with other other participants including Monogram Capital Partners, founding partner of Riverwood Capital Michael Marks, and existing investor Magnus Hoglund, founder of Law360. Dig Inn founder and CEO Adam Eskin was once a private equity associate at Wexford Capital.
Most of the investment will go toward expanding the 10-restaurant chain, which has some $35 million in annual sales. The company plans to open another five to seven restaurants in 2015, including its first outside New York City. Eskin thinks Dig Inn has the potential to eventually go national, but its next market will be on the East Coast for logistical reasons.
About 70% of the chain’s menu consists of vegetables, but the concept stands apart from the plethora of salad chains because Dig Inn specializes in cooked vegetables. “People are getting more comfortable with the idea that meat doesn’t need to be at the center of the plate,” Eskin says, pointing to trends like Meatless Monday and Michelin chefs launching all or mostly vegetable-based menus.
The No. 1 vegetable sold at Dig Inn in 2014 was sweet potatoes (230,292 pounds), with beets the runner up at 217,435 pounds. Kale scored a respectable third (174,708 pounds).
“There’s a lot more than you can do with Brussels sprouts”—tied with red onions at No. 4 with at 162,550 pounds—“relative to how people used to think about it way back when,” he says. “The level of culinary innovation is making vegetables more mainstream.”
Dig Inn is trying to anticipate the challenges that will come with scaling a concept focused on sustainable and local food. It’s an issue that’s top of mind in the industry as Chipotle last week stopped selling pork in about a third of its U.S. restaurants after discovering that one of its suppliers was not complying with the Mexican food chain’s animal-care standards.
Dig Inn has brought in a sourcing manager who was previously a farmer and is building direct relationships with suppliers from the start rather than going through middlemen. Eskin says that’s unusual for a company of Dig Inn’s size. “We’re doing that at a much earlier stage,” he adds.
Eskin is capitalizing on a shift in consumers who want healthier food that’s better for the environment but still accessibly priced (the average check at Dig Inn is $10). “We think given where the world is headed that we have a more viable product,” Eskin says.
He believes the investment interest stems from the size of the $700 billion restaurant industry, compounded by the level of disruption that’s going on in the sector. “The incumbent folks are either going to go away, shrink, or pivot in some way,” Eskin explains. That’s resulted in growth and funding for Dig Inn and other chains with similar values like Sweetgreen, which landed $18.5 million in funding in November.
In addition to expansion, the latest round of Dig Inn’s funding will also in part go toward exploring food tech, which Eskin says has boomed over the last 18 months. “Food has become the new technology sector,” he notes. Companies like Blue Apron, Sprig, and Munchery are figuring out how to deliver high-quality food to people very quickly, and these ventures changed Eskin’s assumptions that food delivery was strictly a New York City phenomenon. The Dig Inn team is investigating whether it should start its own service or partner with an existing one.
“Restaurants will always be our core business,” Eskin says, “but I think it would be a mistake not to be mindful of how the landscape is changing.” | Ten-outlet New York City restaurant chain Dig Inn has raised $15 million. Who knew sweet potatoes, beets, and kale could be so lucrative? | 24.766667 | 0.766667 | 2.166667 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/california-cop-pushes-wheelchair-man-into-street | http://web.archive.org/web/20150123195624id_/http://www.people.com/article/california-cop-pushes-wheelchair-man-into-street | Video : People.com | 20150123195624 | 01/23/2015 AT 12:00 PM EST
A San Francisco police officer was caught on camera in two separate videos trying to shove a man in a wheelchair into the street on Sunday.
The disabled man, identified as Bo Frierson, was reportedly confronting the cops because they had detained one of his relatives, according to
In response, according to the video, an officer tries to shove Frierson away, pushing him into the street. He only doesn't fall out of the chair because he appears to be strapped in. A man comes running to help him once he sees what's happening.
"I'm not a threat to anybody," Frierson told
"He dumped me out, you see, a couple of times. Lucky for the seatbelt. Everyone wear your seat belts.
"What if I were to just fall on my face?" he added. "I could have died."
A spokeswomen for the San Francisco police tells PEOPLE that the officers stopped their vehicle because they saw a "heated verbal argument" taking place.
"Officers exited vehicle to investigate what was happening," the spokeswoman said. She went on to say that the cops advised Frierson not to approach them.
The person who uploaded the clip
has identified himself as Edwardo Delacruz and claims he is a cousin of the men in the video.
, Delacruz said that his cousins were just "joking around."
In the video the cop, who has been identified by the police as Officer Carrasco, says Frierson ran over his foot. But Delacruz disputes this claim.
"If you look at the video, he doesn't jump or react in a way that a person [would] who just had their foot ran over," he said. "He said that when he realized he was being filmed."
But the police say Carrasco was indeed injured, adding that he lost his cool with the man after his foot was hurt.
"Everyone who has their foot run over might lose their composure," the spokeswoman told PEOPLE.
The incident is being investigated by Internal Affairs. Frierson told ABC7 he plans to file a formal complaint against Carrasco. | A spokeswoman for the San Francisco Police Department says the incident is being investigated | 30.285714 | 0.928571 | 3.785714 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2012/08/01/the-sony-device-samsung-claims-inspired-apples-iphone/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150201153718id_/http://fortune.com/2012/08/01/the-sony-device-samsung-claims-inspired-apples-iphone/ | The Sony device Samsung claims inspired Apple’s iPhone | 20150201153718 | FORTUNE — The biggest drama on the first full day of Apple v. Samsung — the high-stakes patent infringement case being played out in a packed San Jose federal courthouse — was the release to the press of information Samsung’s lead attorney had literally begged the judge to allow into evidence. (“What’s the point of having a trial?” he said in open court when his umpteenth motion was denied.)
The leak infuriated judge Lucy Koh — to the delight of the reporters in the courtroom and, presumably, Apple’s AAPL legal team.
The story Samsung was trying to tell the jury was that before it unveiled the first iPhone, Apple was pursuing a design inspired by Sony’s SE aesthetic — a line of reasoning that has been transformed in hot fires of the blogosphere into proof that Apple “copied” Sony’s design.
The evidence was barred on a variety procedural grounds. But as John Gruber deftly showed in a Daring Fireball post Tuesday, it should have been barred because it’s totally bogus.
Here’s the iPhone creation story Samsung wanted to tell (taken from an unredacted Samsung legal brief):
Right after this article was circulated internally, Apple industrial designer Shin Nishibori was directed to prepare a “Sony-like” design for an Apple phone and then had CAD drawings and a three-dimensional model prepared. Confirming the origin of the design, these internal Apple CAD drawings prepared at Mr. Nishibori‘s direction even had the “Sony” name prominently emblazoned on the phone design, as the below images from Apple‘s internal documents show: Soon afterward, on March 8, 2006, Apple designer Richard Howarth reported that, in contrast to another internal design that was then under consideration, Mr. Nishibori‘s “Sony-style” design enabled “a much smaller-looking product with a much nicer shape to have next to your ear and in your pocket” and had greater “size and shape/comfort benefits.” As Mr. Nishibori has confirmed in deposition testimony, this “Sony-style” design he prepared changed the course of the project that yielded the final iPhone design.
There are a lot of problems with that story, starting with the fact Noshibori’s design (pictured above) didn’t change the course of the iPhone project, and he never said it did. Apple has released sketches of a near-final iPhone design (see left) that pre-date his CAD drawings by almost a year.
But let’s go back to the first sentence of the excerpt. The article that was circulated internally at Apple, Gruber helpfully points out, was a 2006 Businessweek interview with the designers of the product shown at the top of this piece. It was not a phone at all, but a Walkman — the NW-A1200 — that according to Businessweek represented for Sony a new, cleaner, less cluttered design aesthetic.
And what inspired that new aesthetic? Of all things, according to the Sony designers, an Apple iPod.
Apple wasn’t copying Sony, dear bloggers. Sony was copying Apple. | Judge for yourself: Does this look like something Jony Ive might have copied? | 36.8125 | 0.5 | 0.5 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2015/01/29/suzan-lori-parks-father-timeless-tale/gvPzkNIJrlhyVXIXv174hP/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150201224923id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/theater-art/2015/01/29/suzan-lori-parks-father-timeless-tale/gvPzkNIJrlhyVXIXv174hP/story.html | Suzan-Lori Parks’s ‘Father’ is a timeless tale | 20150201224923 | Benton Greene and Jenny Jules in “Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3.”
CAMBRIDGE — I want to start with the dog. That might seem an odd point of departure for a projected nine-part epic like “Father Comes Home From the Wars,” the first three sections of which the American Repertory Theater has just opened at the Loeb Drama Center. But playwright Suzan-Lori Parks did win a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for her drama “Topdog/Underdog.” And Part 3 of “Father” draws on the poignant episode from Homer’s “Odyssey” in which Odysseus returns home to Ithaca, after 20 years, and is recognized by his faithful dog, Argos, who gives a wag of his tail before giving up the ghost. Parks’s wall-eyed dog is named “Odd-See,” because his eyes “go this way and that.” Sporting an oversize shaggy sweater and sneakers, panting and slavering and rolling onto his back to have his tummy rubbed, he’s not just faithful, he’s a hoot.
But Odd-See is only one of many rewarding characters in “Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3),” which goes this way and that as it examines what it means to be free, and what it means to be true. Parks’s trilogy, which debuted at New York’s Public Theater in October, is set during the Civil War, but she has emphasized that this “is not the History Channel. It’s very much a mash-up.” Her characters mix references to Shakespeare and Genesis with current slang. They wear cargo pants and Crocs. Strumming a banjo and an acoustic guitar, music director Steven Bargonetti sings some of Parks’s own songs, like “This Bright Wilderness” and “Misplaced Myself.”
Part 1, “A Measure of a Man,” takes us to a “modest” slave plantation in rural Texas. It’s 1862, and personal slave Hero is facing a difficult decision. Should he stay home with wife, Penny (Odysseus’s wife is named Penelope), and fellow slave Homer and the rest of his friends? Or should he go to war with his “Boss-Master” Colonel and fight for the wrong side — the Confederacy — with the understanding that if he survives, he’ll be set free.
In Part 2, “A Battle in the Wilderness,” Hero, having chosen door number two, finds himself and the Colonel stranded between the lines and in possession of a wounded Union captain named Smith, from the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry. Part 3, “The Union of My Confederate Parts,” brings Hero back, under the new name of Ulysses (referring to the Latin name of Odysseus but also to Union commanding General Ulysses S. Grant). Penny is waiting for him, but unlike Penelope, she hasn’t quite kept every potential suitor at bay. And Hero/Ulysses, unlike Odysseus, has some baggage. He also has a copy of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation promising freedom to all — but freedom to do what?
Neil Patel’s set for the ART’s thrust stage is simple and suitably timeless. Parts 1 and 3 comprise a primitive weathered gray slave shack, with a couple of tree trunks emerging from parched grass and, at the back, the slope of a hillside. For Part 2, the shack is replaced by the wooden cage in which Smith is confined. ESosa’s equally appropriate costumes range from believably period to shabby-but-hip contemporary.
From left: Ken Marks, Benton Greene, and Michael Crane in “Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3.”
Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge 617-547-8300. www.americanrepertorytheater.org
The cast, under director Jo Bonney, invests all this with ease and spontaneity, breaking the fourth wall frequently to address the audience. The quartet of “Less Than Desirable Slaves” — Charlie Hudson III, Julian Rozzell Jr., Tonye Patano, and Jacob Ming-Trent — is a Greek chorus with attitude, and Harold Surratt radiates hard-won authority as the Oldest Old Man. Ming-Trent doubles as Odd-See, channeling the messengers in Greek drama who spin out their reports interminably. (Ming-Trent’s roles will be taken by Patrena Murray starting Feb. 6.) Michael Crane is so natural as Smith, he hardly seems to be acting; Ken Marks’s Colonel is more convincing as a sadist than when he’s trying to be nice.
Jenny Jules’s bright, exuberant Penny is the emotional anchor of the trilogy, even after Part 3 reveals a series of promises kept and promises broken. There are, in fact, surprises in all three parts. Benton Greene’s Hero at first seems improbably callow, but perhaps that’s deliberate, since he grows more manly in the course of the evening. Sekou Laidlow’s self-assured Homer, on the other hand, knows who he is from the beginning, and he and Greene come to look like different sides of the same coin. It seems clear, as Parts 4-9 bring the time frame forward into the present, that Hero and Homer, and their descendants, will be the focus of “Father Comes Home From the Wars.” Parts 1-3 can lag on occasion, as when the Colonel persists in asking Smith whether he wouldn’t love to be a slave owner. But even after three hours of watching on Wednesday, I was ready to see more. That’s the mark of a good story. | Suzan-Lori Parks’s “Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3),” now in performances at the American Repertory Theater, examines what it means to be free, and what it means to be true. | 23.106383 | 0.957447 | 11.638298 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/01/30/partners-ruling-could-have-national-implications/sXotXb3VEFUfyySeHMgPzO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150203034235id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/01/30/partners-ruling-could-have-national-implications/sXotXb3VEFUfyySeHMgPzO/story.html | Partners ruling could have national implications | 20150203034235 | A court ruling rejecting a settlement that would have allowed Partners HealthCare to acquire three community hospitals could have industry implications well beyond Boston. The decision casts doubt on expansion strategies that promise to deliver more coordinated and cost-effective care.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders’ decision on Thursday comes as hospitals and health systems nationwide move to build bigger networks. In a case that has been followed across the country, Sanders rejected the argument that hospital consolidation would help control costs through increased efficiency and suggested that Partners’ expansion would result in higher prices for consumers across Massachusetts.
“If the settlement was upheld, it would have been a strong signal that there could have been even more consolidation in other markets following this precedent,” said David Balto, an antitrust lawyer in Washington who opposed the Partners acquisitions. “This will raise doubts about consolidation going forward, especially in very concentrated markets.”
It also raised doubts that Partners would continue its efforts to acquire South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, which Partners executives years ago called “the prize,” and Hallmark Health System, which operates hospitals in Medford and Melrose.
Partners can still try to complete the deals, but Attorney General Maura Healey has said she will sue Partners to block the mergers.
A judge denied the deal in a devastating blow to Partners HealthCare, and to former attorney general Martha Coakley.
Partners executives say they are evaluating their options. With chief executive Dr. Gary Gottlieb scheduled to step down in the coming months, the decision may be left to his successor.
“Their least wise path is for Partners to try to fight this all out in court,” said Dr. Paul Hattis, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and member of the Health Policy Commission, a watchdog state agency that opposed the Partners deals. “It will take a number of years to resolve these matters through the legal system, and it would be a huge distraction for them.”
The Partners settlement was the result of a five-year state and federal investigation into Partners’ market activities. Former attorney general Martha Coakley presented the deal as a common-sense compromise that included price caps and limits on Partners’ future expansion.
But it drew a firestorm of criticism from opponents who felt the deal would do little to stop Partners from growing its already dominant place in the market and raising prices for consumers and insurers. Sanders sided with opponents when she rejected the deal, saying it was a “Band-Aid” approach and not in the public interest.
The settlement relied heavily on the kind of “conduct remedies” — price caps and changes to contracting practices — that have fallen out of favor in antitrust circles, said antitrust specialist Matthew L. Cantor, partner in the New York law firm Constantine Cannon LLC. Antitrust specialists typically prefer settlements that force an organization to make structural changes, such as divesting certain properties.
“This was a unique agreement because it relied on business conduct remedies like price caps,” Cantor said. “Those are disfavored by federal enforcement agencies and antitrust scholars because the caps are temporary and they are hard to monitor. A court doesn’t like to be in the business of monitoring price caps.”
Erin C. Fuse Brown, a health law professor at Georgia State University who has studied industry consolidation, said the rejection of the Partners settlement suggests that such remedies will be scrutinized more carefully in the future.
The judge’s decision won’t stop the national wave of hospital consolidation, Brown said, but “it certainly throws some cold water on plans of big hospitals to buy up other hospitals." | A court ruling that rejected a settlement that would have allowed Partners HealthCare to acquire three community hospitals could have implications for the industry well beyond Boston. | 24.785714 | 1 | 9.142857 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20150203-driving-the-renegade-jeeps-little-achiever | http://web.archive.org/web/20150207080047id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/autos/story/20150203-driving-the-renegade-jeeps-little-achiever | Driving the Renegade, Jeepâs little achiever | 20150207080047 | Truth is the precious but ponderous cargo aboard the diminutive Jeep Renegade.
“It is most important that it be true to the brand,” says Jeep’s US marketing director Jim Morrison of the new compact SUV.
“Truth” is really just a proxy for “authenticity”, and both are enormously important to Jeep – a nameplate with roots in World War II and an uncanny ability to evoke self-sufficiency and backwoods know-how. Can a tiny, car-like SUV possibly bear such a cumbersome, shifty payload?
Worldwide regulatory demands for reduced fuel consumption and commensurate reductions in carbon dioxide production gives the fuel-efficient Renegade a bit of urgency, but Jeep says it has planned a compact but rugged crossover for years. Surely being born of desire, rather than government regulation, is the narrative that Jeep prefers to tell.
Wrestled over curvy mountain switchbacks in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, the little Renegade displays an agility befitting its car-derived roots and it sprightly size. Do not be fooled by its bluff, upright grille and windshield; those familiar off-road cues cloak a thoroughly capable on-road vehicle.
MacPherson strut suspension at all four corners provides the limberness to both tame paved turns and obstacles strewn on the trail. The electrically assisted rack-and-pinion steering suffers a bit of characteristic artificiality at low, on-road speeds, but comes into its own as the Renegade gathers pace. Off-road, the light touch feels just right, conveying the needed feel as the front tires search for the path of least resistance. Thanks to 8.7 inches of ground clearance and 19in water-fording capability, all-wheel-drive Renegades can engage in the standard – if not the more spectacular – off-road stunts expected of a Jeep.
It accomplishes its off-road capability the same way the mechanically similar – but far more expensive – Land Rover Evoque does: electronic wizardry. A computer controls the flow of engine power to the wheels, the motion of each wheel, the gears in the nine-speed automatic transmission and how wide the throttle should open, given the conditions.
All these allow the range-topping Trailhawk edition to go pretty much everywhere the larger Wrangler, Cherokee and Grand Cherokee can. Lesser Renegades possess commensurately less capability, all the way down to sub-$20,000 front-wheel-drive poseurs that save owners money at purchase and at the pump. Front-drive versions will top 30mpg on the highway, Jeep claims, but official numbers have yet to be released.
The optional all-wheel drive system skews front-drive most of the time, coming back on line in less than a second if the all-knowing computer determines that the rear wheels are starved for power. In practice, the interplay is utterly imperceptible.
Motive force for North American models comes from either a 2.4-litre four-cylinder engine driving through a nine-speed automatic transmission or a turbocharged 1.4-litre four-cylinder with a six-speed manual. Befitting Jeep’s relatively new Fiat corporate parentage, an array of less powerful (and less thirsty) engines, including diesels, are available outside North America. The 2.4-litre moves the Renegade with authority, while the 1.4-litre is adequate in unhurried driving, but is unmasked when the gas pedal meets the floor and its cupboard is revealed to be rather bare.
One of the Jeep Wrangler’s most beloved traits is its ability to lose its top. The hardtop-only Renegade delivers a decent facsimile of that freedom with the optional My Sky, consisting of a pair of retractable-removable sunroof panels that allows rays and air to reach the front and rear seats. When removed, the panels stow away unobtrusively below the rear cargo floor.
Inside, all the Renegade's surfaces, materials and controls are unimpeachable, thanks to Chrysler's resolve to curb its pre-Fiat-merger tendency to cheapen cabins. The official company line is that the splash of colour on the tachometer’s face at redline reflects an authentic Jeep mud splatter. In truth, however, it was inspired by a paint splotch left on vice president of interior design Klaus Busse’s goggles after a staff paintball battle.
“It isn’t the PC explanation,” Busse says while showing a photo of the goggles, “but that’s where it really came from.” Despite his direct connection to this detail, the designer says his favourite cabin appointment is the dash-mounted grab handle on the passenger’s side – a thick and stout attachment that, according to Busse, conveys true Jeep character. Says Busse: “I pulled on it and it moved the whole vehicle!”
One miss: the well-regarded Uconnect touchscreen infotainment system comes in a 6.5in size rather than the 8.4in display found in other Fiat Chrysler vehicles. Given Jeep is looking to court a new buyer with the Renegade, one who might expect the comforts and amenities of a softer crossover or sedan, it seems a miscalculation.
Authenticity-obsessive brands like Jeep, however, may get a pass. It’s rare for such a brand to bend its truth without breaking it, and compared to prior attempts – the ponderous Liberty and homely (if popular) Compass come to mind – the Renegade broadcasts a truth as appealing as the cheeky bleat from its dual-note horn: Jeeps are a lot of fun.
If you would like to comment on this or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. | Built to broaden the appeal of the off-roading brand, the compact SUV carves out a niche all its own, writes Dan Carney. | 39.62963 | 0.62963 | 1 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/orange-is-the-new-black-lea-delaria-engaged | http://web.archive.org/web/20150207093201id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/orange-is-the-new-black-lea-delaria-engaged | Orange Is the New Black Star Lea DeLaria Engaged to Chelsea Fairless : People.com | 20150207093201 | Chelsea Fairless (left) and Lea DeLaria
02/06/2015 AT 06:30 PM EST
Wedding white is the new orange.
star Lea Delaria is engaged to fashion editor Chelsea Fairless, the actress announced Friday on
"Despite their concerns about the patriarchal confines of marriage, actor / singer Lea DeLaria & editrix Chelsea Fairless of Brooklyn, New York are pleased to announce their engagement," she posted, alongside a wacky picture of the happy couple Photoshopped with
"No date has been set for the impending nuptials," she continued, "but it's safe to say that it will be the event of the season, or a total s--- show."
DeLaria, 56, is known for her role as tough-talking Big Boo on the Netflix hit – and for shutting down hateful subway "preachers"
She popped the question back in January after the Screen Actors Guild Awards,
in a comedy series, she told
Fittingly, DeLaria was first introduced to Fairless through her costar Emma Myles, who appears as Bible-thumper Leanne, two and a half years ago, she told E!
"Everyone saw how emotional I was at the SAG awards. I was so filled with love," she explained. "I turned to her at the Netflix party that night and asked her to marry me. We announced it to all of our friends there." | The star says she popped the question to fashion editor Chelsea Fairless after the SAG Awards | 16.625 | 0.9375 | 3.1875 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2011/10/14/360buys-qiangdong-liu-chinas-new-e-commerce-star/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150212001749id_/http://fortune.com:80/2011/10/14/360buys-qiangdong-liu-chinas-new-e-commerce-star/ | 360buy’s Qiangdong Liu: China’s new e-commerce star | 20150212001749 | Imagine if Amazon delivered the same day. Qiandong Liu’s 360buy does.
FORTUNE — Sitting in his big office, a stone’s throw from the iconic Bird’s Nest, the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, Qiangdong “Richard” Liu is explaining how he got the idea for 360buy, China’s fast-growing e-commerce site (a mashup of Amazon AMZN and Fresh Direct), which global investors are lining up to back. Sure, Liu could claim that he had foreseen the rise of China and the Internet explosion, and that he had brilliantly found a way to capitalize on both trends. But in his first interview with a non-Chinese publication, Liu, an affable but quiet 38-year-old, tells Fortune that the success of 360buy, which is on track to hit $1.5 billion in sales next year, was less a product of inspiration than one of desperation.
At the end of 2002 the deadly SARS virus broke out in China, and for a few terrifying months, as dozens of people died, no one knew what it was or how to treat it. Businesses across the country were shuttered, as people huddled in their homes.
Liu owned a profitable electronics distribution business, with 12 retail offices in four cities, but the SARS outbreak was a serious blow. “We were losing a lot of money then,” he says. He stayed confined in his apartment, but a few of his managers, going stir-crazy, sneaked into the office in Beijing and discussed ways to cope. One of them came up with the idea of trying to move some of the company’s inventory via the Internet. A eureka moment? Only of sorts: “I barely knew what the Internet was back then,” Liu says now. “Seriously. I had never used it.”
Liu, 38, nonetheless approved the idea, and by 2005 his little electronics distribution business was on pace to do $12 million in Internet sales. He convened a meeting of his top store managers and asked their opinion: Should they just shut the bricks and mortar and become an online business only? They all agreed: The company would go online only, and at the end of 2005, what would become 360buy was born.
Today the company employs 12,000 people across China, has pushed into books and music, and has caught the eye of some of technology’s most sophisticated financiers. Digital Sky Technologies (DST) — the Russian firm that is backing Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon invested $500 million this year. Wal-Mart WMT , the world’s largest retailer, and Sequoia Capital, the blue-chip venture firm that has backed Apple AAPL , Google GOOG , and YouTube, are also backers. Liu says he hopes to take 360buy public in the U.S. no later than the end of 2013.
The Smartest People in Tech 2011
The company’s advantage over other e-tailers — and the thing that has helped attract the likes of Wal-Mart — is its masterful logistics. The company guarantees that if a customer types in an order before 11 a.m., he or she will receive the product before 6 p.m. the same day. Similarly, anyone who orders before 11 p.m. will get the package by 9 the next morning. (Fortune tested that claim, placing one small order in Beijing and three in Shanghai over the past two weeks. It worked every time.) Each delivery person is equipped with a point-of-sale terminal to allow customers to pay with their bank debit card upon receipt of a product. Further, the company has a “100-minute policy”: If a customer has any complaints about a product, a delivery person will be back at his doorstep within an hour and 40 minutes after the complaint is lodged. The 360buy delivery system is so effective that by the end of the year, Liu is going to farm it out, allowing any company to use it for a fee — including e-commerce archrivals like Dangdang.
Figuring out new ways to produce revenue right now makes some sense, because the retail e-commerce space in China is in the middle of a price war that can’t be good for anybody. It is also “getting more crowded,” as a venture capitalist who was in 360buy’s first round of financing three years ago says.
Indeed, ask Liu who he thinks 360buy’s primary competitors are, and he cites China’s largest brick-and-mortar electronics retailer, Suning, as his No. 1 rival, TK acknowledging that it has moved online effectively and now wields more clout to lower prices with electronics vendors.
The irony of that isn’t lost on Liu, the former small-time electronics shop owner. A decade ago he would never have dreamed of competing with the country’s leading electronics retailer. Liu has a nice pile of cash and a delivery network in 300 cities to help him maintain his edge, but he’ll need to keep generating new moneymaking ideas.
Not that he’s worried. “We’ll see what happens next,” he says simply. As Liu knows all too well, inspiration can come from the most unexpected sources.
This article is from the October 17, 2011 issue of Fortune. | Imagine if Amazon delivered the same day. Qiandong Liu's 360buy does. FORTUNE -- Sitting in his big office, a stone's throw from the iconic Bird's Nest, the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, Qiangdong "Richard" Liu is explaining how he got the idea for 360buy, China's fast-growing e-commerce site (a mashup of Amazon and Fresh Direct), which… | 13.546667 | 0.893333 | 8.066667 | low | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2015/02/10/jon-stewart-to-leave-comedy-centrals-the-daily-show/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150213111529id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/02/10/jon-stewart-to-leave-comedy-centrals-the-daily-show/ | Jon Stewart is leaving 'The Daily Show' | 20150213111529 | This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com
By Tessa Berenson and Dan Hirshhorn, TIME
Jon Stewart, the comedian-turned-faux newsman who transformed The Daily Show into a cultural powerhouse over the course of more than a decade, is leaving the show later this year.
Stewart announced his coming departure during the taping of Tuesday night’s show, and Comedy Central president Michele Ganeless confirmed it in a statement. It wasn’t immediately clear what Stewart’s next move will be, nor was it clear who would replace him or whether the show will continue.
“For the better part of the last two decades, I have had the incredible honor and privilege of working with Jon Stewart,” Ganeless said. “His comedic brilliance is second to none. Jon has been at the heart of Comedy Central, championing and nurturing the best talent in the industry, in front of and behind the camera. Through his unique voice and vision, ‘The Daily Show’ has become a cultural touchstone for millions of fans and an unparalleled platform for political comedy that will endure for years to come. Jon will remain at the helm of ‘The Daily Show’ until later this year. He is a comic genius, generous with his time and talent, and will always be a part of the Comedy Central family.”
Stewart became anchor in 1999, taking a show that Craig Kilborn had started and turning it into a searing nightly political and media satire that left no subject matter—and no politicians—unscathed. His fire was trained as often on his real-life media colleagues as it was on the politics or public affairs of the day.
Ratings for the show have increased 400% from the year Stewart took over. The show has received 50 Emmy nominations and won 15. In 2000 and 2004, the show won two Peabody Awards for its coverage of the presidential elections relevant to those years, called “Indecision 2000″ and “Indecision 2004,” respectively. And it spawned another powerhouse in its own right when Stephen Colbert, a Daily Show correspondent, launched The Colbert Report. Colbert ended his show late last year for a move to David Letterman’s job at CBS. | The iconic Comedy Central host will depart later this year. | 38.909091 | 0.727273 | 2 | high | low | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2010/09/24/how-apple-is-sucking-the-profit-out-of-the-mobile-phone-business/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150216135131id_/http://fortune.com:80/2010/09/24/how-apple-is-sucking-the-profit-out-of-the-mobile-phone-business/ | How Apple is sucking the profit out of the mobile phone business | 20150216135131 | The iPhone’s growing share of the spoils could spell bad news for Google’s partners
On Tuesday we posted a pair of pie charts that showed Apple AAPL selling 3% of the world’s mobile phones in the first half of 2010 and taking 39% of the industry’s profits. (See Apple’s outrageous share of the mobile industry’s profits.)
Asymco‘s Horace Dediu, however, did us one better. He published the graph above charting Apple’s share of the available profit in mobile phones as compared with its 7 biggest competitors over the past three years.
As he notes, Apple’s growing share has come largely at Nokia’s NOK expense, although Sony Ericcson SNE and LG are also getting squeezed and Motorola MOT , as he puts it, “has not had anything to lose.”
“Will Android change this picture?” he asks rhetorically. “As I’ve argued before, Android is most attractive to the unprofitable and the strategically constrained. Can having undifferentiated new products change this? As Nokia is unlikely to license Android, and RIM seems very unlikely and Apple is out of the picture, the only possible contenders are Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
“Motorola and Sony Ericsson have both returned to profitability but with a very small volume Android strategy. However the incumbents fielding Android are really facing a far more sinister threat: the smaller local brands in China (e.g. ZTE) and emerging markets.”
Some assume, as Dediu puts it, that the future belongs to the Korean cell phone manufacturers (i.e. Samsung and LG). But if they are hoping to turn a big profit, using Google’s GOOG Android to bet against Apple could be a risky play.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped] | The iPhone's growing share of the spoils could spell bad news for Google's partners On Tuesday we posted a pair of pie charts that showed Apple selling 3% of the world's mobile phones in the first half of 2010 and taking 39% of the industry's profits. (See Apple's outrageous share of the mobile industry's profits.)… | 5.073529 | 0.897059 | 8.838235 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/luke-bryan-disney-world-photos | http://web.archive.org/web/20150222010103id_/http://www.people.com/article/luke-bryan-disney-world-photos | Luke Bryan Family Photos at Disney World : People.com | 20150222010103 | 02/21/2015 AT 01:00 PM EST
You know what they say about all work and no play? Luke Bryan sure does. So the singer made time to hit up Walt Disney World with his family for a day of fun between his Orlando concerts.
While at the Magic Kingdom on Feb. 20, Bryan stopped for a meet-and-greet with cowboy Goofy (because even Goofy goes country in the presence of Luke!) before riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
It was the perfect kind of day for Bryan, 38, who last year told PEOPLE that the best of both worlds is having his family out on tour with him.
"I'm at my happiest when I'm out on the road and my sons Bo [6] and Tate [3] and my wife, Caroline, are with me, because I'm doing what I love and I'm not having to be away from my family. When we're all out there together, we play with them all day and then I get to go onstage."
Bryan also shared a photo from the outing on Instagram: | The singer and his family make a pit stop at the happiest place on Earth | 14.2 | 0.666667 | 1.066667 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/apr/15/art | http://web.archive.org/web/20150227020936id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/apr/15/art | Adrian Searle has a ball at Glasgow's art festival | 20150227020936 | One Saturday in July last year, Didier Pasquette attempted to walk between the tower blocks of the 1960s Red Road housing development in Glasgow. He stepped into space and just kept walking, sliding his feet forward, one after the other, on a cable slung between the towers, 90 metres above the ground. Pasquette's high-wire walk was filmed from several viewpoints by the film-maker and photographer Catherine Yass; Pasquette was also provided with a lightweight head-cam to record his journey.
It was a mild, sunny day with a light breeze. A few metres out, Pasquette hesitated. The view from his head-cam records the bounce in the wire, and a sideways tremor, as though the cable were being plucked by the wind. He reversed, gingerly making his way back to the tower, feeling behind him for every step.
The different views of Pasquette's perilous journey are premiered at the 2008 Glasgow International, which opened at the weekend. A wuss with vertigo like me shouldn't watch this. Standing in the middle of Yass's four-screen installation (an Artangel project) in the Centre of Contemporary Art on Sauchiehall Street, I asked myself, what if Pasquette had fallen? Would Yass have continued with her project? As it is, I have little doubt that Pasquette's decision to retreat makes High Wire more riveting. A success, after all, is only a success, in a business as risky as Pasquette's. As metaphor, a high-wire act cannot fail.
Founded in 2004, Glasgow International is now set to become a regular biennial. Building on its low-budget, do-it-yourself approach, each edition has been better than the last. The project has slowly expanded, occupying not just established venues but studios and abandoned and derelict buildings around the city. It runs until April 27, but some projects will continue into the summer. There are shows, performances and concerts all over town. Glasgow has the most developed arts scene outside London, and many empty spaces. Successful local artists tend to stay (even if, like Douglas Gordon, they spend protracted periods in New York or Berlin), and the city supports a number of commercial galleries - The Modern Institute, Sorcha Dallas, the improbably named Mary Mary, as well as public sector spaces and museums.
Douglas Gordon recently opened a gallery in his house, where commissioning organisation Common Guild presents the first UK solo show by French-Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed. In one video, Abdessemed hangs by his feet from a rope attached to a helicopter. Suspended upside-down in the roar and the swirling dust, the artist tries to make a drawing on the ground. In another recorded performance, he attempts to write the phrase, "Also sprach Allah" on the underside of a carpet that has been nailed to the ceiling, which he can only reach by being tossed in a blanket. I like Abdessemed's approach, though I get motion sickness just watching this, so I wonder how he felt. The strange ritual in the room, with the artist repeatedly thrown heavenwards, the magic carpet stuck to the ceiling, the references to Nietzsche and the Thousand and One Nights - there's a lot to unravel.
Some of Abdessemed's best works appear slight or inconsequential. The difference between success and failure here is all a matter of timing, execution and exactitude. Any hint of worthiness or laboriousness kills the art. Elsewhere, in Turner prize-winner Simon Starling's latest work, which concerns "the possibilities of generating complex sculptural forms from the micro-geology of photographic images", a technical hitch had melted the micro-geology; Starling's project has so far failed to materialise.
Over at Tramway, Jonathan Monk has gilded the tramlines that run the length of the building with gold leaf. This sounds beautiful but somehow isn't. As it is, the shallow groove through which the tramlines run has also been plugged with lengths of rope, doubtless for health and safety reasons, but which overcomplicates the effect. Other works are dotted about this huge space, and in the middle is a drum-kit that visitors are invited to play, as a sort of accompaniment to the show. I model my frenetic drum technique and weird time signatures on Animal in the Muppets. By contrast, the 10-year-old who followed me on to the stool was a rhythm genius. You've either got it or you haven't.
What the Glasgow International lacks curatorially (this edition's theme, where it has one, is described as "public and private"), it makes up for with energy. This comes directly from the vitality of Glasgow's visual arts scene itself. Jim Lambie has managed, through a kind of artistic overkill, to destabilise and disarrange the ground floor grand salon of Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art. Anything that screws with this space is fine by me. Work often has a hard time surviving here, next to the hall's massive columns, the ornate ceiling, the windows on three sides. Lambie has made a magnificent jumble of it.
Half submerged in the surging pattern of op-art arcs that cover the floor, concrete boxes bob about, like icebergs, each apparently filled with 12" albums. Lambie's work often references music (the show is titled after Love's 1968 album Forever Changes), and I found Mantovani, Barbara Dickson and Harry Secombe records in one of the boxes. Warm Leatherette, a sort of giant starfish made from sewn-together sleeves of leather jackets sits under a window, and in the centre of the hall stands a higgledy-piggledy arrangement of brightly painted wooden chairs, from which dangle handbags covered in shards of broken mirror. An arrangement of mirrors hangs from the ceiling, in a configuration that mimics the constellation of Cancer. The show is a series of encounters with strange objects and singularities. There's a black bag on the floor that appears to have morphed with a dartboard and a writhing tangle of handbag straps; it sits among multicoloured farts of spray paint. You might take this as a sort of rejoinder to Monk's efforts over at Tramway; the effect is a kind of overexcited visual riot.
By contrast, Tyrolean artist Ernst Caramelle, at Mary Mary, does just enough. As well as making small, discrete paintings, Caramelle paints directly on the wall. Blocks of bright translucent colour slide over lintels. Black rectangles and rhomboids run along the bottom of walls, or complicate corners and doorways. He twists the way we see space, but his art is more than an optical game. It is understated and elusive. Caramelle deserves to be better known in the UK: I can imagine him making a beautiful show at Camden Arts Centre, or the Icon in Birmingham.
Of the commissions made especially for Glasgow, Polish painter and filmmaker Wilhelm Sasnal's is the most poignant. Music echoes through an empty space in a warehouse near the Saltmarket. In the basement, a looped 16mm film shows Polish punk band 19 Wiosen singing about Angelika Kluk, a young Polish student raped and murdered in Glasgow in 2006, and whose body was hidden under the floor of St Patrick's church in Anderston. The song is played twice, the first time sung by Marcin Pryt, the second by a naked unnamed actress. Much of the time the female singer doesn't bother to mime as she crouches before the camera. Her nakedness is somehow less disturbing than the emptiness of the space. The projector clatters. The music rises through the floorboards. That's it. What really works is the dynamic between the filmed performance and real space, the emptiness and how sound fills it, what is visible and what is hidden.
Round the corner, I was plunged into a labyrinthine space where seven video works by Dani Marti and Katri Walker are being shown. Some are in large spaces, others in tiny cubbyholes. It's inventively done. In one work, a bunch of Australian blokes camp in the Outback, and discuss art, life, lesbians and the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. There are tensions in the group that pass like the weather. There are flies and thunderstorms. Another video focuses on a young homeless Glaswegian, with his chewed-up polystyrene begging cup, while others feature a Mexican woman who sings prayers for the dead, and whose hobby is baseball, and a man whom God has told to be a sculptor. There was something about a dog. The darkness is filled with lives and stories. It's all very unexpected, extremely well done and utterly disorientating. I hope future Glasgow Internationals can keep it that way.
· Glasgow International is at venues throughout Glasgow until April 27. Some projects continue through spring and summer. Details: glasgowinternational.org | Psychedelic flooring, a high-wire balancing act and magic carpets - Glasgow's art festival is bursting with energy. Adrian Searle has a ball | 62.925926 | 0.666667 | 1.777778 | high | low | mixed |
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/dish/201502/bills-coach-rex-ryan-goes-all-truck-paint-job-featuring-logo-team-colors | http://web.archive.org/web/20150228015714id_/http://www.thepostgame.com:80/blog/dish/201502/bills-coach-rex-ryan-goes-all-truck-paint-job-featuring-logo-team-colors | Rex Ryan Goes All-In With Truck Paint Job Featuring Buffalo Bills Logo, Colors | 20150228015714 | It's no longer a question of "Is Rex Ryan committed to the Buffalo Bills?" Now, it's just a matter of "How far will he go to prove it?"
Continuing with his borderline obsessive offseason plan to commit himself fully to Buffalo football, Ryan has invested in a bumper-to-bumper paint job for his truck that is inspired by the Billsl. The truck is primarily blue, complemented by team colors and the Bills logo. The lower part of the truck is also painted to suggest it is caked with fresh snow.
Rex Ryans new truck love it GO BUFFALO @buffalobills #BILLSMAFIA pic.twitter.com/9JEwF5d88k
— drew (@billsrock78) February 26, 2015
Ryan has been adamant not only about winning in Buffalo, but also about bringing in a new culture. The coach said he wants to turn the team into a "bully" and bring back a winning attitude that has been mostly gone since the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Bills reached four straight Super Bowls.
Apparently, Ryan's new truck design has been in the works for at least a few weeks. One reporter tweeted out that Ryan "showed me pictures of the design a few weeks ago."
It'll be interesting to see where he goes from here. Short of lifting a boombox over his head while shouting at the second-story bedroom window of sleeping Bills owner Terry Pegula, all to profess his devotion and love, Ryan will have a tough time topping his new paint job.
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Hannah Davis: Before The SI Cover | It's no longer a question of "Is Rex Ryan committed to the Buffalo Bills?" Now, it's just a matter of | 12.64 | 0.84 | 5.96 | low | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2012/03/05/when-nobody-and-everybody-is-the-boss/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150301074521id_/http://fortune.com:80/2012/03/05/when-nobody-and-everybody-is-the-boss/ | When nobody (and everybody) is the boss | 20150301074521 | (TheMIX) — As a reverse fairy tale for the CEO set, the reality television program Undercover Boss is fascinating, not so much in the witness-to-a-train- wreck mode of the rest of the genre, but because it is so revealing of our conflicted relationship with “the boss.”
The premise of the show — that the only way to get a clue about what’s really going on in his (or her) organization, is for the boss to go undercover on the front lines — is all too often the actual reality in organizations of any size. Yet, at the same time, the view of the boss as the ultimate authority with the heroic power to swoop in and save the day — whether that means paying down a mortgage, granting an instant promotion, or banishing a reviled policy — holds sway in real life as well as on “reality” TV.
Few figures are simultaneously as reviled and revered as “the boss.” The problem isn’t with the people who fill the role (that’s another story), but the role itself. The “modern” organization was founded on the principle of control — a central authority sets direction, corrals information, curtails decision-making power, and punishes deviations from the norm.
That might have worked in a world in which standardization, predictability, conformity, and discipline were enough to mass produce profits. But it doesn’t work in a world of constant change, competition from everyone and everywhere, and commoditized knowledge. And it certainly doesn’t work in a world in which there is so much hunger for greater humanity, freedom, and meaning.
We’ve reached an inflection point when it comes to how we organize human effort. The most inspiring organizations today are experimenting with what gets people out of bed in the morning and what fires up their imagination, initiative, and passion. And the best bosses understand that their power comes not from maintaining control, but from devising ways to unleash more freedom and creativity among their people.
Of course, the ideology of control is deeply embedded in our organizations. Chiseling around the edges won’t lead to meaningful change. This is why it’s so instructive to learn from organizations that have exploded the traditional hierarchy and learned to rule without bosses and manage without managers. These long-running experiments in organizational democracy and radical autonomy may have been “born this way,” but they offer up a set of insights and approaches for rethinking and redistributing leadership at any organization.
Morning Star is the world’s largest tomato processor and probably one of the most remarkable models of managing without managers in the world. The central California company was founded by Chris Rufer in 1970 with a distinct organizational approach. According to Paul Green, Jr., who runs Morning Star’s training and development, that philosophy assumes that “people are happiest when they have personal control over their lives; that the best human organizations are those in which people aren’t managed by others, but in which participants coordinate among themselves, managing their own relationships and commitments to others.”
Today, Morning Star is a complex, capital-intensive $700 million business with double-digit growth over 20 years (in an industry with an annual growth rate hovering around 1%) — and a collection of 400 colleagues without bosses, titles or job descriptions, who determine their own roles and responsibilities, negotiate their commitments peer to peer, and make their own decisions about who to hire and how to spend the company’s money.
At the center of the company’s design for work is a mechanism that produces a sort of order. It’s called the
(or CLOU, pronounced “clew”), a contract in which each individual defines his or her personal mission (and how it relates to the organizational mission), work commitments, key activities, and success metrics — all negotiated with 10 or 12 core colleagues (called CLOU colleagues). The CLOUs are available online to everyone in the company, they can be updated at will, and are embedded in a social network that includes a real-time feed of performance data, CLOU colleague activities, and peer feedback.
Instead of hewing uncomfortably to a rigid, top-down hierarchy, the CLOU system allows Morning Star’s colleagues to operate in a “natural” hierarchy based on expertise, achievements, and accountability. People don’t move “up” at Morning Star, they grow in respect and responsibility (and compensation) based on their contribution.
Likewise, ideas aren’t taken up the chain of command; they travel out to the relevant colleagues. In this system, where nobody (and everybody) is the boss, strong relationships make for a stronger organization.
Grow without losing human scale
Strong peer relationships may trump layers of management, job titles, and job descriptions, but can they scale? That’s a question W.L. Gore has wrestled with for decades. The 53-year-old maker of Gore-Tex high performance fabrics and some thousand other products — from Elixir guitar strings to Guide dental floss — employs 9,500 people in some 50 locations and is consistently ranked one of the best places to work and among the most innovative companies in the world.
Like Morning Star, it was founded on a very different idea of what a company could be. Gore has no formal hierarchy, no bosses, few job titles, and offers associates (everyone is an owner) autonomy in choosing their work and negotiating roles within teams. And like Morning Star, peer relationships and commitments are the bedrock of the operation.
To avoid diluting those crucial relationships, Gore famously caps the population of any given facility at around 200 people — the size where, founder Bill Gore observed, “we decided” becomes “they decided.” The emphasis at every turn is on direct, personal communication. The negotiation of roles is often laborious and time-consuming but it pays dividends.
Another multi-decade experiment in organizational democracy, Whole Foods Market has maintained human scale even as it has grown to 62,000 team members and 310 stores around the world by making all work teamwork. Every store is made up of a dozen or so self-managed teams, each store is a team, and the leadership of the company forms a team where all decisions are made by majority vote. Each team has extensive control over budget, policies, and local innovation — and rewards are based on team performance. As Whole Foods founder and chairman John Mackey puts it, “humans flourish best when they are in small groupings of people they know well and who they come to love and trust.”
And that’s the key. Humanizing the organization isn’t just about size — it’s about creating a culture of trust, intimacy, and informality. The best way to do that is to keep everyone on the same page — literally. Whole Foods, Morning Star, and W.L. Gore all open up an unprecedented amount of information, financial data, and strategic decisions to people across the organization. Morning Star produces a detailed financial report every two weeks for all to view. Whole Foods even shares salary information (of executives or peers) to any team member who requests it.
Mackey calls it “no secrets” management.” While so many organizations separate and disenfranchise people by parsing out information on a “need to know basis,” these companies align and energize people by sharing it on a default basis.
Although “boss” is “the B-word” at W.L. Gore, the company still has a president and CEO — but one who came into her job very differently than most. A Gore lifer, Kelly was chosen by popular vote. Her associates were asked who they thought was the best person to lead the company (no short list of candidates was supplied), and much to Kelly’s surprise, she was chosen by her peers.
Peer review is an established ritual inside Gore — a forced ranking of each associate’s 20 to 30 closest colleagues’ contribution to the company’s success determines compensation. At Morning Star, compensation is a product of an individual’s self-assessment and the evaluation of a peer-elected compensation committee.
Whole Foods WFM offers the right to vote to local teams when it comes to hiring. New hires serve for a period of one to three months on a team, after which the team approves (or rejects) the candidate as a permanent team member by two-thirds vote. It turns out that peers are much better at predicting who will be a great teammate or leader than any executive committee.
And it turns out that when you distribute the work of leadership to a cohort of engaged and empowered peers, you create a rich social fabric that is infinitely more resilient than a rigid hierarchy with reinforced corner offices.
Dear Readers: Have we reached the limits of leadership? Are the days of the big boss over? Can we manage without managers? Tell us what you think. | The best bosses understand that their power comes not from maintaining control, but from devising ways to unleash more freedom, creativity, and contribution. | 64.481481 | 1 | 16.703704 | high | high | extractive |
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150227-dirty-words-youre-overqualified | http://web.archive.org/web/20150302160511id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/capital/story/20150227-dirty-words-youre-overqualified | Can't land a job because you're overqualified? | 20150302160511 | Lynda Adjei never expected that her many years of experience in human resources would make it more difficult to find a job, rather than easier. But when she applied to numerous positions after her company restructured, she got the same message time and time again: “You are overqualified”.
After several months of applying to international companies similar to the one where she had previously worked, Adjei broadened her search to include start-ups and managerial positions. Eventually, she was successful and landed a job.
For many highly skilled job candidates like Adjei, being perceived as overqualified can be hard to overcome.
There are three categories hiring managers use to group overqualified applicants, according to New York-based Jonathan Mazzocchi, a managing director and partner with Massachusetts-based executive recruiting firm WinterWyman. First: the candidate has too many years of experience so therefore the role is too junior. Second: the applicant has too many skills and they’ll be bored. Third: he or she has already accomplished too much so they’ll look to leave the new job too quickly.
As a candidate, you must “change perception,” said Mazzocchi in an email. “If you can sell yourself effectively while remaining honest and factual, odds are you can land the right job — even if it is beneath you a bit.”
Think of your CV as a marketing tool. “It’s easy enough to manipulate things in order to create a better impression,” said Mazzocchi. Just keep the facts accurate. For example, remove the first 10 years of experience, along with education dates. “If you have more degrees than a thermometer, then it may be wise to remove ones that aren’t as relevant,” Mazzochhi said.
If you are applying for a director of finance role and you have a handful of degrees, such as a BS, an MBA, an MSF, a CFA and a JD, “you may not need all of that horsepower,” Mazzochhi said. By taking off everything but the BS and the MBA, you “may not scare your prospective employer away as much.”
An excess of education is quite common, according to a 2013 study by the global Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Almost one in three workers in the UK and Japan said they had more education than was necessary to qualify for their current jobs, and in the US, one in five said the same.
Use your interview to explain any of the omitted information and give your pitch on why you would be a perfect match for the role, said Mazzocchi.
Don’t forget to edit your profile on online networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Xing when applying. It should match what you leave on your CV. “In today’s market, expect employers and recruiters to verify everything,” said Mazzocchi.
Bypassing the human resources department is one of the best steps an overqualified candidate can take, according to Dallas-based Tony Beshara, president of recruiting firm Babich & Associates. Instead, applicants should target “the individual hiring authorities” within the organisation, he said. These people have final say on new hires and might be willing to consider you even if you don’t fit the specifications — or if you have too many credentials. Accountants should call the accounting manager or the controller, Beshara suggested. Salespeople could reach out call the sales manager or vice president of sales. Engineers? Call the engineering manager. The idea is to call the person who has the most immediate need, Beshara said.
If you must go through human resources, Beshara recommends editing your CV to fit the position. “Dumb it down. Get that executive vice president [title] off of there,” he said. “Otherwise, they’re not going to interview you.”
A major concern for employers is whether boredom will set in for someone with a lot of experience. “It’s important to give the impression that the position you’re interviewing for is a stretch position and you’re not going to walk in and do this role in your sleep,” said Mazzocchi.
If necessary, spell it out. “You need to have a story to tell why this is a job that suits your life conditions and career ambitions right now and the benefits to the employer with having you onboard,” said Stockholm-based author and executive career coach Charlotte Hagard in an email. “The employer will not be able to connect the dots otherwise.”
Mazzocchi said he often instructs more seasoned candidates to search for roles in different industries or sectors. “They (the employer) may be persuaded to consider a more experienced candidate who will need to pick up some of the nuances of their industry and at the same time be qualified enough to drive it,” he said.
Once you get to the interview, you can show enthusiasm for the new industry and say you know you will need to take a half step back in order to gain sector expertise. Let the interviewer know that you are fully prepared to do so and that you welcome this type of opportunity.
“You need to show energy, interest and enthusiasm for the job,” said Hagard. “Try to learn something about your competition and then find the advantages and disadvantages with your background compared to others.” Emphasise the advantages you have as someone with a lot of experience: for example, a broad network, extensive knowledge and the ability to take on lots of responsibility in a short time.
Career Coach is a twice-monthly column on BBC Capital in which we consider the career turning points and questions many professionals face. We welcome questions from readers at careercoach@bbc.com.
To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
Career Coach is a twice-monthly column on BBC Capital in which we consider the career turning points and questions many professionals face. We welcome questions from readers at careercoach@bbc.com. | If youâre having trouble landing a position because you have too much experience, hereâs what to do. | 61.421053 | 0.736842 | 1.263158 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/03/03/advice-from-your-neighborhood-banker/JANMkJZ7Qt0RsZuWWYqw4O/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150304211949id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/03/03/advice-from-your-neighborhood-banker/JANMkJZ7Qt0RsZuWWYqw4O/story.html | Advice from your neighborhood banker | 20150304211949 | Bob Mahoney isn’t satisfied sitting in his wood-paneled office at Belmont Savings Bank checking balance sheets and keeping tabs on interest rates.
So, every few weeks, he will post a video on YouTube or on his bank’s website to offer a dose of folksy wisdom gleaned from his years as a banker, father, traveler, and husband.
The 66-year-old chief executive may lack the ferocity of the television financial guru Suze Orman. But in his plainspoken tone, which veers between grandfatherly and professorial, Mahoney isn’t shy about giving his two cents.
On prenuptial agreements: “I can’t think of a worse way to begin married life.”
On job interviews: “Interviews are decided in the first five minutes. There’s nothing that destroys an interview more than a wet handshake.”
On investment management fees: “They’re irksome.”
The videos, called the Mahoney Money Minute, are taped mostly in his office and sometimes at a Belmont community television studio.
They’re nothing fancy, just a blank background with Mahoney and occasionally with guests, such as employees and specialists, chatting it up.
They’re often longer than a minute.
But Mahoney sees them as part of a long tradition of community banking — offering advice — and a way to differentiate Belmont Savings from the competition.
“This helps the bank compete on a different basis than pricing and rates,” he said.
Mahoney has been a banker for more than 40 years, working as a top executive at Providence-based Citizens Bank before joining Belmont Savings.
Videos, he said, seemed like the right medium; he found that blogging was too boring and Twitter was too terse.
But his productions have hardly gone viral. The videos have received about 4,000 hits since they were launched in 2011 — mostly from the bank’s customers.
“This isn’t the dog-eats-man stuff,” Mahoney acknowledged.
But they may provide useful tips. Don’t pay a fee of more than 1 percent to have someone manage stock funds, Mahoney said. And before that job interview, dab some powder on the palms to ensure a dry handshake. | Every few weeks, Bob Mahoney, chief executive of Belmont Savings Bank, will post a video on YouTube or his bank’s website, offering a dose of folksy wisdom. | 12.939394 | 1 | 3.909091 | low | high | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2013/10/10/the-it-job-of-silicon-valley/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150305053510id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/10/10/the-it-job-of-silicon-valley/ | The ‘It’ job of Silicon Valley | 20150305053510 | If Aaron Sorkin were writing a television drama about Silicon Valley right now — let’s call it The Techplex — one of his key characters might be a product manager. He (most likely he, but maybe she) would be a good-looking, business-savvy type with an undergraduate degree in computer science, perhaps five years out of college. He’d be the “it” employee of the drama, the person at the center of a crew that would include engineers, marketers, designers, and the CEO-founder.
But what exactly would this character do?
Ask a handful of current and former product managers that question, and the most common response is “It depends.” Says Aydin Senkut, a venture capitalist and one of the first product managers at Google: “The definition is so different from company to company. That was my first title at Google because I was the first nonengineer to work on a product, and they needed a title for me.”
In fact, product managers are so hot because they are often the one person in the thick of everything, with the remit of making sure a project hits its milestones and stays on track afterward. “Really good product managers are candidates for CEO jobs,” says Mike Maples, another VC, who was a product manager at SGI and Tivoli, two tech companies from yesteryear. “They sit in the middle of a lot of things.” Adds Deep Nishar, senior vice president for products and user experience at LinkedIn: “A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.”
There is a downside to the role of PMs, as they’re known in the Valley. They often have no one reporting to them, and are forced to rely instead on their cunning and sales ability to cajole colleagues from different realms of the company to work together. The PM’s actual job is to coordinate activities and make sure projects keep moving forward, causing the less impressed of their co-workers to think of product managers as glorified coordinators toting clipboards from meeting to meeting.
Yet just as the brand-manager role at Procter & Gamble launched untold numbers of careers, product management has become one of the best paths for rising through the ranks in Silicon Valley. Facebook runs a rotational product-management program that exposes young wannabe executives to multiple parts of the business. When she was at Google, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer created an “associate product manager” function to identify rising talent. It all makes the PM sound just about ready for primetime.
This story is from the October 28, 2013 issue of Fortune. | The executive title of the moment is product manager. But what exactly is it? | 32.5 | 0.875 | 1.75 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2013/01/03/why-buzzfeed-raised-new-venture-capital/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150307000903id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/01/03/why-buzzfeed-raised-new-venture-capital/ | Why BuzzFeed raised new venture capital | 20150307000903 | BuzzFeed investor explains his interest in the social publisher.
FORTUNE — Social publisher BuzzFeed today announced that it had raised nearly $19.3 million in new venture capital funding, led by existing investor New Enterprise Associates.
So we took a few minutes to chat about BuzzFeed with NEA partner Patrick Kerins, who sits on the company’s board of directors. What follows is an edited transcript:
FORTUNE: You led a $15.5 million financing just last year for BuzzFeed, and the NY Times reports that the money “essentially hasn’t been touched yet.” So why pump in more cash now?
KERINS: It’s not true to say the money hasn’t been touched. It’s a slight misinterpretation that someone might have made after hearing that BuzzFeed didn’t ‘need’ new money. This round was a situation in which the company had interest in raising new money as a cushion to be aggressive in a few areas. And insiders like us said, ‘Don’t go to market, just do it with us.’
If the company ramps the way we think it will over the next year, we could take advantage of its position to be a lot more aggressive in mobile. There also are some ideas about international development, but that comes after mobile. There also are some new developments in video, and the company has added some people in that space.
When you look at BuzzFeed’s 2012 revenue and traffic growth, how do you separate out results that derived from the presidential election?
It’s clear that the political section has been an important part of the company’s story and pageviews. But if you broke down revenue by section you wouldn’t feel it was particularly concentrated on political revenue. In the social advertising space, the advertisers sort of know where they want to be, and it’s actually unusual for it to be [limited to] the political pages.
Ben Smith’s stories and scoops have created a lot of buzz and traffic, but the revenues are diversified throughout the site. So I’m not particularly concerned about post-election revenue drop-off. Advertisers have decided that BuzzFeed is a place they want to be, and that remains true.
You mentioned Ben Smith, who BuzzFeed hired in late 2011 from Politico. Should Buzzfeed continue adding high-profile journalists?
You’re talking to a director, and this is the sort of thing we leave to the guys who run the company. So my opinion is my opinion, and nothing more. I think that, at different stages of the company’s development, having certain notable names is more important than it is at other stages. We want to be a very well-run journalistic entity, but I wouldn’t expect us to be looking for Ben Smith-type hires every six to eight months. Our objective is to constantly find the stories and pieces that result in tons of sharing. If a big name makes sense at a given time, then we’ll try to get them. But up-and-comers also have proven able to find those stories.
What has been BuzzFeed’s influence on the broader digital media market?
I think the social advertising/story unit thing. I think BuzzFeed has proven that you can build a meaningful venture-sized business by using that model. It’s turned heads, including at big companies in the Valley. BuzzFeed has eschewed the normal display stuff, and its success has resulted in a lot more of that type of format being tried by other online publishers. And one of the things we wanted to make sure of was that we raised enough capital to keep Buzzfeed on the cutting edge.
What is the future of BuzzFeed? Does it get subsumed by another online media company, like what happened with HuffingtonPost and AOL?
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that it could become a standalone media company. I think our business at New Enterprise Associates is to put real capital behind companies that we think can do that.
It’s certainly true that there aren’t a lot of VC firms doing content deals, but we’ve been pretty involved. Not just BuzzFeed, but also Buzz Media, Brian Bedol’s new video content production company Bedrocket and a non-fiction film distribution company called SnagFilms.
Media is generally a slow-moving industry with ad money taking a lot of time to find new things. It’s not like creating a new storage widget that’s 10 times more effective than the last one, so everyone buys it and rips out the old one.
But we’ve seen enough change in global content consumption and technology usage habits to feel like there are real venture-type opportunities in content. None of us know how it will all play out for sure, but if you can find a great team on the edge of something new in content we’re willing to do it. And that’s what we think we have in BuzzFeed.
Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com | BuzzFeed investor explains his interest in the social publisher. FORTUNE -- Social publisher BuzzFeed today announced that it had raised nearly $19.3 million in new venture capital funding, led by existing investor New Enterprise Associates. So we took a few minutes to chat about BuzzFeed with NEA partner Patrick Kerins, who sits on the company's… | 15.380952 | 0.936508 | 20.174603 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/03/11/papa-razzi-owners-launch-renovations-change-menu-restaurant-chain/jBTxO8QCSPO5ICm5cPXE7N/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150313105740id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/03/11/papa-razzi-owners-launch-renovations-change-menu-restaurant-chain/jBTxO8QCSPO5ICm5cPXE7N/story.html | Papa Razzi owners launch renovations, change menu at restaurant chain | 20150313105740 | Three years ago, the owners of the luxurious Castle Hill Inn in Rhode Island took aim at a more mainstream market and bought the Papa Razzi restaurant chain. Now they are going to spend millions renovating the eateries, in some cases down to the studs.
The menu at Papa Razzi will also shift from traditional Italian meals to lighter fare and shared plates of homemade pasta noodles and local veggies.
But the owners elected to hold onto the name — and amend it to become “Papa Razzi Metro” — because of the chain’s history in Boston.
“We’ve had an opportunity to take a hard look at how we ultimately take this Boston classic and reposition it for the next 20 years,” said Paul O’Reilly, chief executive of Newport Harbor Corp., which owns Papa Razzi. “There’s going to be a lot more variety to the actual design of the restaurants and the menu itself.”
Newport Harbor is an employee-owned hospitality group based in Rhode Island. The company operates eight stand-alone restaurant concepts, from the upscale 22 Bowen’s Wine Bar & Grille to the seasonal barbecue joint Smoke House, in the Newport and Providence areas. Its best-known venture is the 33-room luxury boutique called Castle Hill Inn, a historic property on a private 40-acre peninsula that earned a place in the prestigious international Relais & Châteaux association of top hoteliers and chefs.
But Papa Razzi is very different than anything else in Newport Harbor’s business portfolio.
For starters, it is a restaurant chain, and the company has historically operated singular establishments. Papa Razzi also marks the company’s first project outside of Rhode Island.
O’Reilly said he wanted to expand into Boston, a less seasonal market than the largely tourist-driven Newport economy, for several years. Although the idea of entering Boston with a handful of restaurants seemed daunting at first, he was drawn to the locations.
Frutti di mare is one of the new dishes on the Papa Razzi menu.
Newport Harbor’s biggest challenge will be to update an older brand without making drastic changes that turn away longtime guests, said Ani Collum, a partner at the Norwell consultantcy Retail Concepts. Newport Harbor says Papa Razzi has 35,000 members in its loyalty program.
“There are some very diehard Papa Razzi fans,” Collum said. “The new group has to tread lightly between a forward-thinking direction and what made the restaurants so special to people around here.”
The well-known Boston restaurateur Charlie Sarkis launched the Papa Razzi chain in 1989. The eateries were folded into his Back Bay Restaurant Group, which also owned Abe & Louie’s and Atlantic Fish Co., among other restaurants. Sarkis sold most of the restaurants a few years ago.
Newport Harbor bought seven of the Papa Razzi restaurants in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Sarkis held onto a few Papa Razzis in other states, but has since closed all but one in Short Hills, N.J.
Newport Harbor closed the Chestnut Hill location shortly after the sale and plans to update all six of its remaining restaurants, which are on Newbury Street and in Burlington, Concord, Framingham, Wellesley, and Cranston, R.I.
Collum said the chain Sarkis built became known for top-notch service at budget-friendly prices. “It was attainable luxury,” she said. “Entrees were $16, but you were treated like you were having a $300 meal.”
Dishes were often customized to guests’ tastes and the menu did not change much over the years. Now people visit Papa Razzi expecting baked breadsticks and foccaccia or their favorite pasta dishes, she said.
Basil rtgatoni is also a new addition to the Papa Razzi menu.
But Papa Razzi’s core fans have aged with the chain, and sales at some restaurants have plateaued, while others grow modestly without an influx of new patrons, the company said.
The chain needs to make changes to appeal to younger diners without alienating its longtime customers, Collum said.
A year and a half ago, Newport Harbor began a research and development process that included thousands of consumer surveys and menu tests with hundreds of existing and new customers. A team led by the company’s longtime chef, Kevin DiLibero, toured kitchens from New York to California to Italy to find inspiration for the new menu.
That menu will feature more small plates and cured meats and fish and introduce Neapolitan style pizzas. The pastas, gelatos, and focaccia will be made in-house. The restaurants will offer many new dishes, and some classics will be updated. The beverage menu will include Italian soda, limoncello, and half glasses of wine to give people a taste of different blends.
Newport Harbor started the makeover in Burlington last fall and closed the restaurant to tear down the interior on Jan. 1. The company plans to wait until the Burlington renovation concludes in April before it begins renovating the other restaurants. The company said the renovation program will take at least two years. | The owners of Papa Razzi plan to renovate six restaurants in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and shift the menu from traditional Italian meals to lighter fare. | 34.285714 | 0.928571 | 3.928571 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2015/03/12/startup-peanut-allergies/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150314020710id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/03/12/startup-peanut-allergies/ | This startup might have a solution for your peanut allergy | 20150314020710 | Could a Silicon Valley startup help bring peanut-butter sandwiches back to school lunchrooms?
That’s the goal of Allergen Research Corp., which is developing protein-based desensitization treatments for peanut allergies. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company this morning announced that it has raised $80 million in new venture capital funding, which will help move its lead drug candidate into Phase 3 clinical trials.
Foresite Capital led the round, and was joined by Fidelity Management & Research Co., Aisling Capital, Adage Capital, RA Capital Management, Palo Alto Investors and existing shareholder Longitude Capital.
ARC is not yet disclosing too much about its product, except that it is an oral pharmaceutical that those with peanut allergies can ingest daily by putting it on their food. Think of it kind of like an immunotherapy, in that it contains a tiny bit of the peanut allergen for the purpose of desensitization. Someone with a severe peanut allergy still wouldn’t be able to gobble down a jar of Jiff, but they also wouldn’t need an EpiPen every time they inadvertently sniff up a bit of peanut dust.
“It will help people handle a peanut load which is small, but still can be life-threatening,” explains Jim Tananbaum, CEO of Foresite Capital. “There is a surprisingly large number of people who walk around in fear, and this should help them not worry about things like touching the wrong kitchen counter.”
More than 2% of all Americans under the age of 18 have a peanut allergy, compared to just 1.2% back in 1997. For adults, the figure has remained relatively stable at 1.3%. ARC is hoping to help both groups, and eventually move into other food allergies like egg and milk.
The $80 million investment is clearly a major vote of confidence from some big-name investors, but the company is not yet releasing its data.
Tananbaum says that his firm found ARC do be promising when it first did due diligence back in 2013, but wasn’t persuaded to write a check until seeing the Phase 2 trial results. He explains: “There have been lots of attempts at preemptively treating food allergies, but this is the first one we’ve seen that’s had this kind of actual effect.”
Get Term Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on deals and dealmakers. | ARC has raised $80 million to help the growing number of people for whom peanuts can equal death. | 22.55 | 0.75 | 2.15 | medium | low | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2015/03/13/oud-scent/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150316003147id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/03/13/oud-scent/ | Oud scent: The smell of musky luxury | 20150316003147 | It’s strong, it’s musky and almost animalistic in its sensuality. Some people love it while others find it offensive and gross. We’re not talking about durian, the beloved but smelly southeast Asian fruit but oud – one of the most expensive raw scent ingredients in the world.
Known as oud (or oudh), it comes from the wood of the Southeast Asian agar (aquilaria) tree. When the wood becomes infected with a particular type of mold, the tree reacts by producing a dark, scented resin, which is often called “liquid gold.” “Oud” is used to refer to both the resin-saturated wood (the agarwood) as well as the oil distilled from it. One reason oud is so expensive is its rarity; by some estimates, fewer than 2% of wild agar trees produce it. Experts claim that the very best oud comes from the oldest trees, which are even more scarce.
It can sell for $5,000 a pound – or more. According to the International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences, oud oil can cost as much as £20,000 per kilogram (more than $30,000) depending on its purity.
“Oud is astonishingly rare,” says Chandler Burr, the former New York Times perfume critic and author of The Emperor of Scent . “It has a very particular scent and there is nothing like it on the market. It’s dark, rich and opaque.”
The scent is an ancient one that has been used for thousands of years in the Middle East and Asia both at home and in religious ceremonies. The International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences states that agarwood, also known as the “Wood of the Gods,” is mentioned as early as the third century AD in ancient China.
In the Middle East, where oud is most common, it is considered a cultural touchstone and highly prestigious. “Oud is so ubiquitous in the Middle East,” says Burr. “Anyone there can recognize its scent immediately.”
Oud is used in wooden incense chips, body oils and fragrance, and is now becoming more popular in the West. According to the NPD Group, sales of oud perfumes are going strong within the prestige fragrance market, which is valued at $3 billion. A 2013 report stated that total oud sales were up by 68%.
In the last few years, both boutique and larger companies have launched fragrances with oud, including Maison Francis Kurkdjian whose Oud Velvet Mood contains cinnamon from Ceylon and oud from Laos and retails for €275 (approximately $298). There’s also Kilian’s Rose Oud ($395) and Christian Dior’s Oud Ispahan ($300), which contains labdanum absolute (also known as Rose of Sharon) and Leather Oud, which contains gaiac wood, cedar and sandalwood. Many of these scents are unisex and are not for the shy and understated. Krigler’s Oud for Highness 75 was created in 1975 for King Hussein of Jordan ($565). Indeed, oud is closely associated with royalty. The British press reported that Prince William was gifted a bespoke scent on his wedding day that contained oud. NPD Group reports that 66% of oud scents are artisanal.
Burr says that Tom Ford’s Oud Wood is his favorite on the market. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” he says. “It takes the oud concept and makes it as literal as possible while still accessible to the west.”
Here’s a look at other oud fragrances and beauty products scented with oud. | The musky, expensive scent is popping up all over the place (for a price). | 38.222222 | 0.722222 | 0.944444 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/03/19/emc-boosts-cloud-software-training/vhnOgZja91ls92Cg1AkyIM/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150321195051id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/03/19/emc-boosts-cloud-software-training/vhnOgZja91ls92Cg1AkyIM/story.html | EMC boosts cloud software training | 20150321195051 | EMC Corp. is taking software developers to school in an effort to help them write better programs for cloud computing.
The giant Hopkinton-based data storage company has set up a training center to help developers master an open-source development system called Cloud Foundry, which promises easier software development and better compatibility with multiple cloud computing systems.
Many companies run vital applications “in the cloud,” using remote machines connected via the Internet. A number of major firms offer such cloud services, including Amazon.com, IBM Corp., and Microsoft Corp. But a company that designs its applications to work on one cloud may find it difficult to switch to a different provider because no two cloud services work in the same way. Cloud Foundry is a system for building applications that will be compatible with multiple cloud services.
EMC is investing $10 million over the next three to five years to help train Cloud Foundry developers. The school, located in the company’s Cambridge offices, expects to train about 30 students this year, but could eventually train up to 140 per year. | EMC Corp. is taking software developers to school in an effort to help them write better programs for cloud computing. The Hopkinton-based data storage company has set up a training center to help developers master an open-source development system called Cloud Foundry, which promises easier software development and better compatibility with multiple cloud computing systems. | 3.290323 | 1 | 32.935484 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/lara-logan-hospitalized-sexual-assault-injuries | http://web.archive.org/web/20150326064541id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/lara-logan-hospitalized-sexual-assault-injuries | Lara Logan Admitted to Hospital Again for Complications from 2011 Sexual Assault : People.com | 20150326064541 | 03/24/2015 AT 11:55 PM EDT
reporter who was sexually assaulted while covering Egypt's Arab Spring protests in 2011, has returned to the hospital.
reported on Monday that Logan, 43, had been admitted to a Washington D.C. hospital as a result of complications from the
she suffered after being separated from her bodyguard in Tahrir Squre in Cairo.
"We were sorry to learn that Lara was readmitted to the hospital," a
spokesperson told PEOPLE. "We wish her a speedy recovery."
for diverticulitis, an intestinal disease, and internal bleeding last month, and Ed Butowsky, a friend of Logan's family, told Breitbart News that the mother of two had been hospitalized at least four times this year.
"Very few people know how stoic and incredibly tough this lady is," Butowsky said. "In spite of everything she's had to face in the last two years, people have no idea the physical suffering she has been enduring due to the brutal sexual assault she encountered."
The 2011 attack occurred just after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was removed from power. A statement by CBS explained that Logan "suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers." Logan would go on to | The CBS journalist returned to the hospital for the second time in a month due to injuries sustained during a brutal attack in Egypt | 10.416667 | 0.791667 | 1.458333 | low | medium | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/cult-favorite-foods-brought-back/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150327145441id_/http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/cult-favorite-foods-brought-back/ | 10 cult-favorite foods brought back from the dead by popular demand | 20150327145441 | This post is in partnership with Money. The article below was originally published at Money.com.
When Burger King brought back chicken fries to its menu last summer, the company explained that the decision was made due to a widespread campaign of fast food fanatics clamoring for their return via online petitions and social media. “Guest outcries reached a point where they could no longer be ignored,” reads a BK statement in August, which also noted that chicken fries, which hadn’t been available since 2012, would be back on menus nationally only for a limited time.
Apparently, while the “limited time” window seems to suffice for the Shamrock Shakes, McRibs, and Pumpkin Spice Lattes of the fast food world, a merely temporary return for chicken fries just didn’t cut it. This week, BK announced that the breaded and fried chicken strips were becoming a permanent part of the menu, to the delight of the fanatical tweeting masses.
Not everyone is happy about the return of chicken fries. Among the disappointed are those who are passionate about bringing back some other food or drink item they’ve craved desperately since it disappeared. For instance, the Beefy Crunchy Movement Facebook page, which has over 16,000 likes, voiced disgust that BK listened to its fans by making chicken fries permanent, yet Taco Bell has ignored the passionate calls for the return of the burrito featuring Flamin’ Hot Fritos inside. The Beefy Crunch Burrito was brought back by popular demand in 2013, but it disappeared quickly and hasn’t been seen in nearly two years.
Other Taco Bell fans have demanded the return of the extra-spicy
, while still other fast food customers have focused their passion on bringing back items ranging from
to KFC Chicken Little sandwiches. Yes, KFC currently has
on the menu, but the supposedly “new and improved” version is quite different from the one sold decades ago, and
have bashed the new item as little more than a “misappropriation of the Chicken Little’s good name.”
What’s interesting—and quite revelatory about human nature and our most passionate cravings—is that there’s quite a long history of failed healthy fast food items, yet there doesn’t seem to be much of a movement to bring any of them back to menus. Instead, campaigns to bring back beloved food and drink from the dead overwhelmingly lean toward those heavy in salt, sugar, grease, calories, and caffeine. Here’s a list of cult favorites that disappeared for a while and recently resurfaced after the people have spoken. | Don't give up hope if some heartless corporate type decides to kill off your favorite soda, cereal, or fast food indulgence. It'll surely make a return to the marketplace if popular demand, well, demands it. | 11.372093 | 0.44186 | 0.627907 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/miranda-lambert-blake-shelton-kiss-photo | http://web.archive.org/web/20150330102709id_/http://www.people.com/article/miranda-lambert-blake-shelton-kiss-photo | Photo : People.com | 20150330102709 | Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton
03/29/2015 AT 03:10 PM EDT
After nearly four years of marriage, country couple
are not shying away from PDA.
On Sunday, the 31-year-old Lambert posted an Instagram photo of the two locking lips – and Shelton, 38, looks pretty happy about the kiss!
The pair are both wearing "Girl Crush" caps from
in the photo, which is also captioned "We love @littlebigtown." LBT's new single
for the mistaken assumption that it is about a lesbian relationship. A few local DJs even refused to play the song.
Lambert and Shelton were married in May 2011. She told
was "the happiest person on the planet."
"I'm not sunshine and roses," she said. "Blake's the happiest person on the planet. He pulls me out of my darkness ⦠Literally, everything is the best about being married."Â
Lambert is in the middle of her nearly 30-city "Certified Platinum" tour, and performed in New York City on Saturday night. Shelton, meanwhile, will next host the Academy of Country Music Awards on April 19 with
Even better for Lambert: Shelton
, "Sangria," which he calls "one of the sexiest songs I've ever cut." | The pair showed their love for each other – and Little Big Town | 19.307692 | 0.461538 | 0.769231 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2015/03/30/stock-market-china-stimulus/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150331003400id_/http://fortune.com/2015/03/30/stock-market-china-stimulus/ | Dow gains 260 points as stock market jumps on news out of China | 20150331003400 | Stocks rebounded sharply Monday as the global market welcomed recent statements by Chinese leaders, who are looking to boost that country’s economy through stimulus and increased foreign trade.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 260 points, or 1.5%, to inch closer to a return to the 18,000-point mark. The blue-chip index suffered major losses Wednesday, when it dropped more than 290 points as part of a market-wide sell-off following poor economic reports and investors’ ongoing concerns about the strong U.S. dollar. Last week’s sell-off turned the Dow negative for the year, but Monday’s gains market the Dow’s best daily rise since early-February, putting the index in the black for 2015.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite also received boosts on Monday, with each index gaining more than 1%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq’s gains put the index roughly 100 points away from the all-time record close (not counting inflation adjustment) it last touched shortly before the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.
The Shanghai composite gained 2.6% during Monday trading after the Chinese government revealed details of a new initiative meant to expand trade between the country and others across Asia, Europe and Africa. Meanwhile, over the weekend, the head of China’s central bank spoke about the growing strength of the U.S. dollar and hinted that there could be further economic stimulus measures to boost the country’s slowing economy.
Monday’s gains in the US came amid a flurry of merger activity from the healthcare industry that sent several stocks soaring. UnitedHealth UNH said Monday it is paying $12.8 billion for pharmacy benefits manager Catamaran TK , while Teva Pharmaceuticals TEVA announced its own $3.2 billion deal for Auspex Pharmaceuticals ASPX . Another pharma company, Hyperion Therapeutics HPTX , will be acquired by Ireland’s Horizon Pharma HZNP for $1.1 billion. | The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 260 points Monday, turning the index positive for the year again following a market sell-off last week. | 13.222222 | 0.888889 | 2.814815 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/kevin-hart-comedic-genius-mtv-movie-awards | http://web.archive.org/web/20150401015300id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/kevin-hart-comedic-genius-mtv-movie-awards | Kevin Hart to Receive Comedic Genius Award at 2015 MTV Movie Awards : People.com | 20150401015300 | 03/30/2015 AT 09:05 PM EDT
among his recent successes, and now Kevin Hart is being called a comedic genius.
On April 12, the 2015 MTV Movie Awards will give Hart the second-ever Comedic Genius Award in recognition of his long list of comedy films and also small-screen projects such as
, which airs 10 p.m. tonight.
A statement from MTV said the award celebrates Hart for a "bold and irreverent comedic style that has captivated audiences from his movies and sitcoms, to stand-up specials, award show performances and in front of packed arenas of fans."
The inaugural Comedic Genius Award went to Will Ferrell, Hart's costar in
, which opened this weekend. Jimmy Kimmel will present the award.
The 2015 MTV Movie Awards will be hosted by Amy Schumer and air live at 8 p.m. ET on April 24. | The actor will receive MTV's Comedic Genius Award at the April 12 show | 11.857143 | 0.857143 | 1.428571 | low | medium | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/03/30/partners-healthcare-offer-employees-low-cost-college-degrees/HubmgOIVAP0ACO5McutZNO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150402224650id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/03/30/partners-healthcare-offer-employees-low-cost-college-degrees/HubmgOIVAP0ACO5McutZNO/story.html | Partners HealthCare to offer employees low-cost college degrees | 20150402224650 | Tina Byrnes spent years filing and photocopying as an office assistant for a Massachusetts General Hospital medical group. Now, armed with an associate’s degree and recently promoted to the front desk, she has her sights set on earning a bachelor’s and becoming a patient advocate.
Byrnes, 47, a mother of five, is one of the first Partners HealthCare employees to take advantage of the health care giant’s sweeping new initiative: to give its workers access to a free or nearly free college education.
The degrees, offered by a Southern New Hampshire University online program called College for America, cost $2,500 a year, which will largely be covered by the tuition reimbursement that Partners already offers, an average of $2,000 annually for full-time employees.
Unlike the regular tuition arrangement, in which an employee could use up much of the annual reimbursement on a few community college classes, the new partnership offers a full degree, with the employee paying just a few hundred dollars each year.
Associate’s degrees in this program can typically be finished in 2½ years or less.
The degrees, tailored for working adults, are based not on lectures and tests but on independently mastering workplace-related skills, using such tools as charts and by interpreting medical terminology.
It’s the kind of competency-based education that proponents say gives blue-collar workers an affordable way to further their careers.
Partners estimates that thousands of nursing assistants, clerical workers, and other employees who have not been to college will have the opportunity to earn an online associate’s or bachelors’ degree. Any employee working 20 hours or more a week can enroll, although some of the company’s lowest-skilled workers, including immigrants on the cleaning crew, must take classes to improve their English and computer skills before they can participate.
Partners’ effort reflects a nationwide push to give lower-income workers a shot at the middle class. In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama called on businesses to offer more education to workers who have not gone to college, and the White House cited companies, including Partners, that are doing just that.
Starbucks, for instance, recently said that it would pay full tuition for employees to finish the last two years of their bachelor’s degree, online, through Arizona State University.
But in general, fewer employers are offering tuition reimbursement than in the past, said Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s a mystery why companies are cutting this perk, he said in an e-mail, because it “helps the employer through retention and by getting more educated workers.”
Currently, Partners pays several million dollars a year in tuition reimbursement and estimates that although the number of employees taking advantage of the program will grow with the new degree partnership, the price tag for the company will not because the flat rate and quicker pace of the program will keep costs low.
Forty-three Partners employees enrolled in a pilot program last year — about half in administrative or clerical roles — and more than 750 employees have inquired about the program since it was expanded companywide last month.
There is no promise of a raise or promotion for Partners employees who earn a degree, and no requirement to stay with the company afterward, but executives said earning a degree will give the workers an advantage.
“There’s an understanding that they will hopefully be eligible for promotions or advancement,” said MJ Ryan, director of workforce development for Partners, the largest private employer in Massachusetts, with about 67,000 employees.
College for America, which was launched in 2013 at the accredited nonprofit Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, is the first program of its kind to be approved for federal financial aid funding. It offers four degrees — an associate’s in general studies with a concentration in business or in nonclinical health care, or a bachelor’s in health care management or communication — primarily through employers.
About 75 companies have signed up so far, including McDonald’s and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, but the Partners commitment is the most substantial.
“What’s remarkable here is that the largest private employer in the state is making an accredited college degree available for $500 a year or less for any employee who wants it,” said Colin Van Ostern, chief marketing officer of College for America. “I’m not sure there is any precedent for that.”
As for Byrnes, the former MGH office assistant who earned her associate’s in one year, the ability to earn a degree and start down a new career path means she may be able to send her younger children to college and be in a better position to help patients.
“Now I feel like I can make a difference,” she said. | Thousands of certified nursing assistants, secretaries, drivers, and managers who have worked their way up through the ranks of Partners HealthCare will now have the opportunity to earn an associate’s or bachelor’s degree online through a Southern New Hampshire University program designed to help working adults move up the ladder. | 16.678571 | 0.839286 | 2.267857 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/emily-blunt-lip-sync-battle-anne-hathaway | http://web.archive.org/web/20150410051539id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/emily-blunt-lip-sync-battle-anne-hathaway | Emily Blunt Takes on Anne Hathway on Lip Sync Battle : People.com | 20150410051539 | 04/08/2015 AT 11:10 PM EDT
How do you take on someone who has
under her belt? With the right pair of Janis Joplin sunglasses, of course.
In this preview of the epic showdown between
, Blunt, 32, pulls out all the stops. The video shows the
star going into faux-diva mode as she searches for the right sunglasses to complete her Janis Joplin look for her big number.
Also a part of Blunt's strategy? Improving mouth mobility by saying
's name repeatedly in her dressing room – and plenty of snarky asides about her competition.
"I've been screaming at everybody pretty much all day, because I don't want a voice," she jokes in the video. "And I guarantee that Anne Hathaway is in full voice right now. You can't use that here. Thanks, anyway.
Blunt also scoffs about her former
costar's overly secretive creative process. "Finally she called me and said 'Okay, listen, I'm doing Beethoven's 5th,' " Blunt says. "And I went, 'There aren't any words in that.' And she just hung up."
She even resorts to outright threats. "I'm going to pick up your feet and mop you," she tells Hathaway, 32, backstage.
Blunt will have to try especially hard to top Hathaway's take on
"Wrecking Ball," a preview of which
But all this build-up is worth it to see Blunt in full Joplin drag taking the stage in the final moments of the video.
airs Thursdays (10 p.m. ET) on Spike. | Blunt goes faux-diva when working to channel Janis Joplin for her big Lip Sync Battle number | 17.833333 | 0.611111 | 1.388889 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/nelson-mandela-death-one-year-anniversary | http://web.archive.org/web/20150410171921id_/http://www.people.com/article/nelson-mandela-death-one-year-anniversary | Nelson Mandela Remembered One Year After His Death | 20150410171921 | 12/05/2014 AT 07:00 PM EST
, people in his native South Africa and across the world are paying tribute to him.
The politician, who was the first black president in South Africa, died on Dec. 5, 2013. He was 95.
Friends and public figures took to social media Friday to commemorate the civil rights trailblazer.
"On the first anniversary of the death of #NelsonMandela, we remember that he chose reconciliation over retaliation,"
And around the world, communities are unveiling monuments in the social activist's memory. In Cape Town, the
– a 30-foot pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers – has been met with
, the giant sunglasses face Robben Island, where Mandela was jailed for almost 30 years.
According to the artist, Michael Elion, the work "links us to the mind of a man whose incredible capacity to transcend enduring physical hardship, with unwavering mental fortitude and dignity, transformed the consciousness of an entire country."
Meanwhile, in Pretoria, South Africa, prison inmates at the Zonderwater have been crocheting blankets for a charity, 67 Blankets for Nelson Mandela Day, in the former leader's memory. (The organization refers to Mandela's 67 years of service.)
"A lot of them want to make a difference. They want to do something for Nelson Mandela," the charity's founder, Carolyn Steyn,
And on this side of the Atlantic, in Montreal, Nelson Mandela Pavilion was just inaugurated and will offer services as a community center.
"With the Negro Community Centre being torn down, I think the community has been looking for a place to call their home for their programming and services," the neighborhood executive director, Tiffany Callendar,
. "This is a demonstration of the city of Monteal's commitment to working with us, but we are still striving to be independent and own our own buildings in due time."
On the first anniversary of the death of #NelsonMandela, we remember that he chose reconciliation over retaliation. pic.twitter.com/tU6agf1iTl | The world pays tribute to the anti-apartheid politician | 39.3 | 0.7 | 1.1 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/04/13/15/11/officer-laughed-about-adrenaline-pumping-after-shooting | http://web.archive.org/web/20150414025806id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/04/13/15/11/officer-laughed-about-adrenaline-pumping-after-shooting | Officer laughed about adrenaline 'pumping' after shooting | 20150414025806 | A policeman in the US has been recorded laughing about his adrenaline rush after shooting dead an unarmed black man as he was running away.
South Carolina officer Michael Slager can be heard talking to a senior policeman in a dashcam recording taped shortly after he fatally shot Walter Scott on April 4.
The senior officer is briefing Slager about police procedure following the shooting and suggests he jot down his thoughts once his adrenaline stops pumping.
“It’s pumping,” Slager says laughing.
“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah,” the other officer replied.
Slager was fired from his position and charged with murder last week after mobile phone footage emerged showing the officer shooting the 50-year-old Mr Scott five times in the back as he is running away from him.
The disturbing footage contradicts Slager’s claims he shot Mr Scott during a struggle when the man tried to grab his Taser.
In the recording after the shooting, leaked to The Guardian, Slager asks the senior officer “What happens next?”
The officer tells Slager he will be brought back to the station where his gun would be taken from him.
But the officer reassures Slager he will then be sent home for a few days before anyone starts asking any serious questions.
“It’ll be real quick,” he said. “They’re gonna tell you you’re gonna be out for a couple of days and you’ll come back and they’ll interview you then.
“They’re not going to ask you any kind of questions right now. They’ll take your weapon and we’ll go from there. That’s pretty much it.”
Do you have any news photos or videos? | The US policeman laughed about his adrenaline pumping after shooting an unarmed black man in the back as he was running away. | 14.391304 | 0.956522 | 3.304348 | low | high | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/jennifer-lopez-mothers-id-like-to-movie | http://web.archive.org/web/20150416014413id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/jennifer-lopez-mothers-id-like-to-movie | Jennifer Lopez to Star in Mothers I'd Like to : People.com | 20150416014413 | 04/14/2015 AT 06:50 PM EDT
And no, PEOPLE isn't leaving off the last word. That's the title, ellipsis and all – though you'd might guess what word is being implied.
, the film is being described as "
Lopez, 45, will produce the film with her production company, Nuyorican Productions, which also produced
. That movie, which made $48 million, also starred Lopez and concerned her character's relationship with a younger man. It remains to be seen if
will have Lopez exploring the comedic side of similar subject matter.
, a raunchy sex comedy titled | Universal Pictures announced that Jennifer Lopez is starring in a movie with a provocative title | 7.866667 | 0.533333 | 0.666667 | low | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2012/09/06/the-crisis-in-u-s-competitiveness-cant-be-ignored/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150416173933id_/http://fortune.com/2012/09/06/the-crisis-in-u-s-competitiveness-cant-be-ignored/ | The crisis in U.S. competitiveness can’t be ignored | 20150416173933 | FORTUNE — Despite some allusions to facing hard truths, there were none spoken from the stage at the Republican convention in Tampa last week — or, so far, at the Democratic one here in Charlotte. To hear some bracing real talk about the economic challenges facing the country, you’d have to head to an underground theater downtown on Wednesday afternoon.
There, at an event sponsored by Duke Energy DUK and Verizon VZ , Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter laid out what he called some “very, very disturbing trends” emerging in the economy.
Porter has been studying the fraying of American competitiveness — the phenomenon of companies and workers seeing their lots improve in tandem — and found that the economic downturn exposed fundamental problems that have been festering for as long as two decades. He said the American job growth engine, once the envy of the world, actually ground to a halt twenty years ago. Industries exposed to international competition have created no new jobs in that period, and workforce participation reversed a long and steady climb back in 1998 and now stands at a 30-year low.
MORE: Stop beating up the Rich
“This is a real, real issue facing this country, and we’ve got to tackle it. We can’t hope that we’ll just have a recovery and things are going to go back to the way they were,” he said. “They’re not.”
Porter backed up his research with a survey of HBS’ 50,000 alumni, who overwhelmingly affirmed his grim assessment. Of those directly involved in making decisions about locating operations, for example, 1,000 were considering whether to move something out of the United States and only 150 were thinking about moving something in. The top reason: American productivity is not strong enough to justify higher wages.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has made huge strides closing the gap on advantages we’ve long taken for granted, upgrading their infrastructure, boosting their education systems and rooting out corruption. “Our problem isn’t that we’re horrible,” Porter said. “Our problem is that we’re just not getting better.”
The list of our weakest spots, as revealed by his survey, should be familiar by now: burdensome regulations, an overly complicated and inefficient tax code, and political deadlock. But Porter wasn’t strictly doom and gloom, pointing out we retain many our core strengths, and some are actually getting stronger: world-class universities, a spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation, strong intellectual property protections, and the most efficient capital markets in the world.
MORE: Was GM really saved?
And in fact Porter declared himself an optimist about America’s future, if only because the fixes are so readily at hand. Notably, they include priorities drawn from both parties. And Porter subtly deflated some of the demagoguery from both sides. Democrats have made hay attacking Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital, with President Obama repeatedly blasting the Republican as “an outsourcing pioneer” who shipped American jobs abroad to fatten his own returns. Without citing the campaign-trail fight, Porter noted the phenomenon “is not some pernicious misbehaving on the part of the business… it’s just the way it is” in a global economy.
Republicans, meanwhile, have made a mantra out of Obama’s “you didn’t build that” quote — taking it out of context to suggest the President doesn’t believe entrepreneurs deserve credit for their own success. But Porter argued governments and businesses indeed have to collaborate to improve what he called “the commons” — “a series of institutions and assets that exist in their community.”
Not all of the changes need to come from Washington, Porter said. But he made an appeal nevertheless for an end of the squabbling. “We’ve made the rounds in Washington, we’ve talked to both sides and we understand why you don’t want to do this, because if you do this, then you give up the bargaining power to get this,” he said. “There are all these complicated arguments for why we can’t get these things done. But frankly, we don’t have time.” | A noted Harvard Business School professor is sounding the alarms on an economic issue that’s been building for decades. But he remains optimistic about America’s future. | 25.903226 | 0.806452 | 1.709677 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2015/04/13/rubio-president-campaign/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150417020417id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/04/13/rubio-president-campaign/ | Marco Rubio wants you to know something about his presidential rivals: They're old | 20150417020417 | Marco Rubio, the latest entrant into an increasingly crowded presidential field, couldn’t have spelled out his pitch more clearly if he’d stamped “The Future” on his forehead. The freshman Republican senator from Florida, taking the stage Monday evening in Miami to announce his 2016 candidacy, missed no opportunity to hammer home the generational contrast he hopes will lift him above the contest’s two outsize early heavies — first, his mentor, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (age 62), and then former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (67), who made her own long-anticipated entry official with an announcement-by-video yesterday.
“Too many of our leaders and their ideas are stuck in the twentieth century,” Rubio told a the crowd gathered at the Freedom Tower, a sort of Ellis Island for Cuban exiles like his parents. “They are busy looking backwards, so they do not see how jobs and prosperity today depend on our ability to compete in a global economy. So our leaders put us at a disadvantage by taxing, and borrowing, and regulating like it was 1999.”
At 43, Rubio stands as the youngest contender in what could reasonably be considered the contest’s first tier. Judging by the speech, he won’t let his elders soon forget it. “They look for solutions in yesterday,” he went on. “Now the time has come for our generation … It is a generational choice … Yesterday is over and we are never going back … Our country has always been about the future … We can’t do that by going back to the leaders and ideas of the past.”
Amid jabs at The Olds, Rubio weaved in stirring references to his own story as the son of Cubans who fled to America seeking a better life for their children. That narrative of humble beginnings — his dad was a bartender, his mom a cashier and a maid — carries its own weight. But it also underscores the departure Rubio aims to represent from the dynastic hold that the Bush and Clinton clans claim on our politics.
The newly-minted White House hopeful also offered up some boilerplate about unleashing prosperity at home while projecting strength overseas. But this speech was all about atmospherics. As our recent history demonstrates, youth and change can make for a potent electoral combination. A key for Rubio, now apparently running only third in his home state, will be satisfying a threshold question in the minds of voters about his readiness for the job. His highest-profile foray into policymaking during his four years in Washington — as a leader of the bipartisan immigration reform effort in 2013 — passed the Senate but died in the House in the face of right-wing rage. With his support among conservatives cratering, Rubio abandoned the comprehensive approach he’d coauthored in favor of a border security-first hardline. The accommodation regained him no love from the base while sacrificing the good faith he’d earned from Hispanics. In other words, it proved a lose-lose.
Yet the former state House speaker has outrun expectations his entire career in public life: He won his senate seat, for example, in the face of near-total opposition from Florida’s Republican establishment, which aligned in the primary behind the moderate former Gov. Charlie Crist. No surprise, then, that Rubio has hustled since the immigration debacle to try to make up the ground he lost.
From his perch on the Foreign Relations Committee, he’s voiced a hawkish line on international affairs while other ascendant personalities in the party, most notably 2016 rival Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have advocated for American retrenchment abroad. And on the home front, he has pressed forward with an economic vision, linking with fellow freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to propose a wholesale overhaul of the tax code. The framework they crafted earned them praise from some reform conservative brains — and also some friendly fire. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argued the plan — which combines some family-friendly provisions, like an expansion of the Child Tax Credit on the individual side of the code, with red meat like a top corporate rate slashed to 25% — could cost the Treasury up to $4 trillion over a decade and is therefore “simply not reasonable given America’s current fiscal situation.” (Rubio, for his part, argues that accounting doesn’t credit the proposal with the economic growth it would unleash, though whether that would make more than a slight dent in the overall price tag is dubious.)
The policy debates will be joined later. As Rubio all but spelled out in caps lock Monday night, he’s going to do what he can in the meantime to make his front-running competition feel their age.
For more on the presidential campaign, watch this Fortune video about Hillary Clinton: | Announcing his White House bid on Monday evening, the Florida senator made clear he'll emphasize generational change. | 46.7 | 0.75 | 1.05 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/04/13/industry-files-suit-against-government-new-internet-rules/ks3gbQF8WSTDa2BMSfiPXP/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150417024711id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/04/13/industry-files-suit-against-government-new-internet-rules/ks3gbQF8WSTDa2BMSfiPXP/story.html | Industry files suit against government’s new Internet rules | 20150417024711 | NEW YORK — A legal fight against the Federal Communications Commission’s new Internet traffic rules has begun with a suit by the United States Telecom Association, an industry group that represents companies including AT&T and Verizon.
The FCC’s rules, approved in February, uphold the principle of Net neutrality — that all online content should load at the same speed. They forbid paid “fast lanes” that favor some content and say that broadband providers can’t slow Web traffic or block content.
The rules, published Monday in the Federal Register, go into effect June 12 if a court does not block them. Litigation could drag on for years, however.
USTelecom said Monday that it is seeking to throw out the rules. The suit was filed in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It asks for a review of the FCC rules on the grounds that they violate federal law and are arbitrary. The suit also says the FCC did not follow the proper procedure for writing the rules.
An FCC spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement Monday that the agency is confident the new rules will be upheld by the courts.
Internet service providers have said they support Net neutrality, and USTelecom seconded that Monday. What some companies take issue with is that the FCC put the neutrality rules in place by regulating Internet access as a telecommunications service — like telephone service, a public utility — rather than as an information service. Some broadband providers don’t like the stricter oversight that comes with that change.
Because of that, the FCC will be able to investigate complaints from consumers and Internet companies, such as Netflix, about ‘‘unjust or unreasonable’’ behavior by broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.
Internet service providers say they are worried that aspects of the new rules are unclear. What practices would the FCC deem unfair, for example? An AT&T executive has said that the FCC’s rules mean ‘‘a period of uncertainty that will damage broadband investment in the United States.’’
USTelecom had also asked the court to review the rules in March, in what it called a ‘‘precautionary move,’’ because it was not sure in what time window it was required to file suit.
A small Texas broadband provider, Alamo Broadband Inc., also challenged the rules, in March. The FCC had said then that lawsuits were premature. | A legal fight against the Federal Communications Commission’s new Internet traffic rules has begun. | 28.6875 | 1 | 14.125 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/mary-j-blige-london-sessions-documentary-tribeca-film-festival-sam-smith-acting | http://web.archive.org/web/20150418114348id_/http://www.people.com/article/mary-j-blige-london-sessions-documentary-tribeca-film-festival-sam-smith-acting | Mary J. Blige on her Documentary, Sam Smith and Acting : People.com | 20150418114348 | While recording her smash 13th studio album,
allowed cameras in the studio as she recorded with industry heavyweights including
that appealed to critics and the public alike at its Tribeca Film Festival premiere Wednesday in N.Y.C.
We sat down with the Grammy-winning artist Thursday at her Tribeca Film Festival press day, where she dished on Smith (whom she calls "my little brother"), making a foray into acting and finding her "happy place" after years of
Well, for the last 15 years that I've been doing this, my fans have always known what was going on, and so to do something so different and not bring them on the journey with me is why I wanted to document it. I needed them to connect with the project because this is way left for them. I needed people to see, to come in with me.
Yeah, it wasn't even my idea to document it. It was just something that came from the powers that be as a part of the project. I automatically said, "I don't know." Then I said, "I have to do it. I have to do it because then my fans will understand." That's why I did it. And we didn't even know [the cameraman] was there half the time.
It's not hard because you're releasing it, and you're showing your way out, and you're showing people that there is a way out for you. So the hard part is going through it, but going to the studio and singing a song like "Doubt" or singing a song like "Not Loving You" is like (
), "Thank God!" You get it out of you, ya know?
Sam is just too much fun, and I love him because he's just so vulnerable, and he lets you in, and he's just, he's really an amazing person – such a good heart. And I love the chemistry that we have. We kind of remind each other of each other. He says it all the time. You know, I was like, "Sam, you're like my little brother!" (
The first time I ever heard Sam's voice was on "Latch," and my limousine driver ⦠I didn't know what other songs Disclosure had out, so I said, "Play me some Disclosure songs." And he played "Latch." That voice came up, with the "youuuuu." Like, who is this, and where did he come from? Amazing. I was a fan. I didn't even think I was going to meet him, and then I met him. Disclosure and I did Terminal 5 here [in New York], and Sam was at the show, and I met him that night. I could hear him in the other dressing room practicing "Latch," and I was like, "I wanna go over there!" (
) I was like, "You need to stop being a groupie!" And then I met him. And then I was working with Darkchild, Rodney Jerkins, and he played me "Stay." After he played "Stay," he was like, "Mary, I need you to go in and be on this remix." I was like, "Yes!" I was speechless. Everything about the song just stops you in your tracks, and the rest is history.
What makes me happy is to be able to express myself. And when I'm in the studio and doing a project like that and just getting all that stuff out of me, that's a happy place because you're being delivered and released from so much. And last night [at the premiere, where she performed] was a happy place because I get to do it with you [fans], in front of you [fans], and we get to do it together. That's the happiest place in life.
So many people think I'm this really mean person and that I don't have a sense of humor and that I don't laugh and I'm not silly and goofy (
). Well, I am. And I'm human. They think I'm this strong ⦠That's not strong, it's weak when you don't have a sense of humor, and you can't laugh at yourself, so yeah, that's been a lot of it.
What's next is I'm going to go after this acting thing; I'm gonna go hard after that. In the midst of this
thing, right now I'm reading and studying acting. I'm gonna do drama. That's first on my list – and surprise people with comedy, a little later. Right now Iâm gonna go after the drama.
. It wasn't much, but I would definitely go back for a whole arc of it. | "We kind of remind each other of each other," Blige says of Smith, who appears in her new documentary, Mary J. Blige: The London Sessions | 31.387097 | 0.741935 | 3.193548 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/04/16/fda-approval-first-generic-multiple-sclerosis-drug-will-boost-momenta-pharmaceuticals/G91ZsWhXj2ZsKXPdIOLsGP/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150420011750id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/04/16/fda-approval-first-generic-multiple-sclerosis-drug-will-boost-momenta-pharmaceuticals/G91ZsWhXj2ZsKXPdIOLsGP/story.html? | FDA approval of first generic multiple sclerosis drug will boost Momenta Pharmaceuticals | 20150420011750 | Federal regulators on Thursday approved the first generic multiple sclerosis therapy, a development that could drop the price of the drug for consumers and boost the business of Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc., which produced the injectable treatment.
The generic version of the MS drug Copaxone will be sold under the brand name Glatopa by the Sandoz division of Switzerland’s Novartis AG, which signed an agreement with Cambridge-based Momenta to market the generic.
Momenta will receive half of the profits from Glatopa sales and stands to draw up to $140 million in milestone payments, based on the drug’s meeting sales and regulatory targets — including $10 million immediately as a result of the US approval.
“This is huge for us,” said Momenta’s chief executive, Craig Wheeler. “It validates our platform for generics. It gives us a lot more confidence that what we’re doing with biosimilars will be accepted by regulators.”
He was referring to Momenta’s development of generic versions of protein-based biotech drugs, which are on track to enter the market later this decade. The first would be a generic version of Humira, the best-selling arthritis drug from AbbVie Inc.
Glatopa was approved as a “substitutable generic" for patients taking Copaxone, an injectable sold by Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. for MS, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system. “Given its complexity, we reviewed additional information to make sure the generic product is as safe and effective as the brand-name product,” said Janet Woodcock, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug evaluation unit.
The generic is the second developed by Momenta and marketed by Sandoz, based in Princeton, N.J. The two companies also collaborate on a generic version of the anti-blood-clotting drug Lovenox, approved by the FDA in 2010, which is priced about 30 percent cheaper than the brand-name drug made by the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi SA.
Sandoz and Momenta have not disclosed when they will launch Glatopa commercially in the United States or how it will be priced in relation to Copaxone, which competes with such MS drugs as Avonex from Biogen Inc. of Cambridge and Rebif from EMD Serono Inc. of Rockland.
The list price for a year’s worth of Copaxone, which is injected daily, is more than $60,000 per patient. Insurers cover the bulk of the cost for most patients.
“You can assume they’ll be significant savings for consumers,” Wheeler said.
“We won’t discuss our pricing strategies publicly ahead of launch but our general goal, as always, would be to offer patients and payers a real alternative to the originator,” said Julie Masow, a spokeswoman for Novartis.
A long-running patent dispute pitting Teva against Sandoz and Momenta is working its way through the federal courts, but it’s not clear if that will delay the launch.
Wheeler said Momenta, based in Kendall Square, has about 260 employees. Its rate of growth will depend on when Glatopa is launched and how it sells.
Momenta stock rose 98 cents, or 6 percent, to close at $17.08. | Federal regulators Thursday approved the first generic multiple sclerosis therapy, in a development that could drop the price of the drug for consumers and boost the business of Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc., which developed the injectable treatment. | 15.435897 | 1 | 15.051282 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2015/04/18/catching-serial-killer-behind-iron-curtain-child/avFR3nexori6urKfWx08HO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150421221042id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2015/04/18/catching-serial-killer-behind-iron-curtain-child/avFR3nexori6urKfWx08HO/story.html | Catching a serial killer behind the Iron Curtain in ‘Child 44’ | 20150421221042 | It’s familiar turf with serial killer yarns: The authorities want to keep their investigation quiet, or at least contained. Never mind the added hassle for the hero — they don’t want the public freaking out. With the period thriller “Child 44,” Tom Hardy and director Daniel Espinosa (“Safe House”) offer a novel twist on this convention by setting the action in Stalinist Russia. Good luck trying to catch a killer when the party line is that murder is the sort of depravity that plagues capitalist society, not the Motherland.
You’d imagine that this confoundingly Soviet dilemma could propel the entire story. Instead, Espinosa opts for a juggling act, getting into period-specific relationship drama that adds to the film, but also some overblown action elements that mar it.
Hardy mines both his signature intensity and his occasional rugged relatability (see “Locke”) as Leo Demidov, a standout investigator with the KGB-preceding MGB. He’s a hard man on the job, scaring the babushkas off those he questions. Still, he does have a certain beefy charisma around his pensive wife, Raisa (Noomi Rapace), plus hidden compassion rooted in his upbringing amid the Ukrainian terror famine of the ’30s.
It’s that solicitude that gets Leo into trouble when a friend’s little boy turns up dead along nearby railroad tracks, and he orders an autopsy rather than treating the matter as an accident. It’s not long before Leo and Raisa are packed off to a miserable industrial outpost where he won’t be investigating anything. So it seems, anyway, until suspiciously mutilated young bodies start turning up on Leo’s new beat as well. (Gary Oldman does a nice Commissioner Gordon riff as a weary hinterlands commander willing to bend the rules to help see justice served.)
Much as we get wrapped up following the cracked politics of Leo’s fall, gender politics with Raisa make for some good dramatic tangents. Rapace plays her character as an open-eyed victim, trapped by her spirit-stifling world but finding a way to navigate it. But spare us, say, the couple teaming to brutally mud-wrestle a treacherous party rival (Joel Kinnaman, part of Swedish-born Espinosa’s foreign film troupe, but thanklessly cast here). That’s 2015 Hollywood hokum, not Russia circa 1953. | “Child 44” review: Tom Hardy and director Daniel Espinosa (“Safe House”) offer a novel twist on serial killer yarns by setting the investigation in Stalinist Russia. | 13.235294 | 0.970588 | 9.852941 | low | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2015/04/20/kyle-wong-starting-your-own-business/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150423195425id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/04/20/kyle-wong-starting-your-own-business/ | The most important lesson I learned as a tech CEO | 20150423195425 | The Leadership Insider network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in business contribute answers to timely questions about careers and leadership. Today’s answer to the question “What advice would you give someone looking to start their own business?” is by Kyle Wong, CEO of Pixlee.
If you’re looking to start your own business, the good news is that there are a lot of startup resources out there to help you make that decision. The bad news is, as a result, there’s also a lot of noise. Since founding Pixlee, I’ve found that the following pieces of advice are crucial when considering whether or not you want to become an entrepreneur:
Embrace uncertainty Many professions have a specific course or direction you can follow to be successful. Although you may not be able to predict when you will enter each new level of your career, the road map is still there for guidance. However, this doesn’t exist in startups. You have to be comfortable with uncertainty. There is no fixed timetable or path when starting your own business.
Ask for help As a startup founder, you cannot expect yourself to be an expert in everything. You need to understand your weaknesses and attract the right people and resources to complement your skill-set. Be comfortable asking for help. Many other successful entrepreneurs have been in your shoes and have faced similar struggles. Meet smart people, stay connected, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.
Scale at your own pace Building a great company will not happen overnight. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to grow and scale at a pace that makes sense for your business. There will always be companies that will grow faster than yours. But trying to keep up with them before your company has the infrastructure in place can be disastrous for your culture, clients, and product.
Read all answers to the Leadership Insider question: What advice would you give someone looking to start their own business?
How to avoid a startup failure by Jim Yu, CEO and co-founder of BrightEdge.
3 things to consider before starting your own business by Sunil Rajaraman, co-founder of Scripted.com.
4 ways to persuade people to join your startup by Nir Polak, CEO and co-founder of Exabeam.
GoDaddy CEO’s 5 tips for aspiring entrepreneurs by Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy.
Watch more business news from Fortune: | Scale the company at your own pace. | 59.25 | 1 | 2.5 | high | high | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/04/20/boston-public-school-system-moves-into-sleek-new-headquarters/krcBOsiet5PXn6GNuvHxaO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150424014702id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/04/20/boston-public-school-system-moves-into-sleek-new-headquarters/krcBOsiet5PXn6GNuvHxaO/story.html | Boston public school system moves into sleek new headquarters | 20150424014702 | It’s a little disorienting inside the new headquarters for Boston’s public school system. Is this a high-tech startup’s office? An outdoor cafe? A trendy bar?
Modern and sleek, it is a place for school administration workers to collaborate, possibly over coffee, according to Sasaki Associates, the firm that designed the interior space at the renovated Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building in Dudley Square. And yes, part of the sprawling compound will be leased as a high-tech accelerator. None of it is a bar, but the carefully planned interior will give the 500 city workers who recently moved to the new location light and window views, from the lowest-level administrators to the superintendent’s staff.
“We were told by Mayor Menino he didn’t want any ivory towers,” said Tom Leahy, senior project manager for the city. “It sends the wrong message.”
Managers in glass-fronted offices sit at the center of each floor, giving them and the workers in low-slung cubicles along the perimeter light-filled views from the building’s 10-foot windows. Before the move, files that crowded the department’s old offices were digitized to reduce clutter.
Employees who need a change of scenery can move to modern sectional sofas, a window-facing coffee bar (perfect for a laptop), or a kitchenette cafe on each floor.
The 215,000-square-foot Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building is the new home of the Boston Public Schools, along with retail space.
“I can think of my desk as 2,000 square feet of space,” said Victor W. Vizgaitis, a principal at Sasaki, which operates offices in Watertown and Shanghai.
In fact, the work space is so open to conversation that the designers installed white noise machines throughout the building. The nearly imperceptible murmur of the machines, Vizgaitis said, helps prevent noise, such as the din of conversations, from traveling.
Tommy Chang, the incoming superintendent, will take a windowed office, askew from the building’s historic prow, refurbished in the property’s $124 million renovation by Shawmut Design and Construction. The superintendent’s conference room next door features an oval window at its center that frames the Boston skyline like an oil painting.
Below, a kitchenette opens onto an airy outdoor deck that offers guests the surreal feeling of being on an ocean liner stranded in the city. The interim superintendent, John McDonough, wanted to have a going-away party there, Leahy said, but the deck wasn’t big enough. | About 500 city workers recently moved into the headquarters of Boston’s public school system in the newly renovated Bruce C. Bolling Municipal building in Dudley Square. | 17.535714 | 0.892857 | 5.178571 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2014/01/16/gamestop-up-up-down-down-and-down-and-down/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150425005249id_/http://fortune.com/2014/01/16/gamestop-up-up-down-down-and-down-and-down/ | GameStop: Up, up, down down, and down, and down … | 20150425005249 | FORTUNE – How much trouble is GameStop GME in?
On Monday, the Grapevine, Texas-based video game retailer trimmed its previously light earnings forecast for the latest quarter — a period that includes the last holiday season — after witnessing an unexpected decline in software sales for older home consoles like Microsoft’s MSFT Xbox 360 and Sony’s SNE PlayStation 3. (GameStop also reduced its earnings for the year.) Although the company reports that revenues climbed 9.3% to $3.15 billion and same-store sales increased 10.2%, shares tumbled 20% that day, their biggest drop in 11 years, and have yet to fully recover.
“I don’t think they anticipated how dramatic the decline would be,” admits Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities. Looking ahead, Sean McGowan, an analyst for Needham & Company puts it simply: “I doubt 10 years from now GameStop is going to have 4,000 or 5,000 stores.”
On the surface, the news could be taken as a bad omen. Could GameStop suffer the same fate as retailers like Blockbuster and Circuit City before it? After all, more consumers are playing inexpensive games on their smartphones and tablets. With last fall’s launch of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, gamers can now bypass a trip to their local store entirely and download an entire 40-plus gigabyte game in an hour or less. And efforts like PlayStation Now, which will allow millions of gamers to stream and play select software to their devices by the end of the year, augur an era where even “downloads” may soon become passé.
More: San Francisco cab drivers are Uber’s latest pickup
But GameStop is hardly doomed, argue analysts. Indeed, McGowan foresees more store closures but also sees GameStop evolving and following in the footsteps of Netflix NFLX , which grew from being a purely distribution service to generating original content. GameStop could grow similarly, taking a more hands-on role with the execution of game content and capitalizing off those efforts. For instance, when PlayStation Now rolls out later this year, stores could actively sell service subscriptions and receive a cut of the sales transaction.
As for those lackluster software holiday sales, expect them to rebound somewhat later this year as more games arrive for the newest consoles. And over the next decade, Pachter argues digital downloads will never supersede sales of physical media and instead max out at 50% of GameStop’s overall software revenues. Unlike music or movies, far too many gamers enjoy trading back their games for in-store credits that go toward future purchases. (Indeed, Pachter says 30% of all games purchased are traded later on.) So digital or not, a substantial contingent of gamers will continue to buy physical media because they know they can trade it in for the next new thing.
Translation: Physical media for videogames might just have a few extra lives left. | With more people playing mobile gaming and a lowered earnings outlook for the year, is the retailer bound for the same fate as Blockbuster or Circuit City? | 19.241379 | 0.793103 | 1.344828 | medium | medium | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2015/04/29/kaiser-ceo-on-healthcare/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150502172409id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/04/29/kaiser-ceo-on-healthcare/? | The prognosis for U.S. healthcare? Better than you think. | 20150502172409 | Bernard J. Tyson, chairman and chief executive of Kaiser Permanente—the $56 billion non-profit health insurer and hospital operator—is more optimistic about America’s healthcare system than he’s ever been. That’s saying something, given that the fate of the Affordable Care Act hangs in the balance pending a Supreme Court ruling due in June. On a visit to Fortune’s office Wednesday, the health system executive painted a mostly rosy picture of the modern, efficient health system he sees in America’s future—though he did note a few pain points that stand in the way. Here are five key takeaways from our conversation.
1. Healthcare institutions have to “own the healthcare dollar.”
For years, the incentives for medical providers have been all wrong, says Tyson. The fee-for-service model has long rewarded physicians and hospitals for ladling on as many tests and treatments as possible. For a more affordable and effective system, Tyson says medical institutions have to focus on patient outcomes, not healthcare inputs (like how many CT scans and blood tests a physician orders). Kaiser avoids this trap by delivering care to patients through teams of providers (doctors, nurses, nutritionists, etc.) and physicians—”who quarterback this care,” Tyson says—get a flat salary, receiving end-of-year bonus payments if their patients achieve better health. (The health system uses a number of surrogate measures along the way to make sure that their members are on the right track—for example, lowering their blood sugar if they are at risk of diabetes.)
In large part, Kaiser can do all this because of the way it’s set up, Tyson says. Not only is it a hospital, it’s also an insurance company, a pharmacy system, and a doctor’s office with some 20,000 physicians. As FORTUNE wrote last summer, “that unusual structure looks a lot like an accountable-care organization as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act.” So is there evidence that such a system works? According to Tyson, Kaiser health system members under the age of 65 spend significantly fewer days in the hospital compared with the same population in the broader U.S. healthcare universe. And it’s clear that other healthcare organizations are continuing to look at Kaiser as a model.
2. Changing American behaviors will change American healthcare.
Such a paradigm shift in the system of provider incentives can have a broad and surprising effect on how all of us live our lives. As it is now, Tyson says, healthcare is a “fix-me system”—patients come to the hospital when something is broken and needs repair. By then, it’s expensive and can often be too late in the process for medical science to do much good. With a change in the incentive structure, medical professionals everywhere can be rewarded for guiding people into making behavioral choices that are likelier to keep them well. Kaiser focuses on four key areas: diet, exercise, tobacco and alcohol. The list may seem a familiar one—but Kaiser gives them all a medical spin that actually gets patients to take the recommendations seriously. For those in need of exercise, for instance, Kaiser physicians write out a scrip on a prescription pad: “Take a walk.” (It seems to work.) Good data, strong communication, and continual feedback between healthcare providers and patients, says the CEO, will transform individual thinking and have a significant effect on health outcomes.
3. Expect to see your doctor less—and email them more.
While all this hands-on health management sounds expensive, it doesn’t have to be. Last year, Kaiser’s physicians conducted approximately 20 million e-Visits—that is, they consulted with their patients by email. That amounts to 13% of all of the nonprofit’s medical appointments in 2014, and Tyson expects the number of digital check-ups to grow. Patients love it, he says—it’s especially good for certain populations, like seniors with chronic conditions—and Kaiser is betting big on video-conference technology that will improve online healthcare. He calls that “distributing care out”—out of the hospital, that is.
4. Interoperability has to be a national priority.
One of the major inefficiencies in the U.S. healthcare system, says the Kaiser CEO, is the independence of each medical provider. Go to one hospital, and they won’t have your medical history nor have any clue as to what you were diagnosed with two months ago at a hospital across the country, or even down the street. He compares this situation to one in which you could only use a Bank of America card in a Bank of America ATM. The adoption of electronic health records is paving the way towards an interoperable system, but Tyson says too many hospitals don’t even have these capabilities yet.
5. What could stand in the way of all this progress? You guessed it: the cost of drugs.
While technological innovation is leading to better patient outcomes in a number of medical conditions, there’s one area where Tyson says “progress” is part of the problem. That’s the new crop of “specialty drugs” that can run as much as $100,000 or more for a course of treatment. In some cases, these drugs are veritable godsends for patients with intractable ailments. (Take, for instance, Sovaldi, an $84,000 drug that can cure Hepatitis C—Tyson himself couldn’t bring himself to believe the claims until he’d seen the data.) Even so, when such wonder drugs are priced in the stratosphere, they can make the entire healthcare delivery system unsustainable. The prices aren’t just high, he says, they’re irrational. “Irrational pricing,” he explains, “is one in which a given price point has no rational explanation other than ‘Because we can.'” | Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard J. Tyson is optimistic for the future. Here are five reasons why. | 63.166667 | 0.888889 | 2 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/emmy-rossum-stand-by-me-ben-e-king-tribute-cover-video | http://web.archive.org/web/20150504174451id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/emmy-rossum-stand-by-me-ben-e-king-tribute-cover-video | Emmy Rossum Stand By Me Cover Video : People.com | 20150504174451 | 05/01/2015 AT 09:00 PM EDT
showed off her serious musical skills in a video she posted to Facebook on Friday.
The 28-year-old Golden Globe nominee shared a stunning cover of "Stand by Me" as a tribute to Ben E. King who
Rossum's bare-bones version of the song (just her and a piano) is hauntingly beautiful and oh-so-brief but it's made quite the impression on fans.
Accolades (in the comments, duh) range from "Can we get Married like now!!!" to "Emmy, darn it, you made this old girl cry." to "Had ZERO clue you could sing so lovely!"
is surprised Rossum can sing. She starred in 2004's
and has released two albums. | She posted her bare-bones rendition of the classic song on Facebook on Friday | 10.133333 | 0.866667 | 1.933333 | low | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2015/05/05/walt-disney-beats-expectations-even-as-it-faces-a-frozen-comedown/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150507192155id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/05/05/walt-disney-beats-expectations-even-as-it-faces-a-frozen-comedown/ | Disney beats earnings expectations as it faces Frozen comedown | 20150507192155 | Walt Disney Co. DIS , the world’s largest entertainment company, reported second-quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ expectations, driven by increased spending by theme park visitors.
Earnings for the quarter totaled $1.23 a share, the company revealed Tuesday. That’s up 14% year-over-year, beating the consensus estimate of $1.09 a share, according to Bloomberg data. Revenues rose to $12.46 billion from $11.65 billion a year earlier.
Disney posted the expectation-beating results in a period that lacked a major blockbuster like “Frozen,” signaling the underlying strength of its theme park and merchandising segments. Ticket price increases at its Orlando, Fla. and Anaheim, Calif. parks helped boost profits and offset lower sales at its film unit, which was selling “Frozen” DVDs at a rapid clip a year ago.
The performance “demonstrates the incredible ability of our strong brands and quality content to drive results,” Bob Iger, Disney’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
In the most recent quarter, operating income at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts increased 24% to $566 million. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Studios faced a 9% decline in operating income at its cable networks and a 10% decline in movie profit, a product of both the “Frozen” comedown and higher programming costs at ESPN.
Higher ad sales and affiliate fees within its media networks also helped. The broadcasting division profits were up 90%, thanks in large part to its recent sale of “Daredevil” to Netflix.
The Burbank, Calif.-based company moved its quarterly earnings release to Tuesday morning in order to let its executives attend the funeral of SurveyMonkey CEO David Goldberg, who is the wife of Disney board member and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Goldberg, who was 47 years old, died suddenly over the weekend while on vacation with his family.
READ MORE: Disney CEO Bob Iger’s empire of tech. | Disney beats earnings expectations with 10% quarterly profit increase even as it faces a "Frozen" comedown. | 18.75 | 0.6 | 0.7 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/05/04/nine-things-you-may-have-missed-monday-from-world-business/aRqwdyBLi1BIOJyVEDDS1H/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150508021511id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2015/05/04/nine-things-you-may-have-missed-monday-from-world-business/aRqwdyBLi1BIOJyVEDDS1H/story.html? | Nine things you may have missed Monday from the world of business | 20150508021511 | NEW YORK — For the first time, the country’s largest cable provider, which also owns NBCUniversal, has more Internet subscribers than cable subscribers. Comcast’s broadband subscribers surpassed cable this quarter. At the end of March, there were 22.4 million customers for each. SNL Kagan, a market research firm, estimates that cash-flow margins for Internet were 60 percent for cable companies at the end of last year, while video margins were 17 percent. In the January-March period, Comcast added 407,000 high-speed Internet customers, the most since early 2013. It shed 8,000 video customers. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
Two years of client withdrawals at Pacific Investment Management Co.’s flagship have cost it the title of the world’s biggest bond mutual fund. Investors pulled $5.6 billion from the Pimco Total Return Fund in April, after redemptions of $7.3 billion in March and $8.6 billion in February. With assets of $110.4 billion, the fund fell behind the index-tracking Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund, which had $117.3 billion as of April 30, according to preliminary data. Pimco has suffered more than $110 billion of outflows from the fund, which peaked at $293 billion in April 2013, since longtime manager Bill Gross left on Sept. 26 for Janus Capital Group. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
The price of a gallon of gasoline in Massachusetts rose 6 cents last week, according to AAA Northeast. The auto club pegged the average for unleaded, self-serve, regular gas at $2.60 a gallon. It was the fifth consecutive week of increases. The average had dropped to $2.06 in February but began to rise as oil refineries retooled to produce pricier, cleaner-burning summer blends. Gas prices are closely linked to the price of oil, which tumbled to about $44 a barrel last summer before climbing back up to $58.72 on Monday,
a national average for gas of $2.45 a gallon this summer, $1.14 below last year’s level. — JACK NEWSHAM
Qatar Airways will begin daily nonstop flights between Boston and Doha, the capital of Qatar, on March 16. Qatar is among the world’s richest countries. The airline will use an A350 XWB plane with 36 business class and 247 economy seats. “This flight will add even more potential connections for our passengers in the Middle East and Southern Asia,” said Matthew Brelis, spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority. Also, JetBlue Airways said it will offer weekly seasonal service from Logan Airport to Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados beginning Nov. 7. Logan now offers nonstop flights to 46 international destinations. — TARYN LUNA
Garelick Farms milk will soon bear a second brand: DairyPure. The joint branding, announced Monday, is part of a strategy by Dean Foods to enlarge its market share and cut its costs, The Wall Street Journal reported. Executives called the rebranding the culmination of a yearslong effort to standardize its 31-brand nationwide milk business. With consumers drinking less cow’s milk, the company is also promoting a “purity promise” that includes a guarantee its cows are not treated with artificial hormones. The products will still be marketed as “fresh from your local dairy.” Garelick Farms will not disappear from the label. Like other brands, including Berkeley Farms, Lehigh Valley, and Dean’s, it will appear alongside the DairyPure name. — JACK NEWSHAM
Think Periscope, but on the big screen: Certain Comcast subscribers can now live-stream events from their mobile device to their own television or another subscriber’s. People with Comcast’s X1 device can use the new Xfinity Share app to stream live events to another X1 subscriber’s TV. The app, available for iOS and Android, could also be used to share personal moments, such as a birthday or soccer game, the company noted. The video stream goes to a specific subscriber’s television, who approves a notification on his or her screen. Some customers have criticized the app in online reviews. Updates will allow users to share content with up to five people at once and will let viewers pause and rewind live streams. Streamers will also be able to store what they shoot on their phones. — JACK NEWSHAM
SAN JOSE, Calif. — John Chambers (left) plans to step down after more than 20 years as chief executive of Cisco Systems Inc. The computer networking company named Chuck Robbins as his successor, effective July 26. Chambers, CEO since January 1995, will continue as board chairman. Cisco said he has expanded the business from $1.2 billion in annual revenue when he became CEO to $48 billion in 2014. Robbins has worked at Cisco for 17 years, most recently as senior vice president. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA — Big businesses and politicians are putting muscle into their lobbying to end the US embargo of Cuba. A new bipartisan lobbying group called Engage Cuba debuts this month with backing from more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies, said James Williams, who heads the effort. And a political action committee called New Cuba PAC is raising money. Engage Cuba, whose staff includes veteran Democratic and Republican operatives, will focus on striking down the ban on American tourism to Cuba. President Obama has loosened the requirements for official permits for Americans to fly to Cuba to engage in 12 permitted activities, ranging from educational travel to musical performances. A growing number of pro-business Republicans are siding with anti-embargo activists. ‘‘We’re seeing an increasing number of Republicans seeing that this is a better route and that this is an opportunity for Republicans to put their stamp on this policy’’ said Ricardo Herrero, who works with Williams’s groups and heads his own new anti-embargo group, CubaNow. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Bloodthirsty zombies and a small-time lawyer helped boost profits for the cable channel operator AMC Networks. Its first-quarter net income jumped 69 percent from a year earlier, thanks to strong ratings from its original shows, including ‘‘The Walking Dead’’ and ‘‘Better Call Saul,’’ a spinoff of ‘‘Breaking Bad,’’ a show that ended in 2013. Net income was $120.9 million, or $1.66 per share. Revenue rose 24 percent to $668.7 million, also surpassing forecasts. — ASSOCIATED PRESS | Technology
Comcast’s biggest business is now Internet
NEW YORK — For the first time, the country’s largest cable provider, which also owns NBCUniversal, has more Internet subscribers than cable subscribers. Comcast’s broadband subscribers surpassed cable this quarter. | 25.617021 | 0.978723 | 25.148936 | medium | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2013/10/25/how-many-iphones-did-apple-sell-last-quarter-11/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150515210821id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/10/25/how-many-iphones-did-apple-sell-last-quarter-11/ | How many iPhones did Apple sell last quarter? | 20150515210821 | FORTUNE — This is the number that matters.
The iPhone not only brings in the lion’s share of Apple’s AAPL revenue (51.4% in Q3), but it is rapidly replacing the Mac as the hub around which the rest of Apple’s product line revolves.
Apple surprised Wall Street in the June quarter. The Street was expecting less than 5% unit sales growth year over year. Apple delivered 20%, despite all the chatter about the high end smartphone market approaching saturation.
Apple may have a harder time surprising Wall Street this time.
Among the 44 analysts we’ve heard from so far — 23 professionals and 21 amateurs — the average estimate is for iPhone unit sales of 33.4 million. (Pro average: 32.7 million; indie 34.2 million.)
That’s up 24% from the same quarter last year, when a lot of buyers were holding out for the iPhone 5. But 24% would still represent the iPhone’s best quarterly growth since Dec. 2012.
The high estimate of 38 million, representing 41% growth year over year, was submitted by Mani Ghasemlou, a newcomer at the independent Braeburn Group. The low estimate of 29 million (7% growth) came from Barclay’s Ben Reitzes.
We’ll find out who was closest to the mark when Apple reports its fiscal Q4 2013 earnings next Monday, Oct. 28.
Below: The individual analyst’s estimates — pros in blue, indies in green. Thanks as always to Posts at Eventide‘s Robert Paul Leitao for pulling together the Braeburn Group numbers. | The analysts' estimates range from 29 million to 38 million. Average: 33.4 million. | 17.705882 | 0.882353 | 1.588235 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2015/05/19/whats-that-in-europes-mobile-sector-can-it-be-growth/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20150521180551id_/http://fortune.com/2015/05/19/whats-that-in-europes-mobile-sector-can-it-be-growth/ | What's that in Europe's mobile sector? Can it be...growth? | 20150521180551 | Britain’s Vodafone Plc VOD posted a rise in quarterly sales for the first time in nearly three years on Tuesday in the clearest sign yet that Europe’s mobile market is edging towards recovery.
The world’s second-largest mobile operator has been hit hard by the constraints on consumer spending in its big European markets, fierce competition in India and by regulator-imposed price cuts around the world.
But on Tuesday it finally forecast 2016 core earnings growth on an organic basis following seven straight years of declines.
That follows updates from the likes of Telefonica SA TEFOF and Deutsche Telekom AG DTEGY which also showed signs of gradual, if slow, improvement in Europe.
Vodafone, which has 446 million mobile customers in countries ranging from Albania to Ireland, Qatar, India, South Africa and New Zealand, posted a rise in fourth-quarter organic service revenue, which strips out one-off costs such as handsets, of 0.1%. That’s not much but it ended 10 straight quarters of declines.
The result was helped by 6% growth from the Africa, Middle East and Asia-Pacific division, while the decline in European revenue and slowed to 2.4% from 2.7% in the previous quarter.
“We have seen increasing signs of stabilization in many of our European markets, supported by improvements in our commercial execution and very strong demand for data,” Chief Executive Vittorio Colao said.
Shares in the group slipped 2% percent in early trading, pulling back from a 9% rise in just over two months in anticipation of an upturn.
“For some time now, Vodafone has been trying to shake off the shackles of being regarded as a company which is “ex-growth” and today’s annual reflection points toward some future promise,” said Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers.
Analysts believe that demand for the more expensive fixed-line fiber services and superfast 4G mobile connections will spur a return to growth from 2016.
“We have significant opportunities ahead of us, with only 13% of our European mobile customers using 4G,” it said.
The one weak spot in the results was Germany, where it was hit by stiff competition. Vodafone Germany CEO Jens Schulte-Bockum will stand down during the 2015-16 financial year.
One other longer-term concern for Vodafone investors has been the thought that it could seek to upgrade its networks in one go by buying Europe’s biggest cable operator, Liberty Global.
Analysts at Jefferies said they would like to hear the company predict strengthening revenue trends through the year.
“We view this as key to reassuring investors on Project Spring delivery and calming fears that Vodafone may need to reinforce itself with Liberty in due course,” they said.
Vodafone forecast a range for 2015-16 core earnings of 11.5 billion pounds ($18.0 billion) to 12 billion pounds, implying core organic earnings growth of between 1%-5%. It also said it wanted to raise its dividend every year. | Vodafone's core earnings have risen for the first time in seven years. It's hoping 4G will make that a habit. | 23.12 | 0.76 | 1.8 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/father-son-reunite-sixty-years-later | http://web.archive.org/web/20150521190537id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/father-son-reunite-sixty-years-later | Father and Son Reunite After Nearly 60 Years : People.com | 20150521190537 | Michael Reed and Dennis Fay
05/19/2015 AT 01:25 PM EDT
As an adopted only child, Michael Reed had a happy childhood in Chicago, but he always wondered about his birth father. Was his dad tall and lanky? Did he have brown eyes like his? On May 15, at age 60, a nervous but excited Reed finally found the answers to his lifelong questions.
In an emotional reunion at the Salt Lake City International Airport, Reed, a banker who lives in Chicago, threw his arms around the father he'd never known and wept.
"Hi, dad," Reed told Dennis Fay, 80, kissing him on the cheek.
"This is probably the most important day of my life – to meet him," Fay, of Murray, Utah,
as the men embraced. "I'm proud of him. There's not many people that would go through what he went through to find me."
Fay, a Korean War veteran, says he "ran around a lot" in his younger years and didn't realize that a woman he had a brief relationship with in the mid-1950s became pregnant and gave up their infant son for adoption.
"She happened to be one of the carhops," Fay said. "If you dated a carhop back in those days, you were pretty macho because they had their pick of men, and I dated her."
According to Fay, the woman left her job and moved away. He married soon after and raised nine children (seven boys and two girls) with his wife, Patsy, who died in 2011.
Reed, meanwhile, found out at age 10 that he was adopted, but wasn't given any information from his parents until he was 30.
After raising two children with his wife, Susan, he says he took a DNA test to learn about his Irish heritage and found Dennis Fay's cousin through genome sharing. She then put him in touch with his biological father.
With his adopted parents now deceased, "I prayed about it – I didn't want to hurt his feelings or really do any harm at all to the Fay family," Reed said.
He needn't have worried. At the airport, the only child who always longed to share his life with siblings was greeted by a crowd of new family members holding blue balloons and a yellow banner proclaiming, "It's a boy!"
"We were a little skeptical at first," Mike Fay (there are now two Michaels in the family) told reporters. But when the DNA test came back, "we knew he was our brother."
"I always wanted a brother or a sister," responded Reed, wiping tears from his eyes. Sixty years later, his dream a reality, "now I have nine." | A Utah dad meets the Chicago son he didn't know he had | 42.692308 | 0.846154 | 1.153846 | high | medium | abstractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/01/us/massachusetts-no-budget-prepared-cuts-tax-today.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524075404id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/01/us/massachusetts-no-budget-prepared-cuts-tax-today.html | MASSACHUSETTS, NO BUDGET PREPARED, CUTS TAX TODAY | 20150524075404 | BOSTON, June 30— Neither Massachusetts nor Boston officials have been able to agree on budget cuts needed to deal with a votermandated tax reduction that will take effect tomorrow with the start of a new fiscal year.
Late today it appeared that the Legislature would not even agree on an emergency, temporary spending measure. Under its charter, the City of Boston will automatically operate with an emergency plan as of midnight, allowing monthly spending at one-twelfth of last year's levels, if a budget has not been approved.
As the dispute over cuts continues, some political leaders appear to be in trouble because of the tax issue. Results from a statewide poll of 500 residents, released last week by the Becker Research Corporation, ranked Mayor Kevin H. White of Boston as the most unpopular political figure in the state. Mayor White, now in his fourth term, got a 65 percent unfavorability rating statewide, virtually the reverse of what it was 18 months ago. In Suffolk County, which includes Boston, it was even more negative, with 79 percent of the respondents terming their attitude toward him ''unfavorable.''
On King, Dukakis and O'Neill
Another finding, termed ''eye-popping'' by the pollsters, projected that Gov. Edward J. King would get only 9 percent of the vote if a Democratic gubernatorial primary was held today in this heavily Democratic state. In sharp contrast, former Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was beaten by Mr. King in the 1978 primary and is expected to run again in 1982, polled 59 percent of the hypothetical vote. Lieut. Gov. Thomas P. O'Neill 3d, also a prospective candidate for the Commonwealth's top job, would attract 20 percent in such a three-way primary, the poll said.
Governor King gained his office on a platform that called for reducing taxes and enhancing the business climate in the state. But while the Becker poll found that the public continued to support major tax reductions, it also found that a majority did not believe the state had an ''adverse'' climate for business. On the other hand, the poll found that most did not know that the state has one of the best employment rates, although the King administration frequently takes note of this.
The tax-cutting issue was brought on by the passage last fall of a ballot issue that obliges cities and towns to cut levies by 15 percent annually until property is taxed at only 2 1/2 percent of market value. In a state where communities have few revenue sources other than the property tax, the cutbacks have not been made without political argument, if they have been made at all.
Governor King first responded to this law with a plan to increase local aid by less than $30 million, then drastically altered his stand and proposed a budget with $200 million to ease the burden.
The State Legislature was still struggling today to reach a compromise on how deeply to reduce state operations in order to give new aid to cities and towns. A Senate-backed budget would eliminate 32 state agencies and reduce 25 others while laying off more than 3,800 employees from the current state workforce of 72,000. The Legislature is weighing that plan against a House bill that would provide only $230 million in new aid to local communities and eliminate only 1,900 state jobs.
The political quarreling and maneuvering are particularly apparent in Boston, where officials expect to lose half the city's operating budget. The voter-mandated tax cut has been aggravated by $40 million in overspending by the school department this fiscal year and courtordered refunds that may surpass $70 million for commercial property owners over-assessed in the past.
Last week, off-duty firefighters protested proposed layoffs of 600 workers by patrolling Boston Common and urging on tourists and residents alike pamphlets that proclaimed, ''Boston is getting burned.''
Patrick F. McDonough, president of the City Council, has assailed Mayor White's proposed budget recommending cuts of nearly 40 percent in police and fire personnel, declaring that the proposal ''borders on the insane.''
He added, however, that the Council planned to reduce the budget still further than the White plan, which would cut spending in the coming fiscal year to $158 million, or $122 million less than the current fiscal year. The Council's strategy, Mr. McDonough said, is to cut deeply enough into administrative departments, rather than police and fire services, to force Mayor White to submit an alternative budget.
A months-long stalemate between the Mayor and the Council partly accounts for the bare-bones White proposal. The two sides have been unable to agree on a bill asking state authorization to sell $75 million in bonds to recover some of the funds channeled to the school department and the debt owed to commercial property owners. While a threat that the schools might have to close early was averted, 26 neighborhood schools were shut down permanently when the school year ended last week.
Illustrations: photo of Mary LaPorte | Neither Massachusetts nor Boston officials have been able to agree on budget cuts needed to deal with a votermandated tax reduction that will take effect tomorrow with the start of a new fiscal year. Late today it appeared that the Legislature would not even agree on an emergency, temporary spending measure. Under its charter, the City of Boston will automatically operate with an emergency plan as of midnight, allowing monthly spending at one-twelfth of last year's levels, if a budget has not been approved. As the dispute over cuts continues, some political leaders appear to be in trouble because of the tax issue. Results from a statewide poll of 500 residents, released last week by the Becker Research Corporation, ranked Mayor Kevin H. White of Boston as the most unpopular political figure in the state. Mayor White, now in his fourth term, got a 65 percent unfavorability rating statewide, virtually the reverse of what it was 18 months ago. In Suffolk County, which includes Boston, it was even more negative, with 79 percent of the respondents terming their attitude toward him ''unfavorable.'' | 4.523585 | 0.981132 | 57.90566 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/01/science/science-library-113424.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524075413id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/01/science/science-library-113424.html | SCIENCE LIBRARY - NYTimes.com | 20150524075413 | The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe By Robert Jastrow. 183 pages. Illustrated. Simon & Schuster, New York. $13.95.
Some day before this century ends, humans may have to agonize over a new and jarring ethical question: is a computer alive? Dr. Jastrow, a physicist and eloquent philosopher of science, answers the question with an emphatic yes. Computers of the late 1990's will rival the human brain in intelligence, he argues, and will far outpace us soon afterward. Being able to respond to the outside world, to react flexibly to changing conditions, to think, learn and grow through experience, he says, they will have to be judged alive.
The book traces the evolution of the universe and of intelligence on earth back to their ultimate origins. The universe began with the primordial ''Big Bang'' 20 billion years ago and has been expanding from that unimaginable first explosion ever since. The sun, Earth and the other planets were formed about four and a half billion years ago. Life arose in the planet's early seas a billion years or less thereafter. Whether these first universal events were blind effects of natural processes or evidence of the purpose of a Creator, the author leaves to the reader to decide.
''Science can find no force in nature that might account for the beginning of the universe,'' he says, ''and it can find no evidence that the universe even existed before that first moment.'' But he views the evidence supporting the natural progression of all the later major steps as overwhelmingly strong.
The first brains appeared, in fish, only about 450 million years ago, but these were only modest nerve circuits to maintain balance and muscle control and to give simple ''good-bad'' responses to signals of odor and light. Intelligence, involving memory and more complex judgemental responses to the world, was not yet born. It began, in Dr. Jastrow's timetable, with the mammal-like reptiles who reached their zenith about 250 million years ago. It developed further among the first true mammals who hid out in small, scurrying noctural forms for 100 million years while the great dinosaurs ruled the earth. The mammals needed acute hearing, smell, memory and judgment as well as agility to survive. All these required better brains.
The long upward path of intelligence on earth continued as changing conditions called forth more sophisticated responses from brains that grew increasingly large and potent. The long process climaxed, of course, with the appearance of humans only a million or so years ago. The modern human brain is the single most complex and powerful thing that has yet arisen in the whole panorama of life on earth, but Dr. Jastrow argues that its evolution, and ours, is now probably complete. The take-home message of the book is what lies ahead if our race is nearly run. The answer, which the author gets to in the last few pages, is sufficiently intriguing - and unsettling -to keep the human brain awake for the last few decades of its reign. HAROLD M. SCHMECK Jr. Life on Earth By David Attenborough. 319 pages. Little, Brown & Co., New York. Illustrated. $22.50.
What is life on earth like? Well, if you're a British television producer, have a penchant for nature, can write, have traveled some 1.3 million miles in 30 countries looking at thousands of different living things in the wild, and your name is David Attenborough, life on earth is fantastic and has a more vivid history than most people imagine.
First published in Great Britain, the book is modelled on the author's successful BBC television show of the same name. It describes the natural history of the earth from the emergence of onecelled organisms some 3,000 million years ago to the relatively recent appearance and proliferation of man.
In rapid-fire sequence we follow the movement of living things from sea to land, adaptation to life in the air and to life in trees, development of warm-blooded animals, and how mammals succeeded in colonizing the entire earth. And with all this, the author points out the evolutionary difficulties of each step, the trials and errors, the obstacles and the successful breakthroughs.
Aided by 118 dazzling color photographs, each major evolutionary organism is described and embellished with an abundance of littleknown facts: Giant squids, survivors of the shelled mollusc era, have the largest eyes of any animal; butterflies' wings have more complex patterns than our ultra-violet-blind eyes can see; male bower birds build exotic bridal suites, and female bats have only one offspring because they would be unable to fly carrying the extra weight of two fetuses. And we are told that the world's first vocalization probably came from the throat of an amphibian - the frog.
Mr. Attenborough, educated as a zoologist at Cambridge University, has written a book that, though it may lack as much scientific explanation of events as some readers would like, is a fascinating introduction to natural history. BAYARD WEBSTER The Invisible World Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 160 pages. $25. There is so much that the human eye, as wonderful an organ as it is, cannot see, microlife and microscape, the subatomic and the cosmic. Modern cameras and other imaging tools, in conjunction with microscopes, telescopes, strobe lights, radiation detectors and computers, are now extending human vision in incredible ways, which are illustrated in this album of ''sights too fast, too slow, too far, too small for the naked eye to see.''
The images of invisible worlds have their scientific uses, of course, but they can also be enjoyed for their esthetic virtues alone. Microscopic photography of crystal structures - a snowflake, for example - produces abstract art that dazzles the imagination. Microscapes mimic geographies that we know: The tip of a ballpoint pen, magnified 5,150 times, appears like a barren lunarscape, and table salt, magnified 50 times by electron microscope, looks like a pile of desert boulders.
Other striking pictures include those of microscopic life in a water drop, a section of a newt's stomach, butterfly sperm, an ant's eye and viruses. A photograph of trails left by subatomic particles is not unlike an imaginative engineering drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. Time-stopping photography, a stroboscopic light technique developed by Dr. Harold Edgerton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is illustrated through images of a bullet penetrating an apple or cutting a playing card.
This beautiful book was inspired by the National Geographic Society's television special, ''The Invisible World.'' JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Illustrations: Photo of a frog | The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe By Robert Jastrow. 183 pages. Illustrated. Simon & Schuster, New York. $13.95. Some day before this century ends, humans may have to agonize over a new and jarring ethical question: is a computer alive? Dr. Jastrow, a physicist and eloquent philosopher of science, answers the question with an emphatic yes. Computers of the late 1990's will rival the human brain in intelligence, he argues, and will far outpace us soon afterward. Being able to respond to the outside world, to react flexibly to changing conditions, to think, learn and grow through experience, he says, they will have to be judged alive. | 9.604478 | 0.985075 | 57.865672 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/02/nyregion/the-city-publisher-fined-500-in-threat-to-official.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524075430id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/02/nyregion/the-city-publisher-fined-500-in-threat-to-official.html | THE CITY - Publisher Fined $500 In Threat to Official - NYTimes.com | 20150524075430 | Herbert S. Bauch, 68-year-old publisher of The Sentinel, the newspaper of the Civil Service Retired Employees Association, was fined $500 yesterday after pleading guilty to attempted larceny by extortion.
According to the New York City Department of Investigation, Mr. Bauch threatened to publish articles critical of the General Services Commissioner, James Capalino, after Mr. Capalino refused to give a raise to a General Services employee who also was an assistant to Mr. Bauch.
Judge Robert M. Haft levied the fine in Criminal Court in Manhattan.
''I don't think I did anything more than what politicians do every day,'' Mr. Bauch said. Mayor Koch said in a news release, ''This was nothing less than an attempted shakedown of a city comissioner.'' | Herbert S. Bauch, 68-year-old publisher of The Sentinel, the newspaper of the Civil Service Retired Employees Association, was fined $500 yesterday after pleading guilty to attempted larceny by extortion. According to the New York City Department of Investigation, Mr. Bauch threatened to publish articles critical of the General Services Commissioner, James Capalino, after Mr. Capalino refused to give a raise to a General Services employee who also was an assistant to Mr. Bauch. | 1.697674 | 0.976744 | 32.395349 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/02/world/rightist-exiles-plan-invasion-of-nicaragua.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524075459id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/02/world/rightist-exiles-plan-invasion-of-nicaragua.html | RIGHTIST EXILES PLAN INVASION OF NICARAGUA | 20150524075459 | Tegucigalpa, Honduras Right wing Nicaraguan exiles here, confident of the support of some sectors of Honduran Army and hoping for a "green light" from Washington, are preparing to invade their homeland to overthrow the 20-month-old Sandinist Government.
Nicaraguan exile leaders asserted that a 660-man "freedom force" stationed in Honduras near the NIcarguan border would soon be joined by thousands of sympathizers from Guatemala and Miami. "I think we'll be ready in two months," a spokesman said.
The rebel groups are gambling that their planned invasion will not only ignite a popular insurrection similar to the one that toppled the Somoza regime in July, 1979, but will also have direct or covert military support from the Governments of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemal.
"Nicaragua cannot be liberated only by Nicaraguans, just as Somoza was not overthrown only by NIcaraguans," said Jose Francisco Cardenal, a leader of the exiled Nicaraguan Democratic Union.
"But we can't wait six months. By then the Sandinists will be too strong. The green light has to come soon from the United States." Nicaragua Builds Forces Although "counterrevolutionary" bands have frequently attacked Sandinist border posts in recent months, Nicaragua, in building up its military strength, has apparently been prompted more by the fear that the exiles are backed by both Reagan Administration and the military governments of the region. A 200,000-man popular militia is rapidly beinf trained to fight alongside of the existing 400,000-strong Sandinist army and police.
So far, there is nor clear evidence of United States support for the Nicarguan exiles, although few dozen have been receiving military training in camps run by the Cuban exiles outside of Miami. Some state department officials are also known to favor a policy of first "strangling" the Sandinist Government economically and then, in the words of one diplomatic "financing dissent groups." Asked about Pentagon or Central Intelligence Agency involement with the exiles, Mr. Cardenal replied, "No Comment."
The Nicaraguan Democratic Union,however, said it had not had a reply to a letter sent last December to Mr. Reagan when he was president-elect. In it, the group appealed for United States support for an invasion of Nicaragua. "The armed segement of the democratic forces of Nicaragua would need from 30 to 45 days of basic training in a neighboring country, Honduras or Costa Rica, before starting its military operations there." the letter said. "It is logical to suppose that the armed forces of the Central American countries would have a favorable attitude toward the liberation movement of Nicaragua and would give it their utmost support." Both Guatamala and El Salvador have charges Nicaragua with supporting leftist gueruillas operating inside their territory. So far, however, only some sectors of the Honduran Army are beleived helping the Nicragauans exiles, in some cases training and supplying them with weapons, in other cases protecting them from incursions into Nicaragua. Direct Clashes Reported Discussed
In recent weeks, though the Honduran Army high command has reportedly begun discussing the likelihood of direct clashes with Nicaragua. "Suddenly we're hearing senior officers say that war with Nicaragua is unavoidable," aHonduran politician said. Some foreign diplomats here asserted that the Honduran Army was "creating a war scare" in the hope of obtaining greater United States military aid. They pointed out that although Honduras and El Salvador signed a peace treaty in December, a decade after they fought a brief border war, Honduras has been alarmed by stepped-up United States military assistance to the Salvadoran junta to help it combat a leftist guerrilla threat.
The diplomats argued that Honduras now felt that the best way of restoring its military equality with El Salvador would be to convince the Reagan Administration of the dangers posed by Nicaragua's growing armed forces. "A year ago, most Honduran troops were facing El Salvador a diplomat said. "Today they are facing NIcaragua." Some Honduran politicians, on the other hand, charge that hostilities with Nicaragua would give the Honduran army the opportunity of staying in power after general elections scheduled for later this year. The President Gen. Policarpo Paz Garcia, is committed to returning the country to civilan rule for the first time since 1972, but some senior officers are said to be reluctant to return to the barracks. Many conservative politicians and businessman, heartened by the Reagan Administration's apparent determination to prevent "another Nicaragua" in El Salvador, are also convinced that Honduras can be truly "vaccinated" against revolutionary unrest only by the removal of the Sandinist regime to the south.
On their own, however, Nicaraguan exile groups seem to pose no serious threat to the Managua Government. Although some exile leaders are businessmen who opposed Gen. Anastsio Somoza Debayle and later became disillusioned with the Sandinists, most Nicaraguans still identify the exiles with the hated Somoza regime and would therefore resist an invasion.
Mr. Cardenal, himself a businessman who supported the Sandinist takeover but chose exile last May, argued that the Nicaraguan Democratic Union was fighting for democracy and not for the return of a right-wing dictatorship. "We will only accept former National Guardsman who have changed their attitude," he said here in an interview. "Soem Guard officers want a return to the old days. We won't have anything to do with them." He said that his organization's military arm, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Nicaragua, included many former Sandinist rebels, "even some trained in Cuba," and already had guerrilla units operating inside Nicaragua. Somoza Colonels in Group
A second exile organization, the NIcaraguan Democratic Revolutinary Alliance, formed by groups in Miami, San Francisco, Guatemala and Honduras, has more former supporters of the Somoza regime in its ranks, including several exiled National Guard colonels living in Tegucigalpa. It military section is called the 15th of September Legion, taking the date of Nicaragua's independence from SPain in 1821.
Perhaps the best known group here is the National Liberation Army, which takes out frequent advertisements in the local press to denounce the Sandinist regime. Its statements are purported to be issued in the "glorious and combative mountains of Nicaragua" and are signed by "Juan Carlos", who is beleived to be Pedro Ortega, a Spanish-born former business assiciate of General SOmoza who lives here. Beyond its propaganda activities, though, the group is beleived to be small and inactive.
Nevertheless, there has been a flurry of activity in the exile movement in recent weeks, with the different groups trying to agree on a common strategy and program and leaders flying between Miami, El Salvador, Guatemala and Tegucigalpa. "The governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala either decide to collobrate with us," Mr. Cardenal said, "or they must face the same Communist cancer as Nicaragua." | Tegucigalpa, Honduras Right wing Nicaraguan exiles here, confident of the support of some sectors of Honduran Army and hoping for a "green light" from Washington, are preparing to invade their homeland to overthrow the 20-month-old Sandinist Government. Nicaraguan exile leaders asserted that a 660-man "freedom force" stationed in Honduras near the NIcarguan border would soon be joined by thousands of sympathizers from Guatemala and Miami. "I think we'll be ready in two months," a spokesman said. The rebel groups are gambling that their planned invasion will not only ignite a popular insurrection similar to the one that toppled the Somoza regime in July, 1979, but will also have direct or covert military support from the Governments of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemal. | 8.937931 | 0.97931 | 39.6 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/02/business/commodities-reversal-in-cotton-profits.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524075518id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/02/business/commodities-reversal-in-cotton-profits.html | Commodities - Reversal In Cotton Profits - NYTimes.com | 20150524075518 | MANY cotton futures buyers fell victim once again last week to both market logic and some clever operations by professional traders. As a result, many cotton longs gave back most of their gains of the previous week.
For example, the near-May delivery, the most active contract on the New York Cotton Exchange, closed Friday at 90.14 cents a pound, down 3.45 cents, or $1,725 per contract of 50,000 pounds, for the week. The previous week, May cotton gained 5.44 cents, or $2,720 per contract.
The sharp rise and decline in cotton futures during the past few weeks was touched off by the weekly position report issued by the Cotton Exchange's clearinghouse on Feb. 18, which gave the long and short positions of the trade houses and large speculators for the week ended Feb. 13. Most other commodity exchanges also issue position data.
These regular reports, closely watched by professional traders, showed that the large shorts (those who had sold cotton futures) had risen by 5 percent, to 57.3 percent of the open interest, in the latest week, while the longs (buyers) held 52.5 percent of the contracts available for trading. The position holdings do not equal 100 percent because of spreads involving simultaneous buying and selling.
This is a rare situation because most speculators are normally long the market, while those actually dealing in cotton, the trade houses, usually hedge their inventory by selling futures contracts short. To some professional traders in Chicago, the Feb. 18 report was a signal to buy, and they did, regardless of the bullish fundamental logic then governing the market.
According to Chicago market analysts reconstructing the operation last week, the professionals correctly guessed that any rise in prices would stampede the thinly margined speculators into buying out of their short positions. After all, speculators usually have no commodity to deliver against their contracts and can only liquidate a short position by buying offsetting contracts.
The professionals guessed right and the resultant short covering raised cotton futures that week. After their brief but substantial buying, the professionals stood aside to let the short covering lift prices further. Whether or not they sold last week, and caused the market to retreat, is not yet known, the Chicago analysts said.
What is known is that the positions reported for Feb. 20 showed a return to normal, with the speculative longs holding 53.5 percent of the open interest and the shorts 47.7 percent.
But the longs received another blow last Monday, when the Census Bureau issued its usage report for last January. The monthly report was decidedly bearish and inhibited buying all last week. It said the consumption of cotton in January fell to an average of 21,732 bales, down 10 percent from the comparable month in 1980.
''Domestic demand for cotton has weakened in recent months and will decline even further in the next few months,'' said Alain Guyard, research chief at Cargill Investor Services Inc., New York, last Friday. ''We think cotton traders have been concentrating on the poor domestic crop last year and overlooking the fact that the Soviet Union produced an unusually large exportable surplus in 1980.''
He added that while the global fundamentals of supply-demand were still outwardly bullish, they could become less so if the growing economic malaise causes a further weakening of demand for gray goods here and abroad.
Ernest Simon, the cotton specialist at Bache Halsey Stuart Shields Inc., said last Friday: ''Demand for apparel is definitely down, with many producers working short weeks. Those making athletic goods, prints and yarns with blended synthetic fibers are moderately active. Most of the domestic mill buying is for delivery after the new crop comes in later this year. Whatever old-crop cotton the mills are buying is strictly to fill in current gaps, which arise now and then because nobody is carrying inventory at today's interest rates.''
Mr. Simon noted that while mill buying seems to dry up when the price reaches 90 cents, ''many users and exporters could be shocked if their order books should suddenly fill up because the cotton that's still around is increasingly of undesirable quality.''
''The key to the cotton market is the demand side; we've known the supply number since last fall,'' he said. The drought-seared cotton crop came in at just under 11 million bales of 480 pounds each, compared with 14 million bales in 1979. By adding the carryover of 3 million bales on hand last Aug. 1, the start of the statistical cotton crop year, the nation had a total supply of 14 million bales last season.
This attracted many traders to cotton futures, Mr. Simon said, because domestic usage was projected at 6 million bales and exports at 5.7 million. ''The Government's export estimate seems certain to prove out, and if their domestic usage projection is also right then the nation will have the lowest carryover in 30 years next Aug. 1, only 2.3 million bales,'' he said, adding:
''Because of the increasingly poor quality of the remaining cotton supply and the low inventories at the mills, some say the Aug. 1 carryover could actually prove to be the lowest since 1925, when it was 1.5 million bales. I would agree, except that the current demand outlook between now and the next harvest doesn't warrant such thinking.''
Illustrations: Graph of futures prices | MANY cotton futures buyers fell victim once again last week to both market logic and some clever operations by professional traders. As a result, many cotton longs gave back most of their gains of the previous week. For example, the near-May delivery, the most active contract on the New York Cotton Exchange, closed Friday at 90.14 cents a pound, down 3.45 cents, or $1,725 per contract of 50,000 pounds, for the week. The previous week, May cotton gained 5.44 cents, or $2,720 per contract. | 10.067961 | 0.980583 | 37.679612 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/03/arts/dali-aide-is-embroiled-in-a-300000-scandal.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524075615id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/03/arts/dali-aide-is-embroiled-in-a-300000-scandal.html | DALI AIDE IS EMBROILED IN A $300,000 SCANDAL | 20150524075615 | MADRID, Feb. 2— A note of estrangement has entered the relationship of Salvador Dali, the ailing 76-year-old Surrealist, with his controversial financial manager and private secretary, Enrique Sabater, who has become embroiled in a new scandal.
Encouraged by a number of long-standing friends who are convinced that Mr. Sabater has enriched himself at the painter's expense, Dali has just given the contract to defend his worldwide copyright interests to a French concern that has long watched over the interests of the Picasso estate.
The Societe de la Propriete Artistique et des Dessins et Modeles, to which Dali has awarded the contract, is expected to investigate the proliferating web of companies established by Mr. Sabater to commercialize the Surrealist's work, according to informants involved in the changeover.
The friends, including A. Reynolds Morse, a Cleveland industrialist and a major collector, argued that Dali's previous arrangement with another French organization, the Association pour la Diffusion des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques, had given Mr. Sabater excessive leeway in managing the artist's business affairs.
Mr. Sabater, a 46-year-old onetime soccer player, has repeatedly denied any suggestion that he has done anything than fairly represent Dali. But his extravagant life style and apparently bottomless income have aroused a number of pointed questions in the Spanish and French press and elsewhere about his business affairs.
On Jan. 22 the Spanish border police arrested three men who crossed from France in two cars, one of which contained 1,085 Dali prints that they said had not been declared with customs. One of the three, Eduardo Fornes, is a friend and collaborator of Mr. Sabater, involved in publishing luxury books containing Dali prints.
The three also were carrying two big art books and three bottles of wine and liquor for Mr. Sabater, which the police gave to him. Mr. Sabater has acknowledged that these items were given to him, but he has denied any involvement in the smuggling of the Dali prints into Spain. Their value was conservatively put at $300,000. 'Friendship Will Continue'
The day after the arrests, a statement from Mr. Sabater appeared in la Vanguardia, a Barcelona newspaper that is usually sympathetic to him, saying that he planned to resign as Dali's private secretary.
''My friendship with Salvador Dali and his wife, Gala, will continue,'' Mr. Sabater declared, ''because it is a genuine friendship, and a friendship like that is not easily broken. It will last as long as I live.'' Mr. Sabater said he wanted to devote more time to his children.
Mr. Sabater also told the newspaper he wanted ''more freedom.'' His job with Dali involved annually moving him and his exacting 87-yearold Russian-born wife from their summer home in Port Lligat, on the Costa Brava, to Paris and New York, as well as shielding them from the press and other curiosity-seekers. This work became especially demanding after Dali sank into a severe depression early last year, and largely abandoned painting.
Since giving what was meant to be a comeback news conference in his birthplace in Figueres, on the Costa Brava, last October - where he appeared unwell and trembling - Dali and his wife have installed themselves as they have in the past at the Hotel Meurice in Paris. According to intimates, Dali remains subject to fits of depression, and is not painting.
Illustrations: Photo of Salvador Dali | A note of estrangement has entered the relationship of Salvador Dali, the ailing 76-year-old Surrealist, with his controversial financial manager and private secretary, Enrique Sabater, who has become embroiled in a new scandal. Encouraged by a number of long-standing friends who are convinced that Mr. Sabater has enriched himself at the painter's expense, Dali has just given the contract to defend his worldwide copyright interests to a French concern that has long watched over the interests of the Picasso estate. The Societe de la Propriete Artistique et des Dessins et Modeles, to which Dali has awarded the contract, is expected to investigate the proliferating web of companies established by Mr. Sabater to commercialize the Surrealist's work, according to informants involved in the changeover. | 4.591549 | 0.985915 | 46.535211 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/04/books/best-sellers-fiction.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524075647id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/04/books/best-sellers-fiction.html | BEST SELLERS - FICTION - NYTimes.com | 20150524075647 | 1 1 11 THE COVENANT, by James A. Michener. (Random House, $15.95.) Fifteen thousand years of South African history. 2 2 15 THE KEY TO REBECCA, by Ken Follett. (Morrow, $12.95.) German espionage in Cairo during the desert campaigns of 1942. 3 4 20 FIRESTARTER, by Stephen King. (Viking, $13.95.) E ightyear-old Charlie can look at anything and turn it into flames. 4 6 14 LOON LAKE, by E.L. Doctorow. (Random House, $11.95.) The strange, lyrical adventures of a young man during the Depression. 5 3 7 UNFINISHED TALES, by J.R.R. Tolkien. (Houghton Mifflin, $15.) Hitherto unpublished fragments of writing about Middle-earth. 6 1 MASQUERADE, by Kit Williams. (Schocken Books, $9.95.) A fantastic tale about the Sun, the Moon and a lost treasure. 7 8 2 ANSWER AS A MAN, by Taylor Caldwell. (Putnam's, $12.95.) A man who has made it big in early 20th-century America struggles against the corruption that engulfs his life.
8 7 17 THE FIFTH HORSEMAN, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. (Simon & Schuster, $13.95.) Libyan terrorists have planted a thermonuclear device in New York and there are only 24 hours to find it. 9 5 12 COME POUR THE WINE, by Cynthia Freeman. (Arbor House, $12.95.) A woman's long journey to self-discovery. 10 10 28 RAGE OF ANGELS, by Sidney Sheldon. (Morrow, $12.95.) An idealistic young woman lawyer triumphs over two vengeful men. 11 9 19 THE ORIGIN, by Irving Stone. (Doubleday, $14.95.) Biographical novel of Charles Darwin. 12 11 7 THE HIDDEN TARGET, by Helen MacInnes. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95.) Young American woman ensnared in an international terrorists' plot. 13 14 THE TENTH COMMANDMENT, by Lawrence Sanders. (Putnam's, $12.95.) The pint-sized investigator of a large law firm sets out to unravel the strange conduct of some of its most important clients. 14 4 MANCHU, by Robert Elegant. (McGraw-Hill, $12.95.) An Englishman caught up in the intrigues of 17th-century China. 15 12 11 THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, by Jean M. Auel. (Crown, $12.95.) A saga of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men, who inhabited Europe 35,000 years ago. NONFICTION 1 1 9 COSMOS, by Carl Sagan. (Random House, $19.95.) Thirteen billion years of the universe's evolution explained by the NASA medal-winning space scientist: tie-in to the current PBS television series. 2 2 18 CRISIS INVESTING, by Douglas R. Casey. (Stratford Press/Harper, $12.50.) ''Opportunities for investing in the coming Great Depression.'' 3 3 12 SIDE EFFECTS, by Woody Allen. (Random House, $8.95.) The comedian's observations on sex, death, religion and almost everything else. 4 4 9 PETER THE GREAT, by Robert K. Massie. (Knopf, $17.95.) The life of the 18th-century Czar who brought Russia into the modern world. 5 6 14 THE SKY'S THE LIMIT, by Wayne Dyer. (Simon & Schuster, $10.95.) Prescription for ''achieving perfection of body and mind.'' 6 5 14 GOODBYE, DARKNESS, by William Manchester. (Little, Brown, $14.95.) A memoir of the Pacific war. 7 7 4 THE COMING CURRENCY COLLAPSE, by Jerome F. Smith. (Books in Focus, $13.95.) An ''investment survival manual'' for the 80's. 8 10 11 AMERICAN DREAMS, by Studs Terkel. (Pantheon, $14.95.) One hundred ordinary men and women talk about their hopes and fears. 9 9 15 INGRID BERGMAN: MY STORY, by Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess. (Delacorte, $14.95.) The actress's personal life as well as her career. 10 13 48 FREE TO CHOOSE, by Milton & Rose Friedman. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $9.95.) The Nobel laureate economist and his wife discuss the relationship of government and the economy: tie-in to the PBS television series. 11 11 7 BETTY CROCKER'S INTERNATIONAL COOKBOOK. (Random House, $12.95.) A completely new collection of recipes under a long-established name. 12 8 21 CRAIG CLAIBORNE'S GOURMET DIET, by Craig Claiborne with Pierre Franey. (Times Books, $10.95.) Recipes for eating well, losing weight and maintaining good health. 13 12 7 A FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRDS, by Roger Tory Peterson. (Houghton Mifflin, $15.) Completely revised guide for eastern North America. 14 14 2 SWANSON ON SWANSON, by Gloria Swanson. (Random House, $15.95.) At age 81, the movie star recalls her life in brisk, acerbic style. 15 7 NUMBER 1, by Billy Martin and Peter Golenbock. (Delacorte, $9.95.) The feisty baseball manager's troubles and triumphs. The listings above are based on computer-processed sales figures from 1,600 bookstores in every region of the United States. FOOTNOTES This week the Random House publishing complex, which includes Random House, Knopf and Pantheon, is not only in charge of the two leading spots, but accounts for a total of eight items on the lists. If that seems a lot, last week the number was 11. The one newcomer is ''Masquerade,'' which has been an enormous success in England. ''Masquerade'' is more than a book with pictures and a story; each of its 15 illustrations by author Kit Williams contains a hidden hare, also a series of clues, which if read right will lead to a treasure - a hare sculpted in gold, studded with gems and buried on public land in Britain. No one has found it yet. Recent gift-giving seems to have improved the quality of books bought: Such items as Justin Kaplan's biography of Walt Whitman, the collected stories of Eudora Welty and the letters of Evelyn Waugh, while not actually best sellers, have come close. Correction. It was reported here that Books in Focus was giving special discounts to chain bookstores on ''The Coming Currency Collapse.'' Not so, reports the publisher; everyone can learn the bad news at the same price. | 1 1 11 THE COVENANT, by James A. Michener. (Random House, $15.95.) Fifteen thousand years of South African history. 2 2 15 THE KEY TO REBECCA, by Ken Follett. (Morrow, $12.95.) German espionage in Cairo during the desert campaigns of 1942. 3 4 20 FIRESTARTER, by Stephen King. (Viking, $13.95.) E ightyear-old Charlie can look at anything and turn it into flames. 4 6 14 LOON LAKE, by E.L. Doctorow. (Random House, $11.95.) The strange, lyrical adventures of a young man during the Depression. 5 3 7 UNFINISHED TALES, by J.R.R. Tolkien. (Houghton Mifflin, $15.) Hitherto unpublished fragments of writing about Middle-earth. 6 1 MASQUERADE, by Kit Williams. (Schocken Books, $9.95.) A fantastic tale about the Sun, the Moon and a lost treasure. 7 8 2 ANSWER AS A MAN, by Taylor Caldwell. (Putnam's, $12.95.) A man who has made it big in early 20th-century America struggles against the corruption that engulfs his life. | 5.73516 | 1 | 219 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/06/nyregion/casino-workers-push-for-gaming-24-hours-a-day.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524080043id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/06/nyregion/casino-workers-push-for-gaming-24-hours-a-day.html | CASINO WORKERS PUSH FOR GAMING 24 HOURS A DAY | 20150524080043 | ATLANTIC CITY WITH an eye to the pending departure from office of their unwavering obstacle, Governor Byrne, casino workers here are organizing a drive to introduce 24-hour gambling.
In the course of this campaign, these workers are joining together in a trade association and also registering as New Jersey voters. At the same time, they are collecting data that they hope will enlist legislative candidates throughout the state to their cause.
Kenneth E. Arthur, a 39-year-old pit boss at the Playboy Hotel-Casino, says that membership in the new Association of Atlantic City Casino Workers is nearing 5,000. He expects the total to reach some 18,000 of a potential 29,000 members.
The drive for extended gambling hours has generated considerable encouragement from businessmen throughout Atlantic City. They, too, would remain open 24 hours, according to Mr. Arthur, who is virtually assured of Atlantic County legislative support and is ''looking north.''
The casinos can now remain open 18 hours on weekdays and 20 on weekends and holidays. Governor Byrne accepted those hours as a compromise after pressing for a daily limit of 16 hours a day.
This new effort toward 24-hour gambling, which requires legislative action but not a referendum, has not changed Mr . Byrne's opinion, acco rding to Harold L. Hodes, his chief of staff.
Mr. Hodes not only reiterated that there was ''no way'' the Governor would sign a 24-hour gambling bill, but he also chastised the City Commiss ion of Atlantic City for its recent adoption of a resolution supporting that effort.
''What they should be doing,'' Mr. Hodes said, ''is passing resolutions to undertake the rehabilitation of Convention Hall, which is so badly needed.''
Mr. Arthur apparently is having little difficulty convincing Atlantic County officials and officeseekers to support the concept, although he and State Senator Steven P. Perskie, a Democrat who is seeking re-election, have not yet agreed upon what approaches should be made.
Another Atlantic County Democratic legislator, Assemblyman Michael J. Matthews, also is totally in support of round-the-clock gambling. Like Senator Perskie, Mr. Matthews is seeking re-election.
Former State Senator Joseph L. McGahn, a Republican who was instrumental in the Senate Judiciary Committee's effort to defeat Governor Byrne's 16-hour proposal and attempted unsuccessfully to move a 24-hour bill, says that his stance has not changed. Dr. McGahn (he is an obstetrician) is attempting a political comeback, trying to win the seat that Senator Perskie took from him.
Mr. Arthur said that he planned to meet the legislative candidates individually after the organization of his association was completed. He emphasized that the casino workers would maintain their organization beyond Election Day as an activist group, ''not to become involved in partisan politics, but to work at causes for the protection of the casino industry.''
Benjamin Borowsky, a spokesman for the state's Casino Control Commission and the Governor's press secretary when the casino legislation was enacted, recalled that Mr. Byrne was convinced at the time that 24-hour gambling would ''stamp Atlantic City as a casino town.''
The commission was in favor of shortened hours, Mr. Borowsky said, because it believed that a built-in rest period would be important. ''I do not believe now that there is enough call among legislators to change the hours,'' he said. Senator Perskie said that he had conferred with Mr. Arthur and advised obtaining the service of an accounting firm to undertake a 24-hour gambling feasibility study.
Mr. Perskie said that he would be prepared to support the proposal if the workers could establish with some degree of credibility that the change would result in more job opportunities and contribute toward improved conditions.
Supporters of 24-hour gambling have contended that, should it be sanctioned, vehicular traffic control would be improved and street crime reduced. However, Senator Perskie said that those beliefs were ''so shallow that they are insulting to intelligence, unappealing and unconvincing.''
Mr. Matthews's first attempt to extend the gambling hours was snagged in the State Government Committee, while his second, which would keep the casinos open at least until 6 A.M. in the summer, also failed to advance.
''I would go now for an amendment that would allow 24-hour gambling for the casinos, but only as a management prerogative,'' Senator Matthews said. ''And I would require proof that the extended hours could be handled.
''One need but look at people waiting in long lines for the casinos to open, others sleeping in hotel lobbies and people roaming the streets with nothing else to do to be convinced of the need for longer hours.''
The City Commission resolution supporting 24-hour gambling was approved by a 3-2 vote. Mayor Joseph Lazarow, who voted against it, said he favored instead a resolution that would support 24-hour gambling, but would include a share of the new casino taxes to be generated going to Atlantic City to meet increasing city costs brought about by the casino industry.
Assemblyman William L. Gormley, an Atlantic County Republican who is also running for re-election, said he agreed conceptually with a need for 24-hour gambling.
Mr. Gormley recalled that a commitment had been made by the Committee to Rehabilitate Atlantic City -the organization that promoted casino gambling and conducted the successful 1976 campaign - that there would be no full-time gambling because of its possible ''honkytonk'' effect on the city.
''That must be addressed first of all,'' Mr. Gormley said, ''and we must develop a strong set of social arguments as to why a change now would work, whether it would benefit people at work in the casinos and promote traffic safety and the well-being of the region.''
Casino execu tives have hesitated to enter the discussion at this early stage, but Richard Gillman, board chairman of Bally's Park Place, epitom ized the general feeling when he said there was no evidence at h and that benefits would outweigh additional expense.
''Naturally, if it helped our bottom line, we would be supportive,'' Mr. Gillman said. Mr. Arthur, who was a casino auditor in Las Vegas before coming to Atlantic City, said that overtime casino work , while appearing beneficial on the surface, was taking a ''hor rendous toll.''
He noted that four casino workers had died in automobile accidents caused by their having fallen asleep at the wheel after putting in long hours, and that others have suffered impaired health. The present schedule precludes three shifts and staggers workers among two shifts, according to demand.
''I have received pledges of support from merchants, casino workers, city workers and legislators from other parts of the state,'' Mr. Arthur said. ''I believe we can make this a statewide issue for the Legislature to consider as the will of the people.''
Illustrations: photo of action at roulette wheel at casino | ATLANTIC CITY WITH an eye to the pending departure from office of their unwavering obstacle, Governor Byrne, casino workers here are organizing a drive to introduce 24-hour gambling. In the course of this campaign, these workers are joining together in a trade association and also registering as New Jersey voters. At the same time, they are collecting data that they hope will enlist legislative candidates throughout the state to their cause. Kenneth E. Arthur, a 39-year-old pit boss at the Playboy Hotel-Casino, says that membership in the new Association of Atlantic City Casino Workers is nearing 5,000. He expects the total to reach some 18,000 of a potential 29,000 members. | 10.543307 | 0.984252 | 42.354331 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/06/business/synthetic-fuels-board-selected.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524080300id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/06/business/synthetic-fuels-board-selected.html | Synthetic Fuels Board Selected | 20150524080300 | WASHINGTON, May 5— The Reagan Administration, after a long delay, has picked six men to join Edward E. Noble, the designated chairman, as board members of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, industry and Congressional sources said today.
The six are Victor A. Schroeder, an Atlanta real estate developer; Robert F. Six, chairman of Continental Air Lines Inc.; C. Howard Wilkins Jr. of the Maverick Company; Robert A.G. Monks, head of the Boston Company Inc.; Donald E. Santarelli, a Washington lawyer, and V. M. Thompson Jr., chairman of Utica National Bankshares Inc., a Tulsa-based bank holding company.
A White House official said the board would be announced shortly after the final clearance of one candidate. It was understood the names have been sent to Capitol Hill for informal review.
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation, created under a law signed by President Carter last June, has been without a board since the resignations of five original members were accepted by President Reagan shortly after he took office. The five Carter appointees were never confirmed by the Senate.
The corporation was designed to act as a catalyst in the creation of a major new American synthetic fuels industry, one that could produce the oil equivalent of 500,000 barrels a day by 1987 and 2 million barrels a day by 1982.
Mr. Six, Mr. Monks and Mr. Thompson are reported to be Democrats who presumably will serve one-year, two-year and three-year terms. The terms of the seven are staggered initially so one member's term expires each year. | The Reagan Administration, after a long delay, has picked six men to join Edward E. Noble, the designated chairman, as board members of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, industry and Congressional sources said today. The six are Victor A. Schroeder, an Atlanta real estate developer; Robert F. Six, chairman of Continental Air Lines Inc.; C. Howard Wilkins Jr. of the Maverick Company; Robert A.G. Monks, head of the Boston Company Inc.; Donald E. Santarelli, a Washington lawyer, and V. M. Thompson Jr., chairman of Utica National Bankshares Inc., a Tulsa-based bank holding company. | 2.619469 | 0.99115 | 60.619469 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/07/business/con-ed-backs-rehabilitation.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524080303id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/07/business/con-ed-backs-rehabilitation.html | Con Ed Backs Rehabilitation | 20150524080303 | The Consolidated Edison Company is urging state legislation to establish ''enterprise zones'' to aid redevelopment.
The company cites 71 businesses that it says have taken advantage of discount electric rates for locating or expanding in depressed areas of the South Bronx and Brooklyn.
Robert B. Stevens, assistant vice president, said the concept could include reductions in gross-receipt, property and labor taxes and provide special depreciation credits. Such areas, he said, have underemployed workers, underdeveloped transportation and underutilized utilities. The Con Ed discount plan started July 1. | The Consolidated Edison Company is urging state legislation to establish ''enterprise zones'' to aid redevelopment. | 5.473684 | 1 | 19 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/07/world/chinese-party-s-evaluation-glosses-over-former-soviet-relationship.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524080330id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/07/world/chinese-party-s-evaluation-glosses-over-former-soviet-relationship.html | CHINESE PARTY'S EVALUATION GLOSSES OVER FORMER SOVIET RELATIONSHIP | 20150524080330 | PEKING, July 6— Even though the Russians and the Chinese parted company 21 years ago, the Soviet memory lingers on in China. In train stations, airports, guesthouses, factories and libraries, as well as in the minds of thousands of Soviet-trained Chinese, the Russian language, its designs, its methods and its ideas continue to dot China's landscape.
But in the Chinese Communist Party's recent assessment of its achievements and failures in ruling China since 1949, the influence of the Chinese-Soviet relationship was glossed over in generalities that shed almost no new light on how or why the two Communist giants broke their partnership and became bitter enemies.
There was nothing about the personal feuds between Mao Zedong and Nikita S. Khrushchev, about Moscow's rejecting Peking's pleas for help in building nuclear bombs or other disagreements that historians say led to their estrangement. As a justification for current leadership policies, the assessment left these and other windows covered.
Soviet Canceled Its Aid in 1960
The abrupt cancellation of Soviet economic aid in 1960 and the removal of hundreds of Soviet engineers and technicians were lumped with ''natural calamities'' and domestic political mistakes as reasons for economic disasters between 1959 and 196l. But there was no explanation for the Soviet pullout.
The Chinese assessment, published last week in connection with the party's 60th anniversary, said only that China ''stood up to the pressure of the Soviet leading clique'' during that period and repaid all debts owed to Moscow, elsewhere reported as more than $2 billion for buying arms during the Korean War.
On the ideological rift over what the Chinese consider the Soviet Union's ''revisionism'' after Stalin, the document blamed Moscow for building party arguments into confrontation between the two nations. It said:
''Soviet leaders started a polemic between China and the Soviet Union, and turned the arguments between the parties on matters of principle into a conflict between the two nations, bringing enormous pressure to bear upon China politically, economically and militarily. So we were forced to wage a just struggle against the big-nation chauvinism of the Soviet Union.'' Mao's Attacks on Revisionism
Mao's attacks on Soviet revisionism were one of the contributing circumstances in the Chinese party's ''error'' in broadening the battle against domestic revisionism, which, in turn, helped throw the party into the hands of leftists and bring on the disasters of the Cultural Revolution, the document said.
There was the implication that the father-son relationship between Moscow and Peking evolved into Soviet bullying, which Peking resented and which contributed heavily to their estrangement.
Foreign diplomats who have analyzed the assessment noted that a strong attack now against Soviet revisionism would do little to serve the main purpose of the document, which was to justify the policies of the current Chinese leadership under Deng Ziaoping, the party's senior deputy chairman.
Mr. Deng was twice purged under Mao and his leftist followers for advocating economic development policies they deemed not only revisionist but also pushing China down the capitalist road. The assessment said those attacks were misguided. Soviet Examples Is Assailed
The document praised Mao for making Marxism-Leninism practical for China's revolutionary needs, saying that the Chinese revolution almost dissolved in failure in the 1920's and 1930's because its leaders made Marxism a dogma and deified the Soviet experience and its Comintern resolutions.
The current Peking leadership refers to the Soviet Union as hegemonist, or expansionist. The leaders do not say that hegemonism is what Moscow was up to in the 1950's, when hundreds of Soviet advisers were at work on economic development projects in China.
The Soviet Union now maintains a turtlelike presence in China, with an estimated 500 diplomats and dependents confined behind the walls of a huge compound on the northeastern outskirts of Peking. In contrast, Americans and dependents number fewer than 150. But they are scattered throughout China while the Russians are confined to Peking.
Soviet influence looms. Alongside Marx and Engels in the symbolic heart of Chinese Communism, Tian An Men square in downtown Peking, the portraits of Lenin and Stalin look down on the dwarfed Chinese peasantry, although they do so now only on special occasions such as May Day and last week's anniversary.
China is also one of the few places in the world where one can still buy portraits of Stalin. The Soviet Union is not among the other places. | Even though the Russians and the Chinese parted company 21 years ago, the Soviet memory lingers on in China. In train stations, airports, guesthouses, factories and libraries, as well as in the minds of thousands of Soviet-trained Chinese, the Russian language, its designs, its methods and its ideas continue to dot China's landscape. But in the Chinese Communist Party's recent assessment of its achievements and failures in ruling China since 1949, the influence of the Chinese-Soviet relationship was glossed over in generalities that shed almost no new light on how or why the two Communist giants broke their partnership and became bitter enemies. There was nothing about the personal feuds between Mao Zedong and Nikita S. Khrushchev, about Moscow's rejecting Peking's pleas for help in building nuclear bombs or other disagreements that historians say led to their estrangement. As a justification for current leadership policies, the assessment left these and other windows covered. | 4.694444 | 0.983333 | 47.927778 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/06/style/swimwear-evolution.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20150524080357id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/06/style/swimwear-evolution.html | SWIMWEAR EVOLUTION | 20150524080357 | At this time of year, bookstores are customarily inundated with new books on fashion. Two of the more interesting of the current crop have just been released by the Abbeville Press and are likely not only to please, but also to fascinate, educate and not cost either an arm or a leg.
Entitled ''Shoes in Vogue Since 1910'' and ''Swimwear in Vogue Since 1910,'' the books, by Christina Probert, a former editor at Vogue, draw on material that has appeared in the American, British and French editions of the magazine since 1910.
Each book is 96 pages long, has 40 pages in full color, costs $9.95 and each offers a short course not only in its specific design area, but also in fashion history in general. Most important, though, Miss Probert presents her material in a manner that is at once literate and exciting.
We learn, for example, how shoe design, which flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries, nearly died during Victorian times, with shoes in the late 1800's, writes Miss Probert, ''fulfilling the same function for the feet as corsets did for the body.''
After World War I, the fashion explosion that affected apparel affected shoes. Women became more active, hemlines went up and shoes became both functional and beautiful. In grand sweeps of color and text, Miss Probert takes us through the evolution of shoes to 1959, with the now-famous high-arched shoe with no heel, and up to the return to platforms in the 70's.
The evolution of swimwear has very much paralleled that of shoes, the designs becoming progressively more liberated as women themselves have become so: from suits that totally covered the torso to the amusing panel-front suits of the 40's to today's totally uninhibited creations.
In compiling these books, Miss Probert had rich material to start with, including the cerebral fashion illustrations of Benito and Eric. Miss Probert has filled her books with splashes of art, visual wit and imagination.
Illustrations: photo of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman in 1940 | At this time of year, bookstores are customarily inundated with new books on fashion. Two of the more interesting of the current crop have just been released by the Abbeville Press and are likely not only to please, but also to fascinate, educate and not cost either an arm or a leg. Entitled ''Shoes in Vogue Since 1910'' and ''Swimwear in Vogue Since 1910,'' the books, by Christina Probert, a former editor at Vogue, draw on material that has appeared in the American, British and French editions of the magazine since 1910. | 3.690909 | 0.990909 | 54.118182 | low | high | extractive |
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