In late 1995, Robert Williams, then director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, used his discretionary observing time to aim Hubble at an apparently empty region of deep space. The resulting 342 images were combined into a single jaw-dropping picture amounting to a cosmic bore hole into the depths of space and time.

Stunned astronomers counted more than 1,500 galaxies in an area of the sky about the size of a grain of rice held at arm's length, the most distant of which were shining less than a billion years after the big bang. The original Hubble Deep Field was followed by other, even deeper views, revealing galaxies in the process of forming less than 500 million years after the big bang.

The latest efforts, known as Frontier Fields, are taking Hubble to the limit, using the gravity of entire clusters of galaxies to magnify the light emitted by more distant, much more remote star swarms in the distant background in a bid to fill in at least some of the blanks in the story of galactic evolution.

Along with proving galaxies evolved much more rapidly than previously suspected, the deep field projects also provide a richly detailed history of star formation, "the rate at which the universe as a whole, not individual galaxies, forms new stars," said Livio.

The Hubble deep fields show that by the time the universe was about 500 million years old, "we already had a very high star formation rate, and then that star formation rate reached a peak at about nine, 10 billion years ago," Livio sad. "It's actually been declining ever since."

Summary: Hubble's biggest scientific breakthroughs from 25 years in orbit


06/21/2016 AT 10:30 PM EDT

star Jackie Cruz did not have an easy route to fame

In her late teens, the actress experienced a nearly fatal car accident, which almost ended her dream of becoming an actress and singer.

"The moment waking up from my accident...I just had this face that you would never see in Hollywood and I was like my dream's over," she tells PEOPLE.

Cruz, whose character goes by the nickname of Flaca on the hit Netflix show, also discusses what she learned from the accident and how it changed her perception on life.

"Now I have this, it's just incredible. I appreciate it, I'm more grateful. Like it felt impossible and it actually happened" she says.

"Beauty is not what you look like ... Yeah I'm wearing makeup now because I like to feel pretty, but it was never that it was the talent," she says.

is now streaming on Netflix.

Summary: Jackie Cruz reveals how the car accident has changed her life


Tragedy in Tucson. Six Dead. Democratic congresswoman shot in the head at rally.

Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity.

I have written about violent rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson.

But I also know that potential, possibility and even plausibility are not proof.

The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point but mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad.” And nearly an equal number of people said that Republicans, the Tea Party and Democrats had all “gone too far in using inflammatory language” to criticize their opponents.

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.

Summary: Within hours of the massacre in Arizona last week, there was a rush to link the shooter to the rhetoric of the right.


In this weekend’s article “My Dinner With Longevity Expert Dan Buettner (No Kale Required),” the author of “The Blue Zones Solution” cooked a meal of broccoli soup and Icarian stew (served with a few glasses of red wine) for the writer Jeff Gordinier. Since we can’t all have such a hands-on experience, here’s a round-up of Mr. Buettner’s advice for living a longer life.

Read the whole article here.

1. Drink coffee. “It’s one of the biggest sources of antioxidants in the American diet.”

2. Skip the juicing. “The glycemic index on that is as bad as Coke. For eight ounces, there’s 14 grams of sugar. People get suckered into thinking, ‘Oh, I’m drinking this juice.’ Skip the juicing. Eat the fruit. Or eat the vegetable.”

3. You should also skip the protein shake.

4. Go for long walks.

5. It’s O.K. to drink red wine. “A glass of wine is better than a glass of water with a Mediterranean meal.”

6. High-impact exercise winds up doing as much harm as good. “You can’t be pounding your joints with marathons and pumping iron. You’ll never see me doing CrossFit.” Instead stick to activities like biking, yoga and, yes, walking.

7. Cook mostly vegetarian meals that are heavy on fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, 100 percent whole-grain bread, oatmeal and avocados.

8. Hold the butter. “My view is that butter, lard and other animal fats are a bit like radiation: a dollop a couple of times a week probably isn’t going to hurt you, but we don’t know the safe level.” Use olive oil instead.

9. Eat meat and fish only sparingly.

10. Try to stay away from cow’s milk. Use soy milk instead.

11. There’s no need to avoid carbs if you add freshly baked loaves of bread to a meal. “A true sourdough bread will actually lower the glycemic load of a meal. But it has to be a real sourdough bread.”

12. Eat in good company. It’s not just about what you eat, but how you eat, and how much you and your friends enjoy a meal together: “The secret sauce is the right mix of friends.”

Summary: You don’t have to eat a dinner cooked by Dan Buettner, the author of “The Blue Zones Solution,” to incorporate his advice into your life: a life that will hopefully be longer after reading this.


HOW you see something," said Nigel Parsons, the managing director of Al Jazeera International, "depends very much on where you're sitting."

Stephanie Kuykendal for The New York Times

The newsroom of Al Jazeera International, which is currently under construction, will include a spiral staircase and a fiber-optic network  a far cry from the network's early facility.

William Philpott/Reuters; Mike Clarke/AFP--Getty Images

The emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, top, and Nigel Parsons.

Those words could well serve as the manifesto for the channel, the English-language offspring of the polarizing pan-Arab network, which will make its debut in more than 40 million households in late May.

Addressing hundreds of journalists and academics who had come to Doha, Qatar, for the second Al Jazeera Forum, Mr. Parsons promised that the new channel  with its headquarters there and broadcast centers in Washington, London and Kuala Lumpur  will cover the stories and people that the Western-owned news media overlook. "We're not going to be another CNN, BBC or Sky," he told the attendees on the last day of January. "If we were, there'd be no point." But, he added, "It's not our position to tell viewers what to think."

During a freewheeling question-and-answer session, the audience pressed him for details. With costs already surpassing a billion dollars, Al Jazeera is the most ambitious television network start-up in recent years. Will it be the first network to crack the Western monopoly on delivering news and opinion to a global audience? Will it provide an Arab and Muslim point of view to the rest of the world?

Many at the forum hoped it would. But its top management is British, and its high-profile hires  like the smooth interviewer David Frost and the former "Nightline" correspondent Dave Marash  are hardly representative of the developing world. Will it then, the journalists wanted to know, just be colonialism in more modern garb?

Outside of that crowded conference room, the pressure is just as great. In the Arab world, Al Jazeera has a reputation for tackling the thorny issues. But in the United States, where it is best known for showing tapes of Osama Bin Laden's tirades, one person's fearless reporting can quickly become another's dangerous propaganda. And the more widely it is viewed as a terrorist mouthpiece, the harder a time the channel will have getting a spot on the already-crowded American cable line-ups.

Mr. Parsons understands the need to reassure new viewers in the West without disappointing old ones in the Arab world. "Essentially, it's about getting the balance right," he said.

A little more than five minutes from the 1980's-era opulence of the vast Sheraton on the Doha's corniche  if the traffic-clogged roundabouts thoughtfully bequeathed by the British do not double the commute time  lies the headquarters of the Al Jazeera networks. To describe the exterior as nondescript would be giving the dusty compound of squat buildings and satellite transponders too much credit. But inside, another story unfolds.

The Arabic-channel's new newsroom, which opened last year, is an airy space filled with Aeron chairs, slick flat-screen LG and Samsung monitors and on-air sets whose color scheme (orangey green) morphs through the day. Next door, in a former parking lot, swarms of men in smocks  imported cheap labor from Southeast Asia  hurry to complete the English-language headquarters.

Employees at Al Jazeera International boast of having one of the largest plasma screens of any newsroom in the world. From the newsroom on the first floor, a glass spiral staircase will lead to a mezzanine of open-plan news desks for the Web site and glass-walled offices, a rarity in the Arab world, where executive suites are more often clubby, private affairs. A fiber-optic network will connect Doha to its broadcast centers and other bureaus. There will also be a prayer room, as is customary in Qatari workplaces. Over all, it's a far cry from the tiny newsroom of the channel's early years, the one that prompted the Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak to marvel during a 2000 visit, "All this trouble from a matchbox like this."

Al Jazeera's rapid growth over the last decade is primarily the doing of one man, the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani. Since bloodlessly overthrowing his father in 1995, Sheik Hamad has overseen the vast natural gas reserves of his country, a sandy spit of land about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined that juts out of Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf.

But those reserves will not last forever, so he has used the profits to diversify. He has opened Qatar to the West, turning it into a regional education hub, setting off a building boom and loosening some political restrictions. In 1996, he issued a decree establishing Al Jazeera, and then bankrolled its first five years with a grant of $137 million. He is still footing the bulk of the channel's annual budget.

"He's thinking long-term," said Hugh Miles, the author of "Al Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That is Challenging the West" (Grove Press). In a rough neighborhood, he wants to build "an Arab version of Switzerland  rich, neutral and secure," Mr. Miles said.

Summary: Al Jazeera, the most ambitious television network start-up in recent years, will launch an English-language offspring in late May.


In 1992, the Guggenheim Museum in New York held the inaugural show for its new – and what would turn out to be short-lived – downtown art gallery in SoHo. The opening was memorable not for the art within, but the action outside. To enter the exhibition the great and the good of the New York art world had to pass a picket line of about 500 feminist protesters, many of them carrying banners that read: "Where Is Ana Mendieta?"

That question was directed at the male-dominated art establishment, which feminists claimed had already forgotten Ana Mendieta, who had died seven years earlier. What incensed the protesters even more was the inclusion in the show of a work by her former partner, the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre. To them, as well as to Mendieta's family and many of her friends, Andre was responsible for her death.

In the early hours of 8 September 1985, Mendieta had – to borrow the words Andre had used when he called the emergency services – "somehow gone out the window" of their 34th floor apartment on Manhattan's Mercer Street.

Both had been drinking heavily. Andre later claimed to remember nothing of the events leading up to her death and that she may even have committed suicide, but those that knew her well – and knew of her acute fear of heights – thought this unlikely. Many of them believed he had pushed or even thrown her out of the window during a drunken argument.

"What happened that night, no one will ever know," says the artist Ted Victoria, a close friend of Mendieta who still lives and works in a studio in SoHo close to where she first lived after arriving in New York. "But the notion that she would jump out the window in her underwear – no. She had too much going for her at the time, more so than him. Her work was being noticed. And she wasn't depressed.

"I know because I saw her a few nights before her death. She was up and happy. She hated heights, so she would not have climbed up on the window, which was close to, and just above, the bed in their apartment. My guess is they were fighting and it just happened, this terrible thing."

"Most people thought he had done something active," says Dotty Attie, an artist and friend of Mendieta from when they both belonged to the all-women AIR gallery in New York in the early 1980s. "Others, who knew him, could not believe it. Most of his women friends supported him, but people wanted to blame somebody. There was a lot of division in the New York art world over her death. People took sides."

When the police arrived, they found the couple's bedroom in a mess and Andre with scratch marks on his nose and arms. His initial statements differed from his recorded message to the emergency services. He was arrested and later charged with murder. In court, a doorman testified that he heard a woman screaming "No" several times around 5.30am, and then the thud of her body as it hit the roof of the all-night delicatessen below.

After three separate indictments, Andre was acquitted on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to prove that he had pushed her during a drunken row. Many of her friends remain unconvinced of his innocence. They cite contradictions in his police interviews, and his decision to be tried by a judge rather than a jury – which meant that the evidence was weighed up without him being cross-examined by the prosecution.

"There were too many things that were just not right about the trial," says the feminist writer and academic B Ruby Rich, a friend and staunch supporter of Mendieta, who wrote a long, critical article in the Village Voice newspaper following the failure of the first indictment. "Not least the cynical way in which his lawyers tried to use her art to back up the suggestion that she committed suicide. Many powerful figures in the New York art world colluded in that."

Until recently, the question asked by those feminist protesters might have been amended to "Who is Ana Mendieta?", so unknown was her art outside the rarefied world of feminist art criticism. But, as the recent big show of her work at the Whitney Museum in New York and the imminent retrospective at the Hayward gallery in London attests, Mendieta is undergoing a reappraisal as a pioneering artist whose work, as the Hayward's artistic director, Ralph Rugoff, notes "ranged nomadically across practices associated with body art, land art, performance, sculpture, photography and film".

Cuban-born and American-raised, Mendieta described her work as "earth-body" art. From 1971, when she had her first solo show while an MA student at the University of Iowa, until her death, she created a diverse collection of work that included silhouettes of her body created in mud, earth, rocks, wild flowers and leaves, performance pieces that evoked the folk and occult traditions of her native Cuba as well as her beloved Mexico and subversive self-portraits that played with notions of beauty, belonging and gender. In her performance pieces, where she sometimes used blood "as a very, powerful magical thing", she evoked the power of female sexuality as well as the horror of male sexual violence. In her photographic self-portraits, she pressed her face against glass to distort her features or pictured herself dripping in blood or disguised as a man with glued-on facial hair.

Mendieta's art, like her spirit, was fuelled by a restlessness rooted in her exile from Cuba. Friends described her variously as "sparky", "provocative", "tempestuous", "outspoken" and "fiercely ambitious." After her death, many saw, in her often dark and ritualistic art, a foreshadowing of her fate – she once staged a performance in which visitors came upon her prone under a blood-splattered white sheet. Others claimed her as the freest of female free spirits in a male-dominated art world. The curator and scholar Irit Rogoff, her as "essentialised through an association of wild appetites and with unbounded female sexuality." It is only now that the power of her art is finally taking precedence over the stereotypes that were thrust upon her and the darkly dramatic manner of her death.

Mendieta was born in November 1948, the second of three children to Ignacio and Raquel Mendieta, a well-off, upper-middle-class couple. Her father, a supporter of Fidel Castro, was made an assistant in the post-revolutionary ministry of state in 1959 but, disillusioned with the anti-Catholicism of the new Cuba, later became involved in organising counter-revolutionary activities. As did his two daughters, Ana and Raquelin, aged 12 and 14. Fearing for their safety, he arranged for their passage to America, in 1961 through Operation Pedro Pan, a scheme organised by a priest in Miami that allowed around 14,000 children to leave the country and enter the US under the guardianship of the Catholic church. "For Ana, it was an adventurous thing," her sister Raquelin later remembered, "When we arrived in Miami, she kissed the ground."

Her euphoria was short-lived. After a time in which they were given over to the care of an Iowa reform school, where beatings and confinement were common punishments for the slightest misdemeanour, the sisters were separated and spent several years being shunted from one foster home to another. Ana felt abandoned by her family and isolated from her homeland. She did not see her mother and brother again until 1966, or her father, who was jailed for disloyalty to Castro, until 1979. He died soon after arriving in America.

"You have to understand she came to America with nothing," says Victoria. "That sense of exile was something she carried with her as well as a fierce independence of spirit. She would talk about it sometimes when she'd had a few drinks. I mean, coming from the heat and fire of Cuba to puritan Iowa would leave its mark on anyone and she had that survivor's spirit.

"She was driven in everything she did and that made her feisty and combative as well as great and generous company."

Mendieta began making art at the University of Iowa, where she had a decade-long affair with the artist and academic Hans Breder, perhaps her most important formative influence. It was Breder who drew her attention to the notion of cross-disciplinary practice, citing the likes of Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein and the Viennese actionists as creative touchstones as well as organising visits by contemporary avant garde artists such as Hans Haacke and Vito Acconci.

In the summer of 1971, Mendieta travelled to Mexico for research, describing the experience as "like going back to the source, being able to get some magic just by being there." Her vision – of a unified art of the self, drawing on nature and place as well as performance and sculpture – was being formed. Its first manifestation was also one of the rawest: a series of visceral performances created in response to the 1973 rape and murder of a university student, Sara Ann Otten.

By 1974, Mendieta was working on a series of performances that used blood as the primary material, including Body Tracks, in which she dips her hands and forearms in blood then smears them down a wall. Everything she did was documented on film or photographs, often by Breder.

In the summer of 1975, having returned to Mexico, she created the first of her Siluetas series in which she left an imprint of her body in the ground. Her silhouette pieces became a kind of signature, and were often executed in stones, leaves and twigs, flowers and driftwood, and sometimes set on fire, outlined by fireworks or drenched with red paint. "My art is grounded on the belief in one universal energy which runs though everything," she wrote in an artist's statement from the early 1980s, "from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant, from plant to galaxy."

Rich, though, insists that Mendieta's art is as much rooted in the feminism of the time as any art tradition. "She came out of the feminist movement as much as Cuba. In the 1970s, blood was being reclaimed as a feminine – and a feminist – material in art. Plus her early earth works, particularly those made in Mexico, are very potent because they are made by a woman.

"People place her in the earth works tradition of Robert Smithson or Richard Long, but when a woman engages with the earth it is a very different statement. Her body was her art and she placed it in the ground. In doing so, she was trying to ground herself in the earth but also reconnect with the earth that she was standing on even if it was not Cuba."

Mendieta arrived in New York in 1978. She found a tiny apartment on Sullivan Street and eventually made friends with some of the leading feminist artists of the time, including Nancy Spero, Mary Beth Edelson and Carolee Schneemann. When Edelson organised a fancy-dress party for Louise Bourgeois, Mendieta went as Frida Kahlo. In 1979, also with Edelson's support, she joined the AIR all-women gallery on Wooster Street. "We didn't have a unifying agenda or way of thinking," says Attie, a founding member, "except that we wanted everything that men had in the art world. For most of us, that meant recognition."

It was through Spero that Mendieta met Andre. Their relationship intrigued some of their friends and baffled others: she was feisty and opinionated, small and sexy; he came across as cold and detached, his towering presence as formidable as his intellectual aloofness. "Carl and Ana were very different personalities and that is what attracted them to each other," says the Argentinian artist Liliana Porter, a friend of Mendieta. "Carl was very methodical in his daily life, following routines, and Ana was the opposite. He liked her strong personality, her looks and her intensity and she enjoyed his company and in some way needed a more mature and steady point of re ference."

Creatively, though, their art practices could not have been further apart: hers was wide-ranging, elemental and ritualistic; he was a minimalist whose work was refined and cerebral.(Andre is still best known in Britain for his infamous arrangement of 120 bricks at the Tate.) It is one of the ironies of her early death that her star was in the ascendancy as he was entering a period in which demand for his work fell and prices dipped accordingly. Often, when drink had been taken, she would taunt him about this, once saying, "You know, Carl, minimalism is over… you already did your thing." He would respond in kind.

"They drank a lot," remembers Victoria. "They would arrive around here for dinner with four or five bottles of champagne. There were arguments, mostly started by Ana. She was combative. She could bring out stuff that would really piss you off. That was just how she was when she was drunk. She had loads of attitude."

Attie concurs: "I had dinner with her and Carl in Rome and they both got very drunk. I remember her saying, 'Oh, he likes your work, but he's never bought anything.' It was mischievous and pointed and they went to it arguing. "But I didn't get the feeling he was ever violent. I remember she wanted to drive home and it was he who said no. He had self-control even when he was very drunk. I had a hard time thinking he would push her."

Mendieta moved to Rome in 1983 on a prestigious American Academy residency and fell in love with the city, describing it to friends as a cross between Cuba and New York. "She felt accepted there in a way she never was in America," says Rich. "She could be herself." For a while, her relationship with Andre hit the rocks, then, surprising everyone who knew them, they reunited and married in a private ceremony in Rome in January 1985. On her return to New York in August, though, she told friends she suspected him of having an affair in Berlin, where he had been working off and on.

On Thursday 5 September 1985, the couple had dinner with Spero and her husband, the painter Leon Golub. Spero later described them as "happy and relaxed". Three nights later, they stayed in to have a Chinese takeaway, watch a movie and drink champagne. The following day, she was found dead on the roof of the delicatessen, 33 floors below an open window of their apartment, her body having hit the surface so hard that her head left an imprint. Even her death echoed her art. "Ana was on her way somewhere else creatively when she was killed," says Rich, pointedly. "She was starting to make objects rather than ephemeral works. Stuff she could sell. She was excited and optimistic." Attie recalls meeting her in Rome earlier in the year and feeling the same. "She told me that she was making new work and that she was going to give up drinking and smoking because women artists did not get recognition until they were old. She said that she wanted to live long enough to savour it."

Ana Mendieta: Traces is at the Hayward gallery, London, from Tuesday to 15 December. southbankcentre.co.uk, 0844 875 0073

Summary: The mystery of how Ana Mendieta fell 34 floors from the window of her New York apartment has echoes in the work she left behind, writes Sean O'Hagan


Police say they believe a body found in a dumpster in Santa Cruz, California is 8-year-old Madyson Middleton

07/28/2015 AT 08:05 PM EDT

A 15-year-old boy lured 8-year-old

into his parent's apartment where he murdered her and then tossed her body into a trash container at their apartment complex, a Santa Cruz Police Chief said Tuesday.

"She knew him," police chief Kevin Vogel said during a Tuesday morning press conference. "I think she had a reasonable amount of trust in him. We don't think she was taken against her will."

After the boy placed her body in the trash container he tried to hide it, Vogel said.

"Her body was concealed in a recycle bin in a way that was not obvious or readily apparent," Vogel said. "It is my belief she was killed even before we got the phone call Sunday night."

Vogel said the boy was taken into custody soon after Middleton's body was discovered at 7:55 p.m. Monday. Police became suspicious when they saw him standing near the trash container watching the search.

"We have evidence that ties our suspect directly to Maddy," Vogel said, but he declined to say what the evidence was.

Middleton, a third grade student, was last seen around 5 p.m. Sunday riding her white Razor Scooter around her home at the Tannery Arts Center, an apartment complex and performance venue for low-income artists near the San Lorenzo River. Her mother reported her missing about an hour later. Hundreds of police officers, FBI agents, a helicopter crew, search dogs and volunteers were involved in the frantic search.

Then around 7:50 p.m. Monday night, a Santa Cruz police detective found Middleton's body in the trash container. The boy was taken to police headquarters where he was interviewed. Vogel said he was arrested Tuesday morning and transported to Santa Cruz County's juvenile detention facility.

Vogel said the investigation is still ongoing.

"Our investigation is still in full swing," he said. "This has just been absolutely devastating for me personally and for my staff. My staff was so hopeful that we were going to find her alive. And when the news came last night that she was not alive, it was horrific. It was horrible."

Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeff Rosell said his office is still deciding what charges to file against the boy.

Summary: Madyson Middleton's body was found in a trash bin


The "Hunger Games" star has spent a better part of the year promoting the last movie in the franchise and filming David O. Russell's "Joy," the starlet's third film with the acclaimed writer and director.

It was Lawrence's collaboration with Russell in "Silver Linings Playbook" that earned her an Academy Award for best actress in 2012 and a nomination for best supporting actress in 2013 for "American Hustle," as well as two Golden Globes and a Bafta award—Britain's version of the Oscar.

But Lawrence's empire isn't all about film. Last December she found her way onto the Billboard 100 for her rendition of "The Hanging Tree" from the "Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1". Debuting at number 12 on the chart, the song had sold over 1.1 million digital copies as of January 2015, according to Billboard.

Lawrence was recently named the face of Dior's new Addict Lipstick, having clinched a three-year contract extension with the luxury group last year reportedly to the tune of $15 million.

The starlet has also launched her own charity, the Lawrence Foundation, which says it supports the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, West End School, St. Mary's Center, Hadley Mercer and the Special Olympics.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled David O. Russell's name.

Summary: "The Hunger Games" star Jennifer Lawrence is breaking Hollywood's mold as one of the highest paid actress in the industry.


Perez told CNBC there's "too many people who haven't got a raise in years and there's too many people working 50 hours a week and getting their food at the food pantry." Along those lines, about 46 million Americans receive more than $80 billion in food benefits, and Census Bureau data shows that the number of children receiving food stamps is higher than before the start of the Great Recession in 2007.

When asked what areas the new jobs are coming from, Perez told CNBC the "health-care sector continues to be a robust area of opportunity." He also mentioned the Department of Labor has seen "the most growth in the last year has been in business and professional services, which by-and-large are very good, middle-class jobs."

CNBC asked Perez about the impact of workers moving into the "gig economy," where workers are independent contractors instead of employees. For example, ride-sharing service Uber has hired 160,000 drivers in the U.S. However, Perez denounced the "false choices" he says the sector offers workers.

"I hear some people who say that, well, we either innovate or we regulate and the best way to help build the 'Ubers' of the world is to make sure that there's no regulation," he said. "That's just flat wrong. That's a false choice."

Perez pointed to Instacart, a grocery delivery start-up with 7,000 workers in 16 cities. Instacart recently reclassified some workers as employees. The company "recognize(s) if you want to build long-term growth, you've got to make sure you take care of your workers," he said.

Perez added: "I see workers and businesses alike coming together, understanding that when more people have more, we're a stronger nation."

—"On the Money" airs on CNBC Sundays at 7:30 p.m., or check listings for air times in local markets.

Summary: U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez cited the "resilience" of workers and economic growth, but also saw "unfinished business."


As a matter of fact, wealth inequality is a healthy and necessary component of a growing economy. An economy that has no wealth inequality will, most certainly, stagnate and die leaving widespread poverty behind. We want and need the right amount of wealth inequality to fuel the creative ambition that leads people to seek a better financial future.

Read MoreBillionaire luxury chief says wealth gap is 'unfair'

What these politicians mean to say is "exaggerated wealth inequality." It may seem like a subtle difference, but it isn't. If a body doesn't get enough water in a couple of days, it will die. If a body gets too much water in a couple of minutes, it will die. This same relationship is true of most things, yet it is often overlooked. For instance, there is a commonly held belief that drinking alcohol is bad. It's just not true. Alcohol is good. Excessive alcohol is bad, but unfortunately that's not the message that most people hear. Those of us whose job depends on paying close attention to Federal Reserve policy have noticed growing evidence that the economy may have been overserved its low rate policy.

Long-term easy money has clearly boosted the assets that the wealthy hold, like stocks and property, while also raising the costs of things that eat up disposable incomes of the middle class, like food and energy. Low rates have also discouraged saving and encouraged risk-taking. When you extend this effect over many years, the economy has a way of sorting out the winners and losers and placing them at separate ends of the wealth spectrum. Low-rate policy, at its core, was meant to be a short-term economic kick to take the edge off of recessions. The last couple of decades it's been used as a constant counterbalance against the headwinds of fiscal policies that limit growth.

Read MoreRubio's money problems: An asset?

There was a recent paper published by Philadelphia Fed economist Makoto Nakijima, in which he suggests that years of accommodative Fed policy may have exacerbated wealth inequality. Here's the part that makes me a crazy: The Fed's words make it seem like their involvement — maybe, just maybe — made a growing problem a tiny little bit worse. Nothing to really blame them for, of course, because it was just a little bit more. The problem is that their part in this process is the very thing that moved the needle from healthy levels of wealth inequality to a toxic corrosive level that's accompanied by a potential to polarize a society.

This is not a small deal. History shows us that exaggerated wealth inequality has the potential to derail successful societies. To put it more plainly, the Fed's 10-percent addition to the situation may easily be the thing that created 100 percent of the problem. It's like this: I know that I can have about four beers in an evening and have a great night with friends and be perfectly fine the next day. I also know that if I have just one or two more, then an otherwise productive Sunday morphs into watching golf on the couch. I often make the wrong decision but it always seems reasonable at the time. I mean, what could one little beer hurt?

Read MoreIs China falling out of love with luxury?

Commentary by Jim Iuorio, managing director at TJM Institutional Services. Iuorio is a veteran of financial markets, where he has traded and provided analysis for large institutional clients for nearly 30 years. Much of his focus has been on rate policy and its effects on equities, commodities and U.S. Treasurys. Follow him on Twitter @jimiuorio.

Summary: Here's what all of the presidential candidates are getting wrong about wealth inequality, says trader Jim Iuorio.


Jonathan Miller, of Miller Samuel, which contributed to the study, said that he expects the price gains in New York's high-end market to continue at least for the near term.

"With chronically low inventory levels, unyielding interest from foreign investors and an improving economy, I fully expect additional price increases over the next six quarters," he said.

Read MoreFor $99,000 a week, this London rental is yours

London's outlook is a little less bright, due to the huge and unsustainable run-up in prices over the past few years. The report expects prices to grow only around 2 percent or 3 percent this year and to be flat in 2015.

"Prices in London are high by historical standards, and there is less scope for strong growth over the next few years," said Tom Bill, head of London residential research at Knight Frank.

That slower growth may be one reason why New York expected to surpass London in the coming years as the favorite city of the rich. According to Knight Frank's survey, New York will be the top city among the global wealthy by 2024, displacing London as the current leader.

Summary: London and New York may be the favorite two cities of the global wealthy. But when it comes to investment returns since 2010, Dubai was your best bet.


Mayors love buildings. They love the opportunities to pose in hard hats, to make their mark on their cities, to leave permanent monuments of their reigns and to demonstrate in the most tangible possible way that Something Is Being Done. Mayors have also been known to use large contracts and profitable planning consents to return favours to their supporters in construction and development and, in some disreputable cases, to take kickbacks themselves.

London mayors have more reasons than most to like planning, architecture and design, as these are areas within their relatively limited range of powers where they have some influence. They oversee the London plan, which guides the future development of the city, and have the power to approve or refuse significant planning applications. They have budgets that can be spent on the city's public spaces.

Ken Livingstone, in his last incarnation as London mayor, pursued a policy of unstoppable growth, based on his belief, since discarded, in the permanent revolution of financial services. Nothing should stand in the way of developers erecting buildings that would serve the banks that would make the money, a portion of which could then be extracted to pay for the affordable housing that was made more necessary by the high property prices caused by the boom in financial services.

He adopted Richard Rogers's idea of the "compact city", that it was good to densify and intensify the centre of London, rather than let it sprawl horizontally into the green belt. The results of his dash for growth, combined with the compact city, were a series of towers pushed through the planning system with Livingstone's support: some, such as the Shard, are now being completed; some are poking their concrete lift cores into the air; some remain computer-generated images awaiting the funds to be turned into reality. Livingstone also pursued, with partial success, a policy of creating "100 public spaces", based on Barcelona's renewal of its streets and squares.

Then came Boris Johnson, who has shown himself as much in love with grand gestures as anyone, although with limited funds to achieve them. He has therefore thrown himself behind the London River Park, a privately financed plan for a series of pontoons floating in the Thames that, while they will have some benches and green stuff here and there, will also have extensive corporate hospitality areas to pay for the project. He backed the Emirates Air Line, a cable car that may or may not be functioning in time for the Olympics, in return for sponsorship which means that the airline will get its name on the tube map. He has slathered the streets with blue cycle lanes, a colour by happy coincidence close to the branding of the sponsor of Boris bikes, Barclays Bank.

He has promoted the Orbit, the 115m-high sculpture by Anish Kapoor next to the Olympic stadium, which reportedly arose from a chat between Boris and its sponsor, Lakshmi Mittal, in the gents' at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And, indeed, unless there is some so far hidden genius to this structure, which will reveal itself once the public is allowed to explore it, it currently looks to me very much like a lot of steel and money pissed into the sky, to no great purpose except the vanity of those involved. Johnson has presented images of the Eiffel Tower visible above Parisian apartment blocks and sincerely seems to believe that the Orbit will be no less impressive seen from the future residential developments on the Olympic site. I doubt it.

He has also backed the revival of the Routemaster bus, with the admirable intention of bringing back a bit of dignity and civility to public transport. These handsome if over-styled objects certainly lift the spirits in rare sightings along the 38 route – there are eight currently in operation – but until they become the standard rather than the exception they will remain in the category of rhetorical flourish.

But if Johnson's monuments suffer from the columnist's love of making a splash, his mayoralty has been more impressive when it comes to things that are barely visible, or about taking stuff away rather than adding it. Recently, without much discussion or brouhaha, railings and barriers disappeared from London's major roads, as part of a programme of "decluttering". The theory is that if pedestrians and cars are less nannied by safety features, they will take greater responsibility for their own actions and behave more safely, with the added benefit that the streets look much better.

The experience of High Street Kensington, which was decluttered some years ago, suggests that it works. No one yet knows for sure if the changes to London's other roads will save lives or cause carnage of Charge of the Light Brigade proportions, and if it's the latter it will come to seem like a very bad idea. Assuming it does not, decluttering represents a significant change in attitude to city streets – they are seen more as places to inhabit than as machines for channelling the movement of people and cars.

Slightly more visible are the removal of the gyratory systems at Piccadilly Circus and elsewhere, and the X-shaped pedestrian crossing at Oxford Circus, devices that rebalance the relationship of pedestrians to vehicles in favour of the former. There is also the remaking of Exhibition Road, an impressive if partly compromised attempt to realise the concept of a "shared surface", where people coexist with cars, on a large scale.

Johnson's officers have been trying to direct limited funds towards reviving London's more obscure zones. There are officially 600 high streets in the capital, and Johnson has available £250m or so to spend on improving them, which works out at less than half a million per high street, which isn't very much. The idea, therefore, is to do a lot with a little, to connect better the suburb of Rainham, for example, with its beautiful marshes; to put up a new sign on the library on Ponders End; to make a street market work better; to spruce up the lesser-known parks. It is arguably the closest any Tory politician has come to realising the fast fading idea of the Big Society.

It's not all that much, but it is in principle an intelligent use of scarce resources and is more effective than a grand plan of Livingstone's for an area called Barking Riverside. This would have used up more than twice the budget at Johnson's disposal for the whole of London on the infrastructure necessary to make it work. Meanwhile Johnson has also introduced minimum standards of space for new homes, including such things as balconies that are large enough to have some use. Developers predicted that this interference with their right to design very mean homes would make house building altogether impossible, but it has not turned out to be the case. Whatever the problems currently afflicting the construction industry, this has turned out to be the least of them.

As for skyscrapers, the recession has reduced the number of controversial proposals landing on Johnson's desk, although he did turn down a ridiculous plan for a huge glass funnel next to Battersea Power Station. On this occasion he resisted the temptation to identify himself with a pointless spike.

This, then, is Borisopolis: a combination of show-off whatsits and fairly sensible stuff. When it comes to public space there is not a fundamental difference between Labour and Tory, Livingstone and Johnson. Both think it's a Good Thing and both have an idea of a city that favours pedestrians and cyclists more than it did before. Johnson and his administration do however deserve credit for getting some things done that make London, in a modest way, a better place to live.

Summary: The Emirates Air Line cable car, new Routemasters, decluttered streets, the Olympic Orbit sculpture… after four years of Boris Johnson as mayor, London is a mixture of vanity projects and a few good ideas, writes Rowan Moore


UCLA linebacker Myles Jack, who tore his meniscus in September, runs through a drill at his pro day March 15.

UCLA linebacker Myles Jack, who tore his meniscus in September, runs through a drill at his pro day March 15.

Baalke’s drafting of injured players has hurt 49ers

There was a time - not so long ago - when 49ers general manager Trent Baalke had an enviable problem.

His issue: Too many talented players and too many draft picks.

That is, from 2013-14 the 49ers had a loaded roster and 24 draft picks, meaning many of those rookies had zero chance to make the team.

This dilemma gave rise to Baalke’s draft-and-stash strategy in which he selected players rehabbing from serious knee injuries. Those players would spend a “redshirt” rookie season on injury lists, where they didn’t count against the 53-man roster, and would be fully recovered and ready to contribute a year later.

It was a strategy few teams could afford to adopt because they needed their draft picks to contribute immediately. The 49ers, however, could grab injured prospects at least a round later than they would have been selected if healthy and start reaping the rewards a year later.

Consider: From 2013-14, Baalke used five of his 23 picks on players coming off significant knee injuries, spending second-, third-, fourth-, fifth- and seventh-round selections on those rehabbing prospects. Last year, two of those players (RB Marcus Lattimore and FB Trey Millard) weren’t in the NFL and the remaining three (DL Tank Carradine, G Brandon Thomas and CB Keith Reaser) played an average of 103 snaps for the 49ers.

In 2015, despite the wave of offseason exits that gutted the roster, Baalke used a fourth-round pick on wide receiver DeAndre Smelter, who didn’t play last year because of a torn ACL he sustained in college.

In 2016, the 49ers have 12 draft picks, but are coming off a 5-11 season and have a roster littered with holes. Will Baalke ditch his draft-and-stash strategy, at least for this year?

“There’s no competitive advantage to me really sharing my thoughts on what we’re doing to do with injured players,” Baalke said at the NFL combine. “We’re going to value them the way we’ve always valued them. We’re going to value them as they’re healthy and determine what the level of risk is. And whether we’re willing to take that risk on or not will depend on the player individually, not as a whole. So I’m not going to pigeonhole our organization and say that we wouldn’t take a guy coming off of an injury.”

There are, of course, two prominent linebackers coming off serious knee injuries in this year’s draft: UCLA’s Myles Jack and Notre Dame’s Jaylon Smith.

On March 15, Baalke attended UCLA’s pro day to get a look at Jack, who sustained a torn meniscus in practice in September. Despite his injury, Jack, who is not expected to run a 40-yard dash before the draft, is such an elite talent that he could be off the board when the 49ers select at No. 7.

His situation evokes memories of Rams running back Todd Gurley, whose college career ended in November 2014 because of a torn ACL. Still, Gurley was selected No. 10 overall in 2015, rushed for 1,106 yards and was named the Offensive Rookie of the Year despite missing the first three games.

Meanwhile, Smith, once viewed as a potential No. 1 overall pick, is expected to slide out of the first round after he sustained a torn ACL and LCL on Jan. 1. Concerns about possible nerve damage have reportedly caused multiple teams to take Smith off their draft board.

At the combine, Baalke said his track record with injured players wouldn’t necessarily deter him this year.

“Every injury’s different,” Baalke said. “Just because you say a knee injury - there’s different levels of severity. There’s different challenges they face. Not everybody reacts to injury the same way psychologically or physically. So there’s always risk. When you take an injured player, you’re rolling the dice.”

Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ebranch@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @Eric_Branch

Summary: From 2013-14, Baalke used five of his 23 picks on players coming off significant knee injuries, spending second-, third-, fourth-, fifth- and seventh-round selections on those rehabbing prospects.  Last year, two of those players (RB Marcus Lattimore and FB Trey Millard) weren’t in the NFL and the remaining three (DL Tank Carradine, G Brandon Thomas and CB Keith Reaser) played an average of 103 snaps for the 49ers.  In 2015, despite the wave of offseason exits that gutted the roster, Baalke used a fourth-round pick on wide receiver DeAndre Smelter, who didn’t play last year because of a torn ACL he sustained in college.  “There’s no competitive advantage to me really sharing my thoughts on what we’re doing to do with injured players,” Baalke said at the NFL combine.  There are, of course, two prominent linebackers coming off serious knee injuries in this year’s draft: UCLA’s Myles Jack and Notre Dame’s Jaylon Smith.  On March 15, Baalke attended UCLA’s pro day to get a look at Jack, who sustained a torn meniscus in practice in September.  [...] Gurley was selected No. 10 overall in 2015, rushed for 1,106 yards and was named the Offensive Rookie of the Year despite missing the first three games.  [...] Smith, once viewed as a potential No. 1 overall pick, is expected to slide out of the first round after he sustained a torn ACL and LCL on Jan. 1.  Concerns about possible nerve damage have reportedly caused multiple teams to take Smith off their draft board.


Andrew Shapiro watched his father fight colon cancer for five years. But his dad can only do so much. Andrew decided to make his dent in battling cancer.

During a Relay for Life event in Fairfax County, Virginia, Shapiro set three world records in pull-ups. The 17-year-old high school junior spent seven months training for his challenge, pushed by his father's diagnosis and his American Ninja Warrior fandom.

According to The Washington Post, Shapiro started his Saturday at 8 a.m. He set the six-hour pull-up record when he clocked 3,515 pull-ups. At 12 hours, he set a record with 5,742 pull-ups. Shapiro's bid for the 24-hour record was completed and halted when he finished 7,306 pull-ups in 18 hours. The previous day-long record was 6,800, set by Jan Kares of the Czech Republic in 2015.

The Shapiro family set up three video cameras and 15 judges were present to certify the achievement for the Guinness World Records. Shapiro also raised $4,000 for the American Cancer Society.

Shapiro plans on applying to go on American Ninja Warrior when he turns 21 and becomes eligible.

Per Shapiro's mother, Stephanie, his father is now cancer free and in remission.

More Good Sports: -- 'Ice Bucket Challenge' Inventor Gets Jersey Retired At Boston College -- Bryce Harper Has Spontaneous Act Of Kindness For Chicago Homeless Woman -- College Softball Player With Torn ACL Ends Career With Base Hit

american ninja warriors, andrew shapiro, Cancer, Fitness, Guinness Book Of World Records, Guinness World Record, pull-ups, Teenager

Summary: A teen just set the record for pull-ups in a day thanks to his father's inspiring fight with cancer.


GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump was livid at ABC's "The View" on Twitter after its panel of hosts, namely Whoopi Goldberg, slammed retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson for supporting him.

".@TheView T.V. show, which is failing so badly that it will soon be taken off [the] air, is constantly asking me to go on," he tweeted.

He went on to tweet that the show became a "total disaster" after Barbara Walters left and that ABC was wasting people's time.

SEE ALSO: Donald Trump viewed more unfavorably than Congress, GOP

Trump also promoted another tweet that called all of the panelists "brain-dead puppets."

The flurry of tweets followed up Carson's interview on the program earlier in the day. Goldberg and the other panelists chastised Carson, a former Republican presidential candidate, for supporting a "racist" like Trump in the GOP primary.

"You have aligned yourself with a man who has bashed women, made countless racist remarks, and you're Ben Carson," Goldberg said. "Why would you align yourself with that?"

RELATED: 20 celebrities who endorse Trump

Donald Trump fumes at 'The View' after panel fries Ben Carson for supporting him

Kid Rock showed his support for the presidential hopeful in an interview with Rolling Stone, saying he's "digging Trump." He also added, "Let the motherf---ing business guy run it like a f---ing business. And his campaign has been entertaining as shit."

The former heavyweight champion announced that he would endorse Trump while appearing on HuffPost Live back in October of 2015. "He should be president of the United States," Tyson said.

As for what Trump has said about immigration, Tyson said the words were "crude" and someone could work with him on the delivery of his message.

Baldwin, who was fired by Trump on two different seasons of "The Celebrity Apprentice," said during an interview with Don Lemon on an episode of "CNN Tonight" that Trump would make a "great" president "because he's not a politician, and he doesn't care what anybody thinks."

The actor endorsed Trump back in 2011, even after being fired from season four of "The Celebrity Apprentice," and offered his praise for the presidential hopeful again recently. "He's a great guy. He's sharp. He's fast," he told Fox411. "He can change the country after the last eight years."

The retired pro-basketball player tweeted: "@realDonaldTrump has been a great friend for many years. We don't need another politician, we need a businessman like Mr. Trump! Trump 2016." He was fired from season two of "The Celebrity Apprentice."

When asked by TMZ for his thoughts on Trump, the actor and former bodybuilder said, "I hope Donald goes all the way." He was also fired from a season of "The Celebrity Apprentice."

TMZ asked Hogan which 2016 Republican presidential candidate he would want to face in the ring, but instead of answering the question, he said he'd want to be Trump's running mate.

The musician wrote an article for WorldNetDaily in which he said, "[Trump] should be given the Medal of Freedom for speaking his mind in such a bold, honest, and straightforward manner."

The model and reality star posted a video on YouTube expressing her support for Trump.

The Las Vegas entertainer announced his support on "Fox and Friends," “I love Donald, and he would make a great president,” he said. But he also voiced his support for other hopefuls, such as Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, and Ben Carson.

The businessman and star of A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” supported Trump at a rally in Oklahoma last year, where he was invited up on stage. He officially announced his endorsement in January.

The former pro wrestler, former Minnesota governor, and actor was speaking with previous Trump staffer Roger Stone for "Off the Grid," when Ventura said, "I shocked my staff today. I came in and said, ‘You know what, as far as the Republicans are concerned, I hope Trump wins.'" Though he also added, "Now I’m not a Republican — I’m not a Democrat either — so ultimately, I’d like somebody else to win overall.”

After initially calling Trump a "shame pile of idiocy" in a tweet, Sheen had a change of heart a month later and tweeted that he'd be Trump's "VP in a heartbeat!"

The socialite held a luncheon in support of her ex-husband.

The retired NFL coach said of Trump, "I think that he has the fire in his belly to make America great again and probably do it the right way," in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.

The retired NFL wide receiver told TMZ Sports, "This may be what the country needs and Trump... He’s a guy who won’t put up with B.S. and has what it takes to change how government is run." He appeared on the most recent season of "The Celebrity Apprentice."

James, a TV personality and founder of West Coast Choppers, posted a lengthy Facebook message in January supporting his former "Celebrity Apprentice" boss. He said:

"Ive met a lot of people in life and I have found it best to form opinions about them by actually meeting them in person. ... What I personally observed is a man that is perfect suited to run this country. ... One thing you know about me is Good or bad I will always tell it like it is. This guy is the Real Deal, and will Make America Great Again."

But Carson said looked at both the "good and the bad" of Trump's candidacy. He said there was no perfect candidate running and pointed out that the real-estate mogul owned an inclusive resort in southern Florida.

"You look at when Donald Trump first went down to the Palm Beach area and a lot of the clubs down there would not accept Jews and blacks," he said. "He insisted on Jews and blacks and he helped to break that open."

Carson continued: "Has he said some things that I wouldn't say or you wouldn't say? Of course."

But Goldberg wasn't satisfied with his answer.

"You can say that till the cows come home. But this guy, I'm sorry, he's a racist and he's not good for the country," she said. "You're Ben Carson, you're so much better than this," Goldberg added.

SEE ALSO: GOP voters want for a new candidate to run for president -- but who?

Another panelist, Joy Behar then jumped in. She asked how Carson could support Trump after the GOP frontrunner infamously compared Carson's temperament to that of a "child molester." However, Carson didn't budge.

"If it was about me, I'd be offended. But it's about America and we have to save this nation," he said. "Tell me a politician who doesn't tell lies?"

Trump, who appeared on "The View" last September, previously fumed about Goldberg and Behar. In January, he said: "Whoopi Goldberg is terrible. Very sad!"

Watch more from the interview:

Summary: The GOP front-runner went on to tweet that the show became a


Ever since Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that he and wife Priscilla Chan will give away 99% of their Facebook shares, there has been all types of analysis and commentary. A lot of it has been laudatory. Some has been critical, with particular emphasis on how the “Chan Zuckerberg Initiative” will be structured in a way that could reduce the couple’s tax bill (something Zuckerberg yesterday fought back against).

But almost every story and blog post used the same dollar figure for what that 99% equaled: $45 billion.

To be fair, that’s the number Zuckerberg included in his original announcement. But he also qualified it with the word “currently.” As in, those Facebook FB shares were worth around $45 billion at the time of his blog post.

As of last check, Zuckerberg holds 426,252,091 of Facebook stock. At market open on Tuesday, they were worth $44.68 billion. At market close that very same day, they were valued nearly $1 billion higher. One year earlier, they were valued just below $32.9 billion. Two years earlier they were worth $20 billion.

Zuckerberg is just 31 years old. Chan is 30. The plan to to donate/invest/etc. the shares over the course of their lifetimes — which should mean at least 40 more years. Just assuming very modest stock price appreciation, the $45 billion figure would be the low-water mark. Moreover, the plan is to recommit any investment proceeds, thus only further expanding the pot.

So feel free to think whatever positive or negative thoughts you want about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. But don’t think that it’s only worth $45 billion.

Summary: So, about that $45 billion...


Tesla’s fast chargers can add about 170 miles worth of electricity to its cars’ batteries in about 30 minutes. If an Israeli startup achieves its goal, electric cars could travel hundreds of miles after only five minutes of charging.

On Wednesday three-year-old startup StoreDot, said that it’s raised $18 million in funding from the investing arm of Korean electronics giant Samsung and Russian investor Roman Abramovich. The company, which has raised $66 million in total, plans to spend the latest investment on getting its fast-charging battery into electric cars.

Many companies are focused on various ways to boost the range of the batteries used to power electric cars. Some companies like Tesla and Panasonic are focused on making lower cost batteries that can store more energy in a single charge. Others, like the now defunct Israeli startup Better Place, have tried to build stations that use a robotic arm to quickly remove empty batteries from cars and replace them with charged ones. Still others are building out networks of electric car chargers in shopping centers and office parking lots that drivers can use to refill cars when necessary.

Whatever technology can help make electric cars more competitive with, or even superior to, gasoline-powered cars could be a significant and valuable innovation. Batteries, the most expensive part of an electric car, can offer up to 265 miles on a single charge. Using a standard charger, those best-in-class batteries take several hours to fully charge. With a much more expensive fast charger, called a DC charger, those batteries can still take over 30 minutes to top off.

Concerns over slow and inconvenient charging is partly to blame for the limited adoption of electric cars. Americans bought only 118,000 electric cars last year compared to 16.5 million new vehicles of all types sold last year.

StoreDot, founded in 2012, is working on a rather unusual way to try to tackle this battery problem. It’s developed a brand new type of lithium-ion battery that it says can be fully charged in just a few minutes. In theory that would make filling up an electric car as fast and convenient as filling up with gas at a service station.

The company, and its team of scientists, have used nanotechnology to make new organic materials that make up a battery that can be charged and discharged more rapidly than standard lithium-ion batteries. The company has 50 employees, including 20 researchers with PhD’s.

One problem with a standard lithium-ion battery is that there are various elements — due to both the materials used and the design of the battery — that block the flow of the current inside the battery and make it more difficult to deliver spikes of power. This is called a battery’s internal “resistance.”

StoreDot has optimized its battery to have as low a resistance as possible. Working at the tiny molecular level, StoreDot has used its new materials to make very thin battery electrodes, which is the part of the battery that charges and discharges. The thin electrode layers — so thin they’re “almost transparent” says StoreDot CEO Doron Myersdorf — help reduce the resistance, and the current can rapidly flow through the battery within minutes.

The startup is now testing its batteries in cell phones and with a handful of big cellphone makers. Myersdorf says he expects to sign a commercial deal with a cell phone maker within “a couple of quarters,” and get the company’s batteries into the consumer cell phones sometime next year.

For electric cars, though, it will take much longer. StoreDot is using the funding to create a division to focus on retooling its cell phone batteries for electric cars. Even if everything goes well, StoreDot’s batteries wouldn’t be ready for commercial electric cars for at least another five years.

But as any battery startup can attest, many things can wrong between now and then. It’s very difficult to move battery tech from the lab into the commercial marketplace, and it’s still unclear whether carmakers would be interested in its yet-to-be-developed battery alternative.

Other startups that are working on new types of electric car batteries include Sakti3, QuantumScape, Seeo, XG Sciences, Envia Systems and SolidEnergy Systems. According to research firm Lux Research, Panasonic holds 39% of the marketshare for batteries for electric cars, while LG Chem and Samsung SDI are also big players.

For more about batteries, watch this Fortune video:

Summary: An Israeli startup is planning on bringing its fast charging batteries to electric cars.


The Democrats who ran Congress in President Clinton's first two years routinely massacred good environmental legislation. They defied Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's efforts to reform grazing and mining laws. They blocked efforts to rewrite demonstrably bad law like Superfund, the toxic-waste cleanup program.

Could things get worse? Under Newt Gingrich, they already are. The Democrats never set out to destroy 25 years of legislative history aimed at making America's air breathable and America's waters drinkable, swimmable and fishable. But that is what the House Republicans seem bent on doing -- not by flat-out repealing basic laws but by making it almost impossible to put them into effect.

Mr. Gingrich's strategy -- seductively called "regulatory reform" -- has several components. One is already a done deal. By wide margins, the House and Senate have passed bills that would make it harder for Congress to approve unfunded mandates -- costly new regulatory obligations imposed on states and cities without the Federal dollars to pay for them. That means Congress will not be able to order state and municipal governments to stop polluting waterways with sewage or chemicals unless Congress underwrites the cost.

The downside is obvious. Congress may decide not to come up with the money -- which means that "unfunded" state and local governments would be free to pollute. Although the dangers are clear, some environmental advocates have resigned themselves to the bill. Their hope is that if Congress wants to solve a problem, Congress will provide the dollars. Mr. Clinton intends to sign the bill.

A greater threat is item two on Mr. Gingrich's list. A bill now before the House would subject all old and new Government regulations dealing with health, public safety and the environment to a new system of risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis and peer review. On their face, these are worthy ideas. Washington has produced more than one costly regulatory nightmare.

But Mr. Gingrich's approach -- embodied in a bill called H.R. 9 -- converts these useful concepts into a recipe for paralysis. The bill would require agencies to endure a cumbersome 23-step review consisting of layers of "expert" panels, some of which would include individuals or companies with a stake in the outcome. Even if an agency survived that process and issued a rule, private parties could challenge in court the science used to justify it.

Set aside for the moment that some risks are not easily quantifiable and that it is hard to attach a dollar figure to the benefits of cleaner air or water. The real problem with the Gingrich approach is that it could bring the regulatory process to a halt. It is one thing to relieve businesses of excessive regulatory burdens; it is another to undermine an overwhelming public interest in a cleaner environment.

It will be up to the Senate to stop this scheme. Bad regulations and laws can be revised on a case-by-case basis. But to strangle all rule-making, which is what Mr. Gingrich has in mind, is to subvert the democratic processes that have dramatically improved America's environment in the last few decades.


Nearly 15 years after the horrific events of 9/11, President Obama must decide whether to release 28 pages of information withheld as classified from the publicly released report of the congressional inquiry into the terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans.

On April 10, the CBS program “60 Minutes” aired a story about the missing 28 pages. I was one of several former public officials — including former House Intelligence Committee Chairman and CIA Director Porter Goss, Medal of Honor recipient and former Sen. Bob Kerrey, former Navy Secretary John Lehman and former ambassador and Rep. Tim Roemer — who called on the White House to declassify and release the documents.

Two days after that broadcast, I received a call from a White House staff member who told me that the president would make a decision about the 28 pages no later than June. While that official made no promises as to what Obama would do, I viewed the news as a step in the right direction.

My optimism about the administration’s action on this critical issue was short-lived. On May 1, when CIA Director John Brennan appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” I watched with astonishment as he argued that the 28 pages should not be released because the American people are incapable of accurately evaluating them.

When asked to make the case against releasing the information, Brennan replied, “I think some people may seize upon that uncorroborated, unvetted information that was in there that was basically just a collation of this information that came out of FBI files, and to point to Saudi involvement, which I think would be very, very inaccurate.”

With all due respect, that argument is an affront not only to the American public in general but also to all those who lost family members, loved ones and friends on that fateful September day in 2001. Americans are fully capable of reviewing the 28 pages and making up their own minds about their significance.

As co-chair of the Joint Inquiry Into the Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I have read the 28 pages. My oath of confidentiality forbids me from discussing the specifics of that material. But while I cannot reveal those details, I strongly believe the American people deserve to know why this issue is so important. All of the references below are from the declassified, public version of the Joint Inquiry’s final report.

For the first time in more than 200 years, Congress merged two standing committees from different houses of Congress. The first order we gave was for the intelligence agencies to preserve any information that might be useful in understanding what happened before, on and after 9/11.

While reviewing these files, our experienced staff found documents that raised concerns about the possible involvement of foreign individuals and foreign sources of support for the hijackers. On Oct. 10, 2002, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller testified, “I think the staff probed and, as a result of the probing, some facts came to light here and to me, frankly, that had not come to light before, and perhaps would not have come to light had the staff not probed.”

The fruit of that probing constitutes the bulk of the material that remains classified. Our final Joint Inquiry Report, released in July 2003 minus the missing 28 pages, reprimanded the agencies for a lack of attention to and action on information in their own files. This data included “information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States.”

At the time, “neither CIA nor FBI officials were able to address definitively the extent of such support for the hijackers.” Given the magnitude of the risk to national security, the Joint Inquiry found that gap in intelligence coverage “unacceptable” and referred the information summarized in the 28 pages to the FBI and CIA for investigation “as aggressively and as quickly as possible.” The release of the 28 pages would allow the American people to evaluate important questions, such as:

Former Illinois governor and two-time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson put it best: “As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.”

That unique status gives the American people all the authority and capability needed to review the 28 pages and determine the truth. It is long past time they had the opportunity.

Bob Graham represented Florida in the US Senate from 1987 to 2005.

© 2016, Special to The Washington Post

Summary: Nearly 15 years after the horrific events of 9/11, President Obama must decide whether to release 28 pages of information withheld as classified from the publicly released report of the congression…


This week’s Cannes Film Festival premiere of the Woody Allen period-set romantic drama Cafe Society was supposed to be a crowning moment for the 80-year-old Manhattan movie icon.

Instead, events surrounding the ceremonial kick-off turned into a Fellini-esque public down-dressing, a media circus — with correspondents from The Hollywood Reporter barred from a publicity luncheon for being “harmful” — and, almost by default, a referendum on a too-deferential press corps that failed to question Allen about decades-old sexual assault allegations concerning the writer-director’s daughter.

On Wednesday’s glitzy opening-night ceremony for the 69th installment of France’s most venerable film fest, things got off to a rocky start when Cannes master of ceremonies Laurent Lafitte aimed an off-color joke at Allen that drew audible gasps from the audience. “It’s very nice that you’ve been shooting so many movies in Europe, even if you are not being convicted for rape in the U.S.,” the French comedian said.

It was an oblique reference to director Roman Polanski’s legal limbo on a 1977 rape charge. But more broadly, Lafitte’s remarks brought to mind accusations Allen has vehemently denied and been battling in the court of public opinion for many years: that the multiple Oscar winner sexually molested his daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 7-years-old.

Allen has never been convicted of any such charges and has denied the allegations consistently. He insisted he wasn’t offended by the joke. “I am completely in favor of comedians making any jokes they want,” Allen said at the premiere gala.

Nonetheless, the rape joke arrived just hours after his estranged son Ronan Farrow published a widely discussed guest column in The Hollywood Reporter slamming the media — and in particular, The Hollywood Reporter’s cowardice in its own recent cover story on Allen — for failing to question the filmmaker’s alleged sexual assault.

“Every day, colleagues at news organizations forwarded me the emails blasted out by Allen’s powerful publicist, who had years earlier orchestrated a robust publicity campaign to validate my father’s sexual relationship with another one of my siblings,” Farrow wrote, drawing comparisons with the culture of media acquiescence surrounding the growing Bill Cosby sex scandal.

“Reporters on the receiving end of this kind of PR blitz have to wonder if deviating from the talking points might jeopardize their access to all the other A-list clients,” Farrow said.

As if on cue, Allen’s influential longtime publicist Leslee Dart prohibited a quartet of reporters from The Hollywood Reporter from attending a luncheon for Cafe Society on Thursday. “It’s only natural that I would show my displeasure when the press — in this case, The Hollywood Reporter — goes out of its way to be harmful to my client,” Dart said in a statement to the magazine.

The upshot? All that controversy has largely overtaken any buzz surrounding Cafe Society, a bittersweet comic romance set in ‘30s Hollywood starring Jessie Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, which has gotten generally positive reviews and which received a three-minute standing ovation at its premiere. “I think any jokes about rape, homophobia or Hitler is not a joke,” Cafe Society costar Blake Lively told Variety about Lafitte’s joke. She declined to comment on Ronan Farrow’s essay, which called out actors for continuing to work with the director, saying she hadn’t read the article.

The Cannes episode underscored that the decades-old allegations will continue to hang over the filmmaker and those who work with him. In 2014, just before the Academy Awards, Dylan Farrow wrote an op-ed in which she recounted the alleged abuse in detail and slammed Hollywood for continuing to celebrate the filmmaker. Allen responded with an op-ed piece of his own, accusing her mother, Mia Farrow, of implanting the memories.

This time, Allen, for his part, did what he could to downplay the impact of his son’s essay. “I never read anything about me, these interviews I do, anything,” the filmmaker said Thursday. He also declined to comment on Farrow’s allegations. “I made my statement a long time ago in The New York Times, they gave me a lot of space and, you know . . . I just think it’s so silly, the whole thing. So no, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t think about it. I work.”

Chris Lee is a former staff writer for Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He covers entertainment, culture and business in Los Angeles.

Summary: It started with a rape joke and a blistering op-ed by Allen's son.


LONDON, April 11— He sought to present himself as a legitimate historian with contrarian views on the Holocaust. But the British writer David Irving lost a libel case today when a judge declared that he was in fact an ''active Holocaust denier.''

The case has been closely watched by people alarmed at the rising tide of Hitler apologists and neo-Nazis who say there was no Nazi program to put the Jews of Europe to death, or who argue that the scale of the Holocaust has been greatly overstated.

At issue were a number of assertions in ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,'' a book first published in 1993 in the United States by Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta.

In the book, Ms. Lipstadt wrote that Mr. Irving, now 62, was ''one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial'' and said that ''he is at his most facile at taking accurate information and shaping it to conform to his conclusions.''

Holocaust denial is not a crime in Britain, as it is in Germany. But Mr. Irving, the author of more than 30 books on World War II and the Holocaust, some of which historians have praised, sued Ms. Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, saying that the book had severely damaged his reputation as a historian.

He brought the suit here because British libel law puts the burden on the defendants -- in this case, Ms. Lipstadt and Penguin -- to prove the truth of their assertions.

The judge, Charles Gray of the British high court, handed a resounding victory to Ms. Lipstadt. In a scathing ruling notable for its stern wording, he declared that Mr. Irving was a racist Holocaust denier who deliberately distorted historical evidence in order to cast Hitler in a favorable light. Mr. Irving's treatment of history, he said, was often ''perverse and egregious.''

Under British law, Mr. Irving, who represented himself at the trial, is responsible for paying the costs incurred by Ms. Lipstadt and Penguin. Lawyers for Ms. Lipstadt said the costs were likely to exceed $3 million. Mr. Irving said he would seek permission to appeal.

Commenting on the rulingduring a trip to Washington, Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel said: ''The strength of Israel today ensures that today no second Holocaust will take place, and no one in the world will dare rise against the Jewish nation. But in parallel, a determined struggle is going on against the people who deny the Holocaust that brought the death of a third of our nation.''

In the early years of his career, Mr. Irving wrote a number of admired books, notably ''Hitler's War'' (1977), and Justice Gray today praised his dogged use of primary sources and said that ''as a military historian, Mr. Irving has much to commend him.''

But in recent years, Mr. Irving's views have become more and more extreme and he has been linked with right-wing groups and neo-Nazis.

In 1992 he was fined and banned from Germany after he was convicted under the German law that makes Holocaust denial a crime. He has also been refused entry to Canada, Italy, Austria and Australia.

Among other things, Mr. Irving has said that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were not used to kill people -- Jews who died there suffered from typhus and other diseases, he argues -- and that Hitler neither ordered nor approved the Nazis' plans to systematically put Europe's Jews to death. In fact, he has argued, Hitler did not know about the mass killings until at least 1943.

And while Mr. Irving has acknowledged that many Jews died during World War II, he has also said it was logistically impossible for the number to have been in the millions.

In 1996 St. Martin's Press withdrew his biography of the Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels, which contends that Goebbels, not Hitler, was behind the murder of the Jews.

In the trial, Mr. Irving used the withdrawal as evidence that Ms. Lipstadt's book had fanned the flames of an ''organized international endeavor'' to destroy his career.

To prove the merit of Ms. Lipstadt's statements about Mr. Irving, her lawyers presented testimony from a number of Holocaust historians who picked apart many of Mr. Irving's conclusions, showing them to be based on deliberate distortions and selective use of facts.

In his denunciation of Mr. Irving's credibility, Justice Gray said, in essence, that Mr. Irving had no case. The judge refuted his argument that any misrepresentations he might have made were inadvertent.

''Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence,'' the judge said. ''For the same reasons, he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favorable light, particularly in relation to his attitude toward and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews.'' Mr. Irving, he concluded, is ''an active Holocaust denier'' and anti-Semite who ''associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.''

After the ruling, a jubilant Ms. Lipstadt, 53, said Mr. Irving had been ''hoist on his own petard,'' with his own evidence, and exposed as a liar.

''This was not about versions of the truth,'' she said. ''This wasn't about a historian with a controversial view of history. This was about a man who claims to be a historian making up, distorting, perverting, manipulating.''

Mr. Irving, who was splattered with a raw egg by a protester as he went to court this morning, so that he sat through the judge's ruling in his shirtsleeves and vest, slipped out a back door after the decision and did not speak to reporters. But he told the Press Association in an interview in his apartment in Mayfair that he found the ruling ''perverse'' and ''historically incredible.''

He accused Ms. Lipstadt and Penguin of enlisting the help of ''the leaders of the Jewish communities around the world'' in an orchestrated effort to discredit him. ''Their method was to pour a bucket of slime over me and say, 'Look, he's covered in slime,' '' he said.

''I am not at all anti-Semitic,'' he added. ''It is not anti-Semitic to be critical of the Jews.''

Anthony Julius, a lawyer for Ms. Lipstadt, said the case was not about whether the Holocaust took place, but whether there was any evidence to support Mr. Irving's views.

''We put the focus on his writing and proved that it wasn't up to standard,'' he said. ''It's important to secure definitive rulings against Holocaust deniers, to send them back into the anti-Semitic ghetto from which they came.''

In a statement, Rabbi Marvin Hier and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the dean and associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, called the ruling a ''victory of history over hate'' and said it put an end to Mr. Irving's career.

''Today's decision definitively places Irving where he belongs -- not as an historian, but as a leading apologist for those who seek to whitewash the most heinous crime in human history,'' the rabbis said. ''Irving tried to manipulate the British legal system in order to put the victims murdered in the gas chambers on trial; instead, the net result is that he will be relegated to the garbage heap of history's haters.''

Photos: Deborah E. Lipstadt, after being cleared of libel yesterday, and her accuser, David Irving, as he arrived at court earlier. The judge found Ms. Lipstadt correct in characterizing Mr. Irving as a Holocaust denier. (Photographs by Reuters)(pg. A6)


Actor Nick Offerman, of Parks and Recreation fame, has an important but silent message for the holidays: Sitting by the fire while sipping Lagavulin can make for a soothing 45 minutes.

In a minimalistic ad commissioned by Lagavulin Scotch whisky maker Diageo, Offerman silently sips whisky in front of a fireplace for a full three quarters of an hour. He barely moves, only blinking occasionally and taking the occasional nip.

Offerman’s connection to Lagavulin is a gimme for fans of NBC’s Parks and Recreation. On the sitcom, he plays Ron Swanson, a reluctant libertarian government employee of fictional Pawnee, Indiana, and a quintessential “man’s man.” Scotch is one of Swanson’s great loves: He calls it “nectar of the gods” in this clip.

Here at Fortune, beyond enjoying the humor in the ad, it is important to give some context to the broader business strategy at play here. The ad is part of a web series called “My Tales of Whisky,” and Offerman’s presence is the latest in a string of strong male figures who have been depicted in alcohol beverage ads over the years. He joins hits like Dos Equis’ “The Most Interesting Man in the World” and Miller Lite’s iconic “Tastes Great, Less Filing” ads featuring numerous sports stars.

But back to the video. Just watch.

Summary: By the fireplace, life is soothing.


THIN fish fillets can be tricky, mostly because they fall apart the instant they're overcooked. But the fact that quarter-inch-thick fillets of flounder, sole and other flatfish take so little time to cook can be turned to your advantage.

By poaching them in barely hot liquid, you slow the process and gain control. By flavoring the liquid first with a quick-cooking aromatic vegetable, you create a comforting, warming dish that needs only bread or rice to become a meal. By contrast to what happens with broiling or sauteing, the fish never dries out.

The traditional liquid for poaching fish is court-bouillon, a stock made from scratch using fish bones, onions, carrots and celery and enhanced with white wine and herbs. Assuming you don't have any on hand -- and who does? -- the poaching liquid of choice is chicken stock.

The usually insipid canned variety is fine, because you're going to add flavor to it, and quickly.

This recipe requires 15 minutes or less from start to finish. While the stock comes to a boil and reduces by about half, you clean and chop some leeks, adding them to the liquid as they're ready. A couple of minutes later, you season the broth and add the fillets. The subsequent cooking time depends largely on your equipment. If you have an electric stove, you can simply turn the heat off; the element will remain warm enough to cook the fish. You may need a low flame with a gas stove, but it should be the minimum. A heavy-duty pan may retain enough heat to make even that unnecessary.

Poaching fish with this method presents dozens of options, all of which are as simple as changing the seasonings. You can use other aromatic vegetables, like shallots, onions, scallions, garlic, carrots and celery, alone or in combination. (Cut carrots into small pieces so they'll cook quickly.) Or try herbs, especially parsley, chervil or dill, and spices, alone or in combination. For example, a North African-style combination of a few coriander seeds, a small piece of cinnamon and a little cumin is easily assembled and appealing.

You can also use this technique for thicker fillets, like red snapper, sea bass or cod.

After you cover the skillet, keep the heat on low and, after about six minutes, check the fish every minute. When a the tip of a thin-blade knife inserted into the fish encounters no resistance, the fish is done. If it begins to flake, it's overdone -- but only slightly, and it will still be juicy.

About 2 cups chicken stock (or 1 can containing 14 or 15 ounces)

Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 1/2 pounds flounder or other thin fillets.

1. Place the stock in a large skillet that can be covered, and turn the heat to high. Let the stock boil and reduce by about half while you prepare the leeks. Trim off leek roots and green ends; cut the white part in half the long way, and rinse thoroughly. Chop each half into semicircles 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick, adding them to the boiling broth as you cut them.

2. When all the leeks are added, cook a minute longer. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir; then add the fish. Cover, and turn off the heat, or keep the heat at an absolute minimum. Uncover and check the fish after 3 minutes; it is done when the tip of a thin-blade knife inserted into the flesh encounters no resistance. Continue to check every minute until the fish is done.

3. Serve the fish with the leeks and some broth spooned over it; top all with a sprinkling of coarse salt.


The overwhelming breathlessness of this production is probably unavoidable, given its determination to hew as close as possible to its source. Ms. Norman is an eminent playwright whose " 'night, Mother" won the Pulitzer for drama the same year that Ms. Walker's novel did for fiction. And Ms. Norman brings a refreshing if dogged writerly respect to Ms. Walker's work.

But the novel -- which contrasts the lives of stay-at-home Celie and her traveling missionary sister, Nettie (Renée Elise Goldsberry) -- covers not only four decades but also three continents. Related largely in bluntly vernacular letters written by Celie to God and to her sister, the book's central focus is the feminist evolution of Celie, who at 14 is sold in marriage to an abusive older man (called Mister and played here by Kingsley Leggs), after having given birth to two children by the man she believes to be her father.

"The Color Purple," though, is also the story of other, more innately forceful women from whom Celie gathers the strength to find herself. In addition to Nettie, who discovers her ethnic identity while a missionary in Africa, there's the strapping and defiant Sofia (Felicia P. Fields), Celie's stepdaughter-in-law, a role created on film by Oprah Winfrey (a producer and invaluable promoter of this show). And the voluptuous, pleasure-seeking Shug Avery (Elisabeth Withers-Mendes), a saloon singer and sometime-mistress of Mister, initiates Celie into the joys of the flesh and is most important to her growing self-esteem.

It is to the credit of each of these confident actresses that their characters register as emphatically and winningly as they do in the midst of the narrative rush. Ms. Fields and Ms. Withers-Mendes both exude a sensual energy that you can feel the audience wants to luxuriate in. (The same impression is cut, in a sunnier vein, by Brandon Victor Dixon as Sofia's cheery husband.) But every time they work toward musical climaxes, that darn hydra-headed Story intervenes with another plot twist.

Many of these are related by a hyper-lively quartet of gossiping church ladies. Others, set in Africa, come from Nettie's letters to Celie. Even a big dramatic aria like "Mister's Song" winds up spending an awful lot of time recapping events the audience already knows and undercutting Mr. Leggs's best dramatic efforts.

Mr. Griffin, acclaimed for his ingeniously miniature productions of big-scale works like "Pacific Overtures" and "My Fair Lady," emerges mostly as a skillful traffic conductor here. He keeps things moving at a jaunty clip, even when the events are as ugly as rape, domestic abuse and racial violence. This discrepancy would probably be jolting if you had time to think about it.

Amid the whirlwind of story lines, LaChanze holds admirably steady in what is a rather thankless part. Since Celie spends much of the show being scared and downtrodden, LaChanze must hide her considerable natural light under a bushel of homeliness and self-effacement. And her long-delayed survivor's anthem, for which she is allowed to pump up the volume, is unfortunately a generic power song. (Sofia's truncated "Hell No!" and Celie's top-40-ready duet with Shug, "What About Love?," are better.)

At the show's end, Celie has acquired, in addition to gray hairs and a personal fortune through the making and selling of pants for women, an air of matriarchal dignity that she wears like vintage couture. And it occurred to me that somewhere along the way in her odyssey of survival and triumph, Celie had morphed into a heroine of the kind of inspirational women's fiction found in airport bookstores, written by Barbara Taylor Bradford and Danielle Steel.

These are authors I would never have thought to compare to Alice Walker. But such things happen in adaptations that emphasize sheer story over sensibility. Devotees of Ms. Walker's novel would be better off thinking of this show less as "The Color Purple" than as, say, "Celie: A Woman of Independent Means."

Based on the novel by Alice Walker and the Warner Brothers/Amblin Entertainment motion picture. Book by Marsha Norman; music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray; choreographed by Donald Byrd; directed byGary Griffin; sets by John Lee Beatty; costumes by Paul Tazewell; lighting by Brian MacDevitt; sound by Jon Weston; hair design by Charles G. LaPointe; production managers, Arthur Siccardi and Patrick Sullivan; production stage manager, Kristen Harris; general management, NLA/Amy Jacobs; music director, Linda Twine; dance music arrangements, Daryl Waters; additional arrangements, Joseph Joubert; music coordinator, Seymour Red Press; orchestrations, Jonathan Tunick; music supervisor and incidental music arrangements, Kevin Stites. Presented by Oprah Winfrey, Scott Sanders, Roy Furman, Quincy Jones, Creative Battery, Anna Fantaci and Cheryl Lachowicz, Independent Presenters Network, David Lowy, Stephanie P. McClelland, Gary Winnick, Jan Kallish, Nederlander Presentations Inc., Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Andrew Asnes and Adam Zotovich and Todd Johnson. At the Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway, at 53rd Street; (212) 239-6200. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.

WITH: LaChanze (Celie), Elisabeth Withers-Mendes (Shug Avery), Felicia P. Fields (Sofia), Brandon Victor Dixon (Harpo), Renée Elise Goldsberry (Nettie), Krisha Marcano (Squeak), Kingsley Leggs (Mister), Francesca Harper, Jamal Story and Stephanie Guiland-Brown.

Summary: Ben Brantley reviews The Color Purple, musical adaptation of Alice Walker novel and film, with book by Marsha Norman and songs by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray and directed by Gary Griffin; LaChanze, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Elisabeth Withers-Mendes and Felicia P Fields star; photos (M)