Ian Gray had worked in the law for 40 years, so high-profile cases were nothing new. But never in his career were so many eyes on him as on 28 September 2015, when he was serving as the Victorian coroner.

He was about to deliver his findings into the death of 11-year-old Luke Batty, a horrific case of filicide that shocked Australia and forced governments to seriously rethink their approach to tackling family violence. “It was very intense,” Gray says. “While many cases are moving, Luke’s was a particularly moving case.”

Luke was killed in February 2014 when his father, Greg Anderson, hit him with a cricket bat and stabbed him in public view on a field in Tyabb, south of Melbourne, before stabbing himself and being shot dead by police.

Reporters from around the country gathered to hear Gray’s recommendations after his investigation into the death. Luke’s mother, Rosie Batty, sat in the front row. Next to her, on an empty witness stand, sat a photograph of her with Luke.

The articulate and open comments Batty made in the immediate aftermath of her son’s death helped to propel the issue of family violence to become one of national significance, and led to her being named the 2015 Australian of the Year.

Behind her in the court, family violence survivors and advocates waited expectantly, hoping Gray would recognise the lack of support, funding and coordination in the system they had been trying to highlight for years, and more importantly, suggest what could be done about it.

It was one of the last cases of Gray’s career, and the one he acknowledges was the most scrutinised. He retired this year at the age of 66 after four decades of legal work across Victoria, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Timor-Leste. He is widely respected by the highest echelons of the court and by both sides of politics for his considered and fair treatment of some of the most complex justice issues. There was an understated and measured approach to the way he ran a courtroom. He expertly moved witnesses past tense moments while also displaying compassion, and was well-liked by his colleagues.

His home in St Kilda is a quirky contrast to the structured nature of the court. It has become, over the years, a kind of art gallery, an eclectic mix of mostly Aboriginal pieces on display. They were collected over the decades by his wife, the feminist playwright Suzanne Spunner. Even in the kitchen, barely a piece of wall remains uncovered.

One of Spunner’s most well-received plays, the award-winning Dragged Screaming to Paradise, was based on the culture shock of moving with Gray to the Northern Territory with their two young children in tow in 1987. Gray had accepted a job as principal legal adviser to the Northern Territory Land Council, an experience he said gave him an invaluable understanding of Aboriginal customs, art and culture. Thankfully, Spunner grew to love the territory, and the pair decided to stay.

In 1992 Gray was made chief magistrate of the Northern Territory. He moved back to Victoria in 1997 to serve a record 11 years as chief magistrate there before becoming a judge in the county court and then state coroner.

He took on many landmark cases throughout his career but it was the Batty case, spanning his last two years as coroner, that was perhaps the most intense. “I was very conscious of the importance of the case and, more importantly than anything, the need to make useful recommendations,” he said. “You get used to it, but coroners are human and as anyone would expect that they have a range of reactions to the cases they deal with.”

A coroner’s role is not to apportion blame or to sentence offenders. Rather, a coroner investigates a death to determine the cause, and to recommend what, if anything, could be done differently in future to prevent similar deaths. Despite the non-adversarial nature of the coroner’s court, Gray says there are moments of despair and intensity.

You do feel struck, sometimes, by the pathos in court

“It was an emotional inquest because it was held quite soon after Luke’s death,” Gray says. “Sometimes it can be too soon. I don’t think it was too soon in this case, because Rosie Batty wanted it, and I felt there was public interest in it being held as quickly as possible. But it was very intense, and the in-court intensity remained throughout.

“There were a couple of moments where Rosie Batty was really upset and expressed profound frustration and despair, crying out, explaining how she had done everything she could to keep Luke safe. It was very legitimate and came from the most profound place of loss and despair. You do feel struck, sometimes, by the pathos in court.”

But as coroner, it was Gray’s job to allow the moment, acknowledge the evidence, and then to move on from it so the inquest could continue without “having to adjourn at each moment of hyper-intensity”. “You can’t be so emotionally affected that you lose your concentration or ability to control the case or run the court,” he says.

After considering the evidence Gray found that though Luke’s death was a “premeditated act of filicide,” no one could have predicted Anderson would kill Luke. He made 29 recommendations, a lot for an inquest, after weeks of evidence from police, court officers, Batty, child protection services and others.

Gray found that opportunities were missed by courts, doctors and police to refer Anderson for psychiatric assessment; that delays in the court system and a lack of coordination between police meant Anderson never faced charges against him in the court; and that there was a lack of consistent risk-assessment tools to help determine Anderson’s risk of harming others.

In a rare move, Gray directed his recommendations to the premier, Daniel Andrews. Last month Andrews announced that all of Gray’s recommendations would be adopted.

“Directing findings at a government doesn’t happen often, I hadn’t done it before and I didn’t do it again,” Gray said. “But this case covered and involved a range of government departments and activities, and because the Victorian government was extremely focused on addressing family violence, I directed the findings at the premier. And I’m pleased they’ve been accepted.”

His recommendations were also acknowledged and supported in the findings of Australia’s first royal commission into family violence, handed down in March.

It was one of many horrific cases of violence against women and children handled by Gray. He investigated the 2012 murder of Jill Meagher, and delivered findings into the murder of Kelly Thompson, who was brutally murdered by her ex-partner, Wayne Wood, in 2014.

Gray has handled the pressure and task of constantly dealing with death by attempting to keep sensible work hours, going for long walks, singing once a week with his community choir, sailing and doing yoga.

He says he has always had a strong sense of social justice, and a firm belief courts should strike a balance between keeping the community safe and ensuring justice for victims, while also reducing the chance of someone reoffending. He believes magistrates should have the flexibility to use their wisdom in dealing with offenders.

This was a belief that came under attack during his final years as chief magistrate in Darwin. Many governments have bowed to pressure to “get tough” on crime, often in response to media campaigns that distort the true risk of a crime or the characteristics of those responsible for them.

In 1997 the then chief minister of the Northern Territory for the Country Liberal party, Shane Stone, introduced a mandatory sentencing regime for juvenile offenders charged with property theft or damage. Stone was, by his own admission, someone who ran “a very high-level law-and-order government”.

The inevitable target, intended or not, was Indigenous youth

It was for this reason that, after five and a half years as chief magistrate, Gray resigned from the role. He publicly criticised Stone’s amendments to the Northern Territory sentencing and juvenile justice acts, saying the changes jeopardised the integrity of the court. Despite voicing his concerns to the attorney general, Gray could not stop the laws from being introduced.

“The inevitable target, intended or not, was Indigenous youth,” Gray says. “You sentence an enormous number of Aboriginal offenders in the Northern Territory, and you want and need the options for how you might sentence them.” He also believed the move would lead to an increase in Aboriginal deaths in custody.

The first case Gray heard under the changes was that of a 17-year-old Caucasian man who got drunk one night and smashed the rearview mirror of a car. The boy had no criminal history and was doing well at school, but Gray had no choice but to sentence him to the mandatory 14 days in jail. Under the changes, a second property offence carried a mandatory sentence of three months and a third offence of one year. The jail time applied whether the offence was damaging a valuable item or stealing a packet of biscuits.

While Gray believes in punitive, harsh justice for violent offenders, he was and remains deeply concerned by mandatory sentencing, saying it removes a magistrate’s ability to use their experience to make wise and just decisions. “For me it was untenable to continue in the position given the prospect of locking people up for minor offences,” he says. “I was also ready to move back to Victoria with my family, so the timing was right, but certainly the reforms were a key reason for me moving on from that position when I did.”

Gray still cares about the treatment of young offenders. It was “absurd”, he says, to issue young people with fines that they would never be able to pay and that might ultimately land them in detention.

Youth offending remains under scrutiny today in the Northern Territory, where a royal commission is under way into the failure of the detention system to protect youth. “The techniques used in Don Dale were excessively harsh, and the continuing explosion in the rates of incarceration of young Australians in parts of the country is a national shame,” Gray says.

He is a staunch believer in transparency and openness in the justice system, including allowing journalists and the public access, where ethical, to as much information about cases as possible.

As Victoria’s chief magistrate, he was involved in court open days, school presentations and community outreach sessions. In 2007 he agreed to let Channel Nine film inside the magistrates court for its reality television show The Code: Crime and Justice.

In 2008 he was involved in introducing a scheme that saw duty barristers rostered on in courts to represent unrepresented litigants pro bono. Today that program is entrenched in the court system.

He also worked in his magistrate and coroner roles to reduce delays in the court system, which he admits to being “obsessive about”, saying delays in justice erode public confidence. “It’s the greatest eroder of public confidence in justice, people sitting around waiting to be heard, or waiting forever for decisions to be made,” he says.

In a career that included serving as head of the land and property unit with the United Nations transitional administration in Timor-Leste, where he helped to resolve land disputes in the newly independent country, Gray says it is difficult to pinpoint a highlight.

But he says he did not retire because he had grown tired of the job. “I was still thoroughly enjoying my role as coroner it and completely into it,” he says. “But stopping work and how you go about it is a complex challenge, and I thought I should stop while I was still enjoying it and while I still have time to do other things.”

His first move post-retirement was to spend a couple of months walking the Camino Francés, a pilgrimage route to Santiago in Spain. Since returning he has joined the board of a local legal service in his home suburb of St Kilda called First Step.

It tries to help people addicted to alcohol and other drugs who have also committed crimes. For vulnerable people with health issues, he says, courts needed more flexible ways of implementing justice and more options than just prison sentences or fines.

“Offenders are taken by a lawyer though the magistrates court where, under the court’s watchful eye, they can work with clinicians to reduce their addiction and dependency and to become healthy and employed,” Gray says. “It’s a very credible and intelligent way of reducing the risk of reoffending, so it is beneficial to both the individual and society.”

Gray is also adjunct professor in the college of law and justice at Victoria University, and is working closely with it on issues relating to Timor-Leste.

He hopes he can apply what he has learned through his decades in the courts to do good on the outside. His career had exposed him to “the great parade of humanity in all of its beauty and tragedy”.

“You should come out of it all with a real balanced sense of what people are forced to endure and what people go through.”

Summary: He led some of Australia’s biggest inquests in his 40-year legal career. Now in a revealing interview Ian Gray reflects on Rosie Batty’s grief, his dispute with NT ministers – and why levels of youth incarceration are ‘a national shame’


Company Website: http://www.phone.com20 word description: Phone.com offers cool new communications services, with a special focus on the infrastructure and budget needs of small businesses and households.

CEO's 100 word description: Phone.com offers innovative and affordable communications services. Winner of the 2007 Internet Telephony Product of the Year award, Phone.com Virtual Office offers a local, toll-free or vanity toll-free number with the ability for you to manage it from our popular web interface. In addition, Virtual Office includes more features than you would expect from an expensive business phone system – auto attendant, call forwarding, menus, voicemail notification, schedules, and so much more!

Mashable's Take: Phone.com has a fairly lengthy history when it comes to its domain name (at least in terms of web history), but the recently relaunched website is focusing on some newer efforts this time around. Obviously the focus is still phone-related, but there's nothing that says "phone trend" like VoIP services.

Most of the recent talk about VoIP is in regards to its ongoing integration into social media; just look at Jangl. But there's the other side to VoIP, and that's business integration. There's a growing interest for SMBs to find more economic ways in which to have phone systems for their companies, and VoIP services haven't always been in the picture for viable consideration. Phone.com is hoping to turn this around, with a slew of options and plans for SMBs to utilize in the office.

As the world's workforce gets smaller (globalization), and the US economy puts a strain on business owners, streamlined virtual services are among those tools that can help an office environment run more smoothly. Similar to the trend we're seeing in socially integrated and individually-directed VoIP and phone-related services, Phone.com is also offering a virtual office suite to go along with its VoIP service. This is to offer a more complete package for a phone system, giving you custom recordings, scheduling tools, and more.

I've noted this trend a few times now, but several specialized phone services have made some major advances in moving towards the actual execution of this concept, and the trend will only gain speed in the coming year, especially for businesses and individuals with business needs.

Editor's Note: If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion in "The Startup Review" series, please see the details here.

Summary:
STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name:  Phone.com

Company Website:  http://www.phone.com

20 word description:  Phone.com offers cool new communications services, with a special...


BEIJING—E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will pay US$590 million for a minority stake in a Chinese smartphone maker as it looks to expand its presence in mobile technology.

The Hangzhou based company said on Monday it would acquire a stake in Meizu Technology Co., a closely held gadget maker based in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai. The two companies declined to disclose the size of the stake.

BEIJING—E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will pay US$590 million for a minority stake in a Chinese smartphone maker as it looks to expand its presence in mobile technology.

The Hangzhou based company said on Monday it would acquire a stake in Meizu Technology Co., a closely held gadget maker based in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai. The two companies declined to disclose the size of the stake.

The move comes as Alibaba looks to boost its presence in mobile and continues to pursue its own mobile-operating system. Alibaba and rivals Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. hold strong positions in each of their own corners of the Chinese Internet but are rushing to secure space on the country’s smartphone and tablet screens.

Meanwhile, the deal could bolster Meizu against larger rivals like Xiaomi Corp. and Lenovo Group Ltd.

Alibaba began a partnership with Meizu last year to make smartphones running its mobile operating system YunOS. Alibaba originally launched YunOS in an effort to drive users to its e-commerce apps and other services, but the company has made limited headway switching major smartphone players from Google Inc. ’s dominant Android mobile-operating software.

Originally a manufacturer of MP3 players in southern China, Zhuhai-based Meizu has transformed itself into a seller of advanced, budget smartphones to Chinese consumers who want iPhone-like devices at a lower price. Like its larger competitor Xiaomi, Meizu uses a business of selling devices that are bargains compared with major brands with similar specs and relying on social media to drive sales.

“The investment in Meizu represents a significant expansion of the Alibaba Group ecosystem and an important step in our overall mobile strategy as we strive to bring users a wider array of mobile offerings and experiences,” said Alibaba Chief Technology Officer Jian Wang in a statement.

Alibaba’s investment marks the largest move so far by a Chinese Web company in smartphones, and comes after similar moves by Internet giants in the West. Amazon.com Inc. unveiled its Fire Phone in June with features that made it easier to shop on its mobile marketplace. Google purchased Motorola Mobility in 2012 to make phones running its Android operating system, although it sold the phone maker to Lenovo in October. In a smaller Chinese deal, Qihoo 360 Technology Co. said in December it would invest $409 million December in a joint venture with Shenzhen-based smartphone maker Coolpad Group Ltd.

The investment also continues a spending spree by Alibaba that includes everything from online video to travel software to entertainment.

Meizu said it aims to sell 20 million smartphones in 2015. China’s three largest domestic smartphone vendors Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei Technologies Co. have each announced targets of selling more than 100 million units this year.

China is the world’s largest smartphone market, but sales growth is slowing as the market becomes increasingly saturated.

Write to Eva Dou at eva.dou@wsj.com

Summary: E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will pay $590 million for a minority stake in a Chinese smartphone maker as it looks to expand its presence in mobile technology.


) thinks that protein drinks and low-calorie sparkling beverages to counter the slow growth of the U.S. carbonated beverage industry.

"Expect to see from us an interesting number of mid- to low-calorie sparkling beverage platforms," in 2015 said Simon Lowden, Pepsi's chief marketing officer of Pepsi Beverages North America, in an interview with TheStreet. Lowden said that "Tropicana will see news around sparkling juices and waters," while "you will see protein as an ingredient come in across more and more beverages."

Protein could be added to

, which will come out with more energy chews and bars. Year-to-date volume for Gatorade sports drinks have increased by a mid-single digit percentage.

Coconut water, an industry that ballooned to $400 million in U.S. sales last year, according to research firm Euromonitor, is being targeted in a larger way by Pepsi aside from it leveraging its majority stake in

. O.N.E was third in terms of 2013 annual sales in the coconut water category, behind the privately held Vita Coco and Zico, which is owned by Coca-Cola (

). "You will see more news from us on coconut water next year as an ingredient across brands like Mountain Dew," said Lowden.

The healthy theme that underlies Pepsi's innovation push next year, and also recently at Coca-Cola with its Life product that has 35 percent fewer calories than a typical cola, is meant to counteract demand

in the carbonated soda industry. "In the last 18 months, the conversation in the U.S. has gone from 'How many calories am I taking in?' to 'Is it artificial?' "

Pepsi has jumped ahead of Coca-Cola in the race to reignite consumer interest in soda by entering the emerging craft soda industry with its new brand Caleb's Kola.

The naturally sweetened soda in a brown glass bottle is named after Pepsi's founder, Caleb Bradham. Available at Costco (

) locations in Maryland, New York, Virginia and Washington, the eventual wider rollout of the premium product will help Pepsi boost revenue in its carbonated drinks portfolio, which has been hurt by the commodities businesses of regular and diet colas.

Craft sodas are traditionally made in smaller batches, and feature unique flavor combos like green apple and berry lemonade. "We are finding millennials, in particular, that this authenticity, and its ingredient history, is so important with them, they believe in stories," remarked Lowden. "I think you would be surprised it comes from PepsiCo."

will be competing with industry stalwarts Boylan's Soda and

). Beverage Digest estimated that craft sodas, although a long-term sales opportunity for PepsiCo and likely Coca-Cola, only have 1 percent share of the roughly 9 billion-case U.S. soda market. The small market share of craft soda highlights the uphill battle for Pepsi's marketing team in trying to get consumers to pay more for a soda that looks the same as others found in glass bottles on retail shelves.

Both Pepsi and Coca-Cola need of whatever innovation -- ingredient or packaging -- their respective R&D teams can cook up to bring sustainable growth back to their U.S. carbonated soft drink portfolios. Overall soda volumes fell an estimated 3 percent in 2013, the ninth straight yearly contraction, according to the latest data from Beverage Digest. Further, estimated U.S. retail sales of carbonated soft drinks declined 1 percent to $76.3 billion, the first downturn in dollar terms in at least 15 years, underscoring the need to boost volumes amid limited pricing power.

In the third quarter, Pepsi's North America non-carbonated beverage volume grew slightly and its carbonated soft drink volume fell 1.5 percent. At Coca-Cola, sparkling and still beverage volume in the Americas each declined 1 percent. Coca-Cola didn't respond to requests for comment.

Summary: PepsiCo is also expanding its craft sodas, naturally sweetened in unusual flavors, and lower-calorie beverages to restore fizz to its beverage business.


fter weeks of taking fire over veterans' accusations that he had lied about his Vietnam service record to win medals and build a political career, Senator John Kerry shot back yesterday, calling those statements categorically false and branding the people behind them tools of the Bush campaign.

His decision to take on the group directly was a measure of how the group that calls itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has catapulted itself to the forefront of the presidential campaign. It has advanced its cause in a book, in a television advertisement and on cable news and talk radio shows, all in an attempt to discredit Mr. Kerry's war record, a pillar of his campaign.

How the group came into existence is a story of how veterans with longstanding anger about Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements in the early 1970's allied themselves with Texas Republicans.

Mr. Kerry called them "a front for the Bush campaign" - a charge the campaign denied.

A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.

Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a trustee of the foundation for Mr. Bush's father's presidential library. A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet when he and Mr. Bush's father faced off in the 1988 presidential election.

The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.

Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year.

In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brinkley, provided by Mr. Brinkley to The New York Times, Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the group, allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said, "I am not going to say anything negative about him." He added, "He's a good man."

In a profile of the candidate that ran in The Boston Globe in June 2003, Mr. Hoffmann approvingly recalled the actions that led to Mr. Kerry's Silver Star: "It took guts, and I admire that."

George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage." At that same event, Adrian L. Lonsdale, another Vietnam veteran now speaking out against Mr. Kerry, supported him with a statement about the "bravado and courage of the young officers that ran the Swift boats."

"Senator Kerry was no exception," Mr. Lonsdale told the reporters and cameras assembled at the Charlestown Navy Yard. "He was among the finest of those Swift boat drivers."

Those comments echoed the official record. In an evaluation of Mr. Kerry in 1969, Mr. Elliott, who was one of his commanders, ranked him as "not exceeded" in 11 categories, including moral courage, judgment and decisiveness, and "one of the top few" - the second-highest distinction - in the remaining five. In written comments, he called Mr. Kerry "unsurpassed," "beyond reproach" and "the acknowledged leader in his peer group."

Summary: An ad questioning John Kerry's war record sprang from an alliance between Texas Republicans and veterans angry about Mr. Kerry's criticism of the Vietnam War.


Originally posted Feb 16th 2007 10:13 AM PST by TMZ Staff

Sylvester Stallone is all Rambo in the front -- and all party in the back!Amazingly, the "Rocky" star breezed through security at LAX, despite sporting the most dangerously offensive haircut known to mankind -- the mullet. Where's the man-bob when you need it?! Stallone can be seen playing with his longer locks as he chats with Homeland Security, who did not retain Sly for tonsorial questioning or put his dangerous mane on the No-Fly list. Fans still asked to be photographed with him despite the hateful hairdo. Bless their hearts, they love a celeb no matter what.His gruesome darkened eyebrows and horrific hair might be his look for the next "Rambo" installment, "Rambo IV: Pearl of the Cobra." Consider this fair warning.

Tags: Paparazzi Video, Sylvester Stallone

Summary: Sylvester Stallone is all Rambo in the front -- and all party in the back! Amazingly, the "Rocky" star breezed through security at LAX, despite sporting…


Friday, May 30th 1997, 2:02AM

THERE will be a double drama today on the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater when Rocky Allen of WPLJ (95.5 FM) hosts his fourth annual "Showgram on Broadway," with numerous guests and proceeds going to the Committee to Prevent Child Abuse.

The guests reflect the mix of WPLJ music: Jon Bon Jovi, Jon Secada, Gloria Gaynor, Lou Diamond Phillips, Shawn Colvin, the Stylistics, Abe Vigoda, Deborah Gibson, Wang Chung, Night Ranger, Donna Lewis, Darlene Love, the Trammps and others.

But host Allen also is playing out a drama of his own. Months after he was left paralyzed from a back operation, he says he is hoping to walk with crutches onto the Ed Sullivan stage.

Toward that goal, he's been doing daily rehabilitation, and he may face another operation before it's over. But he has been progressing, says WPLJ Vice President Tom Cuddy, and lately has done shows from the 'PLJ studio after working for months from home.

"This is a big thing for us and for Rocky every year," says Cuddy. "I think this year it's bigger for him than usual." Cuddy also says so many artists volunteered for the 4-8 p.m. show that next year it may be held over two days.

AROUND THE DIAL: There's another big live radio-hosted show in town tonight. WHTZ (100.3 FM) is hosting "Z Day on the Intrepid," live from that big Hudson River ship starting at 7. Guests include Bon Jovi, Erasure, Duncan Sheik, OMC and Paula Cole. . . . WNEW's Dave Herman, WAXQ's Donna Donna, WDHA and WBZO were among those sending best wishes to Bob Dylan yesterday. WFAN's Imus asked whether recovery from this infection might mean we would now be able to understand him. . . . Delphine Blue does a special edition of her fine "Shocking Blue" today, 10 a.m.-noon on WBAI (99.5 FM). . . . Fred Herschkowitz plays Jackie Mason, Groucho Marx, Tom Lehrer and other comics tonight, 7:30-10, on WBAI. . . . Morning host RuPaul of WKTU (103.5 FM) will give out lottery tickets and chat with Robert Klein today. . . . Nancy Wilson guests today with Ashford & Simpson on WRKS (98.7 FM), 5-7 p.m. . . . WRAT (95.9 FM) in South Belmar is raising money for the American Cancer Society 11 a.m.-1 p.m. today by selling requests for $25 and $45 each.

Summary: THERE will be a double drama today on the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater when Rocky Allen of WPLJ (95.5 FM) hosts his fourth annual "Showgram on Broadway,"with numerous guests and proceeds going to the Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. The guests reflect the mix of WPLJ music: Jon Bon Jovi, Jon Secada, Gloria Gaynor, Lou Diamond Phillips, Shawn Colvin, the Stylistics, Abe Vigoda, Deborah Gibson, Wang Chung, Night Ranger, Donna


By GREG B. SMITH DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, April 25th 2001, 2:21AM

For years, informer Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano pocketed royalty checks from his book, "Underboss," as he lived the secret life of an ex-hit man in suburban Arizona.

The checks are no longer in the mail.

Starting this month, "Underboss" checks will be forwarded to an escrow account controlled by Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano, who is prosecuting the renowned turncoat on drug charges.

Prosecutors say they expect to collect $400,000 in past and future royalties, which they hope to pass on to the families of Gravano's many murder victims.

"I love Arizona," said Rosanne Massa of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, whose brother was whacked by Gravano. "New York should be so embarrassed with themselves. At least in Arizona they care about the law."

Gravano admitted to 19 murders when he began cooperating with the FBI and testified against his former boss, Gambino gangster John (Dapper Don) Gotti. After five years in prison, he began living in Arizona under an assumed name.

He has admitted being paid $250,000 as his share of an advance paid to author Peter Maas for "Underboss," published in April 1997 by HarperCollins.

Gravano was also to receive a percentage of any additional royalties, based on the number of books sold.

Several relatives of Gravano's victims sued him in New York under the state's Son of Sam law that bars criminals from profiting from their crimes.

But they lost last year when a court ruled that Son of Sam provisions didn't apply to Gravano because he was charged under federal, not New York, law.

After Arizona authorities arrested Gravano last year on charges of running a statewide Ecstasy ring, they sued to seize his assets - including book and movie royalties.

In response, Gravano cited the $400,000 figure as legal literary earnings, not tainted by any alleged drug connection.

But Napolitano argued that the book earnings were subject to seizure because they were based on criminal behavior, the illegal acts cited in the book.

Arizona Superior Court Justice Mark Sanata ruled on April 3 that proceeds of "Underboss" "are traceable to racketeering" and "would not exist were it not for Mr. Gravano's criminal activities in New York."

Napolitano's office then asked the court to hand over control of $380,000 of Gravano's past royalties and another $20,000 in future royalties to the state.

This week, Napolitano spokeswoman Patty Urias said if the forfeiture effort is upheld on appeal, Arizona will distribute the money to the victims' families.

Gravano attorney Larry Hammond did not return calls yesterday. His client remains in county jail awaiting a trial in the fall on the drug charges.

Summary: For years, informer Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano pocketed royalty checks from his book, "Underboss,"as he lived the secret life of an ex-hit man in suburban Arizona. The checks are no longer in the mail. Starting this month, "Underboss"checks will be forwarded to an escrow account controlled by Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano, who is prosecuting the renowned turncoat on drug charges. Prosecutors say they expect


Sunday, June 23th 2002, 1:80AM

It is, of course, not easy getting a first novel published, not to mention a collection of short stories. But it can be done, and then, if all proceeds normally, the young writer is bathed in the silence that usually meets first efforts.

Sometimes not, though. Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer and Andrea Lee all received an arms-wide-open welcome to the literary scene.

The first-time authors profiled here have also generated some degree of excitement. Their editors and publishers have shown them an extra measure of commitment, making them favored children at the houses who've claimed them.

Through the alchemy of buzz - sometimes produced by favorable advance reviews, sometimes by excited literary-circuit chat - each of these freshman efforts was published, or will be published, with early word that something special is happening.

"You Are Not a Stranger Here"

It comes as an enormous relief to hear Adam Haslett report that the short stories in "You Are Not a Stranger Here" do not all spring from personal experience.

That would be a lot to carry around, since tale after tale explores loss, madness, unrequited love, crippling secrets, helplessness and depression. The writing is splendid, the tone pretty bleak.

When this is noted, Haslett, 31, laughs, which is encouraging. "Some of the stories are emotionally autobiographical," he says. "But not in a literal sense."

He shouldn't have much reason to be unhappy. Besides being a hot writing property, he's in his last year at Yale Law School.

"The law appeals to the analytic side of my mind the way writing appeals to the expressive side," he says.

He'd like eventually to do courtroom work, because "I like to be out in the world, observing real people."

He's been writing since his student days at Swarthmore, where he studied with Jonathan Franzen. When he had a story published in Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope magazine, it caught the eye of Coppola's friend Nan Talese, who contacted Haslett and persuaded him to flesh out a collection for her at Doubleday.

The result is a "brilliant, brilliant work," Talese says, and a novel may be next, though Haslett is reluctant to overcommit at the moment.

"Right now," he says, "I'm just trying to squeeze it all in."

"After I had read the stories, I expected to meet a serious, Kafka-like soul," says Talese. "Instead, Adam rather resembles a Great Dane puppy in his openness and cheer. He is a writer who will continue to impress us for years."

"Man Walks Into A Room"

Nicole Krauss is a firm believer in new beginnings.

Her four grandparents escaped the Nazis in Europe to start over in New York and Palestine. Her father left the family business to study medicine for the 11 years it took him to become a prominent Long Island surgeon. Now Krauss, at 27 already a critic, radio documentary-maker and award-winning poet, has taken up writing fiction, completing a first novel she is determined won't be her last.

"I've discovered I love waking up every day to a long-term project," she says.

The critics are already looking forward to her next book. "She's one of the more promising [young novelists] I've come across in years," says Bruce Allen, who reviewed "Man Walks Into a Room" for Kirkus Reviews, one of publishing's early warning systems. "The quality of her prose is beautiful, one sentence after another."

The story Krauss chose to propel is about Samson Greene, an attractive Columbia University English professor who loses his memory, and with it an ability to live his life as it was before. The experiments of a sinister scientist give him one mental lease on a new existence. But it is rooted in shades of nuclear apocalypse, and Samson must find other means of filling a horrifying void.

"It is unusual for a first novel, because there isn't really any discernible element of autobiography," says Sean McDonald, the book's editor. "It's not remotely about Nicole."

Not if it was supposed to be about a dark-haired beauty who played Shakespeare's Juliet, wrote poetry and won lacrosse games at Old Westbury's Wheatley High School before heading west for Stanford.

But there are remembered fragments. Driving across country during college, Krauss says she became obsessed with the forlorn stretches of Nevada where atomic tests had once rained radiation on an unsuspecting landscape and its occupying G.I.s. Samson meets his past and future there.

"Fiction writing is the solution to this overwhelming sense of nostalgia I've always had," says Krauss, "this responsibility to remember for those you love."

Nick McDonell graduated from Riverdale Country Day School in the Bronx on June 13 and will spend the summer before starting college the way many young people do - traveling. The difference is he'll be on tour promoting his novel, "Twelve," which is arriving in bookstores with considerable attention.

With blurbs of praise from the likes of Joan Didion, Richard Price and Hunter S. Thompson, "Twelve" works partly as a cautionary tale and partly as a satire set in the milieu of druggy, amoral Manhattan rich kids.

The son of Sports Illustrated managing editor Terry McDonell, Nick was recovering from a sports injury when Morgan Entrekin, a family friend and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, called to see how he was doing. And what he was doing.

"When I heard he was working on a book, I was convinced it would be interesting," Entrekin says. "And it turned out to be."

McDonell admits that "Twelve's" philosophizing, drug-dealing protagonist may be a stand-in for the 18-year-old author. "A lot of what he thinks, I think."

But beyond that, he laughs off the perception that the book is in any way a roman Â clef of the private-school social scene.

"The characters are all stereotypes," McDonell says. "One of the criticisms I get is that I can't write women. And it's true. I guess I don't know enough about them yet."

Grove/Atlantic has sold rights to the book in eight countries. McDonell, who's off to Harvard in the fall, says he'll gladly read the reviews, positive or otherwise. "I think Kirkus Reviews told me I should stay in school," he says. "Which is fine, because I was going to anyway."

Meera Nair is not a movie director, though she practically shares a name with "Monsoon Wedding" and "Salaam Bombay" auteur Mira Nair. But as Mira does in her films, Meera uses the short-story medium to paint vivid tableaux of life in various parts of India.

Her collection of stories, called "Video," reflects her peripatetic childhood, in which her journalist father constantly moved the family, exposing her to cultures and lifestyles throughout that South Asian nation.

The collection features the Catholics of Goa in "The Sculptor of Sands" and the Muslims of Hyderabad in the title story, the urban squall of Delhi in "The Lodger in Room 726" and the tropical aromas of Mangalore in southern India in "The Curry Leaf Tree."

"I think for me, India is all these people," says Nair, 36. "We now tend to think of India as a Hindu country, but it is extremely diverse. I am Hindu, but I went to a Catholic school run by Italian nuns."

Her nomadic background helped her develop a keen sense of how different people converse. Publishers Weekly said Nair's "ear for dialogue is spot-on, and varying degrees of rage, exhilaration or confusion are crisply expressed."

But even the well-traveled Nair needed time to acclimate to American culture when she first came to the United States and Temple University in 1997.

"Four days after I arrived, I was standing in front of a classroom full of gritty, mostly working-class basketball players, teaching them remedial English," she recalls. "That was culture shock for you."

"When the Messenger Is Hot"

Elizabeth Crane's collection of short stories won't be published until January, but at a major convention of publishers and booksellers in New York recently, a hum started that will likely grow into buzz by the time "When the Messenger Is Hot" reaches stores.

"Elizabeth is amazing at navigating the line between someone crying out of happiness and someone crying out of sadness," says Geoff Shandler, executive editor of Little, Brown.

The stories, which have a fantastical edge, are about women who, as the author says, "are smart, but somehow just don't get it." Love is perplexing, loss is confounding, and their sense of self seems always at risk. In one, a young woman sells her life story to the movies and the actress playing her steals her identity, only to casually toss it away en route back to Hollywood.

Interestingly, Crane has taken a reverse path for young writers looking to become literary lights. Now "no longer in my 20s," she grew up in Manhattan the daughter of a professional opera singer and a college professor. After graduating from George Washington University, she tried writing screenplays. For a time, Crane earned her living tutoring child actors on movie sets.

Several years ago, though, she fell in love with Chicago and left New York, which so many people consider a birthplace of literary careers. But it was in Chicago that she started writing seriously. First came a novel, which she has since tucked in a drawer. Then came the stories, and Crane says there are more already written. "I have so many stories," she sighs.

That's likely a good thing, given her publisher's commitment to her.

"We have grand ambitions for her," says Shandler. "We think she's the real deal."

Summary: WRITERS ON THE VERGE Five first-time authors we're going to be hearing a lot about It is, of course, not easy getting a first novel published, not to mention a collection of short stories. But it can be done, and then, if all proceeds normally, the young writer is bathed in the silence that usually meets first efforts. Sometimes not, though. Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer and Andrea Lee all received an arms-wide-open welcome to


INDIANAPOLIS – Rupert Boneham won over TV viewers during 2004's "Survivor: All-Stars" -- earning a nifty $1 million as the overwhelming choice for fan favorite on the reality show. Now the bushy-bearded Boneham is hoping Indiana voters will find him just as charming.

Boneham, 47, announced Saturday that he's seeking the Libertarian Party nomination for Indiana governor, saying he wants to take on the state's political establishment because he feels voters deserve better.

At a news conference in Indianapolis, Boneham said he's the best candidate to replace Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who has reached his term limit and can't run next year, because he's "not beholden to any special interests."

In prepared statements circulated later by his campaign, Boneham said he wants to run as the Libertarian candidate because he thinks Indiana voters deserve an alternative to "the dysfunctional state of our current government."

"I have only one interest: Empowering Hoosiers to give back to their communities. If the government puts up roadblocks, then they should be repealed," Boneham said.

"Hoosiers have consistently voted in professional politicians and look at the results. Hoosiers should have a different choice in 2012," he said in the news release.

Boneham, who's known for wearing tie-dyed shirts, won $1 million when he was voted fan favorite in 2004's "Survivor: All-Stars." He donated a portion of his winnings to his Indianapolis-based charity, Rupert's Kids, which provides mentoring and job-training to at-risk youths.

Boneham formed an exploratory committee in August for a possible gubernatorial bid and said he wanted to gauge public support to see if people are ready to elect him.

Among the candidates who are seeking to replace Daniels, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Pence and former Democratic Indiana House Speaker John Gregg are the early favorites.

Sam Goldstein, the state chair of the Libertarian Party of Indiana, said he's "very excited" about Boneham's announcement.

"His nomination would be a great asset to the party and I look forward to working with him and his campaign team should he win the nomination at our convention next spring," Goldstein said in a statement.

The party, which will hold its convention April 14, said Boneham has been a supporter and a member of the Libertarian Party for nearly a year.

Summary: Rupert Boneham won over TV viewers during 2004's Survivor: All-Stars -- earning a nifty $1 million as the overwhelming choice for fan favorite on the reality show. Now the bushy-bearded Boneham is hoping Indiana voters will find him just as charming.


LOS ANGELES – Karl Lagerfeld is one of the biggest names in the flamboyant fashion design industry, but the German mogul wasn’t afraid to open up about his views against same-sex marriage and gay parents raising a family.

“I’m against it (gay marriage) for a very simple reason: In the 60's, they all said we had the right to the difference. And now, suddenly, they want a bourgeois life,” Lagerfeld recently told contemporary youth culture magazine, Vice. “For me it’s difficult to imagine—one of the papas at work and the other at home with the baby. How would that be for the baby? I don’t know. I see more lesbians married with babies than I see boys married with babies. And I also believe more in the relationship between mother and child than in that between father and child.”

And not surprisingly, Lagerfeld’s words have hit others where it hurts.

“Absolutely (it is offensive). But that's Karl," says prominent Los Angeles stylist Phillip Bloch, whose client roster includes everyone from Halle Berry to Drew Barrymore to Mariah Carey. "Karl is about pushing a button and that's his point of view. That's why he's an expressionist and he is a reference. It's a matter of equality, we should pay the same taxes, we should be able to get married, we should all be able to vote, be up for the same jobs, we should all be allowed to be happy and we should all be allowed to be miserable.

"[Karl] is definitely a supremacist and of course he said, "Of course I think much more about the relationship with the mother and the child as opposed to the father and the child." Well, for someone who's so creative, how could you be so single-minded? It's very single-minded but it's Karl's way of thinking. I don't think it's wrong, I think it's funny and it's cute to me that Karl thinks that way.”

But could these very bold statements hurt his standing in the industry?

“Hell no! Karl Lagerfeld is one of those designers that has done some of the most amazing things I've ever seen, and some of the most hideous things I've ever seen,” Bloch continued. “It is part of the pathos that is him and it's just great. He is him, whether it's being futuristic, or couture, whether it is boho chic, it's just him and what I think is such an important train of thought is Karl thinks very one way, he does that job and I think another. My mind is open to more choices because that's how I work and people who do different jobs, their minds work in different ways.”

And despite reaching out to numerous fashion industry big-wigs, very few were willing to comment given Lagerfeld’s hierarchy in the world of all things style and sophistication. However, Jon Barrett, Editor in Chief of The Advocate, just hopes the designer’s words will simply ignite the movement to overturn Prop 8.

“I completely respect Mr. Lagerfeld's disinterest in getting married and I hope that all of us--Karl Lagerfeld included--will soon have the legal freedom to decide whether or not to marry the person we love,” Umbach added.

Summary: Karl Lagerfeld Speaks Out Against Same Sex Marriage, Gay Parents


Oct 29th 2012, 7:25 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES

A JOKE courtesy of “Car Talk”, National Public Radio’s hilarious motoring-advice and agony-aunt show... Two little old ladies are driving down the road. The passenger becomes alarmed when she senses her friend behind the wheel has just run through a red light. But not entirely sure, she hesitates to mention it. At the next intersection, the driver definitely goes through on red without slowing. After the third such instance, the now petrified passenger turns to her friend and says: “Mildred, you just ran three red lights!” “Heck,” exclaims an aghast Mildred. “Am I driving?”

The way a person’s cognitive ability deteriorates with age is no laughing matter. Back in 1995, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that, though motorists aged 70 and older accounted for only 9% of the American population, they were responsible for 14% of all traffic fatalities—and 17% of pedestrian deaths. Since then, the number of old-folk behind the wheel has risen as baby boomers edge closer to becoming septuagenarians.

That is rather worrying. It could even reverse (or, at least, slow) the long-term trend towards safer motoring. The overall death rate among motorists in America has fallen steadily since 1975 (from 15 per 100,000 licensed drivers to 12 per 100,000) as a result of seat-belt laws, the crackdown on drunken driving, better infrastructure and safer vehicles all round. In contrast, the death rate among 16-year-old drivers has nearly doubled (from 19 to 35 per 100,000) over the same period. The main reasons are thought to be the heavier traffic, moving at higher speeds, and the way inexperienced teenagers have access to far more powerful vehicles than their parents had.

Fortunately, teenagers mature, gain experience and put their risky behaviour behind them. Not so the elderly, who may not realise how much skill, judgment and reaction time they have lost, along with their deteriorating vision and physical strength.

With age, the brain begins to shrink, causing some of its nerve cells to lose their connections with others. At the same time, the blood flow in the brain slows down. These changes are believed to lie behind the deterioration in cognitive function—the ability to process thoughts—in elderly people.After retirement, two out of three people suffer from some form of cognitive impairment. It starts with “senior moments”—the inability to recall the name of an acquaintance, a word on the tip of the tongue, or where the keys were put. Most compensate by making notes and relying more on calendars.As the years roll by, such memory lapses become more frequent, and the tendency to misplace things increases. Those with mild cognitive impairment usually retain their capacity to learn, read, speak and write, but their attention span deteriorates along with their short-term memory. This can lead, eventually, to Alzheimer’s disease or other causes of dementia.Cognitive skills are, of course, crucial for driving. So, too, is co-ordination between eyes and feet as well as eyes and hands. It is what allows the driver to steer smoothly, gauge braking distances and slot into fast-moving traffic safely. Other motor skills are necessary for depressing the pedals in the correct order, operating hand controls and turning the head to check blind spots. Most important of all is reaction time—especially the time needed to take the foot off the accelerator pedal and hit the brakes, or to jerk the steering wheel to avoid a sudden obstacle.In a young person, reaction times can vary from 0.7 second for something expected to 1.5 seconds for a total surprise. In the latter case, extra time is needed for the brain to work out what is going on, and then to decide on a response. Though reaction times increase with age, older motorists’ greater experience and tendency to drive more slowly help compensate for the decline in motor skills.There are no clear-cut guidelines to say when motorists should surrender their car keys. It depends so much on the individual. That said, there are some general statistics that offer assistance. For instance, drivers in their 60s are among the safest on the road—with no more fatal accidents, on average, than motorists half their age. But once they enter their 70s, their statistical chance of being killed in a car crash rises steadily. Apart from deteriorating cognitive and motor skills, older drivers become more frail and vulnerable, which increases their likelihood of breaking bones, damaging organs and dying as a result of a crash. From their 80s onward, they start having an increasing number of more serious accidents. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an industry research organisation based in Virginia that studies road accidents, reckons that octogenarians and up have higher collision rates than any other age group except teenagers. The fatality rate for drivers who are 85 and older is nine times greater than for those under 70.Three factors contribute to age-related motoring accidents. The first is poor judgment in making turns across oncoming traffic. The second is drifting out of lane. The third is an inability to cope effectively with unexpected events. By and large, septuagenarians involved in crashes at intersections—where half tend to occur—often misjudged whether it was safe to cross or turn; octogenarians usually failed to see the vehicle they hit. On average, then, motorists approaching their 80th year should think seriously about giving up driving. The very least they should do is discuss the matter with their family doctor, especially if they are taking drugs for chronic conditions (as is often the case with elderly people). Even over-the-counter medicines can have active ingredients—such as the antihistamines in allergy pills, or codeine in cold remedies and pain relievers—that dull motor skills and distort reaction times.But doctors are often reluctant to tell patients to quit driving altogether—as much out of fear of alienating them, as out of concern for condemning them to a life of restricted mobility and loss of independence. Given the general lack of public transport in most parts of America, not being able to go shopping, meet friends, dine out, see a film or, indeed, visit the doctor can be a real hardship. Such activities are often the only things keeping the elderly active and alert.In California, anyone over 70 who is renewing a driving licence is required to attend a local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office every five years for both a written and a vision test. Also, doctors in California are obliged to report anyone with worrisome driving abilities to the DMV. A recent study in Canada, where similar reporting requirements exist, found that warning the licensing authority of an elderly patient’s fitness to drive resulted in a 45% drop in crashes serious enough to warrant hospital treatment.But how do doctors identify unsafe drivers? The American Medical Association recommends a few simple tests. One is to ask a patient to walk ten feet (three metres) down a hallway, turn round and walk back. If this takes longer than nine seconds, the patient probably has a driving problem. Another test, which measures spatial processing and memory, requires a patient to connect a sequence of letters and numbers (A to 1, B to 2, C to 3, etc) scattered randomly on a piece of paper. A patient who does poorly is thought likely to cause an accident.Unfortunately, such indirect screening procedures have had mixed results. In an ideal world, motorists over 70 would be tested directly for cognitive ability. One method that has gained favour abroad is the DriveABLE Cognitive Assessment Tool, which came out of research on fitness to drive at the University of Alberta. The test is administered by trained operatives and measures 22 variables while performing six specific tasks relevant to driving ability. The assessment is said to determine whether a driver is cognitively impaired with an accuracy of 93%.Getting the elderly to take a test like the DriveABLE procedure in order to have their driving licences renewed is not going to happen—at least, not in the immediate future. State governments are too strapped for cash as it is. Adding a 40-minute procedure, conducted by specially trained staff using dedicated terminals, would make the whole licence-renewal process prohibitively expensive. But if, alternatively, taking the test led to the possibility of a lower car-insurance premium, your aging correspondent would be one of the first in line.

Summary: Don't tell me I can't drive A JOKE courtesy of  “Car Talk”, National Public Radio’s hilarious motoring-advice and agony-aunt show... Two little old ladies...


Terri Jentz in 1992, at the beginning of a planned bike trip across America.

The campsite in Cline Falls State Park, where violence brought her trip to an early and sudden end.

ON June 27, 1977, a hateful stranger in a high-clearance pickup drove over the tent of two Yale undergraduates as they slept in a state park in Cline Falls, Ore. The man parked on one of the pair for a moment, and then he pulled forward, got out of the truck and began attacking them both with an ax. The students, Terri Jentz and Shayna Weiss (whose name has been changed), were spending the summer before their junior year riding the BikeCentennial TransAmerica Trail. They were 7 days into an 80-day, 4,200-mile trip.

Jentz's account of the attack kind of parks on your chest too. I have read those four pages three times, because each time I go back, looking for a specific image or line, I get caught in it again. Imagine that it had been Truman Capote himself who'd been savaged in Holcomb, Kan., and that he had survived to describe his ordeal. That is the level of command and sinew at work in the writing. I don't want to give away the horrific details  their impact should be reserved for the reading of her book, not a review  so just one example will serve. Jentz can barely see without corrective lenses. There is a moment, after the axing, when she manages, though her right arm is badly mangled, to locate her contact case and put the lenses into her eyes. They are wetted not with lens solution but with blood that drips from her hair. (Of course, as a fellow extreme myope, I'm thinking, You didn't bring a pair of glasses?) Jentz writes: "I blink away the blood, and now the scattered campsite is sharp under a dim moon."

Understatement is the quiet power that fuels Jentz's writing, and our rage as we read it. Here is a woman viewing the aftermath of her attempted killing through the smeary haze of her own blood, and she manages to encapsulate the scene and all its emotional torque in this one small, unadorned action. There is more horror in that blink than in a hundred caterwauling pages of James Frey.

Jentz needs this controlled calm because she is not merely, with this book, condemning her attacker. She is condemning American culture, one of easy violence that glorifies "the badass outlaw," that values "self-gratification, impulsivity and irresponsibility, and rewards preening narcissism." She is condemning violence against women and a society-wide indifference toward its ubiquity, what she calls our "passive complicity." For she learns that the main suspect is not a serial killer or an asylum escapee, but a local handyman with a history of beating up girlfriends and wives (several of whom Jentz tracks down and interviews) and eluding legal consequence. But Jentz keeps the editorializing to a minimum, and her soapbox is, for the most part, more of an easy chair. I felt a bit hopeless, but I never felt harangued.

Jentz did not come to her anger quickly. She pushed it deep inside herself and spent 15 years in what she calls "the dead zone." The once indefatigable Terri Jentz was now spending, by her reckoning, 70 percent of her energy worrying. "It seemed to me that it was a great risk to inhabit a body," she writes. "Often I felt flashes of panic just to find myself encased in one." Her worldview was shuttered and grim. She describes passing a scenic preserve called Jean B. Harris Memorial Park and assuming that Harris was a woman slain there, not the park's benefactor.

Eventually Jentz realizes what must be done to reclaim her vitality. She begins her own investigation of the crime, which was never solved. She begins in 1992, and on Page 110. You, the reader, will travel the next 432 pages at her side and in her head. As far as I can tell, she has included all the interviews she undertook and all her investigative reasoning. I don't think it occurred to Jentz to leave things out, any more than it occurred to her to ride just a segment of the TransAmerica Trail rather than all 4,200 miles (though neither she nor Weiss had trained for the trip). Jentz's determination, seemingly wherever it is applied, pulls in those around her and obliterates hesitation or reluctance. She keeps you pedaling without ever questioning why you have agreed to this long and harrowing trip.

Summary: Fifteen years after she was assaulted by a maniac with an ax, Terri Jentz sets out to investigate the unsolved crime for herself.


Sycamore Networks Inc., once one of the state’s hottest young companies of the telecommunications boom, said Monday that it is proceeding with its previously announced liquidation and dissolution in accordance with the plan of complete liquidation and dissolution that the stockholders approved at the Special Meeting, effective as of the close of business on March 7.

Last fall, a Chelmsford-based company founded in the late 1990s by high-profile entrepreneurs Dan Smith and Desh Deshpande disclosed its intentions to sell its hardware business for $18.75 million and wind down operations.

In a Monday press release, the company said it intends to file a certificate of dissolution with the Delaware Secretary of State on March 7 and to submit a request to the Nasdaq Stock Market to suspend trading of the common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market effective as of the close of trading on March 7.

Summary: Sycamore Networks Inc., once one of the state’s hottest young companies of the telecommunications boom, said Monday that it is proceeding with its previously announced liquidation and dissolution in accordance with the plan of complete liquidation and dissolution that the stockholders approved at the Special Meeting, effective as of the close of business on March 7. Last fall, a Chelmsford-based company founded in the late 1990s by high-profile entrepreneurs Dan Smith and Desh Deshpande disclosed its intentions to sell its hardware business and wind down operations.


JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — The head of the International Monetary Fund cautioned the world’s major central banks Friday not to withdraw their unconventional support for weak economies too soon.

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said stimulative policies are still needed in key regions, especially Europe and Japan, which have struggled with prolonged weakness.

She spoke at an annual economics conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., sponsored by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

Lagarde said central banks must carefully develop strategies for scaling back their efforts to keep borrowing rates low. Any pullback should be determined by the strength of individual economies, she said.

Her comments come as the Fed is signaling that it could slow its bond buys later this year if the US economy continues to improve. The Fed’s bond buying has helped keep US interest rates near record lows.

‘‘Unconventional monetary policy is still needed in all places it is being used, albeit longer for some than for others,’’ Lagarde said in her speech to the conference.

The anticipation of a slowdown in Fed bond buying has unsettled US stock and bond markets and sent interest rates up. Rising US rates have, in turn, triggered turmoil in some emerging economies, such as Turkey, India, and Indonesia.

Lagarde took note of the market declines that have followed Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s signal in June that the Fed could begin slowing its bond purchases later this year if the US economy strengthens further.

She said finance officials should prepare contingency plans in case market turbulence worsens.

Some investors think the Fed could announce at its next meeting in September that it’s reducing its bond purchases. But comments from Fed officials at Jackson Hole suggested some disagreement within the central bank over the proper timing for a slowdown to begin.

In her speech, Lagarde said the support being provided by major central banks is buying time for nations to implement key economic reforms. ‘‘Push ahead with deeper reforms to lay the foundation for durable and lasting growth,’’ Lagarde said. ‘‘Do not waste the space provided by unconventional monetary policies.’’

Summary: Eds: Adds Lagarde comment from question period, credit tagline.JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. (AP)— The head of the International Monetary Fund cautioned the world’s major central banks Friday not to withdraw their unconventional support for weak economies too soon. IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said stimulative policies are still needed in key regions, especially Europe and Japan, which have struggled with prolonged weakness. She spoke at an annual economics conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., sponsored by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.


Peter de Francia: The Ship of Fools, notable for the poignancy of the artist's imagery, 'even as it comments excoriatingly on human frailty'. Photograph: Pallant House

In 1959 Peter de Francia painted The Bombing of Sakiet, a canvas roughly 6ft high by 12ft wide, that has frequently been referred to as his Guernica. It was his response to the killing of 79 villagers in Tunisia where, the French authorities claimed, Algerian insurrectionists were trained.

Comparison to Picasso's masterpiece is obviously far-fetched, despite the scope of De Francia's ambition and achievement, but it gives a measure of the times. Far from being the backwater that is casually assumed, as the mists of war drifted away, the 1950s in British art was a decade seething with invention and riven by faction, political and artistic, in which the currency was not Warhol's percipient notion of 15 minutes of fame, but ideas freely and vehemently exchanged between continental Europe and Britain, and between British realists and abstractionists.

As it happens, De Francia, who has died aged 90 of pneumonia after a long spell as a diabetic, was well placed to be a combatant. A committed socialist, involved in the birth of the Universities and Left Review (soon to merge with the New Reasoner and become the New Left Review), he was born in Beaulieu, on the Côte d'Azur near the border with Italy. His father, Laurent Fernand de Francia, was a lawyer from a wealthy Genoese family, and his mother, Alice Groom, was English. De Francia grew up multilingual, studying in Paris first at the Lycée Pascale and then at the American high school.

He had a firsthand knowledge of postwar Italian art. In 1947 he worked in the studio of the communist Renato Guttuso, the leading socialist-realist painter, returned to Italy for two years in 1949, had a circle of Italian artist friends, and held a couple of shows in Milan.

His course had been set in 1939, following the death of his father. De Francia went to Brussels to study at the arts academy: when the Nazis invaded the following year, he got on his bike and pedalled to the coast through fields to avoid roads blocked with refugees going south and allied troops going north. In England, his mother's greeting was: "Why haven't you shaved?"

He joined the British army, was transferred from anti-tank artillery to interpreting photographs of the Normandy coast which, being half French, he was presumed to know intimately, and after D-day served in Belgium. Once the war was over he went to the Slade School of Art in London.

As late as 1977 the critic Richard Cork wrote: "Despite the prominence Peter de Francia commands as professor of painting at the Royal College of Art, his work is a more or less unknown quantity to everyone outside close friends and colleagues." The occasion for Cork's remarks was De Francia's big solo show at Camden Arts Centre. The reasons for the previous semi-obscurity were diverse, but included the fall from favour of the leftwing of De Francia himself and others of the order of John Berger, the sculptor George Fullard, the illustrator Paul Hogarth, the scientist JD Bernal and the cartoonist Abu (Abu Abraham). Another and more pertinent reason was that De Francia, neither communist nor fellow traveller, was an intellectual in the French sense, actively engaged with ideas and politics, reviewing, writing books (including a major study of Fernand Léger), broadcasting successfully on art and becoming a talks producer for BBC Television.

Yet he had shows all round the world; latterly and fittingly, three exhibitions at James Hyman Fine Art, the gallery run by the author of a key book on the period, The Battle for Realism; and he combined this with teaching in several art schools, including the RCA, where in 1980 the new rector, Dickie Guyatt, invited De Francia to step down from his professorship. De Francia refused, Guyatt sent in the lawyers, and the painting school rose, young and old, passed a motion of no confidence in Guyatt and the administration, and won the day for De Francia.

His work remained combative and brilliant. He was an agile draughtsman and beautiful colourist, but the clincher is the poignancy of his imagery even as it comments excoriatingly on human frailty, as in The Ship of Fools, a painting from around 1972 in the Pallant House collection at Chichester. The Battle of Sakiet, on extended loan from the Tunisian Embassy, is in the current hang at Tate Modern. Apart from Guernica, it has echoes of the wrecked warplanes of Paul Nash's Dead Sea, and even of Hogarth – an infant falling headlong from its mother's arms – but mostly its inspiration was the memory of German Stukas dive bombing during De Francia's rural bike ride through Belgium.

De Francia's first marriage, in 1943, ended in divorce; the second, to Jenny Franklin in 1980, was dissolved in 1988; the third was to Alix MacSweeney in 2004. She survives him.

• Peter Laurent de Francia, artist, born 25 January 1921; died 19 January 2012

• Peter de Francia on the BBC Your Paintings website

Summary: Artist with a brilliant and combative style, he became the RCA's professor of painting


82 Categories at the 56th annual Grammy Awards, which air Sunday at 8 p.m.

2 Grammys won by host LL Cool J

9 Nominations this year for Jay Z, including one for best rap album

1 New category for 2014: best American roots song

1991 Year the first MusiCares person of the year award was given; Carole King receives this year’s honor

17 Age of New Zealand artist Lorde, who, if she wins for record of the year and song of the year, will become the youngest winner ever in both categories

Summary: 82 Categories at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, which air Sunday at 8 p.m. 2 Grammys won by host LL Cool J 9 Nominations this year for Jay-Z, including one for “Best Rap Album” 1 New category for 2014, “The Best American Roots Song” 1991 Year the first “MusiCares Person of the Year” award was given; Carole King receives this year’s honor 17 Age of New Zealand-artist Lorde, who, if she wins for” Record of the Year” and “Song of the Year,” will become the youngest winner ever in both categories


The girl is slumped like a stoned teenager in a doorway, head drooping, hands folded in her lap: she has been dead for more than 500 years, and a team of international archaeologists and scientists, led by Dr Andy Wilson of Bradford University, has just pieced together the appalling last months of her life.

Like other children found on some of the highest peaks of the Andes, the mummy nicknamed the Llullaillaco Maiden had literally been fattened up for death, fed a much better diet in her last year including maize and meat, the luxury foods of aristocrats.

Her fine woven dress and cape are also far from the coarse peasant dress she probably wore before a horrific honour was bestowed on her: she was chosen to be abandoned on a mountain top, a living sacrifice to the gods.

She may indeed, the archaeologists hope, have been stupefied with drugs and alcohol. In her last weeks she was drugged with coca, and probably maize beer - perhaps to bring on merciful oblivion, possibly more pragmatically to combat altitude sickness so she could climb 6,739m to her own death, after walking hundreds of miles from the Inca capital, Cuzco.

The Maiden, aged about 15, whose mummy goes on display this week at a museum in Salta, Argentina, is regarded as one of the most perfect naturally mummified figures from anywhere in the world. She was found in 1999 in a stone shrine on the summit of the volcano, on the borders of Argentina and Chile.

Nearby were two other children, Lightning Girl, aged about 6, whose body was scorched by a direct lightning strike some time after her death, and Llullaillaco Boy, perhaps the most pathetic victim. If the girls were drugged beyond caring, the seven-year-old clearly was not: his clothes were covered with vomit and faeces, evidence, the scientists believe, of his terror. He probably actually died of crushing, so tightly bound that the cloth dislocated his ribs and pelvis.

The precise cause of the other deaths remains uncertain: the bitter cold which preserved their bodies is the most likely explanation. The scientists, many with children of their own, struggled to maintain objectivity. "The mummies were so extraordinarily preserved, it was impossible not to feel fully engaged with them as human beings," Dr Wilson said. "It felt almost as if the individuals were recounting their stories themselves, that was what was so chilling about it."

The team believes the food, the clothes, the jewellery, the expensive pottery left with them, were all intended to raise the status of the children, possibly to make them a more acceptable offering, but possibly more pragmatically so that the Inca rulers could use snatched peasant children, sparing their own. Their deaths were the climax of a complex ritual lasting at least a year, when they were almost certainly brought to Cuzco - the source of the pottery found with them - and then walked enormous distances to the mountains, which must have taken months.

Their hair was cut, and the cut hair carefully placed in small cloth bags with them - analysis of isotopes in hair samples provided the most telling evidence for their short lives - and the girls' elaborately braided soon before death. As if he hadn't endured enough torment, the little boy's was full of nits.

Their deaths were terrifying, and Dr Wilson believes they were meant to be. "The logistics of getting the children there needed imperial organisation," he said. "We believe there was some measure of the Incas demonstrating their power to the colonised: obey, or this is what will happen to you."

Summary: Archaeologists have pieced together the horrific last moments of children abandoned on the highest peaks of the Andes, more than 500 years ago, as human offerings to the gods.


By Charlotte Triggs and Peter Mikelbank

05/23/2014 at 12:30 PM EDT

From left: Kourtney Kardashian and Kendall Jenner, Kim Kardashian, and Kris Jenner

Neil P. Mockford/GC; INF; Marc Piasecki/GC

celebrated their impending nuptials with a brunch at designer Valentino Garavani's Château de Wideville, a 17th-century residence outside Paris Friday.

Wearing a low-cut butterfly-print appliqué dress by the designer himself, the reality star, 33, and West, 36, left their apartment in Paris at 12:30 with baby North and approximately 50 guests in tow while a scrum of paparazzi, fans and well-wishers looked on. The group, including mom Kris Jenner and sisters

headed outside of town to the eight-bedroom

for a pre-celebration hosted by

Meanwhile, preparations were fully underway at Florence's

, where the couple's wedding ceremony is expected to take place Saturday.

Two trucks bearing an assortment a white flowers, including roses and hortensias from Holland, were delivered to adorn the 16th-century fortress, while dozens of construction workers, security and party staff prepared the property for the wedding.

Disco lights were hung, metal detectors erected and a portable toilet imported from France was set up on the grounds, while wooden flooring was laid over the fort's grassy outdoor area so that guests could dance without their heels sinking into the ground. Marble walls were set up and tents to protect the event from overhead photography were spotted down the road from the fortress, waiting to be delivered Friday morning.

And it looks like Kim will continue

, at least this week – among the deliveries being made was a shipment of gourmet ice cream cones, also from France.

The Inside Scoop on Kim and Kanye's Wedding

Summary: Flowers, flooring and toilets are delivered to Forte Di Belvedere while Kim and company celebrate with Valentino outside Paris


A portrait of David Bowie photographed in 1978 will be included in the exhibition. Photograph: Armstrong Jones/PA

Haunting portrait photographs, including a swan-necked David Bowie photographed in 1978, the playwright Nell Dunn looking startlingly like a long-lost Bowie twin, and Vita Sackville-West, the writer, gardener and former lover of Virginia Woolf who was still formidable in the year before her death in 1962, have been donated to the National Portrait Gallery by the society photographer Lord Snowdon.

The gift of 130 original prints, including photographs of his former in-laws from the years he was married to Princess Margaret, is one of the largest ever to the gallery.

Other portraits gifted to the gallery feature actors John Hurt and Alan Bates, writers Kingsley Amis and Graham Greene, musicians Yehudi Menuhin and George Melly and artist Barbara Hepworth.

Several of the portraits will be exhibited for the first time in a free exhibition on his life and work opening at the gallery in September. The exhibition was already being curated from works that Snowdon donated last year.

The director of the NPG, Sandy Nairne, said: "These are wonderful portrait images of some most creative and engaging contributors to Britain in the second half of the 20th century."

• Snowdon: A Life In View will run at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 26 September 2014 to 21 June 2015.

Summary: Several portraits will be displayed for first time in exhibition on his life and work opening at gallery in September


Sledgehammer Games co-founders Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey are keenly aware "Call of Duty" fans don't want the next game to be just good. They're demanding greatness.

"People are tweeting us every day," Schofield said last week during a behind-the-scenes tour of the Foster City game studio that is creating "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare," scheduled for release this fall.

"We knew coming in five years ago that we were stepping into some massive shoes," Condrey said.

Sledgehammer is the first new studio in a decade to take the development lead for one of the biggest franchises in video game history. To date, gamers have bought more than 175 million copies of the war-simulation game, which has generated more than $10 billion in retail sales, and there are more than 40 million active players for online versions of the game.

"The pressure is definitely there," said Aaron Halon, director of product development. "We're also fans ourselves, and I think that helps. I sometimes feel like we're some of our worst critics. We love it. We're passionate about it."

Halon is one of the more than 225 employees spending long hours putting the finishing polish on "Advanced Warfare" to meet a September deadline to deliver the game to Sledgehammer parent Activision Blizzard of Santa Monica. The game is scheduled to be released to the public on Nov. 4.

This is the first in the series to be set far in the future with a story that starts in 2054. Actor Kevin Spacey plays Jonathan Irons, the head of a private military corporation. Spacey not only voices the character, but his face is also the computer-generated image of Irons.

To make the game more realistic, Sledgehammer talked technology with sources like NASA and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

The studio even contracted a futurist who writes "what if" scenarios for the U.S. government, such as "what happens if we had to evacuate Detroit," Schofield said.

"We're researching what tires are going to be made of in 50 years - Will they be filled with air? Will they be filled with water?" Schofield said.

So there are no flying cars, but the game does have attack drones and directed energy weapons. The game's hero, Pvt. Jack Mitchell, dons an exoskeleton, a computer-enhanced suit of armor that boosts his fighting abilities. Prototype exoskeletons are already in use.

"We're not space travel and aliens and laser beams," Condrey said. "We're very much grounded in research of today."

"Advanced Warfare" is the type of game Schofield and Condrey envisioned when they founded Sledgehammer in 2009 as a subsidiary of Activision. But their journey to "Call of Duty" evolved from circumstances beyond their control.

The game industry veterans met while working at Electronic Arts on titles like "Dead Space" and a James Bond game called "From Russia With Love."

At the time, "Call of Duty" creator Infinity Ward of Encino was the game's primary studio. But a nasty legal battle about royalties between Activision and Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella handed Sledgehammer an usual opportunity.

"They stepped in when Infinity Ward lost its co-founders and one third of its staff," said analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities.

Sledgehammer was already working on a version of "Call of Duty" set during the Vietnam War.

The franchise was always based "on a soldier's journey" and the camaraderie with a group "fighting for a hero's cause," Condrey said. Yet while the Vietnam project "was creatively interesting," the war itself was "not viewed globally as a hero's war," he said.

Instead, Activision asked Sledgehammer to work with what was left of Infinity Ward on "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," which was released in 2011.

"They said, Would you like to work on 'Spider-Man,' a racing game or 'Call of Duty'? and it really wasn't close," Condrey said.

That led to the lead role in creating a new "Call of Duty" for the PC and the two next-generation home consoles that were released in 2013, Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.

Sledgehammer received a third year of development time while Activision-owned studio Treyarch worked on "Call of Duty: Black Ops II," released in 2012, and Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Neversoft and Raven Software worked on last year's hit, "Call of Duty: Ghosts."

The extra year gave Condrey and Schofield time to work on the quality of "Advanced Warfare," but they also admit it eliminated any excuses they might have had if the game stumbles.

Pachter said the "Advanced Warfare" preview Sledgehammer showed at the big game industry conference E3 in June "looked phenomenal."

"This year's game is likely to be among the highest rated in franchise history," he said.

"Advanced Warfare" does have a tough act to follow: Retailers spent more than $1 billion worldwide on "Ghosts" in one day following its Nov. 5 release. Pachter said "Advanced Warfare" needs to hit about $950 million to be a hit, but "that is pretty much a lock. They are doing a great job."

Condrey and Schofield said their studio's name also described their personalities, which is why they're confident they'll succeed.

"We signed up for that pressure in advance, and we do use that to drive us to do the best work of our careers," Condrey said.

But they also know video game fans will have the ultimate say and that they can be fickle.

One glaring example comes from their former employer's longtime hit - the military fighting series "Medal of Honor." Electronic Arts put the series on hold after the 2012 release of "Medal of Honor: Warfighter" was a big flop.

Schofield believes his studio's attention to quality will make "Advanced Warfare" a hit.

"We want to have a game we're proud of to give to the fans," Schofield said. "The best thing for Michael and I would be for the fans to write to us on Twitter and tell us how much (they) enjoyed the game."

Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChronicleBenny

Summary: People are tweeting us every day, Schofield said last week during a behind-the-scenes tour of the Foster City game studio that is creating Call of Duty:  Sledgehammer is the first new studio in a decade to take the development lead for one of the biggest franchises in video game history.  To date, gamers have bought more than 175 million copies of the war-simulation game, which has generated more than $10 billion in retail sales, and there are more than 40 million active players for online versions of the game.  Tough workHalon is one of the more than 225 employees spending long hours putting the finishing polish on "Advanced Warfare" to meet a September deadline to deliver the game to Sledgehammer parent Activision Blizzard of Santa Monica.  To make the game more realistic, Sledgehammer talked technology with sources like NASA and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.  The game's hero, Pvt. Jack Mitchell, dons an exoskeleton, a computer-enhanced suit of armor that boosts his fighting abilities.  The game industry veterans met while working at Electronic Arts on titles like "Dead Space" and a James Bond game called "From Russia With Love."  [...] a nasty legal battle about royalties between Activision and Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella handed Sledgehammer an usual opportunity.  Big breakThat led to the lead role in creating a new "Call of Duty" for the PC and the two next-generation home consoles that were released in 2013, Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.  Pachter said the "Advanced Warfare" preview Sledgehammer showed at the big game industry conference E3 in June "looked phenomenal."


When I teach communications etiquette, I always start with the Four P’s, the bedrock of positive, relationship-building communications.

Public versus private. Think not only about what you want to communicate, but how you are going to do it. For instance, I once overheard a man’s cellphone conversation while on a train. The person he was talking to apparently kept trying to discuss the qualifications of a candidate for a job. To his credit, the person on the train refused to discuss the issue: “I can’t talk about it right now, I’m on the train.”

Also, remember the Bulletin Board Rule: If you can’t post it on a bulletin board for anyone to read, then don’t e-mail it, tweet it, blog it, instant-message it, or leave it on a voice mail.

Proofread. Excusing your errors by putting a note at the end of a text saying “Please excuse typos; this was written on my phone” does not remove the impression that you are careless, it just reinforces it. Be particularly careful in today’s digital world because auto-correct can make you look foolish, and spell-check is no guarantee that everything is correct.

It’s particularly important to spell people’s names correctly. Before you write to someone for the first time, call the person’s office and double-check the spelling of his or her name. Getting it right is expected; getting it wrong leaves you with egg on your face.

Pronunciation. Mispronouncing words can make you look like you don’t know what you are talking about. Mispronouncing a person’s name can be a fatal error, especially in a job interview or meeting a new client. Find out how to pronounce a person’s name ahead of time. Doing so will ensure your meeting will start off on a positive, professional note.

Patience. Take your time when communicating, especially when replying. If you’re feeling a little frustrated, wait five minutes before returning a call so the frustration you feel subsides and isn’t heard in your tone of voice. When using digital communications, try the “send later” or “draft” button. Wait a few minutes and then reread your message. Ask a colleague to read it to be sure of its tone. Or, go into a quiet, private room and read your message out loud. You’ll hear the tone in your writing.

Remember, an ounce of prevention . . .

Summary: When it comes to communications etiquette, always start with The Four P’s, the bedrock of positive, relationship-building communications.


2014 MTV Video Music Awards Sunday at 9 p.m., MTV

Which ridiculous costumes and attention-getting stunts will clog up your feed on Monday morning? Expect a Beyoncé-centric night. She’s the leading nominee with eight VMA nods, and she’s the recipient of this year’s Video Vanguard Award. Also, she’s performing, and when she performs (above) she always means beyzness. Also performing: Usher, Iggy Azalea, Jesse J, Nicki Minaj, Usher, and Maroon 5.

Outlander Saturday at 9 p.m., Starz

After a strong premiere for Starz, with some 5 million viewers watching the show across the first week, “Outlander” has already been renewed for a second season. The series, adapted from Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling books, is decent enough, with a time-traveling theme and lots of melodrama. But the characterizations tend to be flat, and the romantic scenes are spray-cheesy.

The Knick 10 p.m., Cinemax

Marty Saturday at 8 p.m., TCM

Doctor Who Saturday at 8 p.m., BBC America

Summary: Expect a Beyonce-centric night at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards Sunday.


BY EMERSON CHAPIN; SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMESAUG. 26, 1964

TOKYO, Aug. 25 — A 12‐car train of Japan's New Tokaido Line sped 320 miles from Tokyo to Osaka today in 3 hours 56 minutes.

The test run, the first conducted at regularly scheduled speed over the entire route, was termed “very, very successful” by Reisuke Ishida, president of Japan National Railways.

The superexpress Hikari stopped only at Nagoya and Kyoto as it raced in record time from Japan's capital to her second largest city. After a two‐hour stop in Osaka, the streamlined blue ‐ and ‐ white train made the return trip in just over four hours.

The New Tokaido Line, an imaginative venture hurried to completion in five years by Japan's Government ‐ operated railway corporation, will begin regular service Oct. 1, 10 days before the beginning of the Olympic Games.

In a test run earlier this year, one of its trains reached a speed of 150 miles an hour. National Railway engineers believe this can be bettered.

The trip of the Hikari marked a proud day for Japan. Thousands lined the route to wave and cheer as the express flashed past.

Traffic was stopped on many main highways as the Hikari approached. The Japan Broadcasting Corporation had a large crew aboard the train, at vantage points along the route and in aricraft overhead to provide exhaustive coverage of the trip that the Japanese hope will open a new epoch in railroading.

The Hikari rode smoothly and quietly over welded, mile‐long sections of steel rail. It often gave the impression of idling,

The train traveled at an average speed of just over 80 miles an hour. It stopped for nine minutes at Nagoya and two minutes at Kyoto.

Mr. Ishida said in an interview aboard the train that expresses would run on a fourhour schedule for the first six months and thereafter, he hoped, on a three‐hour basis. “We are being very cautious,” he declared.

The railroad president said a slight jerkiness experienced on today's trip was because many sections of the new roadbed had not yet settled completely.

“We know we can run very safely even at 250 kilometers (156 miles) an hour, but the maximum will be held to 210 on our regularly scheduled runs,” he added.

At one point the Hikari reached 217 kilometers an hour. Much of the time it traveled at 180 kilometers (about 112 miles) an hour, speeding through numerous tunnels at more than 100 miles an hour.

The New Tokaido Line is intended to relieve the intense pressure on Japan's main Tokaido Line. The Tokaido serves an area that includes Japans' six biggest cities and 40 per cent of her population. The area

The electric‐powered train can carry 978 passengers in its two first‐class and 10 second class coaches. The cars are airconditioned, equipped with cushioned and adjustable seats, and pressurized for comfort. A buffet car will provide light refreshment.

Initial fares for express runs will range from the equivalent of 56.33 to $13.98. They will probably be raised when speeds are increased.

U. S. Trains Are Recalled

The fastest scheduled American train run today is the Burlington Railroad's Morning Zephyr, which travels at 82.3 miles an hour for 45.25 miles *on its run from Aurora to Rochelle, Ill.

The New York Central's Engine 999 of the Empire State Express reached 112.5 miles an hour before the turn of the century, and a Union Pacific train traveled at 120 miles an hour over a nine‐mile stretch in Nebraska in 1934. The world speed rail record is held by two French Railway electric locomotives, which in 1955 both achieved a speed of 205.6 miles an hour.

This article can be viewed in its original form. Please send questions and feedback to archive_feedback@nytimes.com

Summary: new Tokyo-Osaka express makes trial run; avgs 80 mph; map


FORTUNE — The Delaware Chancery Court has given some comfort to venture capital and private equity firms with minority stakes in publicly-traded companies, in a ruling related to last year’s $117 million acquisition of steakhouse chain Morton’s Restaurant Group by an affiliate of Landry’s Inc.

Certain shareholders had challenged the sale, partially under a theory that private equity firm Castle Harlan – a 28% shareholder in Morton’s – had improperly influenced the sale process. Why? To provide liquidity to limited partners (the original investment was a decade old), so as to improve future fundraising odds.

Judge Leo Strine – not always private equity’s biggest fan, despite last week’s Dell DELL decision – dismissed the complaint, finding that: (a) The sale process was thorough, and (b) Castle Harlan “benefited from the transaction pro rata with the other stockholders.

“This nips in the bud a plaintiff’s theory that was beginning to blossom about there being something wrong with a large stockholder – maybe even a controlling stockholder – being part of a decision that it’s time to sell the company,” says Jim Lidbury, co-head of the M&A practice at Ropes & Gray.

Lidbury dismisses the notion that a PE firm would time a sale process to benefit fundraising – he (and seemingly Strine) finds it “absurd” while I find it entirely plausible – but adds that motive is secondary to process.

“There have now been four broadly similar cases in the past several years, and the only time the plaintiff survives is when there is something flaky about the process, like an allegation of intimidation to fire people,” he explains. “So long as you run a professional, clean process you’re going to be in a very defensible position.”

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Summary: Morton's ruling suggests that M&A process trumps all.