Correction appended Wednesday, March 2

The world is a prison. As I close my front gate, it slams like a heavy cell door securing itself shut. My sneaker steps on the sidewalk echo like I’m stomping with a pair of heavy boots through a cement hallway. Someplace far away, a bird chirps, but it’s drowned out by the sound of cars rumbling past like battle tanks. And my sleeves — I can even hear my sleeves brushing into my torso, the friction of every thread grating away at my nerves.

I know this sounds bad, but this is my world right now — at least while I’m wearing Here Active Listening earbuds. And then when I take them off, everything is right again. In fact, it’s a really nice day outside.

A pair of Bluetooth-connected, wireless headphones, Here looks like something you’d plug into your ears to listen to a podcast or to take a phone call. Instead, these in-ear headphones double as both a microphone and a speaker, capturing the sounds of the world around you and modulating them so they sound different once they dance across your eardrum.

So, in other words, it’s a gimmick, right?

Not so, says Noah Kraft, CEO and co-founder of Doppler Labs, the startup that has brought these $199 “hearables” to market. Doppler wanted to create a wearable device that lets users take control of their audio environment and allows them to have, essentially, “digital ears.”

“Every single person hears the world different. Some people might walk into a loud concert and think, ‘Wow, that’s perfect!’ Other people might want to turn it down,” says Kraft. “If you’re like me, and you’re an audiophile, you might walk into that room and say, ‘Huh, if it only had a little more reverb, a little more bass, I would enjoy it more.'”

To that point, Here delivers. Pairing with a smartphone app, the earbuds can modulate sound in remarkable ways, doing everything from changing the volume of the world around you to applying complex filters that change the nature of reality’s sounds.

Here, the most comfortable earpieces I’ve ever crammed into my canal, is unobtrusive to wear. Its directional performance is excellent, meaning sounds feel like they’re coming from the right direction. Volume, pitch, tone, and other variables, however, are another story. The app lets you tweak them with an equalizer, while preset filters can help block outside noise.

But Here wasn’t designed for everyday wear — at least not this version of the device. Instead, it’s geared towards live music aficionados looking to save their hearing, while also hoping to enhance the sound at shows.

Backed by musical notables like Mark Ronson, Quincy Jones and Hans Zimmer, among others, Here is partnering with Coachella this summer, giving festival attendees the chance to mainstream the technology. Last year, Doppler Lab’s Dubs noise-filtering earplugs were the show’s must-have earwear, with 100,000 pairs being distributed in welcome boxes. They then became a must-have on the concert circuit, becoming the official earplug of multiple music festivals. But while Dubs specialized in drowning sound out, Here looks to make every note matter.

With Coachella stages optimized for Here, the festival is trumpeting the tech’s arrival, emailing attendees information about the earbuds in advance and giving people an opportunity to buy a pair before the music starts. Kraft estimates some 10,000 of the festival’s 225,000 attendees will use a pair while there.

That number may not make the product seem like a runaway hit, but Doppler Labs is being deliberately slow about rolling out the new buds. Here’s initial product run of 10,000 units is now shipping; there are 50,000 people on a wait list looking to grab any leftovers.

If the Coachella crowds catapult Here to success like they did Dubs, it mark the beginning of an in-ear computing revolution. “We believe people will be wearing much more computers on their body, and we hope to be at the forefront of in-ear computing,” says Kraft. “And we think augmented reality and hearing optimization is a really unique and interesting way to get tech into people’s ear.”

Correction: The original version of this story misstated the price of the Here Active Listening earbuds. They are $199.

Summary: Hear music and other sounds like never before


Malcolm Turnbull has promised to take a fresh look at petrol prices, but says greater competition and use of mobile apps will help address consumer concerns.

Consumer advocates say motorists aren't reaping the full benefit of reduced international crude oil and refined petrol prices, despite them being at the lowest level for more than a decade.

Across the five largest cities, prices averaged 121.7 cents a litre in 2015/16.

Brisbane recorded the highest retail prices in the past year with motorists paying an extra 4.1 cents a litre above the other cities.

The prime minister said he planned to discuss the issue with Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief Rod Sims.

"But it is a competitive business ... over the years we've felt that the solution was competition and transparency," Mr Turnbull told Alan Jones on 2GB radio on Thursday.

"There are plenty of ways of getting applications on your phone and so forth that show you where the cheapest petrol is, but of course the problem is very few of us have got the time to drive around because we're all so time poor."

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten doesn't expect suppliers to change their practices.

"When Malcolm Turnbull says he will make a phone call, my advice is if you find a low-price petrol station fill up today," he told reporters in Canberra.

Mr Shorten said there was no simple solution, but public pressure was important.

Shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh said the ACCC should be given a "market studies power" and armed with stronger penalties for firms doing the wrong thing by consumers.

"The question is not whether or not the PM can ask the ACCC to do something, but what teeth the ACCC has to do it," Dr Leigh said.

"Frankly, if all you are doing is asking a sheep to do a tiger's job, it's not going to have much teeth."

The Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association says more government regulation has increased costs, while margins are being squeezed by increased competition in the convenience store market.

Since May 20, motorists have been able to access near real-time petrol price information through the MotorMouth smartphone app, or its equivalent.

Crossbench senator Nick Xenophon, who met the ACCC boss in Sydney on Thursday, believes there is a need for a more competitive market.

"The big four oil companies have pretty much a stranglehold on the wholesale and distribution of fuel in this country ... (but) if you increase supply and you increase competition that is better for consumers."

Summary: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he will talk to the head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission about petrol prices.


Police have intercepted a load of sly grog allegedly bound for the vulnerable far north Queensland community of Aurukun.

Some 30 litres of wine, beer and port was seized after officers intercepted a vehicle during patrols in a remote area of West Cape York on Wednesday, police say.

Three men from Aurukun, aged 31, 34 and 67, and a 50-year-old Hopevale man have been charged with attempting to take liquor into a restricted area and will face court later this month.

Summary: Four men have been charged after police caught a load of sly grog allegedly bound for the far north Queensland town of Aurukun.


The man who is accused of murdering schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer is facing nine additional charges relating to two young girls.

Rick Thorburn, 56, first came to police attention in April this year after a complaint was made against him regarding his conduct with a 4-year-old and an 11-year-old girl.

He was subsequently charged with nine offences relating to both children by the Queensland police.

Tiahleigh was in the Thorburns care for 10 months when she was found dead by fishermen on the banks of the Pimpama River last November.

A police officer holds up a piece of lightly-coloured material uncovered in the search of alleged killer Rick Thorburn's property. (ABC)

Thorburn has been charged with her murder, while his son Trent has been charged with incest, perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Police allege Trent had sex with Tiahleigh days before she was killed, and feared she was pregnant.

Thorburn’s wife Julene, 54, and 20-year-old son, Josh, are also charged with perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Both were released on bail.

The revelations come as police yesterday uncovered light-coloured material in the search for the 12-year-old’s backpack and uniform.

Excavators and forensic police moved in on the Chambers Flat property – the home where she is alleged to have been murdered.

"There is evidence that things had been burnt at the property, but that's not uncommon for a rural property," Detective Inspector Damien Hanson said yesterday.

“It’s an extensive crime scene.”

Tiahleigh’s biological mother Cindy spoke out yesterday for the first time since charges were laid, telling reporters a “piece of her heart is missing”.

“I will not let Tiahleigh’s death be in vain,” she said.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: Tiahleigh Palmer's biological mother, Cindy Palmer, has spoken to the media for the first time since charges were laid over the schoolgirl's death.


Some pro athletes blasted Donald Trump for using the term "locker room talk" to defend his lewd comments from 2005, but Tom Brady politely punted when asked about it during a press conference Wednesday.

"With kids of your own, how would you respond if your kid heard Donald Trump's version of locker room talk?" a reporter asked.

Brady responded with a smile and said, "Thank you, guys. Have a good day."

Then he ended the presser by walking away from the podium.

Brady has generally steered clear of political talk but acknowledged last year that he is friends with Trump.

"I have known him for a long time," Brady told WEEI in December 2015. "I support all my friends."

Donald Trump, Football, New England Patriots, NFL, Politics, Tom Brady

Summary: Tom Brady is polite in declining but exits quickly when asked about Donald Trump's definition of "locker room talk."


Queensland police have charged two men and are questioning another over the robbery of an on-call doctor.

Police say four men approached the doctor when he was on-call in Maryborough on Monday night and stole his medical kit containing numerous prescription drugs.

Officers have since located the medical kit and charged two men, aged 25 and 22, and are questioning a third while they remain on the hunt for the fourth bandit.

Summary: Police have charged two men and are questioning a third after an on-call doctor was robbed in Queensland's Wide Bay region on Monday.


A 78-year-old woman has been threatened with a knife and robbed inside her own home in Sydney’s south-west.

The woman was inside her house in Lurnea at about 8.45pm when a man forced entry into the property.

He confronted her, drew out a knife and threatened her before stealing her purse which had the keys to her white Ford Fiesta inside.

He then sped away in her car.

The woman was taken to Liverpool Hospital suffering shock.

Police are urging anyone with information in relation to this incident to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016


A father has been crushed to death by two marble slabs at his business in Brisbane's bayside when they slipped from the back of a truck.

Ray Finch, 61, was critically injured in the incident on Shore Street West in Cleveland around 10am (11am AEDT).

Paramedics were unable to revive him and he died at the scene.

A man has died in an industrial accident in Brisbane. (9NEWS)

Mr Finch, a stonemason for more than 40 years, was offloading the 600 kilogram blocks from a truck when they slipped from the vehicle.

"It's a real shock for him to be gone. He was an amazing man and he will be greatly missed," the victim's son told 9NEWS.

The man died at the scene. (9NEWS)

The slabs appear to have been positioned securely on the truck but Workplace Health and Safety Queensland will be investigating and a report will be prepared for the coroner.

It comes just months after two workers were crushed by a concrete slab at Eagle Farm Racecourse.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: A man has been crushed to death by two granite slabs at a business in Brisbane's bayside.


OLUMBUS, Ohio - A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, similar registration drives have been mounted in them as well, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.

"We know it's going on, and it's a very encouraging sign," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. The new voters, Mr. Elmendorf said, "could very much be the difference."

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Christine Iverson, declined to comment on The Times's findings and said she did not believe Republicans were lagging in the registration battle. "We're very confident that we have a ground game that's as good as the Democrats', and better," she said.

The precise impact of the swell in registration is difficult to predict, as there is no reliable gauge of how many of these new voters will actually vote. Some experts, though, say that the spike has not been accurately captured by political polls and could confound prognostications in closely contested states.

What is clear is that each side has deployed huge numbers of workers and devoted millions of dollars to the effort. Much of it is being directed by civil rights and community groups, as well as soft-money organizations allied with the Democrats. One such Democratic umbrella group, America Votes, says its constituents - labor unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, community organizations - will spend $300 million on registration and turnout in swing states, a sum that dwarfs the $150 million in public financing the two candidates together will receive for the entire fall campaign.

The registration drives are just the first step in a campaign by each side to get more Americans to vote by using personal contact. As registration winds down, with early October cutoffs in many states, efforts will shift to staying in touch through Election Day with repeated phone calls and visits, and, on Nov. 2, ferrying people to the polls.

In Ohio - no Republican presidential candidate has ever been elected without carrying the state - the campaign has been especially exhaustive. Canvassers ride public transportation, visit coin laundries, and trudge the sidewalks and parking lots at the job centers, housing agencies and community colleges.

In Columbus, Akume Green has haunted the Franklin County Courthouse for months, working the sidewalk between the entrance and the nearby bus stop. Ms. Green says she has signed up more than 700 voters since March here and elsewhere in the city. But it is getting harder to do so, she said. On a recent day, the first 12 people she asked said they had already registered.

"I get about 30 new voters or changes of address in six hours," said Ms. Green, who was hired by Project Vote, the nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. "I used to get 16 in 45 minutes, but now everyone's registered."

Studies have shown that calling voters and showing up at their houses before and on Election Day substantially increases turnout - and is cheaper per vote than buying a television advertisement. Republicans used the strategy with great success in the 2002 elections.

But Donald P. Green, a professor of political science at Yale who has conducted many of those studies, said there was no reliable way to tell how many new voters would turn out at the polls, especially those from lower-income areas.

"Do you get 30 percent, or do you get 70 percent?" Professor Green said. "To the extent that these new voters are on the radar screen of groups that have the kind of resources these groups have at their disposal, they might well turn out."

Steve Rosenthal, the chief executive of Americans Coming Together, or ACT, a soft-money group that is trying to register Democrats, said he believed they would. "I think what's happening on the streets, below the radar, is what's going to make the big difference on Election Day," said Mr. Rosenthal, who said his organization and the other groups would register two and a half million new Democratic voters nationwide.

But Republican officials say they remain confident that their voters will prove easier to get to the polls. "It would scare me if we weren't doing our own thing," said Joanne Davidson, the regional chairwoman of the Bush campaign in four Midwestern states including Ohio, of the wave of new Democrats. "We know how to turn out voters."

Ms. Green is typical of the army of registrars who have been working the streets here, some of them since last September. Their persistence has produced results. Franklin County had 650,000 registered voters in the 2000 election. "Now we're over 800,000," said Matt Damschroder, the director of the Board of Elections. "If you look at the pure census numbers, you'd think we are close to registering the entire voting-age population."

Project Vote says it has registered 147,000 new voters in Ohio. Americans Coming Together said that, together with allied groups that are part of America Votes, it had registered 300,000 new voters. America Votes and ACT are openly Democratic, although they cannot legally coordinate with the party or the Kerry campaign.

Republican officials say they think the paid workers who are registering low-income voters are sloppy, and are skeptical of the number of voters they claim to have registered, saying many are duplicates and changes of address. Mr. Damschroder said he had to throw out many of the cards he got because the voters were already registered. "One woman had signed a card three different times," with three different groups, he said.

Prosecutors in Columbus have filed criminal charges against an Acorn registrar, saying that he filed a false registration form and forged a signature. Officials for the group say they fired the worker and instituted a quality checking system before the prosecutors acted.

Nevertheless, an examination of county registration records shows that the groups have added thousands of new Democrats to the rolls and have far outnumbered new registrations in Republican areas. In a 300-square-block area east of the courthouse in downtown Columbus that voted nine to one against Mr. Bush in 2000, for instance, 3,000 new voters have registered this year. That is three times as many as in each of the last two presidential election years. The number of registered voters in the area is up 18 percent since January.

By comparison, in a prosperous area north of downtown with a similar number of voters who are overwhelmingly Republican, just 1,100 new voters have been added this year, increasing registration rolls by 7 percent.

These numbers are similar across Ohio. The Times examined registration from Jan. 1 to July 31 in a sample of counties that included seven of the state's nine largest, along with some smaller rural and suburban counties. Voters do not give a party affiliation when they register in Ohio, but The Times looked at the voting history of ZIP codes to gauge the political inclinations of the new voters.

In rock-ribbed Republican areas - 103 ZIP codes, many of them rural and suburban areas, that voted by two to one or better for George W. Bush in 2000 - 35,000 new voters have registered, a substantial increase over the 28,000 that registered in those areas in the first seven months of 2000. The Ohio Republican party said it was pleased with the results.

"It's not easy work, but we go door to door in strong Republican precincts, making sure everyone is registered," said Chris McNulty, the state party chairman.

But in heavily Democratic areas - 60 ZIP codes mostly in the core of big cities like Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown that voted two to one or better against Mr. Bush - new registrations have more than tripled over 2000, to 63,000 from 17,000.

In Florida, where The Times was able to analyze data from 60 of the state's 67 counties, new registrations this year also are running far ahead of the 2000 pace, with Republican areas trailing Democratic ones. In the 150 ZIP codes that voted most heavily for Mr. Bush, 96,000 new voters have registered this year, up from 86,000 in 2000, an increase of about 12 percent.

But in the heaviest of Democratic areas, 110 ZIP codes that gave two-thirds or more of their votes to Al Gore, new registrations have increased to 125, 000 from 77,000, a jump of more than 60 percent.

In Duval County, where a confusing ballot design in 2000 helped disqualify thousands of ballots in black precincts, new registrations by black voters are up 150 percent over the pace of 2000.

"We're using guerrilla tactics to get into the malls and sign up voters before the security guards chase us off," said Adam Broad, 40, an organizer in Duval County with the Florida Consumer Action Network Foundation, one of dozens of community groups registering in Florida.

The groups are building nationwide databases of voters and have committed millions of dollars for continued contact with them before and on Election Day.

"If every Democrat showed up at the polls, you'd win, no question," said James Koehler, a precinct organizer in Columbus working for MoveOn.org, another soft-money group. Mr. Koehler said MoveOn hoped to have a volunteer in every precinct to call neighbors on Nov. 2.

But intensive voter contact and turnout are exactly what the Republicans believe they do best. Their plan calls for the same kind of sophisticated targeting, and a last-minute push for turnout called a 72-hour strategy, the plan Republicans used in 2002 to overwhelm incumbent Democrats like former Senator Max Cleland in Georgia.

Even before Election Day, the new voters may be having an impact on the campaign, because they may not be accurately reflected in the political polls.

"The people who are new voters are disengaged; they're less likely to respond to a poll question," said Philip Klinkner, a government professor at Hamilton College.

Summary: A registration campaign in Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in Ohio and Florida.


SAN FRANCISCO, July 15 - Add personal computers to the list of throwaways in the disposable society.

On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker's Dell desktop computer was overrun by spyware and adware - stealth software that delivers intrusive advertising messages and even gathers data from the user's machine - he did not simply get rid of the offending programs. He threw out the whole computer.

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Terrelea Wong, a doctor who replaced her infected computer, says she no longer clicks on pop-ups.

Mr. Tucker, an Internet industry executive who holds a Ph.D. in computer science, decided that rather than take the time to remove the offending software, he would spend $400 on a new machine.

He is not alone in his surrender in the face of growing legions of digital pests, not only adware and spyware but computer viruses and other Internet-borne infections as well. Many PC owners are simply replacing embattled machines rather than fixing them.

"I was spending time every week trying to keep the machine free of viruses and worms," said Mr. Tucker, a vice president of Salesforce.com, a Web services firm based here. "I was losing the battle. It was cheaper and faster to go to the store and buy a low-end PC."

In the face of a constant stream of pop-up ads, malfunctioning programs and performance slowed to a crawl or a crash - the hallmarks of spyware and adware - throwing out a computer "is a rational response," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a Washington-based research group that studies the Internet's social impact.

While no figures are available on the ranks of those jettisoning their PC's, the scourge of unwanted software is widely felt. This month the Pew group published a study in which 43 percent of the 2,001 adult Internet users polled said they had been confronted with spyware or adware, collectively known as malware. Forty-eight percent said they had stopped visiting Web sites that might deposit unwanted programs on their PC's.

Moreover, 68 percent said they had had computer trouble in the last year consistent with the problems caused by spyware or adware, though 60 percent of those were unsure of the problems' origins. Twenty percent of those who tried to fix the problem said it had not been solved; among those who spent money seeking a remedy, the average outlay was $129.

By comparison, it is possible to buy a new computer, including a monitor, for less than $500, though more powerful systems can cost considerably more.

Meantime, the threats from infection continue to rise, and "the arms race seems to have tilted toward the bad guys," Mr. Rainie said.

The number of viruses has more than doubled in just the last six months, while the number of adware and spyware programs has roughly quadrupled during the same period, said Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec, which makes the Norton computer security programs. One reason for the explosion, Symantec executives say, is the growth of high-speed Internet access, which allows people to stay connected to the Internet constantly but creates more opportunity for malicious programs to find their way onto machines.

Mr. Weafer said an area of particular concern was infections adept at burying themselves in a computer system so that the cleansing programs had trouble finding them. The removal of these programs must often be done manually, requiring greater technical expertise.

There are methods of protecting computers from infection through antivirus and spyware-removal software and digital barriers called firewalls, but those tools are far from being completely effective.

"Things are spinning out of control," said David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale.

Mr. Gelernter said his own family's computer became so badly infected that he bought a new one this week. He said his two teenage sons were balking at spending the hours needed to scrub the old one clean of viruses, worms and adware.

Mr. Gelernter blames the software industry for the morass, noting that people are increasingly unwilling to take out their "software tweezers" to clean their machines.

Microsoft executives say they decided to enter the anti-spyware business earlier this year after realizing the extent of the problem.

Summary: In the face of growing legions of digital pests, many PC owners are simply replacing embattled machines rather than fixing them.


Friday, November 6th 1998, 2:05AM

THEY DIDN'T recognize the shoeless man lying unconscious on the floor of the posh Manhattan townhouse. The blonde trying to resuscitate him was frightened and out of breath.

"How long has he been out?" one of the paramedics asked.

His body was warm, but they couldn't find a pulse. Now they began administering oxygen and injecting powerful drugs into the shoeless man's veins to jump-start his heart.

Six minutes later the electrocardiogram line gave a wiggle. But as paramedic William McCabe radioed nearby St. Clare's Hospital that the squad was ready to roll, he got inexplicable orders to head for farther-away Lenox Hill Hospital instead.

At Lenox Hill a few minutes later, the ambulance was met by Dr. Ernest Esakof.

"All right," Esakof announced to the crew. "Let's not talk about this."

At 12:20 a.m. on Saturday the 26th of January 1979, 70-year-old Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, former four-term governor of the State of New York and former vice president of the United States of America, was declared dead, apparently of a heart attack.

Forty minutes later, Rockefeller family spokesman Hugh Morrow began unspooling the official story of the great man's last moments.

But matters were already spinning out of control.

THE SCION OF the family that oversaw America's most famous fortune, Nelson Rockefeller lusted his entire life for that which even his millions could not buy the presidency.

An aristocrat who treated his wives to new Rolls-Royces each year, he had nonetheless always been a hit with the masses. "Rocky" worked hard at being a regular guy, throwing out a jaunty "Hiya, fella!" as he glad-handed voters en route to his four terms in Albany.

But he was often at odds with his own Republican Party, and in the twilight of his career he'd had to settle for a truncated two-year stint as vice president to Gerald Ford, a man the otherwise populist Rockefeller considered his distinct inferior.

In the summer of 1975, the unhappy veep had met a 22-year-old wire-service reporter named Megan Marshack, who seemed to have won his interest by plying him with cookies. When he left Washington the following year, Marshack came back to New York with him as his $60,000-a-year assistant moving into a luxurious co-op at 25 W. 54th St., a few doors from the townhouse Rockefeller kept in the city.

The first press reports of Rockefeller's death paid moving tribute to the hardworking GOP elder who had died at his desk while working on a book about modern art.

Solemnly, Morrow told reporters Rockefeller had suffered a heart attack at 10:15 Friday night in his office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and that a security aide, the only other person present, had tried to revive him and failed. The stricken man had been admitted to Lenox Hill at 11:15, he said, and widow Happy Rockefeller had arrived at 12:25 a.m., 10 minutes too late. Of the frightened blonde, Morrow made no mention.

The following day, Morrow admitted he'd gotten one or two details wrong. Actually, Rockefeller had died at his 54th St. townhouse, he said. A chauffeur also had been there at the time. Of the blonde, there was still no mention.

But there she was in the police reports, and now the press wanted to know about her.

Well, yes, Morrow acknowledged, he had just learned that Nelson Rockefeller's young assistant also had been present when his heart gave out.

IN HIS DEATH, the distinguished Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller now became a lurid tabloid astonisher.

None of the story held up. He'd been stricken at 10:15, he arrived at the hospital at 11:15 why, the press wondered, had it taken an hour to get Rockefeller to the hospital? No, the Rockefeller camp said, the heart attack had actually occurred minutes before 11:15 and the time originally given out had been incorrect. "It was simply a case of people under pressure making a mistake," said spokesman George Taylor. As for Marshack, said Morrow, she had called 911, and that was the sole extent of her involvement.

But it wasn't Marshack who had called 911 at all, it quickly developed. That call had been made by TV personality Ponchitta Pierce, who lived in Marshack's building and who had departed the scene before cops arrived.

Marshack was gone now too visiting friends in the country, Morrow said, he didn't know where. That story collapsed when it was learned that The Associated Press had reached Marshack by phone four hours after Rockefeller's heart stopped beating, and that she'd told the AP that Morrow was with her.

Morrow clammed up altogether at this point.

By now the questions were too large to contain. Why hadn't there been an autopsy? Why had Rockefeller been so quickly cremated? And who exactly was this Miss Marshack, anyway?

MEGAN MARSHACK had several acquaintances quite willing to dish to the papers. Quickly there came revelations that Rockefeller had helped her buy her plush apartment, furnished it with antiques and art from his personal collection, provided for riding lessons at his Pocantico Hills estate in Westchester. Marshack's neighbors said Rockefeller, stooped though he was by worsening health, was a frequent visitor and always brought flowers for his comely assistant. Former co-workers made it plain they regarded Marshack as a gold-digger, a woman who talked openly of snaring a man with money.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau made an "informal" inquiry into the events surrounding Rockefeller's death then declined to reveal what he'd turned up. "I don't want to get into questions like that," he said.

In an America still uncertainly coming to terms with the notion of seeing the names and reputations of its devoted public servants sullied, social observers fretted that the line between news and gossip was perhaps becoming blurred, not to mention the line between privacy and public interest. But it wasn't long before Johnny Carson could start drawing laughs merely by uttering the words "Megan Marshack."

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD Steven Rockefeller, the dead man's grandson, finally broke the family's silence. He was satisfied, he said, that Marshack and everyone else had done everything they could to save his grandfather.

"I don't know what Megan's role was exactly," he said, "but if she was involved with Grandaddy, I hope she did the best she could and that she was instrumental in some of his success."

Asked what he would say to Megan Marshack, the young Rockefeller said: "I would tell her, `I hope you made my grandfather happy.' "

LATER IN 1979, Mayor Edward Koch fired chief medical examiner Michael Baden after the M.E.'s office dropped hints that Nelson Rockefeller had died while having sex.

Summary: THEY DIDN'T recognize the shoeless man lying unconscious on the floor of the posh Manhattan townhouse. The blonde trying to resuscitate him was frightened and out of breath. "How long has he been out?"one of the paramedics asked. "Five minutes,"she gasped. His body was warm, but they couldn't find a pulse. Now they began administering oxygen and injecting powerful drugs into the shoeless man's veins to jump-start his heart. Six minutes later the


>> 'Housewife' Huffman Hits the Road in 'Transamerica'

Posted Dec 20th 2005 10:47AM by TMZ Staff

By DAVID GERMAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Felicity Huffman wasn't supposed to win the Emmy over her more glamorous and talked-about "Desperate Housewives" co-stars. But she did. Now, she's an Academy Award favorite for her performance in "Transamerica" -- in which she plays a man prepping for sex-change surgery.

Not bad for an actress who was thinking a few years ago that maybe she wasn't supposed to have a Hollywood career, after all. Through the few ups and many downs in her career, Huffman often thought about quitting, pulling into her driveway and crying with her head on the steering wheel after bad days and failed auditions.

Huffman managed to fleetingly catch the eye of audiences with bit parts "The Spanish Prisoner" and "Magnolia," and she endeared herself to a cult of fans who caught her as the slightly flighty producer on the acclaimed but short-lived TV series "Sports Night."

To those who wondered why Huffman did not steadily rise to bigger and better parts, the answer is easy.

"No one offered them to me," Huffman, 43, told The Associated Press over a salad at a cafe near the home she and her husband, actor William H. Macy, share with their two daughters in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley.

"I'd get three lines here, four days in a movie there. When you'd drive on to the set, you don't know where you're going, there's no chair for you. They're going, `Who are you again?' This was the first time that I'd been considered for a major part, much less a lead."

Huffman's two breakthroughs came almost simultaneously. After reluctantly meeting with ABC about yet another TV project she figured would go nowhere, she was cast as the overwhelmed homemaker Lynette in "Desperate Housewives."

As she was doing an early cast reading of the show's pilot script, Huffman got a call from her agent that she had gotten the part of Bree in "Transamerica," playing a transsexual whose final surgery to become a woman hits a snag after she learns of a teenage son, a cynical street hustler (Kevin Zegers), she never knew she fathered.

The character, who began life as a male named Stanley, is a definite "she" to Huffman, though Bree still has the manly plumbing.

"It's an interesting question, where does gender start?" Huffman mused. "Always before, we've gone, `If you have a penis, you're a man. If you have a vagina, you're a woman.' It's what they tell you in nursery school and kindergarten. Now there's a whole other level brought into it."

"Transamerica" writer-director Duncan Tucker had first seen Huffman on stage in David Mamet's off-Broadway production "Cryptogram." Later catching Huffman in bit movie roles or guest spots on "Frasier," Tucker found himself wondering:

"Why is this woman not a star, like Frances McDormand, or the girl-next-door Meryl Streep?

"She reminds me of actresses like Rosalind Russell or Carole Lombard, those kind of good sports you could imagine hanging out with and having a beer. Really smart and fast-talking. I just had this gut instinct that she was the kind of transformative actress who would totally disappear inside the skin of somebody created from scratch. She wouldn't become Felicity Huffman playing Felicity Huffman as a transsexual but a completely new human being."

Huffman came up with Bree's look and deportment mostly on her own -- hair and makeup stiffly applied by a hand not yet skilled in such feminine trappings, body language ungainly as she grows accustomed to changes in her body.

The actress worked with a vocal coach to develop Bree's deep, throaty voice, which took Huffman an hour to slip into each morning and which she maintained throughout the day, finding that she would lose the thread if she slipped into her own voice between takes.

Bree's voice so unnerved Macy, who stayed at home with their children, that he finally told her only to call before work in the morning or after shooting at night, when she was back in her own persona.

The youngest of eight children, with six sisters and one brother, Huffman settled on acting by age 10, after her mother sent her off to a summer theater camp. After initial stage success in New York, Huffman got by in Hollywood on parts in such movies as "Hackers" and the odd TV role until "Desperate Housewives" made her a star.

Though critics say "Desperate Housewives" is in a sophomore slump, Huffman and co-stars Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross and Eva Longoria grabbed four of the five Golden Globe nominations for best actress in a TV comedy or musical, and the show was nominated for best series. (Huffman also earned a Globe nomination for best actress in a dramatic film for "Transamerica.")

Huffman diplomatically defends the show against accusations of a creative funk.

"We were riding so high that there's no place else to go but sort of down for a while, and God willing, up again. And I'd say everyone's entitled, of course, to their opinion," Huffman said. "My experience has been the scripts have been great. I think it's been a wonderful year."

The year could get even better if "Transamerica" brings Huffman an Oscar to go with her Emmy. The film is one of the first acquisitions for the Weinstein Co., the new outfit of Miramax Films co-founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who are among the savviest of Hollywood's awards campaigners.

Huffman still is waiting to see if the film will translate to more meaty screen roles. But she has been cautioned by Macy, who signed on as executive producer of "Transamerica," that she better not take another job over the "Desperate Housewives" summer break.

"As my husband tells me, he's going to kill me and divorce me and then eat me if I work over the hiatus," Huffman said. "He's ready for us to have some time together, and he's ready not to be Mr. Mom, anymore."

A visit to the "Desperate Housewives" set by a director friend from New York City brought home to Huffman that she finally had landed a long-term gig. She asked her friend if he was going to direct an episode that season.

"He said, `No, I think I'm going to come in next year to direct,"' Huffman said. "I went, `Oh, I'm going to have a job next year, too? This continues?'

"This job is fantastic. I've had fantastic jobs before that have died, and the fact that this job has legs -- and what legs, this job has gams, not legs -- is just fantastic. I can't tell you how grateful I am everyday."

Tags: felicity huffman, FelicityHuffman, transamerica


RICHFIELD, Ohio, Dec. 23— The Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs have agreed on a four-player trade and will make the formal announcement Thursday, according to a published report.

''We have an agreement with San Antonio,'' said Ted Stepien, owner of the Cavaliers. ''This will help both clubs.'' The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported today that Cleveland will send Mike Mitchell, a forward, and Roger Phegley, a guard, to San Antonio for Reggie Johnson, a forward, and Ron Brewer, a guard.

After Cleveland's 114-95 victory over the Kansas City Kings on Wednesday night, Mitchell said in the Cavaliers' locker room that the trade has been in the works for a week.


Sunday, December 18th 2005, 1:23AM

Jessica Simpson goes everywhere with her - in fact, she's been her constant companion since the singer's separation from husband Nick Lachey. They've been seen in Simpson's car together, hair blowing in the wind as they flee from the paparazzi. Both have pricey Louis Vuitton bags, and their hair color is nearly identical. Are we talking about Cacee Cobb, Jessica's best friend and personal assistant? No way, it's Daisy, her beloved Maltipoo. Sure, it must be great to have a look-alike to dress up (who won't question your fashion sense) but not everyone dreams of a doppelgÃ¤nger doggy. While it's not an exact science, some experts say that our choice of pet often says something about our personality. We consulted Drs. Suzanne Hetts and Dan Estep, certified animal behaviorists (www.AnimalBehaviorAssociates.com), to help us decipher the meaning behind the following celeb/pet pairings.

GEORGE W. BUSH with his Scottish terrier, Barney

All hail the chief and his trusty hound. But has our President chosen a partner that's single-minded? (And we're not talking about Dick Cheney.) The Scottish Terrier, although dignified and brave, can be stubborn and in need of discipline. They can also be snappish and moody as adults. Bred as hunters, Scotties are active dogs and are not for couch potatoes, which makes Barney the perfect pooch for the President who enjoys weekends on his Texas ranch. ÂCrawford, here we come!

JESSICA SIMPSON with her maltipoo, Daisy

Some dogs, like their owners, were just born to be pampered. Jessica Simpson's maltipoo, Daisy, and Eva Longoria's Maltese are the height of femininity - adorable "froufrou" dogs covered in bows. But this could come with a price, as people may think that Eva and Jessica are more interested in appearance than substance.

DOMINIC MONAGHAN owns a praying mantis

Before you swat away that next annoying insect, think again - you might be killing someone's beloved bug. Dominic Monaghan, star of "Lost," keeps a leaf mantis named Gizmo as his flying friend. Although it can't sit, stay or even play fetch, the leaf mantis is an excellent companion for an exotic and mysterious person. The only problem - the leaf mantis can't form attachments like a dog or cat, so it's not the perfect pet for anyone in need of some TLC.

LIV TYLER with her King Charlescavalier spaniel, Neal

Never judge a book by its cover - or in this case a dog. The King Charles cavalier spaniel is more than just a pretty face. These little lovelies have the spirit of big dogs in their small, furry frames. They also allow their owners, like Tyler, to project a serious and intellectual side regardless of their beauty.

MICKEY ROURKE with one of his Chihuahuas

Chihuahuas, like the one carried by tough-guy Rourke are full of energy, personality and won't take any guff from dogs twice their size. Rourke has been known to assert himself and might like that his pack of plucky pups won't back away from a challenge, either.

GEORGE CLOONEY owns a potbellied pig

For anyone who's read or seen "Charlotte's Web," it's obvious pigs are highly intelligent animals but still extremely unusual pets. Unless, of course, you're George Clooney, an anything but average actor. George doesn't care what others think and according to Drs. Estep and Hetts, Max, his pig, reaffirms that George is an independent thinker.

JESSICA BIEL with her bulldog, East

Bulldogs aren't known for their looks but that hasn't stopped some of Hollywood's most beautiful women from falling in love with them. Both Jessica Biel's half-English, half-American bulldog, East, and Reese Witherspoon's pup, Frank Sinatra, have that never-say-die attitude and meet conflict head on - much like their owners.

JENNIFER ANISTON owns a corgi-terrier mix

Who says a dog has to be man's best friend? Why not a woman's? Jennifer Aniston and Norman, her corgi-terrier mix, are two peas in a pod, from the beach to just hanging out at home to getting over her divorce from what's his name, Norman has been a constant sight. He's a dog's dog for a woman comfortable in her own skin and with the knowledge that she has "arrived" in her own life.

Summary: LIKE OWNER, LIKE PET? Sidekicks may offer clue to celebs' personalities BY FELISSA BENJAMIN Jessica Simpson goes everywhere with her - in fact, she's been her constant companion since the singer's separation from husband Nick Lachey. They've been seen in Simpson's car together, hair blowing in the wind as they flee from the paparazzi. Both have pricey Louis Vuitton bags, and their hair color is nearly identical. Are we talking about Cacee Cobb, Jessica's best friend


Oct 31st 2011, 10:22 by E.B. | NEW YORK

AS WE report in this week's print edition, the X Prize Foundation has just announced a new challenge: to sequence the genomes of 100 centenarians in 30 days for less than $1,000 each. Earlier in October, meanwhile, the winners of another of the foundation's competitions were announced. That X Challenge was prompted by the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in summer 2010 and supported by assorted environmental groups, educational institutions, and corporations like Cisco, and even the oil giant Shell. The task was suck up 2,500 gallons per minute, double the rate of the fastest clean-up on record. To make things trickier, each greasy gallon extracted had to contain at least 70% oil.

The challenge, launched as the oil was still gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, initially attracted 37 teams from around the world. Of those, ten were chosen to participate in the competition, and subsequently to test their devices at the Ohmsett National Oil Spill Response Research and Renewable Energy Test Facility, in New Jersey, where the earlier benchmarks were set. The winning team, representing Elastec?American Marine, an Illinois-based maker of oil-spill-recovery kit, clocked a snappy 4,670 gallons per minute. It also managed to exceed the recovery-ratio bar, extracting almost 90% of the oil. They were awarded $1m for their effort. The runners up, Nofi, another specialist outfit, also managed to meet the criteria and got a consolation prize of $300,000.

Elastec/American Marine's winning design was a modified version of the company's commercially successful spinning drum, which is coated with an oil-attracting substance that picks up the slime as the contraption rolls on the water's surface and is then scraped to recover the oil. This time, though, instead of using the drum, the Elastec/American team, led by Don Johnson, created a disk enhanced with grooves to increase the device's effective surface area, and also to act as capillaries, sucking up more liquid. Mr Johnson said that the company had been thinking about tweaking their earlier design for some time. But it was the X Challenge that provided the incentive to explore the idea in earnest.

There is, of course, no single best method to clean up an oil spill. Ocean currents, accessibility and weather conspire to create different sets of circumstances which call for different approaches. So do regulations, both about conducting off-shore drilling and cleaning up any resulting mess. Grappling with nature may yet prove easier than navigating the corridors of Congress.


TAIPEI | Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:58am EDT

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Chen Wei-yih has posed for a set of photos in a flowing white dress, enlisted a wedding planner and rented a banquet hall for a marriage celebration with 30 friends.

But there is no groom. Chen will marry herself.

Uninspired by the men she's met but facing social pressure to get married, the 30-year-old Taipei office worker will hold the reception next month in honor of just one person.

"Age thirty is a prime period for me. My work and experience are in good shape, but I haven't found a partner, so what can I do?" Chen said.

"It's not that I'm anti-marriage. I just hope that I can express a different idea within the bounds of a tradition."

Her T$50,000 ($5,675) wedding comes after online publicity that has netted 1,800 largely sympathetic comments.

"I think there will be more and more girls like this," said "divagirl," who did not elaborate.

Taiwanese women are marrying later and less often as their economic status advances, fuelling government concerns about a drop in the birth rate and its impact on productivity.

Only 40 percent of women surveyed earlier this year by the education ministry said they imagined married people could live better than singles, local media said.

"I was just hoping that more people would love themselves," said Chen, who will go on a solo honeymoon to Australia.

Chen said her mother had insisted on a groom at first but later jumped aboard the solo marriage plan.

But as Chen cannot officially register a marriage to herself, if she finds a man later she will wed again.

"If I had a steady boyfriend, I wouldn't do this," Chen said. "it would be offensive to him, anyway."

(Reporting by Ralph Jennings; editing by Elaine Lies)

Summary: TAIPEI (Reuters) - Chen Wei-yih has posed for a set of photos in a flowing white dress, enlisted a wedding planner and rented a banquet hall for a marriage celebration with 30 friends.But there is no


J.M. Smucker Co., the company that makes Folgers coffee and Jif peanut butter, reported fiscal first-quarter earnings, excluding some items, of $129.3 million, or $1.17 per share. That topped the average analyst estimate of $1 per share in a Bloomberg survey. That also compared with earnings of $128.2 million, or $1.12 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Summary: J.M. Smucker Co., the company that makes Folgers coffee and Jif peanut butter, reported fiscal first-quarter earnings, excluding some items, of $129.3 million, or $1.17 per share. That topped the average analyst estimate of $1 in a Bloomberg survey. That also compared with earnings of $128.2 million, or $1.12 per share, in the same period a year earlier.


Ashton Kutcher finally has a "Two and a Half Men" identity.

Kutcher, who replaced Charlie Sheen on the hit CBS sitcom, will play Internet billionaire Walden Schmidt, CBS officials revealed yesterday -- adding that Kutcher's first day on the set this past Monday was very tense.

"When everybody walked on the set . . . you could cut the air with a knife," CBS programming chief Nina Tassler told TV critics in LA.

The tension, she says, was broken by "Men" star Jon Cryer, who took a few moments to address the cast and crew before the season's first table read.

"He gave a little speech," Tassler said. "I can't even remember the words. It was just something very touching. Then, when you hear that first actor mutter that first line, you breathe a sigh of relief."

Kutcher will be introduced on the Sept. 19 season premiere as Schmidt, who's nursing "a broken heart," Tassler said.

Tassler wouldn't confirm reports that the season will open with a funeral for Charlie Harper, Sheen's old character.

"The show will be as irreverent as it has ever been," Tassler promised.

Sheen was fired from "Men" last March after engaging in a bitter, public feud with show creator Chuck Lorre, show producer Warner Bros. and CBS.

Go to NYPost.com for more Entertainment news.

Summary: Tension on Ashton Kutcher's First Day on 'Two and a Half Men' Set


Local consumers said Thursday they are less confident about the safety of popular over-the-counter medicines such as ibuprofen, after a Plymouth family whose daughter suffered a horrific reaction to Children’s Motrin was awarded a $63 million judgment against Johnson & Johnson.

KAYANA SZYMCZAK FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Alexander Ruiz, 20, of Framingham

“I’m scared of pills,” said Alexander Ruiz, 20, of Framingham. “Just because things are FDA approved, that doesn’t mean anything. Thank you very much; I’m going to get over my headache on my own.”

In 2003 when Samantha Reckis’s parents gave their 7-year-old daughter Children’s Motrin for a fever, the over-the-counter version of the popular medicine did not contain any warnings about possible side effects, the family’s lawyers said in their case against Johnson & Johnson. Reckis suffered an extremely rare but painful reaction to the medicine, called Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis, in which she lost much of her skin and her sight and suffered through repeated hospitalizations and surgeries.

A Plymouth County jury ruled Wednesday that Johnson & Johnson was liable for not including warnings about potential side effects to Motrin on the medicine’s label. Warning labels for ibuprofen products such as Motrin have since been amended at the request of the US Food and Drug Administration to include descriptions of the early symptoms of the type of reaction Reckis suffered.

But in interviews yesterday, some consumers said they believe medicines available today are safe because of the oversight of regulators such as the FDA.

Kayana Szymczak for the Boston Globe

Chris Montgomery, 29, of Mattapan, with Shaddiff Lopez-Garcia, and their son, C.J.

“For the most part, with all the regulations they have to pass like the FDA, they’re probably a safe company,” said Chris Montgomery, 29, of Mattapan who has a 1-year-old son. “Motrin’s been around longer than we have.”

However, researchers at Kansas State and Michigan State universities studied how consumers view warning labels and found that many often overlook the notices drugmakers put on the side of their containers. Their research, published last summer, concluded that warning labels were not prominent enough for some consumers to even notice.

Meanwhile, some parents said they are increasingly leery of giving medications to children, even popular over-the-counter versions.

KAYANA SZYMCZAK FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Gilda Fortier, 36, of Bellingham, and her 2-year-old son, Isaac.

“I always check the labels ever since I heard about that Tylenol case,” said Gilda Fortier, 36, of Bellingham, who is the mother of a 2-year-old.

KAYANA SZYMCZAK FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Donald and Aurora Donahue, both 68 of Scituate.

In April 2010, Johnson & Johnson recalled Children’s Tylenol along with more than 40 other nonprescription products after the FDA found contamination problems at a company plant.

Tylenol was also the subject of the perhaps the most notorious incidence of tampering in the pharmaceutical industry, when in 1982 seven people died after taking capsules that had been laced with cyanide.

“Even though something like this is regulated, you still have to be cautious,” said Fortier.

Aurora Donahue, 68, of Scituate, said she makes a point of talking to a pharmacist before giving any medication to her two grandchildren because she doesn’t trust labels.

“We always check with the pharmacy, and unless it’s completely necessary, we don’t give it to them,” Donahue said. “It’s scary — they’re little people with little brains, and you’ve just got to be careful.”

Summary: Local consumers said Thursday they are less confident about the safety of over-the-counter drugs like ibuprofen, following a $63 million dollar judgment against Johnson & Johnson in a case involving a Kingston girl who had a horrific reaction to Children’s Motrin that has radically altered her life. The jury in the case of Samantha Reckis, who lost her sight and nearly all her skin because of a reaction to Motrin, found the company failed to warn about possible side effects.


NEW YORK — Google has agreed to pay $7 million as a result of an investigation brought by a coalition of state attorneys general, officials said Tuesday, in one of the largest fines for violating privacy in the digital age.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said the Bay State will receive about $327,000 as part of the settlement.

The fine stems from the Street View case, in which Google deployed special vehicles to photograph the houses and offices lining the world’s streets. But for several years the company was also secretly collecting personal information — e-mails, medical and financial records, passwords — as it cruised by. It was data-scooping from millions of unencrypted wireless networks.

‘‘Consumers have a reasonable expectation of privacy,’’ George Jepsen, Connecticut’s attorney general, said in a statement Tuesday. ‘‘This agreement recognizes those rights and ensures that Google will not use similar tactics in the future to collect personal information without permission from unsuspecting consumers.’’

As part of the settlement, Google agreed that it acted improperly and said it would engage in a comprehensive employee education program about privacy, as well as inform the public about securing wireless networks and protecting personal information.

Thirty-eight states participated in the investigation.

Google has repeatedly been faulted by regulators for privacy violations. Last summer, the search giant paid $22.5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges it had bypassed the privacy settings on Apple’s Safari browser. That fine, the largest civil penalty ever levied by the FTC, came after Google agreed to be audited by the agency for 20 years for privacy violations related to a social networking feature.

Some of Google’s most severe critics, who feel that the company is so big and powerful that it often eludes censure, said they were pleased with the attorneys generals’ actions.

“This is a significant privacy decision,’’ said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. He noted that the settlement figure was more than 200 times the amount the Federal Communications Commission fined Google last year for obstructing its own Street View investigation.

Still, the fine is a pittance for Google, which has net income of about $32 million a day.

‘‘It is the public opprobrium, not the money, that counts in these cases,’’ said David Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University who previously directed the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. ‘‘And I think people were rightly unhappy with Google’s collecting the information in the first place and then Google’s lame explanation.’’

Google initially denied that any data had been collected from unknowing individuals, then sought to play down what it had and fought with regulators who wanted to examine it.

‘‘We work hard to get privacy right at Google,’’ said Niki Fenwick, a spokeswoman. ‘‘But in this case we didn’t.’’

She added that Google has since improved its systems.

The attorneys general probe began in June 2010. Richard Blumenthal, then Connecticut’s attorney general, said his office would lead a multistate investigation into what he called ‘‘Google’s deeply disturbing invasion of personal privacy.’’

In December 2010, Blumenthal issued a civil investigative demand, equivalent to a subpoena, to get the data. Google, however, never gave Connecticut any data.

Summary: Google has agreed to pay $7 million as a result of an investigation brought by a coalition of state attorneys general, officials said Tuesday, in one of the largest fines for violating privacy in the digital age. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said the Bay State will receive more than $327,000 as part of the settlement. The fine stems from the Street View case, in which Google deployed special vehicles to photograph the houses and offices lining the world’s streets. But for several years the company was also secretly collecting personal information — e-mails, medical and financial records, passwords — as it cruised by. It was data-scooping from millions of unencrypted wireless networks.


"My first job in sport was in professional cycling. I was the sponsorship director for the company CSC, so I used to look after Team CSC. That's where I know Carlos, Lars [Michaelsen] and a lot of the other pros that are here from," Gorman told the Telegraph. "I also [later] worked with the Cervelo Test Team in their set up and then I went on to do some work in Formula One – with [Richard] Branson when he started up Virgin Racing.

"I was actually at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and I walked into the Virgin Racing motorhome and somebody in there said 'my brother's got this interesting idea and wants to get involved in cycling, he's over on Sunday, why don't you meet up?'.

"So I sat down with the guy, Chris Milner who worked for Goldman Sachs, and he told me about his vision for a great team event. Chris then introduced me to Niels whose background is all around charitable fundraising and mine is obviously all about cycling sponsorship. So, in many ways, it was the perfect partnership."

Bryan-Low continues. "We [Cosaveli] were founded in 2011 to specifically create the world's leading pro-am race series and to do it purely for charity.

"Prior to doing this I was a director of fundraising for a grant making foundation and also a fundraiser for a charity. The reason for doing all this – the Trois Etapes – is to raise as much money as we can for various charities.

"It's an interesting dynamic that we have. I think there's something about cycling that brings out the best in people, there's something about shared suffering – I'm not sure what it is or what the cause is.

"Last year was our inaugural event and we raised $1.8 million for charity. The PGA Tour, in their flagship event which is sponsored by BMW and SYNNEX, raised $600,000. Now, if the PGA Tour with 11 years experience of running that event can only raise $600,000 with two main corporate sponsors there's something about a new cycling start-up organisation that can come and and lay on a new event and beat the PGA Tour by three times, I think that says something about cycling. It's nuts."

And it is nuts. The PGA's 2012 BMW Charity Pro-Am, one of the PGA's main charity events, had almost three times as many participants as the inaugural Trois Etapes while tournament attendance at the golf was in excess of 55,000. Other than support crew the attendance at the Trois Etapes was probably just a handful of supportive spouses, friends and family members. And a few roadside cows.

"There's something about cycling and philanthropy," adds Bryan-Low.

Indeed, while there will be hundreds if not thousands of untold stories to come from the Trois Etapes – from educationally disadvantaged children in Britain who benefit from the work done by Shine or wounded servicemen or women who are retrained by Walking With The Wounded – plenty of good comes from a bunch of, mainly, middle-aged men pedalling their bikes up and down a few mountains.

"Cycling, of course, does have a chequered past and things do continue, but there are some fantastic back stories here," said Gorman. "There's a pro' rider here called Songezo Jim.

"When I was in charge of sponsorship at Team CSC, our nominated charity was Velokhaya, which was based in a township just outside Cape Town. In 2008 we paid for 20 of the kids who had put in the most effort over the course of the year to come and spend time with us at the Tour de France. One of those kids was Songezo Jim."

Jim, who now rides for UCI Pro-Continental team MTN Qhubeka, was riding the Trois Etapes in support of World Bicycle Relief.

"I grew up in Eastern Cape, South Africa, until I was 13 years-old. I lost my parents at a young age – my mum when I was eight and my father passed away when I was 13," Jim told the Telegraph. "My aunt then took care of me and I moved to Cape Town. I had lived in a township in Eastern Cape, but my new home was worse than a township.

"Velokhaya helped me a lot. In 2008 they paid for our trip to come to Europe which was when I first saw how European cycling works and I thought 'wow, I want to be a professional cyclist in Europe'.

"Coming to Europe to watch Carlos Sastre influenced me a lot. Big time. We came to visit Team CSC and we got to see the [team] buses which we don't have in South Africa, the infrastructure, the way the teams are all organised and the life of professional riders. I knew this is what I wanted to do, and thought 'this is where I want to be'.

"We rode up Alpe d'Huez – I did it in 56 minutes. Maybe now I can do better, but I was young at the time.

"I went back home and soon started winning races, I was still a junior, and from there I just kept going. I was really motivated, obviously, and the support from Velokhaya was a huge help and I'm thankful for it."

Earlier this season Jim made history when he became the first black African rider to compete in the WorldTour while his team-mate, Gerald Ciolek, went on to win the Milan-Sanremo one-day classic.

"Things like that make me proud," concludes Gorman. "So it has come full circle and shows that by investing, through cycling, good things can be achieved."

Good things can, and were, achieved over four days in the Alps as 120 riders raised over $2.6m for charities such as The Anne Frank Trust, SHINE, 1001 Fontaines, Shooting Star CHASE, Prostate Cancer UK, Walking with the Wounded, Right to Play, dZi Foundation and World Bicycle Relief.

Summary: Telegraph Sport recently headed off to the Alps to discover all about the   Trois Etapes, the pro-am cycling race where business met pleasure – and   pain.


U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday were poised to clear the way for formal debate to begin on the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulation since the 1930s as they dropped efforts to block the bill."Senate Republicans will at last allow debate on the bill to bring accountability to Wall Street," Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said in announcing a dramatic deal ending a three-day standoff.The agreement came after Democrats threatened to hold an extraordinary all-night session to pressure Republicans to drop their opposition after they had blocked action on the bill for three consecutive days.On the issues, the distance between the two sides is not huge and analysts expect a bill to pass eventually.However, more procedural obstacles could lie ahead, with Democrats fearing that Republicans could threaten to filibuster individual amendments to the bill as they are proposed.Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said bipartisan negotiations between Dodd and Senator Richard Shelby, the banking committee's top Republican, had ended."Now that those bipartisan negotiations have ended, it is my hope that the majority's avowed interest in improving this legislation on the Senate floor is genuine and the partisan gamesmanship is over," McConnell said in a statement.A McConnell aide said bipartisan agreement was reached on dealing with "too big to fail" financial firms, but not on derivatives and consumer protection.With congressional elections set for November, lawmakers from both parties are keen to pass a bill, while banking lobbyists have fought for months to block and weaken reforms.Financial markets are watching how strongly the legislation will be to crack down on banking and dealing practices, and what that may mean for banks' capital and valuations.The Republicans floated their first written counterproposal on Tuesday. Analysts described it as "extremely similar" to the Democratic bill, which has been under development for months in response to the 2008-2009 financial crisis.DEMOCRATS TARGET ANGERWorried about losses in this year's elections, Democrats are keen to take advantage of widespread anger at Wall Street, perhaps the only address more unpopular than Capitol Hill.Dodd told reporters on Wednesday that his 1,558-page bill would not impinge on the ability of small businesses such as auto dealers and dentists to offer installment payment plans. Republicans have expressed concern about this issue.But an aide said companies that profited from such loans might have to answer to the new consumer watchdog.Dodd told Reuters no decision has been made on the status of a $50-billion fund proposed by Democrats to help pay for dismantling big financial firms in distress. Republicans have demanded that the fund be dropped."I have people all over the lot on that issue," Dodd said. "There is no decision on anything yet."Dodd's bill would create an "orderly liquidation" process for unwinding large firms, aiming to prevent more taxpayer bailouts like 2008's rescue of AIG and the shock bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.CONSUMER AGENCY BIGGEST STUMBLING BLOCKShelby, who has led the Republican negotiating effort, said on Tuesday that the proposed consumer-protection agency was the biggest stumbling block.The Democratic bill would also impose regulations on the unpoliced $450-trillion over-the-counter derivatives markets, curb risky trading by banks, force hedge funds to register with the government and crack down on debt securitization.Any bill that passes the Senate would have to be reconciled with a version that cleared the House of Representatives in December. Analysts say that could happen by mid-year.The Republican counterproposal was the first time the minority party in the Senate has set down its goals on paper during months of closed-door negotiations. It would set up a consumer-protection council, rather than the consumer-protection bureau envisioned by Democrats.Republicans also want to restrict the Federal Reserve's emergency-lending authority more than Democrats, while allowing national bank regulators to continue to preempt state laws.In votes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance bills in the 100-seat Senate. Democrats control 59 seats, one short of the number needed to overcome procedural hurdles.However, the shift by Republicans suggests Democrats will be able to muster the support needed to move forward.

Summary: Senate Republicans on Tuesday floated their first counterproposal to rewrite financial regulations after blocking a more sweeping Democratic plan for a second straight day.


Born – October 20, 1971 Long Beach, California, U.S.

Got his first break from Dr. Dre and appeared on Dre's debut solo album, "The Chronic."

Broke out with his first album "Doggystyle," followed by "Tha Doggfather," followed by an album which received slightly negative reviews, possibly because it didn't have the word "dogg" in the title.

Became an international superstar, introduced the world to the term "fo shizzle." Thanks for that, Snoop.

Has appeared in movies and TV projects that are true to his gangsta roots, like "Starsky and Hutch" and "It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie."

May have smoked marijuana once or twice. We're still looking into that.

Summary: Snoop Dogg on TMZ, your go-to source for celebrity news, photos, & videos. Latest Story: Snoop Dogg -- Uncle June Bug On Death Bed


In Tyler Perry’s latest opus, “The Single Moms Club,” he demonstrates how disparate stereotypes can find common ground through the power of a single cliché. Though not as offensive or inane as his last film — “Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas” — the new one does maintain his auteurist qualities of social consciousness, schematic narrative, and a combination of piety and smarmy humor.

Here, five women from different backgrounds have, for various reasons, found themselves raising children on their own.

Whiny Hillary (Amy Smart) has just been divorced by her lawyer hubby and is left with no alimony or child support. How is she going to care for her daughter after firing their maid, who up to now has been the girl’s surrogate mother?

Hillary’s best friend Jan (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a career-driven book editor, has no need for men. When she wanted a kid because she believed she could “have it all,” she used an anonymous sperm donor. Turns out that raising a child interferes with professional ambitions, so she signs her daughter up for various activities to get her out of her hair.

Jan demonstrates her ruthlessness by brushing off May (Nia Long), a journalist submitting the manuscript of her novel. But May also is a single mom with problems. Her boy wants to know why his father never visits. Should she tell him the truth?

Like Hillary, Esperanza (Zulay Henao) is husband dependent. Her macho ex-spouse threatens to kick her out of “his” house if she dates another guy. She’s been seeing a poor bartender secretly for a year. Dare she reveal her relationship, lose her home, and alienate her daughter?

Finally, the Madea-esque Lytia (Cocoa Brown) fears her boy will end up in jail like her two older sons and so pushes the boy too hard. He acts up along with the four other kids at the private school they attend, and the five mothers are called into the principal’s office, a kind of “Bridesmaids” go to “The Breakfast Club,” where they are ordered to atone for their children’s misbehavior by organizing the upcoming school pageant.

Despite some friction, they start the support group of the title, where they learn that sisterhood is powerful, and that the key to being a successful single mother is finding the right single man to help out. It won’t surprise you that one of those Mr. Rights is played by Tyler Perry himself.

Summary: In Tyler Perry’s latest opus, “The Single Moms Club,” he demonstrates how disparate stereotypes can find common ground through the power of a single cliché. Though not as offensive or inane as his last film – “Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas” – the new one does maintain his auteurist qualities of social consciousness, schematic narrative, and a combination of piety and smarmy humor. Here, five women from different backgrounds have, for various reasons, found themselves raising children on their own. Whiny Hillary (Amy Smart) has just been divorced by her lawyer hubby and is left with no alimony or child support. How is she going to care for her daughter after firing their maid, who up to now has been the girl’s surrogate mother?


1. Dick and Liz Cheney have some hash words for President Obama over his approach to Iraq:

“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”

Tonight, we’re “All In” on the conversation around the escalating violence in Iraq, and public officials’ attempts to work through our legacy in that country on the national stage. James Fallows and Col. Morris Davis join us.

2. Big news for the Washington Redskins today, as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled the trademarks for the team, citing ”a preponderance of evidence that a substantial amount of Native Americans found the term Redskins to be disparaging when used in connection with professional football.” We’ll talk with Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

3. An app that says just one word, “Yo,” raked in seven figures in venture capital cash. Is this a sign of another tech bubble?

4. Plus, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank joins us to talk about the world of conservative Islamophobia.

Summary: All In Agenda for June 18, 2014.


updated 08/13/2014 at 02:45 PM EDT

Dierks Bentley isn't afraid of a challenge. Neither are Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton (or his

costars!), Justin Moore, Chase Rice, Cole Swindell or Lee Brice ...

They're just a few of the artists drenching themselves in ice water as part of the Ice Bucket Challenge movement

. Why are they doing this? To raise money and awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

The campaign, which actually started months ago as a fundraiser for various charities, has become a phenomenon around the world in the last 10 days, since friends and family of former Boston College baseball player and ALS patient Pete Frates used it to raise awareness about the disease.

The idea is for participants to douse themselves in ice water, and challenge others to do the same within 24 hours. If they don't, they must donate to the charity of their choosing.

Bentley, who was challenged by Rice, went all in outside of Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on Sunday. "If you watch Chase Rice's video, there's only about half the water and ice that's in this bucket," says Bentley, before adding, "I really don't like Chase right now."

Check out some of the cold-water craziness below.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Summary: The ALS awareness movement gets a little support from some of your favorite country stars


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FORTUNE — Earlier this week, it came to light that Facebook was having talks with Secret, a mobile application that lets people share messages anonymously with the contacts on their phone. Rumors quickly surfaced that Facebook FB was evaluating whether to acquire the small company, which despite the buzz only officially launched on Jan. 30. Facebook denied the rumors, and Secret founders David Byttow and Chrys Bader-Wechseler remained quiet.

On Wednesday, Byttow stopped by Fortune‘s offices to talk about building the app that has captured the attention of Silicon Valley’s tech community. During a wide-ranging conversation that covered everything from the most popular secrets on the site (people outside of the tech community seem to like to post their age, gender, and salary) to his personal history (at 19, Byttow dropped out of college, collected $400 from his dad, and drove his 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse to California to make videogames), we asked him for his thoughts on how last week’s rumor got started.

Here’s what he had to say.

Fortune: How did the rumor get started?

Byttow: Honestly, I think someone found out we were talking with people at Facebook, which is true. I talk with people at Twitter [too]. And I guess that set it off. And it’s funny — it picked up as a story, but in a sense, I think, it’s interesting. It definitely helps legitimize what we’re doing, which is good.

The fact the story landed?

Yes, because it’s true there’s something very powerful about our platform, and it should not be dismissed. It’s much more than gossip, than just an anonymous platform. Over time, that may become more clear.

So were you talking to Facebook because it was offering to acquire you?

I was talking to Facebook because I was interested in figuring out how we could work together.

And did you approach them about having that conversation?

I don’t mean to put you on the spot.

No worries. I’m used to it.

You said you were talking to Twitter …

Yeah, look, it’s an ecosystem there. I know employees there. We just hired one from Twitter TWTR . We’re always talking, but also keeping things close to our chest. I think most people can’t make sense of Secret yet. There’s definitely a wait-and-see attitude but there is something there. Honestly, if I were Facebook or Twitter, I would watch closely.

Summary: David Byttow, co-founder of the anonymous social app Secret, discusses his company's talks with Facebook.


The art of Jack Napthine is a powerful mix of boldly outlined locks, light bulbs and snatches of text; Julian Martin’s thick pastels give a dense velvety texture to his drawings; and Terry Williams’ soft sculptures of fridges, helicopters and video cameras are flamboyant and witty.

They’re all talented artists whose art is shown and collected in Australia and beyond and whose creations are currently part of Everyday Imagining: New Perspectives on Outsider Art at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne. But a few decades ago, their careers would have been unthinkable. In all likelihood, they would have spent their lives in institutions for the intellectually impaired.

Outsider art was a term coined in 1972 by British art historian Roger Cardinal. It was a roughly equivalent but more inclusive coinage for art brut (raw art), a 1940s label by Jean Dubuffet for work by inmates of insane asylums, which the French artist described as “unscathed by artistic culture … and the conventions of classical or fashionable art”.

Today, as well as including artists with disabilities or mental illness, the term is increasingly applied to others on the margins of art and society: the homeless, ethnic minorities, migrants, folk artists, the self-taught. Outsider art is hot – art fairs dedicated to the work of the marginalised draw large crowds and big bucks. The flagship exhibition of Massimiliano Gioni’s 2013 Venice Biennale was entitled The Encyclopedic Palace after the work of self-taught Italian outsider artist Marino Auriti.

But while examples of creativity unscathed by artistic fashion can be exhilarating and inspiring for artists and collectors, it’s a salient feature of most outsider art that the people applying the label are invariably on the inside – gallerists, academics, psychologists and artists who are art-school or university trained.

There has long been a fear of including the self-taught in the world of high art, says James Brett, founder of the Museum of Everything, a peripatetic collection of unclassifiable and undiscovered art that has taken up residence at London’s Tate Modern as well as Selfridges department store.

Brett is one of the speakers at Contemporary Outsider Art: the Global Context, a conference taking place in Melbourne from 23 to 26 October. “Being called an outsider artist is a badge of pride if you’ve been labelled as marginal elsewhere,” he says. There are many more art-makers than those who society labels artists, he adds. “Insider” art, with all its rules and gatekeepers, is only a small subset of a much larger world of creativity.

It’s an attitude that Joanna Bosse, curator of the show at the Ian Potter Museum, agrees with. She believes it’s time to dump some major preconceptions and concentrate on the work.

“While accepting there is this category called outsider art with a historical precedent and lineage, I wanted to look deeper at how we come to the work,” she says. “Do we come with preconceptions about what the artists are trying to say?”

Napthine, the foster son of Victorian Liberal premier Denis Napthine, is one of five Australian artists that make up the show (alongside two New Zealanders, Martin Thompson and Andrew Blythe). Bosse picks out a drawing of a male nude by Lisa Reid, who has also exhibited at the Outsider Art Fair in New York. Seen from above, the man’s body hair is rendered as lozenge-shaped blocks of black, his dyed blond head hair a surprising contrast.

Reid is among the 100 or so artists who work out of Arts Project Australia (APA), a gallery and studio space in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote (Napthine and Kellie Greaves, another exhibitor, work out of Art Unlimited in Geelong, another studio for practising artists with disabilities).

APA has grown in scope and ambition since Myra Hilgendorf, the mother of a disabled but artistically gifted daughter, founded the organisation in 1974 to provide high-quality art and framing materials and to exhibit the works of the “mentally retarded” (to use the term of the time) in regular galleries.

Today, its studio regulars have the same rights and opportunities as non-disabled artists and, says Brett, APA is one of the world’s top five centres for outsider art. The gallery manager and curator Sim Luttin says that while not all of its artists exhibit, those that do show their work receive payment following guidelines set out by the National Association for the Visual Arts. Crucially, they also gain a sense of self-worth that manifests in different ways. “When an artist sees his or her work professionally presented and when people comment, some say they’re thrilled, but even those who don’t speak show it – they might just stand taller.”

APA’s publicity material prioritises artists’ work over their biographies. “Some artists don’t want to focus on their disability,” says Luttin. “You wouldn’t write [for a biography of an “insider’ artist] ‘he’s been an alcoholic for 30 years.’”

Brett, who has featured several APA artists in his Museum of Everything, agrees. “I’m attracted to the material, not the biography,” he says. “Disability’s a term; it’s about levels of ability. Everybody has mental health issues, everyone’s on the [autistic] spectrum, you could say that creativity is a version of dysfunction.”

APA’s 40th anniversary and the conference (which it is jointly hosting) have inspired seven overlapping outsider art exhibitions in Melbourne throughout September, October and November. These include Albert Tucker and the Mystery of HD at Heide Museum of Modern Art, featuring paintings by self-taught rural artist HD Dearing, “discovered” by established Australian artist Albert Tucker in the 1940s. The Alcaston Gallery is showing work by Western Australian artists with disabilities; the Dax Centre and the Social Studio are exhibiting art by people with mental illnesses; and work by former refugees is being shown in outdoor spaces throughout the city.

These shows demonstrate that outsider art is a broad church. Is there a particular aesthetic? “The works can’t be conventional,” says art historian and curator Dr Anthony White, from the University of Melbourne. “The idea of spontaneity doesn’t match the reality; the wild man theory doesn’t account for sophistication and calculation.”

With the growing interest in outsider art comes the seeming contradiction of “mainstream” outsider artists, especially in the US, where monographs and high prices have created cults among collectors. “The market requires superstars,” notes White. The scene and the term “outsider art can be problematic, he adds, but it gets to the heart of how we think about culture and creativity. “As soon as you say it’s outside, it could be in.”

• Everyday Imagining; New Perspective on Outsider Art is at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne until 18 January 2015

Summary: With seven shows and a major conference in Melbourne, self-taught artists are in the spotlight again. So why is ‘outsider art’ still a label overwhelmingly used by art world insiders? Fiona Gruber reports


Kurdish militia have fought off a fresh assault by the Islamic State group on a key Syrian town, after one desperate woman defender carried out a suicide attack against the jihadists.

IS militants attempted to storm the town of Kobane on the Turkish border from both east and west of a strategic hill to the south, but Kurdish fighters repulsed the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.

A Syrian Kurdish official inside Kobane said the town had come under heavy bombardment by the jihadists and there had been fierce clashes as the Kurdish fighters fought off the assault.

IS fighters seized part of Mishtenur Hill, which overlooks Kobane, late on Saturday, but US-led air strikes slowed their advance.

The Syrian Kurdish official, Idris Nahsen, said IS fighters were just one kilometre from the town and that air strikes alone were not enough to stop them.

In a sign of the Kurdish defenders' mounting desperation, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at an IS position east of Kobane on Sunday, the Observatory said.

It was the first reported instance of a female Kurdish fighter employing a tactic often used by the jihadists, said the Britain-based watchdog, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.

The bomber, in her 20s, was a full-time fighter with the People's Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish rebel group, which - like its ally in Turkey the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party - has a large number of women under arms.

The group identified her as Dilar Gencxemis, alias Arin Mirkan, from the Kurdish-controlled town of Afrin in northwestern Syria.

"She killed dozens of gang members and demonstrated the YPG fighters' determined resistance," it said in a statement carried by the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency.

"If necessary, all YPG fighters will follow her example, and the gangs will not be allowed to achieve their aim of taking Kobane," it added.

Sunday's fighting around Kobane - also known as Ain al-Arab - killed at least 19 Kurdish fighters and 27 IS jihadists, the Observatory said.

Under assault by IS for nearly three weeks, the town has become a crucial battleground in the international fight against the jihadists, who sparked further outrage at the weekend with the release of a video showing the beheading of Briton Alan Henning.

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Summary: Kurdish fighters backed by US-led air strikes are battling Islamic State jihadists for control of a key Syrian town.


FORTUNE — Asymco‘s Horace Dediu on Thursday updated his quarterly review of mobile phone profits, and the news for everyone but Apple AAPL and Samsung is not good.

Apple is in roughly the same position it was last quarter, with an 8.8% share of the market in terms of units shipped (according to IDC) and a share of profits (according to Dediu) down two percentage points to 73%.

Samsung, riding the Google GOOG Android juggernaut, grew its market share (by units shipped) to 23.5%, up 35.4% year over year, and its share of the profits to 26%.

HTC, by contrast, is barely breaking even. And the rest — Research in Motion RIMM , Nokia NOK , Sony SNE , Motorola MOT and LG — are losing money.

Remember: We’re talking about all mobile phones, not just smartphones. And the entire worldwide market, not just the U.S.

In a separate chart, Dediu makes the point that these changes are taking place against the backdrop of a global handset market that is exploding, generating $14.4 billion in profits for the eight largest vendors last quarter, up from $5.3 billion in the same quarter two years earlier.

“Seen this way,” he writes, “the story isn’t so much that Apple ‘took the profits from the incumbents.’ Rather, it’s that Apple created a vast new pool of profits.”

Dediu also looks at the disruption underway at the other end of the market — the so-called feature phones — where the major vendors are losing ground to legions of low-cost manufacturers churning out unlicensed “white label” knockoffs.

Nokia in particular seems to be getting squeezed from both sides.

See The phone market of 2012: A tale of two disruptions.

Summary: Among the major vendors, Samsung captured 26%, HTC took 1%, and the rest lost money


When do CEOs file their rally-the-troops internal memos with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission? When they’re in a fight-for-your-life battle with Microsoft.

Yahoo chief Jerry Yang took the step of copying regulators on an all-hands e-mail about Microsoft’s hostile $45 billion bid for Yahoo YHOO that was sent to company employees Wednesday morning.

In a memo titled “Building on our Strengths,” Yang wrote, “As we’ve said, no decisions have been made about Microsoft’s proposal. Our board is thoughtfully evaluating a wide range of potential strategic alternatives in what is a complex and evolving landscape.”

Yang added that the company has a lot to be excited about — including a digital music partnership with Rhapsody and a newly-launched version of Zimbra, the company’s suite of e-mail and collaboration tools for small businesses.

According to current and former Yahoo employees, selling to Microsoft is the last thing that co-founder Yang wants to do. “Nobody’s blood runs purpler than Yang’s,” says Jeff Weitzman, former senior director of client services at Yahoo.

The memo is another sign that Yang may be worried about losing key “Yahoos” as the battle with Microsoft drags on.

“As we look to build on the progress we’ve been making, I want to make sure you all realize how essential you are to Yahoo’s success,” he wrote in the e-mail.

Summary: By Michal Lev-Ram When do CEOs file their rally-the-troops internal memos with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission? When they're in a fight-for-your-life battle with Microsoft. Yahoo chief Jerry Yang took the step of copying regulators on an all-hands e-mail about Microsoft's hostile $45 billion bid for Yahoo that was sent to company employees Wednesday…


FORTUNE — By now I’m sure you’ve heard about today’s big merger news: Actavis ACT buying Warner Chilcott WCRX .

Wait, did you think I was talking about Yahoo buying Tumblr? Here are some quick stats:

Notice anything horribly amiss? Particularly once we consider that Tumblr basically is the latest/greatest means for teens to express themselves, while Warner Chilcott develops products to help people manage serious diseases and prevent unwanted pregnancies.

And, to be clear, we here at Fortune are certainly part of the editorial imbalance. So far this site has already published three posts about Yahoo’s YHOO purchase of Tumblr, and none about Actavis buying Warner Chilcott (save for this one).

So why are we media folk so obsessed with the acquisition of a low-revenue blogging platform and so dismissive of an $11 billion combined revenue drug-maker? Four basic reasons:

1. It’s easier for most of *us* to understand what Tumblr makes than what Warner Chilcott makes. Not how they make it (i.e., coding vs. petri dishes), but the finished product (online content vs. pills to treat for diseases the average writer doesn’t have).

2. Yahoo and Tumblr have young, telegenic CEOs (see here and here). Actavis and Warner Chilcott do not (see here and here).

3. There are far more tech-focused online media sites than there are healthcare-focused media sites. And I’m not just talking trades here. Even Fortune has a tech vertical, but not a healthcare one. Mostly because…

4. We largely cater to people who spend part of their day on the web, consuming content. Not surprisingly, those people tend to have a particular interest in things that involve the web and web content. It’s a huge built-in audience, and we reporters know that our bread is ultimately buttered by pageviews.

RELATED: Actavis joins the Fortune 500

There was a time, not too long ago, when media outlets could drive “what’s important” by page placement or big web headlines. But that time has passed, in an age of homepage-killing mobile apps, brand-killing social shares, etc.

So we give readers what they want, even if we don’t necessarily think it’s what they should want. It may mean we’re no longer elitist. Or, more likely, it means we’re no longer living up to our responsibilities… Sorry.

Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

Summary: Why we're paying attention to the wrong deal.


EarlySense Ltd., a provider of patient monitoring solutions, has raised $15 million in Series E funding.Pitango Venture Capital led the round, and was joined by return backers JK&B, ProSeed VC Fund, Docor International Management and Bridge Investment Fund. The company is based in Israel, with a U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Mass. www.earlysense.com Visterra Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based developer of drugs for infectious diseases like seasonal and pandemic influenza, has raised $13 million in new Series A funding. The total round now stands at $26 million. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Omega Funds were joined by return backers Polaris Venture Partners, Flagship Ventures and Lux Capital. www.visterrainc.com

Intronis Inc., a Boston–based provider of cloud backup solutions for the IT channel, has raised $12 million in new VC funding. Greenspring Associates led the round, and was joined by return backer OpenView Venture Partners. www.intronis.com

YPX Cayman Holdings Co. Ltd., a Taiwanese quick-service restaurant chain, has raised $11.5 million in new VC funding. LionRock Capital led the round, and was joined by Qiming Venture Partners and Ignition Capital. www.ypxfood.com

DoubleDutch, a San Francisco–based provider of mobile engagement apps for events and enterprise workgroups, has raised $4 million in Series B funding. Floodgate led the round, and was joined by return backers Bullpen Capital and Lightbank. www.doubledutch.com

TRX Systems Inc., a Greenbelt, Md.–based developer of personnel tracking systems, has raised $2 million in Series A funding. Backers include Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, New Dominion Angels and the Maryland Department of Economic Development. www.trxsystems.com

Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

Summary: EarlySense Ltd., a provider of patient monitoring solutions, has raised $15 million in Series E funding.Pitango Venture Capital led the round, and was joined by return backers JK&B, ProSeed VC Fund, Docor International Management and Bridge Investment Fund. The company is based in Israel, with a U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Mass. www.earlysense.com Visterra Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based…