WASHINGTON, Sept. 4— Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said in an interview last night that the Reagan Administration had made considerable progress toward the independence of South-West Africa in behind-the-scenes discussions with South Africa.

Mr. Haig's optimism, it was learned, stemmed from South Africa's return to Excerpts from interview, page 5. a position more in line with what it held in 1978, when negotiations for the independence of the territory as Namibia began in earnest. Between then and this year, South Africa's position had hardened considerably.

''We're not where we want to be yet,'' Mr. Haig said. ''But we are farther ahead on where we want to be.'' South Africa administered South-West Africa, a former German colony, under a League of Nations mandate of 1920 that was revoked in 1966 by the United Nations. It regards South Africa's continued control of the area as illegal.

On Monday, the United States vetoed a resolution in the Security Council condemning South Africa for its raid into Angola. Mr. Haig said the veto was needed so that the United States could maintain its ability to ''influence South African attitudes.'' 'Earliest Possible Independence'

''I think it's very important for critics of contemporary U.S. policies to understand that our judgments have to be based on what we do that is designed to bring about the objective which we all commonly seek: the earliest possible independence for Namibia,'' he said.

''It is the United States who has, in a dialogue with South Africa on the Namibian question, made progress which thus far goes far beyond that of the previous three years,'' he said.

It was learned that Mr. Haig's optimism was based on these developments in discussions held with South African leaders over the last several months:

- After in effect rejecting the United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 of 1978, which it had earlier agreed to as the basis for a Namibian settlement, the South Africans have again said they would accept it.

- After rejecting the presence of United Nations peacekeeping forces in South-West Africa as a substitute for the Namibian guerrillas, South Africa now is willing to accept the international force in an independent Namibia to enforce certain arms limitation measure s and to insure free elections.

- After listing a number of detailed constitutional guarantees for Namibia as preconditions for a settlement, the South Africans have asked for ''confidence-building measures'' that the United States believes are already contained to a large extent in the spirit and letter of the United Nations documents of 1978.

This month, the United States wi ll discuss the new situation with Britain, Canada, France and West Germany, the other Western intermediaries on Namibia and a set of propos als will be presented toSouth Africa and the black African parties.

It was the Carter Administration which worked out with various parties the Western plan and Security Council Resolution 435 which have formed the basis for negotiations. The resolution, a fairly brief document, authorized the United Nations to take the lead in bringing about Namibian independence.

On another subject, Mr. Haig said that China had given the Administration ''an expression of interest for some limited defensive-type military equipment,'' which he said included the sale of antitank missiles, antiaircraft missiles and radar.

While in Peking last June, Mr. Haig disclosed that the Chinese were now eligible to buy such equipment and that a delegation would come to Washington in August. The delegation has yet to come, and Mr. Haig said no new date had yet been set. 'Limited Budget' for Arms

Asked why the Chinese seemed to be delaying, he replied that in the past, ''they've had vast markets available to them in Europe for highly sophisticated acquisitions which they have not pursued.'' Part of the reason, he said, might be a ''limited budget.''

As to the possibility of American sales of advanced equipment to Taiwan, which has brought strong protests in advance from China, Mr. Haig said there had been ''no decision.'' But he said ''there's something on the horizon with respect to Taiwan's defense needs.''

''We have to assess what those needs are, and it would be handled, as I emphasized before, with great sensitivity,'' he said. Disagrees With Allen

From Sept. 11 to Sept. 14, Mr. Haig is scheduled to visit Yugoslavia and West Germany, and he said in the interview that he differed with Richard V. Allen, the White House national security adviser, who has warned about the spread of ''pacifism'' in Western Europe.

''I'm not one to believe that pacifism is running wild in Western Europe,'' he said. ''I spent too much time there, and I've had too much current dialogue to believe that.''

Referring to recent anti-American demonstrations in West Germany and elsewhere, he blamed the problems on the declining economic situation in Europe and ''the strong anti-nuclear sensitivities in a number of West European capitals.'' Move on Neutron Weapons

He said it had been ''aggravated'' by the unilateral American decision to assemble and stockpile neutron bombs, a move that he had opposed.

Mr. Haig also said there would be ''linkage'' between the beginning of talks on limiting strategic arms and the Soviet attitude on other issues, such as offering constructive solutions to the problems in Afghanistan and Cambodia.

Overall, he said that the Soviet Union in the last year has shown ''a relatively moderate international posture,'' which he said was due to Moscow's desire to be seen ''as a vanguard for international peace and disarmament'' and to aggravate problems between the United States and its European allies.

Mr. Haig has been sharply critical of Soviet activities around the world, but he said he had to acknowledge that most of what he saw as troublemaking had, in his view, occurred before the Reagan Administration took office.

He said that another possible reason for Moscow's ''relative restraint'' was concern over the increase in American military spending.

As to the Reagan Administration's policies in the United Nations, he said that in the past the United States might have been overly concerned about the attitude of other countries.

Speaking specifically about the Namibian question, Mr. Haig said, ''We've got to dedicate ourselves - and this is the President's instructions to me - to achieving real results, and we're going to be measured in the final analysis by the nonaligned and by the front-line states on that; not on our rhetoric and not on our United Nations voting record.''

Illustrations: photo of the South African delegation to the U.N. photo of Alexander M. Haig Jr.


WASHINGTON, Feb. 12— Ernest W. Lefever, a prolific writer and public speaker who is under consideration as the director of human rights policy in the State Department, has in the past seemed to question the value of the policy and of the job he is expected to fill.

However, Mr. Lefever said in an interview this week that ''I look upon myself as a great advocate of human rights in a more profound and effective way.''

He opposes the use of punitive sanctions, such as the withdrawal of economic and military aid, from friendly but authoritarian foreign regimes because of human rights abuses. He said he is ''utterly convinced that the most effective way to get reform is quiet diplomacy'' and maintenance of friendly relations.

Administration officials predict that the 61-year-old Mr. Lefever will be nominated and confirmed to the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. Considerable Opposition Seen

Senator Alan D. Cranston of California, the Democratic whip and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he believed there would be ''considerable Senate opposition'' to Mr. Lefever, adding that he ''seems to have a blind eye to human rights violations by right-wing military dictatorships.''

In some ways, Mr. Lefever's views on human rights seem to fit in with the Reagan Administration's already stated intention of placing less emphasis on human rights than the Carter Administration did.

He said in the interview that ''scolding'' a regime - in the case of Argentina, for example - ''didn't bring anybody back to life and was counterproductive.''

On some occasions Mr. Lefever has seemed to suggest that he opposed the present framework of laws under which he would operate as Assistant Secetary of State and to suggest that he doubted the justification for any attempt to influence human rights policies in other nations. Testimony Before Congress

In testimony on July 12, 1979, before a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Lefever said that ''in my view the United States should remove from the statute books all clauses that establish a human rights standard or condition that must be met by another sovereign government before our Government transacts normal business with it, unless specifically waived by the President.''

He added, ''It shouldn't be necessary for any friendly state to pass a human rights test before we extend normal trade relations, before we sell arms or before we provide economic or security assistance.

''We have no moral mandate to remake the world in our own image. It is arrogant of us to attempt to reform the domestic behaviors of our allies and even of our adversaries.''

In testimony in 1974 before the inter-American affairs subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Lefever was drawn into a colloquy about the use of torture by the ruling military junta in Chile. Abuse Linked to Tradition

Mr. Lefever said that a former State Department official had ''pointed out that we must understand the normal level of police abuse which goes on in that part of the world as a residual practice of the Iberian tradition.'' He added that he believed that ''the incidence of torture has dropped off markedly and is approximately normal for that part of the world.''

Mr. Lefever said he believed in ''minimum to zero U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,'' adding, ''I am a strong noninterventionist and that includes covert and overt intervention.''

In a 1978 article in the magazine Policy Review, he wrote that policies toward the Soviet Union ''should be determined by our economic and security interests'' and they should not be ''influenced, much less determined, by the extent of human rights violations in the Soviet Union.''

In the interview, Mr. Lefever denied that these and similar statements could accurately be construed to mean that he opposed efforts to force changes in human rights policy on the Soviet Union. He said any such suggestion rested ''on one sentence, taken out of context.'' Determined Critic of Carter

He added that Moscow ''is a very good target for criticism'' and also said that ''with our adversaries I approve of public criticism.'' Mr. Lefever did not say that he favored going beyond criticism to the use of economic sanctions or pressure.

Mr. Lefever was a determined and frequent critic of President Carter's human rights policy, charging that Mr. Carter ''trivialized'' the issue. Saying that such ''human rights activists'' failed to make a clear distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism, Mr. Lefever added, ''In their preoccupation with the minor abridgment of certain rights in authoritarian states they often overlook the massive threat to the liberty of millions.''

Mr. Lefever said, ''I am known as a moderate, thoughtful and nuanced person, but sometimes I get angry.'' He also said: ''There is a campaign against me. I don't mind attacks based on principle, but I've never been in this kind of unpleasant context before.''

A variety of liberal activists and interest groups say they will ask to testify against Mr. Lefever's nomination, some saying they believe conflict-of-interest questions are involved. This was an allusion to Mr. Lefever's role in a controversy over the marketing of an infant formula for the bottle-feeding of babies in third-world countries. Infant Formula Controversy

There is a body of opinion that a marked increase in sales of formula and a decline in breast-feeding has caused an increase in malnutrition and infant deaths in underdeveloped countries, supposedly because of the use of polluted water by impoverished mothers in preparing the formula. The nutritional value and purity of the product when used as directed is not questioned by critics.

Mr. Lefever is the president of the Ethics and Policy Center in Washington, which he founded in 1976, and which he has described as a small tax-free research and publication organization aimed at applying ''traditional Judeo-Christian values in the public policy arena.''

The center has received $25,000 from Nestle S.A., the Swiss-based corporation that markets about 50 percent of the infant formula sold in the third world. Mr. Lefever has commissioned a journalist to do a $5,000 study of the controversy and he himself wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal last month defending the industry against what he called ''compassion-created revolutionary rhetoric'' and denouncing a proposed code to limit marketing and promotion of formula as the work of ''self-annointed custodians of rectitude.''

Mr. Lefever called suggestions that a conflict existed ''preposterous'' and said: ''I wish Nestle would give us a lot more -why not?''

Illustrations: photo of Ernest W. Lefever


IT started this summer with a little red spot on the boy's cheek. No one thought anything of it -not until weeks after he had left Fire Island for camp in New England. Then suddenly the 11-year-old fell ill with flu-like symptoms and had to be hospitalized for arthritic pains.

Lyme disease had struck again. Named for the Connecticut shorefront community where it cropped up in the late 1970's, the nonfatal skin, muscle and joint disease that is believed to be spread by ticks has surfaced this summer across the Long Isl a nd Sound and elsewhere across the country. The ticks have been lin ked to a proliferating deer herd on a Federal preserve on Fire Islan d, but the bloodsucking parasites are also said to be carried on mi ce and perhaps household pets.

Scientists at the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and health authorities on the Island say that Lyme disease - and, in its later stage, Lyme arthritis - is no matter for alarm and is not a reportable disease, which means that physicians are not required to report cases to the Government. But Fire Islanders and others who have encountered a dozen or so cases this summer say that greater awareness of the disease is necessary if problems are to be avoided.

As in the case of the now-recovering 11-year-old boy from Point O' Woods, Fire Island - where 10 cases have come to attention so far this season -the disease first manifests itself as an expanding ring of skin rash radiating outward from the red mark of a tick bite. Because the rash spreads, it has been named ''erythema chronium migrans'' - literally, redness-chronic-moving. It is also sometimes accompanied by chills, fever, a stiff neck and nausea.

Those symptoms and the rash may disappear within a few days, but then a week to several months later the muscle and joint pain and stiffness of arthritis can appear. There can also be attacks of meningitis, nerve paralysis and heart irregularities. But in 90 percent of the cases, according to Dr. Charles Herron, a medical epidemiologist of the Atlanta disease-control centers, the ailment then subsides, leaving no permanent aftereffects.

In the other 10 percent, he said, there are chronic arthritic effects, but he said he was not aware of any fatalities. The disease is not viewed as contagious. Penicillin has been found to be effective in some cases.

Lyme disease was first recognized by a scientist at Yale, Dr. Allen Steere, on the basis of cases in Lyme in 1975. Because its symptoms were often mistaken for those of other ailments, earlier outbreaks went essentially undetected, although occurrences have been noted in Scandinavia, West Germany and Wisconsin and, after Lyme, in California, Oregon, New Jersey and lately, perhaps, in Georgia.

Dr. Steere was able to track down about 510 cases up to 1979 and 226 more last year. This year will probably see an equal or greater number, Dr. Herron estimated, bringing the total known cases to date in this country to about 1,000.

The tick implicated in the East, according to Dr. Herron, is Ixodes dammini, a parasite of the eight-legged spider family. Dr. Donald Cameron, who practices internal medicine at New York Hospital and is chairman of the medical committee in Point O' Woods, said that a mapping of the 10 cases in his community placed them all in a thickly foliated area favored by the semitame deer herd of Sunken Forest, the adjacent Federal preserve. The deer wander fearlessly into the community in the early morning, he said, adding that the rangers ''haven't figured out what to do with them.''

People who have visited Fire Island, Dr. Cameron added, should watch for any symptoms of Lyme disease, which should be promptly reported to a physician. Early treatment with penicillin has been effective in some cases in pre-empting the onset of the arthritis stage, he said.

''There's no real way to get away from the ticks, so people have to be aware of the problem,'' said Robert Feeney, a businessman-chemist and Fire Islander from Water Island, whose daughter and wife came down with the disease, the daughter 10 years ago, the wife last summer. Both made full recoveries.


WASHINGTON, Oct. 10— Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has reportedly reached a compromise with the White House on the composition of a panel that President Reagan has proposed for a bipartisan study of Social Security.

According to Congressional sources, the 15-member group that the President suggested in a televised speech last month will be composed of seven Republicans, seven Democrats and an independent, to insure that its recommendations not carry a partisan stamp.

When Mr. Reagan made the original suggeston, he said he would name five members to the panel, as would Mr. O'Neill, a Democrat, and Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., the Republican majority leader of the Senate.

This led some Democrats to oppose the proposal on the ground that the panel would be composed of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, with the latter powerless to influence the ''bipartisan'' group. ''I think Speaker O'Neill can count better than that,'' observed Jim Wright, the leader of the Democratic majority in the House.

Under an agreement reached between the Speaker and James A. Baker 3d, the White House chief of staff, the appointments will be divided this way:

Mr. O'Neill will name three members and Representative Robert H. Michel of Illinois, the House minority leader, two. Each will include one House member among his selections. Senator Baker will name three members and Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the Senate minority leader, two. Again, each will choose one senator.

Mr. Reagan will name two Republicans, two Democrats and one independent. It is expected that his Republican choices will be senior Administration officials, such as Richard S. Schweiker, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and John A. Svahn, Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. 2 Expected Choices

Mr. O'Neill has asked Representative Claude Pepper, Democrat of Florida, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Aging, to serve on the panel. Mr. Byrd is expected to designate Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, the ranking member of the Senate Social Security Subcommittee.

The panel will be largely concerned with averting a serious financial shortage in the retirement fund that is expected to occur in 35 years, when the ''baby boom'' generation begins to claim benefits while a shrunken work force is providing less and less in contributions.

There is also the prospect of a smaller fund shortage in the next five years, but a bill scheduled for Senate approval this week is designed to avert that by giving Social Security a larger share of the payroll tax and permitting it to borrow from the Medicare and disability funds.

Mr. O'Neill and the White House are still negotiating over a date for the panel to report its recommendations to the President and Congress.

The White House reportedly favors April 1983, which in effect would postpone further discussions of Social Security as a political issue until after the 1982 Congressional elections. Mr. O'Neill reportedly wants to set the date for next April, which would reintroduce the subject in plenty of time for the 33 Senate and 435 House races the following fall.

Mr. Reagan's recommendations last May that Social Security benefits be trimmed to preserve the solvency of the retirement system aroused widespread opposition and presented the Democrats with a political issue that Mr. O'Neill has been reluctant to surrender.

But some House members of both parties believe the retireme nt issueis so sensitive that all incumbents would be better off if further dis cussions were postponed until after next year's electio ns.

Mr. Reagan proposed creation of the panel ''to remove Social Security once and for all from politics,'' but the disputes over its composition and the timetable make it clear that this goal is easier to proclaim than to achieve.


Announcement has been made by Mrs. William J. Keating of Hamden, Conn., of the engagement of her daughter, Susan Louise Keating, to Thomas David O'Connor Jr., son of Mr. and Mrs. O'Connor of Loudonville, N.Y., and Watch Hill, R.I. A December wedding is planned. Miss Keatin g, daughter also of the late Mr. Keating, was graduated from Lauralto n Hall in Milford, Conn., and cum laude from Boston College, havi ng spent her junior year at the Institute for European Studies in Vi enna.

She is a paralegal with the New Haven law firm of Tyler, Cooper , Grant, Bowerman & Keefe and a member of the Junior League of New Haven. Her father was a lawyer.

Miss Keating is a granddaughter of the late Municipal Court Justice and Mrs. William A. Keating of New York and the late Mr. and Mrs. George W. Markey of Greenwich, Conn., and New York. Her maternal grandfather was president of the Markey Press in the Bronx and publisher of The Northside News, a daily newspaper.

Her fiance, an alumnus of the Canterbury School in New Milford, Conn., attended Boston College and expects to graduate in December from Northeastern University. His father is president and chairman of the Mohawk Paper Mills in Cohoes, N.Y.

Mr. O'Connor is a grandson of Mr. and Mrs. Edward J. Breck of Somers, Conn.; Palm Beach, Fla., and Watch Hill and the late Mr. and Mrs. George O'Connor. His maternal grandfather, now retired, was president and chairman of the John H. Breck Company, the hair-care producer founded by John H. Breck, great-grandfather of the future bridegroom, and acquired by the American Cyanamid Company in 1963. His paternal grandfather was president and chairman of the Mohawk Paper Mills.

Illustrations: photo of Susan Keating


Sibyl Elizabeth Davis, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. William Davis of Lake Placid, N.Y., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was married yesterday to Randall Lars Quayle, son of Mrs. Oliver A. Quayle 3d of New York and the late Mr. Quayle. The Rev. John Fitch of Saranac Lake, N.Y., performed the Protestant ceremony in the Tiffany Chapel at the Lake Placid Club Resort.

The bride was graduated from the Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale and from Connecticut College and received a master's degree in special education from the University of Northern Colorado. She is a special-education teacher with Boces (Board of Cooperative Educational Services) in Franklin and Essex Counties. Her father retired recently from Conde Nast Publications Inc. in New York, where he was an advertising executive.

The bride is a granddaughter of the late William B. Warner, a former president of the McCall Publishing Company in New York and of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Mr. Quayle, a psychologist for the Lake Placid schools, graduated from Dartmouth College and received an M.S. degree from Pennsylvania State University. His father was president of Oliver Quayle & Company, a public-opinion research concern in New York.

Mrs. Edward W. Davis, sister-in-law of the bride, was matron of honor. Oliver A. Quayle 4th was his brother's best man.

Illustrations: photo of Sibyl Quayle


FLUSHING, N.Y.— So far I've outlasted them all. Over the last two decades, education fads have come and gone and I'm still in the classroom with the student, with only the textbook between us.

It seems like ages ago that Admiral Hyman Rickover talked about the need for excellence in education and the importance of keeping up with the Russians. That's when the Federal money started pouring in.

One of the first innovations was a language lab. The idea was that the students could learn more effectively by listening to records and tapes and by hearing themselves trying out foreign words and phrases. So a room was set aside, its insides were torn out, and individual booths were built and wired for headphones. The teacher's desk was replaced by a console with knobs, buttons, and jacks, and he became a kind of disk jockey. Tapes and records lined one wall. I don't remember how long this bold experiment lasted but a few terms later the room was turned into a study hall. Now the insides have been torn out and the cycle has been completed. The lab is again an oldfashioned classroom. I don't know what happened to the records and headphones.

Uncle Sam showered us with all sorts of other goodies. I particularly remember two impressive tape recorders that made our eyes light up, though they looked a little too cumbersome and complicated to use in a classroom. After a while they just got in the way in our office, so we put them in the storage room. A few years later, someone noticed them on a shelf and we passed them on to the audio-visual department. We needed the space for other things.

I remember, too, years ago when, at a department meeting, the main topic was the use of our new overhead projector. Our chairman, a bit of a showman, flaunted his newly acquired expertise in subduing the infernal contraption. He flashed a sample composition on the ceiling, on the wall - on me! And, with a special crayon, he showed us how we could correct a student's paper for all the world to see. Red pencils seemed about to go the way of the buggy whip. But English teachers are easily intimidated by technology, especially when it weighs more than 30 pounds and involves turning out classroom lights. So I don't think any of us used the thing back then, and it, too, found its way into the storage room, this time on the floor because it was too big to put on a shelf. We still have to be careful not to kick it when we reach in for some chalk or a box of paper clips.

Those were gaudy days - flush times, as Mark Twain would have said. The ready money created a kind of euphoria and prompted some educators to act out their wildest fantasies. For instance, high on the most remote shelf of our book room there were 35 new books containing Aristotle's ''Poetics'' and ''On the Sublime,'' attributed to Longinus, waiting to be used by an unborn generation of superstudents. Every now and then, we gaze up at them, trying to discover the motive of a predecessor who had ordered them, blinded as he was by some pedagogical delusion or, more likely, by the mandate to spend money - because it was there.

It's interesting that in the midst of all this largesse we teachers remained, for the most part, hopelessly traditional in teaching methods. Though we might have given lip service to the need for innovation and for new materials, all that new hardware hardly affected us at all in the classroom, where things count. Mainly, all those shiny gizmos were baubles for some administrators to puff about and play with. And, like children, they soon grew tired of them and went on to other things.

Of course, I'm not against audio-visual aids. For example, I've got a superb tape of Siobhan McKenna as Saint Joan that I use whenever we're reading George Bernard Shaw's play. I do the same with some Shakespeare but I usually use my own recorder because it's portable and simple to operate. Like most teachers, I prefer a direct relationship with my students. Machines get in the way.

All of this is a roundabout way of explaining why I didn't panic when President Reagan talked about cutting the education budget. For one thing, as a teacher in New York City I've been on short rations for quite a while: Our building is not properly maintained, we have no composition paper, and I'm holding on to my own private blackboard eraser since new ones are hard to come by. The truth is that I never really believed in all the hardware that once upon a time came our way. So if the Reagan cuts mean that we're not going to get a new tape recorder, I won't complain. We already have two - somewhere.

What I do believe in is a rather simple equation: the teacher, the student, and the book. Just close the classroom door and let us be - and, though it's unlikely now, if there's a package from Uncle Sam, just put it in the storeroom with the other stuff. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Edmund Janko has just finished a six-year term as dean of boys at Bayside High School, in Queens.


The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 88th Street (860-1313), is one of those museums whose architecture shares the attention, with the exhibitions, of the visitor. The spiraling ramp along which the big displays are viewed as one descends winds around an open core and makes for constant vistas as you go.

Two exhibitions are now on view. The works of Giorgio Morandi, an Italian painter, line the spiral upward from where you debark from the elevator at the fourth floor, and the 266 pieces in ''Art of the Avant-Garde in Russia From the George Costakis Collection'' accompany you on the downward spiral to the main floor.

The Morandi art, shown through Jan. 17, are tranquil and eyecatching still lifes and landscapes that are more than mere representation, and introduce you to the skill of a master artist. The Costakis exhibition offers you glimpses, through Jan. 3, of work done between 1910 and 1930, many never before seen in New York and only rarely seen in the Soviet Union, whence the collector emigrated in 1977. John Russell, an art critic of The New York Times, described it in a review as ''a remarkable affair and rich above all in smallscale lyrical work that comes across with a remarkable freshness.''

By all means, look in at the breathtaking assortment of art by Picasso, Cezanne, Braque, Degas and others that glow in the Justin K. Thannhauser Wing, just off the big spiral.

Open Wednesdays through Sundays from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. (Thanksgiving Day, too), and from 11 to 8 Tuesdays. Admission: $2; students and over-62's, $1.25 (free to all from 5 to 8 P.M. Tuesdays). FLORA

The New York Botanical Garden is in the Bronx on Southern Boulevard and Pelham Parkway, adjacent to Fordham University and across the street from the Bronx Zoo. It is a wonderfully large piece of New York given over to botany, both cultivated and in nature, a marvelous place to walk around in and raise a Thanksgiving Day appetite the day before. On Wednesdays, the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, a striking spread of plant life under glass is open free to visitors - on other days, it costs $2.50 to go in (75 cents for under-12's and over-65's). What you will go through in this most Victorian enclosed acre, are 12 glass pavilions, each with a different theme. There is an Orangery, a Cruciform House, a Roman Topiary Zoo, a Palm Court, a fern forest.

The scene outside this indoor sanctuary fits the New York season, with trees that change undergoing their annual riot of color while evergreens splash the gray fall with their imperturbable greenery.

Admission to the garden is always free, but there is a $2.50 parking fee if you drive there. Open from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Tomorrow the grounds are open, but the Conservatory will be closed for the holiday. NOON SONG

The Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity is a lovely and familiar landmark for Brooklynites who have seen it these many years at 157 Montague Street, at the corner of Clinton. The church has a program, the Arts at St. Ann's, which among other things sponsors a series of Wednesday lunchtime concerts, now ending its second year. These programs present soloists performing serious music, classic and modern, with voice and instruments. Today the artist is Joyce Guyer-Hiller, a soprano who was a finalist in the 1981 Metropolitan Opera auditions. She will offer a program of Strauss, Poulenc and Bacon.

Admission is free, although contributions are appreciated. Information: 834-8794. AT THE MOVIES

This is the last week of the Directors Collection seven-week Festival of International Classics at the Eighth Street Playhouse, 52 West Eighth Street (674-6515). The penultimate bill today presents two French films. ''Les Anges du Peche'' was directed by Robert Bresson in 1943, a turbulent, frightening time in France, then under Nazi domination, one in which some film makers successfully coped. This one is described as an ''allegory'' about liberty and the rights of women. In the cast: Renee Faure, Jany Holt and Silvi. It plays at 8 P.M. The other film is ''The Nun,'' (''La Religieuse''), directed in 1965 by Jacques Rivette and starring Anna Karina, who finds herself a nun imprisoned by the claustrophobic strictures of her order. At 5:45 and 9:30 P.M.

Tomorrow the festival concludes with a Japanese pair, the 1964 ''The Assassination'' and the 1965 ''Samurai Spy,'' both directed by Masahiro Shinoda. Admission: $4.50.

For Sports Today, see page B8. Richard F. Shepard

Summary: THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE   The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 88th Street (860-1313), is one of those museums whose architecture shares the attention, with the exhibitions, of the visitor. The spiraling ramp along which the big displays are viewed as one descends winds around an open core and makes for constant vistas as you go.   Two exhibitions are now on view. The works of Giorgio Morandi, an Italian painter, line the spiral upward from where you debark from the elevator at the fourth floor, and the 266 pieces in ''Art of the Avant-Garde in Russia From the George Costakis Collection'' accompany you on the downward spiral to the main floor.


PORT CHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 25— Play in the world team championship here this afternoon strongly indicated the shape of things to come. The four qualifiers for the semifinal playoffs Wednesday are likely to be Britain, Argentina, Poland and the United States.

In the last two days, Australia made a strong effort to make up ground lost in the first three days of qualifying play. But their challenge faded this afternoon when the Australians lost to Argentina, 14 to 6. The Australians are now 15 points out of fourth position and are unlikely to be able to close the gap in the last four rounds.

In other matches, Britain lost to Pakistan, 11 to 9, almost dissipating the lead the British have held for the last three days. The United States lost to Indonesia by the same margin, but has a firm hold on the fourth qualifying spot

The standings after 10 rounds were: first, Britain, 115; second, Argentina, 114; third, Poland, 112; fourth, United States, 108; fifth, Pakistan, 94; sixth, Australia, 93; seventh, Indonesia 84. U.S. Women Rout Australia

In the women's series for the Venice Trophy, the United States consolidated its position at the top of the standings by administering a 20-to-0 defeat to the Australians, whose strong bid to reach the final is now unlikely to succeed. Britain bounced back after a heavy loss last night and defeated Venezuela, 19 to 1, to regain second position.

The standings are: first, United States, 132; second, Britain, 111; third, Brazil, 109; fourth, Australia, 90; fifth, Venezuela, 68. In 1969, Bobby Levin, a 12-year-old boy living on Long Island, began taking lessons from Abe Goldstein, an expert of long experience. Three years later, Levine was the youngest life master in the history of the game, and today, at the ripe age of 24, he is representing the United States in the Bermuda Bowl.

In the diagramed deal from the eighth qualifying round, Levin held the South cards and galloped into four hearts. West led the diamond ace and shifted to a trump. East put up the king, an error, and South won with the ace. Spade Ace Located

East-West were playing ''ace from ace-king'' so Levin inferred from West's silence in the bidding, incorrectly as it happened, that the spade ace was on his right. So instead of making the normal play of a spade to the king, he led the spade jack and ducked in dummy, hoping that West had failed to cover with the queen.

East won with the queen and played another trump to cut down dummy's ruffing potential. South won in dummy, led to the club ace and played the club jack. When West did not cover, South threw a diamond from dummy. A low club was ruffed in dummy and a diamond was ruffed to reach this position: NORTH S K 9 8 7 H - D Q C - WEST EAST S A S 10 5 3 H - H 5 D K 4 D 9 C Q 9 C - SOUTH S 4 H J 8 D - C K J

Barely pausing for thought, Levin played for his only real chance. He cashed his two trumps, forcing West to part with both his diamonds. Then a spade lead insured a club lead from West at the finish, and the game was made. The opposing North-South rested in two hearts, and the American team gained 10 international match points. NORTH(D) S K 9 8 7 6 H Q 10 7 D Q 7 3 2 C 6 WEST EAST S A 2 S Q 10 5 3 H 9 2 H K 5 4 D A K 10 4 D J 9 6 5 C Q 9 8 7 3 C 5 4 SOUTH S J 4 H A J 8 6 3 D 8 C A K J 10 2 Both sides were vulnerable. The bidding: North East South West Pass Pass 1 H Pass 2 H Pass 4 H Pass Pass Pass

West led the diamond ace.

Illustrations: Diagram of a bridge hand


WASHINGTON, Jan. 28— In a marked shift of position and tone, Gen. David C. Jones of the Air Force, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vigorously urged Congress today to give top priority to building a new strategic bomber.

General Jones said the need was urgent. ''Deploying a new manned penetrator should be a top priority among the new strategic initiatives that we need to pursue in the days ahead,'' he said, adding that such an aircraft would be able to penetrate extensive Soviet defenses.

In a report to Congress last year, however, General Jones, the nation's senior military officer, had said, ''Over the longer term, I believe we must continue with the development of a manned penetrating aircraft to succeed the B-52.''

General Jones, who has been criticized by some conservatives as being too compliant with the military policies of the Carter Administration, gave a tough, almost belligerent report on the posture of the nation's armed forces. The report was released today by the Pentagon and delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which opened hearings on the 1982 military budget.

Caspar W. Weinberger, the new Secretary of Defense, told the committee that he would send recommendations on the new bomber to Congress in March, but he added that its cost estimates would not be ready until June. Under consideration are an updated version of the B-1 bomber that President Carter killed, a new version of the FB-111 bomber or a wholly new plane that would incorporate the latest technology, including the proposed stealth bomber, an aircraft designed to be ''invisible'' to radar.

General Jones also testified at the hearing, telling the committee that ''there would be no way for the West to match the weight of effort that the Soviets could hurl into a conventional battle'' in the Persian Gulf area. But he added that there should be ''uncertainty'' in the minds of Soviet leaders about where and in what form the United States would respond to such a move.

In his annual report the general was more specific, saying, ''The Soviets must be continually faced with the certain prospect that a military move against U.S. or allied interests risks a conflict that could be wider in geography, scope or violence than they are prepared to deal with.'' Comments on Arms Treaty

While General Jones also urged that the United States continue to abide by the terms of the unratified treaty to limit strategic arms as long as the Soviet Union did the same, he added, ''If it is clearly not in our best interests to abide by it, we should not abide by it.''

He said that if, for example, the United States achieved a breakthrough in new weapons prohibited by the strategic arms treaty, they should be developed even if it was understood that it might cause the Soviet Union to take similar action.

General Jones was scathing in his criticism of the volunteer military service, but he stopped short of a call for resuming the draft. ''In a nutshell,'' he asserted, ''for nearly eight years the U.S. has been enjoying the political benefits of an all-volunteer force without being willing to pay the price to make it successful.''

Mr. Weinberger told the committee that the 1981 and 1982 military budgets would be revised upward by unspecified amounts and outlined plans for a change in policy for procuring weapons that now are often bought in small amounts over long periods. Lower Unit Costs Seen

The Secretary said that ''when we buy equipment, we want to buy it at maximum efficient production rates.'' Defense contractors have often said that buying more at a faster rate would mean lower unit costs.

Mr. Weinberger said that the new policy would ''require the expenditure of more funds initially, but will save money in the long run.''

He also sought to assure industries doing business with the Defense Department that they would receive ''a fair profit but will not be rewarded for the mistakes of their own making.''

The Secretary, who said that he would have his proposals for budget revisions ready late next month, added that there was ''a real possibility'' that they would contain funds for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

Illustrations: Photo of Gen. David C. Jones Photo of Sec. of State, Alexander M. Haig, Jr.


Even if you don’t have kids, the odds are you’ve heard of Minecraft—if only because Microsoft MSFT acquired the game’s independent developer Mojang for $2.5 billion last year. Because many people play Minecraft for free, and share it with friends, there are more than 100 million registered users who have played the open world brick-building game since it launched in open beta in 2009.

That’s a huge global audience for Spanish tech company Now Computing to tap into, with its new Gameband+Minecraft wearable gaming wristband.

According to research firm IDTechEx, the wearable electronics market will grow from $20 billion in 2015 to nearly $70 billion by 2025. But companies like Apple, Samsung, Nike, Garmin, and Fitbit are targeting adults, or at least an older demographic than Gameband. Gameband is the first wearable specificially aimed at a younger demographic.

Gerard Alquézar Artieda, chief geek (his official title) at Now Computing, says Gameband’s “sweet spot” is between the ages of 8 and 12 with a 70/30 male to female split in buyers. He adds Gameband appeals to the 6- to 12-year-olds that are just starting to play Minecraft in single player mode. Former Mojang CEO Carl Manneh previously said the Minecraft audience had grown from 25- to 35-year-old males at launch to users as young as four and as old as 98, with a significant concentration of males 10 to 15 years of age.

“We believe Gameband is a new category, and as such there are not a lot of direct comparisons for what we are doing,” Artieda says. “Gameband lets you take your entire gaming experience anywhere, wearing it on your wrist and being able to access it on any computer.”

The $80 Gameband allows gamers who play PC, Mac, and Linux versions of the game to save worlds on their wrist with a back-up stored on the cloud. After the first year, users will be charged a $10 annual fee for cloud storage.

The closest technology to Gameband is Razer’s NabuX smartband, but even that skews older and has been developed as a gaming social platform. The appeal for Gameband is Minecraft, itself, which has shown no signs of slowdown with its dedicated and growing worldwide fan base. According to Newzoo, Minecraft has sold over 54 million copies worldwide across multiple platforms.

Now Computing spent 18 months working with Mojang on Gameband, beginning this project before Microsoft came calling with its checkbook. From the outset, Artieda says the objective was to create a product that enhances the gaming experience for Minecraft players. The idea of neatly managing the entire gaming experience in Gameband came from the player community. The future of this device, and a brand new audience for wearables, now rests in this dedicated fan base’s hands, or on its wrists.

Summary: Startup Now Computing has launched into the $20 billion wearables market with Minecraft Gamebands.


Kris Jenner (left) and Caitlyn Jenner

06/25/2015 AT 01:15 PM EDT

had a lot to say about her ex's gender transition during

which aired mid-May, she had remained quiet about

's complete transition as seen on the cover of

However, the Kardashian-Jenner family matriarch is now speaking out about her ex since she reintroduced herself to the world as Caitlyn, and – perhaps unsurprisingly – Kris is as positive as can be.

"I think it's amazing," Kris, 59, told

in Cannes on Wednesday of Caitlyn's transition. "I think that someone following their dream is truly inspirational to a lot of people â¦ you have to do what makes you happy."

Kris' social media accounts are often a vehicle of promotion for the various business ventures of her children, though she has been relatively silent when it comes to Caitlyn's own projects. The last time Kris Tweeted about Caitlyn directly was following her

– when Caitlyn was still chiefly referred to as

, Kris only addressed the special in an Instagram photo of the promo captioned "#familylove" as well as

of Mia Farrow, who wrote, "I think the Kardashian-Jenner family is handling this complex transition with great compassion, generosity, humor and love. Love them."

Caitlyn's journey will be explored in full detail in E!'s eight-part docu-series,

, which premieres July 26 (8 p.m. ET) on E!

Summary: Until now, Kris had yet to discuss her ex's complete transition as seen on the cover of Vanity Fair


A huge fire is burning at a chemical plant in Texas, triggering numerous explosions.

The Montgomery County Fire Marshal’s Office reported the incident on its Facebook page, confirming there had been “multiple explosions”.

Marshal Jimmy William told CNN affiliate KPRC it is not yet known if there have been any injuries or casualties.

Streets surrounding the fire have now been closed. (Twitter: @payden_nicole)

The building is owned by a company called DrillChem which creates products such as lubricants and sealants for the oil and gas industry.

Residents within a three kilometre radius of the plant have been advised to keep air conditioners turned off, close all vents, doors and windows and to stay indoors.

This is a breaking news story. More information will be added as it comes to hand.

It is unknown at this stage what caused the explosion. (Twitter: @Visoh_)

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: A huge warehouse is burning in Texas following an explosion at a chemical plant in Conroe.


08/21/2015 AT 07:15 PM EDT

's father, Troy Austin, tried to take his own life earlier this week, PEOPLE can confirm.

Austin – who has been estranged from his

star son, who took his step-dad Mark Tomlinson's name, for years – was arrested Tuesday night on suspicion of drunk driving in South Yorkshire, England; then, when brought into custody, he was put on suicide watch after trying to self-harm, U.K.'s

"He has been reported as a missing person, and there were real concerns about his mental state and well-being," prosecutor Joanne Lewis-Crookes said Wednesday at a hearing for Austin, 46, who reportedly disappeared after an argument with his brother over a hotel they own.

"It is suspected he went off, having borrowed a friend's car, to kill himself. Police officers located Mr. Austin and discovered he still had the vehicle's keys in his possession. It was thought Mr. Austin smelled of intoxicants. A number of empty cans were recoved from the vehicle as well. He had bought the alcohol to pluck up the courage to kill himself," Lewis-Crookes added.

"He was taken to a local police station but was trying to hurt himself. He was taken to [the] hospital for treatment to injuries caused."

Austin reportedly pled guilty to his charge (failing to produce a sample) and will be sentenced next Month.

Austin and Tomlinson's mother, Johannah Poulston, divorced when the singer was 5 years old. The One Direction star – who is

– reportedly hasn't spoken to his biological dad in years.

Summary: The One Direction singer's dad, Troy Austin, was arrested Tuesday night and attempted suicide


Cuba is planning wind projects and hopes to produce 24 percent of its own electricity in 15 years, and Puerto Rico hopes that 20 percent of its electricity comes from renewable energy by 2035.

Between 2009 and 2013, foreign direct investment in the Caribbean nearly doubled to $217 billion, according to data from the World Bank.

That capital is finding its way into a variety of Caribbean industries, including energy, said Edgar van der Meer, a senior analyst at NRG Expert, a London- and Toronto-based energy intelligence and market research publisher.

Read MoreIs steam power the answer to our energy problems?

Recent advances in hydraulic fracturing—so-called fracking—horizontal drilling and the growing shale gas production they have produced mean the U.S. is importing less fossil fuel from Caribbean islands like Trinidad and Tobago, historically a producer for the region.

"Now, we are in a position to sell to them at a cheaper price," said Andrew Holland, senior fellow for energy and climate at the American Security Project, a nonpartisan think tank. "And once the government allows (more exports) and the infrastructure is there, we can export liquefied natural gas and other natural gas products to them."

Investors interested in the Caribbean region should look to the wind and solar energy markets, said Ebinger, as well as the tourism market, which will benefit from cheaper and more efficient energy.

Cuba is an important destination for potential investors, said Holland, as its economy has picked up after five decades of practically no growth.

Read MoreWill plunging oil force energy dividend cuts?

The Obama administration in December took steps to begin an economic and diplomatic rapprochement with the communist nation, which for its part has begun to experiment with free market business on a small scale.

"You can't yet run your island on solar or wind power, but you can do a lot," Holland said.

Summary: Declining oil prices, the U.S. energy revolution and changing relations with Cuba have created new opportunities for energy investment in the Caribbean.


For investors, finding the right hedge fund can be a lot like dating. Which one matches your goals? Do your personalities connect? Is it worth investing time…and money?

Well, one start-up is trying to make the process easier by matching investors with the right hedge fund – think of it as a matchmaking website for those wanting top returns.

"Really this is for…institutional investors, pretty sophisticated investors that are spending a lot of time, effort and capital to find these funds," Sam Hocking, CEO of iMatchative, told CNBC on Friday.

The San Francisco based company uses a whole host of metrics to work, from traditional sources such as regulatory filings, to algorithms created by behavioural finance experts to determine the compatibility between investors and funds. The product, called ALTX, has over 16,000 funds on its website.

iMatchative raised $20 million last year in a funding round and has Mexican telecoms billionaire Carlos Slim as one its backers.

Summary: Finding the right hedge fund can be like dating. One start-up is trying to make it easier by matching investors with the hedge funds.


08/31/2015 AT 11:00 AM EDT

At Sunday's Video Music Awards,

: the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. For a moment, the world briefly stopped turning (citation needed) so West could deliver a

, covering everything from grocery store visits to the importance of "listening to the kids, bro" to

The subsequent announcement of his presidential run came as a surprise, and not just because he yelled, "I'm not no politician, bro!" earlier in the speech. By most accounts, the rapper has zero governing experiencing. However, we think it's precisely Kanye's lack of experience that makes him the perfect candidate to dismantle the political status quo. He's a Washington outsider! He's not tied to Big Oil or special interests.

This may seem a bit premature, but we've already rounded up Yeezy's presidential platform, gleaming insights from his lyrics.

"Whether you broke or rich you gotta get this/Having money's not everything, not havin' it is." – "Good Life"

"Deception is the only felony." – "No Church in the Wild"

"I made 'Jesus Walks,' so I'm never going to hell." – "Otis"

"I am a god/So hurry up with my damn massage/In a French-ass restaurant/Hurry up with my damn croissants/I am a god/I am a god/I am a god." – "I Am a God"

"S--- is real, got me feeling Israelian/ Like Bar Refaeli, or Gisele – no, that's Brazilian." – "Clique"

"You know the kids gon' act a fool/When you stop the programs for after-school/And they DCFS, some of 'em dyslexic/They favorite 50 Cent song '12 Questions.' " – "We Don't Care"

"All the girls pass the weed to your mother------' man/Get 'em high/Now I ain't never tell you to put down your hands/Get 'em high/And if you're losin' your high then smoke again/Keep 'em high." – "Get Em High"

"Went from bein' a broke man to bein' a dope man/To bein' the President, look there's hope man." – "Crack Music"

Summary: Don't know if you'll give West your vote? Here, this is how he feels about the issues that matter most


CBS-owned CBS Sports said it will allow viewers to live stream two regular NFL season games, in addition to AFC coverage, on their portable devices, expanding its services to the fast-growing Internet viewer base.

Viewers will be able to stream games from the regular season and playoff of the National Football League on the CBS Sports website and on television via select connected TV, including Xbox One, Apple TV, Chromecast and Roku players, CBS said on its website.

Streaming coverage of the games, including this year's Super Bowl, will also be available on phone to Verizon users.

Read MoreHow much for a Super Bowl 50 spot in 2016?

CBS will stream the national broadcast of New York Jets versus Miami Dolphins in London on Oct. 4. The second game will be the Carolina Panthers versus Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26.

Online streaming services are becoming increasingly popular as it pulls in viewers who do not want to pay for costly cable TV bundles.

Summary: CBS will allow viewers to live stream two regular NFL season games on their portable devices, expanding its services to the Internet viewer base.


Elsewhere, the fragile ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia looked increasingly shaky after Ukraine on Monday accused rebels of carrying out the heaviest artillery attacks since a truce was agreed, while Russia blamed Kiev, Reuters reported.

The European Union, which oversaw the drawing up of the ceasefire and imposed sanctions on Russia for its role in the conflict,said the fresh escalation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine violated the spirit and the letter of the ceasefire.

In other news, Moody's Investors Service cut Brazil's credit rating to near-junk status on Tuesday but said the country's investment grade status was safe for now.

In the U.K., official figures showed that unemployment remained steady at 5.6 percent in the second quarter of the year, but wage growth fell to hit its in three months in June. Sterling dropped sharply against the euro, before paring losses.

Summary: European equities ended sharply lower on Wednesday as a yuan-related selloff in Asian stocks weighed on investor sentiment.


Then, there is the second category of takeover stocks, the kind that requires an activist to step in. For instance Jana's recent position in ConAgra, which Cramer sees as a positive gain for the long term, if Jana is invited on to ConAgra's board of directors and make it a better company.

But the real homerun situation for Jana would be if there was an outright sale. Either way, it's a win-win situation for Jana.

But what about Twitter? Cramer has seen plenty of speculation from investors that suggests that all it needs is an activist to turn it around. Is that really the answer?

Currently, there is no strong leadership at Twitter, and the interim CEO is trying to do everything all at once. He is ridiculously trying to chauffeur his other company, Square, through the IPO process while trying to find a new CEO for Twitter.

"Given that absurd situation, I think Twitter could be an obvious target for activism," Cramer said.

In Cramer's perspective, an activist could easily buy 5 to 6 percent of Twitter's shares and then push for change or a sale. However, right now activists refuse to get involved without a safety net.

Cramer argued that unless an activist can get Twitter to sell itself—something that could happen without a permanent CEO—then the activist could lose a ton of money if Twitter cannot grow its user base fast enough. Ultimately, Twitter could get hammered with a terrible quarter, and the activists don't want to risk it.

---------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: It isn't Greek to me Cramer: Chinese slowdown is a crackdown Cramer: Is Apple poisonous to Fitbit? ----------------------------------------------------------

"I think it's too high risk for most activists to take a shot at," Cramer added.

And while the logical acquirers of Twitter, such as Google and Yahoo, could still make a move on the company, Cramer doesn't think that will happen without an invitation to make a bid. That invite is something that activism could easily provide.

So, while it might make perfect sense for an activist to step in on Twitter, Cramer doesn't think that will happen because it's not a win-win situation. And that's not something Twitter can provide right now.

Summary: Jim Cramer explains the two types of takeover targets in the market and why an activist won't go near Twitter.


Sept 13 (Reuters) - The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States fell 27 cents in the past three weeks as refiners and retailers gave up some of their profits margins to sell more fuel, according to the Lundberg survey released on Sunday.

Regular grade gasoline fell to $2.44 per gallon in the Sept. 11 survey from $2.71 on Aug. 21, when the previous survey was taken before the Labor Day holiday.

The decline for consumers came as refiners and retailers passed along earlier decreases in crude oil prices, Lundberg said. Increases in gasoline supply across the country and profit margins that Lundberg called "healthy" gave the refiners and retailers leeway to take pump prices down.

Compared with one year ago, the $2.44 average price was lower by $1.02 a gallon.

"Consumers are winners at this point," survey publisher Trilby Lundberg said. "It is a big historical discount to last year."

The latest decline came despite crude oil prices having gone up between surveys, she said.

Gasoline prices could slip another 4 to 10 cents in coming weeks, as long as crude prices do not surge, Lundberg said. "The price trend is probably still down from here."

Production costs for many refiners across the country should go lower because many will see anti-smog regulations ease on Sept. 15 allowing them to operate in the winter with higher vapor pressures than in the summer, she said.

Drivers in Indianapolis saw one of the biggest declines in the last three weeks in the survey area, which covers the 48 contiguous states. Gas prices there fell 73 cents to $2.13 a gallon as BP PLC's Whiting, Indiana, refinery came back online following repairs, Lundberg said.

The lowest average price, as in the previous survey, was in Charleston, South Carolina, and the highest was again in Los Angeles. The latest prices in Charleston were $1.94, compared with $3.31 in Los Angeles.

(Reporting by David Henry in New York; Editing by Bill Trott)

Summary: Sept 13- The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States fell 27 cents in the past three weeks as refiners and retailers gave up some of their profits margins to sell more fuel, according to the Lundberg survey released on Sunday. Regular grade gasoline fell to $2.44 per gallon in the Sept. 11 survey from $2.71 on Aug. 21, when the previous survey was taken...


"It is a revolution because this sector was not looking at the market with a friendly approach and now it is open to interest from international investors so I think it will be a good point for Italy (too)," Messina said Wednesday, speaking to CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Read MoreRead More'Fading' Europe faces QE risks: Italian business

He believed that there could be some kind of "bad bank" structure set up for bad loans among Italy's smaller and weaker cooperative banks too.

Bad loans are something of thorn in the side of Italy's banking system. The number of non-performing loans (NPLs) continues to rise and reached a total 181 billion euros ($210 billion) in November, up from 179.3 billion euros a month earlier, the country's banking association reported on Monday.

Showing that there is wider awareness of the problem facing Italian banks, nine out of the 13 banks on the European Central Bank's blacklist of banks following its asset quality test were Italian with a combined capital shortfall of 9.7 billion euros ($12.1 billion).

Mario Greco, the chief executive of Italian insurer Generali, told CNBC that the banking reforms were a very "significant move" for Italy as a whole.

"Italy needs to have a stronger banking system and this move allows the banking system to start reforming, becoming bigger and the banking system can than help the economy to grow much more than it has done in previous years."

Some banks would have to merge, Greco believed, but this would make the "national banking system much better and stronger."

Summary: Italian business leaders told CNBC that banking reforms could help strengthen Italy's sclerotic banking system as a whole.


Joe Klamar | AFP | Getty Images

Rows of fresh large pumpkins at the Pierce College Farmer's Market in Woodland Hills, Calif.

The list of crops affected by California's ongoing drought is growing. This time it's pumpkins.

While this year's crop is expected to be normal—a pumpkin from California weighing 2,058 pounds took first prize and set a new tournament record this week—the lack of water is forcing many pumpkin growers to face the possibility of plowing over their pumpkin patches sooner than later.

Next to Illinois, California is the second-largest pumpkin producer in the country.

"The impact is very severe on us and if we don't get rain this winter we won't be able to grow anything," said Wayne Martin, a farmer in Fresno, California, who grows pumpkins on his 60 acres of land.

"It's very bad here with the little water we have," he said.

Read MoreIf California doesn't get rain this winter ...

Martin explained that because he's had to pump more water out of the ground than usual to produce this year's crop, the cost of doing business has gone up.

"The financial impact has really hurt," he said. "We've had to pay more for the water and that means consumers will pay more."

Martin said he expects he will have to sell his pumpkins for 15 percent more than last year. The national average is currently around 50 cents per pound, or $5 for a basketball-sized pumpkin.

Doug Perry runs Perry Farms in Fremont, California, and grows pumpkins on 91 acres. He's had to go to a drip irrigation system to help cultivate his crop. He's actually growing smaller pumpkins because of water cutbacks.

Perry said he's fortunate to have access to water that other farmers might not have in drier parts of the state. But like Martin, he worries about next year and beyond.

"This winter is key for a lot of us," Perry said.

Summary: The Golden State's lack of water is making some pumpkin farmers feel they are at the end of their rope when it comes to growing the crop.


been a friend@ (Corrects paragraph 30 to say Greenwich, Connecticut, instead London, and paragraph 31 to say energy exposure "includes oil" instead of "mainly oil")

NEW YORK, Aug 28 (Reuters) - The nearly two-month-long slide in oil prices to 6-1/2 year-lows has been a boon to many so-called systematic funds, which trade based on technical signals or computer algorithms rather than fundamentals.

While most market commentary has focused on the persistent glut in the global market caused by unrelenting OPEC output and surprisingly resilient U.S. shale production, these commodity trading advisors (CTAs) have ridden the downtrend to robust returns.

It is too early to say how most of them fared on Thursday, as oil prices surged by more than 10 percent in the biggest one-day gain since the financial crisis.

Interviews with five of the larger and best-performing CTAs also show that investors who opened or maintained short positions have reaped significant profits this year, despite a rally that began after the previous lows were hit in March.

Several of those successful funds have paid no attention to fundamentals like an oversupply from resilient U.S. production or concerns about Chinese demand. Instead, these "systematic" funds have simply let their algorithms respond to price trends.

Below is information on the strategies, exposure and results of systematic, trend-following funds with bets on oil and other commodities:

Assets under management: $4.8 billion, 30 percent to 40 percent allocated to commodities markets

Trading strategy: Quantitative, trend-following algorithms based on directional trends in prices, held over the medium-term

Position in commodities: Short position in crude oil for more than a year, prompting significant gains as crude fell from its peak despite giving back some gains in April's turn higher and Thursday's snapback rally.

The firm's main fund was up 8 percent overall on the month as of Aug. 24, and around half those gains resulted from its short in crude oil.

"The trend-following models we've built don't know or care what's driving the prices," said Chris Reeve, Aspect's director of product management.

"Often the best profits come when people think the fundamentals don't justify a trend but actually that trend continues, and it turns out maybe they do - the market's view of fundamentals changes."

Assets under management: Nearly $2 billion, small percentage allocated to commodities

Trading strategy: Short-term, systematic algorithms, using price indicators like momentum and mean reversions

Position in commodities: Short positions in U.S. crude and Brent crude throughout July, resulting in a gain of 84 basis points during the month. The fund lost 1.46 percent on the whole in July.

The fund switched to a long position in crude in August, resulting in modest losses. It remained long heading into Thursday's snapback rally, and took profits as a result of the gains.

"Our models tend to do better in more emotional, volatile periods," President Michael Geismar said.

Assets under management: $6 billion, with an average of 14 percent allocated to metals and energy

Trading strategy: Diversified, systematic, trend-following investments

Position in commodities: Has a short position in oil markets. Also built up short copper position after the current downtrend began in the second half of May, also short in other metals and energy markets. The fund has seen a roughly 7 percent gain in July and August so far, and its commodities shorts contributed a significant portion to that.

The fund also maintained its short position heading into Thursday's snapback rally, meaning it suffered losses.

"We do not believe that trends occur all the time in all markets," Executive Director Andre Honig said.

Assets under management: Over $80 million in more than 45 commodity futures; nearly 40 percent is allocated to energy, including oil.

Trading strategy: data-driven, systematic fund

Position in commodities: A short position in oil has paid off over the past two months, resulting in overall gains of 5 percent in July, and nearly 8 percent this month, through Aug 24. The bearish bet has also helped drive an overall gain of 19.8 percent at the fund this year.

"We don't claim to be experts in the sense that a discretionary trader might," said Grant Smith, head of research for Millburn.

"If you think of yourself as an expert, you can sometimes cling to your preconceived ideas of what's going to happen in the market. We are data-driven, and our models have no problem changing their view if the market says they are wrong."

Assets under management: $42 million

Position in commodities: Opened up a short position in U.S. crude in early July with prices at $58.77 a barrel; they fell to below $40 a barrel earlier this week.

The fund is up almost 21 percent on the year, with almost 15 percent of that coming in the past two months.

"This is all very similar to the blackjack card," said Thomas Rollinger, Red Rock Capital investment head. "Basically you are not going to win at every hand, but if you have a systematic strategy where you manage risk very tightly and you have a slight edge that you can implement, you will extract the return, or alpha, over time."

(Reporting by Luc Cohen; Additional reporting by Eric Onstad and Barani Krishnan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Summary: NEW YORK, Aug 28- The nearly two-month-long slide in oil prices to 6-1/ 2 year-lows has been a boon to many so-called systematic funds, which trade based on technical signals or computer algorithms rather than fundamentals. While most market commentary has focused on the persistent glut in the global market caused by unrelenting OPEC output and surprisingly...


Security forces escort fleeing people from the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, Mali

updated 11/20/2015 AT 12:00 PM EST

•originally published 11/20/2015 AT 05:00 AM EST

At least 27 are dead after gunmen stormed a Mali hotel, taking more than 100 hostages,

All of the hostages have been freed, but the attackers remain inside the hotel, according to

The attackers, armed with assault rifles and grenades, shouted "Allahu Akbar" – Arabic for "God is great" – as they attacked the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, a source told

. At least three people are dead in the assault.

The hotel, which is near the city's diplomatic corridor, is popular with tourists and foreign workers,

reports. Several Chinese tourists were in the hotel and have been taken hostage. It's possible a number of U.S. citizens are in the hotel as well.

The U.S.-based Rezidor Hotel Group, which owns the Radisson, told the AFP: "Our safety and security teams and our corporate team are in constant contact with the local authorities in order offer any support possible to reinstate safety and security at the hotel."

France has been involved in fighting an al-Qaeda linked Islamist insurgency in the north of the French-speaking West African country for the last two years. Operations have included airstrikes and even combat operations by French troops.

In August, a hostage siege at a hotel by suspected Islamists killed 13 people, including five United Nations workers.

The attack on the Radisson comes exactly one week after ISIS terrorists

in a series of brutal coordinated attacks on Paris.

Summary: The attackers, armed with assault rifles and grenades, reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" – Arabic for "God is great" –


The day before a bill aimed at closing the gender wage gap in Massachusetts is expected to go before the state Senate for a vote, one of the state’s biggest business groups has come out in favor of the legislation.

In a statement on Wednesday, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce president and CEO James E. Rooney noted that half the city’s workforce is female and said that “wage inequality not only affects businesses, it also has a negative impact on families and the overall Massachusetts economy.”

The bill would prohibit employers from seeking a job candidate’s salary history, since asking a woman to disclose her earnings, which are historically lower than men’s, could put her at a competitive disadvantage.

It would also require companies to allow employees to openly discuss their salaries.

Rooney said the chamber is “proud to be a vocal supporter” of the legislation.

But another major business group in the state, the 4,500-member Associated Industries of Massachusetts, sounded a cautionary note in a dueling statement Wednesday. In its statement, the group noted that while it supports existing statutes outlawing discriminatory pay, some employers consider the bill “counterproductive.”

“The legislation encourages unbridled litigation rather than addressing the many complex issues surrounding pay and equity in the workplace,” said the statement, which the group said it plans to send to the Senate.

It’s unusual for the Chamber of Commerce and AIM, two of the state’s most powerful business groups, to take dramatically different positions on a piece of legislation.

In fact, representatives from the Chamber, AIM, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation typically meet once a month to discuss policy issues. Often, they have a goal of presenting a united front to state lawmakers, representing the region’s business community. That’s not going to happen, at least not anymore, with the equal-pay bill.

The final version of the bill addressed previous concerns chamber officials had. Rooney said the current bill “supports both employees and employers by bringing greater guidance to differences in pay while preventing baseless lawsuits and burdensome regulations.”

If the Senate approves the bill, it would then be sent to the House. Speaker Robert DeLeo said on Monday that he supports the end goal behind the equal-pay legislation but needs to learn more about the specific proposal before deciding whether to back it.

Summary: A bill aimed at closing the gender wage gap in Massachusetts is expected to go before the state Senate for a vote Thursday.


Motherly love and, to just the right degree, grandmotherly love are the subjects of this adorable painting, made in France just a few years before the Revolution. Silk dresses, obviously, play a big role too.

The painting, at the Harvard Art Museums, is called “The First Steps.” Yes, it’s cheesy — and not as affecting as Rembrandt’s famous pen drawing of the same subject. But it’s superb in its own way.

The painting is attributed both to Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) and his sister-in-law Marguerite Gérard (1761-1837). Gérard was the younger sister of Fragonard’s wife, and she came to live with the Fragonard family after her mother died.

She was 14. The apartment they lived in just happened to be in the Louvre, which was spectacularly handy for someone just then falling in love with art. Gérard, who found herself especially drawn to the Dutch masters of the 17th century, became Fragonard’s pupil.

Lucky her. Along with Watteau, Chardin, and Boucher, Fragonard was one of the great French artists of the 18th century. Praised in his youth as an artist of “astonishing talent, able to change from one style to another,” he decided, just as his official career was peaking, to turn away from conventional academic painting and to toss out portraits, landscapes, and sentimental genre scenes instead.

The French Academy despaired of his “frivolity and lack of interest.” But that’s exactly what I love about him.

Fragonard’s work expresses ease and nonchalance, a sense of things mattering to this degree but no more. His favored subjects — boudoirs, enclosed gardens, amorous conversations, and young children — suggest a natural affinity (biologically speaking) between eroticism, child-rearing, and sentimentality.

In the 18th century the “erotic” was regarded as a civilizing concept, a necessary component in the attempt to find a perfect equilibrium between reason and feeling. It’s interesting, given this, to learn that, as the popularity of what one critic called Fragonard’s “slapped on, dashed off, well whipped up style” sagged in the early 1770s, he returned to a tighter, more “reasonable” style. And in effecting this transformation he was strongly influenced by the Dutch-loving Gérard.

The writings of Rousseau on childhood and education hover in the background of any 18th-century painting that chooses to show a child taking its first steps. This painting, which has a pendant hanging nearby, called “The Beloved Child” (it’s also attributed to both artists), celebrates simplicity, the joy of maternal feelings, and the innocence of childhood.

Meanwhile, Gérard’s developing mastery of fabrics (it was probably her hand behind the mother’s dress in “The First Steps”), suggest that she was getting on with her own ideas.

By Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Marguerite Gérard

At Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. 617-495-9400, www.harvardartmuseums.org

Summary: The painting, made in France just a few years before the Revolution, is attributed both to Jean-Honoré Fragonard and his sister-in-law Marguerite Gérard.


We never thought we'd see the day – but it seems that

's eternally sparring sisters Lady Mary (

) and Lady Edith (

Well, for now, at least.

Details about the eighth episode of the final season of

's second-to-last episode, just before Lady Mary walks down the aisle to wed

's Henry Talbot, the two sisters share a poignant moment – and appear, it seems, to put aside their past spats and move forward as sisters.

Before this sweet scene, it was a rougher-than-usual episode for

got along (read: at all).

Michelle Dockery (as Lady Mary, left) and Laura Carmichael (as Lady Edith) on Downton Abbey

Joss Barratt / Carnival Films

, in a foul mood after sending her future husband Henry away, heads to breakfast where Tom (

, Edith and her almost-fiancé Bertie (Harry Hadden-Paton) are waiting. Mary then makes a reference to Marigold's (Edith's out of wedlock daughter) true maternal parentage, thereby rupturing Edith's relationship with Bertie.

All in all, it was a seriously harsh move, even for Mary, and the next time Edith and Mary are in the same room, the former is calling the latter a "bitch" (honestly, overdue) and is fleeing Downton in response.

's wedding, however, she comes back. Mary, surprised that she did after she was so cruel to her, asks her why. Edith replies, "Because in the end, you're my sister. And one day, only we will remember Sybil. Or Mama, or Papa, or Matthew, or Michael, or Granny, or Carson, or any of the others who have peopled our youth. Until at last, our shared memories will mean more than our mutual dislike."

It's a moment guaranteed to send any

fan into tears – mentioning the Matthew

Sybil (Jessica Brown-Findlay) in the sentence, is quite frankly, too much to handle. But as emotional as the scene was for the fans, it was perhaps even more so for

and Carmichael, who were acting alongside each other for one of the last times in six years.

"There were such strong parallels in that dialogue," Dockery said in an interview with PBS'

, which was shared exclusively with PEOPLE. "Laura and I have this closeness, and memories that we will only share. When she said those words, there was a double meaning to it. I was really tearful."

Plus, it gives us all what we've been waiting six years to see: Mary actually being nice to Edith. When Dockery watched it back with her IRL sister, she said much of the same.

"As Edith walks in, my sister said, "Come on, Mary!' " Dockery said. "As to say, 'Come on Mary, you need to be the bigger person and apologize to your sister.' "

Fingers crossed this détente lasts until the series finale on March 6!

's sixth and final season is currently airing Sundays (9 p.m. ET) on PBS

Summary: Could this last until the series finale?


Scott Disick and Kourtney Kardashian

03/19/2016 AT 04:40 PM EDT

really do seem to be on good terms.

The pair took their two eldest children, Mason and Penelope, to Universal Studios Hollywood on Friday, where they visited "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" (weeks before it officially opens), among other attractions, an onlooker tells PEOPLE.

The family enjoyed several of the rides at the "Wizarding World," and both Mason and Penelope used their wands at the interactive stations throughout, the onlooker says.

Kardashian, 36, Disick, 32, and the kids also went on the

ride and spent time in the Minions-themed "Super Silly Fun Land," the onlooker says.

"A little Harry Potter magic," is how Kardashian herself described it in

of Penelope at the park.

after nine years together, have had

, they have recently been spending time together.

They were seen having a stealthy lunch earlier this week, and, soon after Kardashian joined Snapchat,

Don't misunderstand, though: None of this spells reconciliation, Kardashian said.

"By the way everyone relax, people that have three kids together spend time together," she said.

Summary: The family enjoyed several of the rides at "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter," and both Mason and Penelope used their wands at the interactive stations throughout, the onlooker tells PEOPLE


If you believe all the hype, we should be in the midst of the mother of all startup movements. New business and job creation should be off the charts. And millennials, the much-proclaimed entrepreneurial generation, should be the focal point.

All of that should be true. Unfortunately, it’s not.

If that’s news to you, you’d better have a seat because the U.S. Census data will floor you. New business creation in America has been steadily declining for decades. The same is true of new jobs from startups and small businesses.

Ironically, this troubling trend is most pronounced among the millennial age group. The newest generation to hit the labor force is not just the most unemployed, underemployed, and indebted in modern history, it’s also the least entrepreneurial. Boomers actually start more companies.

Clearly, the masses have been consuming massive doses of entrepreneurial Kool-Aid, courtesy of the media, the blogosphere and the social media drones that tweet, post and share every bit of user-generated click-bait with their hordes of friends and followers. But I digress.

As if we don’t have enough fictional fads, ludicrous myths and pseudoscientific nonsense, the good folks at MIT’s Sloan School of Business have a new initiative with a different take on all of this. They say the real existential crisis is not the quantity but the quality of American entrepreneurship.

It wasn’t easy to get through all the tables, charts, and jargon, but near as I can tell, the brainiacs at Sloan want to figure out a way to identify the next Amazon amzn , Google goog or Facebook fb so they can influence public policy and help those companies accelerate growth.

The problem, they say, is that startups with high-growth potential are stagnating. The key to maintaining a robust pipeline of innovative startups in America, they conclude, is lots and lots of research and “policy intervention” targeted at identifying and helping innovative companies “commercialize and scale.”

Of course, no research paper would be complete these days without concluding that all this “requires a new conversation.” And this one did not disappoint.

Contrary to how cynical that sounds, I do have great respect for academia. But as a veteran of Silicon Valley who’s worked with far more than his fair share of successful startups, I feel compelled to test some assumptions and perhaps bring a dose of reality to the conversation.

The notion that technology startups with high-growth potential are having trouble commercializing and scaling has got to be the most ludicrous assumption I’ve heard in a very, very long time. If anything, the opposite is true. We are sitting on a massive powder keg known as the private equity bubble with 146 venture-backed startups valued above $1 billion.

I don’t know what all the PhDs are doing up there in Cambridge, Mass., but they really should get their heads out of the books and get out occasionally. Have they never heard of Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat, Pinterest or Magic Leap? Do they seriously not know that WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion?

Startups with high-growth potential are not getting millions of dollars like they did back in the day; they’re getting billions. Valuations are completely out of control, as are burn rates. Innovative companies like GrubHub, Fanatics, Lyft, Zenefits and BuzzFeed are disrupting age-old industries. And believe me, they’re having no trouble scaling in terms of infrastructure or capital.

As for identifying the next Amazon or Google: if that were even remotely possible, the researchers would have every venture capitalist on Sand Hill Road courting them with riches beyond their wildest dreams. Why in the world do they think successful VCs are so darn wealthy? It’s not called “venture” capital for nothing. It’s high-risk, high reward.

For the record, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were turned down by a who’s who of Silicon Valley investors and dotcoms who thought the last thing the world needed was a standalone search engine company. Finally one man – former Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim – saw their vision and cut them a check for $100,000. That investment came to be worth more than $2 billion.

Trust me when I tell you, there was no way to predict that outcome.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a role for academics in entrepreneurship. After all, Page and Brin came up with their idea at Stanford. The Internet was developed by public and private research institutions with Department of Defense funds. And STEM talent is always hard to come by, vis-a-vis the astronomical cost of higher education and broken immigration system.

The hands-down most important thing policymakers can do for American entrepreneurs is to quit legislating and regulating and get out of their way. That, and to quit teaching our kids that they’re special snowflakes. That would be great.

Related: What It’s Like to Raise Tens of Millions of Dollars and Lose It All

Summary: If policymakers want to help American entrepreneurs, they should get out of the way.


Red Hat shares could rise 30% in a year as more companies use its server software, according to a report on Sunday in the financial publication Barron’s.

Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat RHT , which distributes an open source computer system known as Linux, is growing its apps business which generated roughly 15% of annual revenue last year.

Red Hat Claims $2 Billion Revenue Prize

Red Hat’s apps business consists of an open-sourced platform for cloud computing called OpenStack; virtualization software which helps companies make better use of their hardware; and storage software. Red Hat is trying to use its strength in Linux to sell through products from its apps business to clients, Barron’s said.

Revenue from Red Hat’s apps business last year rose 46% and made up the highest percentage yet of the company’s total revenue.

Summary: The open source cloud platform is soaring.


The National Consumers League tested 11 different olive oils purchased at various supermarkets, and found that six of them, despite being labeled “extra virgin,” weren’t extra virgin at all.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given extensive reports of lax standards and outright fraud in the olive-oil business. In fact, the findings are better than some earlier studies that indicated some olive oils were adulterated with other kinds of oil, such as soybean oil, or were made with olives from countries other than Italy, despite label claims of “Made in Italy.”

These practices were revealed in a widely shared New York Times interactive feature last year that was based on a couple of different studies.

The NCL’s testing comes with a load of caveats. It wasn’t a “study” so much as a more-or-less random bit of testing. Puzzlingly, while the NCL listed the five oils that passed the test, it didn’t name the six that didn’t.

That’s because the companies whose products failed the tests made “a huge stink” over the results, said Sally Greenberg, the NCL’s executive director. Those companies complained that only a single bottle of each variety was tested, and so the results were unfair, since occasionally a single bottle will go bad thanks to exposure to light or some other environmental factor. She said the NCL might test the same products again in “six or seven months,” using a different lab, and if the results are repeated, the NCL will reveal which products failed. “If it happens twice, well then maybe we’re on to something,” she said.

In 2011, the University of California at Davis found that about 69% of the olive oil sold in the United States is adulterated.

The NCL tested olive oil purchased in supermarkets in the Washington, D.C. area. None of the products they tested contained any oil that didn’t come from olives, but six of them, despite labels indicated the contrary, didn’t meet the standards for calling it “extra virgin.” The testing included lab analysis and tasting by experts.

“The results of our olive oil testing reveal that, while consumers are buying and paying extra for olive oil labeled EVOO, too much of the olive oil bought off the shelf isn’t the real deal,” said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the NCL, in a statement.

The five that did pass muster were:

California Olive Ranch Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Colavita Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Trader Joe’s Extra Virgin California Estate Olive Oil

Trader Joe’s 100% Italian Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Lucini Premium Select Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Summary: New findings cast further doubt


Former J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. employee Keith Edwards—who provided tips leading to a payment of $614 million by the bank to the U.S. government over insurance on home loans—will get $63.9 million for his efforts, according to a court filing Friday.

Mr. Edwards's allegations kicked off a case against J.P. Morgan in which it was alleged the bank started falsely certifying Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans...

Summary: Former J.P. Morgan Chase employee Keith Edwards, who provided tips leading to a payment of $614 million by the bank to the U.S. government, will get $63.9 million for his efforts.


A former Barclays PLC director was arrested Tuesday morning in New York and accused of feeding insider-trading tips to his plumber in exchange for a free bathroom remodeling and cash, according to criminal and civil authorities.

Steven McClatchey, 58 years old, was a former employee at Barclays, the bank confirmed. Prosecutors said he worked for seven years at the Manhattan office of Barclays, where he was responsible for tracking the bank’s involvement in potential mergers and acquisitions. He distributed a weekly...

Summary: A former Barclays PLC director was arrested Tuesday morning in New York and accused of feeding insider-trading tips to his plumber in exchange for a free bathroom remodeling, according to criminal and civil authorities.


NEW ORLEANS -- More than a million people were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. A decade later, some of them are still unable to return to their homes.

It's not just a matter of money, but of red tape.

While much of New Orleans is almost back to what it was before the storm, the Lower Ninth Ward is still rebuilding.

Errol Joseph, 64, is a lifelong resident of this community. A general contractor, he helped rebuild dozens of his neighbors' homes.

"I had somewhere to live. We were able to rent a house," Joseph told CBS News. "So many people didn't have anywhere to go."

Years later, he is still frustrated by one final project: fixing his own home.

"That was my mistake, working on different people's houses, getting them in place," Joseph said. "When I had a lot of men working for me, within three months we would have been able to be in here."

After the waters receded, it took four years for Joseph to get the permits he needed. He took his savings, insurance payouts and federal funds to begin rebuilding.

But then, he says, inspectors told him he was not certified to elevate the house and his federal money could be at risk if he continued. That meant more delays.

Four years later, after the New York Times reported his story, he was finally allowed to continue -- but only if he hired a contractor who was certified to elevate his house.

But by that time, his money was gone.

"I'm in over $300,000 of- I don't want to say debt, but that's what I owe people, just about," Joseph said.

The Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness told CBS News that "There was a program error with Mr. Joseph's case and he was given incorrect guidance. Going forward, it's our responsibility to help him and other home owners."

Today, with volunteer help from LowerNine.org, the Josephs are finally piecing together their home. The group has rebuilt 75 houses in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Since Katrina, almost 90 percent of residents have returned to New Orleans. But in the Lower Ninth Ward, less than 40 percent of the residents have been able to rebuild.

Alden McDonald Jr., president and CEO of Liberty Bank, said the high cost of rebuilding is a major factor.

"A lot of them are without homes today," McDonald said, "priced out of their neighborhood but priced out of housing."

Joseph plans to move into his home in November. But he hopes it doesn't take another 10 years for the neighborhood to come back.

"I don't worry about this house. I worry about this community and showing the people what can happen," Joseph said.

His message for his old neighbors: "Come on back."

© 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Summary: While much of New Orleans is almost back to what it was before the storm, the Lower Ninth Ward is still struggling to rebuild


Britney Spears is even “stronger” now that she’s a mom.

The popstar published an open letter to her two sons, Jayden, 9, and Preston, 10, on Wednesday referring to the boys as her “masterpieces.”

“From the day I saw the most precious eyes, I believed in miracles to the core,” she wrote.

KATHIE LEE & HODA: WE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE SUCH LOVING MOMS

The 34-year-old’s message to her sons with ex-husband Kevin Federline was published in Time Magazine as part of a collection of letters from celebrity moms ahead of Mother’s Day on May 8.

Other letters were penned by Tori Spelling, Ivanka Trump, Jillian Michaels, Debbie Reynolds and Amber Rose.

Spears says her children were a gift from God and she discusses the presence of faith in their lives.

“I hope you learn praying alone is when you are most connected to God, and know you are never alone,” she wrote. “He is with you always.”

Spears added that she hopes to teach her boys strength and passion and that she prays for the two find their dreams.

She closed by saying, “I pray you laugh, love and soar through your journey of life.”


So who’s Facebook rooting for anyway?

One day the social network is confirming that it will sponsor the GOP convention in Cleveland that will presumably crown Donald Trump as the Republican standard-bearer.

A few days later, an unnamed former Facebook employee is saying the company routinely suppressed news stories that might appeal to conservative readers by removing them from its trending list (even if they really were trending).

Now there appears to be a tie-breaker: In this election cycle, Facebook fb employees have donated more to Hillary Clinton—a lot more—than to any other candidate, The Hill reports.

They’ve donated $114,000 to Clinton so far this election, almost $100,000 more than to runner-up Marco Rubio, who received $16,604 from Facebook folks.

According to The Hill, some 78 people in Facebook’s engineering, communications, public policy, strategy, marketing, and human resources departments donated to the former First Lady. That donor list includes at least seven vice presidents, one of whom is Tom Stocky, who gave $2,700—the maximum an individual is allowed to give per election to a federal candidate—last October.

Who’s Stocky? Well, he heads the team that runs the social media giant’s Trending Topics feature, and was the one who defended it publicly on Tuesday (in a Facebook post, of course).

So, Facebook is clearly in the Clinton camp, right?

Well, not so fast. The donations that The Hill was able to access were itemized contributions—that is, ones that were received by named donors. But, as The Hill notes, campaigns don’t have to give donor information for contributions under $200. Only about $66 million of the $182 million Bernie Sanders has so far raised has come with donor identification. So it’s entirely possible that thousands of other Facebook employees are donating small amounts to Sanders—or to Trump, for that matter. Whether that’s likely is another thing.

Summary: But they might be small Sanders and Trump donors too.