Note to everyone who was curious about “Fifty Shades of Grey” (2015) but was shy about seeing it elbow-to-elbow with the Valentine’s Day multiplex crowd: It’s safe to watch now. The adaptation of E.L. James’s best-selling slice of erotica hit DVD last week, ready for home consumption. Maybe you caught some of the first-run coverage scoffing that the movie was too tame and/or silly to live up to the hype. But does anything these days? Imagine if “Last Tango in Paris” or “9½ Weeks” were released now; you know there’d be snarking about how Brando and Mickey Rourke at least offer some creative ideas for clearing out fridge clutter. For our peekaboo money, leads Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan and director Sam Taylor-Johnson take material that could have been ridiculous — on the page it was — and manage to pull a decent movie from it (if the adjective applies). And if Dornan’s turn as Anastasia Steele’s sexual Svengali works for you, we’d also recommend checking him out as a shrink-serial killer being circled by investigator Gillian Anderson in the British TV series “The Fall.” Talk about fifty shades of screwed up. Extras: Extensive Blu-ray featurettes offer opportunities to hear from the stars, the author, a bondage consultant, and perhaps most insightfully, Taylor-Johnson (“Nowhere Boy”), who has already announced that she won’t be returning for “Fifty Shades Darker.” (The sequel is teased here.) An unrated cut with an alternate ending doesn’t take back that maddeningly elliptical goodbye, but it softens the abruptness. (Universal, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98; available now)

3 GAMES TO GLORY IV (2015)

Our favorite DVDs tend to be escapist releases — and not just movies necessarily. After the week that Patriots fans endured with the revival of Deflategate, there’s definitely some escapism to be had in this three-disc celebration of the team’s championship-clinching postseason run. Get an enhanced look at the Pats’ wins over Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Seattle, from hourlong NFL Films replays to the fourth quarter of NBC’s Super Bowl XLIX broadcast presented in full. Best behind-the-scenes bonus: footage of XLIX hero Malcolm Butler practicing — but not yet perfecting — the play read that would result in the Pick Heard ’Round the World. (Cinedigm, $39.93; Blu-ray, $49.99; available now)

It’s nothing new for an Adam Sandler movie to get dumped on — sometimes unfairly, really. What’s different about this little-seen release is that it comes from Tom McCarthy, writer-director of “The Visitor” as well as the upcoming “Spotlight,” about the Globe’s investigation of abuse in the Catholic Church. We wondered if this could be Sandler’s next “Punch-Drunk Love.” Instead, it was virtually straight to video for the story of a shoe repairman who magically gains the power to step into his customers’ footwear and live their lives. Here’s your chance to see whether it got a fair shake. (Image, $27.97; Blu-ray, $34.97)

Summary: “Fifty Shades of Grey” arrives on disc.


05/17/2015 AT 10:05 PM EDT

Elian Gonzalez is opening up about his life nearly 16 years after his headline-making rescue off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Gonzalez, now 21, sat down with ABC News Senior National CorrespondentÂ Jim Avila for his first-ever American interview as an adult. It also marks the first time he's spoken at length in nearly 10 years.

"To the American people, first I say thank you for the love," Gonzalez says in a preview clip from the interview. He admits that he has forgotten his "English skills" a bit since returning to Cuba in 2000.

near Florida in November 1999 after he was found clinging to an inner tube after a boat carrying him, his mother, and 18 other Cubans sank, killing everyone except Gonzalez and two other adults.

His plight became an international media circus, with the two sides of his family – his relatives living in Miami and his father living in Cuba, battling to keep him in their respective countries. He was eventually returned to his father in Cuba, where he still lives.

The interview will air in clips on

on Monday, May 18 at 7:00 a.m.,Â 6:30 p.m. and 12:35 a.m.,Â ET, respectively on ABC.

Summary: Gonzalez, now 21, opens up about his life in Cuba


Of the many books on music published in the past year, none was more ambitious, monumental and expensive than the NEW GROVE DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS, edited by Stanley Sadie, in 20 volumes, priced at $1,900. Scholars will be picking over it for years to come, and there will be changes and additions (already under way), but that does not negate the sheer accomplishment of the undertaking. It is a triumph of modern musicology, representing the highest ideals.

Another big project that came to term during 1981 was HAYDN: Chronicle and Works. The five-volume biography, published by the Indiana University Press, was begun a long time ago by H.C. Robbins Landon it was chosen by the editors of The Book Review as one of the best books of 1981). Recently released in a form of lagniappe by Mr. Robbins Landon is HAYDN: A Documentary Study (Rizzoli, $37.50 until Dec. 31, $45 thereafter). As documentary biographies go, this is a short one, nowhere near as comprehensive as comparable works about Mozart, Handel and Schubert. Indeed, it is as much a pictorial biography (which the others weren't) as a biographical documentary, with 220 illustrations (44 of them in color). A handsome book, it is a gleaning from the labors that filled the five volumes, and is a handy one-volume introduction to the great composer.

The most unusual musical study of the year is by the British musicologist Wilfrid Mellers, BACH AND THE DANCE OF GOD (Oxford University Press, $39.95). Mellers has always been something of a maverick. He has been influenced by Jungian thought, he seems to be raptly religious, and this look at the music of J.S. Bach verges on sheer mysticism.

It is Mr. Mellers's thesis that in Bach, even in his nonreligious scores, ''music and theology are inseparable, as are pedagogic technique and spiritual allegory.'' In his analysis of several major works, including the ''Well-Tempered Clavier,'' ''St. John Passion'' and B-minor Mass, he finds ''the working of Christian grace through Bach's linear-harmonic polyphony.'' Another thing that fascinates Mr. Mellers is Bach's presumed numerological tinkering. In recent years this aspect of Bach has been studied, and some scholars believe that Bach numerologically set up the Trinity, his own name and other symbols in his music. Mr. Mellers carries this, most seriously, to a point where the reader may believe it is an established fact (which it isn't). Thus, in an analysis of the B-minor Prelude and Fugue from Book 1 of the ''Well-Tempered Clavier'': ''But only after we've done some arithmetic do we discover that motive A (the 'Crucifixus' bass) contains eleven notes, which stand for sinning mankind - a notion Bach adapted from St. Augustine's Transgressionem decalogi notat, ten plus one being a trespass of the ten holy commandments; while motive B contains fourteen notes, the number that represents Bach's name in the figure alphabet. ... Motive C extends to nineteen notes, an indivisible number and the sum of the holy numbers seven (which represent creation) and twelve (a quaternity of trinities and symbol of the Church).'' There are some fascinating speculations in this book, but one has to enter the Mellers mind to respond, and many will dismiss the conclusions as the work of a learned crank.

Another busy mind, though one much more down to earth, is that of the conductor Erich Leinsdorf, who has written THE COMPOSER'S ADVOCATE: A Radical Orthodoxy for Musicians (Yale University Press, $14.95). Primarily directed toward conductors, the book is highly technical and demands a professional background. But sophisticated music lovers can get a good deal from Mr. Leinsdorf's strictures about the elements that go into interpretation and conducting. From aspiring musicians, he does not ask for much - only omniscience. He has been a searcher after truth; he is a veteran with a great deal of knowledge (which he parades with gusto); he has a well-developed ego, and he takes pieces of music apart with the expertise of Dr. Denton Cooley performing a coronary bypass. His colleagues may well disagree with some of his conclusions, but even they may be forced to think after carefully reading the book.

Also highly technical is HAYDN STUDIES, edited by Jens Peter Larsen, Howard Serwer and James Webster (Norton, $35). This big book is a summary of the proceedings of the International Haydn Conference held in 1975 in Washington, D.C. It contains papers, public discussions and lectures covering every aspect of Haydn's work, with special emphasis on performance, and probably is more for the musicologist and specialist than for the general reader. In the last decades Haydn's reputation has come up strong, and he is now realized to be (it is not too strong to say) on a par with Mozart. But his music is full of textual and stylistic problems, and the assembled musicologists plunge into those with relish, in hairsplitting detail, raising many more questions than they answer. But all are interested in only one thing - the truth. If nothing else, this book will acquaint the reader with the contemporary state of Haydn research and open his eyes to problems he most likely did not even know existed.


HOUSTON, Jan. 8— As recently as three years ago, when an economic civil war between the sagging Northeast and the surging Sun Belt was widely thought to be heating up, a kind of defiance hung in the Texas air. ''Drive 70, Freeze a Yankee,'' snarled a bumper sticker often seen on Houston's freeways in those days.

Those stickers have been replaced by others that simply say, ''Secede.'' Somehow the new message seems to lack force. With the assurance of people who believe that they are winning the economic war, or have even won it already, Texans seem to have allowed questions of national rivalry to recede as they go about the business of everyday living in what may be the nation's most vibrant regional economy.

They have taken in stride the findings and recommendations of a Presidential commission on national goals that has recommended that the Federal Government stop trying to prevent the population and economic decline of Northeastern cities and recognize instead that a shift of people and money to the Sun Belt is a fact of life. When people move from declining cities to ones that offer greater economic opportunity, the commission said, the Government should assist them.

''Feds accept inevitable: future in the Sun Belt,'' said the headline in The Houston Chronicle. Then the story disappeared inside the paper the next day, to be all but buried and forgotten by the dominant story of last week: the ouster of Bum Phillips as the head coach of the Houston Oilers football team. Northerners Condemn Report

A public official in New York condemned the draft of the final report of the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the 80's as a ''death knell for Eastern cities.'' But people like Dave Simpson had a more sanguine reaction.

''I don't see what the big deal is about,'' said Mr. Simpson, a young machinist in Mesquite, a suburb of Dallas. ''If people want to come here, I don't see why the Government should try to keep them in cities that are dying anyway.

''Things change, and maybe it's our turn now.'' Things change. That was the basic message of the 45-member Presidential commission, according to Dr. Charles E. Bishop, an economist and president of the University of Houston who headed a subcommittee of the panel. Dr. William J. McGill, former president of Columbia University, who is now retired and lives in La Jolla, Calif., was chairman of the commission. Texans and residents of other Sun Belt states were presented last week with the latest piece of evidence of the big shift of power, money and people their way in the past decade. The Census Bureau reported that because of population shifts, the Northeast and Middle West would lose 17 Congressional seats to the South and West. Trend Seen as Long Term

Texans and other Sun Belt residents have long said that no region of the United States had or should claim any long-term dominance over another, and so they see justice in the rise of their area's economic and cultural fortunes. Virtually all forecasters expect the trend to continue at least through the 1980's.

To some Texans who make it their business to analyze such matters, the argument about one region of the United States versus another misses the point. ''It's not really a question of preferring one region over another,'' said Ronnie Dugger, the publisher of the Texas Observer magazine. ''I don't think regional jingoes outnumber people who have a nationalist cast of mind, people who don't regard Connecticut as Tibet.''

What is important, according to him and others, is to recognize that there will be change no matter what, and to try to figure out the Government's proper role.

Mr. Dugger said:''If we're going to be gutting the Northeastern cities because labor is cheaper down here, then the Government does have a responsibility for someone who's 55 and fired and living in some dark New England town.'' 'Clear Evidence' of Failure

Dr. Bishop said that the Government should focus its attention on people, not localities. He said that Government programs had been ''place-centered, designed to provide a specific infrastructure for cities to keep people where they are.''

''We think there is clear evidence those programs have failed,'' he said. A long line of urban analysts in the last decade have argued that cities remain healthy only as long as they provide a needed economic function. In the North, in the words of Dr. Wilbur Thompson, an economist at Wayne State University in Detroit, ''We did not consciously build great cities, we assembled large labor forces to feed large plants.''

That economic function has fallen as manufacturing itself has declined, while other, different economic activities have expanded and prospered in the Sun Belt and have attracted people. Critics have said that some Federal programs assisted and encouraged that movement. But, according to Dr. Bishop, ''Government programs are going to be more successful if they recognize the underlying character of the marketplace and assist people to take advantage of it rather than trying to hold them where they are.''

If change rules the urban world, some analysts say, it is sure to overtake the Sun Belt in time, also. A hint of this could be read in a report last month by the General Accounting Office to Congress. Citing the gradual, inevitable decline of oil and gas reserves, on which the economy of Texas rests, the report said, ''Although the southwest region currently is fiscally and economically healthy, troublesome trends strongly indicate that long-range planning is needed.''

Congress, the accounting office report said, should act soon to ''help assure that potentially severe economic dislocations in the Southwest's basic industry are anticipated in time to take mitigating action, and thus, to preclude the need for huge Federal aid expenditures in what could become a distressed area.''


WASHINGTON, Oct. 11— Former Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, in an interview aboard an Air Force jet returning from Egypt, said that the United States would eventually have to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

''At some point that has to happen,'' said Mr. Ford. ''I would not want to pick the date today, but in a realistic way that dialogue has to take place.''

Both stressed, according to a transcript of their remarks, that the P.L.O. would have to agree to reach accommodations with Israel, but they added that Excerpts from interview, page A8. a resolution of Palestinian grievances was critical to lasting peace in the Middle East.

The two former Presidents along with former President Richard M. Nixon, who flew to Saudi Arabia yesterday at the start of a tour of Middle East capitals, and Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., who remained in Cairo, led the American delegation to the funeral of President Anwar el-Sadat.

Mr. Carter and Mr. Ford, in shirt-sleeves, sat behind a small table in the front compartment of the jet and spoke to a pool of reporters. Recognition Is Key Issue

Mr. Carter, who engineered the Camp David peace agreement that is at the heart of the current round of Middle East negotiations, said: ''There is no way for Israel ever to have an assured permanent peace without resolving the Palestinian issue, so I think Jerry is certainly right in saying these discussions have to be done.

''The problem is the recognition of the P.L.O. as a political entity, by the United States, before the Palestinians are willing to acknowledge that Israel is a nation that has a right to exist.

''So any mechanism that can be found that can resolve that difficulty would be a very successful step forward.'' Mr. Carter suggested that the stalemate might be broken if, simultaneously, the P.L.O. acknowledged Israel's right to exist and the United States began dealing with the Palestinian organization.

''That is the kind of development that I think has to take place if you are going to get the negotiations for the future off dead center,'' Mr. Ford said. ''If you don't do that at some point you're going to be roadblocked and the risks of not doing something like that are too great when you look at the potential for a fifth war.'' The two for mer Presidents urged against thinking of the Palestinian p eople as a single entity, with Mr. Ford suggesting that leaders other than Yasir Arafat might emerge from the group and with Mr. Carter ca utioning that Palestinian political impulses might not always take t he form of violence.

''To characterize Palestinians as a body as terrorists is a fallacious thing to do,'' said Mr. Carter. ''This stigmatizes a race of people and is a racist approach which does damage to the peace process. Many of the P.L.O. leaders are very moderate in abhorring terrorism and violence.''

Mr. Carter said he did not favor a separate Palestinian nation, but he said the rearing of a generation ''deprived of a home, deprived of a right to own property, deprived of a right to vote'' is dangerous and, he added, ''directly in violation of the heritage of Jews.''

He added that the failure to involve the Saudis and Jordanians more deeply was a mistake of the Camp David discussions. ''Sadat became in public at least a pariah among the Arabs,'' he said. ''But when I would meet with Arab leaders -the Saudis in particular - they were hoping that the peace process would succeed. But it's almost impossible for an Arab to step forward.''

Mr. Ford said American pressure might help moderate Arab nations ''disengage from the radicals.'' Both former Presidents had strong words for the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, with Mr. Carter calling him ''subhuman'' and with Mr. Ford characterizing him as ''a bully.''

Mr. Carter said: ''We ought to make it clear to the Sudanese, to the Egyptians and to the Libyans that encroachment by Qaddafi on the freedom of Sudan would be considered a threat to us.''

Mr. Ford added: ''When you're dealing with a bully, and I consider Qaddafi a bully, as he relates to Chad, as he relates to a country like Sudan, you have to be very firm and you have to be prepared to exercise options that are clearly understood by a person like Qaddafi.''

The two men, both defeated in re-election efforts, conducted a bitter campaign fight against each other in 1976. But Mr. Ford and Mr. Carter spoke generously of each other and warmly of the relationship and responsibilities shared among former Presidents.

''We had a very tough campaign in 1976,'' said Mr. Ford, ''but at no time did I feel any personal enmity and I don't believe he did toward me.''

Mr. Ford said Mr. Carter called on him on ''four or five'' matters, including the Panama Canal treaty negotiations, the recognition of China and the strategic arms limitation talks. ---- Nixon Tours Saudi City

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 11 (UPI) - Former President Richard M. Nixon spent today resting and touring Jidda after meetings with King Khalid and Crown Prince Fahd, according to Mohammed Nasser, a protocal officer handling Mr. Nixon's visit.

Illustrations: photo of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford aboard jet from Cairo


LAS VEGAS, Nev., Sept. 16— Sugar Ray Leonard, behind on points on all three official cards, his left eye nearly closed, suddenly slammed an overhead right to Thomas Hearns's head in the 13th round tonight. Then, after sending Hearns to the canvas three times in that round - twice on pushes - Referee Davey Pearl stopped the bout at 1:45 of the 14th, with Hearns on his feet but defenseless.

Leonard said this fight ''was my toughest'' and ''surpasses all of my professional accomplishments.'' It also surpassed in entertainment its promoters' expectations, despite long spells of inactivity, which drew boos from a crowd that began the evening sitting in 100-degree temperatures.

By winning, Leonard added Hearns's World Boxing Association welterweight title to his own World Boxing Council championship; it was the first title unification bout since Roberto Duran, Leonard's old nemesis, beat Esteban DeJesus in 1978 to unite the lightweight title.

The fight was the richest single sporting event in history with an expected total gross of $37 million. The action ebbed and flowed, and the 6-foot-1-inch Hearns gained control early behind the left jabs from his 78 1/2-inch reach, a 5 1/2-inch advantage. Uppercut Hurts Hearns

Suddenly, in the sixth round, a left uppercut by Leonard hurt Hearns badly. For the next two rounds, Leonard's lightning-quick hands pelted Hearns, a 22-year-old from Detroit who did not seem as if he would last.

But Hearns more than lasted. He showed that he was more than just a left-jab-right-cross fighter. He began dancing, the way Leonard had danced early in the fight, and after clearing his head worked back into control.

Leonard's left eye was closing and by the 13th round, Hearns was not only in control, he was well ahead on the scorecards of the three Nevada judges. Afterward, Mike Trainer, Leonard's lawyer, claimed Leonard had hurt the eye when he was thumbed by Hearns.

Judge Duane Ford had Hearns ahead, 124-122, on the 10-point scoring system; Judges Charles Minker and Lou Tabat had Hearns leading by 125-121 and 125-122, respectively.

''I'm convinced that Ray will never win a close decision,'' Trainer had said this morning. ''The people in boxing are not crazy about him.''

Tonight, Trainer said he was still shocked by the scoring. Most ringside reporters had the fight closer - some had Leonard ahead - than the officials. Several Options for Leonard

Leonard also holds the W.B.A. junior middleweight title, and under that sanctioning body's rules, he cannot hold two championships in different weight divisions. He has eight days to surrender one of his W.B.A. titles.

According to the Leonard camp, he may defend the unified welterweight title against Pipino Cuevas of Mexico, whom Hearns knocked out in the second round last year for the W.B.A. title. Cuevas is the No.1 ranked contender of both sanctioning bodies.

A rematch with Hearns would seem inevitable, but there are other people Leonard has yet to beat, including Marvin Hagler, and may want first. Hagler, the middleweight champion, holds the only other undisputed title.

The fight took place in a temporary arena built on the Caesars Palace Hotel tennis courts before a star-studded crowd that paid about $6 million to sit in 100-degree desert heat. Dan Duva, president of Main Event Productions, the promoters, expected the record gross business of $37 million to come mostly from closedcircuit and home pay television in this country.

The nearly 25,000 privilege customers witnessed a fight rated so close that, only hours before, both men were favored - depending upon which legal bookmaker one visited - by 5 1/2-6 1/2 odds. Record Purse for Leonard

Leonard raised his record to 31-1 with 22 knockouts and received somewhere between $11 million and $12 million, breaking the record of $9.7 million he earned in his loss to Duran on June 20, 1980.

Hearns entered with a 32-0 record, 30 victories by knockout. He left not only $5 million richer, but as perhaps the most gallant loser in boxing since Joe Frazier lost to Muhammad Ali in Manila six years ago.

The prize Hearns was seeking was the 25-year-old Leonard's stature as the most recognized boxer in the world. ''He has what I want,'' has been Hearns's motto here, and on the back of his w hite robe it said, ''Winner Take All.''

On the back of Leonard's robe was the word ''deliverance,'' a reference to his being tired of having Hearns around as a challenger. After his almost perfunctory stare at Leonard, the cold-eyed Hearns stalked his dancing opponent for the first three minutes and did not land a solid punch until after the bell. Leonard then shoved his left glove in Hearns's face, and Hearns retaliated by landing a light right to Leonard's head before Pearl, from Las Vegas, separated them. Slow Start

Leonard's purposeful punches were few; Hearns managed to land a few light jabs. It was not much different in the second round, although a few punches landed. Leonard continued to dance, circling on the outside. He never showed the inclination to get inside Hearns's long reach and wor k the body. He did not get inside until Hearns was tired, not fr om the heat, not from the surprisingly light 145 pounds he weighed th is morning, but from Leonard's punches.


Professor Thurow misses the mark (in stating that ''To discriminate against women is to discriminate against your own wife and lower your own family income . . . one has to believe that men are monumentally stupid or irrational to explain all of the earnings gap in terms of discrimination.'')

People act to maximize their well-being; they do not necessarily act to maximize their money income.

As people will forego income for the sake of leisure, people will also forego some income for the sake of maintaining esteem. Some men would suffer loss of self-esteem if their wive's earnings exceeded their own earnings. Hence, to them, earnings discrimination against women is rational. DONALD L. CHAMPAGNE, Schenectady, N.Y., March 8, 1981

Summary: o the Business Editor:    Professor Thurow misses the mark (in stating that ''To discriminate against women is to discriminate against your own wife and lower your own family income . . . one has to believe that men are monumentally stupid or irrational to explain all of the earnings gap in terms of discrimination.'')   People act to maximize their well-being; they do not necessarily act to maximize their money income.


SINGAPORE, Jan. 21— In a region where a 7 or 8 percent growth in gross national product is not exceptional, Singapore is in a position to make good on its plans to become the banker for Southeast Asia.

In the last seven years, Singapore has attracted scores of financial institutions interested in assisting the oil-fed economies of Indonesia and Malaysia and servicing the foreign companies moving into the region.

Under a Government mandate, Singapore gives many of the same advantages as Nassau or Grand Cayman Island. But, unlike other tax havens, Singapore has a healthy domestic financial market, short-term and long-term offshore markets and is a vigorous foreign exchange center rivaling Tokyo and Hong Kong.

The development of the so-called Asiadollar market is a national goal in Singapore. And if its acceptance is measured by the volume of Asia Currency Units, the accounting entity by which the Asiadollar market was created in 1968, Singapore can claim success. In 1980, the Asia Currency Units, which emerged from a Bank of America proposal, reached $54 billion. Although it is still small compared with the total $1 trillion Asiadollar market, the rapid growth of Singapore's market is held up by the Government as a measure of its growing financial strength. Period of Reassessment

Until now, Singapore has been largely concerned with growth and international recognition. But now, in a period of reassessment, the next stage of development appears to be concentrated in the development of stable and comprehensive capital and bond markets.

The announcement Jan. 14 that Michael Wong Pakshong, the principal architect and managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, would resign this spring is seen as the end of Singapore's financial pioneering.

After 10 years as the head of Singapore's equivalent of a central bank, Mr. Wong acknowledged that it was ''time for a change.'' His resignation was no surprise. Since Goh Keng Swee took over as chairman of the authority last August, the two strong personalities have disagreed over most policy. And Mr. Wong conceded that there had been ''nudges and winks'' over the last year or so. No successor has been named for Mr. Wong, who has been credited with having created the climate for Singapore's rapid financial growth.

Generally, Singapore's development has been well run and successful. ''There is no doubt that Singapore has become recognized as a significant financial center,'' said Peter R.M. Stratford, assistant vice president of Bank of America's Asia currency division in Singapore. ''But the markets are still young. They are not yet mature or sophisticated.'' 'Miraculous' Growth

Looking back, the growth of Singapore's financial district has ''been nothing short of miraculous,'' said one foreign exchange broker. On reclaimed land along Shenton Way, more than 150 financial institutions now line several blocks. ''When we came here in 1972, our London office was highly skeptical, But the growth has been fantastic. This is our third-largest office after London and New York.''

In developing a regional financial center, Singapore has taken advantage of its geographical and political characteristics. Situated on major shipping lines between Indonesia and Japan, Singapore has built refineries, warehousing facilities and a shipbuilding industry. Its communications network is efficient and reliable and its Government encourages business and development.

What is more, Singapore is bilingual. Both English and Mandarin Chinese are spoken. One banker contends that this gives the republic an advantage over Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong in dealing with China. And Singapore is one of Asia's most politically stable countries; in clean, green Singapore, corruption is not tolerated.

The Government through its monetary authority has aggressively used these attributes to create a financial center. To stimulate capital markets it dismantled its foreign-exchange controls in 1978. And the Government is considering taking some of the large companies it owns public to fuel the small stock market. To accommodate foreign bankers, the monetary authority last year abolished stamp duties, a holdover from the British system. And when bankers complained that there were not enough lawyers in Singapore to support the financial industry's growth, it allowed a few foreign concerns to set up business. Excellent Possibilities

''Generally, the monetary authority has been accessible and responsive,'' said David R.G. Paterson, managing director of Jardine Fleming (Singapore), a merchant bank. ''With few exceptions, the investment and development climates here are good.''

Most institutions agree that the possiblities for continued growth in the region are excellent, which is why so many European banks are present.

In the 1950's when the Dutch were thrown out of Indonesia, the Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank withdrew from Southeast Asia, selling off its dozen branches to other financial institutions. Fifteen months ago, it returned to Singapore.

''From the European point of view, the major expansion areas are the United States and the Far East,'' said Joep L.A. Weijts, general manager of the Amro Bank, as it is known. When the bank reconsidered the markets in Asia, it decided to open branches in Tokyo and Hong Kong but put its headquarters in Singapore.

''This area is a raw materials shopping basket for the industrializing region,'' Mr. Weijts said. ''This is a support base and supply center for capital and goods. Singapore is one of the world's largest rig builders, for example. What is more, it is close to its markets. That is why our headquarters are here.''

The European representation in Singapore is strong. Because of favorable tax advantages, West German banks rushed in two years ago. And other European banks that were formerly part of consortiums have gone independent. ''Everybody is trying to get a foothold here in order to get a piece of the cake,'' Mr. Weijts said.

Yet with all this activity, Singapore rermains a very young and unsophisticated financial center. There is still a lack of natural markets for capital in Singapore. Long-term floating rate certificates of deposit are difficult to sell in Asia and often must be sold in Europe with a premium. In Asiadollars, there tends to be active spot trading but no futures market. And the Asiadollar bond market was a ''nonstarter,'' according to John F. Salmon, general manager of Bankers Trust International (Asia). ''The total turnover in 1979 was about $750 million.''

Illustrations: Photo of Singapore River Graph of Singapore's Asladollar Market


CALIFORNIA (AL) - Sent Curt Brown, Steve Brown, Brian Buckley, Ricky Steirer and Mike Walters, pitchers; Mike Bishop and Steve Lubratich, infielders, to minor-league camp for reassignment.

CLEVELAND (AL) - Sent Ed Glynn and Ray Searage, pitchers, and Karl Pagel, first baseman, to Charleston of International League.

LOS ANGELES (NL) - Optioned Greg Brock and Mike Marshall, infielders, and Candy Maldonado, outfielder, to Albuquerque of Pacific Coast League. Waived Ramon Lora, catcher.

Summary: BASEBALL    CALIFORNIA (AL) - Sent Curt Brown, Steve Brown, Brian Buckley, Ricky Steirer and Mike Walters, pitchers; Mike Bishop and Steve Lubratich, infielders, to minor-league camp for reassignment.


CATCHING the publishing industry by surprise, Doubleday has acquired the rights to Irving Wallace's new novel, ''The Almighty,'' which is scheduled for publication in the fall. ''The book was out to seven publishing houses on multiple submission, and Doubleday just reached out and grabbed it,'' said Ed Victor, Mr. Wallace's literary agent. ''Funny enough, Doubleday was the joker in the pack, since the rest of the competition consisted entirely of hard-back-paperback arrangements.''

The contract is said to involve a ''substantial seven-figure sum'' for Mr. Wallace and hard-cover and mass-market-paperback rights in the United States and Canada for the publisher. Industry sources were caught off guard because Doubleday, including its Dell and Delacorte subsidiaries, has undergone numerous editorial and executive changes in the last year and was widely thought to be in turmoil if not in financial trouble. Doubleday officials have consistently denied such rumors.

''I'm really impressed - and amazed - that they pulled this off,'' said a formerly skeptical rival publisher, speaking of the Wallace deal.

In signing with Doubleday, Mr. Wallace leaves New American Library, with which he signed in 1979 after more than 20 years with Simon & Schuster. His subsequent novel, ''The Second Lady,'' marked N.A.L.'s entry into hard-cover publishing and helped launch the ''hard-soft'' publishing deals that are now fairly common. It also marked the first time in years that Mr. Wallace had sold a completed book.

''Before, he had always signed multibook contracts for books that were not only unwritten, but even unthought of,'' said Mr. Victor, an American who lives in London.

''The Almighty'' is about the heir to a great newspaper chain who decides the best way for a newspaper to succeed is to create its own news and report it ahead of its rivals.

Even as war between Britain and Argentina rages in the Falkland Islands, about 20 editors of The Sunday Times of London are gathering material for ''The Falklands Crisis,'' a book that Harper & Row will publish within weeks of the resolution of hostilities. It will include material from reporters now aboard ships of the British South Atlantic fleet, as well as reports from the major foreign capitals. It will also give special attention to the United States diplomatic role in the crisis. The book is the product of the same journalistic team that earlier produced books about the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, about the 1968 American Presidential election and about Kim Philby, the British diplomat-Soviet spy.

Thomas Mann, Gunter Grass and Heinrich Boll are well known to American readers, but not many other German writers are. A German publisher and an American publisher are both betting, however, that American readers will now be receptive to a broader range of German literature.

Continuum Publishing Corporation, a New York publishing house established in 1980 by Werner Mark Linz, formerly of the Seabury Press, has announced that it will issue a German Library, to consist of 100 volumes ranging from the Middle Ages to the present and covering not only literature, but also art, music, politics, sociology, religion and science. As many as 20 volumes will be issued each year in simultaneous hard-cover and paperback editions, and they will contain introductions by such American writers as Alfred Kazin, Peter Gay, E.L. Doctorow and John Simon. The first 10 volumes, including such authors as Heinrich Heine and Heinrich von Kleist, and an anthology called ''German Humanism and Reformation,'' are scheduled for July.

By contrast, the books issued by the Fromm International Publishing Corporation, an imprint that is new to the United States, will concentrate on hard-cover translations of critically acclaimed books published in Germany since World War II. One of Fromm's five titles scheduled for this spring is a memoir about growing up under Hitler, ''A Crack in the Wall'' by Horst Kruger, but the other four are novels: ''Wait for November'' by Hans Erich Nossack, ''The Powenz Pack'' by Ernst Penzoldt, ''Rice in Silver Bowls'' by Alice Ekert-Rotholz and ''Flight of Cranes'' by Christine Bruckner.

''Since the last war, many worthwhile books published in Germany never have reached an American audience,'' Leo Victor Fromm, the company's publisher, said recently. Annette Harms-Hunold, Fromm's editor in chief, seconded that assessment, but added, ''There was an understandable aversion to German literature in the United States after the war.'' Mr. Fromm's grandfather founded Verlag A. Fromm publishers in Germany in 1868 and his father was put out of business by the Nazis 70 years later. Today, Mr. Fromm owns publishing houses in West Germany and Zurich, as well as a daily newspaper in Osnabruck, West Germany.

To inaugurate its American venture, Fromm has budgeted $100,000 toward advertising and promotion. Its office is in mid-Manhattan, and its books are printed, edited and translated in the United States. ''We didn't want to spoil good books with bad translations,'' said Mrs. Harms-Hunold, ''so we had several translations made of each one.'' First printings range from 4,000 to 6,000, nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of copies each has sold in German editions. But Fromm, which bought the English language rights to the books from a variety of German publishers, hopes to sell the paperback rights in this country.

Mr. Fromm seems to have no illusions about getting rich on the publishing venture anytime soon, but neither does he consider it a charitable undertaking. ''I am not only a publisher, but an entrepreneur too,'' he said. ''You can't make a bad book into a best seller, but on the other hand if you have a good book, you can help promote it to success.''

What is that saying about the Soviet Union: its capital is in Moscow, its troops are in Afghanistan and its writers are in exile? In any event, this Sunday, the New School for Social Research, whose faculty was a haven for refugees from Nazi Germany, is sponsoring, with the Partisan Review, a conference of Soviet and East European dissidents titled ''Writers in Exile.''

During the morning session, in the New School auditorium, at 66 West 12th Street, leading writers and intellectuals from the Soviet Union and Communist countries will discuss ''The Exiled Writer and the West.'' The afternoon topic will be ''Writing and Politics.'' Participants include Vasily Aksyonov, a professor at the George Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies; the novelist Vladimir Voinovich; Erazim Kohak, a professor of philosophy at Boston University, and Valery Chalidze, a writer and editor. Tickets, at $5 each, go on sale Sunday at 9 A.M.

Illustrations: photo of Irving Wallace


GABORONE, Botswana, April 9— It is arid, remote and hugely dependent on transport outlets through white-ruled South Africa, but landlocked Botswana has a lot to show for 16 years of independence.

Having started as one of the most unpromising and undeveloped of African countries, with virtually no surfaced roads, it can now boast of being the most durable multiparty democracy in the Organization of African Unity. It can boast, too, that its politicans and public service are uncorrupt by any standards; and that it has achieved rates of capital investment and real economic growth - thanks to some stunning mineral discoveries, notably diamonds, and plenty of foreign aid -that are just as unusual.

But now when President Quett K. Masire tries to look into the immediate future he finds himself preoccupied by two problems that are almost entirely beyond his control. One is the decision of the International Diamond Cartel -managed by De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. of South Africa, a partner with Botswana in its three diamond mines here - to cut back drastically on its purchases in order to maintain the prices of gemstones.

This has already led to a sharp decline in Botswana's foreign earnings, the first such setback the country has experienced since it started mining diamonds less than a decade ago. The short-term effects of the slump are cushioned by the high level of foreign reserves the fiscally conservative Government maintained when it was flush with diamond profits. The long-term effects could be eased by the prospect of developing vast coal deposits and possibly also petroleum, platinum and chrome, which would lessen Botswana's dependence on diamonds and DeBeers. Relations With South Africa

President Masire's second problem has to do with relations with South Africa, which has seemed to be putting all its neighbors on notice that it would retaliate swiftly if their territory was used as a base for operations across its borders.

In the last year, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho - not to mention Angola, which is hit routinely by South African troops in antiguerrilla operations across the frontier of South-West Africa - have all complained of South African violations of their sovereignty. Until recenty, Botswana kept its voice down and tried to finesse any complaints it had against its powerful neighbor in behind-the-scenes negotiations. Population of One Million

Botswana is half as large as South Africa - bigger, that is, than France -but most of it is Kalahari Desert and the population, shown by the latest census to be about one million, is mostly concentrated near its frontier with the Transvaal.

The quiet approach to South Africa was followed for 14 years by Sir Seretse Khama, the nation's first President who had an unassailable political position, in part because he was also the traditional leader of its largest tribal group. President Masire, a soft-spoken former teacher who was the late President's political lieutenant, has a much slighter base.

Perhaps partly for this reason but even more because he is anxious about the unfolding pattern of confrontation in the region, he has lately adopted a more vehement stance toward South Africa. ''They would like to fight their war in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique rather than in South Africa,'' the President asserted in an interview conducted in a tiny waiting room adjacent to his office. ''In order to do that, they have to find a pretext to eliminate enemies in Botswana.''

Summing up his sense of foreboding, he declared: ''I think they're trying to make a Lebanon of us.'' When Zimbabwe complains of South Africa's supposed ''destabilizing'' tactics, it points to the assassination of a leader of the exiled African National Congress in Salisbury; or the bombing of the office of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe's party; or the recent discovery that the white officer responsible for the Prime Minister's personal security appears to have doubled as a South African agent. President Masire's bill of particulars may seem less dramatic, but the incidents he cites have undoubtedly heightened the sense of vulnerability in this tidy little capital of only 60,000.

First there was a spate of articles in the South African press about a reported Soviet buildup in Botswana, including a military mission of more than 200 men. It was immediately assumed here that the articles had been inspired in order to spread an impression that Botswana was posing a security threat to South Africa. Mr. Masire then openly acknowledged what had never been denied, that Botswana had purchased 30 armored personnel carriers two years ago from Moscow for its fledgling defense forces after failing to get them from the United States, but insisted that the total Soviet presence in the country was only 31 people, including women and children.

The scare engendered by the articles was soon followed by the shooting here of a black South African woman who was active in the African National Congress; the victim later identified a black agent of the South African Security Police as one of her assailants. Then came the apparent kidnapping in Gaborone of another South African exile, a young man named Peter Lengwene who belonged to a splinter group called the South African Youth Revolutionary Council.

President Masire sent his Foreign Minister, Archie Mogwe, to Cape Town to complain directly to his South African opposite number, Roelof F. Botha, who denied knowledge of the incident. Eventually Botswana's Commissioner of Police was permitted to interview the missing man in a security police office in Pretoria. He then said he didn't want to return to Botswana.

''My question is this,'' Mr. Mogwe comments dryly. ''Why consult him when you've got to bring him back, when you never consulted him when you took him.'' Question of Namibia

In the interview, President Masire complained also about unauthorized overflights by South African military planes traveling from a finger of Southwest Africa known as the Caprivi Zipfel. He was then asked about an argument advanced by the South African Defense Minister, Magnus Malan, that a victory by so-called Marxist forces in the disputed territory, which is also known as Namibia, would undermine democracy and the private enterprise system in Botswana. ''How noble of him,'' the President said, laughing caustically, ''to undertake such charitable thoughts.''

In fact, Mr. Masire said, Botswana urgently needs a Namibian settlement in order to bring off the most important development project it envisions, the building of a railway across the Kalahari to the Atlantic coast. Estimates of the cost of the railway, which would make it possible for Botswana to export as much as 10 million tons of coal a year, already exceed $1 billion and there are fears that these will escalate to the point of making the project uneconomic.

Illustrations: photo of Jwaneng diamond mine


For much of his very long life Ben Nicholson, who died in London on Feb. 6 in his 88th year, was regarded by many good judges as the most distinguished living English painter. This opinion was not unanimous. Other painters had their champions, and there were people who found Nicholson's work both juiceless and repetitive. But in the United States, in Switzerland, in Germany and in his native England he had a solid constituency.

This was owed above all to what he had contributed to the development of a purely abstract art. Abstract art, he said in 1941, was not the concern of a hermetic minority. It was on the contrary ''a powerful, unlimited, universal language.'' Nicholson at that time had already made the white reliefs that are now generally regarded as his most original contribution to the modern movement. There was something of sculpture, something of architecture and something of painting in the ordered limpidity of those simple-seeming statements. If there is such a thing as perfection in art, those reliefs laid claim to it.

Nicholson saw himself as an international, not a national artist, and in the 1930's he was indeed at the epicenter of the international abstract movement. He knew Mondrian as a neighbor, a friend and a colleague during Mondrian's years in London. He was a close friend of Naum Gabo, the Russian-born Constructivist sculptor whom he ranked as the equal of Michelangelo. Both as an artist and as a man of ideas he was a major force in the small beleaguered group of English painters, sculptors, architects and designers who believed in the potential of abstract art.

None of this did him much good either with the general public or with the tight little world of the London art Establishment. ''We had one or two collectors,'' Nicholson would say later, ''and they came to the studio once a year, and that was that.'' Nor did it ever cease to rankle with him that in the 1930's, when a favorable word in high places would have turned his career right around, the current dictator of English taste kept a taxi waiting outside the gallery where Ben Nicholson's new work was on show, gave it all of 30 seconds, and ran out again.

As the son of Sir William Nicholson, a gifted painter well known for his wit, his social gifts and his elegant and idiosyncratic mode of dress, Ben Nicholson could have had a head start in all worldly ways. But in point of fact he saw himself as a lifelong anti-Establishment man. When admitted to the prestigious Slade School of Art, he lasted exactly one semester, and by his own account spent more time at the billiard table than in the classroom. Not only did he like to think of himself as immune to all social ties, but he would have made that situation retroactive if he could. (When I wrote about him at length, around 15 years ago, our friendship all but foundered when I insisted on describing his grandfather as ''a pillar of society.'')

Critics, curators and art historians often had a rough ride with him. ''They just don't look, you know,'' he loved to say. Something in this was owed to his mother, who was the sister of the distinguished Edwardian painter James Pryde. Ben Nicholson never forgot what his mother once said to him: ''When your father's friends come to the house and talk about art, I can't stand it. They make me want to go downstairs and scrub the kitchen table.'' In his late 60's and 70's, reliefs played an ever greater role in Ben Nicholson's output; and it was difficult not to think, as he bent over one big piece of wood after another and worked away at it with one of the razor blades that he bought by the thousand, that he too in his way was scrubbing the kitchen table as an escape from talk about art.

There was undeniably a certain dryness in some of those late reliefs. Coupled with the kind of self-reproducing gossip that surrounds every famous painter in old age, this persuaded many people that Ben Nicholson was a forbidding old person whose work was no fun. It came as a great surprise to them to find that when Nicholson worked with oil paint on canvas he had at his command a range of high, clear aerial color that sang out like a trumpet across still water. He used this to great effect in abstract compositions, but it also gave a heightened and almost incorporeal beauty to the still lifes of a laden tabletop that related to the achievement of Braque and Picasso in the 20's.

He could also, in his drawings, be unexpectedly funny. He loved to sit and draw in places that were sacred to him - Cornwall and Yorkshire in England, Siena and its countryside in Italy, and many an island in the Aegean. And in those sheets he put the drawn line to work in ways that could never be foreseen. Not only did the line itself have a fizzing energy that never let up, but Nicholson had a very sharp eye for the strange or ridiculous detail that best brings a given place to life. Like Rene Lacoste, the great French tennis player of the 20's whom he enormously admired, he had a way of making very difficult things look easy and unstudied.

In drawing, as in much else, he was tremendously stubborn. Twenty and some years ago a friend arranged for him to draw in the Villa Malcontenta. Fired by the idea of drawing in one of the finest of all Palladio's buildings, Nicholson turned up on time with pencil and paper at the ready. Conducted through the famous frescoed rooms, he rejected them one by one, preferring the hallway of the servants' quarters below. Though noble, these were undeniably gaunt, and the owner had prettied them up with some decorative sculpture that postdated Palladio by many generations. After an hour or two he padded out into the afternoon sunshine with a finished drawing. Palladio's gaunt spaces were perfectly rendered, but of the sculpture there was no trace at all. ''It just didn't belong,'' he said.

As will now be clear, Ben Nicholson was hypersensitive to places. In that respect his later years were not altogether happy. He loved St. Ives, in Cornwall, but after the breakup of his marriage to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, he no longer cared to live there. In Switzerland he had devoted friends and a house above Lake Maggiore that had been built in its every detail to his specification, but in the end he couldn't bear not to hear his own language all around him. He moved to quarters near Cambridge that most of us would have considered ideal, but it turned out that he was not made for an academic community. London with all its drawbacks was the solution that displeased him least, and it was in well-named England's Lane, in Hampstead, that he spent his last years.

The Establishment didn't quite get him, but it did its best. He accepted the Order of Merit, which is the highest honor that England has to give, and by a delicious irony that did not escape him his son-in-law Alan Bowness became director of the Tate Gallery. But to the end of his days he was his old insubordinate self and went on scrubbing the table.

Illustrations: photo of 'Painting 38' by Ben Nicholson


Roger B. Swain is science editor of Horticulture Magazine and author of ''Earthly Pleasures: Tales From a Biologist's Garden.''

From bed, up against an east-facing window, I can see the sunrise. For six months, the bed has doubled as an observatory, a four-posted Stonehenge, a feather-filled pyramid of Kukulcan in the Mayan city of Chichen Itza. Here, clad only in a nightshirt and without even looking at the calendar, I can prove that this is spring, for the movement of the sunrise along the horizon is a precise indicator of the season.

Last Dec. 21, the first day of winter, the winter solstice, when the day is shortest, the sun rose farthest to the south. It stayed there for several mornings, but then started back north along the horizon, playing hide-and-seek for a fortnight among the chimney pots and television fish bones on a distant roof before moving off through a tangle of bare branches. Morning after morning, the sun rose each day a little farther to the left until on March 20, the vernal equinox, the day I had been waiting for, the sun rose due east, directly over the center of the windowsill, and the shadows from the mullions fell straight across the bed. I proclaimed it spring.

Not quite three weeks later, of course, it snowed. Not just a few last flakes, but the worst storm of the winter, which closed the schools and buried the daffodils. ''It's spring,'' I told a couple trying to push a Porsche out of a snowdrift. They didn't bother to answer. Like most people, they weren't sure that this was temporary, didn't know that deep snow is an excellent insulator, protecting buds and blossoms from the plummeting temperatures, and couldn't say that the biggest effect of the blizzard would be on the record books. But then, they didn't have the self-confidence that comes from months of astronomical observation.

The practice of archaeastronomy -measuring seasons the way the ancients did - is more enjoyable if you cheat, if you understand that the movement of the sunrise is a result of the earth's axis of rotation being tipped 23.5 degrees from the vertical. This means that as the spinning planet makes its way around the sun, each hemisphere spends half the year tipped away. The snow and ice and freezing temperatures that result aren't caused by the sun's being farther away, but by the flatter angle with which sunlight is striking the earth - or, put another way, by the longer shadows of trees in winter. What sunlight isn't scattered or absorbed by the atmosphere is simply spread out too thin to keep us warm.

At the winter solstice, back on that darkest day of the year, the hemisphere we live in was tipped the farthest away from the sun, causing the sunrise to appear far to the south. Had I gotten out of bed and traveled to the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5 degrees south latitude), I would have cast no shadow at noon, the sun being directly overhead at the winter solstice. Since then, the sun has been coming back. On the vernal equinox, it crossed the Equator at 5:56 P.M. Eastern standard time. On that date, day and night are equal, or so people think, but any latter-day archaeastronomer with a watch can see that the day is longer than the night. Equal division of night and day actually occurred several days earlier - on March 17, St. Patrick's Day. The discrepancy between the astronomical equinox and the observed one is caused by atmospheric refraction that lifts the sun slightly at both sunrise and sunset, causing it to appear where it isn't.

Since the equinox, the sunrise has continued its progress toward its northernmost point, which it should reach on June 21, the summer solstice. On that day, the noontime sun will be directly over the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees north latitude), and I will proclaim the first day of summer. Without watching the sun to see when it rose due east, I might have missed the equinox, but I have other ways of telling that it is spring. Even with the shades drawn, it's hard not to notice that it has been getting lighter earlier. The difference, of course, is more pronounced the farther you are from the equator. At the equator, the days are always the same length, but here in the middle latitudes the time of the sunrise is as precise an indicator of the season as the sun's position on the horizon at dawn.

At Christmas in New York City, the sun wasn't rising until 7:18; yesterday morning, it rose at 5:04. The sun is also setting later, so there is twice the difference in additional day length. And by the time you have added the two periods of twilight, there is very little nighttime left. By now, after a particularly late night out on the town, it hardly seems worth going to bed since it will be light so soon. Some people, whose morning faces have acquired a permanent glaze, are saying nasty things about springtime. They mumble about moving their bed into a closet or reinstalling World War II blackout shutters. Today, on the fourth Sunday of April, we get some relief. Sunrise was an hour late. This astronomical achievement, this gusset in the calendar, is a result of simply setting the clocks forward an hour at 2 A.M. Daylight time would have pleased Benjamin Franklin. While residing in Paris, he calculated that 64 million pounds of candles might be saved each year if Parisians would get up when the sun rose and conduct their business by daylight. He proposed a tax on windows with shutters and a firing of cannons in the streets to get people up and out at dawn.


Ira G. Corn Jr., a Dallas industrialist and corporate executive whose passion for the game of bridge led him to organize and finance the first full-time professional bridge team, died of a heart attack yesterday morning at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. He was 60 years old and lived in Dallas.

Mr. Corn was pronounced dead at the hospital about 10 A.M., after becoming ill just before the start of a board meeting of the Tyler Corporation, of which he was a co-founder and a director.

Mr. Corn was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Michigan General Corporation, a Dallas-based conglomerate whose 11 subsidiaries make products ranging from paperback books to highway signs. He helped found Michigan General in 1968 and served as chairman and chief executive since then. Since 1950, Mr. Corn had founded or co-founded 24 companies.

His business enterprise was matched by an intense interest in bridge, and he became a championship tournament player, an administrator and an impressario. In 1968 he organized and became the nonplaying captain a professional bridge team called the Aces. Helped U.S. Win Title

Mr. Corn said he organized the group to bring the world team championship back to the United States, a goal he soon accomplished. Impressed by the unity and spirit of Italy's world famous Blue Team, he chose six players from the best of the United States experts and then paid their salaries and expenses for full-time careers of playing bridge.

In return, he insisted the team members follow a regimen of study and training, physical as well mental, that was considered unique to the game.

''Playing International Master Points bridge is more exhausting than pro football,'' Mr. Corn once explained. ''It's brutal, and the pressures far exceed those of any other sport.''

Within two years the team won the Vanderbilt Cup and the Spingold Trophy in the United States and then captured the world championship Bermuda Cup in Stockholm, the first time an American team won the cup since 1954. The team also won the world championships in 1970 and 1971 and was runner-up from 1972 to 1975. Director of Bridge Groups

Mr. Corn was a director of the American Contract Bridge League from 1971 to 1981 and was president in 1980. He had been a director of the Dallas Bridge Association since 1965 and was its president in 1968.

A man of immense stature as well as physical energy, Mr. Corn traveled, lectured and wrote widely on business subjects and on bridge.

In addition to his positions at Michigan General and Tyler, Mr. Corn was chairman of Pinnacle Books in Los Angeles, a subsidiary of Michigan General. He was also a trustee of the American Economic Foundation and vice chairman of the Council of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Mr. Corn's writings include ''Play Bridge With the Aces,'' published by Fawcett in 1972, and a syndicated newspaper column, ''Aces on Bridge.'' Successful Bid of Another Kind

In 1969 Mr. Corn paid $404,000 for a copy of the Declaration of Independence in its first printing, outbidding Hans P. Kraus, the noted rare book dealer, at an auction in Philadelphia.

Ira George Corn Jr. was born in Little Rock, Ark., on Aug. 22, 1921, in a Baptist family that forbade card playing. He was graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 and received a master's degree in business administration in 1948. Mr. Corn was an associate professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1948 to 1954.

He is survived by two sons, John of Los Angeles and Jay of Dallas; a daughter, Laura of Dallas; his father, Ira Sr. and a brother, John, both of Little Rock; three sisters, Martha Owens of Little Rock, Virginia Drexler of Oak Brook, Ill., and Kathryn Rogers of Yorba Linda, Calif., and four grandchildren.

Illustrations: Photo of Ira G. Corn Jr.


Robert F. Durden, professor of history at Duke University, is the author of ''The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation.'' SLAVERY AND FREEDOM By Willie Lee Rose. Edited by William W. Freehling. 224 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $17.95.

STUDENTS of history, especially the many who admired Prof. Willie Lee Rose's multiple-prize-winning ''Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment,'' will warmly welcome the appearance of these essays. Yet as William Freehling, the editor of the volume and her colleague at Johns Hopkins University, explains in the preface, the articles ''should be seen as a beginning turned by the fates into a culmination.'' In the 1960's, Mrs. Rose, equipped with insights gained from research for her first book, became convinced that the historians of slavery who had followed and largely upstaged the great pioneer in the field, Ulrich B. Phillips, had settled for a static portrait of the institution in the last 30 or so years of its existence prior to the Civil War. ''Somehow the idea of the passage of time and the sense of change must be inter jected into this history,'' she insisted, ''if it is to become meaningful history, as opposed to sociology.'' Planning, therefore, to begin earlier than had, say, the historians Kenneth Stampp or Eu gene Genovese - to start, in fact, in the colonial period - and to carry the story through the freedmen's role in Reconstruction , Mrs. Rose projected anambitious study of this vastly challenging su bject. In August 1978, however, not too long after she returned from having been the first woman to hold the Harmsworth visiting profess orship at Oxford University, she suffered a severe stroke. She has recovered sufficiently to assist in the superb editing of this collection, which contains several hitherto unpublished p apers plus selected bookreviews and other pieces, but the longer work must wait.

A masterly practitioner of the ironic and compassionate approach to history so emphasized by her mentor, C. Vann Woodward, Mrs. Rose manages to keep conflicting ideas, each containing a part of the truth, in tension and, in the process, to keep her balance and fairness to a remarkable degree. Sympathetic to the slaves, as any historian in the late 20th century inevitably must be, she nevertheless insists on the basic humanity of at least the majority of the slaveowners. Some of her keenest insights appear in an essay entitled ''The Domestication of Domestic Slavery,'' which the editor describes as the linchpin of the volume. Her thesis here is that slavery, so much more unabashe dly brutal in the 17th and 18th centuries, had to becomethe ''domesti c institution'' in the 19th century. Slave codes were changed to re quire decent provisioning by masters and to limit their power to puni sh slaves. Despite crippling civil disabilities, slaves were increasi ngly defined in law as persons as well as property. At the same time , the 19th century also brought stricter laws, such as those that li mited movement of both slaves and free blacks and prohibited th e education of slaves. Thus the abolitionists could protest that slavery grew yearly harsher, while Southern defenders ofthe instituti on maintained with equal vehemence that it was becoming milder and mo re humane.

Both sides were right and both were wrong, Mrs. Rose suggests. As physical conditions improved in the 19th century, the slave's essential humanity was being recognized. But, simultaneously, blacks were increasingly categorized as a special, different kind of humanity, ''as lesser humans in a dependency assumed to be perpetual. In earlier, harsher times, they had been seen as luckless, unfortunate barbarians. Now they were to be treated as children expected never to grow up.'' In one sentence Mrs. Rose untangles some of the most puzzling problems about the antebellum South and its peculiar institution: ''Still another characteristic of a domesticated regime was that plantations less harmful to the body (of the slave) could be more afflicting to the soul.''

In ''Childhood in Bondage,'' another previously unpublished essay and one that breaks new ground, Mrs. Rose avers that in considering slave resistance, historians have not only supposed a greater uniformity of conditions than actually existed on plantations, but have also exclusively focused on adult behavior. ''Why should we not boldly assume,'' she asks, ''that slaves were exactly like free people in one important respect, that basic attitudes toward their world were formed early in childhood, and that personalities and modes of adjustment were fixed by parental teachings and by childhood experiences?'' She emphasized that the typical slave family was headed by a father and mother, and did so before the studies of the slaves' family life by John Blassingame and Herbert Gutman appeared; she also noted that these parents, having to train children for survival under slavery, faced formidable difficulties; ''When men and women survive on the precarious raft of another man's good will, they teach children arts of survival.''

In dealing with the freedmen after the war, Mrs. Rose displays the same sensitivity and balance as in her essays on slavery. Brief summary hardly does justice to the complexities she analyzes in ''Blacks without Masters: Protagonists and Issue,'' but the final sentence suggests her approach: ''No matter what aspect of this subject one considers - no matter whether analysis focuses on the largely nonrevolutionary revolution or the participation of largely powerless participants or the legacy of slavery or the nature of black leadership - there seems, in conclusion, no possibility of escaping an ambivalent treatment of black protagonists during Reconstruction.''

Mrs. Rose's ''ambivalent treatment'' is well illustrated by the manner in which she deals with the black leaders in the Southern states during Reconstruction. Noting first of all that they were rarely numerous enough, even at the height of radical Reconstruction, to force through the social changes that their constituencies desired, she points to subtle differences in emphasis between the black leaders who came from the North, or from an urban, free black environment, and those who came from the South and directly from slavery. The latter wanted land above all else, while the former gave top priority to the vote. Blacks from the North, thoroughly familiar with the Jim Crow system that then reigned there, were quicker to spot the dangers of segregation, but Southern black leaders ''tended to understand instinctively that their leadership would be handicapped if black insitutions were submerg ed in white ones.'' Even a sympathetic account of the frustration s of blacks during Reconstruction, Mrs. Rose sadly concludes, mu st emphasize that ''never was so much lost for so many, maybe a little because of the mistakes of so few.''

In reviewing the studies of some of her contemporaries, historians whose work has both influenced her own and been influenced by it, Mrs. Rose congratulates them on their success ''at that most elusive task of extracting from an unwilling record the part blacks themselves played in our total history'' and expresses the hope that ''eventually moral judgments, the inescapable ultimate task of the social historian, may be made with more accuracy, grace, and compassion.'' She has aptly, if unintentionally, described her own splendid achievement.

Summary: --------------------------------------------------------------------    Robert F. Durden, professor of history at Duke University, is the author of ''The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation.'' SLAVERY AND FREEDOM By Willie Lee Rose.  Edited by William W. Freehling.  224 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $17.95.


FORTUNE — Walter Driver is a longtime social gaming entrepreneur whose company, Scopely, works with independent gaming studios to co-develop, distribute, market, and monetize multiplayer games. Prior to Scopely, Walter founded and served as CEO of O Negative Media, where he developed social network gaming applications. Before that, he co-founded Ignition Interactive, one of the first developers of third party applications on the Facebook platform.

In 2012, Driver was recognized by the World Economic Forum as one of its Young Global Shapers, and in 2013 he was a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Brown University. After he attended Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference, we picked his brain about his accomplishments, technology, and the surprising thing he learned in school that has helped him as an entrepreneur.

1. What business or technology person do you admire most? Why?

My father, Walter Driver Jr. He’s had a very successful career in law and now finance and showed me that doing everything the right way all the time pays unforeseeable dividends over time — shortcuts rarely take you where you want to end up.

2. What other companies do you admire? Why?

Valve and Vice are two companies I think are very cool — they have an identity that means something to people who work there.

3. What technology sector excites you most?

I’m pretty thrilled to be coming of age at the advent of the smartphone era. Having a connected device in the hands of billions of people is going to create fundamentally new opportunities that are just beginning to take shape yet and are easily taken for granted in the U.S.

4. Is business school necessary for entrepreneurs?

I’ve never had any formal business education, so I honestly don’t know how useful it is, but it’s definitely not a requirement. From my perspective, most people who start companies do it because they either a) are wired that way and can’t imagine doing anything else, b) they have a unique insight into a particular market, or c) there’s a problem they are insanely passionate about solving. Business school seems like a more useful training ground for being an executive than an entrepreneur.

5. What is the best advice you ever received?

Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in the short-term and underestimate what they can accomplish in the long-term.

6. What is your greatest achievement?

The friends I’ve made. Life wouldn’t be very much fun without them.

7. What was the most important thing you learned in school?

I studied creative writing in college. I was writing poetry when most of the folks that are now my peers were writing code. How to create a narrative was the most valuable thing I learned in school — it’s how humans make sense of the world.

8. What is one goal that you would like to accomplish during your lifetime?

My aspiration is that everyone who works at Scopely to view it as one of the highlights of their professional career.

9. What was the last book you read?

Spent by Geoffrey Miller. Any entrepreneur doing something consumer-facing should read it. It’s a very interesting take on the real reasons we buy the things we buy.

10. What is one unique or quirky habit that you have?

I don’t eat any condiments. No sauces of any kind. People ask what kind of diet I’m on, but no, I’m just weird like that.

More from Fortune‘s 10 Questions series:

Summary: There's no need to knock a creative writing degree when it comes to honing business acumen, Scopely founder and chief executive Walter Driver says.


A mystery vortex filmed swirling around in a lake in Thailand has left witnesses baffled.

The whirlpool was spotted in the aqua blue waters of Cheow Lan Lake, a dammed reservoir in Khao Sok National Park in the Surat Thani Province, and lasted for about two minutes.

The swirl left a long, wide trail of white bubbles as it moved through the water in a seemingly random figure-8 path in the video published on YouTube last week.

"Strange events that make us feel very confused," wrote YouTube user Wutpink Sukanya.

"But I can not explain What happened was that the The phenomenal natural or caused by sea creatures swimming below the surface (sic)," they wrote.

The video has reportedly been sent to Seoul, South Korea, for analysis but the witness wrote they have already received some criticism from sceptics.

It's not certain whether the underwater vortex was caused by a living creature or a sinkhole somewhere deep below the surface.

Do you have any news photos or videos?


HMAS Darwin's boarding party team conduct an insertion onto a suspicious dhow. (AAP)

Iran is not willing to accept its nationals being forcibly deported from Australia but will welcome back citizens of their own free will, a top official has warned.

The remarks by deputy foreign minister Hassan Ghashgavi came on Sunday as Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop visited Tehran but failed to make a breakthrough on a long-running immigration dispute.

Ghashgavi, whose brief covers consular affairs, signalled the two countries are widely at odds and he even launched a thinly veiled dig at foreign states who send people back to their place of origin.

"Any forced deportation is contrary to human rights, but we believe that the voluntary return of every Iranian to his country is not a problem," the ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

"All immigration countries make a selection. They welcome those they consider useful to their society... and reject others to be forcibly deported."

Iranians make up 23 per cent of 1848 people held in immigration detention centres in Australia, according to official figures from late March.

Under a hardline policy, asylum-seekers arriving by boat in Australia are subject to mandatory detention, and since 2013 have been denied resettlement even if found to be genuine refugees.

Iranians account for many of the 1707 held on the Pacific island outposts of Nauru and Papua New Guinea, some of whom are still awaiting the final assessment of their claims for refugee status.

Bishop, who is due to leave Sunday capping a two-day trip to Iran, was the highest-ranking Australian to visit in 12 years.

New-York-based Human Rights Watch had urged Bishop to "press Iranian officials to address the violations that compel people to flee Iran and to seek protection elsewhere".

And Prime Minister Tony Abbott last week announced: "We will be talking to the Iranian government about taking back people who are... Iranian citizens, because they deserve to be in Iran. They belong in Iran."

However at a joint press conference Saturday with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Bishop said the two countries had agreed to keep talking.

"We agreed to continue these discussions at consular level," Bishop said.

Zarif added: "It is an important and sensitive human rights issue and we hope that (the visit) paves the way for improving the situation of the asylum seekers."

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: A top Iranian official says the country will not accept any of its nationals who have been forcibly deported from Australia.


An open letter following the Lafayette cinema shooting has rallied the community.

A US man's defiant letter to "Terror" written following the recent Lafayette cinema shooting has gone viral online as the community mourns the two women killed.

Mayci Breaux and Jillian Johnson were killed when "drifter" gunman John Houser, 58, opened fire during a screening of comedy film Trainwreck.

The deaths have prompted a fresh outcry about gun control in the US, with President Barack Obama vowing to dedicate the rest of his term to doing something about the nation's gun crime.

As the Louisiana community mourns, Lafayette resident Matt Langford posted an open letter to online forum Medium.

Deciding not to address the gunman by name or as an individual, Mr Langford simply opens the letter with, "Dear Terror".

He acknowledges the tragedy of the event but said he also knew his community would "fight".

"You picked on a group that doesn’t respond in that fearsome way you may have expected," he said.

"You put us in the fire with the expectation of burning us. Instead, we were strengthened."

He vowed Ms Breaux and Ms Johnson would become a rallying cry for people determined to extinguish "evil".

"We will mourn. We will memorialize. We will lay flowers," he said.

"Then we will rise up and show America how weak and pitiful you really are."

The powerful letter has sparked a huge reaction online, having been seen more than 76,000 times on Medium and shared more than 15,000 times on Facebook.

You showed your evil face to us last night when you senselessly acted out. You, terror, flexed your muscles in an attempt to intimidate us. But you see, this time you picked on the wrong people. You picked on a group that doesn’t respond in that fearsome way you may have expected.

When you looked into our eyes, we started to run. But to your surprise, we ran right at you. You initiated our built in fight response. You caused us, a city known as the happiest in America, to unite in a way that you couldn’t have expected. This happened immediately within that room, but it also started throughout our community.

While our nation fights the evils of racism and inequality, our city will lead by example. Whites and blacks will stand together. Christians and atheists will fight alongside each other. Young and old will stand as a barrier around our city.

You put us in the fire with the expectation of burning us. Instead, we were strengthened. We do not simply possess American Resolve. We ARE American Resolve. You did what you thought you needed to do, terror.

Well, you better run because we are doing what we know we NEED to do.

Jillian Johnson and Mayci Breaux won’t simply live on in our memories. They will live on in our spirit as we honor them by destroying you.

We will mourn. We will memorialize. We will lay flowers.

Then we will rise up and show America how weak and pitiful you really are. You simply don’t stand a chance.

Do you have any news photos or videos?


Debt restructuring will help the island, but a long-term solution must also include structural reforms to address its labor market and other costs of doing business, experts told CNBC. And even if the U.S. government won't make Puerto Rico eligible for Chapter 9 bankruptcy—as mainland municipalities are—the territory could still potentially get by.

"If Congress doesn't allow for Chapter 9, it's going to be a lot more difficult than if it does," said Juan Lara, economics professor at the University of Puerto Rico, adding that he does in fact expect the U.S. government to allow such filings.

Some have called for Puerto Rico to buckle down on an "internal devaluation"—depressing costs (including wages) so the economy can become competitive—as an alternative to currency devaluation, which would be impossible anyway on the U.S. dollar. Experts, however, told CNBC that internal devaluation would not fix everything.

Read MoreWhy Puerto Rico's debt crisis isn't contagious

"Depreciation is not a possibility, but I don't think they can do it through internal devaluation," said Anne Krueger, a former first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund and senior research professor of international economics at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins.

She predicted that many Puerto Rican residents would leave the island if the wage situation worsened appreciably.

Moreover, the territory has "been going through an internal devaluation for years now," the University of Puerto Rico's Lara said. Such a decline has not been intentional policy, he added, but a depression of local costs and profit margins will persist for the near future.

Summary: Even if the U.S. government won't allow Puerto Rico Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the territory could still potentially get by.


Due to volatility, trading was briefly halted three times for Ocwen. Trading has since resumed and shares were down more than 20 percent.

Lawsky demanded in the letter that Ocwen must fix the record-keeping issues in its system immediately and that it must respond to all requests "promptly and accurately." If the Department decides that Ocwen's system and processes cannot be trusted, it will "take whatever action is necessary to ensure that borrowers are protected," Lawsky wrote.

"We deeply regret the inconvenience to borrowers who received improperly dated letters as a result of errors in our correspondence systems," according to an Ocwen spokesperson, in a release to CNBC. "As always, our goal is to avoid foreclosure. In the case of the 283 borrowers in New York who received letters with incorrect dates, 281 are currently borrowers with us. We are continuing to review the rest of the cases." The person added that the company believes the backdating issue, identified to date, has been resolved and that the company will continue investigations in full cooperation with regulators.

An employee had voiced concern about the backdating issue in November 2013 to the company's Vice President of Compliance, Lawsky wrote. Ocwen did nothing to investigate, he said. Five months of inaction later, the same employee raised the issue again.

"Ocwen's indifference to such a serious matter demonstrates a troubling corporate culture that disregards the needs of struggling borrowers," Lawsky wrote.

Read More Mortgage rate drop sparks refinancing boomlet

Ocwen failed to meet obligations under federal and New York law that requires timely communication with borrowers regarding foreclosure proceedings and mortgage modifications, Lawsky alleged in the letter. However, the scope or severity of the company's non-compliance is "impossible to determine" because of the company's questionable record-keeping system, he said.

Ocwen originally told the Department that the issue was isolated to a specific type of letter, that the company discovered the issue in April of 2014 and that it had implemented a solution to fix its system in May 2014, the letter said. But Lawsky writes that all three allegations "turned out to be false."

Read More Banks take big bet on red-hot apartments

"What is clear is that [Ocwen] still did not notify regulators, borrowers, or investors of this significant issue, nor did Ocwen personnel conduct due diligence to ensure that the issue was firmly resolved through the supposed fix in May 2014, or take steps to determine what impact ... may have already had on borrowers," Lawsky wrote.

Summary: Ocwen Financial allegedly backdated thousands of time-sensitive letters to mortgage clients and did not take action to fix the issue despite repeated notices of concern.


David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Workers load wood planks on a house under construction at the KB Home Vineyard Crossing Community in Livermore, California.

"I think it's something that we've needed, but it is definitely going to slow down rent appreciation that we've been seeing," said Selma Hepp, Trulia's chief economist.

The numbers seem to correlate also to markets where there is a tight supply of existing homes for sale. Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco are all seeing above-average apartment construction and below-average supply of homes for sale.

"With respect to multifamily, this corner of the housing industry is certainly seeing robust conditions as rent gains are running at midsingle-digit rates," said Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst with the Lindsey Group. "The apartment vacancy rate as of Q2 was at 4.2 percent, matching the lowest level since 2001, and the homeownership rate of 63.4 percent is the lowest since 1967."

With so many new units coming on the market, however, it begs the question, are we overbuilding?

"I don't think we have a bubble," said Hepp. "I think the demand is still there, and we are going to see more household formation among millennials."

Summary: Multifamily construction activity is above historical averages in more than one-quarter of the U.S.'s largest housing markets, according to Trulia.


Is there a catch? Yup. For now, Comcast only plans on selling the service to the 23 million people who get broadband service from Comcast.* Which means that Comcast's cord-cutting TV service only works if you don't cut Comcast's cord.

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This is true of every other Web TV service as well. None of them work unless you get broadband Internet, which means you need to pay Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon or another broadband provider. (If you're lucky, you may have more than one choice — but you probably won't be lucky.)

The difference is that Comcast is, so far, the only broadband provider providing its own Web TV service (Verizon should have one this year), and the only one selling a Web TV service tied to a specific provider. It's not a coincidence that Comcast's version has the most aggressive pricing, since it can afford to subsidize the cost of programming with the big profits from its broadband business.

TV executives have been waiting for Comcast to sell a Web TV service that would work out of its "footprint" — which means it would be available to anyone in the U.S. with a broadband connection.

But this is a much more modest offering, aimed at a subset of Comcast's customer base. Earlier this year Comcast officially became a broadband provider that also sells TV, but it sells both to the vast majority of its customers.

It's interesting to think about what Comcast is trying to accomplish here: It's possible that it wants to step in before Sling, or HBO, or eventually Apple, gain significant traction with their own online-only offerings. But you might also conclude that Comcast is really trying to make old-fashioned TV more attractive to cord-cutters.

How's that? Here's some quick math: Comcast sells Internet at different prices in different markets, but right now a basic broadband-only subscription in its home market of Philadelphia is $67 a month. Add in the cost of Stream and you're up to $82 a month. But Comcast sells a basic TV + Broadband package, including HBO, for $45 a month.

You will want to read the fine print when you compare the two offers.** But you might reasonably conclude that Comcast would still rather sell you cable TV than Web TV.

It's an open question whether consumers want to pay for so-called "skinny bundles" of TV. Last fall Comcast said sales of its own low-cost bundles had declined. But industry executives say Dish's Sling, which offers a dozen-plus channels over the Web, has quickly built a respectable business this year, with at least 250,000 subscribers. And for now, conventional TV industry wisdom is that skinny bundles will gain enough traction to cause real problems for the networks who don't make it into the bundles.

At the very least, the fact that Comcast is offering this at all shows how quickly perception, at least, has shifted in the TV industry.

Only a few years ago, TV executives were arguing that there simply wasn't a market of people who wanted to watch TV but didn't want to pay for cable. Now they're lining up to sell stuff to the once-phantom market.

*Comcast says it will test Stream in Boston this summer, Chicago and Seattle after that, and then expand to all of its markets in 2016.

**Comcast's broadband-only package, for instance, includes a cloud-based DVR with fewer restrictions than the one conventional Comcast TV subscribers use. On the other hand, the Comcast subscribers who get a TV+Internet package can watch their shows, using a cable box, on their TV sets. Comcast broadband-only subs can't get shows to their TVs without doing workarounds.

Summary: Comcast is now competing with HBO, Showtime, Sony and Dish's Sling TV, all of which will sell you at least one TV channel delivered over the Web.


One of the leads also pointed out that none of the tranches was particularly large, so the bonds were perhaps less liquid. He added that since it priced investors have had a deluge of supply to focus upon, including that from Berkshire.

"For European investors, it was the first opportunity for them to even look at Berkshire, so perhaps some needed the announcement to assess it. But with the market so hot and the company and its CEO being so high profile, we knew it was positioned well," a lead on the transaction said.

Lead managers Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo started marketing an eight-year tranche at 35bp area over mid-swaps, a 12-year at 50bp area and a 20-year at 65bp area, implying respective yields of around 0.90 percent, 1.34 percent and 1.75 percent for the Aa2/AA rated company.

Those yields were much lower than the 3.20 percent coupon on a US$1.7 billion bond that matured on February 11 this year which Berkshire is refinancing.

Read More Buffett: These investments are a 'fool's game'

Leads set official guidance at plus 30bp area, 45bp area and 60bp area, all to price within a 3bp range. Final terms were announced for a 750 million euro eight-year at 27bp over mid-swaps, a 1.25 billion euro 12-year at 42bp over and a 1 billion euro 20-year at 57bp over.

Berkshire's eight-year tranche priced at a premium to where its U.S. dollar deals trade around the same tenor. Its 3.00 percent February 2023s were quoted on Eikon at 55bp over swaps, although factoring in a euro/dollar cross-currency swap that is negative by around 40bp, this made for a premium of some 12bp on the euro issue.

"Companies are having to pay up on the shorter deals at the moment; and on Berkshire's shorter piece, leads should have left more on the table, as the shorter dated stuff is not well bid. Overall, the deal was well executed though and priced to perfection," said Louis Gargour, CIO and managing partner at asset manager LNG Capital.

The longer two tranches, due in 12 and 20 years, could have priced at relatively tighter terms post-swap, although any savings are theoretical, due to Berkshire Hathaway's lack of outstanding longer dated dollar paper.

"If swapped back into dollars, the eight-year comes around 10bp-15bp back of where the dollar bond trades," a lead on the deal said. "So, if the company was swapping back, it would maybe be wider, although on the longer pieces they could have theoretically saved 10bp-15bp, but it's tricky to assess as the curve is a weird shape," the lead said.

He added that for some U.S. corporates tapping the euro market it is a cost-saving exercise, but others may be doing it to keep some of the proceeds in euros.

Berkshire Hathaway has said it will use cash raised from the 3 billion euro deal to refinance some maturing dollar debt, although market players believe it also has a more local investment plan in mind.

"For where the swap rate is, I'm not sure if the deal makes sense. Maybe it's a coincidence that the company is rumored to be looking at investing in Germany, because raising euro funds for that reason would make more sense," a banker away from the deal said.

Summary: Where Buffett goes, others tend to follow, and bankers predict more U.S. firms will issue bonds in Europe after Berkshire Hathaway's euro bond debut.


Is the stock market suffering another "taper tantrum," in the "dollar doldrums," or "losing energy?"

All of these things are being used to describe the current selloff in stocks: They are effectively worries about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates sooner rather than later, the dollar cutting into exports and corporate profits, or falling oil prices hurting energy stocks.

In addition, there has been some technical deterioration in the underlying market technical indicators, like the NYSE Advance/Decline line.

Now, does this all mean that stocks are bound to fall farther, as the wall of worry becomes a little too steep to climb? Instead of selling in May and going away, should we beware the Ides of March, instead?

Read MoreHere's what could sting stocks

It is hard to say, at this specific point in time. But certainly, there may be a few yellow flags being raised about the current condition of the market.

First, the market has been tired of late, with some non-confirmations emerging as the major averages hit new, all-time highs. Besides declines exceeding advances on the New York Stock Exchange, the number of 52-week highs has dwindled as the number of new 52-week lows has expanded.

That is a sign of underlying weakness in the broader market and sometimes presages a more pronounced decline in equities.

Now, we have seen this movie several times in the last few years, without the market suffering a full 10 percent correction.

Certainly, that could be the case again.

Summary: There may be a few yellow flags being raised about the current condition of the market, but it’s not time to push the panic button.


The 14 money managers in the inaugural Squawk Box Portfolio challenge, who together oversee more than $160 billion, believe better times are ahead for the brave few nonindexers left on Wall Street in 2015. The group sees small caps, Apple and Google as ways to top the benchmark.

It's been tough times for those plying the stock-picking trade with just 19 percent of active mutual fund managers beating their benchmark last year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. This poor performance comes during a roaring bull market entering its sixth year.

"As passive investing in ETFs exaggerates the normal inefficacies by increasing the short-term correlations among small and midsize stocks, bottom-up research becomes more rewarding," said Craig Hodges, a member of the Squawk Box Portfolio roster this year and CEO of Hodges Capital. Stock picking will come back this year "due in part to the prolific growth in ETFs, which has created opportunities for active portfolio management."

Read MoreThis shows US stocks most expensive since WWII

Hodges may be on to something because as volatility has increased in the fourth quarter and first days of 2015, so too has active management. In December, 43 percent of active large-cap mutual fund managers beat the Russell 1000, according to Bank of America.

Summary: The 14 money managers in the inaugural Squawk Box Portfolio challenge see better times ahead for the few nonindexers left on Wall Street in 2015.