Both major-party candidates for Governor of New Jersey, responding to the public's concern about crime, have advocated programs designed to deal more forcefully with violent offenders, career criminals and juvenile lawbreakers. A poll of voter sentiment by The New York Times found that 10 percent believe crime was the state's most serious problem. Representative James J. Florio of Runnemede, the Democratic candidate, was heavily favored over the Republican, Thomas H. Kean of Livingston, a former Assembly Speaker, by those who said they were afraid to walk the streets near their homes.

But these residents were urban residents, and less affluent and less likely to vote on Nov. 3. The Times survey showed that of those who rated crime as their chief concern, 47 percent favored Mr. Florio and 35 percent said they supported Mr. Kean.

In the poll of 1,118 residents, conducted by telephone between Oct. 14 and 18, crime was the chief concern of 9 percent of whites who responded and 14 percent of the blacks.

In his campaign speeches, Mr. Florio has said that the success of other programs designed to stimulate the ecomony rested not only on services and a reasonable tax program but also ''on the belief by people that they can leave their homes without fear of being hit over the head.''

Mr. Kean said: ''Muggings, purse snatching and assaults have become an everyday companion to many seniors. They have been driven into their homes at nightfall where they literally barricade themselves until the following morning.''

The poll asked respondents if there was an area near their homes - within one mile - in which they were afraid to walk alone at night. Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said ''no'' and 44 percent said ''yes.'' Of those who answered ''no,'' Mr. Kean was favored over Mr. Florio by 45 percent to 44 percent. Those who said they were afraid favored Mr. Florio by 51 percent to 33 percent. Both Back Death Penalty

Both candidates support reinstatement of the death penalty, mandatory prison sentences for crimes committed with a weapon and the construction of a new prison in Camden. Mr. Florio had opposed the original Camden site of the proposed medium security prison, but supports it now that a new site has been found.

Mr. Kean also supports a 30-year prison sentence for first-degree murder where the death penalty was not imposed, and mandatory imposition of consecutive, instead of concurrent, sentences for people convicted of multiple crimes.

He also would support procedures enabling judges to withold bail for 72 hours from defendants accused of violent crime and whose release the judges believe would pose a danger to the community.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Florio both call for treating violent juveniles as adult offenders, and have supported a juvenile-justice program advocated by a legislative committee that includes creation of a family court and a program of restitution to victims of juvenile crime. Both Agree Prisons Are Crowded

The Republican candidate also would institute uniform guidelines for prosecutors when plea bargaining with a defendant and provide for early payment of compensation to victims of violent crime.

Both candidate recognized the crowded condition of the state correctional facilities, but disagreed on assessing blame for the conditions.

Mr. Kean said Governor Byrne had appointed a blue ribbon commission to study the state's correctional system and then ignored the commission's recommendation for new prison construction. He noted that many state prisoners were being housed in county jail facilities under an executive order signed by Mr. Byrne. The order empowers William H. Fauver, the State Correction Commissioner, to use any public building in the state to house prisoners during the current emergency.

The Republican candidate said the state prisoners should be removed as soon as possible. Mr. Florio has said he might continue the Byrne FLORIO AND KEAN PRESENT PROPOSALS TO CURB CRIME executive order if elected.

The Democratic candidate blamed the Reagan Administration for contributing to the problem by failing to follow through on its own proposal to allow states to make use of vacant Federal facilities within their borders to ease prison overcrowding.

Mr. Florio said that he, United States Senator Bill Bradley and members of the Byrne administration had repeatedly asked for the use of the empty Fort Dix stockade, which could house 400 prisoners, but had yet to get a reply.


THIS is a tale of two nuclear power plants that were born at the same time but grew on opposite shores of Long Island Sound. On a clear day, the massive block of the Millstone plant on the Connecticut shore can be seen to the west by ferry passengers approaching New London; the top cap of the Shoreham plant can be seen protruding above the bluffs of Long Island to the east by ferry passengers long before they approach Port Jefferson.

The two plants are designed to have the same electrical generating capacity so each can save seven million barrels of fuel oil a year. There the similarity ends. Both plants were proposed to their respective rate payers within a few months of each other in the winter of 1968-69. The Millstone II plant was built at a cost of $435 million and has been operating since Christmas 1975; the Shoreham plant will cost more than $2.5 billion before it is finished in 1983.

In Connecticut, nuclear power is a reality. Millstone II is operated by Northeast Utilities, parent of four companies serving parts of Connecticut and western Massachusetts. Northeast owns two nuclear plants outright, is part owner of four others and plans to complete Millstone III in 1986. In 1980, over half of the electricity it sold was provided by nuclear power.

In the period from 1974 through February 1981, Northeast's customers paid $1.2 billion for the nuclear power portion of their total bills for electricity. This covered the cost of the nuclear fuel, the operation and maintenance of the nuclear plants, amortization of their costs of construction, and allowances for future costs of fuel disposal and eventual decommissioning of the plants. This huge amount of money is dwarfed by what it would have cost the customers, $2.2 billion, if the company had built and operated oil-fired plants rather than nuclear ones.

Thus, Northeast Utilities customers pocketed $1 billion by virtue of the company's having built and used the nuclear plants. The typical small-home owner, using 500 kilowatt-hours a month, pocketed $300 during that period, even though his electric bills increased from year to year because of inflation. His savings resulted despite his electricity costs' rising; his rates rose less rapidly with nuclear power than they would have with oil alone.

In fact, we know of one Wesley Armstrong, of Southbury, Conn., who paid 2.1 cents per kilowatt-hour for his all-electric home in 1968 and was shocked that he had to pay 5.7 cents per kilowatt-hour in 1980. That is an increase of 171 percent in 12 years. His plight was spelled out in a newspaper article on March 23, 1981, under the heading ''New Electric Rate Chills Homeowners.'' He doesn't realize he is lucky to be living in Connecticut, rather than on Long Island.

On Long Island, nuclear power is a hope for the future but no help for the present. Mr. Armstrong's counterpart on the Island also paid 2 cents per kilowatt-hour in 1968, but he paid nearly 9 cents per kilowatt-hour in 1980 -that's almost twice as much as Mr. Armstrong pays and he should be, therefore, twice as upset. It also represents an increment of 350 percent for the same period.

It is the cost of fuel that is the key to the differences in the cost of electrical power. The accompanying tabulation shows how the rates have increased down the years, for Northeast Utilities (N.U.) and for Long Island Lighting (Lilco); the numbers are cents per kilowatt-hour (c/ KWH) paid by the average customer. The left-hand pair of columns compares total costs for electrical power; the righthand pair compares fuel costs alone, as they are stated (or can be deduced) in the two companies' annual reports for 1980, and from a Lilco flier distributed with its April 1981 statements. Year ectric Rates Fuel Costs (in c/KWH) (in c/KWH) N.U. Lilco N.U. Lilco 1970 2.4 2.4 - 0.3 1976 4.4 5.2 - 1.7 1978 4.7 6.3 1.0 1.9 1980 6.2 8.5 2.0 3.6 1981 (March) - 10.7 - 5.8

The two Lilco columns dramatically show the effect of the rising prices of oil. It now costs Lilco 44 times as much to buy a barrel of oil as it did in 1970, and most of that increase has occurred during the last two years. Lilco's other expenses have risen also, but roughly at the rate of inflation. Now that its fuel cost is more than half the cost of the electricity it generates, one can expect even stronger dependence of its rates upon the price of oil until the Shoreham nuclear plant comes on line, and with that dependence will come the concurrent, unpopular, high rate increases. Since Northeast Utilities does depend also on oil, but to a lesser extent since less than half its power comes from oil, the rates in the N.U. columns of the tabulation have been increasing, but not so rapidly. The cost of nuclear fuel is less than 1 cent per kilowatt-hour for Millstone II and the other nuclear plants it draws upon so that Connecticut is only half as dependent upon oil prices as is Long Island. It has been very unfortunate for Long Island rate payers that the Shoreham plant has been delayed all these years. Had it been completed in late 1975 as Milestone II was, Long Islanders might equally well have paid $1 billion less for their electricity. As things look now, we shall be lucky to see the Shoreham plant operating in early 1983, more than seven years and 49 million barrels of oil after Millstone II.

What caused this fantastically expensive delay? The anatomy of the delay and the dates of crucial steps in construction for the plants makes it clear how they differed. Northeast Utilities applied to the Federal Government for a construction permit in early 1969, a few months after Lilco's December 1968 application. Construction approval was granted for Millstone II in November 1969, less than a year after application; Shoreham was not approved until November 1972, almost four years after application. Millstone II went into commercial operation, after six years of construction, in December 1975; Shoreham will have undergone construction for more than 10 years by 1983.

The key delay was the three years of additional time required for Shoreham to obtain construction approval. Public hearings were required for both projects. The Millstone hearing lasted one week; Shoreham's lasted three years. This was the result of opposition by a small but determined group of citizens called the Lloyd Harbor Study Group. The hearing transcript shows that this group was formed to oppose the construction of a possible future plant (not Shoreham) on property purchased by Lilco in well-to-do Lloyd Harbor near Huntington. In its community solicitation for funds, the group argued that the best strategy for defeating a plant at Lloyd Harbor was to oppose the Shoreham plant. Successful in its strategy, the group unwittingly also succeeded in adding a billion dollars to the past, present and future electrical bills of Long Islanders.

As a result of the three-year delay, the Shoreham plant started rising in a period when the national mood of confidence in this country's industrial future, not to mention nuclear power, was being eroded by doubts. Environmentalists were pointing out all sorts of possible dangers. The Government responded with impartiality to all criticisms, this resulting in more delays and costs. Inflation made the delays still more costly; Shoreham will end up costing six times as much to build as Millstone II.

All the same, Shoreham will save Long Islanders a great deal of money when it is finished. The cost of oil has still been rising faster than inflation. Once Shoreham is running and the nation is that much less dependent upon foreign oil, Long Islanders may join in efforts to change the New York State belief that the people don't want nuclear power.


By Christopher Lehmann-Haupt AN INDECENT OBSESSION. By Colleen McCullough. 317 pages. Harper & Row. $13.50.

MICHAEL is the unknown quantity. Michael seems well enough - altogether sane, in fact. But what is he doing here in Ward X, this isolated part of the hospital, set aside for ''troppos,'' (for tropicals) or soldiers gone round the bend from jungle warfare? According to his medical papers, which Luce and Sister Langtry have read, Michael may be homosexual. What is known, and the reason that Michael is here in Ward X, is that he tried to kill a man in his unit who made some sort of pass at him. Tried to choke him to death and, according to a brief dip we take into Michael's point of view, rather enjoyed it.

So what will happen when Luce, a psychopathic seducer, gets around to pushing Michael beyond the limit of his control? Will Michael go berserk and kill Luce, or will it bring out the ''shirt-lifting poofter'' that Luce believes Michael to be? How will this affect the other Australian soldiers in Ward X? Will it perhaps cure Matt's hysterical blindness? What will it do to Sister Honour Langtry, Ward X's nurse, who appears to be in love with Michael? Will it reinforce her ''indecent obsession,'' whatever that may be? We turn the pages. Emotional Steam

I do not mean to make light of Colleen McCullough's already bestselling successor to her gigantically successful ''The Thorn Birds.'' Michael's little problem happens to be very deftly worked into this drama about a military mental ward on a tropical Indo-Pacific island at the end of World War II. Miss McCullough is a natural storyteller, more than merely clever at getting up a head of emotional steam.

Her characters - Michael Wilson, the mysterious new boy; blind Matt Sawyer, hypochondriacal Mugget Jones, satyric Luke Daggett, guilty Benedict Maynard and the ward leader, Neil Parkinson, who is in love with Sister Langtry - are so immediately present in these pages that one can see them played by those wonderful troupes of English actors who appeared in such military films as ''Tunes of Glory'' and ''Bridge on the River Kwai.'' Some of their scenes, like the one in which Luce Daggett tries to talk Sister Langtry into sleeping with him - ''Sweetie, I'm anything. Anything you like to name! Young, old, male, female - it's all meat to me.'' ''Try me. I'm the best there is.'' - leaves one's pulse racing a little faster.

And because Miss McCullough paints in very vivid colors - ''A great black thunderhead swimming in bruised light sat down on the tops of the coconut palms, stiffening and gilding them to the panoply of Balinese dancers. The air glittered and moved with a languid drifting of dust motes, so that it seemed a world sunk to the bottom of a sunstruck sea.'' - no reader can avoid visualizing her tropical island.

But if Miss McCullough expects to be taken seriously as a novelist - and, to judge from the improvement of this book over ''The Thorn Birds,'' there's no reason why she shouldn't be - she's going to have to write just a little less slickly. Her characters' psychological tics are plausible enough, but somehow her people remain twodimensional. They remind one of those novelty barometers from which a frowning boy emerges when the forecast is rainy and a smiling girl when the outlook is fair. There's nothing else to them but a wooden frame.

Then, too, one has to wonder why, if the omniscient narrator can arbitrarily jump into any character's thoughts at any given moment, she withholds for so long what Michael remembers about the incident that put him in Ward X, or what actually happened to Luce Daggett down in the bathhouse? The answer, of course, is that if the narrator didn't pick the right moments to feed us this information, there wouldn't be any tension or surprise to the story. But since surprise and tension are the only criteria that guide what the narrator may do, we soon begin to feel manipulated by the story. It's almost as if our tears were being jerked. Medical Soap Opera

Finally, though Miss McCullough tries to give her title a variety of meanings - indeed, every major character in the book could be said to be indecently obsessed to one degree or another - it is all too predictable that the obsession that will finally prevail is Sister Langtry's particular commitment. As the last paragraph of the novel puts it: ''Nurse Langtry began to walk again, briskly and without any fear, understanding herself at last. And understanding that duty, the most indecent of all obsessions, was only another name for love.'' Gee.

It's a line like this that makes one want to say that ''An Indecent Obsession'' is merely a gilded version of what I believe teen-age readers used to refer to as a nurse book. It isn't really. But far too often, its faults reduce it to medical soap opera.


WASHINGTON, March 7— Eight months before Election Day, the Democrats have come from behind and caught up with the Republicans in the first round of the 1982 races, the contest to find strong candidates.

That is the view of leaders of both parties, from all regions, politicians who believe that whatever the impact of uncertain national conditions, a good candidate for any office can make the most of them.

Representative Tony Coelho, chairman of the House Democratic campaign committee, said: ''The critical time for the November elections is November through February, when candidates decide to run or not. Whoever has the best candidates usually still wins.''

But parties get strong candidates in years when candidates think the party is strong. Politicians almost never say that they are not running because they would lose, or that they are running because it looks easy. But those are big factors, even if masked in terms such as family and duty.

Gary C. Jacobson and Samuel Kernell, in the recently published book, ''Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections,'' assert that ''the relative quality of the parties' candidates is a function of spring electoral prospects.'' They argue that ''strong'' candidates, whom in House races they define as those with previous elective office and solid financing, have the best chance of winning, even against incumbents.

This year, both parties appear to be recruiting strong candidates. The Republicans obtained many of them early, in 1981, when President Reagan's economic policies were popular and the air was full of talk of a political realignment that would make the Republican Party the dominant one.

The Democrats have been getting strong candidates recently. Examples are Mayor Koch running for Governor of New York, Representative Floyd J. Fithian of Indiana switching from a run for Secretary of State to prepare to challenge a strong incumbent Senator, Richard G. Lugar, and Mayor Frank X. McCloskey of Bloomington, Ind., entering a House race that he once shunned.

In the case of the Democrats, the common factor appears to be the state of the economy, which is encouraging candidates who avoided races in 1982 to give them a try. It shows especially in the Middle West, in such places as unemployment-ridden Peoria, Ill., where no Democrat filed for the House in January, but two have become writein candidates for the difficult chore of opposing Representative Robert H. Michel, the House Republican leader, in the fall. 5 Retire From Each Side

But Democratic optimism has not sent Republicans scurrying for the exits. House retirements, for example, are a traditional index of expectations, and the score is about even, with five Democratic and six Republican representatives closing out their careers.

Among Republicans generally, despite the well-publicized retirements of three Middle Western Governors, William G. Milliken of Michigan, James A. Rhodes of Ohio and Robert D. Ray of Iowa, party leaders sound cheerful.

''I'm in candidate heaven,'' said Frank Fahrenkopf, chairman of the Nevada Republican State Committee. ''I have more qualified candidates than I have had in seven years.''

Even his counterpart in economically depressed Michigan, Mel Larsen, while disappointed at Mr. Milliken's decision not to run for re-election or for the Senate, said, ''We're not having any problem getting good candidates.'' Early Recruiting Said to Pay Off

Eddie Mahe, a Republican political consultant, attributed the party's strong selections, especially in House races, to early and effective recruiting. ''We had so many candidates out so early, we're in pretty good shape,'' he said. ''If the heavy decision-making was going on now, we might be suffering.''

Mr. Mahe said that even though Republican candidates seemed worried about the impact of the recession on their races, he saw no evidence of the sort of panicky rededication to the practice of law that he had encountered in 1974, when both the economy and Watergate scared off Republicans.

''The candidates we had that year couldn't even be the drivers for this year's bunch,'' he said. Incumbents usually make strong candidates, which is why House retirements are watched carefully, or why Republicans in Iowa last month were disappointed at Mr. Ray's decision. Sometimes, however, an incumbent seems to be in such difficulty, as in the cases of Governor Carey in New York or Governor Albert H. Quie, Republican of Minnestota, that retirement appears to give the party an instant lift. Similarly, those who have already been elected to serve some of the constituents of an office they seek, such as a representative running for the Senate or a mayor seeking a Senate seat or governorship, are intrinsically appealing. Campaign Experience Can Help

Office-holders often make strong candidates because they have proven themselves at the polling places to some extent. As Vincent J. Breglio, executive director of the Republican Senate campaign committee, puts it, ''It's easier to get someone to vote for somebody a second time than a first time.''


People sometimes ask, “What’s the best show I’m not watching?” There was a time when my automatic reply was “Breaking Bad,” which began under the radar on AMC, or “Friday Night Lights,” which couldn’t grow an audience on NBC. Now my response, depending on who’s asking, is a dark drama such as “The Fall” or “Luther” — some disturbing murder tale classed up with British accents. Or “Togetherness” or “Rectify” or “Shameless” or “The Knick.”

Or “Nurse Jackie.” Always in my heart, I am eager to endorse “Nurse Jackie,” which finishes its extraordinary seven-season run at the end of the month. The Showtime drama-with-comedic-elements has been among the finest, most original, and most uncompromising series on TV since 2009. It has also provided TV with its sharpest female antihero, the compelling Jackie Peyton, whose behavior has challenged the loyalties of even her most avid sympathizers. “Nurse Jackie” is an unvarnished portrait of a pill addict, and Jackie has tested everyone who knows her: her ex-husband, her two daughters, her hospital colleagues and friends, and, of course, her viewers.

One of the great strengths of the show is its tight focus. Conversations about series TV often revolve around the idea of story arcs, and “Nurse Jackie” has had one of the most clearly defined series-long arcs that I can think of. There have been plenty of short comic subplots involving the supporting characters, notably the pathetic romantic life of the lovable Coop and the drug dabblings of Jackie’s older daughter, Grace. But the centerpiece of the series has been relentless: Jackie slowly but surely destroying her life in order to use, a downward spiral interrupted only by false bottoms. Addiction often shows up on TV, but it’s generally over in a few episodes and neatly resolved. “Nurse Jackie” has honored the brutal realities of addiction, as it leeches her soul year in and year out.

The single-minded power of the show’s long-form arc adds weight to the series finale, which is on June 28. After all the build-up, I’m as curious about how “Nurse Jackie” will end as I was about the “Mad Men” finale: Will Jackie finally save herself for real? Will she continue her long pattern of betrayal, lying, alienation, and drug abuse, culminating in disaster? Will she lose her battle? Is the series going to be a tragedy, ultimately, or a comedy? I have no idea what the writers will choose to do, but I know that Jackie is a stubborn lady with a ferocious disease, and I know that her pattern has not been pretty. Because she has been so damn functional, and such a heroic nurse, I fear she will continue to go down the tubes.

So far, despite many efforts, no one has been able to nurse Jackie as effectively as she nurses her patients.

Bingeing is ever-easier, but you shouldn’t let hours of TV’s best series blur together into a vague reverie.

And Edie Falco. People never ask, “Who’s the best actress on TV I’m not appreciating?” But if they did, I wouldn’t hesitate. We knew Falco was a revelation as Carmela on “The Sopranos,” with her sideways denial, her fierce anger, her complaining New Jersey accent, and her sprayed hair. She carefully showed her character ping-ponging between avoidance and awareness of her husband’s work; she turned the fight scenes with Tony into conflagrations; she brought comedy, with Carmela’s bourgeois aspirations and epic fingernails, but she never let her character be reduced to kitsch.

But as Jackie, she is equally remarkable — fiercer, and yet even more mired in denial of the truth of her situation. At this point in the series, Jackie has squandered her family, a boyfriend, and possibly her job and her profession, all with an emotionally violent flair. And yet she still believes she is entirely different from other addicts, that she will prevail, that everyone else is wrong. Falco plays that contradiction perfectly. Her Jackie is sinking low, but in her mind, she is just trying to survive.

And Merritt Wever. She has been unforgettable as Zoey, a bashful student nurse who has blossomed into a heroine. She has created one of TV’s most endearing and original characters, with a touch of physical humor and a unique delivery. Talk about arcs: She has brought Zoey from sweet innocent to tough-loving friend across the years, with an incremental development that has been unswerving and believable. While Jackie has fallen further and further, Zoey has risen to the occasion of her professional commitment to help others. Once a kind of little sister to Jackie, she is now her more mature sibling. To me, Jackie and Zoey are the Don and Peggy of “Nurse Jackie,” the dual leads.

I have no idea where “Nurse Jackie” will leave us. Jackie has already paid for her sins, which have been many and have been driven by her disease. There’s no sense, as there might have been for “The Sopranos” or “Mad Men,” that a moral judgment needs to be revealed at last. What I hope is that the show sticks to the honesty and authenticity that have been its great strengths over the years. If it can stay true to them, if it can keep its lens free of gauze, it will end beautifully.

Summary: A celebration of “Nurse Jackie,” which finishes its extraordinary seven-season run on June 28.


07/01/2015 AT 04:30 PM EDT

On Wednesday, a 67-year-old man

, marking the seventh shark attack in recent weeks.

The man was swimming about 25 feet from the shore on Ocracoke Island, which is part of the Outer Banks, when a 7-foot gray shark pulled him under the water,

He was swimming in waist-deep water with his adult son when the attack occurred around 12:20 p.m.

The victim, who had several bites to his rib cage, hip, lower leg and both hands, was able to swim to shore where a doctor was able to stabilize him.

Shark incident just now on Ocracoke beach. Pray for victim. Great first responders. #ocracoke #obx #shark pic.twitter.com/Uh394M7Vbz

that he saw a "trail of blood from the water to the sand."

The man, who was visiting from Massachusetts, was airlifted to Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, North Carolina, and is now stable and alert.

#CNN: Witness says ppl already back in water at Ocracoke Island, NC after shark attack. pic courtesy Stephen Lee pic.twitter.com/CSKnMxlV5c

Despite the onset of attacks this season,

says not to be alarmed.

"You have a higher chance of getting into a car accident driving to the beach than you do getting attacked by a shark when you get there," Cahoon, professor of biology and marine biology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, tells PEOPLE.

But when they do attack, just swim back to shore as fast as you can, he advises.

"People say to swim slowly back to shore, but what is that going to do? Swim to shore as fast as you can â shark that means to eat you will keep coming. You need to call for help. People who survive all but the least damaging shark attacks got immediate help from others," he says. "Basically, don't swim alone in shark waters."

Summary: This is the third attack in the Outer Banks in the past week – and the seventh in North Carolina this season


The Federal Reserve should increase rates for the first time in nine years at next month's meeting because it won't hurt the economy and the financial markets are ready, said global credit specialist Mark Okada.

"I really wish the Fed would just rip the Band-Aid off a wound that's healed about three years ago," argued Okada, co-founder of Highland Capital Management with $21 billion of assets under management.

"The economy is in decent shape," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" in an interview Thursday. "At this point, 25 basis points doesn't really matter to the economy. It's something that really should happen because the market has it priced in."

Holding off on hiking rates whether it's because of China, slumping oil prices or the stronger dollar could create "more volatility and more uncertainty in the market," said Okada, who is also chief investment officer at Highland.

As far as advice for investors, he said stocks appear a bit ahead of themselves.

"If you look at breadth in this market, it's not really great. The top 10 percent [of stocks] are about 80 percent of the return for the Nasdaq, and 70-something [percent] of the S&P," he continued. "The winners have been big winners and the losers are starting to get more prominent."

"It's really time to start taking money off the table where the equity market is concerned [and] rotate that into spread-sensitive markets," Okada said—especially if the economic numbers between now and the September Fed meeting indicate a rate pause.

"Maybe it's time to be pricing in lower [rates] for longer in portfolios," he said. "Don't run away from credit ... anything that's interest [rate] sensitive."

Summary: The Fed should increase rates at next month's meeting because it won't hurt the economy and the financial markets are ready, global credit specialist Mark Okada tells CNBC.


China commerce accounted for 85 percent of Alibaba's $4.22 billion in revenue in the latest quarter, the Hangzhou-based company said last week. Alibaba.com is the primary source of revenue for the company's international business.

"We want to make financing as efficient as possible for the millions of U.S. buyers that do business through Alibaba.com and are pleased to bring LendingClub's simple, low cost and transparent financing products to our U.S. buyers," Michael Lee, Alibaba.com's global marketing and business development director, said in the press release.

Read MoreAlibaba's magic fades as stock plunges

For LendingClub, the Alibaba partnership comes about two weeks after a similar deal let Google's small business partners get credit to buy Google's cloud products. However, while Google is supplying the capital to its partners, and thus acting as the lender, Alibaba is counting on the individuals and institutions that invest on LendingClub's platform to provide the financing.

Laplanche said there's plenty of demand among investors. And he added that LendingClub is in the very early days of forging these types of business partnerships. A deal to work with business buyers on Amazon could even be on the horizon.

"Because of the way we operate and being fully online, we have a unique opportunity to be embedded into online marketplaces and partner with other tech companies," Laplanche said.

Summary: Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce, giant is partnering with LendingClub to help small U.S. businesses secure credit.


South Korea's Kospi index finished just shy of a two-and-a-half-month intra-day high, helped by a robust performance among tech shares.

SK Hynix piled on nearly 1 percent, while Samsung Electronics' affiliate Samsung SDI rocketed nearly 4 percent on news that it is acquiring the battery pack business of Austria-based automobile manufacturer Magna Steyr.

Shinhan Financial, the biggest financial group in Korea, climbed 1.3 percent ahead of the selection of the new CEO of Shinhan Bank.

Read MoreFears aside, one Asia market may still have legs

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index underperformed the region for the second straight session, down 0.4 percent amid a pullback among lenders. Standard Chartered was the biggest loser, receding 4.4 percent, but the spotlight was on HSBC, which slumped 3.4 percent after a worse-than-expected drop in full-year profit.

Taiwanese stocks charged up 1 percent to their highest level since November 2007, with tech shares leading the rally. Apple suppliers rode on the momentum of the iPhone maker, with Pegatron rising 2.5 percent, and Quanta, Wistron and Catcher making nearly 1 percent gains. Taiwan's key Taiex index resumed trade on Tuesday after being shuttered for the Lunar New Year holiday since February 16.

Summary: Asian indices mostly advanced on Tuesday to hit new highs, but trading remained cautious ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's testimony.


Taxi disrupting start-up Uber has already formed partnerships with companies as diverse as Spotify and Samsung, so it stands to reason it would make a deal with a bank.

Tuesday, the $40 billion company announced a partnership with Capital One to give certain credit card holders discounts on rides.

Passengers who use a Quicksilver card to pay for a trip on the mobile app will receive 20 percent back as a statement credit on each Uber transaction. The partnership ends April 30, 2016, Uber said in a statement. The user's credit will appear on a statement one to two business cycles after the charge is incurred.

Read MoreUber, Lyft make moves to benefit drivers

The ride-sharing service that operates in more than 300 cities, most of which are in the U.S., had spoken with other banks, but ultimately chose Capital One for its technological innovations over the last two decades.

Summary: Uber and Capital One announced Tuesday a partnership to allow Quicksilver customers to get 20 percent back as a statement credit on every Uber ride.


Increasing supply is the only way to cool off New Zealand's red-hot housing market, the country's deputy prime minister told CNBC, ignoring the central bank's call for a capital gains tax.

Property markets across New Zealand's major cities are steadily climbing, prompting fears of a sharp correction. Sales volume in March rose to an eight-year high, with median prices in the capital city of Auckland soaring 13 percent on year, nearly double the nation's 8 percent gain, the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) said on Tuesday. New Zealand is one of the few advanced economies that hasn't experienced a major price correction in the past 45 years.

Those statistics prompted an unusually aggressive warning from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ). In a speech on Wednesday, deputy governor Grant Spencer said he "would like to see fresh consideration of possible policy measures to address the tax-preferred status of housing, especially investor related housing." That's a clear reference to a capital gains tax on the sale of investment properties, economists widely agreed.

However, Bill English, deputy prime minister & minister of finance of New Zealand, told CNBC on Thursday that he believes increased housing supply is the best way to fix the issue.

Read MoreNZ Prime Minister: Australia is our top risk

"We just need more houses on the ground faster to deal with the inflows from migration and the positive attitudes of many New Zealand households in a world of lower interest rates," adding that the government is going through a deliberate, long and complicated process to improve supply.

But the RBNZ believes supply-side solutions are unlikely to yield quick results, noting that increased supply will take a number of years to eliminate the housing shortage.

Summary: Increasing supply is the only way to cool New Zealand's red-hot housing market, the deputy prime minister told CNBC, ignoring calls for new taxes.


And yet the White House web page still states in the first paragraph: "For those Americans who already have health insurance, the only changes you will see under the law are new benefits, better protections from insurance-company abuses, and more value for every dollar you spend on health care. If you like your plan you can keep it and you don't have to change a thing due to the health-care law." That is NOT TRUE! The Oct. 13 Detroit Free Press front page said Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan sent 140,000 cancellations like mine. Other insurers and states are as well. Millions of Americans are losing their health insurance.

When I spoke to Blue Cross Blue Shield and used their website, I discovered no plan gives me coverage that's as good. And they are almost double the cost or more. Blue Cross Blue Shield has wanted to drop my current plan as not profitable, but the State of Michigan forced them to keep it. Now the ACA just gave them the way to drop it. None of their new plans have no deductible. The lowest maximum annual deductible/copay cost is $5,100 vs my $1,000. They cost $575 and above. Blue Cross Blue Shield will now make double the money on me and probably the other 140,000 Michiganders who are losing their plans. The ACA is a gift to insurers and their lobbyists who helped write the ACA.

So my monthly premium will go up over $250, or $3,000 annually, and my maximum annual deductible/copay cost will go up over $4,000. I could be paying up to $7,000 more per year.

(Read more: Your insurance is canceled because of Obamacare—Now what?)

I did try to see the details on plans on the Healthcare.gov website the first week of October and found there was no way to do that without creating an account, applying, and getting a response. I note that in mid-October, after media complaints, the site has added a button "SEE PLANS NOW," but this is worthless as it only gives the plan name, color and premium amount. It does not give any details such as the most important deductible and co-pay amounts. There is no way to compare plans.

I tried the Healthcare.gov site again the second week of October and was able to set up an account. But when I tried to apply, it would not take my income numbers. So I called the 800 phone number and was told they would escalate my request and someone would call me back in 48 hours. Four-and-a-half days later I did get that callback. The lady said I would not be able to apply on their website, but she would be able to do it. I gave her my data over the phone and she said my application was accepted, but there was no response from the system. She said I would get an emailed reply, but if that did not happen by the first week of November to call back.

I did receive an email stating that I had messages and to log in to Healthcare.gov. When I do that no message notice appears, and the site wants me to start the over. I called the 800 number on Nov. 2. They said that since no message notice appeared they would escalate the request and have someone call me back within 48 hours. (They should say business-day hours as they do not count the weekend.) I expect that call on Tuesday.

(Read more: White House knew millions would have their policies canceled)

I expect to be eligible for a subsidy. I hope to be able to see all of the plans available to me in Michigan, either through Healthcare.gov or outside of it. I do not know how to see what non-Healthcare.gov plans are open to me. I want to do a cost/benefit analysis of all plans. My gut tells me that with a subsidy, my premium cost may be slightly less than my current one, and if I do not have any medical issues I will save a little. But if I have issues, the deductible and co-pays will quickly cost me thousands of dollars. I will go on Medicare in September 2015, so I hope my health holds until then.

The Healthcare.gov website debacle is well known. Eventually that will be fixed. Perhaps not in time for those whose plans end to enroll by the Dec. 15 deadline. But the ACA has more problems than that: Increased costs and less coverage for us responsible Americans already buying our own insurance. It seems possible that not enough healthy people will enroll and the ACA may collapse as insurers raise premiums to stay in business. I wish this could be rewritten, but given the extreme political polarization, that will not happen. It's sad that this poor rollout and supporters refusal to admit that good policies are being canceled will probably eliminate any possibility of going to the preferred single-payer system.

If I had a message for the president, it would be:

Mr. President,Why can't I keep my current good plan I've had for over 10 years without a subsidy?

— Stephen Hamilton is a 63-year old retiree with a BA in math and an MBA from the University of Michigan. He worked in corporate management before starting his own business and was its chairman for 14 years until retiring in 1999.

Summary: This retiree is outraged that the White House says you can keep your plan if you like it — but then you get a cancellation notice anyway!


After nine months of programming exclusively on HBO, the shows also will be available free on PBS, its home for the last 45 years. "Sesame Street" will also continue its run on PBS this fall, with the season featuring a selection of episodes from the last several seasons edited in new ways.

"Sesame Workshop's new partnership does not change the fundamental role PBS and stations play in the lives of families," Anne Bentley, a PBS spokeswoman, said in a statement, noting that PBS stations reach more children ages 2 to 5, more mothers of children under 6 and more low-income children than any children's TV network, according to Nielsen.

More from The New York Times: Money Ills raise doubts on plan to take SFX private Suddenly, plenty of options for cord cutters The misadventures of Issa Rae

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Sesame's partnership with HBO comes at a critical time for the children's television group. Historically, less than 10 percent of the funding for "Sesame Street" episodes came from PBS, with the rest financed through licensing revenue, such as DVD sales. Sesame's business has struggled in recent years because of the rapid rise of streaming and on-demand viewing and the sharp decline in licensing income. About two-thirds of children now watch "Sesame Street" on demand and do not tune in to PBS to watch the show.

Read More Cutting the cord on media—and their stocks

PBS was not able to make up the difference, so Sesame was forced to cut back on the number of episodes it produced and the creation of other new material.

Jeffrey D. Dunn, chief executive of Sesame Workshop, said that the partnership with HBO would allow the group to continue to produce "Sesame Street" and to further its mission to help educate children.

"The partnership is really a great thing for kids," Mr. Dunn said. "We're getting revenues we otherwise would not have gotten, and with this we can do even more content for kids."

For HBO, the partnership provides the network with prestigious and popular television programming for both its traditional television network and its new stand-alone streaming service HBO Now, which is aimed at people who do not have or do not want cable TV subscriptions. In addition to the new series, HBO licensed more than 150 library episodes of "Sesame Street." It also licensed about 50 past episodes of "Pinky Dinky Doo" and "The Electric Company" from Sesame Workshop.

Read MoreNBCUniversal invests $200 million in Vox Media

"We were instantly thrilled for the opportunity to bring an iconic series like 'Sesame Street' to HBO," said Richard Plepler, chief executive of HBO. "'Sesame Street' stands for excellence and quality in children's programming, and we stand for excellence and quality in all programming. If we are going to lean into that and start to do more, we want to associate ourselves with a brand that is consummate to ourselves."

Children's programming is a popular category for streaming services, with the outlets recognizing that they can entice parents to subscribe if they capture their children's attention. The Sesame-PBS deal comes as Amazon, Netflix and other online outlets are pouring resources into acquiring and developing their own original children's series. The "Sesame Street" episodes now available on Amazon and Netflix will no longer be on those outlets because of the HBO deal.

Michael Lombardo, president of HBO programming, said that family programming is important in the streaming world and that HBO had been exploring the category when the Sesame deal presented itself.

"It's the perfect partnership for us to lean into, and we did," he said.

Summary: You may have to pay to get to "Sesame Street." The children's favorite is moving to HBO, but PBS viewers won't be shut out. The New York Times reports.


Yamataka Eye's career as an untamable Japanese musician includes collaborating with Tokyo's Otomo Yoshihide and New York's John Zorn, scream-singing with his band the Boredoms and inciting club rave-ups in the guise of DJ Hellshit. Ranging from despairing expressionistic catharsis through to a psychedelic shamanism, the music may be utterly uncompromising, but Eye's screams are precise screams. Here, this purposefully shattered spirit is applied to the visual arts with a series of sculptural and pictorial assemblages. This art conjures up a kind of crazed transcendence from the junkyard cast-offs of an international consumer wasteland.

Summary: Alt.gallery, Tue 19 to Oct 18


Hunter Parrish and Kathryn Wahl

09/16/2015 AT 05:45 PM EDT

fans – Silas is officially off the market.

's rep confirms to PEOPLE that the actor

to longtime love Kathryn Wahl on Sunday in an intimate ceremony at Flying Caballos Ranch in San Luis Obispo, California.

To compliment the rustic, outdoorsy theme of the wedding, Wahl wore a strapless gown with a flowing, tulle skirt that she accessorized with a crown of brightly colored flowers. Parrish, who can currently be seen as Josh on Amazon's

, also kept to theme with a brown vest over a white shirt.

After the outdoor ceremony, the couple celebrated with their friends and family, who dined and danced under the stars.

Parrish, 28, and Wahl met in 2010 on the set of

, when Wahl was working as a personal assistant. They were engaged last December, a milestone that Wahl celebrated with a

captioned "â¦ I didn't say no."

They newlyweds are currently enjoying a

, including a personalized hashtag:

Summary: The former Weeds star and his longtime girlfriend tied the knot in a stunning ceremony on Sunday


Can a picture ever be as good as the real thing? That's one of the age-old problems Elizabeth Neel faced up to when her work first made a splash in her hometown, New York, a few years ago. The artist's answer was to create pulsing, gestural paintings veering between abstraction and depiction, where thick pigment in fleshy hues was stirred into turbulent layers.

As seductive as her swirls were, there was also something violent and dangerous in these works, where snarled, dense brushstrokes suggested bloody body parts. In Thanks Giving from 2008, a gush of pale rose shooting from a brown, feathery mass could only be a turkey recently parted from its head. Condolences, where scrunched-up shapes in pink and beige suggest the wilting blooms of a funereal bouquet, is similarly morbid.

Nature and death have been big themes for this artist, who grew up on a farm with these daily realities. However, her source material is images from the internet, which she interprets not literally, but using abstraction to translate some of the stories and feelings carried by the chosen images. Take the ominous Swamp Dump from 2005, where sludgy brushstrokes set against a pitch-black ground suggest an overgrown wilderness. Its backstory is sinister: the painting is based on the story of a horrific plane wreck in the Florida Everglades, where rescue teams famously struggled to find human remains – any surviving passengers were believed to have been eaten by alligators while awaiting rescue.

In Neel's current London debut, her latest work shows a fresh, more conceptual direction. She still seems interested in the dance between abstraction and representation, but now she's underscoring the process behind her paintings. Paper print-outs of images including wolves, baby birds and braided hair are scattered on the floor, their forms echoed in the canvasses' stencilled patterns and the twin black orbs which stare like lupine eyes from a number of works.

There are still clouds of spraypaint in luscious colours like autumnal gold and mottled purple to get lost in. Yet Neel has offset her wilder mark-making by leaving sharp lines and squares of bald unpainted canvas. Balancing flurries of paint with patches of plain white, these striking compositions are a reminder that paintings are created using both spontaneity and control, translating nature into the manmade.

Why we like her: For the exquisite Relation of a Journey, where intense ocean blues, the pale green of pond lily leaves and effervescent aqua sprays suggest a watery world of springs, stained rocks and rippling pools.

Super-gran: The young Elizabeth caught the painting bug from her grandmother, the iconic portraitist Alice Neel.

Where can I see her? At Pilar Corrias gallery, London until 7 October.

Summary: Skye Sherwin: This New York artist's seductive paintings veer between abstraction and depiction as she wrestles with themes of nature and death


Scandinavian Airlines said it plans to launch daily flights between Boston and Copenhagen in late March, becoming the first airline at Logan International Airport to offer nonstop service to Scandinavia.

The airline, which also is known as SAS, said it will fly an 86-seat Boeing 737-700 between the two cities and expects the route to appeal to business travelers working in technology, finance, life sciences, and higher education. SAS also said the route will attract passengers traveling to other destinations in Scandinavia and Northern Europe.

The Copenhagen route will be the 52nd nonstop international destination offered from Logan Airport.

“Boston has long been high on our wish list of nonstop destinations and we are therefore delighted to start selling tickets for this direct daily service from Copenhagen,” said Rickard Gustafson, SAS group executive.

Tickets for the new route go on sale Friday and flights take off March 29. The plane offers 20 business class seats and 66 economy seats.

Earlier this year, Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA announced plans to begin offering nonstop flights from Boston to Copenhagen in May 2016.

Summary: It will be the first airline at Logan International Airport to offer nonstop service to Scandinavia.


SHANGHAI -- Even by the rough-and-tumble standards of China’s stock market, it was a chaotic 29 minutes.

With share prices going into free fall almost as soon as local exchanges opened, market gurus at Huaxi Securities Co. were at a loss to explain why. One manager of $46 million in Shanghai liquidated all his holdings. Other investors, including a top-performing hedge fund, tried in vain to cash out as circuit breakers brought trading to an abrupt halt.

By 9:59 a.m. local time it was all over -- except that it wasn’t. Next came a torrent of calls from angry clients upset by the carnage in a week that’s seen two abbreviated trading sessions and a 12 percent tumble in the benchmark CSI 300 Index. And it’s only January 7th.

‘‘We are dealing with a flood of angry phone calls from clients complaining about the market plunge and the circuit breaker,’’ said Wei Wei, an analyst at Huaxi Securities in Shanghai. ‘‘We are also feeling at a loss and confused today as we didn’t quite figure out what was going on in the market.’’

There’s certainly an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to this week’s selloff, which has radiated across global equity markets and rattled investor confidence in the world’s second-largest economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank about 200 points in the first hour of opening amid a ripple effect from China’s tumultuous markets.

It’s not as if China’s growth story is over. True, the yuan is weakening and the economy is decelerating to its slowest annual pace since 1990, but that’s been known for some time. The currency is actually holding up well versus just about everything but the dollar, and analysts are predicting a 6.5 percent economic expansion this year.

What does seem to worry investors is how deftly, or ineptly, Chinese authorities will manage a stock market that’s gone from boom to bust and back again more times in the past 12 months than most major peers do over the course of a decade. After policymakers took extreme steps to prop up shares last summer, analysts are struggling to gauge how Beijing will react to a renewed bout of volatility that threatens to weigh on business and consumer confidence.

Criticism is intensifying over market-wide circuit breakers, launched at the start of this year, that kick in when there’s a 5 percent swing in the CSI 300. That halts trading for 15 minutes, with exchanges shutting for the rest of the day if the index moves by 7 percent, as it did on Monday and Thursday.

In a market with some of the world’s highest volatility, circuit breakers throw up a new wild card that the nation’s 99 million individual investors are still getting used to.

‘‘It is clearly adding some unintended consequences, such as people trying to sell before the break, which is actually accelerating the decline,’’ said Gerry Alfonso, a trader at Shenwan Hongyuan Group Co. in Shanghai. ‘‘Investors need time to adapt to the new rules. This type of development in a retail- driven market is bound to be challenging.’’

Meanwhile, confusion reigns over how policy makers will react to the selloff. Obvious signs of intervention were absent on Thursday, even after share purchases by state-controlled funds on Tuesday helped the CSI 300 eke out a 0.3 percent gain. While people familiar with the matter said the securities regulator held an unscheduled meeting on the market, it ended without a decision on policy action. Officials unveiled plans to curb share sales by major stockholders just a day before an existing ban was due to expire.

Some investors had no choice but to sell on Thursday. Take Chen Gang, who helps oversee the equivalent of $46 million as the chief investment officer at Shanghai Heqi Tongyi Asset Management Co. Chen dumped his firm’s equity holdings and said he won’t get back into the market until regulators improve the circuit breaker system. Many private funds and hedge funds in China have agreements with investors spelling out mandatory liquidation levels if their holdings drop below a certain value.

‘‘This is insane,’’ Chen said in an interview on Thursday. ‘‘We were forced to liquidate all our holdings this morning.’’

Then again, Kelvin Tay, the regional chief investment officer at UBS Group AG’s wealth management business in Singapore, sees a buying opportunity. ‘‘This week has been a disaster’’ but ‘‘it’s fun in a perverse way,’’ he said. ‘‘Investors need to separate the sound from the noise. This is an opportunity to pick up stocks that are undervalued.’’

Some other managers couldn’t sell fast enough. Jiao Ji, whose hedge funds averaged a 61 percent return during the $5 trillion summer rout after he sold out before the crash, said the trading halts came so quickly that he didn’t have time to unload his holdings this time.

‘‘It was quite abrupt on Monday, and it’s even more abrupt today,’’ said Jiao, the chairman of Sunrise Investment, based in northeastern China’s Jilin province. ‘‘There’s not even a chance for a rebound.’’

Summary: Some investors tried in vain to cash out as circuit breakers brought trading to an abrupt halt.


I am looking at a tree that is bearing some very strange fruit. Pairs of headphones have sprouted from its branches and are dangling invitingly at head height. Put on a pair and you'll hear something surprising - the secret soundtrack of trees.

The inner life of trees has been a lifelong obsession for the artist Alex Metcalf. "I just knew there had to be something going on in there," he says. In the course of a two-year MA in design at the Royal College of Art, he found a way to indulge his curiosity, designing a device that can listen "inside" a tree. His first installation - in Kensington Gardens in London, as part of the 2007 RCA degree show - made it clear he had captured something valuable.

"It was amazing. All kinds of people would just stop by and listen, including people who said they were afraid to go into the exhibition because it was overpowering, but loved this quirky thing going on outdoors. And that was completely what I wanted it to be, as open as possible."

So what does a tree sound like? When children hear it for the first time, says Metcalf, they tend to think it is thunder, or a motorbike. This is the structural sound of a tree in motion. "But then, as you keep listening, you can pick out this clicking sound, which is slightly hidden. Once you hear it, you can't ignore it."

The clicking sound is the tree drinking. As water moves up a tree trunk and enters a cell, the air gets displaced, causing a "pop".

Metcalf's eavesdropping is not entirely new, but it is a very specialised area. Scientists have listened to trees to gauge how stressed - or water-deprived - they are. (The popping indicates air where there should be water.) Metcalf's approach, however, is unique. "The technology for this is usually invasive," he explains. "You bore into the tree and take away a section, then seal in a listening device. The thing about my device is that you don't have to cause any damage, and you can listen to any tree, anywhere, any time - plus you can do it long term. Cutting a hole in a tree means you are wounding and infecting it, which will affect the recording."

What Metcalf refers to as "the listening device" is a beautiful object he designed and built - a polished metal cone, based on an old-fashioned ear trumpet but packed with technology that amplifies tiny sounds by up to 33 times, then filters out unwanted ambient noise. Depending on the nature of his installation, you might be listening to a tree "live", or to recordings Metcalf has made earlier. As the weather changes, so the water uptake changes - and the sound.

"What I love is that two- to five-year-olds get really addicted, running from headphone to headphone. This is just a wild guess - though others have suggested it - but perhaps it has similar frequencies to what they heard in the womb. They're not relating it to the tree or anything, just pure sound. Then you get slightly older kids, seven to 10, dancing around to it and finding the rhythms in there, and then - amazingly - 15- to 17-year-old-dudes, coming along with their bling, and really appreciating the connection between nature and technology."

Metcalf was a sailing teacher in Cornwall for 10 years before attending the RCA, and his parents both worked as lecturers. He uses the word "educational" a lot, and it is an aspiration he has for the project. "Most people don't look at a tree and think about the water. You might listen to the wind through the leaves or look at the amazing structure, the age, the grandness, but you miss how fluid - literally - it is. The key thing is for it not to be forced on people - that's why I kept it very simple, without too many preconceptions. I don't have an ecological message. I just want the general public to access something only a handful of scientists have heard."

Metcalf's hanging headphones are part of Atmospheres 2, a season of performances and events exploring the sounds of the natural world - the second collaboration between arts organisation Touch and the Museum of Garden History in London. As the trees lap it up outside, there will be performances indoors from a range of Touch artists, including Philip Jeck and Fennesz, plus a symposium on the intriguing world of hauntology - "the paradoxical state of the spectre".

Metcalf, meanwhile, is also putting the finishing touches to a longer-term installation for Kew Gardens, which will run until September, and has been asked to present his work to delegates at the forthcoming Canadian urban forestry conference in Alberta. Like the work of Touch artist Chris Watson, Metcalf is taking a microphone to the places we wouldn't normally get to hear.

"My sense of the world, in terms of sound," he says, "has changed through doing this. It's amazing - I am busy all day long in my workshop, planning and making these installations. I'm full-time listening to trees. What an unbelievably privileged position to be in".

Atmospheres 2 runs from Thursday to Monday at the Museum of Garden History, London SE1. Details: touchmusic.org.uk

Summary: What do trees sound like - from the inside? Pascal Wyse meets the artist whose hi-tech 'ear trumpet' lets us listen in on their secret soundtrack


01/15/2016 AT 05:35 PM EST

is continuing to open up about his struggles on

In a preview for Monday's episode, Sheen, 50, tells

that certain lifestyle choices have triggered "manic behavior" from him in the past.

"Manic behavior is usually in the throes of deep partying. Deep substance abuse and drinking. It doesn't really happen when I'm not doing that," Sheen says. "It has never really reared its head. It's interesting how I answered that question. I've been 'described' or 'diagnosed' by enough people that I guess at some point you have to take a look at it if it keeps walking like a duck."

Sheen appeared on two episodes of

earlier this week, where he disclosed he had temporarily stopped taking his HIV meds to seek alternative treatment from Dr. Sam Chachoua in Mexico. However, Sheen quickly discovered the amount of HIV detectible in his blood had risen and the alternative treatments had failed. He has since resumed taking his HIV meds.

"Just to be clear, Charlie put his life at risk for a doctor who claimed to have a cure for HIV. When it didn't work he immediately went back on his medication," his manager Mark Burg

Summary: The actor returns to The Dr. Oz Show Monday


David Bowie and Dominic Monaghan

01/28/2016 AT 11:55 PM EST

films weren't good enough...just imagine them with David Bowie in them!

, who played the hobbit Merry in the films, recalled the time he saw

coming out of a reading during his first audition for the beloved films.

"I was at the Hubbard's, which is a pretty notorious casting agency office in London, doing an audition for

, and when it ended I went over and talked to John Hubbard, who was running the audition, and he said, 'Hey, it went really well," he told the

. "You should wait around for 5 or 10 min. We'll give you some feedback."

He continued, "I thought, 'Oh, OK, cool, and I sat in the reception office. As I was reading a magazine waiting, David Bowie came in and signed his little list and went in. And I'm assuming he read for Gandalf. I can't think of anything else he would've read for it. He may have read for something else, but I'm a huge David Bowie fan, and I was lucky enough to know his son now so just seeing him in person was pretty special to me."

after courageously battling cancer for 18 months, has had his share of acting gigs, including his

as Jareth the Goblin King in

alum was convinced Bowie was reading the part of Gandalf, there was word going around that the legendary artist was auditioning for the part of Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, a part eventually played by Hugo Weaving.

, director Peter Jackson said he purposely chose unknown actors to play the parts instead of legends like Bowie.

"These are famous, famous characters, loved for nearly 50 years," Jackson told EW in 2001. "To have a famous, beloved character and a famous star colliding is slightly uncomfortable."

Summary: "I was lucky enough to know his son now so just seeing him in person was pretty special to me," the actor said


When the curtain opens Friday on the 41st annual Boston Science Fiction Film Festival and Marathon, producer and curator Garen Daly will see more than a few familiar faces. “I know people who’ve been to every one. Some met here, got married, and are now bringing their kids,” he says.

The two-part program, nicknamed The Fest and The ’Thon, runs through Feb. 15 at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square. It’s said to be the oldest genre film festival in the country, and it may be even older than we thought. Daly claims that the festival actually started in 1972, making it (unofficially) 44 years old. He discovered its origins while researching his in-progress documentary about the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge, where Daly worked. “It was called the Festival of Horror and Science Fiction, but there was an administration change [at the Orson Welles] and they changed the name so there’s some lost history about how it developed,” he says.

In any case, the purpose of the festival has always been the same: to showcase science fiction films by directors with distinct visions from around the globe. The 24-hour marathon, which ends the event, has long provided sci-fi fans with the chance to revel in classic and new films with 750 like-minded friends. “It’s the original binge viewing,” says Daly.

This year’s Fest opens with the New England premiere of “The Survivalist,” dubbed “Mad Max in the countryside” by IndieWire. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, where a loner is befriended by two women. Directed by Stephen Fingleton, it has won numerous awards including the BAFTA Douglas Hickox Award and best new narrative at the Tribeca Film Festival. Also screening on Saturday is the world premiere of “Native,” a British film about two scientists seeking a new life form. It stars Rupert Graves (“Sherlock”) and Ellie Kendrick (“Game of Thrones”). Director Daniel Fitzsimmons will engage in a post-screening conversation with the audience.

Other highlights of the Fest are the short films from around the world; this year’s edition boasts nearly 40 shorts, says Daly. Features include the Boston premiere of “400 Days,” about astronauts being tested for a long space flight who find out how badly things may turn out, and the US premiere of “Mafia: Survival Game,” a big-budget Russian film based on the popular game in which contestants must find the mole or die. From France comes Jonathan Helpert’s “House of Time,” about a professor who invites people to his home to show off his latest invention, which travels back in time to when the Nazis occupied France. There will also be a classic double-feature, screened in 35mm: “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” (1958) and “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” (1953). Computer games director Kieth Arem (“Call of Duty”) will attend with his debut feature film, “The Phoenix Incident,” which, according to Daly, reinvents the found-footage format in its story of alien abduction. Arem will also unveil a new immersive app during his appearance at the Fest.

Among the highlights of the marathon are “Himmelskibet” ( “A Trip to Mars”), a 1918 “space opera” from Denmark, and “High Treason,” a 1929 film long thought to be silent. The ’Thon presents a recently discovered sound version remastered by the British Film Institute and Library of Congress that will be shown in 35mm. Also screening are several modern classics including Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956); a 70mm print of “Starman” (1984), starring Jeff Bridges; and Nicolas Roeg’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976), starring David Bowie.

For a complete schedule and more information go to http://bostonscifi.com/festival-films/

Summary: When the 41st annual Boston Science Fiction Film Festival and Marathon opens, curator Garen Daly will see lots of familiar faces.


Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Conservative Antonin Scalia were "best buds," despite being political opposites. They are pictured together at the Washington opera in 1994

He was the brash, larger-than-life, brilliantly sharp-witted conservative bedrock of the Supreme Court. She is the court's soft-spoken, diminutive, quietly revolutionary liberal voice. More often than not, they found themselves in ideological battle.

Yet in a relationship that lasted decades, through parallel career paths that ended up making them the closest of friends, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg proved opposites really do attract.

Indeed, they couldn't have been more fond of each other, as Ginsburg, 82, made clear in a

that she has written in the wake of

She began the tribute with a reference to

, a recent comic opera about their famous friendship.

"Toward the end of the opera

, tenor Scalia and soprano Ginsburg sing a duet: 'We are different, we are one,' different in our interpretation of written texts, one in our reverence for the Constitution and the institution we serve," she wrote. "From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies."

The pair frequently dined and vacationed together, and they would ring in every New Year's together with their families. And yes, they challenged each other professionally as well – including, since 1993, as justices together on the nation's highest court.

"We disagreed now and then," Ginsburg wrote, "but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia nailed all the weak spots – the 'applesauce' and 'argle bargle' – and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion."

She added: "He was a jurist of captivating brilliance and wit, with a rare talent to make even the most sober judge laugh. The press referred to his 'energetic fervor,' 'astringent intellect,' 'peppery prose,' 'acumen,' and 'affability,' all apt descriptions. He was eminently quotable, his pungent opinions so clearly stated that his words never slipped from the reader's grasp."

Scalia was just as fond of Ginsburg.

"Call us the odd couple,"

at a George Washington University event with her. "She likes opera, and she's a very nice person. What's not to like? Except her views on the law."

In closing her tribute, Ginsburg again referenced opera.

"Justice Scalia once described as the peak of his days on the bench an evening at the Opera Ball when he joined two Washington National Opera tenors at the piano for a medley of songs," she wrote. "He called it the famous Three Tenors performance. He was, indeed, a magnificent performer. It was my great good fortune to have known him as working colleague and treasured friend."

Meanwhile, the owner of the Texas ranch where Scalia was found dead Saturday said his passing was "peaceful." He died of natural causes and no autopsy was needed, a judge told the

"The judge, when I found him Saturday morning, was in complete repose," John Poindexter, owner of Cibolo Creek Ranch in Marfa, Texas, told

on Sunday. "He was very peaceful in his – in the bed. He had obviously passed away with no difficulty at all in the middle of the night."

Poindexter said Scalia arrived at the ranch Friday with a "good friend" to join about 35 other people for a weekend retreat. They enjoyed a "very jolly dinner," Poindexter said, before Scalia excused himself at about 9 p.m.

When Scalia did not come down for breakfast the next morning, Poindexter said he knocked on his door but got no response. At about 11 a.m., Poindexter entered Scalia's room and found him with "no pulse and a very cold sensation."

"It was very difficult for everyone," Poindexter said.

But Friday's dinner, Poindexter added, was in some ways a most fitting farewell for the revered justice.

"He found himself in a very congenial group. He was surrounded by admirers of him and his work," Poindexter said. "Among the most commonly said things [on Saturday] was, if this had to happen – and we're really sad that it did – but if it had to happen, it happened in the very best of circumstances," he added. "He seemed to enjoy himself greatly."

Summary: Meanwhile, the owner of the ranch where Scalia passed away said his death was "peaceful"


Thousands of people desperately in need of food and shelter are stranded in remote regions of the country that have been cut off by the severe flooding.

In the south, where the Omo river burst its banks on Sunday the situation is critical, state TV reported. At least 194 bodies have been recovered and 6,000 people need urgent help.

"Two army helicopters and 14 motorboats have been deployed to evacuate up to 6,000 people marooned by the floods," it said. "Bad weather has been hampering rescuers."

The heavy rains follow a period of prolonged drought.

The Dechatu river in the east burst its banks last week killing 254 people; another 250 are missing and feared dead.

Officials and aid workers have said that the toll could increase significantly due to difficulties reaching the worst affected regions.

There are fears a third river, the Awash, could soon burst its banks. About 7,000 people living near to the river are being evacuated.

Heavy rains in the the highland regions between June and August frequebtly cause floods in lowland areas of Ethiopia.

Aid workers have said that the situation has been made worse by land cultivation, deforestation and overgrazing in recent years.

Paulette Jones, spokeswoman for the World Food Programme (WFP), said: "The rivers in Ethiopia have less capacity to hold as much water as they did years before, because they are being filled up with silt.

"It takes less intensity of rainfall ... to make a river in any particular part of the country overflow."

Summary: Up to 700 people are now feared dead after heavy rains caused devastating floods in Ethiopia.


The combination of these two features – the support level and the downtrend line – create a down sloping triangle pattern. The apex of this pattern -- when the trend line intersects the support line -- is around April 2015.

A sustained move above the value of the trend line will signal a potential change in the trend direction. The first upside target for a successful trend change is near $1,400.

Failure to move above the trend line combined with a sustained move below the support level has a downside target near $970. Between April 2013 and October 2014, gold traded in a broad sideways trading band between $1,180 and $1,390. The width of the trading band is measured and this value is projected below support at $1,180. The band is $210 high and this calculation is used to set a downside target near $970.

The calculated target is a little below the long-term historical support and resistance level near $980. This suggests there is a high probability that gold will fall to around $980 before any new consolidation pattern develops.

Read MoreWhy gold just can't win

The consolidation near $1,180 may continue for several weeks. Investors will move into the market when the uptrend breakout or the downtrend continuation is clear. The clear trend direction should develop before April 2015.

The combination of the trend line and the Guppy Multiple Moving Average indicator suggest the trend is still bearish. The long term GMMA remains well separated and this shows investors continue to sell gold.

In addition to a move above the value of the downtrend line, the gold price would also need to move above the upper edge of the long term GMMA to confirm that a new uptrend is developing. The separation in the long term GMMA suggests the downtrend in gold will continue. The downside target is near $980.

Daryl Guppy is a trader and author of Trend Trading, The 36 Strategies of the Chinese for Financial Traders – www.guppytraders.com. He is a regular guest on CNBCAsia Squawk Box. He is a speaker at trading conferences in China, Asia, Australia and Europe.

Summary: As gold finishes out a rocky year, its chart is heading toward critical development point, and the yellow metal may fall below $1,000 an ounce.


Syria's government must do more to present its ideas about a political transition and not merely talk about principles of peacemaking, UN mediator Staffan de Mistura has said after a fifth day of peace talks.

The end of a week of talks in Geneva came as Syria neared the three-week mark in its "cessation of hostilities", a temporary truce in the five-year-old civil war that has largely held but was marred by "some incidents" on Friday, he said.

"We are in a hurry," he told reporters after what he called an "intense" day and meetings with Syria's government delegation and the main opposition, the High Negotiations Committee.

De Mistura said he had given both sides weekend homework so negotiations could speed up on Monday, and during the second week of discussions he would go deeper into the issue of a political transition.

He had told the government delegation they could talk about procedures if they wished, but it was impossible to avoid dealing with the substance, he said.

"In the end, people in Syria don't need procedure, they need reality and they expect that from us."

Syria's war has killed more than 250,000 people and caused the world's worst refugee crisis, with more than half the pre-war population displaced.

Next week he aimed to build "a minimum common platform" to better understand how to approach a post-war transition, which is the core issue to be tackled at the next round of talks in April, he said.

"We are already aiming very clearly for that."

De Mistura said he had been impressed by the depth of the engagement in the process by the HNC, including substantive points on its vision of a peaceful transition.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has rejected opposition demands he give up power as a precondition for lasting peace.

Summary: UN mediator Staffan de Mistura has reported an "intense" fifth day at Syria peace talks in Geneva, saying negotiations need to speed up.


03/22/2016 AT 09:25 PM EDT

star admitted she was invited to join the

entourage at some point, and while she didn't specify how she responded, she was willing to share her thoughts on the

"They appropriate exclusivity. They're cliques!" she told

for its April/May cover story, with a tone described as "exasperation."

Asked to elaborate on receiving an invite to Swift's celeb posse – which has included her friend Selena Gomez, and the likes of

– Moretz simply said of the singer, "She's a very talented person."

An outspoken proponent of gender equality, Moretz went on to explain how she's become more willing to voice her opinions as she's gotten older.

"There were definitely moments when I was 13 or 14 and was worried about not being liked if I spoke out, but I realized that's kind of this forced, societal feminist outlook of how women should be – they should feel sorry for speaking out," she said.

Elaborating on her views on feminism, Moretz added, "It's about equality – and it's not just about women being powerful. It's about races being powerful; genders being powerful."

Her stance on gender equality has even effected her choice of projects, and including her upcoming turn in Disney's live-action reimagining of

"We can't make this regressive tale in a modern world. We're going to flip it on its head. It's going to feel good for women and men in the sense that it's not just appropriating feminism, and it's not leaning on regressive stereotypes," she said.

Summary: "They appropriate exclusivity. They're cliques!" ChloÃ« Grace Moretz told Complex of squads


'Yan adawa a Gambia da kuma kungiyar kare hakkin bil'adama ta Amnesty sun ce, mai fafutukar nan Solo Sandeng ya mutu ne a tsare, bayan kama shi da aka yi yayin zanga-zangar lumana ranar Alhamis.

Amma minista a gwamnatin kasar Sheriff Bojang ya fadawa BBC cewa, ba zai iya tabbatar da ikirarin 'yan adawar ba.

Jiya Asabar 'yan adawa da masu fafutika suka gudanar da zanga-zangar neman a sako duk wadanda aka kama.

Amma gwamnati ta ce, an kama 'yan adawar ne saboda sun yi zanga-zanga ba bisa ka'ida ba.

Ana zargin gwamnatin Yahya Jammeh da gallazawa 'yan adawa.

Summary: 'Yan adawa a Gambia sun ce, mai fafutukar nan Solo Sandeng ya mutu ne yayin da yake tsare bayan kama shi da gwamnati ta yi.


05/16/2016 AT 09:30 AM EDT

As soon as Kimmel sat down alongside

on Monday as the first

, he went right into a round of burning questions.

"Where's Michael?" the late-night host asked Ripa, 45. "Let's start from the beginning, what happened?"

Ripa giggled but refused to go into detail about the departure of her former co-host,

, whose last day on the show was Friday.

"I'm like an ex-boyfriend you go back to for sex," joked Kimmel, 48.

He also asked Ripa if their affection during Strahan's last few weeks – particularly a goodbye kiss on Friday's broadcast was all for show.

"We don't fake hug and kiss," Ripa responded. "It wasn't like air kissing. It was genuine."

The comedian then looked over to Michael Gelman and fired off a few more questions to the producer about Strahan's, 44, departure for

"Will you ever talk to Michael Strahan again? Will he be back on the show as a guest?" Kimmel asked.

An embarrassed Gelman responded with a "yes" and a "maybe."

Later on in the show,

came out on stage and told jokingly told Kimmel, "You look different."

"I got my teeth fixed," Kimmel joked, referring to Strahan's signature gap-toothed smile.

The show also rolled out a new

logo on Monday, showcasing only Ripa's name.

Earlier Monday morning, Kimmel stopped by

's Sirius XM show and said he had not been approached by producers to avoid any discussion of Strahan's exit.

When Stern, 62, asked if Kimmel would ignore that type of request, he said with a laugh: "Of course I'd ignore it!"

He added of the Strahan drama, "I definitely am going to get into it – we

to get into it," and Kimmel also revealed to Stern that he'd warned producers he wanted to discuss the events of the last few weeks – even more than he'd want to talk about his 22-month-old daughter

, 32, on Tuesday, comedian

, 52, on Wednesday, ABC World News Tonight anchor

, 42, will take over the vacant seat on Thursday, and

, 47, will close out the week on Friday.

airs weekdays (check local listings).

Summary: On Monday, Jimmy Kimmel took over LIVE as Kelly Ripa's first guest cohost of the week


Bob Evans Farms is moving to close 27 underperforming restaurants, a move that comes after the casual dining chain reported a weaker profit for 2015.

A bulk of the Bob Evans Restaurants being shuttered, 21 in total, are owned by the company and closed over the weekend. The remaining six locations are leased and will be closed throughout fiscal 2017. Bob Evans bobe said it estimated it will incur $7.5 million to $8 million in expenses related to the charges, though it also anticipates to generate about $20 million in proceeds from the sale of the owned properties.

President and CEO Saed Mohseni said the performance at the restaurants that are closing “was not meeting expectations.” The company intends to offer positions to employees at nearby locations when possible. If relocation isn’t an option, Bob Evans will pay laid off staff severance benefits.

The restaurant closures only affect a slim number of stores that Bob Evans operates. The chain, which operates in 19 states primarily in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southeast, operates 548 restaurants. Unlike many casual dining restaurant concepts, Bob Evans also has a fairly large food products segment–though a bulk of revenue still comes from the restaurants.

The closures come at a time when casual dining chains like Bob Evans find themselves challenged by the faster growing fast-casual segment. As traffic migrates to those concepts, which serve fare that is a step up from the fast-food industry but without table service, it can hurt demand at chains like Bob Evans.

Lately, Bob Evans has still managed to report fairly slim sales gains. Most recently, annual sales increased to $1.35 billion last year from $1.33 billion. But profitability has been a greater challenge. Fiscal 2015 net income slipped to $16.6 million in 2015 from $33.7 million the year earlier.

Summary: Sales were not meeting expectations.


The Republican presidential circus traveled back through the looking glass on Thursday night into a world where candidates distinguish themselves over how to ensure Social Security’s solvency and a competitive trade policy, rather than the size of their hands and other appendages.

The substance-heavy debate felt like a palette cleanser after a Jerry Springer-inflected clash last week that embarrassed the entire party. The most telling sign of the lowered temperature in Miami: frontrunner Donald Trump, who has remained a cartoonish provocateur even as he’s pulled away from the field, turned in perhaps his tamest debate performance to date.

It could be the first signs of a prevent defense as Trump sees the nomination nearing his grasp. He made it roughly 100 minutes into the two-hour event before mentioning his poll numbers, surely a personal record in restraint. And in the concluding moments of the event, Trump even made a plea for party unity (“be smart and unify”), with the implicit message that at this point in the race, it amounts to an appeal for rallying around his candidacy.

“We’re all in this together. We’re going to come up with solutions. We’re going to find the answers to things,” he said. “And so far I cannot believe how civil it’s been up here.”

Then again, Trump will be Trump. He doubled down on his Wednesday comment to CNN that Islam — all of it — hates the United States. “There’s something going on that maybe you don’t know about, maybe a lot of other people don’t know about, but there’s tremendous hatred,” he said. “And I will stick with exactly what I said to Anderson Cooper.” He sidestepped an opportunity to condemn the violence that’s become a hallmark of his campaign rallies. And he repeated his praise for Vladimir Putin as a “very strong leader for Russia” before attempting to qualify that, unbelievably, by adding, “strong doesn’t mean good.”

Trump is no master of policy nuance, and his flimsy grasp of the issues beyond anything that could fit on a bumper sticker showed through, clearly, again. But the measured tone of the debate also meant that Trump’s remaining rivals for the nod avoided ganging up to attack him on his checkered history as a businessman and political freelancer. GOP establishment leaders are now frantically marshaling their donor class to fund attack ads highlighting that bio. Yet days before make-or-break primaries next Tuesday, the candidates who hope to benefit from that assault declined to use their last, best platform to echo the message. On that score alone, Trump can call the night a win.

In a brief interview with CNN moments after the debate wrapped up, Trump suggested this will be his last one. If he sweeps Florida and Ohio next week, his march to the nomination would start to look irreversible. And as other candidates disappear from the stage, the showdowns would only grow more treacherous for him.

Thursday’s debate previewed how at times, as the non-Trump candidates tried to knock the billionaire celebrity off-balance by squaring off with him on the issues. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, trying to repair the damage he inflicted on himself mudslinging with Trump in their last meeting, returned to form as a serious guy.

“I know that a lot of people find appeal in the things Donald says because he says what people wish they could say,” Rubio said after Trump’s comments on Islam. “The problem is, presidents can’t just say anything they want. It has consequences, here and around the world.”

Trump replied that the September 11 attacks themselves were consequences and he doesn’t want to be “so politically correct.” And Rubio responded with one of his sharpest lines of the night. “I’m not interested in being politically correct. I’m interested in being correct,” he said, going on to argue that the U.S. needs to work with Muslim partners in the Middle East to confront common enemies.

Later, after a back-and-forth between Rubio and Trump over reengaging diplomatically with Cuba (Rubio vigorously opposes the Obama administration’s decision to do so, while Trump has embraced it), Texas Sen. Ted Cruz jumped in to endorse Rubio’s argument. “I think this exchange actually highlights a real choice for Republican primary voters,” Cruz said. “When it comes to foreign policy, do you want to continue on the same basic trajectory as the last seven years of the Obama foreign policy? When it comes to these deals, Cuba and Iran, they were negotiated by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. There’s a real difference between us. Donald supported Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.”

The two senators also struck similar positions against Trump on the need to tweak Social Security to get the program on sounder footing. Rubio pointed to his plan to raise the retirement age for younger workers and impose means testing. Trump vowed not to touch the program but instead to “make this country rich again; to bring back our jobs; to get rid of deficits; to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse.” Here again Cruz followed Trump and echoed Rubio, arguing the program is “careening towards insolvency, and it’s irresponsible. And any politician that doesn’t step forward and address it is not being a real leader.” He called for adjusting the rate of growth in benefits. That wonkish dynamic characterized the night, with Trump apparently hewing to an endure-to-win strategy.

Summary: Trump looked tame during what was a policy-heavy debate.


Gwen Stefani and Jennifer Garner are just the latest crop of famous women whose husbands were allegedly involved with their nannies — and it’s a cliché Lauren Weedman knows all too well. The actress had been with her husband, David*, for 11 years when she found evidence of his affair with their teenage babysitter. Here, 47-year-old Weedman — author of “Miss Fortune: Fresh Perspectives on Having It All From Someone Who Is Not Okay” (Plume, out now) — tells The Post’s Lindsay Putnam how her marriage fell apart.

Three months after my husband, David, and I decided to end our marriage in 2013, I was impressed with how successfully our co-parenting strategy was working. Though he had moved out of our Los Angeles apartment, David would visit frequently as we tried to keep things as normal as possible for our 4-year-old son, Leo.

So when David accidentally left his laptop at my place, I didn’t think anything of turning it on. The computer had once belonged to me, and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t left any important videos — such as Leo’s birth — behind. But the oldest video on David’s computer wasn’t one of Leo splashing in the bathtub. It was of our babysitter, Simone, sans clothes — and it was dated 2011, a year before David and I had even gotten married.

David and I first met nearly two decades ago. We were both living in Seattle at the time, and appeared together in a small independent film. He had a beautiful wife, Hannah, and a young son, Jack. It wasn’t until after Hannah passed away from cancer and David and I were both living in NYC that I developed a crush on him — but since I was still married to my first husband at the time, our friendship remained just that.

After my divorce, I moved to LA in 2003 to pursue my acting career — and, as luck would have it, David and Jack moved to Santa Monica, Calif., not long after. For the first time, we were both single; it wasn’t long until a few theater dates turned into a full-blown romance.

But I always wondered if I measured up to his widow, Hannah, and constantly sought validation from David to try to soothe my anxiety.

“You know, it just hit me: If we end up staying together, you will go down in history as the great love of my life,” I told him one night after four years of dating.

I was hoping for a moment straight out of a romantic comedy, where he would call me the love of his life, too. Instead, all I got was an “Aww.”

But after six years of dating, I pushed David to have a baby. I was 40, and knew that this was probably my only shot at becoming a mother.

We had Leo the next year. David offered to stay at home with the baby; he loved being involved, and he was an amazing father. As the primary breadwinner, I continued to take on new acting roles — mostly theater gigs, but also occasional small parts on popular shows including “True Blood,” “New Girl” and “Masters of Sex.” When Leo was 1, David recommended we hire Simone, an 18-year-old aspiring actress whom he mentored. She would show up in low-cut tops and miniskirts, but I thought that was just because girls are so overly sexualized in Southern California. When a friend of mine told me that she had spotted them together in the street, I assumed that they were discussing her career.

David and I eventually made our union official and got married in 2012, when Leo was 1½. I thought I had the perfect little family. But David grew increasingly distant. He’d go on long bike rides and disappear for hours. After months of tense, one-sentence conversations, I snapped.

“You keep telling me that you’re ‘happier than you’ve ever been in your life’ being a stay-at-home dad, but you seem so unhappy. At least with me. I can’t take it anymore. Listen, David, if you’re not happy, if you don’t want to be married, then let’s split. We’ll be good co-parents. We’ll…”

“Yes. I think we should,” David interrupted before I could even finish my thought.

Our marriage was over, less than two years after it began. And three months later, I knew the real reason why.

When I found the video, I couldn’t even scream, as Leo was in the room. I’d always pictured catching a husband in an affair as a dramatic scene complete with the slashing of car tires. Instead, I called Simone and left a voice mail: “You’re not babysitting today. You’re never babysitting Leo again.”

It’s every woman’s nightmare, and it can happen to anyone — just look at Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck. It comes down to the fact that this whole manhood thing is tough. Feeling like a man, being a money earner, being the one who takes control — I thought they were clichés. But they’re true. Men think that they want to have all of that pressure off of them, but once it’s lifted, it can be emasculating to be less successful than your wife.

David, a former actor, was used to being told he’s amazing and handsome. But you don’t get a lot of ego strokes when you’re home with your kid all day. I was always too stressed out by working and parenting to do it for him.

But I should have followed my instincts. Other parents warned me about Simone, but as a feminist who works with at-risk girls, I didn’t want to pass on a new babysitter just because she was overly sexual. I thought she was just a lost, damaged kid. I thought if I didn’t hire her, it would make me look like some old insecure troll. I was trying to prove to David that I was cool.

If I didn’t feel comfortable, I should have just said so, and not cared what anyone else thought.

It’s been two years since David and I split, and he and Simone are still together. It can still be painful but, surprisingly, I’m grateful for the affair. I needed something to completely cut me off from my ex-husband. Otherwise, I would have stayed with him despite his constant unhappiness and the ongoing fighting. I was so committed. But it made me realize that I needed to put my own needs first. So, in some ways, I’m grateful to Simone. I’m grateful to be free.

When reached for comment, David said: ”The only thing I would say is that Lauren is a writer and a storyteller who, like many, combines truth with fiction in her art as a way of getting to a deeper truth. I respect her work and collaborated with her on several projects, and support her work as best I can. It makes no sense for me to say what is true and what is not, as I do not believe that is what her work is about; the book is about her truth and is not a documentary. Even though we were not able to be partners we have found a way to be great co-parents to my son and for that I am very grateful and that is the only thing that matters.”

*All names except for Lauren and Leo’s have been changed.

Summary: Gwen Stefani and Jennifer Garner are just the latest crop of famous women whose husbands were allegedly involved with their nannies — and it’s a cliché Lauren Weedman knows all too well. The actres…


EMC emc said on Thursday that it plans to spend $250 million on a restructuring plan that includes an undisclosed number of job cuts.

The company, which makes data storage equipment, revealed plans in July to cut $850 million in annual spending, but it did not disclose the associated costs for the restructuring. Based on a regulatory filing made late on New Year’s Eve, we now know.

The $250 million will cover severance for employees laid off, and other associated costs. The job cuts should be mostly done by the end of the first quarter and completed by the end of the year, EMC said.

Here is the complete text of the filing:

On December 30, 2015, as part of the previously announced program to reduce our existing cost base by $850 million annually, and consistent with prior restructuring actions to keep pace with changes in the industry, EMC Corporation management approved a restructuring plan. The plan consists of a reduction in force which will be substantially completed by the end of the first quarter of 2016 and fully completed by the end of 2016. The total charge resulting from this plan is expected to be approximately $250 million, with total cash payments associated with the plan expected to be $220 million.

WATCH: For more on the Dell-EMC deal

While all of this is going on, EMC is working to ensure that it’s planned $67 billion acquisition by Dell goes through. Dell CEO Michael Dell and EMC CEO Joe Tucci announced that deal, the largest ever in the tech hardware world, in early October. It is expected to close by the end of 2016.

Summary: Funds will cover severance for employees as part of a plan to to cut $850 million in expenses.