Pop star Justin Timberlake has become an investor in beverage startup Bai Brands, a partnership that will see the Grammy winner serve as "Chief Flavor Officer" as he helps steer product development and upcoming marketing campaigns.

"I've been a fan of Bai for a long time," Timberlake said in a statement. "This partnership was created from a shared desire to help people put better ingredients in their bodies without sacrificing taste."

Bai founder and CEO Ben Weiss told Fortune that selling a stake to Timberlake and bringing him on board for business decisions made sense for a few reasons. The singer and actor is actually a fan of the brand. And at the age of 35, he's also the core demographic Bai strives for—they target older millennials as their main consumer base.

"We don't need a celebrity to find success, we found success without them," Weiss said of his company, which was founded in 2009 and booked $120 million in sales last year. "But the reality is, this guy happens to be famous, he's a consumer of the product we pour our soul into, and he is truly respectful of our vision of the future, which he will now be a part of."

Bai, which is poised to generate $300 million in revenue this year, says Timberlake will work closely with the executive team to help develop new flavors, product launches, and marketing campaigns and digital content. On the product development side, Bai has been fairly active for a startup. It launched 13 new items in the last year, broadening a slate of fruit flavored-drinks that contain few calories, little sugar, and no artificial sweeteners.

On the marketing side, the Hamilton, N.J.-based company said it is expecting in 2017 to "more than double" the $60 million it spent on marketing this year. Timberlake, Weiss says, will be a "big part of our messaging next year."

The investment into Bai is one of many Timberlake has made over the years. He invested in audio technology company AfterMaster Audio Labs almost two years ago and famously was a backer of social-media website Myspace, which was acquired recently by Fortune parent Time Inc. The closest he's gotten to the traditional beverage industry is Timberlake's relationship with Beam Suntory: he has a tequila brand called Sauza 901.

Bai and Timberlake came together earlier this year when Weiss heard through a mutual friend that the A-lister was interested in an introduction. "Clearly, I took that meeting," Weiss said. He quickly learned Timberlake was a passionate fan of the brand—mixing Bai's Tanzania Lemonade Tea with his Sauza 901 tequila. Both parties quickly saw that a relationship would be mutually beneficial.

"Justin is one of the most creative people I've been around," Weiss said. "He truly cares about the beverage and has an opinion worth listening to whether it relates to flavor innovation or marketing."

For Bai, an investment and marketing jolt from Timberlake will help elevate the name-recognition of the brand. Timberlake is one of many well-known investors that have jumped at a chance to buy a stake of Bai. Other backers include Dr Pepper Snapple (dps), actor Ashton Kutcher, and private-equity firm Strand Equity Partners. The brand's fast growth has helped it achieve a potential valuation of more than $2 billion—including debt—as it reportedly mulls a sale.

Summary: Will serve as brand's first Chief Flavor Officer.


A man who allegedly raped a woman in a Brisbane alleyway more than five years ago has faced court, just as his co-accused was extradited from NSW.

He will seek bail on Friday.

The 24-year-old was arrested in Annerley on Wednesday morning and charged over the 2011 attack on the 20-year-old woman.

Police allege the two men forced her into an alleyway on the night of April 15, 2011, as she was walking along Manning Street to catch a bus after leaving a nearby venue.

It's alleged the pair violently raped her, inflicting both internal and external injuries.

The Brisbane man, who currently works as a barman, sat calmly in the dock of the Brisbane Magistrates Court during a brief hearing on Thursday.

Barrister Cliff Crawford told the court his client had only just received prosecution material and planned to make a bail application on Friday, when his 32-year-old co-accused will also appear in the same court.

The man was remanded in custody.

Police have said the two men are known to one another but have not revealed how.

Both are from Brisbane and face three counts of rape, two of sexual assault and one count of deprivation of liberty.

The 32-year-old was arrested in northern NSW at the same time as the younger defendant and has faced a Lismore court, where detectives sought his extradition to Queensland.

He arrived at the Brisbane watch house on Thursday morning.

The court heard he was in the process of being interviewed and was likely to appear on Friday.

The arrests came after police last week made a fresh appeal for public information, saying evidence was being retested with modern technologies.

Detectives from the sex crimes unit had also joined the investigation.

Following the arrests, Detective Inspector Garry Watts said the outcome showed no matter was ever considered "unsolvable" and the victim was relieved.

At the time of the incident, a senior detective said the woman was "aggressively raped in the worst way" he had seen throughout his career.

Summary: Two men accused of the "aggressive rape" of a 20-year-old in Brisbane more than five years ago are due to appear in court.


Debbie Reynolds was “frail” and in poor health in the months leading to her tragic death.

Reynolds died shortly after being rushed to the hospital due to a possible stroke on Wednesday — just one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher died of a heart attack.

“It’s a lot of times terrifying, watching my mother, who’s incredibly resilient, coping with certain health issues that she’s had,” Fisher told PEOPLE in May of Reynolds.

Reynolds, 84, was first hospitalized in 2012 after having an adverse reaction to prescription medications. At the time, the incident forced her to cancel any upcoming appearances.

“Debbie was hospitalized at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles due to an adverse reaction she experienced to a medication she was currently taking,” her rep said in a statement, according to Entertainment Tonight. “On the advice of her doctors, Reynolds has been forced to cancel appearances and concert engagements for the next three months.”

When Reynolds was honored with both a Governors Award in 2015, she was unable to attend the ceremony due to an unexpectedly long recovery from a surgery. Her granddaughter Billie Lourd, accepted the award for her “heartbroken” grandmother.

In May 2016, Fisher opened up about her mother’s health, revealing that Reynolds had suffered from a “spinal issue.”

“She had an illness that she’s recovered amazingly from,” Fisher told PEOPLE.

Fisher called her mother “resilient” despite ongoing health issues while filming their mother-daughter documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.

“We were really lucky we got really what probably could be her last [big project],” said Fisher.

Fisher said that her mother was “doing really well” although she was “a little more frail.”

The Star Wars actress also told the Washington Post that while Reynolds was recovering, her mother’s health had begun to “decline, physically and cognitively.”

In June, Reynolds’ son Todd told ABC News that “when [Reynolds] was in the hospital and barely recovering from an operation, she had a small stroke.”

Just last month, Fisher spoke of her admiration for her mother while appearing on the NPR show Fresh Air.

“She’s an immensely powerful woman, and I just admire my mother very much,” she said. “There’s very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life, and raised children, and had horrible relationships, and lost all her money, and got it back again. I mean, she’s had an amazing life, and she’s someone to admire.”

Reynolds was last photographed publicly alongside Fisher at the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Summary: Debbie Reynolds was “frail” and in poor health in the months leading to her tragic death. Reynolds died shortly after being rushed to the hospital due to a possible stroke on Wednesday …


Cynthia Coords & Frank Turnbull

MATCHMAKING MOM Cynthia Coords, 33, a mortgage sales broker, met Frank Turnbull, 34, a police officer, through family. "We were both at his cousin's wedding a few years back, but we were both doing our own thing," says the bride. "But his mother kept suggesting we get together. So we started E-mailing and finally decided to go out to dinner last summer, and then it happened very quickly. We got engaged three months later."

AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION In late November of last year, the couple went out for dinner and a show. "He was a nervous wreck at dinner and I couldn't figure out why," says the bride. "I thought something was wrong. We had front-row tickets for Blue Man Group and we're sitting there and all of a sudden there's my name on the ÂTelePrompTer. I was totally in shock. In front of the whole audience, he pulled me out of my seat and everyone read from the screen 'Will you marry me?' It was a fun proposal; we still laugh about it being 'oh so romantic' as I'm standing there with all this debris in my hair from the show."

REGAL ROMANCE Trumpeters played the wedding march as the bride walked down the aisle wearing a strapless silk gown with a French bustle. She carried a bouquet of ivory roses. Bridesmaids wore champagne Bill Levkoff tank-style tops with long skirts.

CASTLE TO CRETE About 150 guests gathered at the Sand Castle in Franklin Square for the reception. Tables were decorated with vendella rose centerpieces. The couple danced to "Love Is Divine" by Seal. "We liked that song because it starts slow and romantic," says the bride, "and then picks up at the end by the time everyone else is joining in." After a dinner offering six entrÃ©e choices, a vanilla custard and strawberry cake was served for dessert. The couple honeymooned in Greece.

Karen Lewis & Jerome Benoit

SMOOTH OPERATOR Karen Lewis, 34, met Jerome Benoit, 33, about four years ago on a girls' night out. "I am so not a club person, but my cousin came into town for a visit and wanted to go out, so I called my girlfriend and the three of us went out," says the bride. "I met him at the bar and we started talking, we chatted the whole night, and then moved it to the dance floor." Lewis felt instantly comfortable with Benoit, a reading teacher at an elementary school, because she works as a grade school physical therapist. "We talked about teaching. ... He was so sweet, he wasn't pushy, he didn't use any lines, so I gave him my number." The problem was, Benoit saved the digits by entering them into his cell phone's voice recorder. When he tried to listen later, he couldn't hear the playback over the noise of the club. "A week went by," says Lewis, "and I told my co-workers he never called. They said, 'Well, you know the school he works at, call him!' So I got up my nerve and I did."

DASHING DISHER The Bronx couple soon began dating exclusively and eventually went ring shopping. Benoit proposed in October of last year. "Later, he went and picked up the ring, and one day I'm cooking dinner and we're getting ready to eat," says the bride, "and he just took the ring out and got on one knee and said some very sweet things."

SWEPT AWAY The couple displayed a "memory board" - made by the bride - in the church's vestibule. "My grandparents and both of Jerome's parents are deceased, so I decorated a bulletin board with wedding pictures of them and shots of them when they were young." The bride wore a strapless, beaded A-line gown with a scalloped neckline. She carried a bouquet of three dozen movie star roses sprinkled with stephanotis; bridesmaids wore salmon-colored dresses. After the ceremony, the couple "jumped the broom," a tradition that symbolizes a step into their new life together. Lewis decorated her own broom with satin ribbons, silk flowers, leaves and pearl beads.

EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY About 180 guests celebrated with the couple at Antun's in Queens Village, where a sax player made the dinner hour jazzy and a deejay later kept everyone dancing. Friends and family received CDs with the couple's favorite love songs, including their first dance tune, "For the First Time," by Rod Stewart. Lewis danced with her father to "Because I Love You" by Celine Dion. In addition to a wedding cake, the bride's cousin provided black cake, the traditional rum-based matrimonial dessert made in the West Indies. The couple enjoyed a honeymoon in St. Lucia.

Tonia Chiffon Murrell & Boyde Bevon Greenaway

SERENE SWEETHEART Tonia Chiffon Murrell, 36, met Boyde Bevon Greenaway, 33, at a single parents church event about three years ago. "I said to myself, 'She's cute,'" says the groom. "And, later, we hooked up a few times because we were planning an event together for the church. I guess you call it chemistry; I liked her personality. She's so sweet." Two years ago in June, the Bronx couple went on their first date. "I had asked her to go out after church, but I was handling all sorts of church business, so I was running around, talking to this person and that," recalls Greenaway, an electrician. "And I remembered I was supposed to meet up with her, and I looked over, and she was just standing there, patiently waiting for me. I said, 'Wow, that's it.' I was struck by it because most women, they're not having that. I dropped everything, and I thought, 'She is the one. I'm not letting her get away.'"

MISLEADING MAN Last November, Greenaway asked Murrell, a secretary at the Montefiore AIDS clinic, to dinner. "I spent the whole evening trying to discourage her from thinking we were getting married anytime soon," he says. "I told her me and my friends made a pact that we wouldn't get engaged until all three were ready, and she knew the two other guys were way behind me in that." The bride was discouraged. "I thought, 'Oh, no, I'm going to have to break up with him soon because I'm hitting my two-year limit!'" she says. After dinner, he walked her to the door. After he turned away, he suddenly said, "Oh, wait a sec. I forgot something." He walked back and popped the question. "She was screaming 'Yes!'," says Greenaway, "and then she opened her door and inside all her friends and balloons and cake were waiting."

LOVE BLOOMS The groom, from the Caribbean, says the couple's dream wedding would have been at a beach, but given the city limits, they opted for an outdoor ceremony and celebration at Sakura Park. The 2-acre park takes its name from the Japanese word for "cherry blossom" and is still home to some of the original trees - a gift to the city in 1912. About 100 friends and relatives gathered at the gazebo to watch the two wed on a perfect sunny morning. The bride entered the ceremony to "If Only You Knew" by Patti LaBelle. She wore an off-the-shoulder, satin A-line gown with a beaded bodice and carried a bouquet of white roses and lavender hydrangea. Later, the couple danced to Alicia Keys' "If I Ain't Got You." The couple honeymooned in Atlantic City.

To submit your upcoming N.Y.-area wedding, E-mail date, location and contact info to downtheaisle@nydailynews.com or call 212- 210-1654

Summary: DOWN THE AISLE BY MICHELLE MEGNA FRANK KOESTER DESIREE NAVARRO Cynthia Coords & Frank Turnbull June 25, 2005 East Meadow, L.I sales broker, met Frank Turnbull, 34, a police officer, through family. "We were both at his cousin's wedding a few years back, but we were both doing our own thing,"says the bride. "But his mother kept suggesting we get together. So we started E-mailing and finally decided to go out to dinner last


Sunday, June 14th 1998, 2:04AM

To kick off the 1998 summer reading season, we've enlisted the help of six literate readers as reviewers. They've read a stack of the books most likely to be toted to the beach, and here are the results.

Reviewer: Gavin Fraser, 32-year-old director of finance, Brooklyn

If you happen to be a city-living male in your 30s with an awareness of pop culture, Nick Hornby is an author you'll enjoy immensely. If you've ever found yourself inventing destinations in order to go driving with the windows up, playing Nirvana at a volume that threatens the structural integrity of your car, Nick Hornby is an author you'll swear got into your head and wrote a novel just for you.

The hysterically funny observations and right-on opinions in " About a Boy" should come as no surprise to anyone who read Hornby's first book, "High Fidelity."

"About a Boy" takes place in 1993 London and revolves around Will Freeman, a 36-year-old single guy whose daily activities revolve around listening to music, catching the latest Mike Leigh film, browsing used-record shops and chasing women.

"Chasing" is probably the wrong word, because Will isn't too actively involved in much of anything, and he likes it that way. He doesn't have to work and never has which has afforded him a contented bachelor's life of leisure: hip clothes, music, TV, beer and no commitments.

The other main character, Marcus, is a 12-year-old boy who is anything but hip. The son of a depressed and suicidal single mother, he is the nerdy new kid in his seventh-grade class who gets hounded by bullies and can't make friends. The closest he comes to cool is an appreciation of his mother's Joni Mitchell album, which doesn't cut it with the skateboard and Snoop Doggy Dogg sensibilities of his peers.

Not exactly a match made in heaven, but Will's got something Marcus needs an informed male influence and Marcus provides Will with something he thinks he might be interested in access to single mothers.

Their paths cross when Will joins a single-parents group in order to test his new theory: London is crawling with beautiful single mothers who are "handicapped" by the fact they have children, thereby leveling the playing field and making them accessible to an average bloke like himself.

What follows is a lighthearted yet touching story of a boy who grows up and a man who does the same.

Marcus fills a void in Will's life he never gave much credence to. At a minimum, Marcus at least gives Will something to do. Will, for his part, slowly brings Marcus up to speed on such things as Adidas high tops and Kurt Cobain.

Throughout the story, Hornby's sense of humor keeps the reader laughing and turning pages. His more profound messages regarding the important things in life weave their way into his characters' thoughts and actions. There is an emphasis on the positive side of every situation, which for Hornby seems to be the secret to getting through life's more difficult times a streetwise philosophy I think holds up very well.

Reviewer: Loren Miller, 33-year-old businessman, New Jersey

Set in the Louisiana bayou country, James Lee Burke's novel is about people's struggles, their weaknesses, failures and the demons that torment their souls for the wrongdoing they have committed over the years. We find detective Robuicheaux (perhaps the only honest cop in the entire Atchafalaya bayou) turning a blind eye to the shortcomings and criminal acts of others in order to pursue his crusade against a single act of evil that was committed some 40 years earlier.

Robicheaux is not only consumed by the ghost of a historical murder, he's also a victim of his own ineptness failing to prevent numerous other murders and failing to bring to justice a single suspect.

I found the novel too trite. It fails to define the cause of this investigation, and it is cumbersome in that it features way too many characters, too many locations and too many plots.

I thought Burke's attempt at discussing social issues was stereotyped. We are handed a female partner who's gay and a best friend who's an alcoholic. The gay partner is an unattractive woman who uses crude and vile language; she has a short temper and enjoys berating men and physcially abusing them. Burke's self-righteous attempt at discussing alcoholism is appalling.

The book does have its good points. Burke has a gift for using vivid metaphors, and his sense of humor is subtle. He displays tremendous knowledge of the corrupt Atchafalaya bayou and the plight of the African-American man today and some 40 years ago.

As a reader of mysteries and thrillers, I would prefer to continue reading the likes of Stephen King, John Grisham and Robert Ludlum. While Burke certainly is a talented writer, I think it will take a few more novels and life experiences for him to attain that level of greatness.

It Was a Very Good 'Year'

A Widow For One Year

Reviewer: Marlene Eisner, 60-year-old housewife, Long Island

John Irving's latest novel is an easy read, which kicks off with the deaths of Thomas (17) and Timothy (15) Cole, killed in an automobile accident while vactioning with their parents.

How this tragedy shapes others' lives is the theme of the book, which spans 40 years the opening scene occuring five years after the boys' demise.

The main character is Ruth Cole, the dead boys' sister, who is abandoned at age 4 by her bereaved mother. Ruth's great success as a novelist, her rocky relationship with her lecherous father, the apprehension she feels about her "missing" mother and her relationship with men are all tainted by the tragic circumstance into which she was born.

Irving's fluid prose successfully brings the reader back and forth in time, and his characters are excessive and outlandish. For all its tragedy and violence, this book has many hilariously funny passages. The novel is also sexually explicit some of it's funny, most of it's ugly but none of it is titillating. The most tedious aspects of this book are the constant refrences to the craft of writing; these took me out of the main story, which otherwise flowed very well.

I enjoyed this book, I think John Irving writes beautifully and is a wonderful storyteller. But this is not light reading. I would recommend it to people who want to sink their teeth into a thought-provoking tale.

Reviewer: Henry Malone, 42-year-old writer, the Bronx

Richard Price's powerful new novel opens mid-mystery: Brenda Martin, a white woman, staggers dazed and injured into a hospital E.R. She tells the police that she has been carjacked by a black man and that her sleeping young son was in the stolen car.

Thus begins an urban roller coaster of racial tension, police brutality and cultural rage in the fictional New Jersey city of Dempsy.

The plot is a complex web, both tangled and taut, ready to combust. It is a story of deception, of two Americas, a tale of two cities: one black, one white.

Perched solidly in the middle of this web is Lorenzo Council (Big Daddy), a black detective, born and reared in the Armstrong Project Houses. Council aptly named, considering the streetwise counsel he freely dispenses to the displaced youths of these projects is assigned to investigate the carjacking. He becomes teamed with Jesse Haus, a young white reporter for the local newspaper, also a product of the projects. She and Council form an unlikely and, at times, unwilling partnership investigating the crime.

Freedomland was an amusement park in the Bronx, built in the shape of the United States. Its novelistic twin is Freedomtown, the ruins of an abandoned amusement park dividing the black city of Dempsy and the white city of Cannon. For the people of Dempsy and for many who live in the dense urban centers of America the promise of Freedomland is a decayed and broken hope.

Music is everywhere in this work, from chapter titles ("96 Tears," "Higher and Higher," "Steal Away") to the rhythm and blues and soul music that play in the background. There is also the music of language, the syncopated slang of streetspeak sung across these pages like shorthand sheet music. There is the jive jargon of the projects. There are the jugglers, the actors and the shooters. Price brilliantly gives life to the unconscious, downbeat rhythm of casual conversation that usually goes unnoticed. And there is the lyrical music of prose, especially when Council brings Martin to Freedomtown in one last attempt to solve the crime.

As this rapid ride of a novel ends, Council invites Haus to take another ride with him, a ride of time and place, through the dark corners and tumultuous events of the last few days. Price refers to this as a sort of "stations of the cross," a journey of redemption. But for Martin and her son Cody, for the city of Dempsy and in fact for a racially divided America, there is no redeemer, no savior.

Reviewer: Leslee Johnson, 24-year-old student, Manhattan

In the sweltering heat of a small-town Texas afternoon, a young black-haired beauty with eyes as dark and deep as the most secret wishing well dreams of a caravan of rainbow-colored wagons "strung out across fields of grass like soap beads."

Meet Arlinigton Mowbray Arley for short Jacquelyn Mitchard's compelling character from "The Most Wanted," who yearns for a love she has never had. With a winsome combination of childlike trust and womanly grace, the 14-year-old Arley believes she has found the love she longs for in Dillon Thomas LeGrande, a handsome inmate at a nearby prison.

Arley and Dillon marry and, during their first conjugal visit, conceive a child. When Dillon breaks out of prison and begins a search to reclaim his bride and baby, Arley finds herself a fugitive, torn between the man she loves (despite her knowledge of the danger) and a life of her own, rich with the challenge of college and creating a safe home for herself and her daughter.

Mitchard has given us a page-turner with heart and intelligence. She keeps the action hovering and building like a hot Texas afternoon thunderstorm.

More importantly, Mitchard gives us the story of two brave women, Arley Mowbray and Annie Singer, Arley's attorney and friend. Mitchard plumbs the murky depths of the heartbreak and loneliness of new love and old love, and soars up into the reaches of self-discovery and the freedom of a love in which each person brings out the very best in the other.

"The Most Wanted" is a more mature and original work than Mitchard's previous book, "The Deep End of the Ocean." The main characters are finely drawn and compelling, though there are passages that wax so sentimental, I felt I was reading a Lifetime movie. But these moments are rare enough to be forgotten, or at least overshadowed by the grittier parts and the feisty courage of the women. Besides, who doesn't enjoy a good Lifetime movie now and then?

by Fred Imus with Mike Lupica

Samir Patel, 24-year-old student, Manhattan

Somehow, Fred Imus brother of radio personality Don Imus got "The Fred Book" published. Fred is the owner of a mail-order business and a regular on his brother's show. Why has he written a book? Even he doesn't seem to know.

"The Fred Book" is supposed to be an irreverent and politically incorrect compilation of very brief anecdotes, jokes, and observations about ex-wives, Santa Fe, dogs that act like women, farm sex, White Rouse interns and, most unbelievably, O.J Simpson.

I don't listen to the radio show and I don't know Fred, but after reading Don's introduction to the book, I expected something different a fiery, charming read. There is nothing of that sort in this book.

I have trouble understanding why anyone would care that Fred thinks Dan Rather is the best newsman on television or that Fred ranks himself, on a scale of 1 to 10, a 4.

This book is innocuous, slight and boring. I believe, in the pop-culture backwash of "Seinfeld," authors who endeavor to write a book of observations have to really keep their eyes open or have a unique perspective. I can't accuse Fred of either.

Perhaps people who listen to Don's show will find it funnier than I did, but I think even the most rabid Fred fans will be disappointed because there is just so little here, and virtually nothing we have not heard repeatedly before: O.J. is a murderer. So what? Clinton had sex. Big deal. Dogs and farm animals can be funny. Anything else? Just give me something, anything.

Fred tells his readers that neither he nor Don can think of any reason why anyone would buy this book. On that score, I'm with them.

Summary: To kick off the 1998 summer reading season, we've enlisted the help of six literate readers as reviewers. They've read a stack of the books most likely to be toted to the beach, and here are the results. A British 'Boy' Wonder About a Boy by Nick Hornby (Putnam, $22.95) Reviewer: Gavin Fraser, 32-year-old director of finance, Brooklyn If you happen to be a city-living male in your 30s with an awareness of pop culture,


Monday, July 10th 2000, 2:13AM

Michael J. Fox avoided one expensive bullet.

When the star was getting ready to decorate his Fifth Ave. apartment a few years ago, his first choice was the hot design firm run by Stephen Sills and James Huniford.

But Fox, who had yet to start "Spin City," was between shows at the time, and the snobby decorators regarded him as "uncool," reports a source. Fox and his wife, Tracy Pollan, hired Marc Charbonnet instead, and their apartment hit the cover of Architectural Digest.

Last week, Sills and Huniford - who also decorated Tina Turner's home in the South of France - got a front page of their own. New York magazine told a tale of a lawsuit accusing the duo of overcharging their superrich clients for antiques.

Sills and Huniford are currently in arbitration with Dennis Alter, the multi-millionaire Advanta credit card magnate, who had the decorators do his 38,000-square-foot dream home outside Philadelphia. Just one of the problems: a dining room table similar to the one the Alters purchased for $65,000 had recently been sold at auction for a mere $5,750.

Fox should count his blessings.

Denise Rich went right to the top. The ex-wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich has wrangled some of the biggest names in the world for her G&P Foundation fund-raiser on Nov. 30. The charity is named for Rich's daughter Gabrielle, who died of cancer.

President Clinton is the honorary chairman. Queen Noor, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Paul McCartney are honorees. Larry King will be the master of ceremonies.

And the list of folks who've volunteered to perform or help out in other ways includes singer Marc Anthony (Denise wrote "Remember Me" on his current album), Yankees Roger Clements and Derek Jeter, singers Natalie Cole, Patti LaBelle, Olivia Newton-John and Luther Vandross, actors Fran Drescher and Jane Seymour.

Chris Rock is busy this summer. The comedian's HBO show premieres this season on Aug. 14. He's just finished shooting a Paramount movie, "Down to Earth," here in New York. And he's writing, producing and appearing in "Pootie Tang," another movie for Paramount that's based on the character from his HBO show.

The film is shooting in Bed-Stuy with Lance Crouther - a standup comic who writes for Rock's HBO show - starring as Pootie. He gets a duet with rap star Missy Elliot.

Rock has a small role in the movie. But that doesn't mean he didn't create a stir when he went on the set.

"Walking in the nabe with Chris is very funny," reports one spy. "People keep coming up, shaking his hand. 'Oh yeah, I knew you,' 'I knew your sister,' this one and that one [said]. Chris didn't know any of 'em."

Is the doctor who's looking for love a deadbeat dad?

Dr. Paul Dantzig, 52, a dermatologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center, has gotten a lot of attention by offering a $200,000 reward to the person who finds him a wife.

But any woman prepared to walk down the aisle with him better keep her day job: The lonely doc has not paid a dime in child support for 12 years, Saturday's London Times reported.

According to Times reporter Joanna Coles, Dantzig says he was divorced 17 years ago, and that he had two kids, who are now 18 and 22. He adds he hasn't seen them since 1988.

"I got arrested a couple of times trying to see the kids. Maybe they'll see my picture in the paper, but I don't know if they'll recognize me," Dantzig tells the Insider.

The lovelorn doctor told Coles that the ad was his 90-year-old mother's idea. He says he's already received about 100 replies, and he plans to screen them all carefully.

P.S. to future bride: Dantzig lives with his mom.

SHE'LL NEVER EAT DINNER IN THIS TOWN AGAIN

Princess Firyal of Jordan is in hot water here over a dinner party across the pond.

The very social ex-sister-in-law of the late King Hussein invited a slew of international glitterati to her showcase London home recently to celebrate the marriage of Mercedes-Benz heir Muck Flick to Corinne Mueller-Vivil (her family makes the German version of Tic-Tacs).

So many New Yorkers were in town that the guest list swelled to more than 110.

So the Princess called the whole thing off. Friends like socialite Nan Kempner, Nancy Reagan pal Betsy Bloomingdale, and Kay Saatchi, the estranged wife of ad man Charles, were told the dinner had been canceled, several sources say.

But Flick, who'd invited Firyal to his wedding, asked her to arrange a small dinner party. Only 46 people - the number the royal dining room table can seat comfortably - were there. And, of course, news filtered back to the disinvited.

"The princess tried to rent the Serpentine Gallery [in London's Hyde Park]," says a defender. "But she couldn't, for love or money." At least it wasn't for lack of trying.

Â NOT SO BIZARRE: The August issue of Harper's Bazaar picks seven women who personify success. Why aren't we surprised that Money Honey Maria Bartiromo made the cut? The CNBC star - and the first reporter to broadcast from the trading floor of the stock exchange - married Saul Steinberg's son, Jono, last year. She's such a phenom that some Wall Streeters regard her cowlick as a market indicator. But Bartiromo modestly downplays her influence. "I don't really think that's a force in a $17 trillion market," she tells Bazaar.

Â FOXY MOVE: L.A. television personality Jillian Barberie can thank Regis Philbin for the recent brightening of her career prospects. The statuesque co-anchor of Fox' "Good Day L.A." show got so much buzz when she did a guest spot as Philbin's sidekick on "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee" that she is being tapped for her own Fox show, reports an industry source. Meanwhile, she's going to do the weather for Fox' NFL pre-game show. Way to go, girl!

Â IT'S A GOOD THING: Chalk one up for Martha Stewart. She won the latest round in her fight against Harry Macklowe, her next-door neighbor at her second home in East Hampton on Georgica Pond. The developer was trying to prevent the guru of good taste from building on the 2.5-acre property, but a panel of judges just ruled that she can add on to the sleek modern home known as Travertine House. Now she's planning scads of improvements including an office, library, and gym. The idea, reports one source, is to it use for photo shoots for her TV shows and magazines, just as she does at her other Hampton's pad, a Victorian beauty on Lily Pond Lane.

Summary: Michael J. Fox avoided one expensive bullet. When the star was getting ready to decorate his Fifth Ave. apartment a few years ago, his first choice was the hot design firm run by Stephen Sills and James Huniford. But Fox, who had yet to start "Spin City,"was between shows at the time, and the snobby decorators regarded him as "uncool,"reports a source. Fox and


By PHYLLIS FURMAN DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER

Tuesday, January 30th 2001, 2:20AM

In the Imax movie "Everest," a team of climbers encounters deadly ice storms and treacherous avalanches as they try to scale the world's largest mountain.

Imax' co-chairmen, Richard Gelfond and Bradley Wechsler, have felt their pain: Their giant-screen movie company, known for flicks like the 3-D "Into the Deep" and "Fantasia 2000," is suffering amid a devastating shakeout in the movie theater business.

While Imax doesn't own many screens itself, it generates most of its cash by leasing sound and projection systems to theaters like Manhattan's popular Sony multiplex at Broadway and W. 68th St.

But in the last year, its movie theater customers have faltered badly. Some chains have filed for bankruptcy, following an aggressive expansion binge in which they borrowed heavily to build fancy megaplexes, with stadium seating and digital sound. Others are on the brink of bankruptcy, including Loews Cineplex, which controls a big share of marquees in the New York area.

The turmoil has left Imax with a shrinking customer base and a stack of bills it hasn't been able to collect. Just last week, the company, based outside Toronto, warned investors that it would post a substantial loss for 2000.

Imax' stock has been panned by Wall Street, plummeting from a 52-week high of nearly $30 last August to its close yesterday at $4.25.

The mounting problems have forced Gelfond and Wechsler to ditch a plan to sell the company, claiming they'd never find a buyer willing to pay what it was worth.

It could get worse. As the box-office turmoil continues, Wall Street is watching closely to see whether Imax will be forced to follow its movie theater chain customers into bankruptcy court.

"We've been increasingly concerned," said Russ Solomon, senior credit officer in charge of media and entertainment companies for credit rating agency Moody's. "If things get bad, they could get ugly in a hurry."

Gelfond, a former Wall Street dealmaker who met Wechsler at defunct investment banking firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, insisted Imax is not in danger of bankruptcy. He said Imax has enough cash to withstand the downturn in the theater business, which he says could last at least through next year.

But others aren't as sure about Imax' future. "Things could get worse," said Katherine Styponias, a media and entertainment analyst at Prudential Securities.

Imax' woes mark a big setback for Gelfond and Wechsler, who acquired the 33-year-old company in 1994 for $70 million, backed by investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella, which owns 33% of the company.

At the time, Imax theaters were mostly found in museums and planetariums, such as the American Museum of Natural History on the upper West Side, and showed science flicks like "Beavers" and "The Dream Is Alive."

But Gelfond and Wechsler saw much more in the giant Imax screens, which use 3-D technology that lets moviegoers feel like they are part of the action. The partners were ready to move Imax beyond a limited audience to mainstream Hollywood.

"The goal was to have one Imax theater in every multiplex," Styponias said.

For a while, their strategy clicked. Imax opened 221 giant screens in 28 locations worldwide - about half in the U.S.

The Imax partners made a major push to lure mainstream audiences, and the effort began to pay off: In 1998, "Everest" hit big, grossing more than $100 million.

They were even more hopeful last January, when Disney released "Fantasia 2000" - the first full-length, animated film to use Imax technology.

While Disney kept a big chunk of the film's $75 million box-office take, the movie "proved Imax could attract commercial audiences," Gelfond said.

But the good times didn't last. And, at the same time their theater customers began to falter, the Imax pair also suffered setbacks in Hollywood.

They were forced to drop plans to release an Imax version of DreamWorks' upcoming animated movie "Shrek," because of the high cost of rolling it out in Imax theaters. "Shrek" will open on conventional movie screens in May.

Entertainment insiders have questioned whether Imax can ever fulfill its ambition of becoming a Hollywood force, given the high cost of making Imax films and the limited commercial appeal of bigscreen movies.

For now, Imax still has a shot at a potential windfall. The company is one of three exclusive licensees of Texas Instruments technology that will be used to convert theaters to digital projection.

That puts Imax at the forefront of what is expected to be a revolutionary trend: The conversion of all movie theater chains from conventional projectors to digital technology. But experts said the transformation could take years, especially because struggling movie chains don't have the money to invest right now.

"Digital will come, but its not the Holy Grail, because there's so much cost involved," said Dave Davis, an entertainment analyst at investment advisers Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin. "Eventually theaters will convert, but it won't happen soon," agreed Prudential's Styponias.

The question now is whether Imax can hold out. Gelfond said it can. "We're in a difficult period," the Imax chief said. "But we'll get through it."

Summary: In the Imax movie "Everest,"a team of climbers encounters deadly ice storms and treacherous avalanches as they try to scale the world's largest mountain. Imax' co-chairmen, Richard Gelfond and Bradley Wechsler, have felt their pain: Their giant-screen movie company, known for flicks like the 3-D "Into the Deep"and "Fantasia 2000,"is suffering amid a devastating shakeout in the movie theater business. While Imax doesn't own


Brett Miller is the president of Custom Software by Preston (CSP). For more than 10 years CSP has impressed clients with highly effective software solutions and teams of multi-talented software engineers.

There are multiple approaches you can take to staffing when it comes to IT projects. You can deal directly with full-time or freelance/contracted employees, or you can outsource using local or offshore development firms.

Determining which of these methods of staffing software development projects is right for your company can be a challenging endeavor, and three opposing characteristics of business need to be considered: cost, risk and convenience. Each of these three concepts demands extensive consideration in the specific context of the project and the organization as a whole.

Below is an overview of what you need to consider and the pros and cons of each option for IT staffing.

First and foremost, you must decided whether to work with individuals or development companies. Regardless of if you’re working with developers in-house, or remotely, or if they’re full-time or contracted, the first decision you need to make is whether you want to work with individual developers or companies that specialize in outsourced development.

The underlying questions to ask here are simple: Do you want to manage the small details of the project? Do you have the time, expertise and desire to handle this responsibility? Or, would you rather use your time for something else and leave those details up to an expert?

Risk management is about assessing (and minimizing) the likelihood of delays or failures. Minimizing the effects of unforeseen difficulties is also critical. Basically, you want to reduce the likelihood of anything that affects the bottom line.

Throwing money at a project does not always guarantee the best outcome, however, being prepared to commit to the appropriate budgeting often does. In other words, a company that is prepared to fund success is more likely to achieve that success.

You can minimize risk by performing due diligence when selecting a company or individual to work with, clearly defining the project scope, expectations and milestones in any development contracts, and allocating enough money to hire competent developers.

The most talented technical candidates do demand higher hourly rates, but as indicated already, their expertise reduces risk and the number of required project hours. Spending additional money also allows the convenience of implementing the exact approach your company desires, while at the same time potentially simplifying the candidate selection process.

The underlying question here (related to convenience) is how much time do you want to dedicate to finding the most qualified talent? How confident are you in being effective in the selection process? Does your budget line up wth expectations?

Let’s take a deeper look at some of the benefits and drawbacks of each method of IT staffing:

(Moderate Convenience, Moderate Cost, Moderate Risk)

(High Convenience, Moderate Cost, Moderate Risk)

(Low Convenience, Moderate Cost, High Risk)

(High Convenience, High Cost, Low Risk)

(Moderate Convenience, Low Cost, High Risk)

Remember, this is a balancing act between the factors of cost, risk and convenience. No one goes into an IT project expecting it to fail, but the fact is, many projects do fail. Properly handling risk management, decision making and cost control demands flexibility and advanced planning. Thoroughly understanding the options available and potential risks when staffing a software project will help ensure the most effective results.

Let us know in the comments your experiences with any of these options for IT project staffing.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jamesbenet

Summary: IT staffing can be tricky business.  It comes down to comparing cost, risk and convenience. Here are a few things to consider when hiring for a development project.


By Andrew Cawthorne and Enrique Andres Pretel

CARACAS | Tue Sep 28, 2010 4:01pm EDT

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela's newly empowered opposition would not be able to block his socialist legislative program and challenged them to go to the voters immediately if they wanted to unseat him.

Having boycotted parliamentary elections in 2005, opposition parties in the recently-united Democratic Unity bloc won 65 seats, or more than a third, of the National Assembly in the South American nation's weekend election, against 98 seats for the ruling Socialist Party.

Given they also obtained half the popular vote, Democratic Unity hailed the result as a triumph and set their sights on defeating Chavez at the next presidential election in 2012.

But the 56-year-old Chavez -- who has been in power since 1999 and remains Venezuela's most popular politician -- ridiculed their celebrations and threw down a gauntlet.

"I challenge them. As they say they are the majority ... call a referendum. Why wait another two years to get rid of Chavez?" he told a news conference late on Monday.

"Come for me! Here I am ... If not, see you in 2012."

Venezuela's constitution would allow a so-called "recall referendum" on the president if the opposition obtained about 3.5 million signatures requesting it. But Chavez comfortably won one in 2004, and the opposition is wary of trying again.

Opposition leader Antonio Ledezma responded to Chavez's challenge by saying he should be focused on other things.

"Get to work! Stop the shanty-towns in the hills around Caracas from falling down," Ledemza, who is also Caracas city mayor, told a news conference.

"Don't invite us to another battle, more confrontation. Invite us to work together against crime, poverty, the electricity shortage, the crisis in hospitals ... This is not a war. We are not going to fix these problems with insults."

The opposition want to exploit their new profile in parliament and increased acceptance among Venezuela's nearly 29 million people to mount a serious challenge in two years.

For that, they need to maintain unity among the more than 30 parties and groups that make up Democratic Unity, and present a program that goes beyond just opposition to Chavez.

"The opposition still lacks real cohesion, a credible message and attractive candidates, so voters were really voting for, or against, Chavez," said Daniel Kerner, an analyst with Eurasia Group, following Sunday's legislative vote.

"Chavez remains powerful and, most importantly, his continuity was not at stake here. Any view that Chavez will lose those elections (in 2012) will be premature."

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt Sunday's vote was something of a watershed for an opposition movement used to in-fighting and being outwitted by Chavez.

Investors welcomed the peaceful nature of the election and the opposition's strong showing. Venezuela's benchmark 2027 bond rose 2.5 percent on Monday and another 0.6 percent to a bid price of 72.75 by early afternoon on Tuesday.

Analysts said strong oil prices and greater appetite for global risk were also behind that.

Chavez insisted the opposition, which will take their new assembly seats in early January, would not block his reforms.

"Ninety-nine percent of laws are passed by simple majority and we won the simple majority ... They won't be able to win a majority unless they raise both hands," he said laughing.

In reality, the ruling Socialist Party fell well shy of the two thirds or 110 seats needed, experts say, to pass major laws like shakeups of education and health or big nationalizations.

But Chavez does have three months before the new lawmakers take office, so the Assembly is a rubber-stamp until then. He wants further reforms to grass-roots political structures and may seek more nationalizations in the bank and food sectors.

The Socialists are one vote short of the 99 seats, or three fifths, needed to give Chavez decree powers that would enable him to bypass parliament, so there will be plenty of political speculation over whether they could lure one legislator over.

In a four-hour news conference at his presidential palace, Chavez vowed to "speed up" programs, without being specific.

The baseball-mad former soldier rose from poor rural roots and first tried to take power in a 1992 coup before winning at a vote in 1998. Since then, he has become a leading U.S. critic and one of the world's most recognizable politicians.

Chavez has an authoritarian style and is tough with critics -- but bristles at accusations of being a dictator.

"If you have eyes, look. If you have ears, listen," he said. "This is an infinitely democratic project."

(Additional reporting by Eyanir Chinea; Editing by Anthony Boadle)


LONDON | Mon Sep 1, 2008 4:04pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Children born to fathers older than 30 are more likely to develop bipolar disorder, a common condition sometimes known as manic depression, researchers reported on Monday.

The paternal risk also grows with the age of a father, rising to 37 percent by the time a man is 55 years, said Emma Frans, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the study.

The brain disorder causes extreme shifts in mood, energy and ability to function. It is marked by high periods of elation or irritability and low periods of sadness and hopelessness that can last months.

The findings published in the Archives of General Psychiatry bolster evidence that children of older fathers are at higher risk of psychological conditions such as bipolar disorder, autism and schizophrenia, the researchers said.

"Advanced paternal age is a risk factor for bipolar disorder in the offspring," Frans and colleagues wrote.

One explanation could be that a man's degraded sperm quality as he ages could increase the likelihood of genetic mutations that may lead to biopolar disorder, Frans said.

"Despite the robust evidence supporting the association between paternal age and severe mental disorders, the association between advanced paternal age and bipolar disorder has not been investigated," the team added.

The findings are another step toward unraveling the mystery of how the condition affecting an estimated 1 percent to 3 percent of adults worldwide arises, the researchers said.

Last month, an international research team linked two genetic variants to an increased risk for the disease, which is often treated with AstraZeneca Plc's blockbuster drug Seroquel. The condition often runs in families.

The Swedish researchers used a national medical registry to identify nearly 14,000 men and women diagnosed with bipolar disorder. For each person, they also randomly selected five people of the same sex and age without the condition.

After factoring for maternal age, the researchers found that children born to fathers older than 30 had an 11 percent higher risk of developing bipolar disorder compared to younger fathers. Children whose fathers were older than 55 had a 37 percent increased risk.

Frans said the findings did not mean that older men should not father children because the overall risk is still low, she added.

"The study sheds light on the negative effect of older fathers but most older men will still have healthy children," she said in a telephone interview.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; editing by Tony Austin)

Summary: LONDON (Reuters) - Children born to fathers older than 30 are more likely to develop bipolar disorder, a common condition sometimes known as manic depression, researchers reported on Monday.The paternal


N Martin Cruz Smith's 1981 novel, ''Gorky Park,'' the Moscow inhabited by our hero, the brooding, world-weary Arkady Renko, was a frozen, static place darkened by the long shadow of the Kremlin. After a brief sojourn in Siberia, Arkady returned to Moscow a decade later in Smith's ''Red Square.'' The Communist regime was expiring, and a ''New Russia'' teeming with black marketeers, gangsters and con men was rising.

In ''Wolves Eat Dogs,'' the latest installment in the Arkady Renko series, Moscow's transformation to capitalism is almost complete. ''Gilded domes still floated around the Garden Ring, but all night earthmovers tore at the old city and dug widening pools of light to raise a modern, vertical Moscow more like Houston or Dubai,'' Smith writes.

Capitalism, of course, means corporate theft, which is uncharted territory for this aging homicide investigator. Early on, Arkady finds himself staring blankly -- ''like an ape encountering fire'' -- at the computer screen of Pasha Ivanov, a nouveau riche Russian businessman who has flung himself out the window of his 10th-story apartment.

This is not an auspicious start -- for the protagonist's detective work or the novel itself. Watching Arkady bumble his way through a white-collar-crime case is not what Smith's loyal readers -+and there are many -- have come to expect. But soon enough one of Ivanov's colleagues, Lev Timofeyev, turns up dead and in a manner much more befitting an Arkady investigation, which is to say that the victim's throat has been slit and one of his eyes gouged out by wolves. Liftoff!

The second body is found outside a cemetery near Chernobyl. There isn't a whole lot of competition for the assignment, so Arkady, who as usual has run afoul of his corrupt, vindictive boss, finds himself searching for clues on this postapocalyptic prairie.

The bulk of ''Wolves Eat Dogs'' is set in the sparsely populated Zone of Exclusion, the actual term for the 19-mile-radius area surrounding the nuclear reactors, which after the 1986 meltdown was deemed too ''hot'' for human habitation. A master scene painter, Smith vividly captures a region studded with checkpoints and warning signs, where dormitories recently constructed for security troops abut ostensibly abandoned houses. (Some residents sneaked back in after the evacuation.) Nothing is more eerie than an abandoned amusement park; Smith gives us one in which the bumper cars have been overturned and the Ferris wheel ''looked like it had rolled, stopped and rusted in place.'' Amid the radioactive ruins, the remnants of old posters from the Communist era -- confident of the future -- still adorn the walls of empty offices. Everything here is either dead or dying; even a man in a dirty white suit ''looked like a lily beginning to rot.''

As Arkady traverses the Zone on a third-rate motorcycle, his radioactivity-detecting dosimeter emits a constant high-pitched whine. The sense that invisible lethal rays are everywhere infuses this book with an anxious, desperate quality that is relieved only by the occasional darkly humorous aside. Asked to say a few words before a luncheon, a professor from a visiting delegation of scientists inquires warily, ''Is the food locally grown?''

Arkady fits right in among the people of Chernobyl and the other ''black villages'' that make up the Zone of Exclusion. Old farmers, humanitarian aid workers, even the local hustlers -- they're all survivors, stubborn, stoic, cynical and yet vulnerable in equal measure. The battered but tireless Arkady, who has endured a brutal father, the loss of the woman he loved, at least one suicide attempt, a psychiatric hospitalization and much more, can relate.

Arkady also meets his soul mate in the Zone, Eva Kazka, a chain-smoking doctor who administers to the region's elderly inhabitants from a makeshift outdoor office -- a card table and folding chairs -- along the village's only paved road. Kazka had been a promising young dancer in Kiev when a cruel breeze blew in from nearby Chernobyl: ''And so ends her days of dancing and begins her acquaintanceship with Soviet surgery.'' With her untamed black hair and pale skin, Eva is not, as Smith is quick to establish, a looker. Like Arkady, though, she has internalized life's injustices but not quite been defeated by them.

Summary: In Martin Cruz Smith's thriller, Arkady Renko heads to the Zone of Exclusion.


Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin “Labor Day.”

I’m going to the Toronto International Film festival in a few days and my brain is already starting to hurt.

Beginning Sept. 5, the program offers 288 feature films in 11 days, including 146 world premieres. Who knows how many potential Oscar performances (on the one hand) and great films I may never get another chance to see (on the other). More than ever, TIFF is a gateway to the fall season of important movies as well as movies that desperately want to be seen as important, and the only way to tell the difference is to see them. But which do you see, and how fast can you get from one to the next? For a week and a half, a small section of downtown Toronto turns into everything great about world cinema and everything exhausting about trying to see it.

Some themes and memes to note for the 38th edition of the festival: Superstar musicians are well-represented with the Ron Howard documentary “Jay-Z: Made in America,” “12.12.12: The Concert for Sandy Relief,” and a young-Jimi-Hendrix biopic “All Is by My Side.” So are the struggles of Egypt, in both documentaries (Jehane Noujaim’s “The Square,” which puts viewers right in the middle of events) and dramas (“Rags and Tatters,” about the night that protesters opened up Mubarak’s prisons).

Daniel Bruhl (left) and Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Fifth Estate.”

More than ever, ambitious filmmakers want to parse and portray recent history: “The Fifth Estate” casts Benedict Cumberbatch — last seen as Khan in this summer’s “Star Trek” movie — as Wikileaks white-maned founder Julian Assange, while Cambridge-based documentarian Errol Morris trains his Interrotron on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in “The Unknown Known.” Canada’s Atom Egoyan tries his hand at a dramatic retelling of the much-documented West Memphis Three killings with “Devil’s Knot.” The great British actor Idris Elba tackles the role of a lifetime in “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” while the great British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black sold into slavery in pre-Civil War America in “12 Years a Slave.”

Maybe that’s not so recent. Fine: The offerings at Toronto include longer historical reaches as well. The chaos at a Dallas hospital the day JFK was shot is re-created with a varied cast (from Paul Giamatti to Zac Efron) in “Parkland.” “The Invisible Woman” probes the secret love affair of writer Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes, who also directed) and Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones). And the rubbernecker in me is undeniably curious about “The Last of Robin Hood,” which casts Kevin Kline as an aging Errol Flynn, Dakota Fanning as his underage girlfriend, Beverly Aadland, and Susan Sarandon as her manipulative mother.

: David Appleby/Sony Pictures Classics

Ralph Fiennes and Felicity Jones in “The Invisible Woman.”

Will I be able to watch all of these movies? Probably not. The festival prompts despairing attempts at moviegoing triage, of choosing to skip a blockbuster I know will open in Boston a month from now (Jason Reitman’s “Labor Day,” with Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin) in favor of, I don’t know, a Moroccan family comedy-drama (“Rock the Casbah,” from director Laila Marrakchi). And sometimes the festival program’s plot descriptions exert a pull that can’t be resisted (“La Ultima Pelicula” — “A famous American filmmaker travels to the Yucatan to scout locations for his last movie. The Mayan Apocalypse intercedes.”)

That said, here are 10 TIFF offerings (in alphabetical order) I’ll do my darndest to catch:

Rabble-rousing documentarian Alex Gibney (“Client 9,” “We Steal Secrets”) originally titled this film “The Road Back” — but that was four years ago, when Lance Armstrong was mounting a Tour de France comeback and still maintaining an iron wall of deceit about his doping. Since then, the walls have come crashing down and this film may be an electrifying portrait of a winner who has now lost everything.

Director John Wells adapts the Tracy Letts play about a fractious Oklahoma clan with a cast to take your breath away: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan MacGregor, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis, and Sam Shepard as the family patriarch. It’s getting a December theatrical release, but there are some movies you want to see early just for the bragging rights.

Jay Z performing in “Made In America.”

Matthew McConaughey is having a career renaissance — gone are the dippy chick flicks — and this starring role as the real-life Ron Woodroof, a Texas good ol’ boy who defied the FDA and smuggled HIV-fighting medications into the States, may put him over the top. He’s no longer a guilty pleasure — well, hey now.

The arrival of a new comedy of social mores by Nicole Holofcener (“Lovely and Amazing,” “Friends With Money”) is always an event, but when the cast includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus (as single mom masseuse), Holofcener mainstay Catherine Keener (as a chatty client), and James Gandolfini in his penultimate film completed before his untimely death this June, attention must be paid.

Actor John Turturro goes behind the camera for his fifth turn at directing in a New York-set tale of an aging man (Turturro) who opts for a career change (see title). The cast includes Sharon Stone, Sofia Vergara, Liev Schreiber — and Woody Allen as the hero’s pimp. Will this be “After-Midnight Cowboy”? A complete train wreck? Or a wayward treat in keeping with Turturro’s other films?

Boston-born actor-writer-comedian Mark Phinney has toiled in the trenches of New York and LA sketch comedy but came back to the mean streets of his youth to shoot this autobiographically tinged comedy-drama about the perils of obesity and food addiction. Expect a lot of, uh, local flavor.

Daniel Radcliffe (left) and Dane deHaan in “Kill Your Darlings.”

Jack Huston (director John’s grandson) plays Jack Kerouac, changeling actor Ben Foster plays William S. Burroughs, and Daniel Radcliffe pushes Harry Potter further into his past as Allen Ginsberg in this drama about a sensational 1944 murder case that changed the lives of the men who would become the Beats.

Can Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi recapture the success of his last film, the Oscar-winning “A Separation”? Is he courting disaster with a similar family melodrama about estranged couples and family secrets? How does Bérénice Bejo of “The Artist” figure in here? All questions I’m eager to have answered.

Is the world really crying out for a remake of Clint Eastwood’s neo-classic 1992 western transplanted to the samurais and swords of Meiji-era Japan? I hope so, because this sounds pretty fascinating. Ken Watanabe (“Inception,” “The Last Samurai”) stars.

Based on 1998’s cheerfully toughminded “Show Me Love” and 2002’s heartbreaking “Lilya 4-Ever,” is there a filmmaker on this planet better at capturing the inner lives and outer struggles of young women than Sweden’s Lukas Moodysson? This tale of 13-year-old girls who start a punk band in 1982 Stockholm may make it a trifecta.

Summary: I’m going to the Toronto International Film festival next week and my brain is already starting to hurt. The program offers 288 feature films in 11 days, including 146 world premieres. Who knows how many potential Oscar performances and great films I may never get another chance to see. More than ever, TIFF is a gateway to the annual fall season of important movies as well as movies that desperately want to be seen as important, and the only way to tell the difference is to see them. But which do you see, and how fast can you get from one theater to the next? Here are 10 TIFF offerings (in alphabetical order) I’ll do my darndest to catch.


Salima, 19, a Somali refugee in Yemen. Photograph: Alixandra Fazzina

Over the past 10 years, British photojournalist, Alixandra Fazzina has roamed Africa and the Middle East, chronicling the plight of the displaced. In July this year, the UN's High Commission for Refugees gave her the prestigious Nansen Refugee award for her extraordinary images of human suffering and resilience in Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and beyond. (The prize of $100,000 is donated to a cause of the winner's choice.)

In 2006, Fazzina started photographing refugees and migrants from civil war-torn Somalia, the uprooted people who risk all to cross the Gulf of Aden in search of a better life. The two-year project has now been turned into an epic, often sadly beautiful book, A Million Shillings: Escape From Somalia. Fazzina's original idea was to follow a single group of refugees from Somalia to Yemen, but that became untenable when she realised few people reach the other side. As it was, she faced extraordinary risks and came upon dreadful suffering, at one point leaving her camera on a beach to help drag survivors from a boat overloaded with dead bodies.

In his introduction, António Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, describes the "conspicuous and gratuitous brutality towards the migrants and refugees making the trip". Torture is common and death – by burning, drowning or shooting – a regular occurrence. "A million shillings is not enough to buy decent treatment for the voyagers," he writes, "but it is enough to sustain impunity for the perpetrators of wholly unnecessary brutality."

A Million Shillings, though, is a book that does not abide by the normal rules of reportage. Its narrative unfolds in an almost novelistic way, as Fazzina's camera tracks a journey that, for the few who survive, often ends in a kind of dismal limbo of uncertainty in a refugee camp in Yemen. Many of Fazzina's images of the everyday life there have an intimate and painterly quality: the muted blues and greens of the clothes, the stoicism of the faces, the abiding sense of futility that attends this kind of survival. Here, the photographs serve the story and you may find yourself lingering, as I did, over her almost holy portraits of the displaced.

Salima (pictured) was 19 when Fazzina met her in Yemen. She had lost her husband and baby son in the war in Mogadishu and was living in a so-called safe house, trying to raise $25 through begging to pay the traffickers who will drive her across the desert to more uncertainty. At night, she passes out on a bare floor and dreams of home.

This is a powerful and moving book that will make you think twice about the meaning of overused, meaningless terms like "refugee" and "asylum seeker".

Summary: Intimate images of refugees in search of a new life are intensely moving, writes Sean O'Hagan


WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new drug from Roche to help treat patients with a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow.

The agency cleared Gazyva to fight chronic lymphocytic leukemia in combination with chemotherapy in patients who haven’t previously been treated for the disease.

Gazyva works by killing cancer cells and encouraging the immune system to fight against them.

The FDA approved the drug based on a study showing Gazyva plus chemotherapy was superior to chemotherapy alone at slowing the progress of the disease.

The injectable biotech drug is the first medicine approved under FDA’s breakthrough designation, which was authorized by Congress last year. The new designation is designed to speed up the approval of promising drugs by providing companies with extra meetings and earlier communication with FDA scientists to discuss drug development.

Summary: WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new drug from Roche to help treat patients with a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow. The agency cleared Gazyva to fight chronic lymphocytic leukemia in combination with chemotherapy in patients who haven’t previously been treated for the disease. Gazyva works by killing cancer cells and encouraging the immune system to fight against them. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia develops slowly over time and is usually diagnosed in the elderly. More than 15,600 Americans will be diagnosed and 4,580 of them will die from the disease this year, according to estimates from the National Cancer Institute. The FDA approved the drug based on a study showing Gazyva plus chemotherapy was superior to chemotherapy alone at slowing the progress of the disease.


In Britain we're sceptical of the idea of the architect as intellectual. Most people probably aren't aware that there's a whole realm of architecture that doesn't involve erecting buildings. But from Vitruvius in the 1st century BC and Alberti and Palladio in the Renaissance to Le Corbusier in the 1920s, architects have always produced books, not just to publicise their work but to lay down the latest architectural rules.

Often these titles tend to be monographs. Light of text and glossy of photograph, they are hefty volumes, records of achievement – a chance for the architect to say "Look on my works, ye mighty, and leave them casually stacked on the coffee table". But Rem Koolhaas's books, produced with his Rotterdam-based practice Office for Metropolitan Architecture, are different, as a new show at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London's Bedford Square demonstrates. On a plinth in the middle of the room sit 400 volumes bound together in black folders. They look like endless meeting agendas, but they are the complete works of OMA from 1978 to 2010. If you stood this object on the floor, it would be as tall as two people, one stood on top of the other. No wonder the show is called OMA Book Machine.

One look at this column of paper will no doubt confirm for some the suspicion that all architects care about is size. And, when it comes to books, Koolhaas wins the "whose is bigger?" competition hands down. But they are more than that. For a start, most were never published. The large majority are internal dossiers: OMA is famous for the huge amounts of research it puts into each project, to the point where Koolhaas even has his own thinktank, which he named in the mirror image of OMA: AMO. And while every competition the practice enters may not result in a building, it will definitely yield a book. Many of these titles are used to persuade clients to hire the practice, but sometimes they have the opposite effect. The MoMA Charrette, for example, was ostensibly OMA's entry to the competition to redesign the Museum of Modern Art in New York – really, though, it was an acerbic critique of this stuffy temple of culture that proposed turning it into an edgy shopping mall. No wonder Koolhaas didn't win.

Mostly the books are made by the architects themselves using office printers, but other times Koolhaas has worked with some of the best book designers in the business: the Canadian Bruce Mau, the Dutch Irma Boom and the New York-based practice 2x4. Mau was behind the fattest and most influential book on display, S,M,L,XL, OMA's 1995 take on the monograph. This 1,300-page brick of heavily cropped images overlaid with text was seven years in the making. It divided projects by size, like underpants, from houses to urban masterplans, and abandoned any sense of a clear narrative. It's still the only architecture book that every graphic designer has on their shelf. Mau himself has gone on to become something of a guru – the Guatemalan government recently commissioned him to do nothing less than transform the country. S,M,L,XL itself was so popular that it was counterfeited in China and published in a weird bootleg version in Iran. One of the highlights of the Architectural Association show is the email correspondence between OMA and the Iranian publisher, who argued that it was important to share Koolhaas' ideas, even in this illegal, bastardised form.

As the years go by, the books get stranger. There's the Wired Dictionary, an inventory of all the words published in Wired magazine, one of the by-products of OMA's guest editorship in 2001. There's a book called PradaVomit, a mystifying booklet that is one of the many products of Koolhaas's tenure as Prada's court architect and consultant. "Even vomit has some content," says one collaborator in a transcript pinned to the wall; and Koolhaas is probably the only architect to have designed the spring/summer "look book" for a fashion label.Precisely through these book-shaped investigations Koolhaas has blurred the edges of architecture, taking it into fashion, consultancy, journalism and cultural criticism.

The paradox at the heart of Koolhaas' obsession with the book as a format is that he reveres it and disrespects it in equal measure. We think of books as precious things that take months of painstaking assembly, whereas OMA throws them together with careless abandon. This was particularly true of 2004's Content, which was laid out like a magazine, even down to the adverts – the "boogazine" has since become a much-imitated format. Then came 2007's Al Manakh, a book about the development boom in the Gulf states, which looked like it had been dragged off the internet and onto the page. These days, OMA and AMO are rumoured to produce a book a day, sometimes within four or five hours.

In some ways, Koolhaas is swimming against the tide. As publishing has gone mainstream on the one hand, focusing on Dan Browns and celebrity biographies at the expense of riskier projects, and digitised on the other, sucked into Kindles and iPads, there has been a growing counter-trend for books as luxury objects. Taschen, the publisher of Content, has been churning out giant tomes – such as GOAT, on Mohammed Ali – in limited print runs with price tags of hundreds, sometimes thousand of pounds. It's as though, somehow, we have to try and make books special again. Unlike the internet, they have tactility and weight. And yet, although OMA's books are rapid and slapdash, they betray enormous faith in the book as a medium at a time when print is under siege.

For Koolhaas and OMA, books aren't luxuries – they are the residue of a process. These are architects trained to think and work through books as just another material, like concrete and glass. The vast amounts of research regurgitated by the OMA machine gets sifted and refined in book form, keeping the method transparent and the information easy to re-use. Nothing is ever wasted, and in that sense there is no such thing as failure. If the research doesn't turn into a building, there's always the book.

Summary: Justin McGuirk: The Dutch architect's practice OMA is so prolific with research that it's rumoured to produce a book a day. So what's behind this preoccupation with publishing?


President Bush could learn a few things from President John F. Kennedy's wartime experience, says author Laurence Leamer. "During World War II, [JFK] was amazed by Japanese fanaticism, said Leamer, whose tome "The Kennedy Men" comes out next week. "A Japanese pilot attacked a transport ship and parachuted into the water. When they went to fish [the pilot] out, he shot at [the Americans] with his pistol till someone blew his head off.

" After incidents like that, and after Bataan, Kennedy saw what Americans were capable of, Leamer says. "It's like what we're seeing now.

" The writer, who is the bestselling author of "The Kennedy Women," reveals a letter from Kennedy's secret archive begging JFK to stop taking daily doses of Novocain and an amphetamine cocktail that caused "an exhilarated dream state.

" "You cannot be permitted to receive therapy from irresponsible doctors like [Dr. Max Jacobson]," wrote Dr. Eugene Cohen, one of his medical advisers. "This therapy, which conditions one's needs almost like a narcotic, is not for responsible individuals who at any split second may have to decide the fate of the universe.

" JFK ignored him. Leamer acknowledges "there was a lot of sex and drugs in JFK's life," but still believes "he was an incredible patriot.

" Getting his shot in? Was Bryant Gumbel exacting revenge yesterday when he talked about the anthrax outbreak at the Florida headquarters of his least-favorite supermarket tabloid? The CBS morning host reported weeklies like The National Enquirer could experience a circulation dip due to readers' fears they could contract the disease from the pages. Gumbel, of course, has been the target of numerous unflattering supermarket tabloid stories during his acrimonious divorce from wife June and affair with Hilary Quinlan. David Pecker, chairman of the Enquirer's parent company, American Media, told Larry King on Wednesday that the nearest printing plant is 1,000 miles away. More to the point, the Centers for Disease Control announced Tuesday, "The public is at no risk of disease from handling printed paper.

" Ready to kick butt Uma Thurman, who's been feeling the kicks of her unborn baby, is eager to start delivering some of her own. The actress started prepping for her first martial-arts role this week by getting a sneak peek at the kung-fu spectacular "Iron Monkey" (read a review in today's Now section). "I'm a chick, I'm here doing my homework," said Thurman, who's due to star in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill.

" Tarantino envisions Thurman as "the deadliest woman in the world" - seeking revenge on her former boss, played by Warren Beatty, after his team of assassins puts her in a coma that causes her to miscarry. The project was delayed when the "Pulp Fiction" princess actually became pregnant. But Tarantino thinks she "understands better than ever now how to play a mother who has her baby taken away.

" Making sure that life doesn't imitate the story, Thurman is holding off on the martial-arts training till after the delivery. Trouble at home Embattled nightclub owner Peter Gatien owes a bundle in back rent and late fees, the landlord of his upper East Side residence charged in a lawsuit filed yesterday. The landlord, 10 East 63rd St., Inc., says Gatien owes $245,000 plus $25,000 in legal fees. Gatien and his wife, Alessandra, moved into the swanky triplex in 1998, paying $15,000 a month. In 1999, the rent jumped to $17,500 and last year was raised to $25,000 a month. Gatien's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment. Perelman prevails An appellate court yesterday upheld Revlon billionaire Ronald Perelman's custody of daughter Caleigh, despite protests from his ex-wife, Patricia Duff. The unanimous decision of the Appellate Division of Manhattan Supreme Court closes another chapter in the bitter five-year battle over the 6-year-old girl. Perelman was awarded custody of Caleigh last April by Justice Eileen Bransten, after a two-year nonjury trial. The appellate panel dismissed Duff's charges of judicial bias and said the record shows she was given a fair trial, the News' Helen Peterson reports. Caleigh spends alternate weeks with each of her parents, though Perelman is the designated legal custodian. Paltrow on passion Gwyneth Paltrow wants you to get to know her inner vixen. "I'm a very sexual person," she proclaims. But she admits she quickly tires of her boyfriends. "I'm lucky if I get past six weeks," says the commitment-shy actress who has dated Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and, currently, her "Royal Tenenbaums" co-star Luke Wilson. "I love men, even though they're lyin', cheatin' [expletive].

" Paltrow tells Harpers Bazaar she blames the misperception that she's an "ice princess" partly on her fine breeding. "In this day and age, if you sit up straight, chew with your mouth closed, and have good manners, you're a snob," she says. She reckons that her frosty persona stems from her half-Protestant, half-Jewish heritage. "The world knows the WASP, but my friends know the Jew half, which is very open," she insists. 'Friend' to women Neil Labute has created some of the most poisonous misogynists you'll ever see in his movies "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors.

" But in his new play, "The Shape of Things," he lets the women get their licks in. The play's star, Paul Rudd, insists Labute is no woman-hater. "He's one of the most highly moral people I've met," he told us at Wednesday's opening party at Ernie's, where Julia Stiles, Regis Philbin and Sandra Bernhard toasted the cast. Rudd's co-star Gretchen Mol agreed. "Neil writes strong female characters and really seems to identify with the side the cruelty is being inflicted upon.


Developer Skanska USA Commercial Development said Tuesday that it has sold a Kendall Square lab-and-office building in Cambridge to Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. for $94.5 million.

The three-story building at 150 Second St. has 123,000 square feet of space. It is currently 85 percent leased. One life sciences tenant is Foundation Medicine Inc., and another, Bluebird Bio, is scheduled to begin moving in next month. Foundation Medicine and Bluebird Bio are among the nine Massachusetts biotechnology companies to complete an initial public stock offering so far this year.

“150 Second Street exemplifies Skanska’s commitment to creating space that enhances local communities – this lab and office building provides the space critical for companies to make the kind of scientific discoveries that have established Boston as a sought-after, world-renowned biotech center,” Shawn Hurley, executive vice president of Skanska USA Commercial Development in Boston, said in a statement. “Skanska is pursuing additional opportunities in the Boston area that will bring value to Boston’s residents and businesses, while also creating healthy, efficient space for companies and tenants.”

On its website, California-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities says its portfolio includes 3.8 million rentable square feet of space in the Greater Boston market. It is a real estate investment trust that is focused principally on owning, operating, developing, redeveloping, and acquiring real estate for the life sciences industry.

Summary: Developer Skanska USA Commercial Development said Tuesday that it has sold a Kendall Square lab-and-office building in Cambridge to Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. for $94.5 million. The three-story building at 150 Second St. has 123,000 square feet of space. It is currently 85 percent leased. One life sciences tenant is Foundation Medicine Inc., and another, Bluebird Bio, is scheduled to begin moving in next month. “150 Second Street exemplifies Skanska’s commitment to creating space that enhances local communities – this lab and office building provides the space critical for companies to make the kind of scientific discoveries that have established Boston as a sought-after, world-renowned biotech center,” Shawn Hurley, executive vice president of Skanska USA Commercial Development in Boston, said in a statement.


A wedding in Nagorno-Karabakh. Photograph: Anastasia Taylor-Lind

In 2011, the world's population reached 7 billion. When I looked into this more, I found that reduction programmes like China's one-child policy had been well documented – but nothing had been done on birth-encouragement schemes. Nagorno-Karabakh, a small region in Azerbaijan that has declared itself independent but remains unrecognised by the rest of the world, was one place actively trying to increase its population – by giving out cash at births and weddings.

This couple, Artak and Armine, received around £470 at their wedding. They could go on to get £150 for their first baby, £310 for the second, £780 for the third, and £1,110 for the fourth. Families with six children under the age of 18 get a house. These are significant amounts in a country where income is very low. Within three years of the incentive being introduced, the birth rate had spiked by 25%.

It was July 2011 and the celebrations began at Armine's house, where she was getting ready with her friends. It is traditional to have two wedding parties, beginning at the bride's village and ending at the groom's. The day is long, there are lots of formalities – and even more drinking, eating and dancing. It was a challenge for me to keep moving and not to drink too much vodka, or eat too much of the delicious homemade cheeses and meats.

This was taken at the second celebration, in Artak's village. Artak and Armine are sitting in between their "best couple" – a pair who have been married for a few years and whose job it is to be their guardians, a bit like god parents. They will guide them through marriage, giving advice and support. Behind me are about 200 people eating and drinking. I think Armine looks sad because it was all so overwhelming. Not only had she just got married, she had also moved house – she wouldn't be going back to her village. After the wedding, she would live with Artak's family.

Although the distance is only 50km, it takes about five hours to reach Artak's village, which is on the border with Azerbaijan, inside a demilitarised zone. The driving is difficult – no tarmac, no gravel, sometimes no track.

My fixer and I got a lift with one of the guests and we booked a taxi for the return. I knew this guest was drunk, but I hadn't realised how badly. It took us seven hours because he kept stopping to drink. I thought I might die – we were being driven by a drunk Russian on mountain tracks with sheer drops. I nearly got out to walk, but the fixer said we might get shot walking at night. The demilitarised zone is heavily patrolled – by the Armenian army on the Nagorno-Karabakh side and by the Azerbaijani army on the other. They often have stand-offs, he said. Soldiers and civilians get killed.

By the time we got to the reception, we only had 20 minutes till our taxi. I thought: what a waste of money, and what a terrible risk to take, for nothing. I had only had time to take this one photograph. I was in a stinking mood, but I loved the picture when I saw it.

Studied: BA documentary photography at Photography at Newport University and MA LCCLondon College of Communication

Influences: Alfredo Jaar, Donald Webber, Rob Hornstra, Donald McCullin

High point: "My first assignment for National Geographic."

Low point: "Claiming housing benefit because I couldn't afford my rent."

Top tip: "Photojournalism isn't dead and don't listen to anyone who says it is."

Summary: 'The couple, Artak and Armine, received £470 at their wedding, then £150 for their first child. Families with six kids get a house'


On Thursday morning, when Ukraine’s new parliament met to confirm a new government – or, as the chamber’s speaker put it, “to move ahead with a total renewal of power” – a detachment of revolutionary troops was parked right outside in an armored personnel carrier. They were not there to protect the lawmakers. They were there to warn them. “So they don’t forget who’s in charge,” said one of troops, Evgeny Sikanov, who had an axe tucked into his bullet proof vest and a portrait of Jesus painted on the front of his helmet. “If they even think about betraying the will of the people, I’m the guy who’s going to go in there and give them a spanking.”

In the past few days, threats liked that have turned the task of governing into a tightrope walk for the political leaders of the revolution in Ukraine. One week after they toppled the regime of President Viktor Yanukovych, they have begun trying to fill the power vacuum he left behind. But they are being forced to do that at gunpoint, threatened from all sides with a resumption of the uprising – this time against the revolutionary leaders themselves.

In the region of Crimea on Thursday morning, an armed militia showed how easily that could happen. Calling themselves defenders of the ethnic Russian majority in the Crimea, they stormed the regional parliament and the headquarters of the local government, which had gone over to the side of the revolution the previous day. The gunmen proceeded to call a quorum of the region’s pro-Russian lawmakers, who convened a session of the Crimean parliament. Standing in the wings with assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades, the masked men then watched as the chamber granted their demand: allow a referendum on the secession of Crimea from Ukraine. A large demonstration of ethnic Russians gathered outside the building to cheer the gunmen on, waving the Russian tricolor.

The pressure on the national parliament in Kiev, meanwhile, was not much less intense. Before voting in a new government, the leaders of the revolution needed to get the approval of the Maidan – the revolutionary encampment in the center of the capital. They had worked through the night to prepare their list of candidates, trying to divvy up the ministerial posts among the disparate political parties, activist groups and paramilitary organizations involved in chasing out the old regime. “No one slept,” says Zoryan Shkiryak, a political activist who was tapped to become Ukraine’s immigration czar. “We came up with the list. But the hard part is getting the Maidan to go along with it.”

That proved nearly impossible on Wednesday night. Still packed with thousands of hardened revolutionaries with no intention of leaving the square, the Maidan has become the noose around the necks of Ukraine’s new leaders. When those leaders came to the square to present their list of candidates, the Maidan shouted them down with chants of “Shame!” The list included many experienced politicians, whom the crowd seemed to feel were tainted with the endemic corruption of Ukrainian politics. At one point they began to chant, “Give power to the young!” Militant leaders of the revolution then got up on the stage to denounce the older politicians for selling out the uprising. “This is a clown show!” said Vladimir Parasyuk, the leader of one of the Maidan’s armed “self-defense” battalions, who took the microphone wearing fatigues. “All of these politicians need to remember that you serve the people,” he said. “And if you forget that, we will come and take you away.”

Hanging heaviest of all over the political leaders of the uprising has been the grief of the revolutionary crowds, who are still mourning the deaths of nearly a hundred of their fallen comrades. Police gunned down dozens of them during the last stand of the Yanukovych regime last week, and on Thursday, when the revolutionary leaders convened parliament, the widows and mothers of the dead marched into the chamber weeping and carrying their memorial photographs, each set in a frame decorated with a crown of thorns. The pictures were placed in a row inside the parliament building, a grim reminder of the price the Maidan paid to put the revolutionary lawmakers in power.

“The people want to see blood for blood,” one of the parliamentarians, Hrihory Nemiriya, told TIME after the chamber adjourned. “The temperature in society is still very high.” In the course of an hour, parliament managed to vote in a new Prime Minister and most of his cabinet. But the fact that roughly 70% of the posts were filled with people from the western regions of Ukraine further alienated the eastern and southern parts of the country, which have resisted the revolution.

Nowhere was that more clear than in the southern region of Crimea, a bastion of Russian nationalism that houses a major Russian military base. By Thursday night, the Crimean capital of Simferopol seemed to have slipped from the revolutionary government’s control. About a hundred policemen from the Interior Ministry of the old regime were guarding the regional parliament building, with dozens of pro-Russian gunmen still barricaded inside, preparing for another session of the Crimean parliament due to commence at gunpoint on Friday. On the lawn outside the building, a large sign written in red letters said, “Crimea is Russia.” So far, the new government in Kiev has come up with no clear solution for stopping the wave of separatism sweeping the Crimean Peninsula in the south. They clearly have enough problems trying keep control of the capital, where a revival of the revolution seems to be one unpopular decision away.

Summary: The political crisis in Ukraine is poised on a knife edge with armed groups pressuring rival rebel governments in Kiev and pro-Russian Crimea


Marcus is excited; his mom is volunteering at school every day for the next week, helping out with a yearly social experiment called Mini-Society. Will is also excited, having just received his latest wantonly enormous royalty check. Thus enriched, Will takes Andy and Marcus to the mall to spend some of his filthy lucre... on a margarita machine, because Dr. Sam loves margaritas and maybe the machine will help lure her to his house for a party? When Will sends Marcus off to buy some giant remote-controlled shark balloons, Marcus realizes Will's royalty checks are now his third favorite things after hope and love.

Concerned that Will exemplifies the wrong values regarding money, Fiona hopes Marcus will get a job in Mini-Society that will correct this. When Marcus learns that King is one of the jobs in Dickensian-era Mini-Society, he sets his sights Will-ishly high, and when Fiona chooses his job out of a hat in her role as volunteer, King comes up. However, determined to give Marcus a lesson he won't forget, Fiona instead designates him Slopmaster, the lowliest job of the lot. Later, Will finds Marcus cradling his head in despair, so he offers $20 to offset the misery. Having been in Slopmaster straits before "Runaway Sleigh," Will can relate, and he advises Marcus to take initiative and come up with a scheme to make some fake money.

Fiona's thrilled to hear Marcus is researching ways to raise his station in Mini-Society life. While she brainstorms ways for Marcus to earn pounds doing tasks for other Mini-Society kids, a genius idea strikes him. Finding the Photoshop file for Mini-Society pound notes, Marcus hits print, sending the filthy lucre to Will's printer. On Market Day, Marcus spends big, making sure his mom is looking in the other direction. He's just tucking into one of eight mini-cupcakes he's bought, when Fiona congratulates him on his joy and humility and rewards him with one mini-cupcake. That's when Will knocks on the dumbwaiter door with a surprise for Marcus - a new iPad, as recompense for having to be Slopmaster! Fiona's jaw drops.

When Dr. Sam declines Will's invitation to the margarita party at his house because of a double shift, he bribes Bev, the ER manager, to schedule time off for Dr. Sam at 2 p.m. that afternoon. It's short notice, so Will's hoping the mariachi band can park in Fiona's driveway - but Fiona has her own problems. Someone's counterfeiting money in Mini-Society! When Will offers $20 to grease the parking wheels, Fiona freaks. You can't solve problems with money!

Dr. Sam shows up at Will's door slightly confused. She thought his party invite was merely a ploy to lure her to his apartment, but when she realizes the party is real, she's sold. This could be the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for her. It's all going swimmingly until Will lets it drop that she no longer has her 5 p.m. shift; Bev was supposed to give it to another doctor. Will figures his bribe makes the deal even sweeter, but Dr. Sam feels cheap - Will's trying to buy her time! Will backpedals and declares his hatred for money just as Marcus sends another load of Mini-Society pound notes through his printer. Begging Sam to stay, Will explains he has to rush to school to save a Slopmaster. Meanwhile, Fiona is explaining to the angry principal that she has laid a trap for the counterfeiter, which of course, outs Marcus. The other kids are just getting ready to stone Marcus when Will arrives to plead the boy's case. The counterfeiting situation is all Will's fault; the truth is money doesn't always make a person happy... a lesson he just learned today.

Will returns home to find an empty house - and a note from Dr. Sam, which promises all is not lost. In the other half of the duplex, Fiona admits to Marcus she made him Slopmaster because she wanted him to learn to be happy with very little, since she can't afford to give him anything with an "i" in its name. Marcus promises he doesn't need those things; all he needs is his mum. Ready for his Dickensian punishment, Marcus returns to school to scrape gum off all the assembly hall folding chairs. Will arrives to share the punishment, but when the janitor asks for a bribe to finish the job, Will admits he has a C-note in his pocket. Nevertheless, the final decision is Marcus' to make... and Marcus opts for the satisfaction of a job well done.

Summary: Will bribes his way into a date while Marcus learns a hard lesson about the value of money.