A strong reach in print: Each week, the Guardian reaches more HE teaching professionals than the THE*

A unique reach online: 41% of HE users of guardianjobs.co.uk do not use jobs.ac.uk

Quality response: 75% of lecturer roles advertised with Guardian Jobs result in a Guardian candidate filling the role

Giving you a unique environment for branding and reaching passive and active HE professionals, EducationGuardian is published every Tuesday. With editorial featuring both Higher Education and Research every week, the Guardian reaches:

• 46,000 HE teaching professionals• 251,000 admin/secretarial staff• 30,000 research professionals

guardianjobs.co.uk allows you to reach a large, unique audience that you cannot reach elsewhere. The site's audience is comprised of:

• 79,000 monthly users working in HE• 27,000 in an HE teaching/academic role• 16,000 in an HE admin/secretarial role• 73,000 HE professionals that use guardianjobs.co.uk do not use the THE or jobs.ac.uk, including 24,000 teaching/academic staff

Alongside the Guardian in print and our award-winning jobs site guardianjobs.co.uk, your ads can run across guardian.co.uk allowing you to extend your reach and brand your organisation to:

• Over 35 million worldwide users including 14 million in the UK• EducationGuardian.co.uk reaches almost a million users a month• 22% of EducationGuardian.co.uk users who are actively looking for a job and a further 41% who are open to opportunities, giving you a great active and passive jobseeker audience

Download the higher education recruitment facstheetLearn more about EducationGuardianFind out more about advertising your FE positions with the GuardianPromoting your courses with the Guardian

Please contact the Education and Courses team on:020 3353 3400

For International recruitment, please contact Esen Eken on+44 (0) 20 3353 2116

Source: * based on THE claimed readership of c. 46,000 with 90% working in a HE institution, NRS Apr 09 – Mar 10 base: read yesterday/last 7 days, Guardian Jobs Site Survey 2010, Ad Effectiveness Database 2010, ABCe June 2010, SiteCatalyst June 2010, Sites & Sections 2009

Summary: Reaching the Guardian's quality Higher Education jobseekers


Nurses in remote Ghana have a new secret weapon in the uphill battle to keep mums and their bubs alive and healthy.

Smart phone technology is commonplace in the western world but in rural Africa it is proving to be a game-changer for health care.

Canberra-based ThinkPlace won an international Design Management Institute award for devising a smart phone application to help remote Ghanian nurses diagnose patients, calculate medication dosages, access training and information and connect with each other.

So far 215 nurses have been using the app for about a year across five pilot districts with an estimated reach of 20,000 patients.

ThinkPlace program director Ledia Andrawes says the application has empowered nurses - who, in some areas, are the only health care workers available - making them more confident.

"You could probably live your whole life and not have any interaction with a doctor in some remote parts of Ghana," she told AAP.

Nurses have given the application the thumbs up.

"You feel good, you feel that whatever you are telling the (patient) is not a lie," a nurse from Ghana's Ningo Prampram district said.

ThinkPlace spokesman Darren Menachemson says the key behind the application's success was the input of nurses in the design process - listening to their experiences, learning about their challenges and observing them at work in remote villages.

"It creates a sense of empathy which results every time in a better solution," he told AAP.

"You have to go in with an open mind and learn what needs to be done, not coming in with a solution and trying to make it fit."

It was also important to "reality check your assumptions" and allow them sometimes to die during the process.

There was scope to potentially roll out the phone application to nurses in other developing countries or even in remote indigenous communities in Australia, he said.

The project was a joint effort with Ghana Health Services, Grammeen Foundation, Concern Worldwide and Gates Foundation.

SNAPSHOT OF HEALTH CHALLENGES IN GHANA

* In 2013 for every 100,000 live births in Ghana, 380 mothers didn't make it, down from 410 in 2010.

* For children under five there are 60 deaths per 1000.

* 44 infants die before they reach one year old per 1000 live births in Ghana.

* Life expectancy at birth 61 years.

* Challenges for remote nurses in Ghana include lack of diagnostic tools, shortage of drugs, lack of petrol and transport to travel for home visits or outreach, sexual harassment and snake bites.

* Maternal mortality rate six women die for every 100,000 live births.

* Mortality rate for kids under five - four per 1000 births.

* Mortality rate for infants under one - three per 1000 births.

* Life expectancy at birth 82 years.

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: Rural nurses in Ghana are saving the lives of mothers and babies with the help of smart phone technology designed by Canberra firm ThinkPlace.


There's only one time of year when I spend several days in a row criss-crossing London, from former breweries and factories in Spitalfields and Clerkenwell to museums and pokey flats in South Kensington. And that's during the London design festival, which took place last week. With nearly 300 events across the city, the LDF is one of the biggest design jamborees in the world – perhaps only the Salone del Mobile in Milan is bigger. There is no linchpin event or obvious highlight – it's the sheer quantity of talent that is the attraction. Sprawling, decentred, laissez-faire and thoroughly international, the LDF is a perfect reflection of London.

One of the best things about the festival is that it reveals pieces of the city that you might never see otherwise. In South Kensington, exhibitions occupied dingy basement flats, an abandoned Chinese restaurant, anonymous first-floor offices, a former mechanic's garage and a Territorial Army drill hall behind the defunct Old Brompton Road Tube station. As ever in London, creativity exists in a precarious relationship with property. South Kensington has an abundance of museums and fancy showrooms, but young designers looking for less formal venues in this well-heeled neighbourhood would ordinarily be out of their league. And yet here they are, a fact that is down to the patronage of South Kensington Estates. The family behind this company has owned what used to be the Thurloe Estate – a great chunk of Kensington that is loosely rebranded at this time of year as the Brompton Design District – since Oliver Cromwell's day. To its credit, SKE lets designers use these spaces to bring some biodiversity to what is effectively a monoculture of expensive residential properties.

One of the effects of this patronage has been to allow designers to curate, rather than merely setting up stands for their wares as most of them are forced to do even in "cutting-edge" east London, where popular showcases such as Tent London and Designersblock charge their exhibitors. Curating is what sets a design festival apart from simply being a profusion of new stuff. Occupying a basement flat, one group of designers took the approach of illustrating the life of a fictional character called Vera, based on a series of found photographs of an unknown woman. Tomas Alonso responded to a picture of her with a horse by designing a lamp, a tray and some shelves out of leather bridles. Emmanuel Philip created a fragrance redolent of sea spray and Turkish rose to illustrate a photo of Vera on a fishing trip. This is design as storytelling, and it establishes an evocative relationship between this flat and a character who never really lived here.

In another basement flat, a group of Royal College of Art graduates was exhibiting in an Edwardian gloom of puce and slate-grey rooms. There were only a few pieces, such as Henny van Nistelrooy's clever reversible shelving system, and yet, as in the previous flat, it felt like a fictional domestic environment.

Down the road, in a generic upstairs office space you'd never notice from the street, another loose collective was exhibiting works based on observations of their cities. Alon Meron showed a set of Venetian blinds that retain the shape of the branch they were cut from. Inspired by the cheap wooden-slat fences that we British use in our back gardens, they borrow a form associated with outdoor privacy and repurpose it for indoor privacy.

These shows place design in a cultural context that is not merely commercial. Of course design festivals are also about networking, promoting and selling – and this above all is what London is good for. But design doesn't always have to be in the foreground – as product. It was precisely in reaction to the commercial nature of design fairs that curator Mariana Pestana created the Auction Room exhibition at Designersblock in Clerkenwell. Here, designers' work went under the gavel – a common enough concept, except that you had to bid with something other than money. A fireman offered his services for life in exchange for a table. Less romantically, journalists were offering to write – or indeed tweet – about designers in exchange for chairs. This is just a reflection of how young designers and architects often work with each other anyway, swapping services rather than money. But it is also a provocative reminder that there are other forms of exchange than the monetary.

The LDF should encourage this kind of thinking. The next stage in the development of the festival will involve building an experience that is more than just an accumulation of stuff. In the past, the organisers have tended to focus on expensive sculptures by celebrity designers and architects. While I understand the role such media-genic images play in capturing the public's attention, we should move beyond the idea of design as spectacle, or merely as commodity. Ideally, the festival could harness some of this copious talent to feed something back into the city. It might be street furniture or public landscaping, but year upon year even small gestures would leave a meaningful residue.

Summary: Justin McGuirk: In opening up unaffordable spaces, the LDF allows designers to curate, rather than market, their work – and to think about how design can be more than just product


12/04/2015 AT 10:00 PM EST

, for his career – and he couldn't be more thankful.

Bridges, 66, grew up watching his father star in numerous television shows and movies, and when he was finally old enough to join him on set, it quickly became apparent how truly passionate Lloyd was about his career. Wanting to follow in his father's footsteps, acting soon became a way for the two to spend time together.

"Whenever there was a part in his movies for a kid, or his TV shows, he would always put us up for it," explains Bridges on

Now an Academy-award winning actor himself, Bridges is fully aware of the influence his father had on his career, providing his entry into Hollywood.

"I think I am a product of nepotism," he admits. "I don't think I would have had the profession that I'm in currently, you know acting, if it wasn't for my dad."

His father didn't just help him get his foot in door, Llyod also taught him everything he needed to know about making it in show business.

"He's my acting teacher," he said. "[He] taught me how to act, told me all the basics about how to make it seem like it's happening for the first time, do it different ways."

he learned from his father came from just watching him work.

"The thing I learned from him most, it wasn't something he said to me in words. It was just observing him, and noticing how much fun he was having and how much he enjoyed what he was doing."

He says his father's joyful attitude was infectious on set, and that now, Bridges tries to bring the same positive energy in his own work.

"That's probably the biggest thing I learned from my father, is his approach to life and work is so joyous," he says. "I tried to follow in his footsteps with that."

Dec. 6 at 8 p.m. EST.

Summary: "I think I am a product of nepotism," Bridges admits


"The Fed has been gone from shooting a bazooka to pellets, and will run out of ammunition beginning in November," said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies. "It seems like the baton of central bank leadership is being passed to the ECB, but it's also very difficult for me to see the Fed tightening monetary policy at a time when the ECB is aggressively easing monetary policy because growth is a global issue. It's not just the U.S. It's not just Europe."

Treasury yields moved higher, and the dollar strengthened against the euro, which dipped below 1.30 for the first time since July 2013. Strong ISM nonmanufacturing data, the best since 2005, also drove yields higher and helped lift stocks. However, the stock market reversed course and closed lower on the day.

Read More Cleveland Fed chief: Forward guidance change needed

CRT Capital, meanwhile surveyed bond market participants Thursday and found that 93 percent said the bond market would be higher by 17 basis points on average if the Fed dropped the words "for a considerable period of time" from the FOMC statement. The respondents also expected front end yields, specifically the 2-year, to move higher by an average 23 basis points. The majority—98 percent—expected a strong stock market selloff with an average decline of 7 percent. The majority also expected to see the dollar move higher.

Even though strategists said the Fed could drop the language, they also said it does not mean the Fed would necessarily move to raise rates before the middle of next year, which is what many Fed watchers forecast as a time frame.

The chatter about the Fed also picked up Thursday after Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, in her first public comments on policy, sounded hawkish and prompted speculation that she would like to see that language dropped from the Fed statement. "I believe using a calendar date at this point would be poor communication," she said.

Read MoreDraghi remarks are honey for euro bears: UBS CIO

She also echoed the comments of other hawkish Fed officials, who say the Fed should consider returning to normalcy because of faster-than-anticipated improvement in employment.

The economy is showing anecdotal signs of improving but even so, economists do not expect the employment report to show a break out from the trend of the last six months.

Tom Gimbel, CEO and founder of LaSalle Network, a Chicago staffing firm, said this summer was among the best periods for hiring since the financial crisis. "Our numbers in the third quarter look like they're going to be up 30 percent over a year ago, and 15 percent over the second quarter," he said, of job requisitions from employers.

Besides the jobs report, traders will be watching the events at NATO, as it discusses Ukraine. Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren speaks at 3:45 p.m. EST.

Summary: Monthly employment reports are always said to be important, but the August report could be a bigger deal because of what it means for the Fed.


01/14/2016 AT 01:30 PM EST

's loved ones are preparing to say goodbye.

"The family of David Bowie is currently making arrangements for a private ceremony celebrating the memory of their beloved husband, father and friend," reads a

titled "Thank You" posted to the late rocker's official website on Thursday. "They ask once again that their privacy be respected at this most sensitive of times."

The family adds: "We are overwhelmed by and grateful for the love and support shown throughout the world. However, it is important to note that while the concerts and tributes planned for the coming weeks are all welcome, none are official memorials organized or endorsed by the family. Just as each and every one of us found something unique in David's music, we welcome everyone's celebration of his life as they see fit."

On Wednesday, a source told PEOPLE "there is

, adding, "The family is extremely private, just like Bowie. [He] had a tiny, tiny circle of friends and confidantes."

on Sunday following an 18-month battle with cancer – is survived by his

, 60; the couple's daughter Lexi, 15; and his son Duncan Jones, 44, from his first marriage to

In the wake of the

's passing, celebrities and fans have been honoring him with

on social media and at

Summary: "We are overwhelmed by and grateful for the love and support shown throughout the world," Bowie's loved ones say


Photo: Matt Rourke, Associated Press

Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly speaks with members of the media at the NFL football team's practice facility, Monday, Dec. 28, 2015, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly speaks with members of the media at the NFL football team's practice facility, Monday, Dec. 28, 2015, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

In this Dec. 29, 2013 file photo, in the rain Washington head coach Mike Shanahan leaves the field after an NFL football game against the New York Giants.

In this Dec. 29, 2013 file photo, in the rain Washington head coach Mike Shanahan leaves the field after an NFL football game against the New York Giants.

The top 10 candidates for the 49ers' head coaching job:

10. Vic Fangio - Considered too persnickety when the 49ers considered him a year ago. Nevertheless, Fangio has an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules and could be an excellent game-day coach. He also might be the best defensive coordinator in the game.

The top 10 candidates for the 49ers' head coaching job:

10. Vic Fangio - Considered too persnickety when the 49ers considered him a year ago. Nevertheless, Fangio has an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules and

9. Bob Stoops, Oklahoma head coach - It's unlikely Stoops leaves the Sooners, but if he did, it might be to San Francisco. He's well known to the Yorks, who have followed the Youngstown native closely.

9. Bob Stoops, Oklahoma head coach - It's unlikely Stoops leaves the Sooners, but if he did, it might be to San Francisco. He's well known to the Yorks, who have followed the Youngstown native closely.

8. Mike Shula, Panthers offensive coordinator - He's a run first and is at the center of Cam Newton's quarterback development. He also helped groom David Gerrard in Jacksonville and Jay Fielder in Miami. However, he won't interview until the Panthers are ousted from the playoffs.

8. Mike Shula, Panthers offensive coordinator - He's a run first and is at the center of Cam Newton's quarterback development. He also helped groom David Gerrard in Jacksonville and Jay Fielder in Miami.

7. Ben McAdoo - Former Giants offensive coordinator was key in the development of Aaron Rodgers, and then helped Eli Manning regain his Pro Bowl acumen.

7. Ben McAdoo - Former Giants offensive coordinator was key in the development of Aaron Rodgers, and then helped Eli Manning regain his Pro Bowl acumen.

6. Jim Mora, UCLA - Who doesn't want to come back to the NFL? Count the 49ers former defensive coordinator among those who do. What works against Mora is he isn't an offensive mind. He also can be high maintenance.

6. Jim Mora, UCLA - Who doesn't want to come back to the NFL? Count the 49ers former defensive coordinator among those who do. What works against Mora is he isn't an offensive mind. He also can be high

5. Mike Shanahan former Denver and Washington head coach - At 63, the one-time 49ers offensive coordinator wants back in. Shanahan lorded over the offense in 1994, the last time the team won a Super Bowl, however his endings in Denver and Washington were forgettable.

5. Mike Shanahan former Denver and Washington head coach - At 63, the one-time 49ers offensive coordinator wants back in. Shanahan lorded over the offense in 1994, the last time the team won a Super Bowl,

4. Mike Holmgren, former Seahawks and Packers coach - At 67, could the San Francisco native lead a third separate team to the Super Bowl? He could certainly piece together a formidable staff and he probably wants to erase his unsuccessful run as Cleveland's team president. Rumor has it that he's a serious candidate.

4. Mike Holmgren, former Seahawks and Packers coach - At 67, could the San Francisco native lead a third separate team to the Super Bowl? He could certainly piece together a formidable staff and he probably

3. Chip Kelly, former Eagles and Oregon Ducks head coach - Rumors have it that both sides are interested. Kelly was upset when the Eagles fired 49ers personnel man Tom Gamble, and Kelly could possibly revive Colin Kaepernick's career with his high tempo offense. However, he can be difficult and he and Gamble could pose a challenge to general manager Trent Baalke.

3. Chip Kelly, former Eagles and Oregon Ducks head coach - Rumors have it that both sides are interested. Kelly was upset when the Eagles fired 49ers personnel man Tom Gamble, and Kelly could possibly revive

2. Hue Jackson, Bengals offensive coordinator - The 49ers reportedly have requested an interview with the former Raiders head coach. Jackson was the last head coach Al Davis hired and he has a excellent resume with quarterbacks, including Andy Dalton.

2. Hue Jackson, Bengals offensive coordinator - The 49ers reportedly have requested an interview with the former Raiders head coach. Jackson was the last head coach Al Davis hired and he has a excellent resume

1. Sean Payton New Orleans - Payton would command a big salary and is a big personality. Unless the Saints release him, he's still under contract, which means the 49ers would have to trade for him. However, he's a 3-in-1 guy by being a head coach, an offensive coordinator and a play caller.

1. Sean Payton New Orleans - Payton would command a big salary and is a big personality. Unless the Saints release him, he's still under contract, which means the 49ers would have to trade for him. However,

Report: 49ers choices down to Kelly, Shanahan

The 49ers will hire Chip Kelly or Mike Shanahan as their next head coach within the next 24 hours, ESPN reported.

Kelly, 52, interviewed last week after he was fired 15 games into the Eagles’ 6-10 season. He went 26-21 with Philadelphia, which went 4-12 in the season before his arrival, but he was fired amid multiple reports of player discontent. He also orchestrated a series of failed personnel moves after he gained general-manager powers last year.

Kelly is not known to have interviewed with another team.

Last week, former Eagles coach Dick Vermeil, who still lives in the Philadelphia area, said he was impressed by Kelly’s three-year tenure.

“I think he was innovative, creative and, geesh, you win 20 games your first two years?” Vermeil said in a phone interview. “... I believe that when he gets his next job — he’s so smart — he’ll improve on those things that got him fired. He proved he could coach football.”

Meanwhile, Shanahan, 63, has been out of the NFL since he was fired in 2013 following Washington’s 3-13 season.

He is one of 13 coaches to win two Super Bowls, but he had a 1-5 postseason record in his final 14 seasons. Shanahan also earned a Super Bowl ring as the offensive coordinator when the 49ers won their last Super Bowl after the 1994 season.

Summary: The 49ers will hire Chip Kelly or Mike Shanahan as their next head coach within the next 24 hours, ESPN reported.  Last week, former Eagles coach Dick Vermeil, who still lives in the Philadelphia area, said he was impressed by Kelly’s three-year tenure.  “I think he was innovative, creative and, geesh, you win 20 games your first two years?” Vermeil said in a phone interview. ...  Shanahan also earned a Super Bowl ring as the offensive coordinator when the 49ers won their last Super Bowl after the 1994 season.


The two companies will be called HP Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. HP expects at least $400 million in dis-synergies from the split.

Read MoreHP stock slides, but Whitman pleased with revamp

Personal systems revenue—the company's biggest segment, which includes computer hardware—dropped 5 percent year-over-year to $7.74 billion.

Notebook sales soared 19 percent, but desktop sales fell 14 percent. Revenue in HP's printing segment also slid 7 percent from the year-earlier period to $5.45 billion.

During Whitman's tenure, the company has dealt with a consumer shift away from traditional computer hardware and put some focus on building its enterprise and cloud segments.

"I'm pleased with where we ended the quarter, the continued success of our turnaround, and the progress we're making on separation," Whitman said in the release.

Revenue in HP's enterprise group dropped 1 percent year-over-year to $6.56 billion. Storage and networking sales were down 8 and 16 percent, respectively.

Enterprise services revenue was 16 percent lower than the year-earlier period.

Year to date, HP's stock has fallen nearly 16 percent, with much of the drop coming after its fiscal first-quarter earnings report in which it disappointed on revenue.

HP recently announced that it was selling a 51 percent stake in Chinese business H3C to Tsinghua Unigroup. H3C provides IT products and services.

HP is still engulfed in legal difficulties linked to its 2011 acquisition of software company Autonomy. HP had previously sued former Autonomy executives for accounting irregularities.

Read MoreHP revenue misses as commercial sales fall

—CNBC's Nana Sidibe contributed reporting.

Summary: HP reported strong notebooks sales in its fiscal second quarter, adding that its planned split into two companies is on track.


Charles Rennie Mackintosh is a British rarity, an architect who led rather than followed, who was admired and studied abroad, and who influenced the direction of the world's architecture. More often, this island breeds skilful latecomers to continental movements, such as Inigo Jones, or great originals whose influence goes nowhere, such as Nicholas Hawksmoor.

Mackintosh's masterpiece is the Glasgow School of Art of 1897-1909, later hailed as a precursor of modernism on account of its simplicity and abstraction, but which is far more than a diagram of the future. It is a building of dazzling range and freedom, from its massive, castle-like south side to the filigree metalwork on its north. It is robust, as an arts school should be, still taking a daily beating and splattering from students, but also exquisite. It runs from bare concrete and painted softwood to leaded stained glass and intricate carving and joinery. Its inspirations extend from Celtic and baronial to Michelangelo and the Glaswegian industrial might of Mackintosh's own time. Every part breathes the independent spirit of the policeman's son who was 28 when he won the commission to design it.

The school is a Scottish national treasure, like a more fascinating Stone of Scone, and an object of veneration by architects all over the world. Now it is to be extended with a new building across Renfrew Street from its north facade. Following an architectural competition, a well-respected American architect was chosen, whose proposals will be considered by Glasgow City Council's planning committee in nine days' time. Yet dissenting voices have been raised: historian William Curtis calls it a "monstrous intervention". Murray Grigor, who has made three films about Mackintosh, calls it "a cliff of glass".

Much has been done to achieve an outcome worthy of Mackintosh. Steven Holl Architects were chosen by a competition jury led by architects, rather than the project managers who usually arrange these things. The new building is to be constructed with old-fashioned building contracts, which give a higher degree of respect to architects' intentions than the contractor-led deals that are more common nowadays.

Holl, who is based in New York, is an architect with an aura of seriousness. He gets up early every day to paint, usually in watercolour. He invokes philosophy and science and endows his projects with poetic names, such as Writing With Light House or The Tower of Silence. He ponders the qualities of daylight and of building materials, their roughness, smoothness, patination and porosity. He likes the word "haptic". He says things such as: "Building transcends physical requirements by fusing with a place, by gathering the meaning of a situation."

He has visited Mackintosh's works and studied their spaces and light. He has identified the palette of colours used in the School of Art and come up with a complementary one for the new building. He has painted evocative watercolours of the airy studios he wants to create there. He has worked and reworked the positions of stairs and the shape of the building. His office has run computer simulations of its lighting effects, inside and out.

His design is based on a series of well-lit studios connected by ramps and galleries where students can, as they do in the internal warren of Mackintosh's school, pause, meet, reflect or rest. There is to be a south-facing terrace, with planting inspired by a machair, which is a kind of peaty coastal pasture. The exterior, composed with the harmonious proportions of the golden section, is in green-tinged matt glass, intended as a foil to the reddish stone of the old building.

Yet, for all this due process and care, Curtis says: "It is horrendously out of scale, it dominates Mackintosh, it does not create a decent urban space, it fails to deal with the context near and far, it is clumsy in form and proportion, it lacks finesse in detail."

And, looking at the confrontation of the old and proposed buildings across Renfrew Street, it's hard to see the evidence of all Holl's thoughtfulness and attention. The new follows the approximate shape of the old, but it is bulked up and coarser-grained. It makes its moves in increments of metres rather than the fractions of inches in which Mackintosh worked. It looks like the old building's robotic cousin.

One of the marvels of Mackintosh is the way his building varies on every front, in response to different settings, while keeping an overall integrity. The Holl design is more monolithic, with a narrower range of notes. This exaggerates its bulk, making it into a single conspicuous object. The hard, sharp, bright glass, meanwhile, threatens to outsmart the weathered stone of the old, turning it from mellow into shabby. Holl's team say the glass will be subtle and respectful, almost like alabaster, but it's hard to be confident about this from the available information.

It is not that the new has to bow and scrape to Mackintosh. A contrasting material is better than a pale shadow of his unrepeatable stonework. There is much to like about Holl's interior: his studios and his idea of making social places out of the stairs and galleries that connect them. But outside there is no sense of rhyme or rapport between the two buildings. This is not a project that needs ripping up and starting again, but it needs a lot more work if it is to be equal to its good intentions and of the ghost of Mackintosh.

Summary: Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Renfrew Street masterpiece is to be extended – but not everyone's happy, reports Rowan Moore


02/16/2016 AT 10:50 AM EST

's close friends and collaborators wish the Twitter-ranting rapper all the best.

on the Grammys red carpet Monday night, Rhymefest clarified his

that West "needs help, in the form of counseling. Spiritual & mental."

"A lot of media wants to use me to tear him down and that's not who I am," he said. "I want Kanye to be healthy, and I want Kanye to be happy and successful, and I'm very proud of his new album."

Rhymefest continued: "I want my friend to be healthy, and healthiness is happiness. I want him to be happy, and if he's not happy, I'm concerned. ... I think sometimes we get concerned with entertaining the public when we should be concerned with being happy."

West's "Jesus Walks" and "New Slaves" co-writer also expressed his belief that "it's challenging being a person as prolific and as genius as Kanye West."

Another of West's collaborators, Malik Yusef, compared his friend to another "off-kilter" artist: Vincent van Gogh.

"There was an artist a long time ago who cut his ear off one time, so Kanye cut off

Rhymefest and Yusef's comments come after an eventful and controversial week for West, 38. (Reps for West did not immediately respond to calls for comment.)

The rapper, who released his seventh studio album,

, on Sunday, faced backlash for both

. He also sent a

claiming he is "53 million dollars in personal debt" and asking Facebook billionaire

for a $1 billion investment "into Kanye West ideas."

in which he discussed his debt in greater detail.

"For the past 3 years people who knew about the debt tried to use it against me in negotiations ..." he wrote. "You can't control me or use the debt against me no more ..."

For the past 3 years people who knew about the debt tried to use it against me in negotiations â¦

You canât control me or use the debt against me no more â¦

Money doesnât make me who I amâ¦

I wanted the world to know my struggleâ¦

"This country was built off of dreamers ... never give up on your dreams, bro..." he continued. "My dreams brought me into debt and I'm close to seeing the light of day..."

this country was built off of dreamers â¦ never give up on your dreams, broâ¦

my dreams brought me into debt and Iâm close to seeing the light of dayâ¦

Iâm an artistâ¦ the definition of art - or at least my definition - is to be able to see the truth and then express it...

West finished the stream of tweets with his commonly used mantra: "

Summary: Rhymefest and Malik Yusef spoke out about West's recent Twitter rants and new album


A survey carried out in several areas of the country showed more than 80% of people supported euthanasia for those with incurable, painful illness, Zhao Gongmin, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.

Approval rates were especially high among the elderly, he said.

However, he added that conditions were "not yet ripe for national-level legislation on euthanasia".Â "I think it is only a matter of time for euthanasia to become legal," ZhaoÂ said, speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing session of the National People's Congress in Beijing.

"Therefore, we should allow some experiments on the local level for the purpose of accumulating experience."

Controversial "We should allow some experiments on the local level for the purpose of accumulating experience"Zhao Gongmin, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Euthanasia has come up at previous parliament meetings and been a subject of controversy around the country for years.

"We should allow some experiments on the local level for the purpose of accumulating experience"Zhao Gongmin, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Zhao's point comes as the government has pledged to put massive new investment in its decaying rural health care system, which is leaving many millions with no access toÂ money unable to afford medical treatment.Â Â Â It is not uncommon for rural people with serious illnesses to kill themselves, often to avoid burdening their families withÂ expensive medical bills.

Summary: An adviser to China's parliament has proposed allowing doctors to


Understandably, many play it close to the vest during such uncertain times. Investor convictions were repeatedly tested during 2008 to 2012, with ongoing dysfunction in Washington, a sub-prime-induced meltdown of our banking system, and Europe's rapidly deteriorating economic situation. All this uncertainty was amped up when 2013 began with the Congressional bungee jump off the fiscal cliff and back.

That is why a year ago I felt compelled to write "Four Reasons to be Optimistic" to point out why my outlook for the markets, based on my homework and view of emerging trends, was optimistic. I highlighted four principal reasons: corporations were still sitting on a lot of warehoused capital; the housing market was beginning to look better; new sources of energy (principally fracking) were emerging; and the euro zone was beginning to stabilize.

(Read more: 'Wizard of Wharton': Stay bullish in 2014)

And, in fact, 2013 was a stellar year — despite the cumulative fiscal drag of a 16-day government shutdown, the budget cuts mandated by sequestration, a 2-percent reduction in take-home pay due to the end of the Social Security tax break, the tax hikes mandated by the Affordable Care Act, and unease about whether and when the Federal Reserve would begin to taper off quantitative easing (QE), the massive money-printing program meant to stimulate an economy enduring such shocks to its system. A mere hint from Ben Bernanke that QE might be ending caused world markets to retreat in May, but in December, when the Fed officially announced tapering was actually going to begin, the market actually staged an impressive rally.

Many signs indicate that the economy is indeed recovering and fears of a recession are, at the moment, unfounded. In fact, the major reason that I am once again optimistic about the year ahead is that I believe this message will seep into the collective market psyche and be increasingly reflected in equity valuations.

When financial historians analyze investor returns subsequent to the 2008 market upheaval, I think what will really stand out is how significantly the returns achieved by those who looked past the headlines outpaced the returns of people who didn't. Paralyzed by fear, the latter kept a disproportional amount of cash in the bank or invested in very low-yielding bonds and failed to participate in the market rally which had begun in 2009 and kicked into hyper-drive in 2013.

(Read more: Byron Wien: Here's why a 10% correction looms)

Given last year's very strong performance, the next big question is inevitable: Is the market overheated and ready for a fall? I say probably not. Though I don't believe 2014 will deliver equally huge returns, I continue to be optimistic not only for the reasons I have already stated but also other positive developments:

(Read more: My top 10 stocks for 2014: Farr)

Certainly, some events can derail the market in 2014 — for example, corporate earnings falling short of expectations or unexpected geo-political news from the Middle East. Still, I believe the bias is to the upside, and the greater "risk" remains being out of a rising market rather than being caught in an overheated crashing market. While stocks are not the relative bargains they have been in recent years and interim market corrections are to be expected, the current situation doesn't feel like a market top to me. Market tops are usually associated with excessive speculation and irrational investor exuberance, neither of which characterizes the present market.

Kenneth A. Kamen is a managing director of The Mercadien Group and president of Mercadien Asset Management and Mercadien Securities, as well as the author of the book,"Reclaim Your Nest Egg: Take Control of your Financial Future."

Summary: After a stellar 2013 in the stock market, it begs the question: Is the market overheated and getting ready for a fall? Asset manager Ken Kamen weighs in.


Billionaire investor Mark Cuban told CNBC on Wednesday he believes IBM is now a financial engineering company, not a tech company anymore.

"They have no vision. What they've evolved into is a company that does [arbitrage] on acquisitions. It's stock buybacks. Who is IBM anymore?" Cuban asked in a "Squawk Box" interview.

In response to Cuban's comments, IBM said via email to CNBC: "When it comes to investing in the business and returning money to shareholders, IBM has done both."

Cuban said the old Big Blue used to have recognizable products.

"They specialize in financial engineering," he said. "To me, that's not a future." He noted that Warren Buffett is a big IBM investor, and said he's a big fan of Buffett, but not of IBM.

In its response to Cuban, the company said: "IBM will accelerate our growth strategy, creating a dedicated cloud business and specialized units to serve industries and professions being transformed by data and analytics. IBM will also continue to return money to shareholders, in addition to maintaining our commitment to R&D and to invest in our business. It is all part of our commitment to delivering higher value to our clients."

Shares of IBM has been under heavy pressure this week after its big earnings miss on Monday. It moved higher on Wednesday. (For the latest stock price, click here.)

Summary: The billionaire investor also explained why he was a buyer of Netflix stock on last week's dip.


AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Kevin Harvick sat on a podium in the middle of his most successful track on the 15th anniversary of his first Sprint Cup victory and insisted he's not job hunting.

Two days before he seeks a record eighth victory at Phoenix International Raceway, the 2014 Cup champion said he expects to be driving for Stewart-Haas Racing next year when the team switches from Chevrolet to Ford.

"I don't see any reason why that would change," Harvick said Friday. "For me, this is the best position I've been in with my team."

Harvick won his first Cup race on March 11, 2001, at Atlanta in a Chevrolet. He won seven times at Phoenix International Raceway, more than any driver, in a Chevy. While team owner Tony Stewart has been vocal in his support of the car change, Harvick has been quiet.

While not fully endorsing Ford, Harvick indicated he has no desire to leave the No. 4 team.

"I feel like I have the best crew chief in the garage," Harvick said about Rodney Childers. "It would be pretty tough to turn around and walk out on everybody who's been a part of building everything that we've built."

Harvick came to the desert as a favorite to win the fourth Sprint Cup race of the 2016 season. He won four consecutive races on the asphalt mile tri-oval and five of six until Dale Earnhardt Jr. took last fall's rain-shortened race.

All Harvick did was lead 143 of 219 laps and finish second.

"I feel like we've had some good showings here, but coming to this track, I'd definitely put that 4 car as my No. 1 pick," driver Jimmie Johnson said of Sunday's 312-mile race.

Harvick brought the same car that he won here with in last spring's race. He's also healthy again, after fighting an illness last week while finishing seventh at Las Vegas for this third top-10 in as many races.

"I started racing here in the mid-'90s," Harvick said about running lower-series races at Phoenix. "You still see a lot of the same fans and people that followed your career up the ranks. I love coming out here."

Summary: Kevin Harvick said he expects to be driving for Stewart-Haas Racing next year when the team switches from Chevrolet to Ford.


"People fall off their horse, break something, have a heart attack," Mr. Rieger said. "Suicides are a big deal. We had a guy from Missoula not long ago, he loaded himself up with a hundred and fifty pounds of rocks and walked right into a fishing lake. Found his body at the bottom of the lake."

This time of year may the worst for mishaps, the deputies said, because daytime is so pleasant -- highs in the upper 70's -- and then the temperature can plummet 50 degrees in a few hours, and it can snow on a dime.

A few days after the search for Mr. Thomson was called off, a clue emerged, and the search was back on. A pair of hikers found Mr. Thomson's backpack in a boulder field close to the trail, about three miles up the most popular route to Granite Peak. Family members of lost hikers live for that kind of sign, the scrap of the missing that can jump-start hope.

Three years ago, Brian Faughnan of Montreal took off on a day hike at Whistler Village, in British Columbia, during the warm summer months. He asked for directions to a trailhead and was never seen again. After a weeklong search, he became one of the missing.

Mr. Faughnan's brother John started a Web site and pressed the authorities to keep searching. He tried to search on his own.

"It's like trying to find somebody in a closet in Manhattan," said John Faughnan, who lives in St. Paul. "You get really discouraged. You go through this crazy phase, where you're really desperate, you consult a psychic, or think something really bad happened. After a while, you just resign yourself to the fact that he's gone."

But the lingering questions, the lack of resolution, are particularly troubling, he said. "You wonder: did he run off and join a cult?" Mr. Faughnan said. "Was there foul play? I have no reason to suspect he ran off and started another life. He was an aerospace engineer with a good job."

For two years, he posted updates, such as they were. But now he talks about his brother in the past tense. "I miss him," Mr. Faughnan said. "I really do. I think he probably went off-trail, and then something happened."

The backpack in the Beartooths proved to be the break that searchers were looking for. They had many questions: Did Mr. Thomson fall? Was he taken by a bear, a cougar? Did a hunter mistake him for prey?

"Not long ago a deputy was up there, hiking and taking pictures just like this guy in the recent case," said Mr. Rieger, the undersheriff. "And while he was walking back to camp, he spooked a moose. It horned him and killed him."

The searchers for Mr. Thomson looked around gullies, cliffs and boulder fields in the immediate area where the pack was found. In a deep ravine, 200 feet or so below where the pack was found, searchers saw something.

Mark Polakoff, a volunteer rescuer, rappelled down the steep cliff, tall boulders all around. At the bottom, he found a body, later identified as that of Charles Thomson. He was no longer among the missing.

Mr. Thomson, who lived in nearby Cody, Wyo., died of head and torso injuries from a fall, the authorities said. "We suspect he was scrambling on the rock, maybe looking to get a picture, and fell," said Sheriff Cliff Brophy of Stillwater County, which covers the area where Mr. Thomson was found.

The elk-breeding season, called the rut, is on now in the Beartooths. Hunters and hikers are trying to get close, to hear the call of the bulls. The nights are frigid, the winds can be fierce. In the morning in this town, the jumping-off point for adventures in the Beartooths, a film of ice coats the half-drained municipal pool.

The people who search for the missing are on heightened alert.

"This is the high season," Mr. Brophy said. "People get caught up in the chase. We get calls from all over the United States, someone saying their loved one is lost in the Beartooth Mountains, and they want us to find them. Well, that's hundreds of miles of backcountry. Some of them we just never find."

Summary: Red Lodge Journal on mountainous region of Montana where 34-year-old Charles Matthew Thomson recently became latest of many people who disappear on hikes and climbs through rugged unforgiving territory like Beartooth Wilderness Area; photos; map; Thomson walked toward glorious reaches of Montana's highest mountains August 21 and vanished, one of too many who set out alone and encounter trouble, or who overestimate their ability; deputies say sunny days and cold nights of autumn are worst for such miscalculations; John Faughnan discusses anguish of his brother's disappearance during day hike in Whistler, British Columbia, three years ago (M)


05/26/2016 AT 03:40 PM EDT

Three high school football players have been accused of sexually assaulting their teammate with a coat hanger in the locker room of Dietrich High School in rural Idaho.

The oldest teen, 18-year-old John Howard, has been charged with felony forcible penetration by use of a foreign object. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

Two other teens were arrested in the alleged attack. The 17-year-old is charged as an adult; the 16-year-old is charged as a juvenile.

The victim has filed a $10 million lawsuit against the school district and several of its administrators.

In the lawsuit – which was obtained by PEOPLE – the victim claims the alleged rape was the culmination of months of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of the teens.

The complaint lists several incidents in which the alleged victim, who, it says, "suffers from mental disorders, including learning disabilities, suffered physical or emotional abuse."

The alleged victim, who is black, also outlines several incidents in which he was harassed because of his race. "He was taunted and called racist names by other members of the team," the lawsuit alleges.

In the lawsuit, the alleged victim claims that he screamed during the locker room incident, but none of the coaching staff came to his aid. He reiterated that claim at a

"I screamed," he testified. "I was pretty upset. I felt really bad. A little bit betrayed and confused at the same time. It was terrible, a pain I've never felt."

He then "was taken to two different hospitals," the complaint reads.

Attorneys for the accused teens did not return PEOPLE's calls for comment. School officials declined to comment on the incident or the litigation.

Summary: 18-year-old John Howard and two younger teens have been charged in the alleged October incident


In this short film, BBC Earth explores the tiny little planet we all live on.

We're releasing it in tribute to the astronomer Carl Sagan, who was born on this day in 1934. Sagan gave us perhaps the clearest demonstration that, while the Earth may seem enormous, compared to the universe it is minuscule.

In 1990 he arranged for the Voyager 1 spacecraft to take a photograph of Earth. But this was no ordinary photo. Voyager 1 was 6 billion km from Earth, beyond the orbit of the most distant planet, Neptune.

The resulting photograph is reproduced below. The pale lines of colour are bands of sunlight. If you look closely, you can see a pale blue dot just below the middle and to the right. That is Earth.

In his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot, published two years before his death, Sagan spelled out what the image tells us:

"Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

"The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

You can listen to Carl Sagan read this passage on the Library of Congress website.

Summary: We all think of our planet as a vast expanse, but in reality it is only a little speck of dust


updated 11/08/2015 AT 09:45 PM EST

•originally published 11/03/2015 AT 08:45 AM EST

took his life in 2014, he left his millions of fans, family, and friends shocked and grieving – no one more so than his widow Susan Williams, who for the last year has remained mostly silent about her husband's tragic passing in an effort to uncover and study the real cause of his death.

Now in one of her first interviews since losing Williams' last August, Susan shares with PEOPLE the details of the debilitating brain disease called Diffuse Lewy Body Dementia or Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) that took hold of Williams and the couple's harrowing ordeal to fight it.

"It was not depression that killed Robin," Susan says, speaking to the public perception of what drove Williams to commit suicide. "Depression was one of let's call it 50 symptoms and it was a small one."

Leah Remini on the cover of PEOPLE

Frequently misdiagnosed, DLB is the second most common neurodegenerative dementia after Alzheimer's and causes fluctuations in mental status, hallucinations and impairment of motor function. The disease started taking its toll on Williams in the last year before his death, by way of its "whack-a-mole"-like symptoms which included heightened levels of anxiety, delusions and impaired movement.

"They present themselves like a pinball machine," Susan says. "You don't know exactly what you're looking at."

Williams' symptoms worsened in the months leading up to his death. He experienced crippling anxiety attacks, a "miscalculation" with a door that left his head bloodied and muscle rigidity. And yet still his team of doctors could not pinpoint exactly what was wrong – until the autopsy.

"I know now the doctors, the whole team was doing exactly the right things," Susan says. "It's just that this disease was faster than us and bigger than us. We would have gotten there eventually."

Susan hopes that she can use what she's learned to help others afflicted by DLB.

"I've spent this last year trying to find out what killed Robin. To understand what we were fighting, what we were in the trenches fighting and one of the doctors said, 'Robin was very aware that he was losing his mind and there was nothing he could do about it,' " she says.

"This was a very unique case and I pray to God that it will shed some light on Lewy bodies for the millions of people and their loved ones who are suffering with it," adds Susan. "Because we didn't know. He didn't know."

Summary: "I've spent this last year trying to find out what killed Robin. To understand what we were fighting," Susan told PEOPLE


You know those movies where the machines take over and the human race gets enslaved by computers? Pure applesauce, says Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet GOOG .

We have little to fear from the rapid growth of artificial intelligence, he said at an event at Columbia University in New York on Monday. Fears about computers run amok are the stuff of movies, he argued, and that the technology serves to help people not hurt them — including when it comes to things like income and employment.

“I worry about inequality but there’s no evidence the stuff we do creates a permanent underclass,” said Schmidt, in the course of an interview with Columbia’s dean of journalism, Steve Coll.

He added that critics have fretted about technology’s impact on the job market for decades but that, overall, tech has created “millions and millions” of new jobs.

The timing of Schmidt’s comments was perhaps ironic since, only a week ago, a Google computer drew on its machine learning prowess to defeat the world’s top human player in an epic match of the game Go. The computer’s 4 games to 1 victory was another milestone for machines, coming five years after IBM’s Watson super-computer routed two Jeopardy champions on national TV.

Schmidt noted that AI software (which Google and others are making open source) is serving to automate tasks like sorting photos or even driving a car, but argued that only very low skill, repetitive type work will be affected. He acknowledged this includes some types of journalism jobs, including certain sports reports and corporate earnings stories, but said this trend will be limited.

“Creative jobs and the caring jobs [like health care] are the ones that are robust against everything,” he said. “There’s no evidence that the world I live in is displacing that.”

Beyond the impact of machine learning on the job market, Schmidt also downplayed its military and cyber-war implications. In his view, as the world’s computers become more inter-connected, AI may come to serve as a “defensive shield” for the global network by identifying and isolating abnormal activities.

“This technology may be very pro-defense. We don’t know yet,” he said, but acknowledged that Google’s leaders did worry about AI in the hands of dictators and authoritarian regimes.

At a time when hacking is regular front-page news, including a recent cyber-plot against a dam in New York, many in the room did not appear to be reassured by Schmidt’s observations. One questioner asked how to avoid the all-controlling computers of the movie Minority Report.

In the end, though, Schmidt’s most convincing answer might have been the simplest one: It’s too difficult.

According to Schmidt, AI has made enormous progress in recent years, but has now reached a huge computational roadblock. The upshot is that AI remains very good at solving problems—but only after humans have done the hard work of defining the problem in the first place. This was the case with Google’s Go computer, whose game-playing feat took teams of people two years to program.

For more about Google, watch:

As such, our fears about machines taking over may still be as far away as they were at the time of the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The villain in the film, by the way, was a computer named HAL whose name was rumored to be based on a big tech company—not Google but another firm with the nearby three-letter acronym of IBM. IBM

Summary: We don't need to be very afraid says Eric Schmidt.


Stacey Dash offered an offensive alternative for members of the transgender community seeking equality and freedom when it comes to restroom use.

"OK, then go in the bushes," the conservative political commentator and former "Clueless" actress told Entertainment Tonight, weighing in on the controversy surrounding legislation in Mississippi and North Carolina mandating transgender people use communal restrooms matching their birth gender.

"I don't know what to tell you, but I'm not gonna put my child's life at risk because you want to change a law, so that you can be comfortable with your beliefs — which means I have to change my beliefs and my rights? No," the 49-year-old Fox News commentator added.

Dash, the mother of 24-year-old Austin and 13-year-old Lola, was originally promoting her upcoming memoir "There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative" when the controversial topic was brought up.

'Clueless' star Stacey Dash blames black people in blog post

Dash also found time to slam Caitlyn Jenner for her use of a women's bathroom, while bashing Lady Gaga for claiming the singer has been using the anti-bullying Born This Way Foundation to promote her own agenda.

"Hollywood pushes a liberal agenda to the rest of the country," she said. "And, whether we like it or not, Hollywood dictates the culture of the country."

She also pointed out that she believes feminism is ruining men.

"We are the most powerful creatures on the planet, women," Dash said. "We raise the men. So, let's start letting them be men… because I feel like they're falling away."

Stacey Dash attacks Leonardo DiCaprio and climate change

She continued on to say she wished the world was more like the 50s and 60s.

"What we're doing is we're chipping away at what it means to be a woman and to be feminine and what it means to be masculine," she said. "I wish we could go back to 'Mad Men' days. I love those days. Men were men and I love them."

Summary: Stacey Dash offered an offensive alternative for members of the transgender community seeking equality when it comes to restroom use.


On my last day of work at the Stanford admissions office, a student worker motioned me over. ''Nancy, I got a reaction call for you,'' she said, giving me a paper with a name and number on it. It was July. Reaction-call season -- those hairy weeks after the decision letters are mailed -- was long over.

''Is she angry?'' I asked.

''No, her daughter never even applied.''

She lowered her voice: ''She knows you. She says her daughter was murdered.'' Sometimes I would avoid returning calls to let a caller's wrath evaporate. I didn't recognize the caller's name, and I might have sat on this one, but it was my last day.

I dialed. ''Hello, is Christine there?''

''Yes, this is she,'' the voice said. ''You know why I called.''

''Your daughter was killed,'' I said, horrified.

''No,'' she responded, quietly, ''my entire family was murdered.'' She listed them one by one. ''Melanie, Stan, Stuart and my youngest, Michelle. Michelle's father, my ex-husband, killed them.'' Both sons died in their sleep, she said, from gunshot wounds to their hearts. A bullet killed Melanie at the age of 17.

How could my colleague not have told me about the whole family? How could I not have heard about these murders? I could feel myself breathing. But I couldn't figure out what to say.

Christine waited for me to speak, then said, ''You can't be a mother if you don't have kids.''

Suddenly, the news overwhelmed me, and I vomited on my desk. I turned to face the wall. I couldn't ask Christine to call me back. I couldn't put it off. I wouldn't be there tomorrow. Sweat raced down my back, pooling at the waist of my pants. Christine asked if I know what happens once everyone leaves after the funeral is over. People cut holes in the carpet to get rid of the blood. They paint the walls. The smell buries the scent of your children. You redecorate, and the rooms stay empty.

''It seems so important that someone at Stanford remember my daughter.'' She paused. ''Melanie met you on Nov. 7 at your information session.'' I must have met 2,000 kids that year. Some flashed their transcripts. Some explained their mistakes. But there is no Rolodex of names.

''After meeting you, Melanie and I could not look at pumpkin ice cream without laughing,'' Christine tells me. During information sessions, I used to ask students to introduce themselves, name their high schools and share their favorite book. Some children turned to their parents as if to ask: ''What should I say?'' To them, it was a test, not an icebreaker. So, I switched to ice cream. After kids shared their choices, I'd tell a story: I used to tell student groups that if anyone could guess my favorite ice cream flavor I would look upon it quite favorably. Once, a young man said, ''Pumpkin.'' I was shocked. No one ever guesses pumpkin. So I asked the student, ''How did you know?'' He replied, ''Someone tipped me off.'' I told him: ''Well, that's an honor-code violation. You can sit back down.'' The audience would laugh nervously.

''No one guesses pumpkin,'' Christine said.

''They still don't,'' I told her.

''Do you remember what she said when you asked about her favorite ice-cream flavor?''

I didn't have the courage to say I didn't remember. I couldn't figure out whether I should lie. I was silent. So Christine gave me clues to her daughter's life: ''Do you remember when she asked about writing about the human genome project? You told her, 'Explain your curiosity; don't explain the project.'''

I say that to everyone when they ask what they should write. I groped for something that made Melanie stand out, but my mind was blank. This was a reaction call without the standard talking points. Parents usually call to figure out exactly what their children did wrong. But the truth is, most students have done everything right. Satisfying answers don't exist: there are too few spaces and too many qualified applicants. It's a tap dance, soothing a parent's frustration about a perceived missed opportunity and convincing them that the child will be O.K.

In her grief, it was as if she were hoping for another chance to make her daughter more than just a face at an information session. The textbook platitudes weren't going to end this conversation. I couldn't wish her daughter well at Barnard or B.U. Melanie had no application, no future. An hour passed. It only occurred to me then that I hadn't even said I'm sorry.

Three months later, as fall begins to make the air crisp, I get a large envelope in the mail. It has been forwarded twice. A picture of a girl, wearing a ballerina tutu, is inside. I stare at her, not recognizing the face. ''I don't expect a reply. You were just very important to us. Your pumpkin ice cream . . . should be available soon. I wish you well.''

Summary: I had always found a way to calm parents whose children didn't get into Stanford — but one mother left me speechless.


Update 1:40 PM, January 14, 2013

Former President George H.W. Bush was discharged from a Houston hospital Monday after receiving lengthy treatment for bronchitis and a persistent cough.

“Mr. Bush has improved to the point that he will not need any special medication when he goes home, but he will continue physical therapy,” Dr. Amy Mynderse, the internal medicine physician in charge of Bush’s care at The Methodist Hospital in Houston said in a statement.

The former President expressed his gratitude in a statement:

“I am deeply grateful for the wonderful doctors and nurses at Methodist who took such good care of me. Let me add just how touched we were by the many get-well messages we received from our friends and fellow Americans. Your prayers and good wishes helped more than you know, and as I head home my only concern is that I will not be able to thank each of you for your kind words.”

Appearing on “Andrea Mitchell Reports” Friday, Former National Security Adviser General Brent Scowcroft said that his friend President George H. W. Bush is doing “much better” after a recent health scare:

“I think he’s doing much better now. He had some respiratory problems that they were very afraid would go into a serious form of pneumonia, and I’m not an expert on the medical diagnosis, but he’s doing fine now. I talked to him a few days ago. And he’s his old self… His spirits are fine.”

Summary: Update 1:40 PM, January 14, 2013


The web offers two definitions for the term “lame duck.” One refers to politicians who are still in office after an election that they did not run in—or lost. The other is historical—the term was used to describe a broker in the 19th Century London Stock Exchange who could not pay his debts. Both of these definitions apply to the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement: It’s not going to pass Congress before the election, and American trade policy will appear bankrupt the longer Congressional action is delayed.

The United States signed the deal at the end of last year, but still needs to implement it, which requires Congressional action. If it does not ratify, America will have defaulted on its promise to 11 trading partners who also signed the deal, and to the more than half dozen other countries that have expressed an interest in joining. So the question is: When can the agreement receive Congressional action? Not in the run-up to the election when Congress is focusing solely on that career-determining event, but afterwards, possibly during the post-election session.

Why can’t Congressional approval just wait until next year? That’s where presidential politics comes in. President Obama is strongly in favor of the agreement, as are most Republican members of Congress and a few dozen or more Democrats. The results of the Indiana primary and the campaign rhetoric to date make it plain that none of the frontrunner candidates wants to implement this trade deal, at least not as is. Donald Trump called TPP “a horrible deal,” and Bernie Sanders has said “kill it.” Hillary Clinton hasn’t completely opposed it, but has said she wants to see changes, which might require renegotiation.

The bottom line: The next president of the United States is not going to send the current agreement to Congress in its current form. It might take years to get to a new agreement, were that even possible, and that would be a long shot.

The rest of the world is not standing still while the United States is occupied with its domestic politics. Sixteen Asian-Pacific nations, with China being the largest, met last week in Australia to work toward a trade deal of their own—the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). It is a preferential trading arrangement that would create new discrimination against American trade in a large part of the world, and will fall far short of the new rules the U.S. has agreed on with its TPP partners. Absent TPP coming into effect, America will be stepping back from Asia, something the next president and Congress will come to deeply regret.

There is a narrow path forward for the TPP, and it has to be taken if the current Agreement is going to go into effect. Lame-duck sessions last typically no more than 30 days, and often less. That’s a very compressed timetable for getting any legislation through, especially when there is not yet a resolution of a few remaining issues key members of Congress have raised. It is incumbent on all who see merit in this agreement—who care about America’s place in the world and about access to foreign markets—to tell Congress to make sure that the TPP passes this year. This opportunity is not likely to come again anytime soon.

Alan Wm. Wolff is Senior Counsel with Dentons LLP, Chairman of the National Foreign Trade Council, and a former United States Deputy Trade Representative.

Summary: But it should be.


GROSSE POINTE FARMS, Mich., May 15— There were tremors along the elm-lined lawns of this courtly Detroit suburb this week as collectors, builders and ordinary homeowners dismantled one of the town's stateliest mansions, even stripping its oak floors and bronze door knockers.

The mansion, a 25-room French Baroque house built in 1913 by Charles A. Platt, a New York architect, was bought about a year ago by Edsel Ford 2d, son of Henry Ford 2d and the crown prince of Detroit's social circuit. Although Mr. Ford planned to move into the mansion, he disliked its ornate appointments. To the dismay of other residents, he decided to auction off virtually everything but the concrete walls.

People came in from New York, Atlanta and Texas to bid on the mansion's chandeliers and fireplaces last Saturday. This week they came to retrieve the goods. They pried off shutters, tore out sinks, stripped pantry counters and hauled out a pair of cement ram's-head urns. Passing of Era Feared

Longtime residents are lamenting the dismantling of the mansion and the passing of an era. The town is one of a string of grand suburbs east of Detroit built by the lumber and automobile barons of the early 20th century, and the mansion ''represents an important time period and life style that most of us will never be able to lead,'' said Lisa Gandelot, president of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society.

The old estates with drawing rooms and servants' quarters are fast becoming an endangered species here. Developers are converting some mansions into condominiums, and some of the estates are being subdivided to accommodate the less sybaritic needs of the professionals who now live here. 'Going to Be Horrendous'

To add to the concern, several prominent residents have died in recent months, raising fears about what will become of their mansions.

''The cumulative effect is going to be horrendous,'' said Patricia Colett, an officer of the Historical Society. ''If this keeps up, Grosse Pointe won't look any different than Sterling Heights,'' a blue-collar Detroit suburb of subdivisions and Chevrolets.

To keep that from happening, members of society are taking inventory of the remaining mansions and are pushing for local laws that would keep old houses, like the one gutted this week, from being sold, demolished or significantly altered without a public hearing.

Mr. Ford is part of the younger generation of Grosse Pointers less tethered to the ways of the past. He has declined interviews since he announced the auction and renovation plans. Bidders Traveled 1,500 Miles

But the auctioneer, Lawrence DuMouchelle, said the sale brought in about $200,000 and made people who traveled 1,500 miles to bid on wood paneling very happy. ''These were contractors, builders, individual homeowners who know what to do with a 12-foot paneled wall,'' Mr. DuMouchelle said.

Jeff Woolstrum, an engineer, came from only as far as the nearby town of Grosse Pointe Park and spent all day Wednesday trying to get the cedar chest he bought out of the mansion's pantry. He said he felt not a tinge of remorse. ''I don't think I robbed history or did any archeological damage,'' he said.

Those arguments mean little to preservationists, who say there are plenty of mediocre houses that Mr. Ford could have bought and gutted. ''This is like buying a Rembrandt and turning it into an Andy Warhol,'' Mrs. Colette said. ''It was a work of art that you can't duplicate.'' Saving of Facade Urged

Preservationists were especially outraged when they saw that Mr. Ford planned to sell even the exterior bricks and roof. The morning of the auction, they carried two letters to Mr. Ford, urging him to preserve the facade.

In one of them, W. Hawkins Ferry, a historian of regional architecture, wrote that the mansion was, ''with two or three other houses, all that remains of the elegance and refinement of the truly great period of Grosse Pointe.'' He added that the facade should remain ''as evidence that we as civilized people respect the priceless and irreplaceable heritage of the past.''

As it turned out, by the time Mr. DuMouchelle pounded the final gavel, the windows, shutters, cement porch and steps, wrought iron fence, fountain, urns, stone entrance and transom were sold. The bricks and the roof remained, to the relief of preservationists. There were no takers.

Photo of French Baroque mansion in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich. (Elsa Frohman); Photos of Patricia Colett, officer of Grosse Pointe Historical Society, and Lisa Gandelot, its president (NYT/Peter Yates)

Summary: LEAD: There were tremors along the elm-lined lawns of this courtly Detroit suburb this week as collectors, builders and ordinary homeowners dismantled one of the town's stateliest mansions, even stripping its oak floors and bronze door knockers.


Meili Cady was 19 and searching for stardom in Hollywood when she was seduced by a powerful figure into a life of crime.

But as she reveals in “Smoke: How a Small-Town Girl Accidentally Wound Up Smuggling Seven Tons of Marijuana with the Pot Princess of Beverly Hills,” Cady’s Svengli wasn’t a sleazy producer but a beautiful Asian woman named Lisette Lee — the heir to the Samsung fortune.

Or so Cady — and many others — believed, until the feds cornered her on an airstrip in Ohio and slapped the handcuffs on.

Dubbed the “Gangster Princess” by Rolling Stone in 2010, Lee, faced with arrest on that same tarmac, reportedly demanded to know, “But what will I wear in jail?”

The feds had no answer for that. They just seized her crocodile purse, in which they found burner phones and a drug ledger.

Behind her was the private jet she’d leased to transport 13 suitcases jammed with marijuana, 500 pounds in all, to Columbus. It was a run she’d made many times in the past months, high-stepping out of her Bentley at a small Los Angeles airport, blinged up with rap blaring, to stroll onto the plane where she expected to be met with the sound of a popping champagne cork.

It was Cady’s job to pour. Dressed modestly in a business jacket and pencil-skirt, the fledging actress wasn’t just playing the role of a diva’s assistant in a high-flying drug caper. She was in fact Lee’s close friend who, when she was hired as Lee’s factotum, had no idea her BFF was using her to front an audacious smuggling operation.

Ironically, she thought Lee was doing her a favor, throwing money her way when she was down and out, as Tinseltown hopefuls so often are.

Certainly when Cady arrived in Los Angeles at 19, she had no idea that one day she would be escorted into a federal building by an army of DEA agents with submachine guns, facing 40 years in prison. Her dad, a Realtor, even drove her south from her hometown of Bremerton, Wash., to see her set up safely in her new life.

She immediately enrolled at an acting studio and took part-time jobs to support herself. A friend from the studio introduced her to Lisette Lee, who he said he met while working for director Bruce Ratner. Lee sent Cady a charming come-hither message.

“Unfortunately, my former schoolmate Paris Hilton has given heiresses a bad name,” Lee wrote. “I don’t only like to hang out with other rich people.”

Cady was lonely, and while she thought it odd that an heiress had to go friend-seeking, she was also hungry for companionship. And on their first girl date, Lee was convincing. She lived in a luxury condo on the Wilshire Corrido, drove a purple Mercedes and had big rocks on her fingers and neck.

Lee’s Korean mother was the granddaughter of the founder of Samsung, while her Japanese father had played a significant role at Sony before becoming a heavy-hitter in casinos back home. She had grown up in their Beverly Wilshire mansion and gone to the tony prep school Buckley before finishing school in London. She had also studied criminal law at Harvard, but dropped out to pursue a career as a pop star in Korea.

It seemed a fantastical tale, but Lee had the props to support it — the lavish condo, the luxury car, the designer jewelry. There was even a video of her strutting onstage at the Asian version of the Video Music Awards, though it was a bit blurry on her BlackBerry.

Lee lived large in other ways too. She had a bitch persona she produced at will, saying outrageous things to shock any room she entered but always getting away with it. Others seemed as readily seduced as Cady was by Lee. The diva even claimed to have had very good times with stars like Channing Tatum and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Meanwhile, Cady’s fortunes only fell. Her big break was popping up from under a table after delivering oral sex to David Duchovny’s dinner partner on Showtime’s “Californication.” For that, she got her coveted Screen Actors Guild card but not much work followed.

Lee came to her rescue when she was dead broke and fearing eviction. At the Ritz Carlton, the heiress apologized for not being as good a friend as she should have been through Cady’s hard times, and offered her a job as her personal assistant. Lee was branching off from Samsung and starting her own business venture.

As usual, Lee was secretive about the details, but very demanding. Cady’s first big assignment was to show up at the Van Nuys airport playing the role of a rich diva who was particular about how her luggage was loaded. Destination unknown.

Only later would she put it together that Lee feared arrest — and sent Cady on the virgin drug-smuggling flight in her place. Cady dutifully showed up at the airport in a limo, breezed through security, and led her “entourage” on board.

On her second flight, though, she made a near-fatal mistake. She offered to help with the bags.

Lee was furious. “Anyone who would travel with seven suitcases, with a f---ing bodyguard, would never offer to help with the bags . . . you’re an actress for f---’s sake . . . an employee who I’ve asked to act like a diva.”

It was time for the real diva to step in. Next time out, Lee cruised into the airport in a pearl and white Bentley, parking a few yards from the jet. Smoky eyes, designer clothes and a British accent backed up her imperious manner. No one was going to mess with her.

No one did, not on that run or on many that followed. When Lee joined the crew, the jet became more luxurious and Cady grew more confused.

As an assistant, she had expected to be picking up dry cleaning, not making large wire transfers of cash under her own name.

It wasn’t until her fourth flight, when she stupidly asked the attendant about the smell of marijuana in the cabin, that she put things together. Their luggage was stuffed with drugs — and she was now a player in a major criminal operation. But what the hell was she going to do about it?

Cady did nothing. She was arrested along with the others in Columbus by the army of feds that greeted them on the tarmac one day in June 2010.

It was estimated that over 14 trips, Lee had moved 7,000 pounds of pot to Ohio — reaping $3 million in the process.

During her trial it was revealed that she was in fact telling a version of the truth.

While she had been raised in a modest home and there were no fancy schools, she was the illegitimate daughter of a Samsung heiress and a Japanese father who owned casinos. Lee had been fostered out as a small child but received an allowance, sometimes as high as $100,000 a month, from Daddy.

Lee got six years while Cady, who made a deal with the prosecutors, got 30 days in custody and a year of home confinement. And while her acting career hasn’t soared, Craig Brewer — who won the top prize at Sundance for “Hustle and Flow” in 2005 — is considering a movie based on Lee’s life.

There’s got to be a role for Cady in there somewhere.

“Smoke” is on sale March 24.


-- The prosecutor has requested a 21-month sentence for Teresa. The judge has taken a short recess and they will be back shortly.

has been sentenced to 41 months in a federal prison for wire and bankruptcy fraud -- but

is still waiting to hear what her fate will be.

Both Joe and Teresa dissolved into tears as the judge tore into them.

The judge said ... if she sentences Teresa to prison, she will stagger the sentence so at least one parent will be free to care for their 4 daughters.

As we told you ... Teresa's game plan was to

-- she could get more than 20 months in prison.

Summary: 1:55 PM PT -- Teresa's sentence was just announced.1:15 PM PT -- The prosecutor has requested a 21-month sentence for Teresa. The judge has taken a short…


Just a few years ago, the idea of self-driving cars felt like a sci-fi fantasy, especially to auto executives in Detroit. But thanks to increasingly cheap sensors, the rise of powerful machine-learning technology, and a kick in the butt from the likes of Google GOOG and Tesla Motors TSLA , driverless vehicles are creeping closer and closer to reality.

Now the automakers are aggressively working on self-driving cars while adding more and more semi-autonomous features to their existing line-ups. But they were hesitant to partner with any of the tech companies. The self-driving car industry is moving so quickly that it’s hard to know if a friendly partner will turn into a competitor. (Take Google and Uber: Google’s venture capital arm invested $258 million in Uber in 2013, before Uber decided to work on self-driving vehicles. Now the two companies are poised to directly compete.)

But a big shift came in March, when General Motors GM surprised the world by spending $1 billion to acquire a tiny, 40-person self-driving startup called Cruise Automation. That deal opened the floodgates.

In May, Toyota struck a partnership with Uber, Volkswagen invested $300 million in ride-hailing company Gett, Apple AAPL , which is widely expected to be working on is own car, poured $1 billion into China’s Didi Chuxing, and Google partnered with Fiat-Chrysler to outfit 100 Pacifica minivans with self-driving technology. And those are just the deals from May. Automakers and tech companies are starting to see the benefits of working together.

To learn more about the future of autonomous vehicles, read Fortune’s story, “Silicon Valley Goes to Detroit.”

Summary: One deal opened the floodgates for automakers and tech companies.


Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s said Britain’s top-notch “AAA” credit rating is no longer tenable after voters opted to leave the European Union, The Financial Times reported on Friday.

“We think that a AAA-rating is untenable under the circumstances,” Moritz Kraemer, chief ratings officer for S&P, told the FT.

Rival ratings agencies Fitch and Moodys have already stripped Britain of their AAA ratings, long before the referendum campaign began.

S&P has previously said its AAA rating for Britain reflected its assumption that the referendum would deliver a vote to remain in the EU.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England promised it would “take all necessary steps” to keep financial markets stable as a day of carnage threatened on London’s financial markets in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.

In a statement, the BoE said that it “is monitoring developments closely, has undertaken extensive contingency planning, working closely with Her Majesty’s Treasury, other overseas authorities and central banks (and) will take all necessary steps to meet its responsibilities for monetary and financial stability.”

The pound is facing its worst one-day loss ever, having fallen 12% from over $1.5000 to a low of $1.3241 in the space of only six hours.

However, it appeared to bounce as the referendum result was confirmed, and rose further after David Cameron, the Prime Minister who had led the Remain camp, announced he would resign by October, so that a new Prime Minister can conduct negotiations with the E.U. on future relations between the two sides.

Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda and Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said central banks of six major developed nations have currency-swap lines at the ready to provide liquidity.

Summary: More fallout from the Brexit vote.


A pitched legal battle between ride-hailing rivals Uber and Lyft, involving accusations of hacking and corporate spying, ended with a settlement this week that did not require either company to pay money, according to sources familiar with the agreement.

The settlement coincided with news that Lyft was working with investment bank Qatalyst Partners to pursue strategic options, including a possible sale of the company. The settlement would remove a legal risk for potential partners, though it could not be learned whether the deal or timing was linked to a possible transaction.

Lyft said on Monday that it had settled a lawsuit against its former chief operating officer, Travis VanderZanden, whom Lyft had accused of breaking his confidentiality agreement when he went to work for Uber. That suit had been scheduled to go to trial in August in a California state court.

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Uber, for its part, said in a court filing that it had withdrawn a subpoena in a separate lawsuit over a data breach. Uber had suspected the breach may be traced to Lyft’s chief technology officer, Chris Lambert, though Lyft has said it had no evidence that its employees were involved.

Uber declined to comment on the terms of the settlement. A Lyft spokesman also declined to comment.

The sources said both Uber and Lyft agreed that allowing their top executives to continue in their jobs without restriction was more important than scoring a legal victory.

Uber and Lyft Are Leaving This U.S. City

Lyft has been working with Qatalyst Partners for about a year, using the boutique advisory firm to look at acquisition offers, investments, fundraising and partnership deals, people familiar with the matter said.

It is common for companies to eliminate uncertainties such as legal risk ahead of a deal.

Settlement talks between VanderZanden and Lyft stalled soon after a mediation session in March, Lyft lawyer James Lynch said at an April court hearing. But momentum towards a deal resumed in recent weeks, said sources familiar with the situation.

VanderZanden served as Lyft’s chief operating officer until August 2014, when he expressed disagreement with the company’s leadership, according to court filings. He eventually resigned and became vice president of international growth at Uber.

Lyft sued him in November 2014. In a sworn affidavit, VanderZanden said Lyft believed he had told Uber that Lambert, the Lyft CTO, had discovered a method to “hack into Uber’s computer systems and gain access to Uber confidential information.”

Uber revealed last year that as many as 50,000 of its drivers’ names and their license numbers had been improperly downloaded, and filed a lawsuit in a San Francisco federal court in an attempt to unmask the hacker.

Uber and Lyft Have a Powerful New Enemy—Elizabeth Warren

As part of its investigation, Uber determined that an Internet address potentially associated with the breach could be traced to Lambert. Lambert’s attorney told Reuters Lambert “had nothing to do” with the breach.

Reuters reported last year that the Department of Justice was investigating the breach, though two sources said they had seen no activity on the case in recent weeks.

If the criminal probe continues, Uber would still be able to share information with the Justice Department, one source said.

Summary: Letting executives do their jobs without restriction was more important than a legal victory.


Never judge an app by its cover.

A malicious app has been masquerading as a benign online document converter, researchers at the cybersecurity firm Bitdefender warned Wednesday. The application claims to convert certain file types into Microsoft msft Word versions, simply and freely.

In fact, the app sabotages people’s computers, the researchers said. Called “EasyDoc Converter,” the fake application is designed to sucker people into installing it, giving attackers full anonymous access to infected Apple aapl machines.

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“It’s not your typical type of malware,” Alexandra Gheorghe, security specialist at Bitdefender, told Fortune. “You install it, but you as an individual have no idea that it’s running in the background and it extracts information regarding everything you do on your system.”

“It’s very silent,” she added.

The Mac malware creates what’s known as a backdoor on Apple operating systems OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) or later. This enables attackers to take full control of a computer, including its webcam, files, email service, and execute code commands, the researchers said in a blog post.

The malware also helps establish a connection over the Tor network, a computer network that lets the hackers remain anonymous.

The good news is that the malware, dubbed “Backdoor.MAC.Eleanor” by the researchers, is not available in Apple’s aapl official App Store. Instead, the app has been advertised for download on third-party sites; for instance, a copy was available on the site MacUpdate until it was removed on Tuesday.

Apple’s default “Gatekeeper” security feature generates a pop up alert when people try to download and install the fake app. But users could still choose to ignore the warning.

Gheorghe said the Bitdefender team has identified a suspect who might behind the scam—a person who has openly expressed interest on social media about creating Mac backdoors—but she declined to reveal any further information, saying that “we would like to verify further and investigate further if our suspicions are right.”

Bitdefender said it could not determine how many people’s computers are infected with the malware.

For more on Mac malware, watch:

Attackers have historically targeted Apple devices with malware less frequently than they have targeted other PC-makers, partly due to the latter’s traditionally larger market share. Earlier this year, another piece of Mac malware came to light called KeRanger ransomware, which encrypted the contents of Apple computers and held the data for ransom.

As a general practice, computer security experts recommend that people download software only from trusted sources over trusted network connections. For those who may have already been infected, the cybersecurity software firm Malwarebytes has incorporated a removal tool into its free anti-malware software.

Other proactive security tools that protect against malware include BlockBlock, an anti-malware app that flags possible security breaches in PCs, as well as Little Snitch, a tool that tells you who your computer is talking to.

Of course, it’s easiest just to avoid downloading fishy apps altogether.

Summary: The app gives attackers complete "backdoor" access to your computer.


Photo: Kimberly Veklerov / The Chronicle

More than 80 digital bus posters welcoming Kevin Durant to the Warriors went up around San Francisco on Thursday.

More than 80 digital bus posters welcoming Kevin Durant to the Warriors went up around San Francisco on Thursday.

The Warriors officially welcomed Kevin Durant to Oakland on July 7th, 2016.

The Warriors officially welcomed Kevin Durant to Oakland on July 7th, 2016.

Kevin Durant (second from right in green hat) talks with Bob Myers, Warriors (second from left) general manager, Steve Kerr (partially seen at far left), Warriors head coach, and Ron Adams (right), Warriors assistant coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San Francisco, California.

Kevin Durant (second from right in green hat) talks with Bob Myers, Warriors (second from left) general manager, Steve Kerr (partially seen at far left), Warriors head coach, and Ron Adams (right), Warriors

Kevin Durant (second from right in green hat) talks with Bob Myers (left), Warriors general manager, Steve Kerr (second from left), Warriors head coach, and Ron Adams (right), Warriors assistant coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San Francisco, California.

Kevin Durant (second from right in green hat) talks with Bob Myers (left), Warriors general manager, Steve Kerr (second from left), Warriors head coach, and Ron Adams (right), Warriors assistant coach, before

Kevin Durant (right in green hat) talks with Steve Kerr (left), Warriors head coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San Francisco, California.

Kevin Durant (right in green hat) talks with Steve Kerr (left), Warriors head coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San

Kevin Durant (right in green hat) talks with Steve Kerr (left), Warriors head coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San Francisco, California.

Kevin Durant (right in green hat) talks with Steve Kerr (left), Warriors head coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San

Kevin Durant (right in green hat) talks with Steve Kerr (center), Warriors head coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San Francisco, California.

Kevin Durant (right in green hat) talks with Steve Kerr (center), Warriors head coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San

Kevin Durant (center right in green hat) talks with Ron Adams (center left in blue), Warriors assistant coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday, July 1, 2016 in San Francisco, California.

Kevin Durant (center right in green hat) talks with Ron Adams (center left in blue), Warriors assistant coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on Friday,

Kevin Durant (center right in green hat) is hugged by Ron Adams (center left in blue), Warriors assistant coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility on�Thursday, July 7, 2016 in Oakland, California.

Kevin Durant (center right in green hat) is hugged by Ron Adams (center left in blue), Warriors assistant coach, before the introductory press conference for Durant at the Warriors practice facility

Here’s who’s behind the huge ad campaign welcoming Kevin Durant

Bus stop posters and billboards over bridges went up across the Bay Area on Thursday to welcome basketball star Kevin Durant — but the Warriors aren’t responsible for anything other than a banner hanging in front of Oracle Arena.

The digital posters saying “Welcome KD” have been spotted in San Francisco bus shelters and on the San Mateo and Bay bridges. There are nearly 100 in total.

A spokesman for the team said he wasn’t aware of the media blitz.

The entity responsible is advertising giant Clear Channel Outdoor, which owns the poster and billboard spaces.

“We just did it because we’re very excited,” said Lisa Mabry, the company’s digital media manager. “We’re a ton of super fans.”

Durant officially signed with the Warriors on Thursday and held his first press conference at the team’s practice facility in Oakland.

Mabry said the ads will run through the weekend. So, KD, catch a Muni before Sunday to see your name in lots and lots of lights.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov

Summary: Bus stop posters and billboards over bridges went up across the Bay Area on Thursday to welcome basketball star Kevin Durant — but the Warriors aren’t responsible for anything other than a banner hanging in front of Oracle Arena.  The digital posters saying “Welcome KD” have been spotted in San Francisco bus shelters and on the San Mateo and Bay bridges.  The entity responsible is advertising giant Clear Channel Outdoor, which owns the poster and billboard spaces.  Durant officially signed with the Warriors on Thursday and held his first press conference at the team’s practice facility in Oakland.