The father of two children found dead in Yanchep has been charged with murder. (Scott Cunningham/Twitter)

A 35-year-old father has been charged with two counts of murder after two children were found dead at their home in the outer coastal suburb of Yanchep, Perth.

Major Crime Squad detectives charged Jason Headland this morning over the deaths of two children aged three and five years, whose bodies were found at their home in Flight Vista on Thursday night.

Mr Headland remains in Royal Perth Hospital in a serious but stable condition under police guard.

A bedside court hearing will be arranged in the near future, police said.

The children’s mother, a fly-in fly-out (FIFO) worker, was not in Perth when their bodies were found.

"We have a family liaison officer appointed to her, we are in direct contact with her now, she is obviously very, very distressed," Detective Inspector Peter Clements told reporters yesterday.

"We are doing what we can at this point to provide support not only to her but the police officers who attended, it was obviously quite distressing." The alleged murders have rocked the local community, with residents reportedly “devastated”.

“Just to see them… I didn’t have conversations with them or anything but the lady across the road would often have a chat to them about general things,” Neighbour Coline Cooper said.

The street Flight Vista is in a golf course estate with many properties still under construction and residents who are new to the area.

Bunches of flowers have started to be placed outside the home.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: Two people have been found dead and a man has suffered critical injuries at a home in the coastal suburb of Yanchep, Perth.


For weeks, Fox has been promoting their two-hour live musical event

, but portions of the special telecast were indeed pre-recorded because of logistical reasons.

Some of the set locations were too far apart for the actors to realistically make it to their next scene during the course of a commercial break. But the cross procession and

"Fox cast primarily singers with acting backgrounds and 98 percent of

– who plays Jesus Christ – tells PEOPLE. "All of us are used to the live performance in front of an audience. That excites us."

But the excitement of doing a live show also comes with the acceptance that

"There's a live procession where thousands of people – kids with their parents, teachers, students, moms, dads – are going to be carrying a 20-ft cross lit in white from one end of the city to the stage and there is going to be live reporters next to them grabbing live testimonies and images that you will see in between scenes," explains Canela.

"And that is anything goes," he continues. "There are going to be all types of people in that procession – people there because they love the story because they need some love in their lives, people that are angry or sad and we embrace all of it because this story is not just for people that believe in it."

airs Sunday at 8 p.m. (ET) on Fox.

Summary: Portions of the live musical event were pre-taped for logistical reasons


There have been three great ages of development in modern Boston. The first began after the Back Bay was filled in the late 19th century, a radical change that triggered a historic construction boom. The second came in the 1960s and ’70s, when a “high spine” of office towers — stretching from the financial district to the Pru — began to rise over an old town.

Its businesses and population on the rise, Boston is in the midst of a building spree whose enormity, pace, and geographic sweep are redefining the skyline faster than any period since the early Industrial Age.

On every horizon, cranes and steel skeletons frame a city bursting with development. New skyscrapers are rising in Downtown Crossing and the Back Bay, and gritty corners long abandoned by developers are blossoming into gleaming new neighborhoods.

By the end of last year, 14.6 million square feet of new buildings were rising in Boston, the equivalent of more than eight John Hancock Towers, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority. That is a new high-water mark for a city whose prior booms — each driven by innovation and rapid business growth — created fundamental change in its layout, attractions, and architecture.

Filling the Back Bay, which began in late 1850s and ended with the century, led to the development of Commonwealth Avenue with its central mall and alphabetical, anglophilic cross streets, thoroughfares distinctly identifiable with Boston, as are the long rows of stately brownstones that filled the new street grid and the landmark buildings — the Boston Public Library, Trinity Church, and the first Museum of Fine Arts (on the site of the current Fairmont Copley Plaza) — that framed the new Copley Square.

A century later, the Hancock and Prudential towers became monuments to Boston’s growth as a financial capital, and, over a 20-year stretch, the city whose tallest building had long been the Custom House Tower built out the essential look of its current downtown.

A view from the Cambridge side of the Charles River last spring offered a look back to the days when the Prudential Tower was the dominant feature on Boston’s skyline.

Today’s boom is more residential and more about the appeal of living in a bustling metropolis — an appeal directed mainly, as was the Back Bay project, at those of very considerable means. Glassy apartment towers are under construction on Boston’s waterfront, where another thoroughfare, Seaport Boulevard, is lying in wait for new stores, crowds, and street life.

In the adjacent downtown, Boston is becoming a taller place. Five towers over 600 feet, or roughly 60 stories, are proposed or already being built, defying a zoning code that still defaults in many districts to 19th-century height limits of 80 to 120 feet. Most of the new buildings will be filled with very expensive residences offering panoramic views.

“We’re a city in high demand,” said Bill McCall, president of the commercial brokerage McCall & Almy Inc. “We’ve really had a transformation that makes living and working in Boston all the more attractive.”

The city’s explosive growth is drawing worldwide attention, and money from all over as well. International investors are sinking billions of dollars into Boston real estate developments. Banks and real estate funds from Europe, Asia, and South America are buying trophy office towers and funding construction of luxury hotels and condominiums.

Many neighborhoods are barely recognizable from just a few years ago. Boylston Street in the Fenway, once dominated by fast-food joints and gas stations, is lined with luxury apartment buildings and new restaurants, and the tallest of them, a new tower planned for the triangular tip between Boylston and Brookline Avenue, is soon to break ground. The Seaport District is one of the fastest-growing neighborhoods in the country. And long-struggling places like Dudley Square and the East Boston waterfront are on the cusp of major transformations.

Boston has had periods of heavy building activity in the recent past, most notably in the late ’60s and early ‘70s, and in the late 1980s. But none of those booms rival the current one in terms of construction volume, according to an analysis by the real estate firm Transwestern RBJ, which examined real estate records back to the 1700s at the Globe’s request.

Only the urban-renewal transformation of the 1960s and ’70s came close to the current boom in terms of the impact on Boston’s skyline and neighborhoods. That era brought construction of Government Center, with City Hall as its provocative new centerpiece. It also kicked off the development of Prudential Center, including its signature skyscraper, which replaced vast rail yards that separated the South End and Back Bay.

A lunchtime crowd monitored the progress on the Prudential Tower, which would take over bragging rights as the city’s tallest building from the John Hancock building (rear left) on its completion in 1964.

Today, Boston Properties, one of the city’s most prolific builders, is developing a 17-story office building on the final parcel within the Prudential complex. Meanwhile, the area around the Pru is exploding with new projects and proposals for hotels and towering residential buildings.

“It’s absolutely extraordinary,” said Bob Richards, a partner at Transwestern RBJ. “What’s driving it is the top-tier labor talent in industries like technology and life sciences. The young people who work for those companies want to live in an urban environment.”

Not coincidentally, the city’s population is rising more rapidly than it has in decades. The total head count rose by nearly 30,000 people, to about 646,000, between 2010 and 2013, according to the US Census Bureau. That’s more population growth in three years than Boston experienced in the 1980s and ’90s combined.

The rapid increase is fueling an unprecedented amount of housing construction in neighborhoods from Charlestown to Jamaica Plain. Of the 72 projects underway in the city, about 68 percent are residential buildings, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

About 8,000 new apartments are expected to be completed in Boston over the next three years, doubling the amount built in large luxury complexes since 1960. And surging demand for condominiums is shaking up the skyline: A 625-foot-tall condo building, known as Millennium Tower, is under construction in Downtown Crossing, and a 700-foot skyscraper recently got underway next to Christian Science Plaza.

Those buildings are among the tallest built in decades and promise to bring new levels of luxury to the city. The project next to Christian Science Plaza will include the city’s second Four Seasons Hotel, and Millennium Tower includes one penthouse unit being offered for $37.5 million.

The median selling price of condominiums in the downtown area rose to $619,000 at the end of last year, a 12 percent increase from 2013, according to LINK, a real estate tracking firm. Both rents and purchase prices have surged to historic highs.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh has vowed to combat the ever-rising cost of housing by building more moderately priced complexes, a promise with echoes from other eras of rapid development and rising prices.

In 1921, as rents skyrocketed in the strengthening economy, mayoral candidate James Michael Curley threatened to undermine “rent hogs” by borrowing $15 million to flood the market with lower-cost housing.

“I will build homes for workingmen, letting them pay for them by the month and at such a reasonable figure as to force these greedy landlords to come down in their prices,” Curley said in a campaign speech covered by the Globe.

Walsh is taking a similar, if less strident, approach. He said he has identified 250 properties across the city for development of middle-income housing, and he is also proposing state legislation to create tax incentives for such projects. Meanwhile, he has also repeatedly acknowledged the economic and physical improvements brought by luxury projects.

Some neighborhoods are seeing rapid-fire construction activity:

■ In the South End, a 12-acre portion of Harrison Avenue adjacent to Interstate 93 is being completely remade. Developers are building more than 700 apartments and condominiums, and recently opened the city’s largest Whole Foods grocery store. Hundreds of additional homes are also planned.

■ At North Station, Converse Inc. is building a new world headquarters, and a 38-story residential tower is under construction nearby. Developers are also planning to build a 600-foot complex of homes, offices, and stores in front of the TD Garden.

■ In Dudley Square, the city is building a $115 million municipal office complex that will house 500 school district employees. Hundreds of new homes are also planned in the area, along with new retail stores.

But by far the most sweeping transformation has occurred in the Seaport District, where the torrid pace of building has turned a 50-acre expanse of parking lots into an emerging neighborhood of homes, commercial buildings, shops, and restaurants.

Office towers are being built for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the law firm Goodwin Procter LLP. Four apartment towers are under construction, and a New York-based real estate powerhouse, Tishman Speyer, is planning to move forward soon with an office building at Pier 4.

“We’re seeing strength throughout the market and that gives us the confidence to move forward on a speculative basis,” Rob Speyer, cochief executive of the firm, said in a recent interview. “Boston has one of the strongest economies in the country. It’s diverse in terms of its industries, and it has an extremely educated workforce.”

Developers John B. Hynes III and the Berkshire Group started construction this winter on a pair of 22-story apartment towers across from the John Joseph Moakley US Courthouse. The buildings will sit on top of 300,000 square feet of restaurants, stores and entertainment, including a ShowPlace ICON movie theater.

Boston’s only other comparable period of residential building occurred in the 19th century, the era of the filling of the Back Bay and the development of Beacon Hill. Hundreds of new homes and apartment houses were built. The face of the city core was transformed.

The 19th century was the era of filling the Back Bay, including Copley Square. The public library there opened its doors in early 1895.

A second major wave of institutional development followed in the first years of the 20th century in the Fenway section, as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Opera Company, and, across the Fens, the Boston Red Sox built grand new homes there.

“That’s when Boston became a great city, the Athens of America,” Hynes said of the 19th-century boom. “That took Boston from an old, second-tier city to number one or two in the country in terms of wealth and new energy.”

Today’s revival is raising the city’s profile on an international stage. Total foreign investment in Boston’s commercial properties more than doubled to $10.4 billion through last September, up from $4.7 billion during the same period in 2013.

The surge put Boston sixth in the world in the amount of money it attracted from foreign sources, behind only London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, and Los Angeles, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., a real estate services firm.

Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, recently purchased large stakes in office towers at One Beacon Street, Atlantic Wharf, and 100 Federal St.

Last May, a venture led by Toronto-based Oxford Properties purchased five buildings in Boston and Cambridge for $2.1 billion.

“Boston has been discovered from an international perspective,” said John Fish, chief executive of Suffolk Construction. “With our health care and academic institutions, we have a very compelling story to tell. I think we have a strong outlook for the next 10 years.”

• BRA says building boom to continue in 2015

• Developer Joe Fallon follows his vision to reshape a waterfront

• City approves 30-story Fenway tower

• Developers raise the bar for launches

Summary: Boston is in the midst of a building boom never seen in its history, with an influx of new residents and companies giving rise to skyscraping towers, thousands of homes, and retail businesses that are redefining commercial districts citywide.


06/16/2016 AT 01:35 PM EDT

A British lawmaker has died after being shot and stabbed in an attack near where she regularly meets constituents.

Jo Cox, 41, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen and a married mother of two, was found bleeding in the street at about 1 p.m., local time, close to where she held twice-weekly meetings with voters in Birstall, a city near Leeds about 200 miles north of London.

said Cox died less than an hour later.

Expressing deepest sympathies to her family, Temporary Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police Dee Collins said in a statement, "Jo was attacked by a man, who inflicted serious and sadly, ultimately fatal injuries. Subsequently there was a further attack on a 77-year-old man, nearby who has sustained injuries that are non life threatening."

The statement continued, "Shortly afterwards, a man was arrested nearby by uniform police officers. Weapons including a firearm have also been recovered."

Andrew McCaren / LNP / REX / Shutterstock

Cox was pronounced dead by a doctor working with the responding paramedic crew at approximately 1:48 p.m.

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour party, of which Cox was a member, called her a "much loved colleague."

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement, "The death of Jo Cox is a tragedy. She was a committed and caring MP."

Only yesterday, Cox had been campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union; a referendum vote takes place next week. Her husband Brendan

of her and her family joining a flag-waving flotilla on the River Thames.

in the wake of his wife's death, saying, "Today is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. More difficult, more painful, less joyful, less full of love," according to the

"I and Jo's friends and family are going to work every moment of our lives to love and nurture our kids and to fight against the hate that killed Jo.

"Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people.

"She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn't have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous."

He concluded, "Jo would have no regrets about her life, she lived every day of it to the full."

Summary: Jo Cox is mourned by politicians from all sides after being attacked close to where she regularly met local people


Girl gets foul ball at Giants-Brewers game

On Thursday, the San Francisco Giants took on the Milwaukee Brewers. While the Brewers won the game 3-1, it was one little baseball fan that was truly the day's champion.

During the 7th inning of the game a foul ball went soaring into the stands. Once the baseball landed amongst the seats, the usual, frantic scuffle for the prize ensued. Throughout the hunt a brunette girl caught in the middle kept her cool. Instead of wading through a sea of legs, she let the ball come to her and then snatched it off the ground.

Behold! The small child who outsmarted a half dozen adults. Let this GIF of her glorious rebel yell and accompanying celebratory arm raise prepare you for a weekend of relaxation, success and pure awesomeness.

Summary: Meet your spirit animal for this weekend


In Mexico City, people know when an earthquake is coming—the city has had a warning system in place for decades. For example, in 2014, when a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit, residents had more than a minute to prepare after getting alerts via TV, radios, and sirens.

Likewise, Japanese cell phones made after 2007 come with a built-in earthquake alert system. These warnings come from the country’s early warning system, which also broadcasts nationwide and can hit the brakes on bullet trains during big quakes.

But California doesn’t have an earthquake warning system. A network of 400 early warning stations has been operating there in research mode for years as part of the West Coast’s “Shake Alert,” but it is only halfway built. It lacks the funding to go full-scale.

Now seismologist Richard Allen at the University of California at Berkeley wants to develop a cheaper, more bare-bones system that could work in tandem with Shake Alert. Allen says your cell phones, and thousands of others around the world, could help power a different kind of earthquake alert. He released a new Android app on Friday to test the theory.

“MyShake” is different from other earthquake warning systems, because it records shaking directly on smartphones. The system uses a phone’s accelerometers, the tiny chips that record movement and vibrations to orient phone screens, log physical exercise, and play games.

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In testing, MyShake was 93% accurate at detecting earthquakes. It notices quakes bigger than 5.0 magnitude, right about the level when they can start to cause real damage.

When a phone running MyShake senses a seismic event, it sends GPS data to the lab at Berkeley for analysis. In theory, the tech could turn that information around and issue an earthquake alert back to phones in less than a second—but this new app won’t do that just yet. For now, the app is only collecting user shake data, while also sharing bits of historical information about major earthquakes.

“It’s a citizen science project” Allen says. In order for it to become a real-time warning system he says, first, “we need to be able to record some real earthquakes.”

For more about social responsibility, watch:

The team that developed the new seismology tech at Berkeley was joined by developers from the Silicon Valley Innovation Center, which focused on ensuring the app won’t suck up too much battery life.

MyShake wasn’t just built for California techies, though. If the app takes off, thousands of cell phones around the world could operate like a network of tiny sensors, says Allen.

The software’s real power could be harnessed in countries where there’s no existing earthquake alert system, like Nepal. Last year, the country was rocked by a magnitude 7.8 quake that killed more than 8,000 people. With new technology like MyShake, the hope is that the country’s millions of smartphones will be able to anticipate the next big shake.

Summary: Cell phones could help warn of coming quakes.


What is executive presence? And why do some people seem to have it in spades? There’s so much mediocre advice out there – and none of it really captures what makes leaders stand out! Popular books and articles are helpful but tend to oversimplify the phenomenon. Executive presence is more than commanding the room, wearing the right suit, or giving a great presentation. The question is, what is it, and how can you achieve it?

We have spent years researching this “X factor” in leadership. Let’s start with a broad definition: executive presence is the ability of the leader to engage, align, inspire, and move people to act. This definition is game-changing. It explains why it matters – and why you should care. Let’s look at the qualities that science tells us define executive presence.

The 15 Qualities of Executive Presence

Character: authenticity, integrity, concern, restraint, humility

Substance: practical wisdom, confidence, composure, resonance, vision

Style: appearance, intentionality, interactivity, inclusiveness, assertiveness

Character qualities such as authenticity and humility build trust. Substance qualities such as vision and practical wisdom win you credibility. Style qualities like appearance and Intentionality help you influence others to get things done – in short, business execution.

Can You Develop a Stronger, More Powerful Executive Presence?

Yes, you can! By tracking historical data from the Bates Executive Presence Index Assessment, and analyzing hundreds of client cases, we’ve documented that leaders can dramatically change perceptions of their executive presence. When assessing clients, we use this multi-rater online assessment to ask your boss, direct reports, peers, board of directors, clients what they think of you. There are 90 items we use to rate leader “behaviors” that have been verified by an independent panel of experts. But you don’t need to complete an assessment to start working on presence today. Begin by familiarizing yourself with the qualities of executive presence, and opening up a dialogue with your trusted advisors.

Seek to Know Yourself – and the Way Others View You as a Leader

Your executive presence is your brand, in a way–how others think about you when you’re not around. What would people say?

Start by asking others what they think of your strengths and gaps. Here are five steps to get started:

Step 1: Identify your trusted advisors

A trusted advisor is in a position to “notice” your behaviors in real-life situations. Look for a business person or close associate who cares about you, and is willing and adept at sharing candid, constructive feedback. You may have a mentor, peer mentors, HR business partner, advisor, or supervisor who plays an important role in your life. If not, cultivate these relationships by asking them to share their views.

Step 2: Ask for their feedback

Ask your trusted advisor(s) to review the 15 qualities of executive presence and weigh in on two questions: 1. What would you say are my strengths, based on these definitions? 2. What are my areas of development?

Step 3: Compare these views to your intentions

Consider the “face value” of the advice you’ve been given and ask yourself, “How does this differ from what I intend to project?” Our intentions aren’t always in synch with others’ perceptions.

Step 4: Look for Role Models

Executive presence is not something you’re born with. Look around for role models who are strong in these areas, watch what they do, and adapt it to your own situation.

Step 5: Be Willing to Try Something New

Executive presence is a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon. As you try new approaches, you will feel uncomfortable. It’s like trying on a beautiful new pair of shoes that fit but need to be broken in — well worth the investment and a little pain. Small changes often can make a big difference.

Do you want help? You can learn to leverage your strengths, and also enhance underdeveloped aspects of your presence. Organizations invest in developing skilled, competent leaders who have the attitude and motivation. So ask! The best leaders we know are lifelong learners. They know they can be better. They invest time and energy in becoming all they can be.

Suzanne Bates is a CEO Coach, CEO of Bates Communications, and author of several books including her latest, All the Leader You Can Be: The Science of Achieving Extraordinary Executive Presence. To take a complimentary pre-assessment survey on your executive presence, go to: www.alltheleaderbook.com

Summary: How to burnish your leadership brand.


A picture is worth a thousand words. You know that.

Measured in dollars, Johnson Publishing is hoping 5 million of them will fetch closer to $40 million.

Looking to raise cash, the Chicago-based publisher of Ebony magazine has put its entire photo archive up for sale. The historic collection spans 70 years of African-American history, chronicling everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Sammy Davis Jr.

Johnson Publishing has had its collection appraised and recently hired a consultant to shop its wealth of iconic images, including a 1969 Pulitzer Prize winning photo of King's widow and child, taken at his funeral.

"It's just sitting here," said Johnson Publishing CEO Desiree Rogers. "We really need to monetize that in order to ensure growth in our core businesses."

Ebony, a monthly lifestyle magazine targeting African-Americans, was first published in November 1945. It came of age during the Civil Rights movement, with Ebony staff photographer Moneta Sleet Jr. producing some of the most important images of that turbulent era.

Sleet followed King from the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott to the 1965 Selma march. And he was there in April 1968 for King's funeral, capturing his widow, Coretta Scott King, with their 5-year-old daughter, Bernice, pressed forlornly against her lap. The powerful and poignant image earned Sleet a Pulitzer Prize, the first awarded to a black journalist. Sleet died in 1996 at 70.

Putting a price on his body of work will fall to the newly retained consultant.

"This is an incredibly important archive." said Mark Lubell, executive director of New York's International Center of Photography. "It is the definition of the African-American experience in the latter half of the 20th century, and it's an amazing, valuable asset."

Raising capital is crucial for the company, which is facing declining revenue and a rocky transition from print to digital under Rogers, the former social secretary for President Barack Obama, who has been steering the legacy African-American media company since 2010.

Her moves have included taking on a minority partner for the family-owned company, redesigning Ebony, its flagship magazine, and taking the money-losing weekly digest Jet out of print circulation.

Rogers inhabits a spacious 21st floor perch overlooking the lake along South Michigan Avenue.

The views from the small, unmarked archive room in the back are even more remarkable, and may be the key to keeping the privately held company on solid financial ground.

Winding through conference rooms and past cubicle stations, a short hallway leads to a white door. Behind it are 70 years of history documenting the African-American experience.

Alphabetized vaults are opened by hand cranks, revealing shelves of photos in manila folders stacked floor to ceiling. The fireproof room is kept cool to preserve the collection, with white gloves at the ready for the few allowed to examine the specimens firsthand.

Linda Johnson Rice, chairman of Johnson Publishing and daughter of founder John Johnson, recently leafed through her family's legacy, now for sale.

In addition to King's funeral, she offered a glimpse of other memorable Ebony photos including Jackie Kennedy consoling Coretta Scott King, Muhammad Ali and Floyd Patterson's first fight in 1965, glamorous shots of jazz singer Billie Holiday, and some less famous subjects, such as New York limousine owner Roosevelt Zanders posing proudly in front of his fleet of 1950s-era Cadillacs.

"This is just a tiny piece of what's in the Johnson Publishing archives," Johnson Rice said. "It's not just celebrities. There are many human interest stories here."

In 2011, JPMorgan Chase's Special Investments Group took a 40 percent stake in Johnson Publishing to infuse much needed capital into the historic but struggling media company. Rogers said selling the photo archive is a much bigger deal for the company, which has seen declines in its ad revenue outpace that of the magazine industry at large.

Ebony has a total average circulation of 1.26 million, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, topping rival Essence, which is published by Time Inc. Advertising revenue at Ebony was down 24 percent last year, while Essence declined 7.5 percent, in line with the industry, according to Standard Media Index. Standard Media Index monitors ad spending through data obtained from media buying agencies.

Rogers, who would not disclose revenue, said the ad decline at Ebony was 8 percent last year. She added that Ebony is raising ad rates for 2015 and that 60 percent of sponsors have agreed to pay more to stay in the magazine, bucking industry trends.

Still, Johnson Publishing faced a uniquely challenging 2014.

In April, Amy DuBois Barnett, editor of Ebony since 2010, left the magazine to join ESPN, where she is helping launch a website focused on African-American sports and culture.

She was replaced at Ebony by Mitzi Miller, her counterpart at sister publication Jet. The next month, Johnson Publishing announced plans to replace the print version of Jet with a new digital app. The digest-size weekly had been a staple among African-American readers for 63 years but a source of red ink for its publisher in the digital era.

Jet had a circulation of 720,000 and an annual subscription rate of $19.99 when it published its final print edition in June. The digital app rolled out in July, with promises of fresh content on a weekly basis, video interviews, 3-D charts and archival photos.

By October, it was essentially shelved, despite an unknown number of users who "mistakenly," as Rogers describes it, paid $19.99 for an app that was promoted as free on an introductory basis.

As of last week, Apple's App Store still offered a 30-day free trial with any subscription deal and featured dozens of negative reviews from paid Jet Digital subscribers. Rogers said Jet notified Apple in October that they had decided to offer the app for free, but a complaint dated as recently as Jan. 5 carried the headline "Waste" and said, "I'm constantly billed ... but I can't access the magazine."

Rogers said Apple informed the company Thursday that they had processed all of the Jet Digital refunds, but would not disclose how many subscribers had paid for the app.

"The process to get here has been a little choppy," Rogers said.

Also looming is a $5 million defamation lawsuit against Johnson Publishing and a freelance writer filed in August by a Georgia FBI agent and his wife, claiming a series of articles that ran in Ebony magazine falsely implicated their sons in the death of a high school classmate.

That case is working its way through the U.S. District Court in Georgia.

Rogers is hoping for better things in 2015, calling it a "key year" for Johnson Publishing, banking in large part on the sale of the photo archive.

In 2012, Johnson Publishing began offering select photos for sale from its collection, and also has pursued licensing to other media on a limited basis. An outright sale of the images could be the best way to monetize the assets.

Getty Images, a 20-year-old company that licenses its library of 170 million assets to businesses and media outlets, is the leader in the space. In 2012, private equity firm Carlyle Group bought Getty Images in a $3.3 billion deal. Rogers said Johnson's archives could be the "black Getty," but only in the right hands.

"One of the things that we've learned is we need to stick with what we're good at," Rogers said. "We're writers, we're creative folks, we produce a magazine ... geared toward that African-American experience. Let's stick as close to that as we can."


Should you change jobs? Even make a radical career change? Most articles on the subject offer a checklist or pros-and-cons list. Here I offer a different approach: an internal debate.

Person: I’m sick of my job. I’m ready for something new and there’s too little opportunity here.

Alter ego: But I don’t have the time or energy to look for another job when I’m working 45 hours a week already. It can take months, sometimes longer to find a good job, especially if I try to change careers. And I doubt anyone wants to hire a newbie at anywhere near my salary.

Person: But, God, I don’t want to stay at Western Widget Works, Inc. forever.

Alter ego: No, but I worry that after all that job hunting, I won’t even like my new job or career any better.

Person: I need to remember that I don’t have to take that new job. I just need to take a little time to see if I can find something better. If not, I’ll stay put. I’ll just start networking.

Alter ego: But I hate networking and I’m lousy at it. I just don’t make a good first impression, no matter how much I practice. I’m better off spending the time improving my skills: tech stuff, public speaking.

Person: Okay, maybe I should do that, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be looking for a job. If I don’t want to network, I’ll just answer some on-target ads, one a week.

Alter ego: But if that’s all I do, a year or two from now, I’ll probably still be at Western Widget. Ugh.

Person: So, fine. I’ll apply to three jobs a week.

Alter ego: But every job opening gets so many applications.

Person: I really have to make mine better—Write a cover letter that, point by point, explains how I meet the job’s requirements.

Alter ego: But if I’m changing careers, I won’t be meeting most of the requirements.

Person: Okay, then I’ll include a white paper, like a term paper, on a topic related to the new job that would interest that employer. That will show current chops and interest, and a concrete work sample.

Alter ego: But that will take a ton of time.

Person: No it won’t. A few-page white paper is like one of those papers I wrote in college. One day I knew nothing about the topic and two days later, I knew a lot and cranked out a good paper.I need to stop complaining. It’s better than staying at Western Widget. Right?

Alter ego: Maybe. What if the problem isn’t the job but me? If I’m honest with myself, as I look back on all my jobs, I’ve always struggled.

Person: Do I have to face that I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed?

Alter ego: That may be part of it. I know that I can’t seem to make myself consistently care enough about work. I do my job but I can’t seem to maintain the fire in my belly. I’m not sure I can change that.

Person: So maybe I need to downscale my job aspirations. Up isn’t the only way. I fought my way to be a manager, but maybe I’d be happier and more successful if I did something less demanding.

Alter ego: Am I the poster boy for the Peter Principle, rising to my level of incompetence?

Person: Maybe. I’ve always tried to compete with my high-achieving friends. Isn’t that silly? Maybe by trying to be what I’m not, I’m making myself miserable and ensuring I don’t succeed.

Alter ego: But what should I do?

Person: Maybe I should go back to being an individual contributor or a support person. I’m organized and good at details. Maybe I should go back to being a coordinator, a marketing coordinator. Maybe I should talk with my boss or HR about getting that kind of job at Western Widget?

Alter ego: Actually, I don’t give a crap about marketing widgets.

Person: I need to remember that as long as the widget is worth marketing, it’s worth doing.

Alter ego: Stop with the pious preaching.

Person: How sure am I that I’ll care more about work if I were doing something else? I say I care about gifted kids being ignored in today’s elementary schools but would I really, after a honeymoon period, be that much more motivated to work hard on some job related to that, or will my laziness come along with me wherever I go?

Alter ego: I don’t want to think I’m doomed to mediocrity. I can’t be sure whether I’ll be any happier on behalf of gifted kids but maybe I should try.

Person: That’s probably right. I should volunteer a few hours a week at some school with a lot of bright kids or maybe even for a school district’s director of programs for the gifted. I should do a little networking, make the case that my skills in marketing and being organized and detail oriented would be valuable there. I should apply to jobs anywhere I might be willing to live that excite me. If I get hired, fine. And if not, I’ll feel better for having tried. And who knows? In spending time around those people quite different from those at Western Widget, I may learn about something or about myself that I wouldn’t know if I just kept on keeping on with my same-old routine.

Alter ego: I’ll think about it.

Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. specializing in education evaluation from U.C. Berkeley and subsequently taught there. He is the author of seven books and an award-winning career coach, writer, speaker and public radio host specializing in career/workplace issues and education reform. His writings and radio programs are archived on www.martynemko.com.

Summary: Instead of a pros-and-cons list, try this


Boston-based LPL Financial LLC will pay a $10 million fine and $1.7 million in restitution to customers to resolve claims of “broad supervisory failures in a number of key areas,” the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said Wednesday.

Its complaint related to sales of nontraditional exchange-traded funds, certain variable annuity contracts, and other products, FINRA said in a statement . LPL also failed to monitor and report trades and deliver more than 14 million trade confirmations to customers, the brokerage regulator said.

“LPL’s supervisory breakdowns resulted from a sustained failure to devote sufficient resources to compliance programs integral to numerous aspects of its business,” said Brad Bennett, FINRA’s chief of enforcement.

LPL, a publicly traded company, is one of the largest financial advisory companies in the country. It has about 14,000 brokers, according to its website, and more than 3,300 employees who support them, furnishing them with research, office support, and compliance services.

The company has grown rapidly. Since 2007, it has expanded and acquired several other firms, boosting its total broker count to more than 14,000, the fourth-highest in the country. Annual revenue has nearly doubled since 2007, growing from $2.3 billion to $4.4 billion last year.

But in multiple rulings, FINRA has said LPL has failed to invest enough in its supervisory capacity. Since 2010, FINRA and state authorities have fined the company at least 11 times, according to the Tuesday ruling, including a $9 million fine in 2013 for failing to archive and monitor millions of e-mails sent by its independent brokers.

In 2013, Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s office ordered the company to pay about $2.5 million over allegations it had failed to supervise and train agents. Galvin accused LPL employees of violating state law and a company policy by selling Massachusetts investors risky real estate securities, and said a state investigation revealed the company to be “a boat with many holes.”

Brad Hintz, an adjunct professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said LPL has significantly beefed up its compliance efforts in recent years and encouraged its independent brokers to merge their operations to improve oversight. But he said Tuesday’s penalty would add to a list of mea culpas LPL’s management has offered to investors.

“Good intentions by a management team are not considered in regulatory investigations,” Hintz said in an e-mail. “This is certainly an embarrassment for a brokerage firm that prides itself on its technology.”

The company said it had already remedied or was working to remedy several regulatory issues that resulted in FINRA penalties. LPL also said that because it had already budgeted for the fine, it wouldn’t reduce earnings expectations.

“LPL has made a long-term commitment to rebuilding its risk management and compliance infrastructure, and this resolution is a significant step in that process,” the company said. “The substantial and ongoing investments made by LPL in our legal, risk management, compliance, and other control functions reflect that this is a top priority for the company.”

The company’s stock closed at $40.62, down 8 cents, or 0.2 percent.

Summary: LPL Financial LLC will pay a $10 million fine and $1.7 million in restitution to customers to resolve claims over “broad supervisory failures in a number of key areas,” the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said.


Mike Casey of Santa Rosa was attacked by a 15 -16' white shark Thanksgiving morning. He has returned to the scene of the attack, a beach near Bodega Bay, twice now for the sake of media reports. BY MIKE KEPKA/THE CHRONICLE

Mike Casey of Santa Rosa was attacked by a 15 -16' white shark Thanksgiving morning. He has returned to the scene of the attack, a beach near Bodega Bay, twice now for the sake of media reports. BY MIKE

Mike Casey of Santa Rosa was attacked by a 15 -16' white shark Thanksgiving morning. Andr�a Moore checks out her fathers progress since she last saw him weeks earlier. Now he is able to walk and his scars are healing healing. BY MIKE KEPKA/THE CHRONICLE

Mike Casey of Santa Rosa was attacked by a 15 -16' white shark Thanksgiving morning. Andr�a Moore checks out her fathers progress since she last saw him weeks earlier. Now he is able to walk and his scars are

Dr. Brian Schmidt was the surgeon who led a team of doctors and nurses in the operating room at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital after Mike Casey's shark attack Thanksgiving morning. BY MIKE KEPKA/THE CHRONICLE

Dr. Brian Schmidt was the surgeon who led a team of doctors and nurses in the operating room at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital after Mike Casey's shark attack Thanksgiving morning. BY MIKE KEPKA/THE CHRONICLE

Mike Casey of Santa Rosa was attacked by a 15 -16' white shark Thanksgiving morning. Andr�a Moore checks out her fathers progress since she last saw him weeks earlier. Now he is able to walk and his scars are healing healing. PHOTO BY DR. BRIAN SCHMIDT.

Mike Casey of Santa Rosa was attacked by a 15 -16' white shark Thanksgiving morning. Andr�a Moore checks out her fathers progress since she last saw him weeks earlier. Now he is able to walk and his scars are

Great White Shark. Chronicle graphic by John Blanchard

Great White Shark. Chronicle graphic by John Blanchard

Man vs. Shark. Chronicle graphic by John Blanchard

Man vs. Shark. Chronicle graphic by John Blanchard

Escape from the jaws of death / Body boarder Mike Casey's trip to Bodega Bay became a nightmare when a great white shark tore into him

The night before Thanksgiving, Michael Casey, a surfing fanatic from Santa Rosa, was asked a question by his father-in-law.

"-Don't you ever worry about sharks?"

Casey, who was planning to go body boarding at Bodega Bay in the morning, had been asked the same thing many times, so he had a ready-made answer.

"The possibility of getting hit by a shark is basically insignificant," he said. "I stand a much greater risk of getting hurt going to the beach by getting into my truck and getting involved in an auto accident."

The next morning, Casey would be in the mouth of a great white shark.

Casey is not your stereotypical surfer, not some caricature in the mold of Sean Penn in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." He is a lawyer who came upon the sport later in his life, a focused man who is passionate about family, job, surfing, karate.

The son of a San Francisco cop who later became an FBI agent, Casey bounced from the Bay Area to the East Coast and then to Los Angeles. He dabbled in surfing while in high school, but, consumed by law school, a new wife and, soon, kids, he gave it up.

Eleven years ago, on a trip to Pismo Beach, Casey planned to introduce his kids to boogie boarding and wound up having a blast himself.

It became his passion, so much that virtually every vacation and weekend was built around the water. He began to have his boards custom-made, and he disdained references to his sport as "boogie boarding," preferring instead the more serious-minded "body boarding." A quick primer: Surfers stand up on boards; body boarders lie on wider, smaller ones.

Casey and his body-boarding mates frequented the area in Bodega Bay known as Salmon Creek, a 3-mile stretch of Sonoma County beach. They called themselves "The Dawn Patrol," and some of the locals referred to them as "The Breakfast Crew" or "The Breakfast Club" because they were always among the first surfers in the water.

Surfers are a different breed, a soulful, almost religious lot who find a bond in becoming one with the wave. They talk of being in the moment, of a smooth, buttery ride that loses them from the everyday concerns of monthly bills and relationships and jobs.

Casey, an assistant deputy city attorney in Santa Rosa, was giddy as Thanksgiving approached. It meant a four-day weekend - four straight days of surfing. On Thanksgiving eve, he contacted his friend Jeff Mays and told him that he would pick Mays and his son up at their Sebastopol home at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and then they'd continue on to Salmon Creek.

Casey was right on time. There was no one on the road, no clouds in the sky,

and Casey thought - fantasized - about a morning spent indulging his passion and working up an appetite for his wife's Thanksgiving feast.

The plan was to surf a spot known as Boardwalk, near the Bodega Dunes campgrounds. There is a point on the drive into Boardwalk, with sand dunes all about, when you hit a crest and, suddenly, there is the water and the waves and the spray and horizon. Just as they reached that spot, a striking wave peaked, curled and crashed.

The men were beside themselves.

They parked, and, before getting into their wet suits, walked quickly up the path to the boardwalk for a closer look. As Casey returned to his car, he passed another surfer, Dave Ashcraft, out for his own glance before getting dressed.

"What a great way to work up an appetite," Casey said to Ashcraft.

Ashcraft grew up on the beach in Florida, where he saw his share of sharks. Not great whites, but black tips, spinners, sandbar sharks - relatively small and relatively harmless types.

Now 31, Ashcraft came to the West Coast eight years ago. One day he was surfing on the San Mateo coast when he abruptly was overcome by a sense of dread. There was something in the water, lurking. He saw nothing, heard nothing but he definitely sensed something.

"My instincts were saying, 'Danger,' " he said. "I felt like I was gonna vomit."

Ashcraft immediately went to the shore, but the experience stayed with him.

On Thanksgiving morning, with Casey and Ashcraft in the water, about an hour-and-a-half removed from their exchange on the boardwalk, Ashcraft had headed away from the crowd, seeking space.

Floating over the top of a wave, he was looking to the north when he spotted a large, gray object in the wall of a wave about 40 feet away. It was just sitting there, stationary.

"That looks like a big seal," he thought, continuing to paddle. A few seconds later, another thought popped into his head: "That was a really big seal."

There is an area off a 100-mile section of the Northern California coast known as "The Red Triangle." It stretches from Bodega Bay down to Ano Nuevo and reaches out to the Farallon Islands. It earned its name because there have been more great white attacks on humans in that area than any other place in the world.

Sea lions and seals are the favorite meal of great whites, which typically attack from behind or beneath with an initial bite and then wait for their prey to bleed to death. Because most attacks happen at the surface, it's believed great white attacks on humans are simply cases of mistaken identity - they see a surfer or a diver wearing a dark wet suit and figure it for a tasty sea lion.

Fifty years ago, on Dec. 7, 1952, 17-year-old Barry Wilson was swimming with friends in Monterey Bay when he was bitten at least twice by what was later reported to be a 15-foot great white shark. Wilson was dead by the time he was brought to shore. It marked the first recorded great white attack on a human in California, and he now stands as one of eight people known to have been killed.

There's no proven method of avoiding sharks. Still, some surfers have taken to painting a black and white pattern on the bottom of their boards, latching on to the unproven - and some say far-fetched - theory that the color combination serves as a great white repellent.

The fall and the winter are the seasons surfers live for on the Sonoma coast. The storms come down from the Aleutians, and the waves are excellent. Carlo Mascolo has been surfing out there for 25 years, straight from high school. He's a regular.

Mascolo has seen sharks from a distance. He has heard about people getting bumped, at Boardwalk as a matter of fact, and he has seen seals attacked at River Mountain up in Jenner.

"It's brutal, pretty intense," he said. "The seals just go flying."

Mascolo arrived a bit later than many others Thanksgiving morning, entering the water about 8:15. He paddled out and moved to the south, toward a group of a half-dozen other surfers, including Casey and Ashcraft, who had rejoined the pack. Mascolo knew Casey by first name only, but he knew he was a regular, part of The Breakfast Crew.

Casey had been in the water for nearly an hour and a half without catching a single wave. It had been tougher than it looked. In fact, Casey struggled for a while just getting out, recycled several times back toward shore by the currents. The wind was pushing pretty hard, flattening the large 10- to 12- foot waves and making them seem smaller than they looked from the shore.

But when Mascolo came upon Casey at about 8:40, he found a man who had finally caught a sweet wave, maybe a 12-footer, that energized him as he returned to wait for another set, about 150 yards out.

Casey was thinking, "I've got this now, I got this thing wired."

Mascolo exchanged hellos with Casey, settled on a spot 15 feet inside of him and waited to catch his first wave of the day.

Casey, meanwhile, leaned on his 42-inch board, forearms resting in the middle, hands grasping the top and his body, from the waist down, dangling in the water. He was wearing a black, hooded wet suit, black gloves on his hands, and black fins over black booties on his feet.

He floated, moving his legs to adjust his position, and looked out to the horizon for the coming set, back arched to see over the swells.

Suddenly, Mascolo saw a surge of water, a boiling up of the sea; Casey was shoved forward, and then Mascolo saw a luminous silver body, a large and beautiful fish.

"Wow, look at this dolphin surfacing," Mascolo thought.

Then Casey screamed out, a scream from down deep, driven by a confluence of impulse, alarm and pain. He felt like he had been hit by a truck. At first the 5-foot-10, 175-pound Casey had no idea what was happening, but, in a second, he knew he was being attacked by a shark.

He kicked out wildly, trying to put some distance between himself and the shark.

Lucas Jacopetti, a seasoned surfer, was about 50 feet away when Casey screamed. He saw Casey rise up out of the water, then sink back down, the water bubbling around him. He saw a fin, then the body. It was mesmerizing. The sun made the gray glisten like chrome.

It was a blur to Ashcraft at first, the water swirling, Casey's body moving with it. Then it was all in focus: A shark was on top of Casey.

The thing was bent, tail down in the water, dorsal up, nose heading back down, maybe a 15- or 16-footer. Ashcraft -couldn't tell if the shark had Casey's legs in his mouth on the way up or the way down, but there was a tug on Casey as the animal submerged, and Casey went downward, too, though he - didn't go all the way under.

Casey wound up on his back, feet flailing, and that's when he saw it, just off to his right: the mouth open, those unmistakable teeth, the silvery gray color, the body curved, a triangular fin - maybe it was the dorsal - all amid the roiling water.

And then it was gone.

"Is it coming back for me? Am I a dead man? Am I ever gonna see my family again?" Casey wondered. He was treading water now, his board off to his side but still leashed to his right biceps.

The thoughts were fleeting, though the fear, the pain and the shock were not. Dazed, Casey looked around. He noticed four or five guys, all within about 20 yards, all frozen in fear.

They wore an identical look that said: "Oh my God!"

Farther to his north, Jacopetti saw Bruno, a 47-year-old local legend of sorts who had seen Casey's board fly up in the air sideways. The two each thought about going to Casey, saw there were others nearer to him, and started for the beach.

Mascolo paddled to Casey right after the attack. He knew he had to help Casey get to shore. Quickly.

Mays thought about paddling toward his friend, but there was serious fear holding back his legs. He saw Mascolo with Casey and decided to head in at an angle and meet them nearer to shore.

Mascolo asked Casey if he was all right. Casey had no idea. He said he thought he was OK. For a brief moment, he -wasn't sure he had even been bitten.

He felt a cutting pain in his legs and some numbness, but he -couldn't tell the extent of his injuries. Then he looked down at his left thigh and saw his skin splayed open. The wound was covered in blood, and the water around him was becoming cloudy.

"We gotta get outta here right now, this thing might come back," Mascolo told Casey. "I'm with you, I'm not leaving you, man, I'm sticking with you, - don't worry about it. Do you need some help getting in?"

"I think I can make it," replied Casey, gathering his board.

Mascolo yelled for someone to call 911, and they began their trek in. Casey rested his torso on his board, but when he realized he -couldn't kick with his legs, he started paddling with his arms.

As dazed and as shocked as he was, Casey's breathing was controlled, perhaps a result of many years studying karate - his other passion - on the way to becoming a third-degree black belt. Mascolo checked repeatedly, and Casey kept saying he was OK. At one point, Mascolo suggested Casey grab onto his surfboard to be towed in, but Casey said, "No, I got it."

Up on the boardwalk, Jacopetti's wife and in-laws were out to watch him surf, and as he began his own push to land, the 35-year-old construction worker thought about the shark coming back for seconds, devouring him as his family looked on.

He prayed repeatedly: "God, let me live today. God, let me live today."

The progress was slow. Casey -couldn't position his body to catch a wave. His legs were virtually useless. At one point, the two hit a stretch where the current tugged in opposite directions. The pain was ratcheting up. His legs were growing numb. He just wanted to get to the beach.

Eventually, he and Mascolo reached a spot where there were some smaller breaks.

"Hey, let's take one of these waves in," Mascolo said.

Bruno reached the beach before them. He sprinted the 150 yards to the boardwalk, yelling for somebody to call for help. As it became clear what had happened, Jacopetti's wife frantically looked for her husband.

She ran to the beach, screaming, "Where's Lucas! Where's Lucas." She was looking right at him. When it finally registered, she patted him down to make sure he was all there. They turned and looked back toward the shore and saw Casey and Mascolo wash up on the beach.

Casey tried to get up and walk on his own, but his legs buckled. He fell and several people rushed to his aid.

Rich Lawton, the supervising ranger for Sonoma Coast State Beach, received a call at 8:52, one minute after emergency dispatch was advised of a shark bite victim at Bodega Dunes. Lawton thought it was a drill.

At the same time, a call went out to the Bodega Bay Fire Department. There, Jim Levy and Jacob Bishop were readying for a morning workout, while their third partner that day, Lou Castleberry, was grocery shopping.

The radio was muffled when the call came in, and Bishop thought dispatch said, "Heart attack." Then dispatch came back. It was clearer this time - "Shark attack."

Castleberry heard it clear enough at the store the first time. A marine biology major in college and a diver who knew much about sharks, Castleberry figured it was probably an angel or a leopard - a shark no more than 4 feet long, with a mouth 5 or 6 inches across. How much damage could that do?

Paul Bradley, a 33-year-old helicopter pilot for the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, got a page as he was leaving for the store to pick up a few items for Thanksgiving dinner.

When he called dispatch, he was told he was needed to pick up a shark attack victim. His mind raced.

"Oh my God, what's this gonna be?" he thought. "What's he gonna look like?"

Bradley knew this much: The guy was alive, and that was better than a lot he had seen. Just the night before, he and two other crew members had fished the body of an abalone diver out of the water who had either drowned or died from a physical malady.

Royce Fraley, a 39-year-old surfer, was just coming over the dunes toward the water when he saw Casey being carried up the beach. One leg hung awkwardly.

Fraley thought the guy had a broken leg.

"That's what I call my shark denial," said Fraley. He was once bumped by what he's sure was a great white while surfing the mouth of the Russian River, and he said his dad was a professional diver in Monterey who witnessed that first documented attack, the one that killed teenager Barry Wilson.

Fraley had had some lifeguard training while in college. He tossed his board and ran to Casey, helping the others get him up the beach. He yelled for Casey's fins to be removed and scanned the wounds.

The wet suit -didn't appear shredded, but Fraley saw random lacerations on both legs. The most significant wound was on Casey's left thigh, and there he could see deep into his leg. Blood, layers of skin, muscle. Fraley -couldn't bring himself to look too long.

On the top of the right foot was a single, precise bite that looked as if it had been made with an ultrasharp razor blade.

Fraley figured he needed to get pressure on Casey's femoral arteries to make sure he -didn't bleed to death.

When Dan Ospina heard the call - "Shark attack at Bodega Dunes campground" -

he was stunned. He knew just about everybody who surfed Boardwalk.

"Who is it? How bad is it?" he wondered.

Ospina, a surfing regular and a volunteer fireman with several years of emergency medical experience, was on his way to Boardwalk when the call came over his pager. As he pulled into the parking lot, he saw his friend Bruno looking frantic. Bruno told Ospina that "Mike," one of the early-bird surfers, was the guy who had been hit but he -didn't know how bad it was.

"Man, there's still people in the water," Bruno told Ospina.

Lawton, the ranger, was right behind Ospina. Ospina asked for his medical bag and then sprinted up the path, down the boardwalk and out to Casey. Casey was pale by that point, but he was conscious and responsive. Ospina looked at the wounds. He thought they were amazingly big and defined, particularly the one on the right foot.

Bob Miller, who owns the Bodega Bay Surf Shack, was among a pack of surfers and bystanders gathered around Casey. When Miller looked at the bite marks, he thought they resembled the holes made in a can of V8 juice by one of those old openers.

Casey was relaxed but in some degree of shock, staring straight up. Ospina asked his name, took a quick medical history and began to bandage some of the wounds. It -wasn't long before Levy, the Bodega Bay paramedic, and the rest of the local firemen arrived.

Levy started IVs of saline in both arms and put an oxygen mask on Casey, and Ospina took Casey's blood pressure. He -couldn't believe it: 128 over 82. Normal. He checked three times to be sure. The mind and body of the third- degree black belt definitely had kicked in.

All around, people were offering encouragement. A few guys remarked on the great wave Casey caught before the attack. Others insisted he would be fine. And in the background, Ric Colorado, a buddy of Ospina's and a local surfer who lately had been more into playing his guitar than catching waves, was strumming religious hymns; a pair of gospels by the Reverend Gary Davis: "Death -Don't Have No Mercy," and "I Will Do My Last Singing In This Land Somewhere."

Casey concentrated on his breathing, and he worried.

"Am I gonna be able to walk, am I gonna do this again?" he wondered to himself.

He also worried that, somehow, he had brought this on himself.

As he lay on the beach, surrounded, his legs bleeding, his skin torn away, he recalled the conversation he had with his father-in-law the night before.

"-Don't you ever worry about sharks?" his father-in-law had asked.

With the help of several bystanders and surfers, the emergency personnel carried Casey from the beach on a stretcher. Casey asked his friend Mays to call Maureen and break the news.

At about 9:25, the rescue helicopter landed in the beach parking lot, just at the end of the path that runs to the boardwalk. Everything went smoothly. The landing, the handoff, the takeoff. They all watched as the chopper disappeared over the hills.

Mays borrowed a cell phone to place the call. Maureen was just about to put her second cheesecake in the oven.

"Hi Mo, I got some good news and some bad news," Mays said.

"Mike's gonna be late for dinner."

Maureen figured maybe they had headed north for a different surfing spot.

"What's the good news?" she asked.

"He got bit by a shark, but all his parts are still there."

He told Maureen that Mike was being flown to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, that he would take his truck and meet her there.

Maureen took charge. She called her 22-year-old son Dallas to tell him what happened. She told Dallas to call his 27-year-old sister Andra to let her know, and told him to come over and help his grandmother finish cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Her father was noticeably shaken. Like Mike, he reflected on the conversation they'd had the previous night.

Maureen and her father readied themselves for the trip to the hospital, but they were both restless. Maureen changed outfits at least three times. She wanted her husband to see her looking good and together, but she -didn't want to wear something too nice for fear of getting it all bloody. Her worried father, rushing to shave, cut himself several times.

Holidays are often like the calm before the storm in hospital emergency rooms. But this Thanksgiving Day was not normal at Santa Rosa Memorial. They were crazy busy - so busy that by the early evening they would go on "divert," meaning the doors were closed to all ambulances unless they were carrying trauma patients.

And the morning had started horribly for Adriana Tabulara, a 29-year-old ER nurse. She began her 7 a.m.-to-7 p.m. shift by inheriting a case involving a 19-year-old victim of a hit-and-run driver. The young man had severe head injuries and was not expected to live.

Tabulara had to tell the teenager's mother. This was usually somebody else's job. Tabulara had never done it before in her three years in the ER. The mother wept uncontrollably, and Tabulara tried to stay composed.

Not long after came the call that a trauma patient was arriving via helicopter, that he was bitten by a shark. The staff was skeptical because of the unusual nature of the call. "Yeah, right," thought Tabulara.

But when Casey was brought in, it was clear immediately this was serious. When his wet suit was cut off, all the blood that had pooled inside it spilled out onto the floor. There was so much blood that Tabulara put on shoe covers for her feet.

The trauma medical director and the surgeon on duty was Dr. Brian Schmidt, who had treated two shark attack victims. So Schmidt knew that most victims survive and that if Casey had gotten this far, there was a good chance he - hadn't been mauled too severely.

Schmidt greeted Casey and saw that he was lucid and that his blood pressure was stable. Casey had been bitten on the left thigh, below the left knee, the inner thigh just above the right knee and the top of the right foot. All four bites went down to the bone.

The first was a deep flesh wound; the one just below the left knee went halfway around the leg, and partially severed the peroneal nerve; the right knee bite had not damaged the joint; and the last one, on top of the arch, severed a tendon on his big toe. They would require a combined 80 staples to close.

Although the wounds were worse than his previous two shark attack patients, Schmidt felt confident there would be no amputations necessary.

Casey was very pale and in considerable pain. The staff kept applying pressure bandages to his left thigh and calf, but they kept soaking through, and blood collected repeatedly underneath his back.

Meanwhile, word spread quickly through the hospital and soon everybody wanted to see the "shark guy." When the news got out that Casey was a lawyer, the gallows humor kicked in. Lawyer jokes everywhere.

And Schmidt, a bit of a goofy guy in the eyes of some of his colleagues, spent much of the rest of the day singing, "When the shark bites with his teeth, dear . . ."

Days later, Casey himself would say, "People ask if (the shark) spit me out as a professional courtesy."

Casey underwent two hours of surgery that day - and another operation about a week later in San Francisco - and was hospitalized for 11 days. He had one final operation in Santa Rosa three weeks after the attack.

While recuperating, Casey lay on the couch in his living room, bemoaning the fact he had to cancel two scheduled, surf-driven vacations (three weeks in Kauai in January, two weeks in Costa Rica in March) and planning his imminent return to work.

Maureen was trying to pace him, but it was a losing battle. He would be back at work soon, if only part time. And the water, that -wasn't even up for discussion.

"We all know he's going back," Maureen said.

There was no doubt in Casey's mind.

"They all know nothing is gonna keep me from getting back in the water," he said. "This is just a temporary setback.

"But I am gonna talk to my friend . . . about getting the shark repellent design."

As it turns out, Casey had a lot working for him that day. For one thing, he was surfing in a very public spot, and for another, many of those around him had some level of first-aid experience. Plus Dr. Schmidt had treated not one, but two shark attack victims. And his wet suit not only protected him from the cold water, it also acted as a tourniquet to help stem the bleeding.

Now, Casey is a statistic: No. 75. He represents the 75th documented attack by a great white on a human in the state, according to John McCosker and Robert Lea, two local scientists who have been studying great whites for 30 years.

"I -can't believe this happened to me," Casey said. He's now back at work full time and unflinching in his desire to return to the water. It's still unclear if Casey will fully recover - there are concerns about the tendon and nerve damage - but he has designs on being back in the water within a year.

He has some catching up to do. Every surfer out that day - the ones in the water when the attack happened, the ones still on the beach - got back in the water soon after. Some, in fact, kept surfing that very same day, albeit not at Salmon Creek.

Those who -don't surf -couldn't possibly understand. Casey's 24-year-old son Brendon is in the Army. At the time his dad was attacked, he was serving a six-month tour in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne. When he called home, Brendon, who has a long-standing fear of sharks, told his dad: "Now you know why I -don't go in the freaking water."

Three days after Christmas, there was another sighting at Salmon Creek.

Great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias

Great whites live throughout the world in cool, coastal waters. In the eastern Pacific, they live from Baja California to the Gulf of Alaska. In Northern California, they are sighted near the Farallon Islands, Ano Nuevo State Reserve (San Mateo County), and Tomales Point and Bird Rock (Marin County).

-- Grow to as much as 21.5 feet and weigh up to 3 tons. Instead of bones, their skeletons are made of cartilage. Females are larger than males.

-- Give birth to live young after a gestation period thought to be one year.

Pups are around 3.6 feet long.

-- Can detect extremely faint electrical currents of the Earth's magnetic field and of living creatures.

-- Can smell one drop of blood in 25 gallons of water.

-- Great whites have more than 3,000 serrated, razor-sharp teeth arranged in three rows. The first two rows grab and rip out mouth-sized pieces of flesh and are swallowed whole. The teeth in the remaining row rotate in to use as mature teeth are lost during feeding.

-- Initial attacks are so rapid and forceful that the victims are often lifted from the water and released. Then the shark waits for the victim to bleed to death before consuming it.

Summary: Escape from the jaws of death / Body boarder Mike Casey's trip to Bodega Bay became a nightmare when a great white shark tore into him  The son of a San Francisco cop who later became an FBI agent, Casey bounced from the Bay Area to the East Coast and then to Los Angeles.  Eleven years ago, on a trip to Pismo Beach, Casey planned to introduce his kids to boogie boarding and wound up having a blast himself.  Casey, an assistant deputy city attorney in Santa Rosa, was giddy as Thanksgiving approached.  [...] Casey thought - fantasized - about a morning spent indulging his passion and working up an appetite for his wife's Thanksgiving feast.  The plan was to surf a spot known as Boardwalk, near the Bodega Dunes campgrounds.  There is a point on the drive into Boardwalk, with sand dunes all about, when you hit a crest and, suddenly, there is the water and the waves and the spray and horizon.  Just as they reached that spot, a striking wave peaked, curled and crashed.  First sign of danger  Not great whites, but black tips, spinners, sandbar sharks - relatively small and relatively harmless types.  On Thanksgiving morning, with Casey and Ashcraft in the water, about an hour-and-a-half removed from their exchange on the boardwalk, Ashcraft had headed away from the crowd, seeking space.  Sea lions and seals are the favorite meal of great whites, which typically attack from behind or beneath with an initial bite and then wait for their prey to bleed to death.  Because most attacks happen at the surface, it's believed great white attacks on humans are simply cases of mistaken identity - they see a surfer or a diver wearing a dark wet suit and figure it for a tasty sea lion.  Fifty years ago, on Dec. 7, 1952, 17-year-old Barry Wilson was swimming with friends in Monterey Bay when he was bitten at least twice by what was later reported to be a 15-foot great white shark.  [...] some surfers have taken to painting a black and white pattern on the bottom of their boards, latching on to the unproven - and some say far-fetched - theory that the color combination serves as a great white repellent.  Mascolo arrived a bit later than many others Thanksgiving morning, entering the water about 8:15.  [...] Casey struggled for a while just getting out, recycled several times back toward shore by the currents.  Casey, meanwhile, leaned on his 42-inch board, forearms resting in the middle, hands grasping the top and his body, from the waist down, dangling in the water.  Suddenly, Mascolo saw a surge of water, a boiling up of the sea; Casey was shoved forward, and then Mascolo saw a luminous silver body, a large and beautiful fish.  [...] Casey screamed out, a scream from down deep, driven by a confluence of impulse, alarm and pain.  The thing was bent, tail down in the water, dorsal up, nose heading back down, maybe a 15- or 16-footer.  Ashcraft -couldn't tell if the shark had Casey's legs in his mouth on the way up or the way down, but there was a tug on Casey as the animal submerged, and Casey went downward, too, though he - didn't go all the way under.  Casey wound up on his back, feet flailing, and that's when he saw it, just off to his right: the mouth open, those unmistakable teeth, the silvery gray color, the body curved, a triangular fin - maybe it was the dorsal - all amid the roiling water.  Mays thought about paddling toward his friend, but there was serious fear holding back his legs.  Casey rested his torso on his board, but when he realized he -couldn't kick with his legs, he started paddling with his arms.  Up on the boardwalk, Jacopetti's wife and in-laws were out to watch him surf, and as he began his own push to land, the 35-year-old construction worker thought about the shark coming back for seconds, devouring him as his family looked on.  Rich Lawton, the supervising ranger for Sonoma Coast State Beach, received a call at 8:52, one minute after emergency dispatch was advised of a shark bite victim at Bodega Dunes.  [...] Jim Levy and Jacob Bishop were readying for a morning workout, while their third partner that day, Lou Castleberry, was grocery shopping.  The radio was muffled when the call came in, and Bishop thought dispatch said, "Heart attack."  A marine biology major in college and a diver who knew much about sharks, Castleberry figured it was probably an angel or a leopard - a shark no more than 4 feet long, with a mouth 5 or 6 inches across.  Paul Bradley, a 33-year-old helicopter pilot for the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, got a page as he was leaving for the store to pick up a few items for Thanksgiving dinner.  When he called dispatch, he was told he was needed to pick up a shark attack victim.  Just the night before, he and two other crew members had fished the body of an abalone diver out of the water who had either drowned or died from a physical malady.  The wet suit -didn't appear shredded, but Fraley saw random lacerations on both legs.  On the top of the right foot was a single, precise bite that looked as if it had been made with an ultrasharp razor blade.  First response  Ospina, a surfing regular and a volunteer fireman with several years of emergency medical experience, was on his way to Boardwalk when the call came over his pager.  When Miller looked at the bite marks, he thought they resembled the holes made in a can of V8 juice by one of those old openers.  Ospina asked his name, took a quick medical history and began to bandage some of the wounds.  Levy started IVs of saline in both arms and put an oxygen mask on Casey, and Ospina took Casey's blood pressure.  [...] in the background, Ric Colorado, a buddy of Ospina's and a local surfer who lately had been more into playing his guitar than catching waves, was strumming religious hymns; a pair of gospels by the Reverend Gary Davis: "Death -Don't Have No Mercy," and "I Will Do My Last Singing In This Land Somewhere."  With the help of several bystanders and surfers, the emergency personnel carried Casey from the beach on a stretcher.  At about 9:25, the rescue helicopter landed in the beach parking lot, just at the end of the path that runs to the boardwalk.  Holidays are often like the calm before the storm in hospital emergency rooms.  They were crazy busy - so busy that by the early evening they would go on "divert," meaning the doors were closed to all ambulances unless they were carrying trauma patients.  The staff was skeptical because of the unusual nature of the call.  When his wet suit was cut off, all the blood that had pooled inside it spilled out onto the floor.  The trauma medical director and the surgeon on duty was Dr. Brian Schmidt, who had treated two shark attack victims.  Casey had been bitten on the left thigh, below the left knee, the inner thigh just above the right knee and the top of the right foot.  The first was a deep flesh wound; the one just below the left knee went halfway around the leg, and partially severed the peroneal nerve; the right knee bite had not damaged the joint; and the last one, on top of the arch, severed a tendon on his big toe.  The staff kept applying pressure bandages to his left thigh and calf, but they kept soaking through, and blood collected repeatedly underneath his back.  [...] Schmidt, a bit of a goofy guy in the eyes of some of his colleagues, spent much of the rest of the day singing, "When the shark bites with his teeth, dear . . ."  While recuperating, Casey lay on the couch in his living room, bemoaning the fact he had to cancel two scheduled, surf-driven vacations (three weeks in Kauai in January, two weeks in Costa Rica in March) and planning his imminent return to work.  For one thing, he was surfing in a very public spot, and for another, many of those around him had some level of first-aid experience.  [...] Dr. Schmidt had treated not one, but two shark attack victims.  [...] his wet suit not only protected him from the cold water, it also acted as a tourniquet to help stem the bleeding.  When he called home, Brendon, who has a long-standing fear of sharks, told his dad: "Now you know why I -don't go in the freaking water."  -- Can detect extremely faint electrical currents of the Earth's magnetic field and of living creatures.  -- Great whites have more than 3,000 serrated, razor-sharp teeth arranged in three rows.


As the demand for flash memory storage increases, Meeks views SanDisk as a buy.

"One of the reasons they missed on the last quarter and also guided to a more subdued 2015 is lack of supply; which I think is a high-class problem. With the stock at this range I would buy it right here and now," he said.

Meeks sees Microsoft as a leader in the cloud computing space.

"I think Satya Nadella has done a nice job of pivoting the company toward cloud computing. A lot of folks don't realize that when you peel back the onion that cloud computing revenues for this company make it one of the biggest cloud computing software companies and growing the fastest," he said.

Meeks says low fuel costs are beefing up Delta's balance sheet.

"Delta has strong management. This was a company that was doing very well when oil last June was at $107 a barrel. If oil stays subdued, the company will save $1.7 billion this year in fuel and $3 billion next year.

"Positive results from cancer treatment makes Medivation a buy," says Meeks.

"They have a drug called Xtandi. It's done well particularly well in the States for post-chemo prostate cancer treatment. Last fall the drug was approved for pre-chemo treatment, so I think it will do quite well," he said.

Summary: Top investor shares his stock picks for volatile markets.


Not too long ago, a good friend of mine returned from a local mammography clinic. In her 40s, she was aware that there were some new guidelines that had generated controversy, but didn’t know the specifics other than that they involved restricting mammograms to women 50 and older.

She was greeted with a roll of the eyes and an annoyed flick of her hand, as if the doctor was waving away an unpleasant odor. Those guidelines, my friend was led to understand, couldn’t possibly be taken seriously, and if she knew what was good for her, she would keep coming back each year for repeat tests.

After all, would she want to die from a disease that was entirely preventable through the power of screening mammograms?

The story is interesting because these “new” guidelines aren’t exactly new. They were published seven years ago. Nevertheless, over this time it appears they’ve had only a minimal impact on the practice of screening mammography. Millions of women under 50 still show up for their annual mammograms, convinced of its lifesaving benefits, even though medical experts all know a secret: Mammograms have only a modest lifesaving benefit for any individual woman.

Perhaps more important, mammograms come with at least an equal risk of harm. It’s not a completely benign technology.

How can this be? If we can catch cases of breast cancer early, why wouldn’t we want to use all of our available medical resources?

A doctor’s office is the last place where one wants to be told that the test, whose results one anxiously awaits, is unreliable.

It’s true that mammograms are good at revealing cancer. But they also reveal other abnormalities that look like cancer but are totally harmless. And the radiologists who read these films are hard-pressed to differentiate cancer from the quirky nothing that should be left alone. In women under 50, for every cancer that is found, many more “false positive” reads take place — and a portion of these women will be given a diagnosis of a cancer that they don’t have and will suffer the harms of treatment that they don’t need.

Mammograms aren’t the only modern health technology that has this problem. Over the past decade or so, there has been a major reconsideration of a blood test used to screen for prostate cancer. Known as the “PSA” test (for Prostate Specific Antigen), high levels of this protein in the blood were supposed to serve as a sentinel warning for impending cancer, no less deadly than breast cancer and just as disfiguring. Hundreds of thousands of men were referred for prostate biopsies, and tens of thousands of those men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and referred for surgery or chemotherapy or radiation or a combination of the three. But the PSA would prove to be an erratic test that could be elevated for all sorts of reasons besides prostate cancer. For example, bike riding, which puts sufficient pressure on the prostate, increases PSA levels.

Similar to mammograms, people underestimated the level of uncertainty in the technology, and as a consequence, men suffered real harm through treatments that they didn’t need.

Of the two, the PSA test is the easier technology to discard, because no population studies have ever shown that men who are screened are less likely to die (if there is a benefit, it is on the order of one man in a thousand). All the PSA provides is harm from overdiagnosis.

Mammograms, by contrast, are a thornier problem: the uncertainty of knowing whether some mass on the film really is a cancer leads to a situation where some women can legitimately claim that their lives were saved. But there are also many women who have been harmed by undergoing treatments for nonexistent cancers.

I suspect that the reason for the delay and the resistance is due in part to our discomfort with uncertainty. A doctor’s office is the last place where one wants to be told that the test, whose results one anxiously awaits, is unreliable. But whether we like it or not, that uncertainty is there, and we may face dire consequences if we ignore it.

In the case of mammograms, one need know only a few statistics to grasp both their utility and their downsides. When a woman is told her mammogram is positive, the likelihood she actually has nothing wrong is about 80%, and although most of these “false positives” are never diagnosed with cancer, a small minority are. Secondly, if a woman opts for annual mammograms instead of having them every other year, she increases the chances of catching an undiagnosed cancer by about 2 in 1,000, but she roughly doubles her chance of falling into that false-positive category. None of this data is disputed by doctors, no matter where they fall on the mammogram controversy.

I know what you’re asking: What are you actually saying I should do, doc? Should I err on the side of caution by starting mammograms at 45 and get them annually, or should I take the more conservative approach, start later, and have them every other year?

It’s frustrating, I know, but I can’t tell you what to do. You have to make the decision yourself. But I strongly believe that the medical community needs to be honest with patients about the rewards and risks of not only mammograms but any procedure. We have to trust that patients can handle uncertainty.

If a doctor has explained it well, there won’t be a need to issue a recommendation. The patient will follow her own recommendation.

Steven Hatch is the author of “Snowball in a Blizzard: A Physician’s Notes on Uncertainty in Medicine,” out now from Basic Books.

Summary: Not too long ago, a good friend of mine returned from a local mammography clinic. In her 40s, she was aware that there were some new guidelines that had generated controversy, but didn’t know the s…


ARLINGTON, Va.—Everyone has hidden biases. For Denise Russell Fleming, a vice president at BAE Systems Inc., they include overlooking quieter colleagues during meetings. "I may have not made the best decisions" because of inadequate input from introverts, she says, adding that she tends to favor more talkative personalities.

As they struggle to diversify their workforces, big businesses are teaching staffers to recognize...

Summary: Big businesses are teaching staffers to recognize that 'unconscious bias' often influences important decisions.


By RICHARD HUFF DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, December 9th 1999, 2:11AM

Talk show host Maury Povich will soon add game-show host to his rÃ©sumÃ©: The veteran broadcaster has been tapped by NBC to host its revamped version of "Twenty One."

NBC will roll out the game show on Jan. 9 at 8 p.m. and also air the one-hour program on Jan. 12 at 8, Jan 16 at 8 and on Jan. 19 at 8.

The network has ordered only four episodes of the show to start; however, if it is a hit in the Nielsen department, anything is possible.

"If it takes off, I think it will be a win-win for everybody," Povich said yesterday.

"Twenty One" pits two contestants against each other in a race to generate 21 points by correctly answering questions. The hook is, both are in soundproof booths and cannot hear each other's answer or know their scores.

The first version of "Twenty One" went off the air in 1958. A year later, contestant Charles Van Doren admitted to cheating on the show. Robert Redford's 1994 movie "Quiz Show" was based on the scandal.

"I remember the show," Povich said. "I was a young man when it was on. It had a certain intellectual drama to it.Â The isolation booth added atmosphere."

The new version "kind of just came together in the last couple of weeks," he added. "It's been very exciting. At the same time, I'm a bit surprised."

NBC sought him out for the assignment, Povich said. After NBC made contact, other networks sought him for their games as well.

"Twenty One" is the latest game show to be scheduled in prime-time since ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" became a phenomenon last summer. Next month, "Millionaire," which propelled ABC to a November sweeps win, will become part of the network's regular lineup. Likewise, CBS is expected to debut "Winning Lines" next month.

Povich said he will work on the show in the coming month. The show will be taped in California, meaning he'll have to shuttle back and forth on weekends.

"I think they have high hopes, but they're realistic," he said.

The host sees "Twenty One" as a return to prime-time television, his first regular gig there in a decade since he anchored the syndicated evening show "A Current Affair." He also sees the work as benefiting his daytime talker, which has been on a ratings roll this season. Moreover, his company recently teamed with Dick Wolf to produce a syndicated crime show.

"I've always been one to look for new challenges," Povich said. "Nobody thought 'A Current Affair' would be what it was. Nobody thought I could make the transition between that and talk shows. Riding a streak of two hit syndicated shows, I'd love to have a third.Â I'm lucky to be picking high cotton right now."

Summary: Talk show host Maury Povich will soon add game-show host to his rÃ©sumÃ©: The veteran broadcaster has been tapped by NBC to host its revamped version of "Twenty One."NBC will roll out the game show on Jan. 9 at 8 p.m. and also air the one-hour program on Jan. 12 at 8, Jan 16 at 8 and on Jan. 19 at 8. The network has ordered only


Buying physical gold can offer tax advantages over owning gold through the more common means of a collective investments, such as an exchange-traded fund.

Coins produced by the Royal Mint and which qualify as legal tender are free of capital gains tax when sold.

The most popular is the Britannia, available through authorised Mint distributors and sold at small margin above the gold spot price on the day. The 2014 Britannia will be available later this month – although you can buy ahead at a fixed price.

As a rule of thumb, try not to pay a premium above the current spot price of more than 4pc. In other words, a one-ounce Britannia when the market prices an ounce of gold at £825 – as in the middle of last week – shouldn't cost you more than £860.

It is usually better to buy the latest possible issues as they tend to be more in demand if you have to sell them back into the market quickly.

Over time, though, the premium that you paid above the spot price will erode – to the point where your coin is worth the gold it is made of. Hence the importance of buying at a competitive price in the first instance. Tubes of 10 Britannias are available sealed by the Royal Mint for those making bigger investments.

The best prices come from online dealers who will courier the gold to your door. Reputable firms will belong to the London Bullion Market Association (lbma.org.uk).

For the latest investing news,

Summary: Buying physical gold, such as Britannia gold coins, carries tax advantages.   But you do have to pay a bit extra


At first, as a group of middle-aged British gay men sit jabbering about male bodies, and sharing photos of naked men on their phones, the Logo series “Cucumber” is a turnoff. Named after a state of phallic arousal (more on the title later), the hourlong drama quickly promises to subscribe to the tired and harmful stereotype of gay men who think of nothing but sex and penises, who are overcompensating for a history of disapproval of their attractions, who are eternally locked into an adolescent view of life and love.

But I am happy to report that it gets better. Much better.

“Cucumber” is from Russell T Davies, the extraordinary Welsh TV writer and producer known for his groundbreaking “Queer as Folk,” for rebooting “Doctor Who,” and for creating “Torchwood.” His new show, which premieres Monday at 10 p.m. on Logo, is indeed largely about gay men and it is extremely sexually frank in the manner of “Queer as Folk.” But it expands beautifully from the stereotypes, ultimately giving us portraits of very specific men and women and their very human trepidations regarding aging, attachment, self-esteem, and romance. By the end of the first episode, after a marriage proposal and a calamitous threesome, I was happily hooked.

“Cucumber” is set in Manchester — it just finished its eight-episode run in the United Kingdom — and it focuses on Henry, who is 46 and bored with his insurance company job and his partner of nine years, Lance (Cyril Nri). Played with great realism by Vincent Franklin, Henry is a cranky guy who easily slips into rants, thinks mostly of himself, and lies when it’s convenient for him. He is stubbornly impermeable, both emotionally and sexually, a theme that Davies handles with great psychological insight as the story develops. And yet Franklin manages to make Henry not just tolerable but a sympathetic hero, a man always wondering, like our own Don Draper, if that’s all there is.

Henry’s life falls apart during a brilliant sequence that involves his cellphone; Davies really knows how to blend tech into his story lines. And so Henry finds himself mixing with some of the much younger gay men and lesbians from his office. They include the charming but unformed Dean (Fisayo Akinade) and the vain Freddie (Freddie Fox), who share a massive but chilly loft that may not be legal, as well as the sweet Scotty (Letitia Wright, who is irresistible). As he tries to fit in with them, Henry has to face some of his insecurities — a process that is both painful and satisfying to watch.

This younger group on “Cucumber” is the fuel for “Banana,” a half-hour sister series that premieres on Monday at 11. For “Banana,” Davies singles out one younger character from “Cucumber” — Dean in the first episode, Scotty in the second — and sets him or her in a small, contained plotline. We follow Dean on a visit to his parents, for example, which takes a marvelous — and very un-“QAF”-like — turn, and we see Scotty pursue a crush a little too aggressively. These episodes of “Banana” are lovely self-standing short stories that build to revelatory moments, but then they also add scope and layers of depth to “Cucumber.” It’s a great idea, and if it sounds forced or parlor-tricky, it’s not. Watch Dean run through the entire arc of a relationship while watching an attractive man on a bus; it’s magical.

There’s actually a third related series, “Tofu,” a documentary web series by Benjamin Cook about LGBT life that’s available on YouTube.

Davies took his titles from a European study of the stages of the male erection, with tofu at the flaccid end of the spectrum. I’m not sure I understand how the story of Henry and Lance corresponds to the cucumber, except perhaps ironically, but I trust Davies to make sense of it. He is a master TV storyteller who has earned our faith.

Summary: Russell T Davies’ new series “Cucumber” and “Banana” follow LGBT people both young and older.


The catch is that the state will only pay legal aid rates that are way below those charged on a private basis. I’m told that the difference could be £50 an hour as opposed to £250 an hour. You can choose your own solicitor but the terms of your legal aid may bar you from employing a top-flight Queen’s Counsel – and even if they don’t, you have to find one prepared to do the job at legal aid rates.

So what happened to Mr Evans? His lawyers say they understood he didn’t want to apply for legal aid because, as a former deputy speaker of the Commons, he did not want to be a burden on the public purse. Mr Evans says he was worried that if he applied and was granted legal aid, he wouldn’t be able to have the top-notch lawyers that justice demanded. What worried him was that the CPS and the police were keen to secure a conviction and “had an open chequebook”. They were “ploughing everything” into the case against him.

With his freedom and his reputation at stake and desperate to avoid a miscarriage of justice, he wanted the best – so he went private. But one of the catches in the system is that even if you are acquitted you aren’t allowed just to pay the difference between legal aid rates and private charges. If you opt to pay full fees, you cop the entire bill – plus VAT.

Mr Evans is absolutely right to say that never again should someone who is found not guilty be forced to pay huge legal bills. The state must pay up. Yet Mr Grayling is also right to cut the overall cost of legal aid to the taxpayer. How to square the two? Although the Evans case was high profile, his lawyers say it was not particularly complicated. So the first question is why the CPS was allowed to throw money at it. Should we have an equality of costs law to stop the CPS using taxpayers’ cash to give the prosecution an advantage? Should it be limited to paying only legal aid rates?

Or perhaps something far more radical is needed. Should we revisit the whole adversarial system? Do we need to pay for solicitors and barristers, or junior and senior counsel in a few of the most serious and complex cases? Years ago, I made a film about the justice system that included a discussion between half a dozen senior judges. All agreed that only some 5 per cent of prosecutions were “hard” cases. In the other 95 per cent, it soon became plain to everyone in the courtroom whether the person in the dock was guilty or not. Most cases do not require top-level barristers charging, I am told, £10,000 a week – or more – for a trial.

In any case, the taxpayer cannot afford it. Yet the lawyers resist root-and-branch change and the battle over legal aid cuts has been bruising. One Ministry of Justice insider told me: “No 10 has no enthusiasm for any more mud-wrestling with the legal profession, certainly not when we are only a year out from an election.”

But the politicians must not be allowed to give up. As Mr Evans will no doubt say when he has his little chat with Mr Grayling, in the short term they must stop innocent people having to pay for the privilege of being acquitted. Ultimately they must find new, radical ways of cutting legal charges. Next year sees a general election – and the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. All political parties should have in their manifestos a pledge to enforce the clause in it that says: “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”

Summary: As the Nigel Evans case demonstrated, reforms to the legal aid system are   seriously flawed