Still, at the risk of sounding like a snobby purist, I have to stress that “Porgy and Bess” is an opera, a big opera, and it makes its most powerful impact when treated as such. George Gershwin’s attempt to fold disparate musical strands — Broadway songs; jazz; the European modernism of the 1920s that he was so enthralled with, especially the music of Berg — into a seamless operatic whole was not completely successful. Still, in a good production, this exhilarating, painstakingly detailed and continually inventive work keeps you hooked for the duration of its score, which has more than three hours of music.

In striving for a streamlined “Porgy and Bess,” a version that might seem more urgent, intimate and dramatically lucid, the new adaptation just makes the piece seem slighter.

Gershwin did not help the cause of “Porgy and Bess” by calling it a “folk opera.” But he was sensitive about presuming to write a work focused on a black community in Charleston, S.C. There is no real folk music in his score. Gershwin even composed his own spirituals rather than quoting existing ones: a more respectful choice, and more original. As he explained in an article for The New York Times that appeared in October 1935, during the Broadway run, Gershwin wanted the music of his opera “to be all of one piece.”

After the tryout premiere in Boston, Gershwin and his co-creators made large cuts, some 45 minutes in all, before taking the work to Broadway. This would seem a clear expression of insecurity from a team of opera neophytes. But in the world of musical theater — where Gershwin and his brother Ira, who wrote the lyrics with Heyward, had thrived — if any song, scene or show was not working, the problem was immediately assumed to be that it was too long. And to borrow a lyric, that “ain’t necessarily so.”

In that Times article George Gershwin sounded almost defensive about the number of songs in the score. “It is true that I have written songs for ‘Porgy and Bess,’ ” he wrote. “I am not ashamed of writing songs at any time so long as they are good songs.”

He added that songs “are entirely within the operatic tradition” and that he used “sustained symphonic music to unify entire scenes.” He prepared himself for that task, he wrote, “by further study in counterpoint and modern harmony.”

Suzan-Lori Parks, who wrote a reworked book for "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess," now on Broadway, talks about some of the changes in the show and in the number "I Got Plenty of Nothing.

Still, the opera was soon considered a deeply flawed work. Versions were produced that lifted the songs from the score and presented the piece as a musical with dialogue. Yet when the full-length original version was restored and produced in 1976 by the Houston Grand Opera, it was a revelation to critics and audiences. Here was an audaciously original opera with a compelling musico-dramatic arc. How could it ever have seemed too long?

In the current reincarnation for Broadway, whole stretches of the original recitatives are turned into hybrids, sometimes spoken (usually with new words) and sometimes sung, with altered harmonies and newly composed transitional passages. Though the action now moves more quickly on the surface, this musical amalgam undercuts the piece’s dramatic depth and urgency. Gershwin’s inspired introductory music devolves into a standard medley-style Broadway overture.

In theory, nothing is sacred. Shakespeare’s plays have been rewritten for centuries. And countless operas have been subjected to all manner of radical adaptations. Still, for the most part, with opera these have mostly involved directorial concepts and updated settings. Even outrageous opera productions usually present the music as written.

Opera companies are not innocents when it comes to making cuts in works. But at least with standard repertory, such cuts tend to be nicks and trims, or an aria for a minor character generally considered superfluous, not whole sections of a score. I cannot be sure, but a good third of the original “Porgy and Bess” seems gone in this adaptation.

The intimacy of the production is a selling point. In the scene at Serena’s home, it is moving to see just a dozen or so choristers, her Catfish Row neighbors, singing the despondent, descending chords of “Gone, Gone, Gone” as they huddle over the laid-out body of Serena’s husband, Robbins. He has been killed in a fight with the brutish stevedore Crown, here the imposing Phillip Boykin. (That fight is depicted by Gershwin in a frenzied orchestral fugue, but the effect in this version was nothing like what you experience when an opera orchestra plays it at full tilt and complete.)

As Serena, Bryonha Marie Parham conveys the new widow’s shocking grief. But her singing of “My Man’s Gone Now” is reticent, and the orchestra almost disappears. This song can knock you out when a full-voiced, throbbing Serena is backed by an opera-house orchestra bustling with Gershwin’s whiplash flute riffs and pummeling percussion.

This “Porgy and Bess” certainly has its moments, and the adaptation comes across as a good-faith effort to try something different. As Ms. McDonald said in the Times interview, the opera “will always exist to be performed.”

But how many people know it? And why did this production team assume that a version of the opera closer to the dimensions of what its creators wrote would not captivate audiences who are new to it?

A version of this article appears in print on January 14, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Shorter, Modern And Less Than Opera. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” was streamlined to make the original opera more accessible and realistic, but we’re left with something slighter.


Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday his administration would stop enriching New York City’s coffers with what he once described as “hidden taxes” collected from water ratepayers, proposing a $183 credit to more than 660,000 water bills.

Mr. de Blasio said he would stop charging the city’s Water Board, which leases the water and sewer system from city government, an annual rental payment starting in the coming fiscal year.

Summary: Mayor Bill de Blasio said his administration would stop enriching New York City’s coffers with what he once described as “hidden taxes” collected from water ratepayers, proposing a $183 credit to more than 660,000 water bills.


Ceilings are reaching new heights.

These days, "10 feet is the new 9 feet," said architect John Cetra of New York-based CetraRuddy Architecture, noting that home buyers love high ceilings because they allow room for tall windows. They also give architects more space to play—with features like domes, mosaics and vaults. In contemporary homes, a wood or tile ceiling can provide texture and warmth.

Here's a sampling of dramatic design options.

If the ceiling is high enough, a dome can be built even if the floor above is flat. A 25-foot-high coffered plaster dome that architect Jose Ramirez designed for a double-height rotunda in a Georgian-style Connecticut house has LED lights built in. Especially at night, the lighting "draws your eye up to the dome," he said.

Barrel vaults were originally structural in purpose, often used in industrial buildings to support heavy machinery. In Manhattan's 19th-century Puck Building, brick vaults with steel beams were installed in the floors underneath the printing presses that were once housed in the space, said Mr. Ramirez, who designed six residential units in the building for developer Kushner Cos. In converting the space to condos, plaster was removed to expose the original brick vaults and beams.

Brick barrel-vaulted ceiling: $60,000 for a newly built ceiling

New condominiums and modern houses are generally known for simple ceilings with clean lines. But many buyers of contemporary homes now want natural materials, like wood, rather than "just a white box," said Chad Oppenheim, founder of Miami-based Oppenheim Architecture + Design. "We've been seeing a movement to make modernism more warm, more comfortable," he said. "People are tired of that cold aesthetic." In a contemporary home in the Bahamas, Mr. Oppenheim designed ceilings made of 8-inch-wide cedar planks.

Wooden beams and boards have long been popular in traditional-style homes, said Randy Correll, a partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects and co-author of the book "Designs for Living." For a basement wine cellar inside an oceanfront house in Dartmouth, Mass., the firm designed a structure of white oak beams. In what they call a "Crown of Thorns" pattern, the beams are stacked symmetrically in a circle. "It's at the end of this long passageway, so it was like a little surprise when you get to that room," Mr. Correll said.

"Crown of Thorns" beamed ceiling: $15,000 to $20,000; Cedar-plank ceiling: $21,600

A coffered ceiling is typically a series of sunken panels that are square or rectangular. The effect is somewhat akin to an upside-down egg crate, Mr. Cetra said. Popular in traditional homes, coffers are often made out of wood beams, plaster or drywall, then decorated with molding and lighting. They have "an element of formality without being over-the-top ornate," said designer and home builder Bobby Webb, adding that he often uses them in dining rooms, libraries and home theaters.

Painted wood-coffered ceiling: $20,000 to $25,000

A groin vault—a series of intersecting arches—is a classic architectural feature that has been used for centuries, said Andrew Scott Kirschner, co-founder of Jackson Kirschner Architects and Associates in Melbourne, Fla. A groin vault "creates a mood or feeling as you walk through," he said, and signals that "the space you're going into is really special." A 25-foot-high groin-vaulted ceiling he designed for a client's home in Orchid Island, Fla., was decorated with a hand-painted fresco showing tropical birds and flowers.

Groin-vaulted ceiling with painted fresco: $80,000

Write to Candace Taylor at candace.taylor@wsj.com

Summary: A field guide to elaborate ceiling treatments, from barrel vaults to coffered panels.


The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.

Prof Steel says procrastination is becoming a bigger issue because many more jobs are "self-structured", with people setting their own schedules.

This means that people tend to postpone things with delayed rewards in favour of activities that offer immediate rewards.

"Procastinators tend to live fro today rather than tomorrow. for short term gain for long term pain" he writes.

Until now, psychologists have generally linked procrastination to perfectionists who avoid tasks rather than produce less than perfect products.

So, instead of people being too lazy to care about the task, he believes that most procrastinators believe they can complete a task and also care about it.

Lazy people, by contrast, are not bothered whether they can finish the job – they just do not want to do it. Both can come up with excuses such as a dog eating the homework.

Famous procrastinators include writers Marcel Proust and Douglas Adams, who famously said he loved the "whoosh" of missed deadlines passing over his head.

Summary: It might seem an idle pastime but academics have come up with a mathematical equation for why people procrastinate.


“Loyalty is a two-way street. It really does go both ways—in friendship, family and love. I was married to my husband for 54 years, until his death. I mean, talk about loyalty and kindness—we always supported one another. I remember once, years ago, I became so upset with a co-worker at WAMU that I left the office and drove to the grocery store to clear my mind. The store was near the radio station but about two miles from home. I got to the store but I was so distracted that I lost my car keys. I was hysterical. I called my husband, crying. He knew instantly why I was upset, so he said he’d take a cab immediately. Well, about 20 minutes later, John Rehm walked in. He said nothing; he just put his arms around me and held me. He’d had trouble getting a taxi so he’d walked all the way to the store with my keys. That’s what loyalty is—a crucial ingredient in any marriage.”

—Rehm, host of NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show, is the author of a new memoir, On My Own.

“In the inner city, loyalty is a way of life. It’s something that people expect—it’s a moral code—and hip-hop is a way of expressing those values. It was really pronounced in the era of Tupac and Biggie. Whether it was a coast or a crew, you announced your loyalty to the world through your music. That kind of loyalty is usually born out of shared experiences, something that leads to a bond between two people. I remember visiting my cousin in Cincinnati when I was a kid. One day, his friend—someone he knew from the block—and I got into an argument over basketball, so we decided that we were going to fight. We walked down to the corner and went at it. But soon it was clear I was getting beat up! So my cousin jumped in and, you know, he settled the argument. It really touched me. In that moment, his allegiance to me mattered more to him than anything else.”

—Common stars in Barbershop: The Next Cut, out next month.

“As an actor, loyalty to your character and her story is of paramount importance. I will never stand in judgment of any character I play. You can’t abandon them, no matter what they do, think or feel. It serves me not one bit, and it doesn’t serve the story. Mistress Epps [from 12 Years a Slave] was a diabolical character—her behavior was reprehensible. But I remember [director] Steve McQueen telling me, ‘You must not judge her.’ So I didn’t look for ways to excuse her behavior. Instead, I tried to understand her actions within the context of her time. She wasn’t smart enough to question what she’d been told; she wasn’t an independent person of mind or heart. But the story wouldn’t be told in the same way if I’d tried to make her more palatable. My job is to serve the story, and if you have no loyalty to your character, you might as well not bother.”

—Paulson is an actress currently appearing in American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson on FX.

“I’ve always been attracted to the humanistic concept of loyalty—an emphasis on respect for everyone’s dignity. To be loyal doesn’t only mean to fulfill commitments to others; it’s something more. We should care for our neighbors, yes, but others as well, even strangers. We should be loyal to everybody. That loyalty enables us to join forces to serve what we like to refer to as ‘the common good.’ Loyalty features prominently in my business. This is exactly the reason why we almost never change our workers and clients. When I restored the parks around the small village of Solomeo in Italy—where our company is headquartered and my wife was born—I did it out of a sense of responsibility and loyalty to the people in the town. I want them to feel proud of the place where they live and work.”

—Cucinelli is a fashion designer.

“Phyllis Frye, a transgender judge in Houston, once made the point that if you’re transgender and you’re able to be a good role model to others, that’s something you have to do out of loyalty to your tribe. Otherwise, people will continue to live these sad, closeted lives. I’ve been really lucky. I would never have come out if my partner had not been 100 percent behind me, loyal to me, because I love her more than I love myself. There are many instances when the relationship does not survive after one partner comes out as transgender, but mine was not one of them. In that way, loyalty is related to love. I like how Robert Heinlein, the science fiction writer, defined love: The happiness of the person you love is essential to your own happiness. In the case of loyalty, the happiness of the person you are loyal to is important to your own happiness.”

—Rothblatt is founder and co-CEO of United Therapeutics and a founder of Sirius radio.

“Loyalty in business really comes down to two things: quality and value. I’ve gone to the same barber for 20 years. Is he a genius stylist? Probably not. And I don’t even care that much about my hair. But here’s a guy who does it fast and well. Without doing disservice to others in the barbershop, they always find a way to get me into the chair quickly. Similarly, there’s a small bookseller on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, where we have a house. I’m a big reader, so it’s a place I go to browse—something I don’t do very well online. The starting point is always the quality of the experience. My four kids are in their 20s, classic millennials. They want an experience they can share with somebody, whether it’s a restaurant or a hotel. They want something Instagram-worthy. But they still value a friendly welcome. If you give people good product, they’ll keep coming back.”

—Sorenson is president and CEO of Marriott International.

Summary: Common, Sarah Paulson and More on Loyalty


IN 1995, NICK JONES —the CEO and founder of Soho House—opened the first of his private members’ clubs in London. Now there are 15 exclusive clubs worldwide, including Babington House, a more rural yet refined retreat in England’s scenic Somerset, built in 1998. Nearly two decades later, Jones is revisiting the English countryside with this month’s opening of Soho Farmhouse—a 100-acre, private members’ club and country house hotel in Oxfordshire.

Located a 90-minute drive northwest of London, off the winding countryside roads of Great Tew, Soho Farmhouse is a fusion of private members’ club, country club and hotel. Although the grounds are typically just for members (who get special rates on accommodations), paying non-members can stay in the guest cabins and are free to use the facilities of the club during their visit.

Members or not, visitors to the sprawling estate can expect their vacation to start the moment they check in: Upon arrival at the gatehouse on the grounds, guests are handed cocktails as their vehicles are whisked away to an on-site car wash.

“I’m doing away with traditional check-in,” says Jones, who explains how a hidden camera scans license plates as guests enter the property. “When you drive in, we’ll already know who you are. We’ll take your luggage, and you won’t see your car again for the rest of your stay—the whole of Soho Farmhouse is car-free.”

Instead, visitors to the club can be transported to various areas of the expansive grounds on restored 1950s milk trucks or bespoke Foffa bicycles provided to each of the 40 individual cabins (which range in size from studios to three bedrooms) as well as a seven-bedroom farmhouse and a four-bedroom cottage. For an added touch of comfort, guests can specify their height and foot measurements when checking in online to ensure that they are given properly sized bicycles and Wellington boots for their stay.

“We’re trying to create something that is as under-designed, unpretentious and comfortable as possible,” says Alex Jackson, the lead architectural designer for In House Design, Soho House Group’s architectural firm. “We’ve approached this like designing a village.”

The complex is a mix of restored 18th-century farmhouses and new buildings, but its heart is the Farmyard, which consists of a former working farmhouse and courtyard surrounded by the main clubhouse barn, the reception area, a cooking school, a deli shop, a pub and a flower shop. Plus, there’s a home and accessories store with products designed by the Soho House team, which will launch later this year (available first to members only) as an online retail venture called Soho Home.

Other facilities include a Cowshed Spa with a salon by renowned hairstylist Josh Wood, a private cinema, a contemporary barn for large events, a fashion and lifestyle store curated by retail guru Alex Eagle, a boathouse with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a winter ice rink, grass tennis courts, a football field, six indoor and outdoor restaurants and a horse stable, as well as an adventure area where children can play and parents can kick back and relax.

Locals have lauded the project for its sensitive architectural response to the pastoral surroundings and Soho Farmhouse’s efforts to integrate the community’s food producers and artisans into its daily operations. For example, produce and provenance are key to its ambitious culinary program, which will be led by the Michelin-starred London chef Tom Aikens.

“We will make our own charcuterie and cured meats and smoke our own meat and fish,” explains Aikens, who has recruited an army of culinary experts to oversee the on-site cultivation of over 500 different fruits and vegetables. “Eventually, I want everything on a plate here to be what we make or produce ourselves.”

Although there are plenty of activities, from horseback riding to boating, Jones has ensured that the wooden guest cabins are well equipped so that visitors can be as self-sufficient as they want. All of the cabins have a waterfront view of one of the estate’s three man-made lakes or stream, and all but the studios boast fully functioning kitchens with an oven, grill, toaster, Le Creuset cookware, coffee and ice machines, a full bar and a stocked pantry. Added bonus: If guests don’t want to make their own cocktails, they can summon one of two 24-hour roving milk trucks that have been converted into portable bars with bartenders on hand. And two mobile “greasy spoons” are on call to serve epicurean guilty pleasures.

How would Jones, known as hospitality’s rebel against formality, sum up Soho Farmhouse? “This will be a country club,” he says, “just without all the stuffiness and bullshit that usually goes with it.”

Summary: An inside look at Soho Farmhouse—a 100-acre, private members’ club and country house hotel in Oxfordshire.


Turkish police have launched simultaneous raids on 44 companies in Istanbul and have warrants to detain 120 company executives as part of the investigation into last month's attempted military coup, state-run Anadolu agency reports.

It said the companies were accused of giving financial support to the movement of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of orchestrating the July 15 putsch. He denies the accusation.

None of the companies involved were named. Police on Tuesday began searches in the Uskudar and Umraniye districts of Istanbul, including buildings belonging to an unnamed holding company, the agency said.

Since the coup, more than 35,000 people have been detained, of whom 17,000 have been placed under formal arrest, and tens of thousands more suspended in a purge of Turkey's military, law-and-order, education and justice systems.

Summary: Turkish police have obtained warrants to detain 120 company executives as part of their investigation into an attempted military coup in July.


It's a nightly dilemma in many households: A student hits a wall doing homework, and parents are too tired, too busy—or too mystified—to help.

Ordering up a tutor is becoming as easy for kids as grabbing a late-night snack. Amid rapid growth in companies offering online, on-demand tutoring, students can use a credit card to connect, sometimes in less than a minute, with a live tutor. Such 24/7, no-appointment-needed services can be especially helpful to students with tight budgets or tight time frames or those in remote areas.

"All of a sudden, the world opens up to them," says Michael Horn, executive director of education for the Clayton Christensen Institute, a San Mateo, Calif., education and health-care think tank.

That said, the quality of on-demand scholastic support can be uneven, and the catch-as-catch-can approach to enlisting a tutor may not be best for struggling students who need sustained help. Sessions can bog down on technical glitches, and language barriers can cause problems on sites that rely on tutors from abroad.

Prices, ranging from about $24 to $45 an hour (and often prorated to the minute), are cheaper than what many skilled tutors charge in a student's home. And parents and students say the quick homework fix can ease stress and make evenings at home more peaceful.

Whenever Peggy Bennett of Dallas tried to help her 13-year-old daughter, Chloe Friedman, with her eighth-grade physics and algebra homework, "we'd always end up bickering," Ms. Bennett says, with Chloe often objecting that the teacher did it differently. "It was a lose-lose situation."

Chloe says she was skeptical when her mom helped her sign up last month on Tutor.com, a New York City-based provider of on-demand tutoring. But after she logged on one evening for algebra help, a tutor, identified only by a first name and last initial, responded within a minute. Chloe says she was guided to figure out the answers, using text chat and an interactive "whiteboard" that displayed their writing and calculations on a shared screen. After hearing nothing but typing for about 10 minutes, Ms. Bennett says she heard Chloe yell from the other room, "They told me I did a good job!" Ms. Bennett adds, "That was all that she needed."

Chloe, who takes classes in dance, acting and singing, also uses Tutor.com on her smartphone at the dance studio between classes. She says she recently got help solving a math problem in less than 10 minutes.

Ms. Bennett now lets Chloe use her credit card to extend her Tutor.com subscription whenever she needs help. So far, Chloe has spent $79.99 for up to two hours of tutoring. Tutor.com subscribers pay once a month for time used; unused minutes can be carried to the next month.

Most sites enlist moonlighting or retired teachers, college professors or professionals with tutoring experience; most offer scheduled tutoring in addition to on-demand sessions. The most common users are middle- and high-schoolers, and college students taking basic courses.

About 95% of the 1,200 tutors available on Bangalore, India-based TutorVista are recruited from India, says C.S. Swaminathan, president of TutorVista, which was recently acquired by the London-based publishing and education company Pearson PSO 0.07 % PLC. Tutoring sessions with its mostly U.S.-based customers are usually held via whiteboard and text chat, to reduce potential language difficulties, Mr. Swaminathan says. Still, students say, language barriers can sometimes slow communication, and grammar glitches can occasionally creep in.

Saira Sultan, an Irvine, Calif., college student, says the TutorVista tutors she taps several times a week for help with her English and math courses are pleasant and knowledgeable. She recently uploaded a business letter she had been assigned to write for her English class, and the tutor marked errors in the text and texted instructions on correcting verb tenses, rearranging paragraphs and rephrasing sentences to read more smoothly, Ms. Sultan says. The one-on-one edits have helped her learn to write more clearly, she says.

The drawback, she says, is that communicating via text chat "takes a lot of time." Mr. Swaminathan says TutorVista can provide audio-chat sessions if scheduled in advance.

As with in-person tutors, knowledge levels and teaching skills can be uneven. Stephanie Dobbs of Los Angeles says one InstaEDU tutor who responded to her daughter Sarah's request for calculus help "didn't know the material at all." But Sarah, who uses the site two to three times a week, says it has so many tutors that switching is easy, and the convenience outweighs any drawbacks.

An InstaEDU spokeswoman says on occasion, tutors can halt billing while they figure out the material, or students can be given refunds or a different tutor.

James Nickerson agrees that on-demand tutors need winnowing. When he turned to InstaEDU recently to help his 16-year-old daughter Emma with an advanced-Latin class (they couldn't find a skilled Latin tutor in their hometown of Stevens Point, Wis.), he didn't turn Emma loose online. Instead, he sat beside her while she chose a tutor, urging her to bypass a math major who claimed a sideline expertise in Latin in favor of a New York University grad student majoring in classics. He also helped her schedule sessions, to provide continuity with the same tutor.

On-demand tutoring is just one of a growing array of online homework-help options. Khan Academy, one prominent example, offers interactive tutorials in addition to educational videos. Chegg.com provides answers to homework questions, while crowdsourcing sites such as StudyBlue enable students to share study guides, notes and flashcards.

Some school districts pay New York City-based TutaPoint and other online-tutoring sites to provide free access to students; about 2,000 libraries let students use Tutor.com without cost. Free access to tutoring sites can help level the playing field for students from all income groups—if they provide trained, qualified tutors, conduct background checks and safeguard users' security, says Nora Carr, president of the National School Public Relations Association, a professional group.

But the sites can also tilt the playing field in favor of kids with plenty of money for tutoring help, creating pressure for other students to have a tutor too. Parents should monitor kids' use of the sites and track fees, which "can get very expensive very quickly," says Ms. Carr, who is chief of staff of the Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, N.C.

Yamini Naidu says online tutoring last year through InstaEDU helped her earn As in advanced-placement classes at her Beaverton, Ore., high school. Now a freshman at Yale University, Ms. Naidu works eight hours a week as an InstaEDU tutor.

She says that students who come to sessions with a list of questions or assignments to work on—and who block out time to concentrate—benefit most. Text chats occasionally stall, though, if students are distracted or start multitasking; Ms. Naidu tries to re-engage students by asking questions to spark their interest, she says.

Bharathy Chummar of Plantation, Fla., turned to the online tutoring site Eduboard last summer to help her 15-year-old son Prajwal research possible science-fair topics. Prajwal had a 45-minute audio and text chat with a tutor, who is also a physician, about an idea involving bacteria. The doctor later sent him a research summary with links to more studies.

Online tutors "fill a huge gap that can never be filled by parents," Ms. Chummar says.

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

Summary: These academic coaches, accessible 24/7 with a web connection and a credit card, teach via chat windows and digital whiteboards. Can they stave off those midnight homework meltdowns?


Victorian baby-seat factory workers who have walked off the job for five days are set to protest outside a pregnancy expo.

Britax workers walked off the job on August 15, worried their jobs will go as the company looks to send production of its baby seats offshore to China.

Britax is reportedly planning to make the first workers redundant in January 2017, according to the Australian Workers' Union.

Workers are set to rally outside the Pregnancy, Babies and Children's Expo at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on Sunday over the measure.

The workers claim Britax's Sunshine factory, which has been in business for more than 50 years, is still profitable.

Australian Workers' Union acting Victorian secretary Liam O'Brien said Britax "was seeking even larger returns by moving to China".

Workers have been protesting outside the gates of the Sunshine factory for five days.

The Fair Work Commission has ordered the workers to return to work.

Summary: Factory workers will protest over plans for Australian baby-seat maker Britax to move its production to China.


Victorian senator Derryn Hinch has confirmed he'll support the federal government's intervention in the long-running CFA saga.

"I've told him (Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews) on the phone that we can co-operate on a lot of issues ... but on the CFA I do not support you," Senator Hinch told 3AW on Tuesday, adding the premier ignored his statement and "moved on".

Senator Hinch failed to explain why he was opposed to the CFA deal when quizzed by a caller and admitted he hadn't yet read proposed legislation unveiled by the federal government on Monday.

Senator Hinch said he thought the CFA bargaining agreement was "trying to tell volunteers what to do".

The prime minister on Monday unveiled draft laws to permanently protect the rights of volunteer emergency service workers following the bitter pay dispute between the CFA and United Firefighters Union.

"I had talks with Michaelia Cash about it last week in Melbourne and during the campaign I went to a lot of sausage sizzles and field days and I'm pleased that the government is going to do this to try to thwart Premier Andrews and the union," Senator Hinch told ABC TV earlier on Tuesday.

Senator Hinch's views on the issue were already well know with the former broadcaster previously saying Mr Andrews was "the type of man firefighters fear".

"He's an out-of-control arsonist with an out-of-control bushfire," the senator said earlier this month.

Summary: New senator Derryn Hinch says he will support the federal government changes to protect volunteer firefighters following the CFA pay dispute in Victoria.


Police have released images of two vehicles involved in a fatal head-on crash on an unsealed blind corner in central Tasmania.

An 84-year-old woman was killed in the smash on Sunday afternoon near Interlaken when the Nissan in which she was a front seat passenger collided with a Toyota ute.

More than 24 hours after the crash, investigators remain at the scene and are calling for witnesses.

The Nissan driver, the 75-year-old husband of the woman killed, was taken to hospital with broken ribs and bruises.

The driver of the other vehicle "was suffering from shock but there was no physical injuries", police Sergeant Rod Carrick told reporters on Monday.

The 17-year-old and his teenage passenger were both checked by medical staff.

"We're still investigating, we're still doing scene examination and analysing all the information we're getting from that scene," Sgt Carrick said, declining to confirm which vehicle had crossed onto the wrong side of the road.

Summary: An 84-year-old woman has died after a head-on car crash in Tasmania.


For a first home buyer to put down a deposit in Melbourne's Footscray, they'd have to forfeit 150 years worth of weekly smashed avocado brunches.

Labor's Tim Watts has taken issue with recent comments by middle aged Australians expressing dismay at seeing young people order "smashed avocado" breakfasts for more than $20.

Those pennies should instead be pocketed for a house deposit, some say.

But Mr Watts says that's nonsense.

"For many Australians the dream of home ownership remains completely out of reach," he told parliament on Tuesday.

"All too of young people's aspiration for home ownership is met with condescension from the government and boomers in general."

In Footscray in his western Melbourne electorate, a young person would have to forfeit 38,000 coffees or 150 years worth of weekly smashed avocado brunches.

The MP was pushing Labor's plan to tighten negative gearing concessions to help young people enter the housing market.

Summary: Labor MP has taken issue with baby boomers telling young people to stop eating smashed avocado brunch to buy their first home.


A total fire ban has been declared for parts of South Australia as very hot and dry conditions hit the state.

Where the bans have been declared, very hazardous fire weather conditions are predicted for Monday.

Temperatures are set to peak near 40C in the regions including North West Pastoral, North East Pastoral and the West Coast.

Thunderstorms and isolated showers are expected to come with a cool change.

The CFS recommends residents in areas where bans have been declared implement their Bushfire Survival Plan.

Fire ban and fire danger rating advice for Monday:

Northwest Pastoral - Very High

Eastern Eyre Peninsula - Severe

Lower Eyre Peninsula - Severe

Mount Lofty Ranges - Severe

Kangaroo Island - Very High

Upper South East - Severe

Lower South East - Severe

Summary: The South Australian Country Fire Service declared a Total Fire Ban for parts of the state on Monday.


SYDNEY—Australian police have charged a man with committing a terrorist act and attempted murder after he allegedly stabbed a man multiple times in Sydney on Saturday.

Australia’s New South Wales state police on Sunday said the 22-year-old man was arrested following the stabbing of a 59-year-old man in the Sydney suburb of Minto.

SYDNEY—Australian police have charged a man with committing a terrorist act and attempted murder after he allegedly stabbed a man multiple times in Sydney on Saturday.

Australia’s New South Wales state police on Sunday said the 22-year-old man was arrested following the stabbing of a 59-year-old man in the Sydney suburb of Minto.

The attack was allegedly inspired by Middle East-based militant group Islamic State, but the man isn’t known to be connected to any terror outfit, said New South Wales state police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn.

Police said the 22-year-old man and the victim were not known to each other. The victim is in the hospital in serious condition, said Ms. Burn.

The incident on Saturday came days after Islamic State urged followers to stab, shoot, poison and run over Australians at iconic locations, including the Sydney Opera House, according to the Associated Press.

Police said there was no ongoing threat following the arrest.

On Monday, an Australian man who planned to kill a police officer in an Islamic State-inspired attack during veterans day commemorations last year was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Write to Rhiannon Hoyle at rhiannon.hoyle@wsj.com

Summary: After an attack allegedly inspired by Islamic State, police have charged a man with committing a terrorist act and attempted murder.


Posted Sep 20th 2007 10:44AM by TMZ Staff

Meagan Good has a tendency to go out bra-less -- and she don't care what you think! After getting caught more than once on TMZ -- showing off her titillating curves -- the stacked "Brick" actress sought our camera last night to explain to haters that she doesn't do it for attention, declaring, "A girl likes to be free!" And how!FYI -- Good made sure to mention her girls were rolling without support last night as well.

Summary: Meagan Good has a tendency to go out bra-less -- and she don't care what you think!  insertBCSinglePlayer(1184769738); After getting caught more than once ...


Wednesday, July 5th 2000, 2:13AM

Â 8:00 p.m. (WB) "Dawson's Creek." Two episodes featuring Pacey (Joshua Jackson) and Joey (Katie Holmes). In the first, they're forced to share a bed during a crowded spring break weekend with Dawson's Aunt Gwen. (Good ol' Aunt Gwen.) In the second, the truth about their relationship is revealed in a series of vignettes from different points of view, including Dawson's (James Van Der Beek).

Â 10:00 (CBS) "48 Hours." After begging us to take 10 strangers to our hearts and turn them into stars, CBS offers a look at the fickle nature of celebrity. Expect to take note of such major figures of 21st-century American culture as Darva Conger.

Â 8:00 p.m. (HIST) "Sail 2000: Aboard the Eagle." Watching those Tall Ships yesterday put the thrill of sailing in you? The Coast Guard ship Eagle will keep your sheets full and your jibs tight. If you like those kinds of things.

Â 8:00 p.m. (SCIFI) "Tales From the Crypt." In this three-hour marathon is a gem directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger about a rich man (William Hickey) who buys himself a new body one part at a time to impress a lady (Kelly Preston).

Â 9:00 (NICK) "Beverly Hillbillies" This two-hour block starts with Episode 1, in which a poor mountaineer shoots at some food and up from the ground come a-bubbling crude. Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea. Well the first thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire. You know the rest.

Â 8:00 (ABC) "Con Air" You know how the day after a long weekend or a holiday you don't really want to be back at work? ABC understands. Forget trying to figure out a prime-time schedule to compete with "Survivor" and "Big Brother." Let's just put on a movie. This one's less than the sum of its parts: Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Mykelti Williamson and David Chappelle.

Â 8:00 p.m. (TCM) "Babes in Arms." Judy Garland is TCM's Star of the Month, an observance that began Monday with "The Wizard of Oz." Garland films, 30 in all, will continue through Sunday. "Babes in Arms," a Busby Berkeley musical from 1939, retains little of the music from the Rodgers and Hart stage production. With Mickey Rooney and Charles Winninger. Followed at 10 p.m. by "Strike Up the Band" (1940) and at midnight by "Babes on Broadway" (1941).

Â 9:00 (USA) "The Day After." Really the day before as well as after a nuclear war, through the eyes of a Lawrence, Kan., doctor (Jason Robards). This 1983 telemovie is not recommended for light sleepers.

Summary: SERIES Â 8:00 p.m. (WB) "Dawson's Creek."Two episodes featuring Pacey (Joshua Jackson) and Joey (Katie Holmes). In the first, they're forced to share a bed during a crowded spring break weekend with Dawson's Aunt Gwen. (Good ol' Aunt Gwen.) In the second, the truth about their relationship is revealed in a series of vignettes from different points of view, including Dawson's (James Van Der Beek). Â 10:00


BY ROBERT INGRASSIA DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, January 28th 2002, 2:24AM

Two decades after the fateful phone call, Jim McCormack can still hear Robert Durst speaking in a cool monotone: "Your sister Kathie's gone missing."

"There was no excitement or worry in his voice," McCormack recalls. "That struck me immediately as suspicious."

It will be 20 years ago this week that Kathie Durst, wife of the wealthy Manhattan real estate heir, disappeared.

Durst told McCormack he'd last seen the 29-year-old medical student at a train station in Katonah, Westchester County, on the snowy night of Jan. 31, 1982.

Twenty years later, Kathie Durst's family is still searching for answers to what happened to her - and looking for justice.

"Take 20 years times 365 days - that's how many times individually and together our family has memorialized Kathie," McCormack said.

Recent developments in the case continue to give hope to the McCormacks and to Kathie Durst's friends.

Even within the past few weeks, tipsters have come forward with information about Kathie Durst's disappearance that investigators consider significant, a source close to the probe said.

The McCormacks have also found some solace in Robert Durst's current situation.

The son of Manhattan real estate legend Seymour Durst is behind bars, charged with a Texas murder that apparently had no connection to Kathie Durst's disappearance.

But even though Robert Durst faces life in prison if convicted in Texas, New York authorities are still working to crack Kathie Durst's case.

"We're not letting up on it," said New York State Police Investigator Joseph Becerra who, in 1999, reopened the long-dormant probe into Kathie Durst's disappearance. "It's still an active investigation."

Becerra referred questions about the case to Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who has said she will charge someone when she has enough evidence.

The Dursts' nine-year marriage was falling apart when Kathie Durst vanished. She'd been planning to file for a divorce and told friends her husband had abused her.

McCormack said he hopes Robert Durst's criminal troubles shake loose more tips about his sister.

"People who know what happened to Kathie are going to say, 'You know what? Why should I be loyal to Robert Durst? Enough is enough. He may have charmed me or paid me off, but I can't live with it anymore,'" McCormack said.

Since the Texas murder charge, Robert Durst's secretive life has become public. He divorced Kathie Durst in 1990, publishing a divorce notice in a small Westchester County weekly. On Dec. 11, 2000, he married Manhattan real estate broker Debrah Lee Charatan in a ceremony that his friends and family didn't know about.

Even if Pirro concluded she had enough evidence to charge Robert Durst for Kathie Durst's death, prosecuting him for murder would pose some high hurdles. With no body, she'd first have to prove Kathie Durst is dead.

Manhattan prosecutors won a murder case without a body in 2000 when a jury found plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Bierenbaum guilty of killing his wife, Gail Katz Bierenbaum, and dumping her body into the ocean from a plane in 1985.

A prosecutor handling the extradition of Robert Durst to Texas from Pennsylvania won a similar case not long ago. Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli won a guilty verdict two years ago against a man whose wife was never found after she disappeared in 1984.

In that case, DNA from a bloody mattress found at the time of the disappearance was tested years later and matched to the missing wife. Also, the husband's friends testified that he admitted killing his wife.

"It's a tough case without the body of the victim," Morganelli said. "I wouldn't want to do it again, but it can be done."

Kathie Durst's brother said he's confident justice will be served - eventually.

"We have not forgotten Kathie," McCormack said. "And we never will."

Summary: By ROBERT INGRASSIA DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Two decades after the fateful phone call, Jim McCormack can still hear Robert Durst speaking in a cool monotone: "Your sister Kathie's gone missing.""There was no excitement or worry in his voice,"McCormack recalls. "That struck me immediately as suspicious."It will be 20 years ago this week that Kathie Durst, wife of the wealthy Manhattan real estate heir, disappeared. Durst told McCormack he'd last seen the


IN the 1950's and 60's, Manhattan remained largely above the wave of aluminum siding that washed over older buildings in the suburbs. What kind of idiot would put up 12 stories of fake clapboard?

But there is one case, a 1920's co-op at 7 Gracie Square, at 84th Street near the East River. It, too, got the miracle cure in the 50's, a shiny cladding of bare aluminum covering much of its Art Deco design to solve water-penetration problems.

Now the co-op is removing the aluminum -- whose installation did not solve the problems -- and will replace every brick on the facade.

The structure at 7 Gracie Square was developed in 1928-1929 by Arthur Crisp, a prominent muralist, just as the East End Avenue area was taking off as an elite residence section. Crisp executed many commissions in hotels and commercial buildings, and he apparently designed the unusual Art Deco lobby at 7 Gracie. His maisonette apartment has a captivating window grille formed from the letters of his last name. Plans at the Department of Buildings were filed by George B. Post & Sons.

An early exterior scheme found by Mary Beth Betts, a curator at the New-York Historical Society, shows a standard, neo-Georgian apartment house. But the final design called for streamlined vertical brickwork, stylized brick panels and conservative but definitely Art Deco detailing. Perhaps Crisp also dictated the exterior; the conservative Post firm often served as an associate for independent architects.

Conceived, but never realized, as a co-op, 7 Gracie Square went into foreclosure in 1935 and finally became a co-op in 1945.

Anyone who came to New York after 1960 would have known 7 Gracie only with its strange, boxy aluminum cladding running in wide strips up the window bays, something like a cheap rocket ship in a Buck Rogers serial. The cladding looks like something added much later than the original design, but the idea that anyone would retrofit a large building in such a way seems so unlikely that it has always been an enigma.

Construction photographs show the aluminum going up between November 1956 and February 1957. Records at the Department of Buildings show the cladding proposed in 1956 "for weather protection and ornamental purposes," according to the application by Julius Eckmann, an architect and structural engineer.

But people who lived in the building during the period agree that ornament had nothing to do with it.

"It was because of continuing leaks," says Leticia Delacorte, "but I thought it was hideous." Others agree with both sides of that assertion, and echo Annie Breed: "Very ugly," she says. She moved to 25 East End Avenue at the time the work was done.

"EVERYBODY complained," says Helen Evarts, "but we were told that was what was needed." One story current in the building is that it was actually finished during the Depression, and the contractor used cheap brick.

William M. Evarts Jr., the husband of Helen, says that the first step had been to simply whitewash the brick, as a waterproofing measure, but that that didn't work, and that then the aluminum went on.

"My cousin on 86th Street jokingly accused us of trying to make our building look fancy," says Mr. Evarts, and other residents say that they got similar teasing.

According to Mr. Evarts, the aluminum did work for a while, stopping some constant leaks, but within several years water penetration resumed.

Now a giant white tarp completely envelopes the facade and Peter Elkin, who supervises the building for the managing agent, Gumley-Haft, says that the co-op is spending about $1 million in its determination to finally cure the problems.

The co-op's consulting engineer is Feld, Kaminetsky and Cohen and that firm's chief architect, Bronson Binger, says that he has not yet determined the underlying causes of the problem. It may be that the original wooden window frames were never properly maintained and allowed water penetration at an early date. It may be, moreover, that the brick is too absorbent -- it is soft and mellow, like that on an 18th-century Virginia house -- and soaks up moisture. It may be that the building was built without weepholes and flashing, trapping water behind the facade.

The facade of 7 Gracie Square faces north toward Hell Gate. "In the winter, rainwater gets in at 33 degrees, followed by a freezing wind, and what happens is obvious," says Mr. Binger.

The alternating freeze-thaw pattern opens up joints and allows more water to enter and the steel behind the facade rusts and expands.

Although only about half of the bricks are actually damaged, both esthetics and economy dictate the replacement of every brick on the facade.

But "we'll put it back exactly as it was in the original design," says Mr. Binger.

Photos: The apartment building at 7 Gracie Square on 84th Street in 1929. (Wurts/Museum of the City of New York); In the 50's, aluminum panels were added to stop leaks. Now the panels are being removed, left. (Christopher Gray)


This is pretty much the coolest thing we’ve seen all morning: Co-Founder of Mizbala.com Guy Dayan and graphic designer Shelly Peleg have gone ahead and manipulated a Twitter “Following” list so that it depicts a rather adorable bird.

Check out the video below for a description of how Dayan and Peleg went about creating this little piece of digital art — basically by asking Dayan’s followers to change their profile pics to a segment of the entire bird (it’s kind of like using a grid to draw a mural, or something of the like). It looks like the endeavor took a goodly amount of effort and time.

We’ve seen Twitter visualization tools in the past, but this is an interesting effort. If you could manipulate your “Following” list, what would you adorn it with?

Summary: Guy Dayan and Shelly Peleg have gone ahead and manipulated a Twitter “Following” list so that it depicts a bird.


The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has slapped the new documentary "Bully" with an R rating, effectively making it difficult for tweens and teens – the ones who would benefit most from seeing a movie about the devastating effects of bullying – to see the award-winning film.

The Weinstein Company, the documentary's distributors, appealed to lower the rating to PG-13, but was rejected by the MPAA.

Now some of those impacted by bullying are fighting back.

Katy Butler, a Michigan high school student who endured brutal bullying in middle school when she came out as a lesbian, is leading the charge with an online petition on Change.org to strike the “R” rating.

“I can’t believe the MPAA is blocking American teenagers from seeing a movie that could literally save thousands of lives. The MPAA needs to give ‘Bully’ a PG-13 so the students being bullied, and bullies themselves, can see this film and schools can show it as well,” Butler told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column, adding that bullying in schools these days remains at an all-time high among youth.

“It’s awful. Everyone either gets bullied or is a bully,” she said. “We need to change this, and showing this film is one way of doing that.”

Last year Butler launched another petition on Change.org encouraging the Michigan state legislature to stop the state’s “License to Bully” bill which was reported to have given religious and moral exemptions from bullying. Over 50,000 supporters signed the petition, and the legislature passed a new bill without the controversial exemptions. Butler’s initiative to get a PG-13 rating for “Bully” has already attracted more than 150,000 signatures, but the MPAA argues that an R does not prevent teens from seeing the movie, but instead enables parents to make informed decisions

“Bullying is a serious issue and is a subject that parents should discuss with their children. The MPAA agrees with the Weinstein Company that ‘Bully’ can serve as a vehicle for such important discussions. Unfortunately, there is a misconception about the R rating of this film limiting the audience to adults,” Joan Graves, head of the Classification and Ratings Administration on the issue. “This is not true. The voluntary ratings system enables parents to make an informed decision about what content they allow their children to see in movies.”

“Bully” got its R rating based on four-letter words, but critics of the R label have pointed to the 1971 documentary “Sunday Morning,” which they say contained more inappropriate language than the MPAA typically allows, but was given a pass due to its documentary nature. Harvey Weinstein, co-chair of The Weinstein Company, last week threatened to leave the MPAA over the decision, calling it an “injustice” to children who have been victimized by bullies.

A rep from the MPAA said the distributor could submit a different version of the motion picture – either censoring or ‘bleeping’ the profanity – to the Classification and Ratings Administration re-rating in accordance with the Rules. But the Weinstein Company is standing firm and does not intend to submit an amended version, the rep said.

Directed by Emmy-award winning filmmaker Lee Hirsch, “Bully” follows five kids and their families over the course of a school year. Stories include two families who have lost children to suicide after they were bullied, and a mother struggling to come to terms with the incarceration of her 14-year-old daughter for bringing a gun onto her school bus. Slated for theatrical release on March 30, director Hirsch hopes “Bully” will shed light on bullying in American schools and act as a catalyst for change.

“Suicide is the ultimate consequence of bullying, so yes, we did know early on that we wanted to tell the stories of parents whose children had committed suicide due to bullying,” Hirsch said in the film's production notes. “We wanted people to be aware of how high the stakes are and to dispel the notion that bullying is just ‘kids being kids.’”

Summary: 150,000 sign petition fighting R rating for 'Bully,' a documentary aimed at young teens


said Wednesday that it plans to move work from its plant in Joliet to another facility in Sumter, S.C., creating 80 jobs in South Carolina, though it will continue to invest in the Joliet facility.

The global construction equipment giant said that the move will consolidate production of hydraulic cylinders in the Sumter plant and allow Joliet to expand production of truck struts, which are already manufactured at the 2,000-employee plant.

A Caterpillar spokeswoman said, "There is no employment impact expected in Joliet as a result."

The $20 million expansion plan in South Carolina will add an additional 170,000 square feet to the non-union Sumter plant, boosting its total square footage to 275,000. The plant now produces small hydraulic cylinders and will add the large hydraulic cylinders produced in Joliet, which is represented by the International Association of Machinsts union.

Caterpillar will spend about $50 million to expand strut production within the existing foot print of the much larger

Caterpillar CEO Douglas Oberhelman made national headlines a year ago after someone leaked to the media a letter he wrote to Illinois Gov.

bemoaning the state's business climate and hinting at the possibility of moving company operations.

Oberhelman sought to downplay the threat to jobs in Illinois, where Caterpillar employs about 23,000 workers, saying that he was merely trying to push for a more positive business climate.

But the news struck an especially sore nerve in Illinois at a time of high unemployment and deepening fiscal crisis.

Although the company has decided to add new jobs and expand its hydraulic cylinder production in South Carolina, not Joliet, it said the move was prompted by global growth in demand that should benefit both states.

"This expansion is driven by growing demand for Cat products and will position our operations in both Sumter and Joliet to continue to grow and exceed customer needs as we drive toward Caterpillar's strategy and goals," Caterpillar Vice President Hans Haefeli said in a release.

Summary: Peoria-based  Caterpillar Inc.  said Wednesday that it plans to move work from its plant in Joliet to another facility in Sumter, S.C., creating 80 jobs in South Carolina, though it will continue to invest in the Joliet facility.


By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON | Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:47pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fewer U.S. teens got pregnant in 2004 but more women in their 20s had out-of-wedlock pregnancies, according to new federal statistics released on Monday.

The latest look at U.S. pregnancy trends also shows more women are keeping their babies even if they are not married, with the exception of black women.

While 45 percent of all pregnancies are among women who are not married, the typical "unwed mother" is no longer a teenager but in fact an older woman, said Stephanie Ventura of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.

"More of them are likely to have the baby rather than having an abortion compared to 1990," Ventura, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

The report found that nearly 38 percent of pregnancies in 2004 were to women under the age of 25, which is down from nearly 43 percent in 1990.

Just 12 percent of all pregnancies were to teenagers, compared to 15 percent in 1990.

Overall, there were almost 6.4 million pregnancies in 2004 among U.S. women of all ages, down 6 percent from 1990.

Out of these pregnancies, 4.11 million babies were born. There were 1.22 million abortions and 1.06 million stillbirths and miscarriages. That means 64 percent of all pregnancies resulted in a live birth.

In 2006, 4.3 million live babies were born but data is not yet complete on abortions.

Ventura said it takes years to gather this kind of data.

She said other studies have shed light on why pregnancy rates are going down among teens.

"There have been some changes in behavioral and contraceptive use among teenagers who are sexually active," Ventura said.

The report said pregnancy rates fell the most among sexually experienced teens, suggesting that better use of contraception may be responsible

"There is some evidence that contraceptive use (for example, at first intercourse and at most recent intercourse) was increasing among teenagers through 2002," they wrote.

Meanwhile, more women are delaying childbearing.

"Among older women, birth rates have been going up -- that's something we have been watching for 20 to 30 years," Ventura said.

According to the study, 77 percent of births to unmarried women in 2006 were to women 20 and older.

"I guess maybe it is changes in attitude and a willingness

to have children when you are not married and that kind of thing," Ventura said.

About 3.5 million pregnancies were among married women and 2.98 million were to unmarried women.

"There are large racial disparities in most of these measures," Ventura said.

About two-thirds of white and Hispanic women who got pregnant ended up having their babies while 48 percent of black women did. Thirty seven percent of pregnancies to black women were aborted.

There are two possible reasons for this, the report found.

"First, non-Hispanic black women were less likely to use a contraceptive method at first intercourse and currently than white women," the researchers wrote.

Second, blacks had double the rate of "contraceptive failure" compared to whites.

(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Bill Trott)

Summary: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fewer U.S. teens got pregnant in 2004 but more women in their 20s had out-of-wedlock pregnancies, according to new federal statistics released on Monday.The latest look at U.S.


Feb 24th 2012, 5:46 by H.J. | SÃO PAULO

IN THIS week's print edition, we explain why we have decided to drop Argentina's official inflation statistics and publish a private-sector estimate, State Streets' PriceStats Index, instead. The PriceStats method involves an automated daily trawl of huge numbers of internet prices, instead of the traditional government approach of identifying a representative basket of goods and then sending dozens of mystery shoppers out to buy those things monthly. It was dreamed up by an Argentine, Alberto Cavallo, who set up a website, Truth in Argentine Statistics , and did the research needed to validate the method during his studies at Harvard University. You can find out more about the theory at the Billion Prices Project, a collaboration between Mr Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon, another Harvard economist an economist at MIT Sloan School of Management. The two set up PriceStats to commercialise the idea, and now the company produces daily inflation information for 19 countries, which are available from State Street, an investment bank a financial services firm.

To sum up, supermarket prices turn out to provide an excellent match for government inflation figures, even though they can only substitute directly for around two-thirds of what appears in the official basket of goods—everywhere except Argentina. The following chart shows the difference between two inflation rates—PriceStats' and the official one—for a range of countries. In Argentina, the difference is more than 13 percentage points. The second-highest difference found among the 19 countries PriceStats covers is also shown: it is in Venezuela, and comes in at just over one percentage point. Generally, online prices turn out to move a bit earlier than official data (this is in fact PriceStats' selling point). But those differences do not propagate over time; offline prices catch up with online prices, rather than diverging.

The close fit between the two series everywhere else suggests that none of the innocent explanations for the big difference in Argentina holds up. You might wonder whether PriceStats is only measuring inflation as experienced by rich people, since poor ones do not shop online, or whether the wide gap is somehow a phenomenon of high-inequality countries, or ones with a history of high inflation. But Brazil and Venezuela tick all those boxes too, and PriceStats' figures match their governments' figures extremely well.

Argentina is not the only country where people complain that official inflation figures do not match their own experiences. A single basket of goods simply cannot fit all pockets and lifestyles: poorer people tend to experience higher inflation when food prices spike, because they spend a bigger share of their income on food; pensioners suffer disproportionately when fuel prices soar, but are usually protected from big hikes in travel costs. But again, the differences tend to fade over time. Sometimes, though, they lead to a more general suspicion that official statisticians are succumbing to political pressure to report a rate lower than reality. But what PriceStats have managed to show is that official statisticians generally do a stellar job—except in Argentina.

From the end of this month, PriceStats will start publishing its data for both Argentina and the United States on their website, with only a short lag. We'll certainly be keeping a weather eye out for any sign that Argentina's official statisticians are raising their game.


It doesn't require too much squinting of the eyes to see plenty of the 2011 49ers in the 2012 Seahawks.

After a string of non-winning seasons (four), Seattle will arrive at Candlestick Park on Thursday as a resurgent team whose 4-2 record has been made possible by a suffocating run defense (second in the NFL), a physical workhorse running back (Marshawn Lynch), a first-round pick who became an immediate pass-rushing force (Bruce Irvin) and an underestimated quarterback with a knack for comebacks (Russell Wilson).

There's more. On Sunday, in the moments after a dramatic comeback win, an emotional member of the Seahawks had an exchange with the vanquished opponent that lacked decorum and made national headlines.

No, it wasn't Seattle head coach Pete Carroll channeling the handshake-heard-round-the-world by Jim Harbaugh. Rather, it was Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, one of Harbaugh's former players at Stanford, taunting Patriots quarterback Tom Brady after a 24-23 victory.

On Tuesday, Carroll, a feisty players' coach who had a successful stint in the Pac-10 like you know who, endorsed the we-bow-to-no-man spirit of Sherman's postgame chatter.

"I like that our team has a chip on their shoulder," Carroll said. "We all do. And there ain't nothing wrong with that."

Thanks to the aforementioned traits Seattle shares with the 49ers, it also shares first place in the NFC West (along with the Cardinals) entering Thursday's prime-time matchup.

The Seahawks have reached the top spot thanks, in part, to the surprising play of Wilson, a 5-foot-11 rookie who slipped to the third round because of concerns about his height.

Like 49ers quarterback Alex Smith, who had six fourth-quarter comebacks in 2011, Wilson has flashed a flair for the dramatic. After six games, he has become the first rookie quarterback in NFL history to throw two game-winning touchdowns in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter or in overtime.

On Sunday, he rifled a 46-yard touchdown to Sidney Rice with 78 seconds left to cap a 13-point, fourth-quarter comeback against New England.

Wilson, the No. 75 overall pick, has more touchdowns and wins than top-10 picks Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III and Ryan Tannehill and has a better passer rating (85.6) than all but Griffin.

"I think he'll be their quarterback for a long time," San Francisco defensive coordinator Vic Fangio said, "and credit to them for seeing through his height and picking him."

As the 49ers did with semi-surprising first-round pick Aldon Smith last year, the Seahawks appeared to have netted another draft-day steal in outside linebacker Bruce Irvin.

Irvin was viewed as a first-round reach by many, but Seattle's front office, which includes former 49ers general manager Scot McLoughan, grabbed him with the No. 15 pick. With 4 1/2 sacks, Irvin is tied for sixth in the NFC with a group of players that includes Aldon Smith.

Yet another common thread: A certain NFC West team also had quite a bit of interest in Irvin.

"We did," Fangio said. "We looked at him thoroughly."

Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: ebranch@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Eric_Branch

Summary: After a string of non-winning seasons (four), Seattle will arrive at Candlestick Park on Thursday as a resurgent team whose 4-2 record has been made possible by a suffocating run defense (second in the NFL), a physical workhorse running back (Marshawn Lynch), a first-round pick who became an immediate pass-rushing force (Bruce Irvin) and an underestimated quarterback with a knack for comebacks (Russell Wilson).  Rather, it was Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, one of Harbaugh's former players at Stanford, taunting Patriots quarterback Tom Brady after a 24-23 victory.  The Seahawks have reached the top spot thanks, in part, to the surprising play of Wilson, a 5-foot-11 rookie who slipped to the third round because of concerns about his height.  After six games, he has become the first rookie quarterback in NFL history to throw two game-winning touchdowns in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter or in overtime.  Wilson, the No. 75 overall pick, has more touchdowns and wins than top-10 picks Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III and Ryan Tannehill and has a better passer rating (85.6) than all but Griffin.


A German amateur stunt performer died instantly from head injuries after being thrown from a spinning playground carousel in a “Jackass”-style stunt gone awry in the Bavarian town of Oberviehbach.

The 20-year-old man, known only as Tobias, was part of the group known as the “Bavarian Dumbasses,” a gang of six young German men who gained notoriety for filming their shenanigans and posting them to the web via YouTube and Facebook.

Tobias was taped to the playground carousel and roped to a BMW by his three cohorts on Sunday, according to the Munchner Merkur newspaper. With the rope hitched to the car, the three other young men, who the paper said were 18-20 years old, then put the car in full throttle in attempt to spin Tobias as fast as possible.

As the car took off, Tobias was propelled by centrifugal force at an incredibly high speed – so fast that the tape tore off and he was sent hurtling six yards from the merry-go-round and head first into the ground.

A woman who lived near the playground said that she then heard blood-curdling screams.

“I heard this terrible scream and shouts for help,” the woman, identified by Munchner Merkur as Rita H., said. “When I arrived my husband was already there and he was trying to revive the victim but it was useless. He was covered in blood and think his neck was broken.”

A father on the scene quickly came to pull his two young children away from the horrific scene, reported Munchner Merkur, adding that when police arrived they found the driver of the vehicle crying in his car.

Police are now looking at manslaughter charges against the friends, according to Munchner Merkur. Tobias’ father told the paper that these stunts shouldn’t be allowed on the web.

“I wish these video on the Internet would be banned — these are dangerous actions,” he said. “This type of thing just never happens again. Never again. “

Summary: Getty Images A German amateur stunt performer died instantly from head injuries after being thrown from a spinning playground carousel in a “Jackass”-style stunt gone awry in the Bavarian town of Oberviehbach. The 20-year-old man, known only as Tobias, was part of the group known as the “Bavarian Dumbasses,” a gang of six young German men who gained notoriety for filming their shenanigans and posting them to the web via YouTube and Facebook. Tobias was taped to the playground carousel and roped to a BMW by his three cohorts on Sunday, according to the Munchner Merkur newspaper. With the rope…


NEW YORK — Walmart Stores Inc.’s chief executive, Mike Duke, found out in 2005 that the retailer’s Mexico unit was handing out bribes to local officials, according to e-mails obtained by lawmakers.

The e-mails contradict earlier claims by Walmart senior executives that they were not aware of bribes being made by the company.

Democratic congressmen Elijah E. Cummings and Henry A. Waxman, who are investigating bribery charges at Walmart’s Mexico division, on Thursday released e-mails that indicate that Duke and other senior Walmart officials were informed multiple times starting in 2005 about bribes being made in the country. US law forbids American companies from bribing foreign officials.

The lawmakers shared the e-mails, which they said they got from a confidential source, with Walmart on Wednesday, and sent a letter to Duke asking for a meeting to discuss them.

‘‘It would be a serious matter if the CEO of one of our nation’s largest companies failed to address allegations of a bribery scheme,’’ according to the letter written by Waxman and Cummings to Duke.

Allegations first surfaced in April that Walmart failed to notify law enforcement that company officials authorized millions of dollars in bribes in Mexico to speed up getting building permits and gain other favors. Walmart has been working with government officials in the United States and Mexico on that investigation.

The company also has been conducting an internal investigation into the matter. And last November, the retailer said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was looking into potential US bribery law violations in Brazil, China, and India.

Brooke Buchanan, a Walmart spokeswoman, issued a statement on Thursday saying that the company has been providing information to the Department of Justice and the SEC, including the documents that were released by lawmakers on Thursday.

‘‘We are committed to having a strong and effective global anticorruption program everywhere we operate and taking appropriate action for any instance of noncompliance,’’ Buchanan said.

The bribery allegations were first reported by The New York Times. Last month, the paper published another story focusing on how Walmart’s Mexico division offered payoffs to get things that the law prohibited.

The story focused on how Walmart paid $52,000 to secure approval to build its store in Teotihuacan on the site of ancient ruins. Although local zoning would have prohibited Walmart from building its store, the Times reported that the company allegedly bribed local officials to have that map redrawn.

In the Times article, Walmart spokesman Dave Tovar denied that US executives knew anything about the alleged corruption involving construction of the Teotihuacan store.

Buchanan, the Walmart spokeswoman, said Tovar’s comment in the Times article was focused on events in 2004, and that the letter that Waxman and Cummings wrote to Duke ‘‘leaves the wrong impression that our public statements are contradicted by the information they released today.’’

The e-mails released Thursday include one from November 2005 from Maritza Munich, then general counsel of Walmart International to Duke and other senior Walmart executives. The e-mail informed them of charges related to bribes paid to obtain permits for a store in Mexico.

The lawmakers also made public another e-mail that Walmart general counsel Thomas Mars sent on Oct. 15, 2005 to Duke and Tom Hyde, the executive vice president of Walmart. That e-mail referenced to bribes paid to obtain permits for the Teotihuacan site.

Summary: Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s chief executive, Mike Duke, found out in 2005 that the retailer’s Mexico unit was handing out bribes to local officials, according to e-mails obtained by lawmakers. The e-mails contradict earlier claims by Wal-Mart senior executives that they weren’t aware of bribes being made by the company.


Everyone makes money mistakes. But missteps or miscalculations can cost you a lot over the long term or inadvertently hurt your family when you’re gone.

Consumer Reports offers 7 ways to correct your missteps or at least mitigate the damage they can cause.

Not updating your beneficiaries. In Consumer Reports’ recent survey about Americans’ money habits, 86 percent of respondents said they hadn’t created their will and other estate-planning documents or updated them within the past five years. Even if nothing has changed in your life, every year you should check your beneficiary designations in your will, insurance policies, investment accounts, and retirement plans such as 401(k)s.

Withholding information from family. The survey showed that in only 40 percent of households did both spouses know where to find details of their financial accounts, required passwords, and keys to safe-deposit boxes. An easy solution is to designate a safe file cabinet or safe-deposit box to hold all important documents and account-access information.

Communication between generations also can reduce hassles and misunderstandings. Yet just 37 percent of respondents with adult children said they’ve told their kids where to find important documents, accounts, and passwords. Adult children stand a better chance of gaining their parents’ trust and helping them make plans if they get their own financial houses in order first.

Botching your 401(k). In interviews with successful savers and investors, a common refrain was to start saving early in life, invest consistently, and put the maximum allowed into a retirement plan. But in the survey, two out of five respondents with 401(k) and similar retirement plans said they were investing 6 percent or less of their income, the typical ceiling for getting a full employer match.

A large percentage of survey respondents mentioned costly investment errors, such as buying or selling at the wrong time. Investing at regular intervals and holding over the long term is the most surefire way to avoid those mistakes and build wealth.

Underinsuring your home and your life. Only 36 percent of the homeowners surveyed said they’d purchased replacement-cost coverage, a more expensive homeowners insurance that provides replacement of your home. And only 20 percent have umbrella coverage against liability claims.

Two other coverages that should not be overlooked are life and disability insurance. Term life insurance is more economical than other types. Use an online broker such as Accuquote, SelectQuote, FindMyInsurance, or LifeInsure.com to compare premium quotes.

Not preparing for emergencies. Most Americans don’t save even half as much as a year’s worth of living expenses. Saving a bit at a time — say, $20 a week — can help build your cash buffer. That money should go into an accessible bank or credit-union savings account.

Ignoring your credit report. Consumers can obtain a credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — free through the industry’s official website, at annualcreditreport.com. To most efficiently monitor your credit, Consumer Reports recommends staggering your report requests to one every four months.

Mismanaging debt. Credit cards generate among the most expensive type of consumer debt; the average interest rate is about 14.3 percent, according to LowCards.com, a credit-card comparison website. In spite of those lofty costs, almost half of the survey respondents with credit cards said they carry a balance on their cards.

To begin to free yourself from that balance, consider consolidating your debt with a home-equity line of credit; rates on HELOCs average between 4 and 5 percent, according to Bankrate.com. Focus on retiring your debt by paying more than the minimum due each month.


Audiences not platforms Easy, effective and efficient audience trading

Most media is planned and bought by platform, and there is often no connection made between how audiences consume and interact with different platforms. Because media is planned, bought and measured in silos there is often little transparency around total campaign reach, making it difficult to articulate the efficiencies of both audience delivery and ad effectiveness. By harnessing the scale of the Guardian's market leading total audience across print and digital platforms – an audience that can be reached throughout the day across web, print, tablet and mobile – and combining it with industry leading audience insight, the Guardian is able to offer a number of cross platform audience packages to advertisers.

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Three package sizes per audience have been designed to deliver different campaign objectives

To learn more about audience trading please contact:robert.smallwood@theguardian.com020 3353 3660

Summary: •	Being part of a transformative change  •	Harnessing insight and planning to deliver advertisers what they want •	Quick to execute •	Better deal for advertisers •	Opportunity to efficiently integrate communications •	Audience trading transparency is in line with our Open philosophy •	Future proofing our digital 1st strategy  •	Monetizing a market leading audience


The Turner prize in Derry is a profound but poignant triumph. To reach the show you have to cross the river Foyle that divides the Protestant east from the Catholic west via the bridge so recently built in the name of peace and then strike out across the square where the British army once paraded, now transformed into common ground.

And from there you must walk through the former army compound. For the work of the four shortlisted artists is not being staged in a gallery but in the very barracks where the soldiers were stationed throughout the Troubles. Only a few years ago this compound was still invisible behind the immense barriers that towered above this beautiful but beleaguered city. Now the building has been redesigned especially for this show.

This is the first time the people of Derry have been able to walk freely through this place, so symbolic of the devastating past, in particular the horrors of Bloody Sunday. Art may have its uses after all.

Derry, what is more, has given something valuable to the Turner prize in return. Nothing in its fraught chronicles – not the bed, the dung, the porn or the poverty of talent – can possibly seem worth the bullfrog huffing and puffing that routinely accompanies the award when seen in the context of the city's own history. All the obsolete controversies can surely now subside.

David Shrigley, the most popular artist on the shortlist, courts the oldest of those gripes – but is it art? – with characteristic humour. The show opens with his 7ft life model posing in all his proud nakedness for an art class: a foolish animatronic boy with a Pinocchio nose, comedy ears and disproportionately short legs, a bucket strategically positioned beneath his spindly penis.

Every visitor is invited to sit down and draw this badly drawn boy. Many already have. The walls are covered with an infinite variety of images – expert, impressionistic, ribald, flamboyant, instinctive. He begins to speak in bubbles, develops a character, acquires scenery – a beach and palm trees – and even a narrative. You can't get him wrong, so to speak, because the boy is all wrong in the first place.

Shrigley has parodied his own famously awkward drawings in the service of liberation. His figure blinks and pees (pre-empting all the obvious jokes) to disarm the shy visitor and release the laughter. This is the most community-spirited of life classes. It admits all-comers, and makes a Turner prize exhibitor of each and every one; and in their joint works the boy comes alive.

Laure Prouvost, the French-born artist who won the Max Mara prize earlier this year, keeps the fun going in a very subtle way with a film homage to her late grandfather, a prolific artist and close friend of Kurt Schwitters, who filled his filthy old cabin to the rafters with early modernist art that nobody wanted. "It is very useful as a tray," remarks Prouvost in her exquisitely melodic voiceover, fingering a sub-fauve canvas with sadness, "but not so much as a painting."

It quickly becomes apparent that this grandfather is fictional, so absurd are the uses to which his art is put – sculptures that double as doorstops, coat-hangers or props for legless chairs, paintings used to patch holes in the wall. And yet there is a truth running through Prouvost's narrative, and it is about artists fashioning things out of junk, pouring their passion into clay sculptures that will one day be used as teapots, spending every day producing more and more work.

The objects themselves make a junk shop of the darkened gallery, where one sits upon the actual chairs that appear in the film. What is a person to do with all this unwanted stuff after all, this surplus art, this art that is otherwise gathering dust? There is a play on recycling that is reprised in the circularity of the film itself, which gradually builds into a shaggy-dog story.

But Prouvost's lilting voice, and the sight of her hands gently trying to order the accumulated chaos of the cabin, turn the humour to sorrow. Her film becomes a lament for the lost artists of the past and their wonderfully free lives, in fact dragged down by the terrible compulsion to keep on making art in an entirely indifferent world.

The choreography of this year's show is superb – I've never seen it better presented – with the black-on-black paintings of the Ghanaian-born Lynette Yiadom-Boakye in the third gallery as a strange and arresting pause. The market is by no means indifferent to Yiadom-Boakye's paintings, which are much in demand, and it's not hard to see why. She has a look, and a hook, and her work is undeniably complex.

A black man shoots at something unseen in the darkness. Another turns to us with an ambiguous grin and a pose borrowed from Titian, conflated with Caravaggio, his teeth gleaming white in the dark. Two more men are pulling on socks in the gloaming, echoing the athletes in a painting by Degas but in an obliterating darkness that makes their actions look both private and furtive.

Who are they? What is going on? These pictures are not quite portraits, and never quite narratives.

Perhaps there is something unnerving in that glint of a smile, in those whites of the eyes burning brightly in the dark; or perhaps these people are trapped in the paintings and long to be free of this peculiar half-life. Loosely but heavily worked, the pictures are both dense and evasive.

In Derry they are presented in a sepulchral gloom; who knows whether they would seem less slippery in the clear light of day. But Yiadom-Boakye achieves her purpose quite efficiently every time, engaging our attention only to baffle it.

At 36, Tino Sehgal is the youngest but best known of this year's four artists. He surely deserves to carry off the prize for his stupendous and deeply moving multi-person performance at Tate Modern last year where strangers talked to strangers as never before in an art gallery. But here is the besetting anomaly of the Turner prize: there is the work for which an artist is shortlisted, and then there is the work presented in the annual show and they are rarely one and the same. Sehgal's gambit in Derry seems altogether more limited.

An eloquent and highly intelligent young man approaches offering you a couple of quid to engage in a conversation about market economies. Whether you refuse or accept, the conversation immediately flows and we were very soon into the politics of Derry versus Belfast, his youth beneath the watchtowers of Creggan, the atrocious local unemployment which means that this man, with multiple degrees in politics and international relations hoping for a job in the foreign office, has been lucky to get work as a barman.

But perhaps it works after all, for I felt the privilege of entering someone else's life so completely through a brief encounter in a gallery. A life plucked from the air, the opinions and experiences of another person so readily given: this is a precious gift. And no doubt the people of Derry, so keen-witted, so open and loquacious, will enter deeply into the spirit of this marvellous mutual exchange. The people will make – will become – the art work.

Summary: The Turner prize looks better than ever this year in a city whose history puts art into perspective, writes Laura Cumming


Artist Pyotr Pavlensky has made eyes water all over the world with his protest against Russia's descent into authoritarianism – nailing his testicles to the ground in Red Square on Sunday to denounce Vladimir Putin's "police state". Yet connoisseurs of performance art are probably already saying: "Meh, seen it all before." For Pavlensky's protest is the latest in a long line of performance art pieces that have endangered life and limb. Here are our top 10 ...

No one will ever know if Bas Jan Ader expected to die in his performance In Search of the Miraculous. In 1975, the Dutchman set out from Cape Cod in a small sailing boat to cross the Atlantic. This was part of an artwork that also included a series of pictures of bland Los Angeles scenes. It was as if he sailed out to find something deeper than freeways and fast food. His broken boat was found 150 miles off the coast of Ireland. It was empty.

Today she hangs out with Lady Gaga but in 1974 the Belgrade-born, New York-based artist Marina Abramovic nearly joined Bas Jan Ader as a martyr to the imagination. In Rhythm 5, she placed on the ground a large, five-pointed wooden star, an echo of the communist red star, soaked it in petrol and lit it. As it blazed, she threw in bits of toenail, fingernail and hair, which she cut off in front of a watching audience. Then she jumped through the flames into the centre. She did not know the fire had sucked up all the oxygen and, since the audience couldn't see her clearly for smoke, it took several moments for them to realise she was unconscious. Abramovic was rescued just in time and rushed to hospital.

In 1971, young American artist Chris Burden stood still while a friend aimed a rifle and shot him in the arm. The performance was caught on video. It was a violent time, with war in Vietnam and riots in US cities. Burden wore a T-shirt and jeans and, after being shot, clutched his arm, looking stunned even though he planned it all. He recovered and went on to have himself nailed to a Volkswagen.

In his 1972 performance Seedbed, American artist Vito Acconci constructed a false floor in a New York art gallery and hid beneath it. Speakers relayed his voice into the gallery. As visitors walked over the wooden floor, they heard him murmuring sexual fantasies about them while masturbating, thereby evoking the paranoia of the Nixon era.

In attacking his own genitals, Pyotr Pavlensky may have been inspired by inaccurate stories about Austrian artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler. When he died in 1969, it was widely believed he had killed himself by cutting off his own penis. The works of this Vienna actionist do include images of castration, but they were mocked up. So Schwarzkogler's reputation as the ultimate performance artist is somewhat exaggerated. He actually died after falling from a window.

In The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, a project that started in 1990, the French artist Orlan has altered herself with a series of operations. Through plastic surgery, she aims to have a completely new appearance based on bits of western paintings that define the ideal of beauty, including Botticelli's Venus and the Mona Lisa. She calls the project "a struggle against the innate".

In retrospect, Orlan's operations look less like feminist body art than the beginning of a cultural obsession with cyborgs and post-human transformations. Enter the Catalan-based Neil Harbisson, who, having been born unable to see colours, has been implanted with a device to "hear" them. In 2004, this "eyeborg" extension was allowed to feature on his passport photo, a milestone in cyborg rights. He is the founder of the Cyborg Foundation.

In Cut Piece, an early piece of feminist art first staged in 1964, Yoko Ono knelt on the ground and laid down a pair of scissors. The audience were invited to come forward and cut off any piece of her clothing. It started politely but became more and more threatening as her clothes were reduced to rags and she kneeled in her underwear.

Hermann Nitsch was part of the Vienna actionist movement that set out to shock Austria with gory images of violence, blood and apparent self-torture. His grotesque Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk is, however, the Orgiastic Mysteries Theatre, in which crowds of young people bathe in blood and conduct animal sacrifice at rituals in his castle. The last such rite happened in 1998.

In 2012, Japanese artist Mao Sugiyama had his genitals surgically removed, to raise awareness of asexual rights. After keeping them in the fridge for a while, he cooked them and served his friends a meal of steaming hot bollocks. But was it art? Hard to say without actually tasting them.

Summary: Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky's nailing of his scrotum to Red Square isn't as unique as you might think: artists have shot, burned, disfigured, and eaten themselves


04/22/2014 at 07:50 AM EDT

But even as time continues its cruel march,

remains undiminished, as this video

"Every teenage girl and boy needs to watch this," Rachel, 18, exclaims at the beginning of the clip. Unlike some of the other entries in the "React" series, the kids in this video aren't confused or annoyed by the subject – they seem to universally love the film. Most of them even know the lines.

And some seem to view the film the same way a slightly older demographic would: as a portrait of

It's good to see kids these days still have respect for the classics.

Summary: The younger generation remains surprisingly familiar with the soon-to-be decade-old film


NEW YORK — Bank of America’s chief executive officer, Brian Moynihan, won permission last month for the company’s first dividend increase since the financial crisis. Now he’s under pressure to salvage the payout after the company mistakenly inflated capital levels by about $4 billion.

One leading option is scrapping a $4 billion share repurchase, said a person briefed on the deliberations. That could allow the North Carolina-based bank to resubmit its request to boost the quarterly dividend to 5 cents, said the person, asking not to be identified because the process is confidential.

Moynihan, 54, has a month to draw up plans that would win Federal Reserve approval after the regulator asked the bank to freeze buybacks and dividend increases. The boost approved in March was heralded as a symbolic victory for Moynihan and the bank, which has had a token penny-a-share payout since 2009.

‘‘This is a step backward for them, it raises credibility issues for management,’’ said Jonathan Finger, whose family- owned investment firm, Finger Interests Ltd., owns 900,000 shares of the bank and stands to lose about $144,000 in annual income if the increase is denied. ‘‘Shareholders have suffered a significant period with no dividends, so some respite from that would be welcomed.’’

Bank of America, the nation’s second-largest bank, views the dividend as linked to the company’s ability to generate regular earnings, which was unaffected by the capital accounting mistake, said the person. The firm isn’t yet certain what payout it will request, and may refine the proposal until the due date, the person said.

The predicament arose after the bank found an error in how it valued structured notes inherited in its 2009 acquisition of Merrill Lynch. The Fed responded by asking it to resubmit parts of its stress-test capital plan, which is designed to prove that a bank is strong enough to survive an economic shock. Bank of America disclosed the situation Monday and said it was hiring an outside firm to review its processes before the resubmission.

The bank’s revised estimate of Tier 1 capital under coming rules fell to $130.1 billion from $134.2 billion, it said in a regulatory filing Monday.

The resubmission probably will face closer Fed scrutiny and a higher risk of rejection, said Erik Gordon, a Ross School of Business professor at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

The bank’s blunder doesn’t necessarily mean the Fed will reject a revised capital plan on qualitative grounds, as the regulator did with Citigroup Inc.’s proposal, said another person with knowledge of the process. Examiners can’t check all the data provided by banks, the person said.

The Fed regards the incident as bolstering the case for the stress tests because the discovery was handled swiftly, said Barbara Hagenbaugh, a spokeswoman for the central bank. Before the stress tests, finding and fixing the error probably would have been a drawn-out process, she said.

The bank said the revised proposal probably will include lower payouts than the earlier plan, which was already modified once to win Fed approval during the stress tests. At stake are $1.68 billion in annual dividend payments for a company that earned more than $10 billion last year. Before the financial crisis, stockholders were getting quarterly payments of 64 cents a share.

Bank of America shares swung to a loss for this year, tumbling 6.3 percent Monday to $14.95,

Summary: NEW YORK — Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan won permission last month for the firm’s first dividend increase since the financial crisis. Now he’s under pressure to salvage the payout after the company mistakenly inflated capital levels by about $4 billion.


updated 07/24/2014 at 10:00 AM EDT

OK, we'll admit it –

is only in Pharrell Williams's "Come Get It Bae" music video for less than a minute. But still, you'll want to watch it. She does a goofy dance!

The rest of the video sees Pharrell looking on approvingly as a variety of different women dance for his amusement. It's kind of like John Legend's

– only with more hats.

And if you're one of those people mystified by the word "bae" (no judgment!)

Summary: For a few seconds, at least