IT WAS GOING TO BE THE FANTASY WEDDING OF THE DECADE—the showbiz merger of Hollywood’s most bankable star, Julia Roberts, 23, and her mercurial actor-beau of more than a year, Kiefer Sutherland, 24. Since this was a union made not in heaven but in Hollywood, some 150 of the glitziest and ritziest were primed to be standing moist-eyed and overdressed at (where else?) 20th Century Fox’s Soundstage 14, which had been done up to mimic a gardenlike paradise. But almost as soon as workers were bedecking the trellises and rolling out the sod…CUT!…Stagehands started dismantling the faux setting…Orders for the bundles of fresh-cut roses that would have adorned each table were canceled…Marcondas Meats, a gourmet meat market, was told to bag the order for the beef filets…and a local liquor store stopped shipment on the champagne.

The background murmur you hear is massive swooning. The four bridesmaids—makeup artist Lucienne Zammit, Julia’s agents, Elaine Goldsmith and Risa Shapiro, and actress Deborah Porter—had already picked up their $425 Manolo Blahnik shoes, dyed seafoam green to match the dresses, from Fred Hayman’s boutique on Rodeo Drive. Julia’s custom-made gown, described in one press report as an $8,000 two-piece number with a long jacket that would turn into a mini-dress after the long skirt and train were pulled off, hung unclaimed at the Tyler Trafficante West Hollywood salon.

The wedding cake, a four-tier extravaganza that was to be trimmed in violets and more seafoam-green ribbons of icing, went unbaked. But the staff at Dominick’s restaurant, where Kiefer’s bachelor party had been hastily canceled, feasted on the cake that had been ordered for dessert. It was an exact replica of a 15-pound roast turkey. A self-deprecating reference to some of Kiefer’s recent movies? No—a consolation prize for the traditional Thanksgiving dinner that he had been unable to persuade Julia to serve at their wedding banquet. “Kiefer has a thing for turkeys,” says a source close to the cake.

If every hyperventilated whisper in Hollywood is true, the wedding that went into turnaround is short on known motivation but high in concepts: big names, broken hearts, global intrigue, passion and enough overnight psychoanalysis to keep a convention of family therapists in Jaguars for years.

How are the two principals doing nearly two weeks after Roberts backed out of the wedding? “Well, what would you think if someone who goes on every talk show and says how much she loves you did something like this? He’s shocked,” huffs a friend of Kiefer’s. And Julia, who was due to climb into Tinkerbell’s tutu on the set of Steven Spielberg’s Hook this week? “She’s in a positive frame of mind,” says a source close to the actress.

Indeed. On Friday, June 14, the very day that Roberts was to plight her troth to Sutherland, the would-be groom was moving out of Julia’s Hollywood Hills house and into his own apartment while she was munching on a turkey burger at the trendy Nowhere Cafe with actor-hunk Jason (After Dark, My Sweet) Patric, 24. Patric, the man suddenly in the middle of the Roberts-Sutherland collapse, is the son of actor-playwright Jason Miller and the grandson of comic Jackie Gleason (Gleason’s daughter Linda is his mother) and a onetime date of Julia’s in her pre-Kiefer days.

Hours after the lunch, Julia and Jason caught a commercial flight to London, then jetted to Dublin where they chastely booked separate rooms at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, where suites go for $650 a night. “The engagement ring was off her finger,” reports a hotel staffer. “She looked very drawn. She had lost a lot of weight. Her hair was a pale orange, like a dye job gone wrong.” If the couple had hoped for peace and solitude, the plan went quickly amok. Hounded by reporters, Patric and Roberts, who had checked in Saturday afternoon, slipped out at dawn the next morning and seemed to melt into the countryside. Rumors buzzed that they had gone off to the Galway cottage of U2 bassist Adam Clayton.

Had Julia suddenly turned into a pretty fickle woman who was again ricocheting into romance? (She was engaged once previously.) Or was she merely seeking solace in the arms of a sympathetic pal? Is Jason, now the boyfriend, or just a friend who is a boy? The two have known each other for at least a year, but here’s a clue: Jason, who had been a pal of Kiefer’s during the making of 1987’s The Lost Boys, had been invited to the wedding but then, according to a friend, had been “uninvited” by Kiefer as the date grew near. Says the friend: “Julia and Kiefer had a big fight over that.” Then there was the one-hour Aer Lingus flight to Dublin on which the duo were “practically making love,” according to a gushing report in the London Daily Mail. But, as Pretty Woman director Garry Marshall recently told a reporter, “Julia needs a lot of hugging and holding.” Assuming that is true in the best of times, it is presumably doubly so in the worst.

The breakup may have caught Hollywood by surprise, but there were early warning signs that the romance was in trouble. Perhaps the most damaging episode occurred in February. Kiefer, because of a spat or because he was doing research for a role in the now-dead movie In from the Cold, briefly moved out of Julia’s home and checked into the scruffy, $105-a-week St. Francis Hotel across the street from Hollywood Billiards Parlor, a favored retreat. Within days, he was seen several times in the company of Amanda Rice, 24, a go-go dancer who performs under the name of Raven at the Crazy Girls Club in Hollywood and who has been known to hang out at the pool hall.

After first meeting Rice over billiards, he visited her on three or four occasions at work. “He always came in just before closing, and I saw them leave together,” says Marwan Khalaf, assistant manager at Crazy Girls. According to a fellow dancer at the club, the couple once took a daytime trip to Disneyland with Rice’s young son and Sutherland’s 3-year-old daughter, Sarah. Rice’s coworker claims she double-dated with Kiefer and Amanda and that the actor was a heavy drinker—a problem that had also reportedly cropped up in his separation from first wife Camelia Kath, 37, from whom he was divorced last year.

During his stay at the St. Francis, Sutherland, who did not have a telephone in his room, received calls from both Julia and his friend Michelle Pfeiffer. According to manager Fran Padilla, one of the women left the message “There’s always a rainbow after the storm.” (When Kiefer checked out of the hotel, the actor obliged Padilla’s request for an autograph and scrawled, “Fran, thanx for a wonderful stay. Best wishes, Kiefer Sutherland.”)

He returned to Julia’s digs in mid-February, but three months later came a crack in the relationship: Rice tattled to a tabloid. She quoted Kiefer as saying that Julia was insecure about her looks, overly possessive and, since Pretty Woman, had turned into an “ice princess.”

Kiefer’s publicist Annett Wolf quickly shifted into spin control and said emphatically that her client and Rice had never had an affair. “He has never denied that he met her, because he likes to play pool,” Wolf says. “He’s denying that he had a relationship with her.” Adds a friend of Kiefer’s: “He is extremely upset about this thing with Rice. There was nothing sexual.” (Crazy Girl assistant manager Khalaf says that Rice is now on leave for breast augmentation.)

Still, two days after the story appeared, Julia checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for the flu and stayed five days. Kiefer visited frequently. “He charmed everyone on the floor,” says hospital spokesman Ron Wise. “He seemed like a real nice guy.”

Amid the gossipy fallout from Rice’s account, Julia and Kiefer celebrated their engagement, and even a wedding date was reported. All seemed to be rose petals just three weeks ago when Julia’s agent, Goldsmith, tossed what was described as a very elaborate shower for Julia. Gifts included lots of lacy underthings for the glowing bride-to-be. Among the 25 guests was Julia’s mother, Betty, and at least one girlfriend from her hometown of Smyrna, Ga.

Two days after Kiefer had flown to his 300-acre spread in Whitefish, Mont., to spruce things up for their planned honeymoon, Julia (temporarily sprung from her duties in Hook) headed for the chic Canyon Ranch Spa in Tucson with some friends. But who should turn up at the spa the same weekend? None other than Jason Patric. There, on Sunday night, June 9, after a supper of chicken piccata and peanut-butter yogurt, Julia, says an eyewitness, discreetly left the dining room with Patric, who appeared to be comforting her.

No sooner had Julia returned to L.A. the next day than the story that the wedding was off broke with a joint announcement by their publicists. At the time, it was being called a postponement, and on the surface things appeared cordial. But those in the know around town were telling it differently: “She dumped him,” says a reliable insider. Kiefer, according to a source close to the prospective bridegroom, wasn’t the first to know he’d been de-groomed; he heard about it from a mutual friend who phoned with the news.

On the day before she would have been married, Julia, wearing a Notre Dame baseball cap suspiciously identical to the one worn around town by Patric, put on her game face and happily hugged Spielberg for promotional pictures on the Hook set. (Her summer movie, Dying Young, opened June 21. See review page 13.) Kiefer wound up spending Father’s Day with his daughter, Sarah, at the home of his ex-wife.

For Roberts, of course, the breakup was not without precedent. She has a history of becoming involved with her leading men. She lived with Satisfaction costar Liam Neeson, 38, when she was 19, and broke off an engagement to her Steel Magnolias screen hubby, Dylan McDermott, 29, after meeting Kiefer on the set of Flatliners in 1990. “Julia is very much Miss Tinkerbell romantic,” says a pal of Kiefer’s. “One minute she’s in love with this guy, the next in love with another.” In fairness to Julia, she is a mere 23 and has been under the relentless pressure that comes with megastardom. Who can blame her for seeking fun and companionship away from the cameras? “The success you achieve on a professional level can have nothing and everything to do with your personal life,” Julia told London’s Sunday Express, ambiguously, in a story that was meant to run during her honeymoon.

Soon after Sutherland’s divorce from Kath, Julia was sporting a diamond, supposedly with no intentions attached. But by the spring of last year, she and Kiefer were living together. In October, Kiefer presented her with that hot Hollywood symbol of love—a tattoo (in this case, a red heart with the Chinese symbol meaning strength of heart on her left shoulder).

So why did Julia bow out? Had she been disenchanted by l’affaire Amanda? “It had nothing to do with her,” says a source close to Kiefer. “Julia knew everything about that. Whatever problems, hesitations or issues they had, they were all worked through.”

One issue that observers inevitably wondered about was old-fashioned career competition, often a factor in Hollywood romances. When Sutherland and Roberts began dating, she was still being described as “Eric Roberts’s sister.” Things were going at a happy hum last summer when Kiefer had four movies on the big screen at the same time (see box). But only one of them—Flatliners, which co-starred Roberts—caused any kind of stir.

Last February, after Julia received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for Pretty Woman, speculation heightened that bucks-and-glory discrepancies could be a problem. Hollywood Reporter columnist Robert Osborne suggested in print that Kiefer’s inferior earning power and possible jealousy over Julia’s career might have rattled her. Then, just a week before the planned wedding, the Los Angeles Times mentioned that Julia will earn $7 million for her work in the movie Renegades next spring, while Kiefer, who is in the same movie, has been promised a whopping $2.5 million plus, more than twice his regular fee. But, says a friend of Kiefer’s, “the [breakup] had nothing to do with that. He supported her in everything. Think about who his father is [Kiefer is the son of veteran actor Donald Sutherland]. Things go up and down in Hollywood, and he knows that.” In fact, the elder Sutherland, who was in L.A. for the wedding, comforted his son. “Donald has been wonderful,” says someone who knows the family. “He cares deeply for Kiefer, and he’s also very fond of Julia.”

For the young couple, the chances of success may have been even slimmer than most. Both were 4 years old when their respective parents divorced, and both have continually sought out not just love but the elusive stabilizing concept called marriage, which they have never actually seen work close up. “The problem is not money, or other women, but Julia,” say one Hollywood insider. “Every time she gets close, she just shies away.”

Only the two of them know—or will eventually understand—if the averted wedding was a personal tragedy—or a triumph of good sense. But nobody doubts that Julia and Kiefer will survive individually, and it’s unlikely either will lack for company of the opposite sex. “Kiefer,” said Flatliners director Joel Schumacher before he took his phone off the hook, “is in a situation where you either grow up very fast or you die. If there’s such a thing as an old soul, he has one.” And Bob McGowan, who managed Julia when she was a gum-cracking free spirit seven years ago, says, “She’s major gutsy. If something’s stopping her, she’ll get rid of it. Julia will handle it, believe me. If she’s the same person I knew, she’ll handle it.”

LOUISE LAGUEDORIS BACON, NANCY MATSUMOTO and LYNDON STAMBLER in Los Angeles, LAURA SANDERSON HEALY in Dublin, WENDY BLACK in Tucson, SAM MEAD in New York City

Summary: IT WAS GOING TO BE THE FANTASY WEDDING OF THE DECADE—the showbiz merger of Hollywood’s most bankable star, Julia Roberts, 23, and her mercurial actor-beau of more than a year, Kiefer Sutherla…


The daughters of a 70-year-old cleaner viciously bashed in a Melbourne toilet block say she is now too afraid to walk out her front door.

Two men throttled, bashed and kicked the woman after she entered toilets they were graffitiing about 4am on Monday last week, police say.

Maria, who doesn't want to share her surname, was punched in the face, kicked and then had her jewellery ripped from her.

The choking damaged her vocal chords and the voiceless woman also carries the bruises and cuts from the assault at the Brunswick shopping centre.

"To think there could be any human being out there who could do that to anyone, much less an elderly woman who is defensive ... it's disgusting," one of her daughters told reporters on Wednesday.

Maria's daughters say that before the attack she never wanted to depend on her relatives and was confident to go about business at night.

Now, their mother is now a shadow of her former self and constantly on edge, even in her own home.

In the days after the attack, Maria spotted a shadow in her bedroom and had a massive panic attack.

"Only later, she realised it was her own shadow," another daughter said.

"For a person of what she was like before, it's quite upsetting to see what she's been reduced to."

The daughters say their father, who was cleaning nearby shops at the time, blames himself for not being there to protect his wife.

The Avondale Heights woman had several items of sentimental value stolen, including her wedding ring and a 50-year anniversary ring.

Police say the opportunistic crime is disturbing.

"It was a cowardly act, there's no need to do this," Senior Constable Jordan Collinson told reporters.

Though unable to uncover any CCTV with a clear image of the offenders, police have released an image of a graffiti tag they left behind.

Summary: A 70-year-old woman has been strangled, punched and kicked while being robbed by two men in a toilet block in Melbourne.


Police guards the area where three people were killed in a shooting incident at a restaurant in Imatra, eastern Finland, after midnight on December 4, 2016. (AFP)

A lone gunman shot dead a local official and two journalists, all of them women, in a night-time attack Saturday in a small town in Finland, a country with one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world.

Police said Sunday they believed the 23-year-old suspect, who was swiftly arrested after the shooting, acted alone and initial indications were that there was no political or extremist motive.

The attack took place as the women were leaving a restaurant in the southeastern lakeside town of Imatra near the Russian border, and police said they may have been targeted at random.

Investigators identified the victims as the head of the municipal council and two local reporters, the SST news agency said.

A police statement said the women had died at the scene after being shot at close range, sustaining gunshot wounds to the head or the torso.

The suspect, a local man, did not put up any resistance to his arrest and the weapon was found in the boot of his car.

The gun belonged to an unidentified third person who had a hunting licence, police said, indicating that the inquiry would seek to establish how it was in the suspect's possession.

Finland enjoys relatively low crime rates compared to other European nations but, with many Finns keen hunters, it has one of the biggest gun ownership rates in the world.

The suspect, who already has a record for violence, was interrogated by police on Sunday but his motive remains unclear, with investigators saying he could have picked his victims at random.

There was no initial indication that the triple murder was "linked to political issues or extremism", police said, adding that they were not looking for any other suspects.

Imatra mayor Pertti Lintunen confirmed to SST that Tiina Wilen-Jappinen, the local council's Social-Democrat leader who was in her early 50s, was among the victims.

The names of the two journalists, one of whom was of a similar age while the second who was in her mid-30s, were not released.

In a posting on its website, Imatra town council said it had set up a counselling facility for residents.

Finland has seen several deadly shootings over the past decade, all by young men.

Figures in the Small Arms Survey, carried out by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, found Finland to be fourth in the civilian gun-ownership ranks, behind the United States, Yemen and Switzerland.

In November 2007, eight people were killed in a high school north of the capital Helsinki by an 18-year-old who later killed himself.

Less than a year later, a 22-year-old shot and killed 10 students in a classroom at a cooking school in the western city of Kauhajoki.

And in May 2012, two people were killed and seven more wounded after a shooting near Helsinki by another 18-year-old. The attacker is currently serving life in prison.

Imatra is a small lakeside town of 27,500 people in southeastern Finland, just a few kilometres (miles) from the Russian border.

Summary: A gunman shot dead three women, including a local council official, as they were leaving a restaurant in a small Finnish town on Saturday night, police said.


Two NSW men have been hailed by police after they detained an alleged murderer following a car accident in Lake Macquarie last night.

Police were called to the scene of a crash on Macquarie Road in Fassifern around 10pm yesterday and found 51-year-old Robert Cadman with facial injuries.

Two locals, Daniel Bray and Josh Robinson, called police after Mr Cadman allegedly attempted to leave the scene following a collision with another car.

During his arrest, Mr Cadman allegedly made comments which led police to search a home in William Street in Toronto.

The body of Mr Cadman's partner, mother-of-three Yvonne Parkes, was found inside. The 67-year-old had allegedly been stabbed multiple times.

Police believe the incident may have been domestic violence-related.

"When you put two and two together, it is pretty scary," Mr Bray told 9NEWS today.

"Old mate hit the other car, so I just thought I am going to stop this bloke and get the licence plate details, like what you would do and then he sped off and hit a tree."

Mr Robinson said he jumped on Mr Cadman after he allegedly attempted to flee the scene.

"He started running through the brushes and yeah fell over and I just sort of jumped on top of him and was like ‘you are not moving mate’ and called the cops straight away," he said.

Mr Cadman was taken to John Hunter Hospital before being arrested at Belmont Police Station, where he was charged with murder.

He was refused bail and appeared in Newcastle Local Court this afternoon.

Chief Inspector Gerard Lawson said the man and woman were known to each other.

"We're not aware of any violent history between the two parties at this stage," he said.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: A man has been charged with murder after a woman was found fatally stabbed at a home in Toronto, Lake Macquarie last night.


The Dow Jones Industrial Average crept higher Monday, even as a pullback in shares of financial companies pressured major U.S. stock indexes.

The blue-chip index rose for a sixth consecutive session to hit another record, with gains in Johnson & Johnson and Exxon Mobil helping to offset declines in Goldman Sachs Group and American Express.

It was a rare postelection retreat for financial firms, which have benefited in part from expectations of looser regulation under the Donald Trump administration. The S&P 500’s financial sector has closed lower in four sessions since Nov. 8, adding 17% over that period compared with the S&P 500’s 5.5% gain.

Financials have also risen alongside expectations for higher interest rates, which should increase banks’ lending profitability.

Many investors believe the Federal Reserve will raise benchmark interest rates later this week and remain on a gradual tightening path.

“I think it’s possible we’re going into a new phase of the bull market, marked by higher interest rates and maybe a strong dollar,” said Rick Anderson, chief investment officer of Hull Investments.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 39.58 points, or 0.2%, to 19796.43. The S&P 500 lost 2.57 points, or 0.1%, to 2256.96, led by a 0.9% fall in the financials sector.

The Nasdaq Composite lost 31.96 points, or 0.6%, to 5412.54, largely on declines in pharmaceutical shares. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index fell 0.7%.

Energy shares rallied with oil prices after a group of oil producers agreed to scale back their output along with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The S&P 500’s energy sector rose 0.7%. Exxon Mobil gained $1.98, or 2.2%, to $90.98, FMC Technologies added 72 cents, or 2%, to 36.08 and Helmerich & Payne gained 1.43, or 1.7%, to 83.18.

The Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 0.5% following five consecutive sessions of gains.

Italy’s FTSE MIB index advanced 0.4% after Italian President Sergio Mattarella asked departing Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni to form a new government. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resigned last week after a defeat in a Dec. 4 referendum on constitutional overhauls.

In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index shed 2.5% in its worst day since June. Analysts said shares were dragged down by a crackdown on stock purchases by insurance companies and comments from Mr. Trump suggesting there might be a change in the U.S.’s acceptance of the “one China” principle.

Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average rose 0.8%, gaining for a fifth session in a row. Shares were lifted by a weaker yen, which makes the country’s exports more competitive.

Write to Riva Gold at riva.gold@wsj.com and Akane Otani at akane.otani@wsj.com

Summary: Declines in shares of financial companies pressured major U.S. stock indexes, even as a surge in oil prices sent energy shares soaring.


These nomadic reindeer herders live in the snowy wilds of Mongolia.

Purev is the matriarch of the Gabaa family.

Uchraa is already well trained in riding the family reindeer.

Matriarch Purev poses with the family reindeer, Batbayar and Bayardalai.

Purev shows off the family's teepee.

To visit the Tsaatan people, the photographer traveled far into Mongolia's Altai Mountains.

Purev stokes the fire in her teepee oven, heated with reindeer dung.

Purev strokes her snow-white reindeer next to the lake.

The Tsaatan people rely on their reindeer for milk, cheese and transportation.

Buyantogtokh is a widow who lives with Purev.

Purev and Buyantogtokh enjoy the warmth of a fire in the snow.

Bayardalai goes for a ride.

Purev, Bayardalai and Batbayar take a reindeer trek.

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Summary: Navigate the snowy wilds of Mongolia with this nomadic reindeer herding family.


All Type A viruses are found in birds. They probably originated in wild birds and usually do them little or no harm. Only a few evolved into strains that could easily infect people. A(H5N1) is not adapted to people, and researchers suspect that human victims so far may have been infected because they were exposed to enormous amounts of the virus from birds.

The letters H and N stand for two proteins on the outside of all Type A viruses. The H, hemagglutinin, helps the virus get into cells, which it must do to reproduce. The N, neuraminidase, helps it get back out to infect more cells. There are 16 kinds of H and 9 kinds of N; they mix and match, and so can produce 144 possible Type A strains. The worrisome thing about H5 is that H5 viruses are avian flus and have not been known to cause human epidemics, so many people may have little or no resistance to them.

Not long ago, A(H5N1) may well have been what scientists call a perfect parasite, meaning one that does little harm to its host, Dr. Ruben Donis, a flu expert at the disease centers. said. Some wild ducks seem to carry it without getting sick at all, so scientists think that ducks were probably its original host and that the two evolved together into a peaceful coexistence: the virus did not hurt the duck, and the duck's immune system ignored the virus. Thriving in the bird's intestines, the virus multiplied rapidly and was spread far and wide by droppings. Other aquatic birds may have adapted in a similar way.

Not so for chickens or other domestic fowl: A(H5N1) attacks their lungs and other organs, and it quickly kills them. But the chicken's immune system tries to fight back, and that battle may alter the virus. The bird may fight off some viruses, ones with certain mutations. Other viruses survive, multiply and become more common. And since they have beaten out the chicken's immune system, they may also be nastier.

It is just a theory, but some scientists suspect that its forays into huge poultry flocks may have brought out more virulent forms of A(H5N1), which may explain why the virus now seems to be killing off more wild birds than in the past. At the same time, the virus has begun to invade more species, including mammals  infected cats, pigs and dogs have been reported. Researchers consider that a bad sign.

"The more opportunities this virus has to mutate during replication in a mammalian host, the more likely it is to mutate," said Dr. Nancy Cox, director of the influenza branch at the disease centers.

In the laboratory, Dr. Maines and Dr. Tumpey have found that the virus seems to have become more virulent over time. With some strains, an unbelievably small amount of virus will kill a mouse, Dr. Tumpey said. Last September, in the Journal of Virology, they reported that viruses from people infected in 2003 and 2004 were more deadly in mice and ferrets than were samples taken from 1997 victims. But there is not enough information about the human cases to tell whether the disease in people has gotten more severe.

Recent studies by several research teams have focused on hemagglutinin. The virus can attach only to cells that have the right receptors  compatible molecules on their surfaces. Many scientists think hemagglutinin, and mutations that change its structure, may control where the virus can go and what it can do. For instance, hemagglutinin may determine which species the virus can infect and which tissues it can invade.

The more organs and tissues a virus can attack, the more likely it is to cause severe disease. Scientists are especially interested in a part of the hemagglutinin that sets A(H5N1) apart from many other bird flu viruses by enabling it, in some species at least, to latch onto many types of cells and thus to cause systemic disease.

Studies published recently in Science and Nature by two research groups suggested that one reason A(H5N1) is not transmissible among people is that the virus can latch on only to cells deep in the respiratory tract, too far down to be coughed up or sneezed out to infect other people. They discovered that only the deeper cells had the right type of receptors.

But if the virus were to mutate so that it could connect with cells higher in the respiratory tract, then it might become transmissible. Several mutations would be needed, and virologists disagree about whether they are likely to occur.

Another major unanswered question concerns how severe bird flu really is in people. Based on cases in hospitals, it looks like a horrific disease with a 50 percent death rate.

But what if some people get infected and recover without seeing a doctor, or never get sick at all, and so are not counted? Then, the death rate would be lower.

A study published in January in The Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that there may be mild, unreported bird flu cases. Over a three-month period in 2004, researchers studied 45,478 residents in a rural district in Vietnam that had A(H5N1) outbreaks to find out how many had contact with sick birds and how many had flulike illnesses.

They found that statistically, those exposed to sick birds were most likely to have gotten sick, and of 8,149 who had a flulike illness, 650 to 750 probably caught it from birds. The study was not conclusive because the researchers did not test their subjects to find out for sure whether they had A(H5N1).

But if human cases are more common than previously thought, it could be both good news and bad news: good if not everyone becomes deathly ill, but not good if more people are infected and might act as the dreaded "mixing vessels" that could let A(H5N1) trade genes with an ordinary human flu virus and produce a new, highly contagious strain that could turn into a pandemic.

"The viruses are changing, and in ways of concern to me and other scientists," Dr. Cox said.

She said scientists had a unique window of opportunity now, in which they could see the disease in both birds and people and try to stop it or at least slow it down.

"Could we quench an incipient pandemic?" Dr. Cox asked. "I don't know, but we could try."

Summary: Researchers are studying the transmission and virulence of bird flu in ferrets and mice, trying to answer questions about the A(H5N1) virus.


Posted May 5th 2006 10:07AM by TMZ Staff

On Tuesday Nick Lachey showed up for soon-to-be pro football star Matt Leinart's draft party at Pure Nightclub in Las Vegas.Lachey stopped to talk to 'EXTRA' about his upcoming record, his happy life, and weighs in on the Matt Leinart and Paris Hilton rumors.Lachey definitely protrayed a different insight to his life than he did to 'Rolling Stone' Magazine.Check local listings for when 'EXTRA' airs.Related links

Filed under: Break-Ups, Music, Life Style, Nick Lachey, Paris Hilton

Tags: Las Vegas, LasVegas, Matt Leinart, MattLeinart, Nick Lachey, NickLachey, Paris Hilton, ParisHilton, Rolling Stone, RollingStone

Summary: On Tuesday Nick Lachey showed up for soon-to-be pro football star Matt Leinart\'s draft party at Pure Nightclub in Las Vegas.  Lachey stopped to talk to ...


BY FELISSA BENJAMIN & MICHELLE MEGNA

Thursday, February 2th 2006, 9:49AM

There's never been a royal quite like Princess Diana. In August 1997, the people's princess sat for what would be her last series of portraits with Mario Testino for Vanity Fair. Instead of scrapping the photos, Testino has put together a book of the unseen portraits called "Diana, Princess of Wales." The result is intimate and elegant, just like the woman herself. $39.99, at Barnes & Noble or www.bn.com. Felissa Benjamin

Every week, it seems, ABC's "The Bachelor: Paris" kicks up some conversation among the women who watch - from the topic of rotting eggs to whether girls who are drunk all the time will ever get the guy. This week the message boards are buzzing about Jehan, the sweet blond who revealed that she has been - gasp!- married before (News flash: She's 29; it happens) and thus got dumped by toothy Travis Stork. "I think he did Jehan a favor; she's way too good for him - he's immature and narrow-minded," wrote one unhappy poster. "This is why women lie to men - because they know it will get them on the fast track to hell, or home in this case," posted another. In any case, some secrets are better not aired on national television. "The Bachelor," ABC, Mondays at 9 p.m. F.B.

Canoodling is Âmaking a comeback in the Âcubicle. And in the conference room, the supply closet, even on the boss' desk, according to the 2006 Office Romance Survey by career publishing company Vault Inc. Almost 28% of employees surveyed 'fessed up to having trysts in the workplace, up from 23% in 2004. Hookup hotspots include the bathroom, computer network server room, elevator and, naturally, offices (ever heard of a security camera, people?). Fifty-eight percent say they've had an office romance, and 43% say one is currently taking place at their company. A lot of the "career development" is happening on the down-low: Half of the employees surveyed have known a married co-worker to engage in an affair with someone else at the Âoffice. On the bright side, 22% found long-term love. Michelle Megna

It's no fun to wander around the city if you're pregnant. Which is why moms-to-be will want to waddle over to Destination ÂMaternity, a one-stop-shopping emporium. The just-opened Madison Ave. flagship combines A Pea in the Pod, Mimi ÂMaternity, Motherhood Maternity, an Edamame Maternity Spa, a learning studio, a toddlers' play area and even a husbands' relaxation room (no more excuses, boys). Find everything a mom-in-the-making may need, from designer jeans to prenatal Âvitamins to Oh Mama bars. 575 Madison Ave. (212) 873-2283. F.B.

If loving footie pajamas is wrong, we don't want to be right. And if a cashmere pair exists, we have to have it. That's right: 100% wool cashmere full-body p.j.'s in teen and adult sizes (the jammies come in fleece, cotton flannel and jersey, in 20 styles). Dressing like a grownup is just no fun. $39.99-$119.99 at www.bigfeetpjs.com. F.B.

Summary: IN THE KNOW BY FELISSA BENJAMIN & MICHELLE MEGNA PERPETUAL PRINCESS There's never been a royal quite like Princess Diana. In August 1997, the people's princess sat for what would be her last series of portraits with Mario Testino for Vanity Fair. Instead of scrapping the photos, Testino has put together a book of the unseen portraits called "Diana, Princess of Wales."The result is intimate and elegant, just like the woman herself. $39.99, at


Thursday, April 10th 1997, 2:02AM

The publisher of a leading music magazine turned the work place into a raucous, locker room-style boys' club where sexual harassment mixed with rock 'n' roll, a jury found yesterday.

Bob Guccione Jr. was found guilty in Manhattan Federal Court of allowing a hostile environment to flourish in Spin magazine's offices in the early 1990s and must pay his accuser $100,000.

Jurors, who deliberated for six days, found the publisher innocent of allegations he discriminated against certain women even as he granted promotions to girlfriends and women he found attractive.

Despite the split outcome, plaintiff Staci Bonner, 29, claimed victory.

"What happened there to me and other women is now finally a matter of public record," Bonner said.

Bonner, a former editorial assistant at Spin, said she felt "vindicated."

She filed the suit against Guccione after quitting the magazine in 1994.

During more than 13 days of testimony, witnesses said the boss permitted crude sexual jokes, dated interns and invited at least one female employe to edit a story naked in bed.

One former intern told jurors Guccione invited her to have a threesome with the 20-year-old daughter of Spin's majority owner, Stephen Swid.

"He said that . . . we were to have a menage a trois," said former employe Holly Holliday, who said the conversation took place in the office when she was 2 1 or 22.

Jill Swid who still works at Spin also said Guccione drew hearts on her arm and told her it would be "funny" if he fondled her under the dinner table in the presence of his business partner.

Bonner attorney Hillary Richard accused the publisher of unequal pay practices in which only men, or women Guccione dated, received substantial raises.

Guccione's lawyer, Bettina Plevan, argued in court that Bonner did not deserve a promotion and had "unrealistic expectations for her career."

Plevan was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Guccione was the only defendant named in the suit because he "set the standards or failed to set them" at Spin, Richard said. The magazine and its publishing company, Camouflage Associates, were also named as defendants.

"There was open and notorious abuse of women when she worked at Spin," Richard said yesterday. "The defendants knew about it and failed to do anything about it. And we're certainly glad that the jury saw that."

The nine-person jury awarded Bonner $90,000 in damages and $10,000 in back pay. The defense may also be required to pay her legal fees.

Bonner, now a freelance writer in Atlanta, said she was relieved. "After all these years, Bob Guccione Jr. has finally been held accountable for this atrocious behavior," she said.


By Juan Lagorio - Analysis

NEW YORK | Thu Dec 24, 2009 12:33pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New legislation may have a much more dire effect on credit card lenders' earnings than analysts had expected, and 2010 could be a brutal year for the companies.

In perhaps the most serious sign of what is ahead for credit card lenders, Discover Financial Services reported that the yield on its loans for the three months ended Nov 30, a measure of the profitability of its assets, fell by more than half a percentage point from the prior quarter.

The credit card company cited new legislation as a major reason for the decline. Discover's shares fell 7 percent on the news, their biggest one-day decline since July.

Discover is the fourth-largest credit card network in the United States and the sixth-largest credit card issuer, meaning it is relatively small, but like the canary in a coal mine, it could be an indicator of things to come.

The legislation in question, known as the CARD act, was signed into law in May. Some of its provisions -- for example, requiring credit card issuers to give customers at least three weeks, instead of 15 days, to pay their bills -- went into effect in August.

Another round of changes in February will likely be much harsher for credit card companies. Lenders will not be able to raise interest rates on existing credit card balances unless the account is at least 60 days past due, and they will not be able to charge fees for customers spending more than their limit, unless cardholders agree to the fees.

The precise impact of these moves on credit card lenders is hard to estimate, but Discover's most recent results imply that investors may be underestimating the revenue impact, analysts said.

"The card act is really a game changer for the industry," Jason Arnold, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

Most credit card lenders' shares have risen more than the Standard & Poor's 500 index since the beginning of 2009.

Shares of the companies are expensive relative to the Standard & Poor's 500 index. Capital One Financial Corp's shares trade at 20 times expected 2010 earnings, while Discover's trade at 21.2 times. The S&P 500 average is 15 times.

"These companies are not what I call high growers," said Keith Wirtz, president and chief investment officer of Fifth Third Asset Management.

"I think the market investors are going to rotate in new directions and probably away from these stocks," Wirtz added.

Some companies have been explicit about the expected impact of the new rules.

JPMorgan Chase & Co estimated its annual card services business' net income would be reduced between $500 million and $750 million.

KBW analysts mentioned Capital One among the most adversely impacted credit card lenders, and American Express among the least impacted companies, given its reliance on affluent and corporate customers.

Capital One said the revenue margin of its credit card business will decline modestly in the fourth quarter.

Credit card lenders enjoyed hefty profits earlier in the decade, as cheap money ignited a lending boom.

But the party ended abruptly as the housing slump and the financial crisis sent default rates to record highs.

"The credit card act makes it a little more cloudy in terms of how quickly the rebound is going to be in the profits," said Scott Valentin, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.

"The expectation of a slow decline in unemployment does not help," Valentin added. Higher unemployment typically corresponds with higher credit card defaults.

Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) analysts said if bankruptcy filings increase another 35 percent in 2010 after rising a similar amount in 2009, credit card lenders could face more pressure.

"We do not assume significant improvements in credit quality in 2010 and even in 2011," KBW analysts wrote in a note to clients.

(Reporting by Juan Lagorio; editing by Gunna Dickson)

Summary: NEW YORK (Reuters) - New legislation may have a much more dire effect on credit card lenders' earnings than analysts had expected, and 2010 could be a brutal year for the companies.In perhaps the most


Jonathan Yeo's portrait of Kevin Spacey as Richard III. Click to see the painting at a larger size. Photograph: Jonathan Yeo/National Portrait Gallery/PA

First his bones were dug up from a Leicester car park; now Richard III is to make a fresh appearance at the National Portrait Gallery in the guise of Kevin Spacey. Or perhaps we should say that Kevin Spacey is to make his first appearance at the gallery and he just happens to be Richard III.

Either way, the NPG released an image of a portrait of Spacey on Wednesday as it announced details of a major display of works by one of Britain's leading portrait artists, Jonathan Yeo. The show will include Yeo's portraits of a diverse group of well-known figures including Michael Parkinson, Grayson Perry, Sienna Miller and Rupert Murdoch. Yeo painted Spacey during the 2011 Old Vic production of Richard III directed by Sam Mendes.

The artist said of the painting: "We decided to put him in character as Shakespeare's notorious villain, partly as a nod to the tradition of theatrical portraits of the past, and partly as a celebration of what may go down as his most memorable stage role."

The National Portrait Gallery's contemporary curator Sarah Howgate said: "We are excited to be showing Jonathan Yeo's portraits as part of our ongoing series of projects with contemporary artists from Alex Katz to Humphrey Ocean. Yeo is remarkable in the range of sitters he portrays from life and this display will include some surprising contemporary figures who have never sat for a portrait artist before."

Jonathan Yeo Portraits will run from 11 September 2013 to 5 January 2014.

Summary: Major display of works from well-known artist includes numerous numerous public figures


ATHENS — A top European Central Bank official deflected the growing speculation that Greece will require a new financial aid deal, saying on Wednesday it will not be clear for months whether Athens would even qualify for more assistance.

Joerg Asmussen, one of the ECB’s six executive board members, said the easing of Greece’s recession in the April-June quarter provided the first signs of stabilization and that there had been progress in finances.

“I have huge respect for what has happened and I would suggest [Greece continues] with the reforms that have started . . . [and shows] perseverance, even if it is difficult to do so,” he said after a meeting in Athens with Greece’s finance minister, Yannis Stournaras.

But he said his talks had not touched on potential future financial aid or debt relief. A day earlier, Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, had roused talk of another rescue for Greece, saying the country will need one — his clearest statement yet on the issue.

The International Monetary Fund, a key rescue loan provider, predicted last month that the bailout program would fall short of Greece’s needs by $5.84 billion next year and by $8.63 billion in 2015. Describing the expected shortfall as a “test of European support,” the IMF said that finance ministers from the 17 euro countries have begun discussions on plugging financing gaps.

Schaeuble did not specify what form the new aid should take, but ruled out a write-down on Greece’s public debt, which is now mainly bailout loans owed to other European governments.

Asmussen said Greece would have to achieve a primary surplus — budget income, excluding interest payments on debt — and fully comply with its austerity commitments.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said it would only be clear in the middle of next year what sums might be necessary for a new rescue package.

Opinions in the rest of Europe are divided on the matter. France’s finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, said he saw no need for a new aid deal.

“This program is on track, that Greece is making enormous efforts to right itself . . . I myself don’t see the urgent need for a new program for Greece,” Moscovici told France Inter radio on Tuesday.

International debt inspectors from the ECB, IMF, and European Commission, known as the troika, will return to Athens in September to review progress. Their findings will help clarify whether Greece will be able to support itself once the bailout program ends.

“We shall also assess a possible extension of the Greek program and its funding,” Olli Rehn, the top monetary official at the European Commission, said to the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat.

According to the paper, Rehn wrote in an e-mail that one option would be to extend the maturity of Greece’s loans.

Greece first began receiving rescue loans from other countries in May 2010.

To qualify for the loans, Greece pushed through repeated rounds of austerity measures, slashing state spending, cutting state sector salaries and pensions, and increasing taxes across the board.

Summary: ATHENS — A top European Central Bank official on Wednesday deflected the growing speculation that Greece will require a new financial aid deal, saying it won’t be clear for months whether Athens would even qualify for more assistance. Joerg Asmussen, one of the ECB’s six executive board members, said the easing of Greece’s recession in the April-June quarter provided ‘‘the first signs of stabilization’’ and that there had been progress in public finances. ‘‘I have huge respect for what has happened and I would suggest (Greece continues) with the reforms that have started ... (and shows) perseverance, even if it is difficult to do so,’’ he said after a meeting in Athens with Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras.


Ellen Gallagher's Wiglette from DeLuxe 2004: 'A very late-flowering strain of surrealism.' Photograph: courtesy of Gagosian

The American artist Ellen Gallagher is admired to the point of reverence on the other side of the Atlantic. Her distinctive combination of politics and prettiness has been catnip for collectors and critics alike these last 20 years. For the latter, there is always so much to talk about – her range of references from Moby Dick and Sol LeWitt to Black Power and Detroit techno, her trademark restyling of 50s ads and 60s sci-fi movies, her evident if excessively elusive intellectualism – all appealingly couched, to collectors, in the delicate aesthetic of her paintings and prints.

It is worth knowing about this high regard when visiting Gallagher's retrospective at Tate Modern. It helps to explain the sheer scale of the event: almost 100 works, many of them multi-part, accompanied by a catalogue of eulogies by some of America's finest art writers, and all kicked off by a gigantic blown-up reprise of Man Ray's famous photograph of Matisse sketching an odalisque in harem pants on a couch with Gallagher's own face pasted on to the model and Sigmund Freud in the role of Matisse.

You may guess that this photomontage has something to do with Orientalism, Otherness and race – Gallagher's father was African-American – and something to do with sex, femininity, white male artists, couch trips, models and the male gaze (piquantly reversed, for Freud is absorbed in his drawing while Gallagher keeps a sharp eye on him). You may engage with its slipperiness, or not, all you like. But the effect depends at least in part on the artist's own fame. It is vital the viewer should recognise not just Freud but Ellen Gallagher.

Prior knowledge of all sorts turns out to be a requisite for this show. An entire gallery, for instance, is hung with numerous editions of what appear to be pretty much the same work: sheets of lined exercise paper glued to canvases, sometimes lacquered, sometimes painted fetching colours and sometimes featuring racial caricatures of big lips and bug-eyes. These mouths and eyes are always tiny and sometimes so faint as to be spectral, which carries its own meaning. Gallagher describes them as "the disembodied ephemera of minstrelsy".

But as for the lined paper – reams of it, regular, incessant – this has less to do with schoolbooks (or so the wall-texts indicate) than the refined serialism of American minimalists such as Agnes Martin and Sol LeWitt. These works from the 1990s hit a nerve in New York where some commentators praised them as an indictment of art-world racism and others found them too easy, too congenial to be more than critique-lite – if that is indeed what they were.

For these works are so wan and underpowered that it is (for me, at least) impossible to tell. And that is the way it goes for so much of this show. The lips and eyes proliferate, reappearing over and again in other combinations – strung together, piled high, strewn around in heaps, cut and pasted and over-painted with oil or gesso, repeated so that they look like patterns in African fabric. They are signs, they are signifiers; but after a few rooms they come to look like nothing so much as elements of Gallagher's own visual vocabulary.

The artist is probably best known in Britain for customising advertisements for skin-lighteners, hair tonics and feminine hygiene from 50s African-American magazines such as Ebony and Sepia. These are all about personal transformation, and Gallagher duly transforms them. The eyes are scissored out – so they go, as you guessed, from black to white – scarlet lips are added and black hair turns blond with wigs of yellow Plasticine applied to the surface in weird permutations.

Some people find this look subversive, mordant or carnivalesque (they should try looking at the devastating montages of John Heartfield). The best that can be said is that it certainly derives from an old tradition. The 60 panels in this series that already belong to Tate Modern, collectively known as DeLuxe, are a very late-flowering strain of surrealism.Why would anyone want to do the same thing over and over again? In Gallagher's case, critical mass seems to be both an aesthetic and political objective. Everything teems, breeds and multiplies, spilling over from one series to the next. Everything repeats itself, presumably like history; everything connects, in life as in her art.

The minstrel lips reappear in the DeLuxe collages, the bug-eyes reappear in blond wigs swimming like tiny sperm in dark oceans. There is a consistent use of gold leaf, Indian ink, cut-outs, relief and gesso, fine ruled lines and elegant draughtsmanship pinning it all together. But to what end?

Gallagher's latest works are underwater fantasies of a black Atlantis populated with the unborn descendants of slaves thrown overboard for insurrection. They are gorgeously glutted with biomorphs and gilded tendrils and faces so tiny as to be nearly invisible, surrounded with enormous areas of blue wash and pale (colour-free?) paper. Their sincerity as lamentations for the lost can hardly be in doubt. But the lost remain lost, alas, at Tate Modern because there are just so many of these works that the mind glazes over. It starts to look like a prolonged exercise in the making of exquisite fine art.

A certain fragility, shading into deliberate feebleness in the case of Elizabeth Peyton and Karen Kilminik, has been quite a trait of US painting in recent years. Ellen Gallagher has it too, if put to a quite different and much more serious end. But her intricate and ever-evolving aesthetic draws too much attention to itself. She has said that her work makes people "uncomfortable". If only it had that power.

Summary: American artist Ellen Gallagher's work aims to unsettle but proves strangely underpowered in this huge retrospective, says Laura Cumming


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At the World Health Organization’s 67th World Health Assembly, now ongoing in Geneva, the case was made that junk food is even more damaging to public health today than tobacco, and that warning labels should be posted accordingly on the implicated foods. Let’s deconstruct this and see where we land.

First, the argument that junk food (whatever, exactly, that is) does more damage globally than tobacco is far more defensible than it may at first seem. As far back as 1993, we knew that the combination of eating badly and lack of physical activity was just behind tobacco on the list of leading causes of premature death and chronic disease in the United States. When the analysis that produced that original list was repeated a decade later, that gap had narrowed due both to less smoking, and ongoing neglect of both feet and forks, with worsening epidemics of obesity and diabetes to show for it.

Related studies have been published with regularity ever since, showing again and again and again, in populations around the globe, that eating badly and inactivity are exacting an enormous toll. Both have now been implicated among the leading causes of premature death and chronic disease worldwide. So that case can be closed.

What, then, of warning labels?

Well, the libertarians among us (and that portion of libertarian in all of us) are likely inclined to balk. In fact, the balking began before ever the talking on the subject had concluded. The basic gist here is: “Don’t tell me what to eat! If the government can tell me what food I shouldn’t eat, what’s to stop them from telling me what food I must eat? The next thing you know, breakfast is prescribed by the Feds and administered by military police.”

I understand the objections. But I don’t think they hold up. Because this isn’t about being told what to eat, it’s about consumer access to information about what they’re buying, which is something any libertarian can get behind. Here’s what consumers need to know: they’re being marketed food that isn’t even, well, food.

Which is why a skull and crossbone warning doesn’t go far enough—even on things like “toaster pastries” and breakfast cereal that contains marshmallows and drinks that contain a day’s supply of sugar and animal flesh that has now been processed into a concoction of meat, sugar, salt, and carcinogens. After all, we are talking about food. These things are not food.

Tobacco is tobacco—there is no way around that—and we deserve to know the risks associated with using it. It is no different than providing just such information about pharmaceuticals. I doubt even the libertarians object to disclosures about the potential side effects of Big Pharma’s offerings. In fact, I suspect the libertarians may feel particularly entitled to just such information. One might argue to extend just such thinking to “junk” food, and thus counter the libertarian argument. Indeed, I think that could be done: being told what’s what is not the same as being told what do to. We can be told what is in our food without being told what food to put in our mouths.

But I don’t think the “unless you want to die slowly and painfully, don’t eat this food!” label goes far enough. Because unlike tobacco or alcohol, food is supposed to be good for us. It is supposed to be sustenance, not sabotage. You can’t smoke tobacco and avoid tobacco. You can’t drink alcohol and avoid alcohol. But you can eat food and avoid junk. There is, in fact, an impressive range of overall nutritional quality in almost every food category—so we could abandon junk food altogether, and quickly learn not to miss it.

In my opinion, that’s what we should do. Junk should never have been a food group in the first place. So sure, let’s apply some objective method to determine what foods warrant a scarlet “J,” but then let’s eradicate them. It’s silly to have warning labels on food we keep selling.

As for the libertarians—well, even they should object to the false advertising involved in marketing junk as food. Besides, they can still smoke and drink.

Summary: Dr. David Katz says it's silly to have warnings on foods we keep selling.


06/01/2014 at 06:00 AM EDT

From left: Jake Owen, Blake Shelton and Dierks Bentley

Some things just get better with age – just ask

He performs in a pair of WWII paratrooper boots, drives a '94 pickup, and at the age of 39, "I'm in the best shape of my life," says the singer.

We noticed – and that's one reason he made it onto PEOPLE Country's Sexiest Men list, along with 51 other hot country guys.

took top billing this year, and while pal – and former title-holder –

still holds his own on the list, Bryan couldn't resist having a bit of fun at Shelton's expense.

"I am," Bryan explains, "a lot better looking than Blake!"

Game on, Blake – Luke may just have to change his

Other men featured in the issue include Jake Owen, Hunter Hayes, Brett Eldredge and Chris Young. And no list of country's hottest is complete without

, who shares his favorite way to unwind on those rare occasions when he does.

"Sometimes I want to do it all and I just can't stop," he says. But his formula for relaxing is simple: "On the water. With a book. Staring at the sky."

Summary: Dierks, Kenny and Blake are among the men who raise our temperatures – and to prove it, they're featured in the latest issue of PEOPLE Country


NEW YORK — Coca-Cola Co. has raised its stake in Keurig Green Mountain Inc., the beverage dispenser maker, as it looks to bring its familiar drink brands to the fast-growing at-home market.

The world’s biggest beverage company disclosed in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday that its subsidiary, Atlantic Industries, now has a 16 percent stake in Keurig Green Mountain.

The move comes three months after Coca-Cola said it was buying a 10 percent stake in the company known for its single-serve coffee makers. Coca-Cola paid $1.25 billion.

Keurig Green Mountain, based in Waterbury, Vt., is in the process of developing a machine for cold drinks that is expected to debut in the company’s fiscal 2015. Its stock price jumped 7.55 percent to close at 119.07 Tuesday.

Summary: Coca-Cola has raised its stake in Keurig Green Mountain Inc., the beverage dispenser maker, as it looks to bring its familiar drink brands to the fast-growing at-home market. The world’s biggest beverage company disclosed in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday that its subsidiary, Atlantic Industries, now has a 16 percent stake in Keurig Green Mountain.


Round three of the year’s most anticipated auction – the Federal Communication Commission’s sale of the 700 MHz spectrum, currently used for analog television – closed Friday.

Since Thursday, bidders have put up a total $3.2 billion in what has been called one of the most significant spectrum auctions in United States history. That’s because the FCC has mandated that whoever wins the so-called C block of the 700 MHz band, which is particularly well-suited for broadband Internet, must make the new network available to all mobile devices. That could eventually upend the U.S’s tightly-controlled wireless landscape, where carriers currently rule which phones and services consumers can use on their networks.

There are four other blocks of spectrum up for sale, including one that will be used for a nationwide public safety network. Over 200 companies qualified to bid for the five blocks, including Google GOOG , AT&T T , Verizon Wireless VZ , EchoStar Communications DISH and Alltel Wireless AT . But because it is a “blind” auction, we won’t know who the winners of each round are – just the amounts of each bid – until the auction has ended and the minimum asking price for each block (a total of at least $10 billion) has been met. We won’t even know how many rounds there will be, as that’s entirely up to the number and amount of bids and the FCC. That means the auction could drag on for weeks or even months.

While the identity of bidders will be kept secret, the public can monitor the process – the number and value of bids – on the FCC’s website. So far the largest single bid was a $1.49 billion offer for a 50-state package of the C block of spectrum. Stearns analyst Robert Peck wrote in a note Thursday that he thinks there are at least two big bidders in the race for the nationwide C block airwaves. The minimum bid for round four is now set to $1.79 billion, still far below the $4.6 billion minimum reserved by the FCC for this portion.

The ongoing auction and the C block in particular has garnered lots of attention because of Google’s involvement – the search engine lobbied hard for the open access requirements, and said it is committed to putting up the minimum asking price ($4.6 billion) for the C block section of the airwaves. But there have been concerns that the recent economic downturn could negatively affect the auction by making it hard for newcomers to come up with the cash needed for minimum bids.

According to the FCC’s site, there will be one more round today and then bidding will start up again Monday morning. As for the actual spectrum, don’t hold your breath – it won’t be available until February 2009, when TVs make the switch to digital.

Summary: By Michal Lev-Ram Round three of the year's most anticipated auction - the Federal Communication Commission's sale of the 700 MHz spectrum, currently used for analog television - closed Friday. Since Thursday, bidders have put up a total $3.2 billion in what has been called one of the most significant spectrum auctions in United States…


09/29/2014 AT 06:35 PM EDT

, Philip Navarro's four-year-old son is captivated by the idea of

, or free-running. And like most of us who haven't spent the necessary years training in gymnastics and sprinting, Navarro's son's reach exceeds his grasp when it comes to parkour.

But that's not going to stop him from trying.

Navarro's son asked him to record his routine along the sidewalk in front of their Portland, Oregon, home. And while the little guy may have more enthusiasm than talent, he makes up for it with panache, donning a mask mid-routine for extra flair.

"Let's see it, Dad," he says at the end, clearly pleased with his work. We'd say he's got a bright future in the sport.

Summary: Philip Navarro's son has a bright future in parkour and self-promotion


Jake and Dinos Chapman: In the Realm of the UnmentionableRaucous, rancid, funny and insidiously disturbing, the most provocative British artists of their generation return to their hometown with a grotesque seaside extravaganza.Jerwood Gallery, Hastings from 25 October until 7 January 2015.

Grayson PerryPerry creates a portrait of British society to tie in with his latest TV show.National Portrait Gallery, London WC2H from 25 October.

Alice NeelPortraits of people and animals by this innocent realist.Victoria Miro, London W1S until 19 December.

Jeremy DellerThe acclaimed Venice Biennale show English Magic continues its national tour.Turner Contemporary, Margate until 11 January

Catherine OpieImages of difference and defiance in America.Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool until 15 February

Bartolome Bermejo – St Michael Triumphs Over the Devil (1468)Long before Jake and Dinos Chapman were born, the artistic imagination fed on evil, as the depiction of the Devil in this Spanish Gothic painting shows.National Gallery, London WC2N

That Paul McCarthy’s butt plug sculpture in Paris has caused outrage, violence ...

... and a rightwing backlash

That the artist has planned an ‘aggressive’ response to the vandals

Yet another Banksy has been vandalised ... this time his take on Vermeer called the Girl with the Pierced Eardrum

There was a fairly lacklustre act of vandalism on a Jeff Koons artwork too

That a town in Sweden is being moved 3km east so it doesn’t fall into a mine

How drunk and disorderly England really is, thanks to a new photobook called A&E: Alcohol & England

That Chinese president Xi Jinping wants to put a stop to China’s bizarre building syndrome – so we shared the most bizarre so far

How Egon Schiele was a feminist artist way ahead of his time ...

... and how much he loved stockings

That the Moroni show at the Royal Academy is magical and erotically charged

That Grayson Perry’s latest tapestry celebrates mongrel Britain

Which photobooks world-famous photographers from Nan Goldin to Martin Parr couldn’t live without

That Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is putting its staggering 20th-century photography archive on show – and we shared the best of them with you exclusively

Snap! How Hans Eijkelboom captured the clothing clans of the 21st century, from fur hood wearers to roller-bladers

About the kids whose pink and blue obsessions go to extremes

Tate director Nicholas Serota is at the top of the art power list

Paw prints: share your artworks about animals now

Summary: Vandals took centre-stage this week, with Paul McCarthy’s Tree sculpture targeted for its resemblance to a butt plug, and Banksy and Jeff Koons art spray-painted


If Maggi Hambling’s paintings are, ultimately, about life and death then the artist herself is positively bursting with life as she prepares to show new works at the National Gallery, London. “I feel younger now than I ever did when I was young actually. I seem to be painting more freely. I just feel freer, younger … smoking, drinking and beautiful women, that’s the secret.”

The exuberance of one of Britain’s most important and controversial artists can be seen in the huge works going on display for the first time from Wednesday. They positively explode with energy.

The Guardian was given an early look at the display of nine paintings, eight of which are part of Hambling’s Walls of Water series, which she began after watching gigantic waves crash on to the sea wall in Southwold, Suffolk, during a storm in 2010: “It is a very genteel place and then suddenly nature was there like a primeval force … I’ve never seen waves like it, it was extraordinary. It was very beautiful but terrifying.”

They are almost cityscapes as well as seascapes, full of life and colour and foreboding.

Some people might see an environmental message in them, although she said that was not her conscious plan. “I do think we are fucking up the planet, I do care quite a lot about that, but I wouldn’t have said that it was a motivation.

“It was just this extraordinary occasion that got me and I had to do something about it. It was life and death at the same moment I suppose, which I think any art that’s worth having a go at is about. I’m trying to paint death with as much life as I can.”

The National Gallery show represents something of a homecoming for Hambling as she was the gallery’s first artist-in-residence back in 1980-81, during which time she produced her series of portraits of the comedian Max Wall.

She has been asked back because her crashing waves paintings offer parallels with a display of works in the gallery’s Sunley Room by the 19th-century Norwegian artist Peder Balke. Although he is little known outside his native country, the National Gallery believes he is a forgotten genius who deserves to be seen more widely. “I hadn’t heard of him,” admitted Hambling.

As well as her dramatic seascapes, all measuring over 6ft by 7ft, the artist is putting on display for the first time a canvas she painted in response to the death of Amy Winehouse in 2011.

“I found her singing very moving and I tried to paint her the colour of her sound,” said Hambling. “It is a memorial and a celebration. It’s just that I found her sound, her singing, very moving and when she died I thought I had to do something about it.”

Hambling has many fans – and many detractors. The Daily Telegraph’s former theatre critic Charles Spencer once wrote of the sculptures he would like to smash – namely her sculpture of Oscar Wilde behind St Martins-in-the-Fields in London (“Hideous is too gentle a word to describe it”) and the famous 4m high Scallop on the beach at Aldeburgh, a tribute to Benjamin Britten.

“Touch wood there hasn’t been any graffiti on it for 18 months or so,” said Hambling. “It still has objectors though, it still has people who’d rather it wasn’t there.”

In all her works, Hambling said, she is responding to subjects that have grabbed her and “with luck the subject is dictating every mark” she makes on canvas.

That philosophy is one reason she prefers Constable to Turner, she said. “Sometimes Turner, with his bravura brush work, is rather more about Turner than the sky, whereas with Constable, you can really smell the Suffolk mud and feel the flesh of a horse.”

Hambling, a “national treasure” in the Independent on Sunday’s annual Rainbow List, is also well known for her passionate defence of smoking, even posing for photographs with a fake one during the five years or so she gave up. She is now unashamedly back on the Marlboro Lights – “It is much better the second time around.”

Hambling splits her time between Suffolk and London and works hard, getting up at about 4.30am in the summer and 6am in the winter, getting to work straight away. “Before anyone can get at you, before the telephone starts.”

And, approaching her “early middle age” (she’s 69), she shows little sign of letting up. “Victor Hugo used to get very cross with trees because they could live for two or three hundred years and he couldn’t. I rather agree with him.”

• Maggi Hambling: Walls of Water is in Room 1 of the National Gallery, 26 November-15 February. Admission is free

Summary: The artist speaks about her latest paintings inspired by waves at Southwold, as well as a work she produced in response to the death of Amy Winehouse


Daniel Craig as James Bond

12/14/2014 AT 01:45 PM EST

The producers of the James Bond films say an early version of the screenplay for the new movie

is among the material stolen in the

Eon Productions said Sunday it is concerned that third parties who received the screenplay might seek to publish it. The film's cast, including

returning in the role of the famed agent 007,

by director Sam Mendes in April and December.

The company warned the screenplay is subject to copyright protection and that "all necessary steps" would be taken to protect the rights of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Danjaq LLC, which is responsible for material related to James Bond on screen.

There's been speculation that North Korea is behind the cyberattack in retaliation for the upcoming comedy

. The film depicts an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea has condemned the film but denied the hack.

Summary: Producers fear an early version of the next Bond story, which is copyrighted, could be published


“Panama 500” Pianist, composer, and Berklee prof Pérez commemorated the 500th anniversary of Balboa’s “discovery” of the Pacific Ocean on Panama’s west coast, as well as the 100th anniversary of the Panama Canal, with this vibrant exploration of varied musical languages, from ancient dance rhythms to modern jazz. Deploying various ensembles, Pérez conveyed history as living memory.

“Lathe of Heaven” Turner matched the soaring lyricism and beguiling unpredictability of his tenor saxophone lines with an equally alluring collection of original pieces that pushed the tension between composition and improvisation. These were beautifully balanced four-way conversations among Turner, trumpeter Avishai Cohen (see also #10), bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Marcus Gilmore.

“Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio” Berklee grad Aldana, 26, the first-ever female winner of the Thelonious Monk International Tenor Saxophone Competition, is a disciplined, patient student of her horn. Working with bassist Pablo Menares and drummer Francisco Mela, she transformed technical acumen into soul.

“Room” Cline, 58, best known for his work with Wilco, and Lage, at 26 a veteran of Gary Burton’s bands, stuck with a restricted palette of effects-free electric and acoustic guitars for this exciting collection of freewheeling back-and-forth exchanges.

“Gathering Call” Pianist and longtime Wilson pal Medeski (from their days in Boston’s Either/Orchestra) joined the quartet (with trumpeter Kirk Knuffke, saxophonist Jeff Lederer, and bassist Chris Lightcap) for this exuberant mix of hard-driving bop, well-chosen jazz covers (including a couple by Ellington), and open-ended Wilson originals.

“Identities Are Changeable” Working with a 16-piece band, alto saxophonist, composer, New England Conservatory professor, and MacArthur “genius” fellow Zénon created this 75-minute mosaic of music with snippets of spoken-word interviews that explored the nature of Puerto Rican identity — rhythmically complex orchestral pieces that never lost their body-moving connection to folkloric dance.

“The Turn” Tenor saxophonist Sabbagh’s quartet — with guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Ted Poor — used their 10 years of playing together to maintain unity and flow as they moved from free-form mood pieces through jazz swing and heavy rock backbeat to no beat at all.

“Connections: Mind the Gap” The veteran tubist drew on his association with the likes of Frank Foster, Arthur Blythe, Astor Piazzolla, Taj Mahal, and Charles Mingus, alternating his thumping First Line Band with sections for tuba and string quartet, creating what is in essence a deep musical autobiography.

“Polarities” Alto saxophonist Epstein, a former New Yorker who now runs the jazz studies program at the University of Nevada, Reno, mixes form and freedom with an intuitive rhythm team (bassist Sam Minaie and drummer Mark Ferber) who know how to make the beat felt even when they’re not playing it, and trumpeter Ralph Alessi, who shares Epstein’s knack for creating varied lines that coil and relax with flowing eloquence.

“Dark Nights” Trumpeter Cohen here augments his Triveni trio (bassist Omer Avital, drummer Nasheet Waits) on various tracks with his sister Anat on clarinet, pianist Gerald Clayton, and (on the standard “I Fall in Love Too Easily”) singer Keren Ann. Among these 10, dark, simmering beauties, the trumpeter’s take on Charles Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” is a standout.

The surprise here is that this “jazz theater” piece really is theater — moving, provocative theater — not just a song cycle with visuals, as is made clear on this DVD. The piece recounts pianist Hersch’s 2008 two-month coma and recovery, in a scenario written by composer/librettist Herschel Garfein, with Hersch’s 11-piece ensemble and a brilliant performance by singing actor Michael Winther, playing both Hersch and Hersch’s partner/caregiver Scott Morgan.

- The best tracks of 2014

Summary: Discovery, history, groove, and soul converge in the best jazz albums of 2014.


Ayear before publishing his classic “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens landed in Boston in 1842 on the first leg of his tour of the United States.

Dickens arrived during a period that, in some ways, might not seem much different from today. The country was reeling from a financial panic that had begun five years earlier, causing an economic depression that spurred bank failures, widespread unemployment, and revolts in the countryside over mortgage payments.

At the same time, society was struggling to adapt to disruptive technologies — in Dickens’s era, the Industrial Revolution — undermining traditional employers, dislocating workers, and expanding the gap between rich and poor.

“Dickens was writing at a stage similar to what we’ve just gone through economically,” says Alasdair Roberts, a law professor at Suffolk University and author of “America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the Panic of 1837.” “The general tenor of our times is very similar to his.”

So what if Dickens, perhaps accompanied by one of the ghost characters made famous in “A Christmas Carol,” were to return to Boston and other US cities today? Certainly, he’d see the progress in addressing the social and economic ills chronicled in the novel through measures such as child labor laws, social safety net, and other programs designed to help the poor, elderly, and vulnerable. But he might also be surprised that some things have not changed.

In “A Christmas Carol,’’ the protagonist, the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, is asked to donate money to help ease the sufferings of the poor. Scrooge refuses, noting that his taxes help support institutions available to the impoverished.

“Are there no prisons?’’ he asks. “Are there no workhouses?”

Public workhouses were often stark, overcrowded, prison-like places where paupers lived and were forced to work for room and board, breaking stones, making sacks, or manually driving corn mills. They are a thing of the past today, though occasionally state and federal officials still have to crack down on unscrupulous employers, such as human traffickers who smuggle illegal immigrants into the country and treat them like indentured servants in restaurants and other businesses.

Today, many of the poor end up in homeless shelters. More Boston residents are living in shelters today than in any of 25 major cities surveyed across the country, according to a recent report by the US Conference of Mayors. Homelessness has risen faster in Massachusetts than anywhere else in the country, up 40 percent since 2007, according to a recent report by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Today, nearly 4,700 families with children live in emergency homeless shelters in Massachusetts, 1,600 of them in rented motel rooms, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars per year for motels alone.

Meanwhile, the United States has the infamous distinction of incarcerating about 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons, the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world; nearly 11,000 are in Massachusetts prisons.

“A lot of people today ultimately end up in prison because they started out poor,” said Anne McCants, an economic historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “So I’m not so sure it’s all that different today than it was in Dickens’s time.”

In the novel, Scrooge’s overworked and underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, is stunned when Scrooge reluctantly gives him Christmas Day off — with pay.

Today, many low-paid and overworked retail, fast-food, and other employees would be equally stunned to get holidays off, with pay, let alone receive other benefits. “The working poor, for the most part, still don’t get paid holidays,” said McCants.

Indeed, some retailers require low-paid employees to work on another holiday, Thanksgiving, to sell more Christmas presents. They do get paid, though.

Wesley Bedrosian for The Boston Globe

In “A Christmas Carol,’’ beleaguered employee Bob Cratchit is given Christmas off with pay, but for many low-wage workers today, a paid holiday off is still a fiction.

Recently, low-wage workers have had seen some progress on the benefits front. In November, 171 years after a “A Christmas Carol” was published, Massachusetts voters approved a ballot measure entitling employees to receive up to 40 hours of paid sick time each year if they work for businesses with 11 or more employees.

Employees at smaller firms can earn 40 hours of annual sick time — but they are unpaid.

Accompanied by the Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge confronts two impoverished children, twins called Ignorance and Want.

To Dickens, “ignorance” is partly a reference to children of his era not receiving even the most basic education. In Massachusetts, the Puritans introduced a form of compulsory education in the mid-1600s, and compulsory attendance at public schools was implemented in 1852, nine years after publication of “A Christmas Carol.”

More recently, education reforms in Massachusetts have led to higher test scores for all students across the state, but there’s also been a persistent “achievement gap” in student performance between rich and poor towns.

Some believe this education gap has only exacerbated income inequality here and elsewhere, with those getting better educations tending to nab much higher-paying jobs.

As for “want,” a recent report by the US Census Bureau said that child poverty has recently risen in Massachusetts, with one in six children now growing up in poverty and often living in emergency shelters.

In “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge is warned that Bob Cratchit’s disabled son, the sweet, gentle Tiny Tim, will die unless he gets proper care. Cratchit, laboring for low wages, can’t afford the necessary medical care.

Today, Massachusetts has come far in making sure most everyone has access to health care, implementing a universal health care system in 2007 and lowering the uninsured rate for children from nearly 5 percent to less than 2 percent, according to Health Care for All, a nonprofit advocacy group.

But that still means about one in 50 children is not covered by health insurance.

And even though all children are entitled to medical services under state laws, they don’t always get it, either because their guardians can’t afford copayments or the system is too complicated, said Brian Rosen, research director at Health Care for All.

Still, Massachusetts residents are better off than the rest of the nation, where 11 percent of the population still lives without private or public health insurance — despite implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act.

And what comparison of the early 1840s to modern times would be complete without a reference to the financial system?

In “A Christmas Carol,” Dickens slips in a sly dig at the United States, referring to how the passage of time benefited Scrooge, who worked in finance, in terms of collecting interest on bonds. Without time, there would be no interest and bonds would be worthless, like “mere United States’ securities,” Dickens writes.

Suffolk University’s Roberts says the phrase apparently refers to the many American states that defaulted on loans after the 1837 financial panic, leading to big losses for investors in Britain and elsewhere.

More recently, investors from Norway and other countries lost millions of dollars buying US subprime mortgage securities. They might empathize with Dickens on that point.

Summary: A year before publishing his classic “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens landed in Boston . So what if Dickens were t today? Would he find the social and economic ills chronicled in the novel had changed?


Pakistani soldiers take position around a school recently targeted by insurgents. (Getty Images)

A US drone has killed eight Islamist militants in the first strike of the new year, targeting al-Qaeda havens in north-western Pakistan.

The unmanned aircraft hit a compound in North Waziristan tribal region, hours after Pakistani fighter jets killed 31 Taliban rebels in the neighbouring Khyber district.

The drone fired missiles at the compound being used by Uzbek militants linked with al-Qaeda, an intelligence official said.

It was the first strike in Pakistan in 2015 as the campaign was intensified since Taliban militants killed 136 children at an army-run school in north-western Peshawar city on December 16.

North Waziristan is the largest of several sanctuaries Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda still control in lawless tribal region on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military has stepped up the offensive it launched in mid-June to regain territory from insurgents.

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: Pakistani airstrikes have killed 31 militants and a US drone strike killed another eight.


Indiana and Kansas consider upping minimum pay

Democratic state senators in Indiana on Wednesday proposed raising the state’s minimum wage by almost $3 from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. State Senator Karen Tallian, the bill’s sponsor, said the proposal would ensure that people who worked 40 hours per week did not fall below the federal poverty level.

Also this week, a state representative in Kansas proposed a similar raise to that state’s minimum wage. Democrat Jim Ward wants to raise the $7.25 rate by $3 over the next three years, bringing it to $10.25 by 2017.

Both bills will likely face opposition from Republicans, who control both state legislatures.

Indiana and Kansas are among a shrinking number of states whose minimum wages are at or below the federal rate of $7.25. There were 28 last year, but that figure now stands at 21, as South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Hawaii, West Virginia, Maryland, and Arkansas increased their minimum wages last year.

New Mexico governor backs right-to-work legislation

Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico on Thursday committed to pushing for so-called right-to-work legislation during the upcoming legislative session, stating that the change to the state’s labor law was “common sense.”

Right-to-work laws prohibit union membership from being a condition of employment. Instituting a “right to work” law allows workers to benefit from union membership without having to pay for it. This free rider problem is considered a major threat to unions nationwide.

New Mexico’s Democratic party-controlled legislature had shut down recent debates over right-to-work legislation, but the issue has gotten new legs ever since Republicans took control of the state House of Representatives in November. Democrats still control the Senate.

There are currently 24 right-to-work states in the U.S., according to the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation, which advocates for such policies.

Union and environmentalists battle over floating natural gas pump in the Atlantic

At a public hearing near John F. Kennedy Airport in New York this week, the Port Ambrose Deepwater Port Project—a proposed floating plant in the Atlantic Ocean near New York Harbor that would let tankers offload liquefied natural gas—sparked debate between union members and New York residents.

Donovan Richard, chair of the New York City Council’s environmental protection committee, expressed worries about the safety risks of liquefied natural gas. “LNG vapor is enough to melt at a distance of 1,200 feet,” he said.

Scott Winter, vice president of the Maritime Trades Department at the AFL-CIO, said he supported the project because of the 800 jobs it is projected to create.

The proposed facility will float in the ocean 30 nautical miles from New York Harbor and would have the capacity to move 400 million cubic feet of gas everyday from ships’ hauls to Long Island through buried pipelines.

After the public comment period ends later this year, Governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will have the option to veto the project.

Summary: The minimum wage train keeps rolling in 2015. That and other news from the world of worker pay.


The Pyramids at Giza are among the world’s great archeological treasures, and one of Egypt’s most popular tourist attractions. A visit there, though, generally involves an expensive flight to Cairo, a jarring cab ride across the congested metropolis, and baking under the Egyptian sun.

But now, exploring Giza can be done from anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Giza 3D, a free interactive Web app being launched Tuesday, will offer the virtual explorer an animated passage through millennia-old tunnels and tombs. It combines the feel of a video game - think Tomb Raider - with the curated accuracy of a museum exhibit, to create a three-dimensional video odyssey deep inside the ancient structures.

The culmination of a two-year collaboration between Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and Dassault Systemes, the French design software company that has its US headquarters in Waltham, Giza 3D will be unveiled at an event at the MFA on Tuesday night.

The virtual tour is also being used in Harvard University’s 3-D virtual reality theater, where Egyptology students can be immersed in the simulation. Just like the virtual motion rides at amusement parks, the digital tour through Giza can leave viewers a bit queasy as it takes quick twists and turns into the pyramid corridors.

“It’s dizzying,’’ said Maggie Geoga, a 21-year-old Harvard senior, although she added it is worth the discomfort. “This is the next best thing’’ to being there, she said.

Dassault software is typically used to design and manufacture products for carmakers, architects, and consumer electronic companies. But in 2005, the French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin began working with the company on a 3-D simulation illustrating the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the three at Giza.

“We said that if we can use 3-D technology to help industry, we could use it to recreate archeology,’’ said Mehdi Tayoubi, vice president of digital and experiential strategy for Dassault.

The company’s work on that project caught the attention of Peter Der Manuelian, a prominent Egyptologist, in 2008. At the time, Manuelian was director of the MFA’s Giza Archives Project, which digitized the archeological records from a joint MFA and Harvard University excavation that ran from 1902 to 1947.

In 2010, the MFA and Dassault decided to create a virtual exhibit from the collection of more than 85,000 digitized photographs, maps, and drawings.

Giza 3D allows virtual explorers to roam around the Giza Plateau and dive deep under the Pyramids. It includes hundreds of tombs that users can explore, historically accurate hieroglyphics to examine, and the ability to take in 360-degree views of the Pyramids or their interiors. As users navigate through the chambers, they can click on items to get historical information, or see copies of excavation documents. Some of the recreations are based on photos from the Harvard-MFA excavation, showing the same bones, pieces of wooden coffins, and stone formations it found.

Ten software engineers built Giza 3D, Tayoubi said - often a laborious process. The application includes at least 30 objects that have been painstaking rebuilt in 3-D, including stone vessels and statues that can be examined in detail. Just building a single ornate chair in the virtual environment, he said, could take a month.

At Harvard, where Manuelian is now a professor of Egyptology, the project has become a regular part of his classes. He takes his students on guided 3-D tours through Giza using a joystick controller.

“We can visit rooms and go above ground and below ground. We can go into burial grounds and rotate around in the bedrock underground. That’s something no human can do,’’ Manuelian said. “It gives [students] a more rounded picture that no PowerPoint lecture can bring across.’’

But it will never be a true substitute for seeing the Pyramids with your own eyes.

“Being out there with the heat and the desert sun, it’s a real tactile sense of the Giza experience,’’ Manuelian said. “The real world still can’t be beat.’’

Dassault Systemes used advanced three-dimensional imaging to build the Giza experience, a virtual and interactive tour of the Pyramids. Giza 3D includes hundreds of tombs that include detailed decorative walls, burial sites, and artifacts that software engineers recreated using some of the 80,000 digitized items — photos, maps, and drawings — in the Giza Archives Project at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The project used QuickTime Virtual Reality technology to include 1,300 panoramic views inside the program so users have 360-degree views inside and outside the tombs.

Summary: The Pyramids at Giza in Egypt are among the world’s great archaeological treasures. A visit there, though, has involved an expensive flight to Cairo, a dizzying cab ride across the congested metropolis, and in general, baking under the Egyptian sun. But now, exploring the three pyramids of Giza can be done from anywhere there’s an Internet connection. “Giza 3D,’’ a free interactive Web app launching Tuesday, will offer the virtual explorer an animated passage through millennia-old tunnels and tombs.


At the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition three years ago, a ragtag MIT crew with a wild idea won the audience choice award with a video showing ketchup gliding out of a bottle — as if defying the laws of physics.

The video went viral and brought so much attention to the product, an ultra-slippery coating able to repel the stickiest of substances, that its creator, MIT materials engineer Dave Smith, halted his PhD program, dropped out, and started a company.

Since then, LiquiGlide has been making steady strides. On Monday, the company announced $7 million in funding from Roadmap Capital. It’s also moving from its shared offices at the NGIN Workspace to a 11,000-square-foot office and lab on Sidney Street in Cambridge. The plan is to use the money to expand its staff to as many as 45 people this year, up from 20, said Smith, now the chief executive.

Smith developed the technology with his mentor, Kripa Varanasi, a professor of materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company’s proprietary technology is a two-layered coating that is sprayed on a hard surface. The recipe includes versions of edible chemicals such as vegetable oils and can be tweaked for any bottle-goo combination so that its liquid contents glide right out.

A few companies that queried Smith and Varanasi after their video hit the Web signed up for hush-hush tests of coatings tailored to their products. The startup has been running on funding from prospective clients.

Smith expects the first LiquiGlide products, coatings for bottles containing fungicides, to reach the market this year. He expects LiquiGlide’s coatings to be lining the insides of household goods by 2016.

Summary: LiquiGlide has been making steady strides. On Monday, the company announced $7 million in new funding from Roadmap Capital, and a move from its shared offices at the NGIN Workspace to a 11,000-square-foot office and lab space on Sidney Street in Cambridge.


Breaking Borders Sunday at 9 p.m., Travel Channel

This new series uses food as a healing gesture. Chef Michael Voltaggio and journalist Mariana van Zeller travel into conflict zones and get people from opposing sides to break bread and, you know, rap. They start with the big monster of all challenges, bringing together Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. Coming: Belfast, Rwanda, and Kashmir.

Exporting Raymond 10 p.m., TVLand

This documentary follows “Everybody Loves Raymond” creator Phil Rosenthal as he attempts something that sounds crazy and impossible: creating a Russian version of the series, to be called “Voroniny.” It’s always interesting to see whether or not humor can be translated into different cultures and languages, nyet?

In an Instant Saturday at 9 p.m., ABC

Harrowing survival tales. Sitting through “I, Frankenstein.”

Wuthering High School Saturday at 8 p.m., Lifetime

Sex Box 10 p.m., WEtv

When it comes to boxes, I stop at wine.

Summary: Breaking Borders Sunday at 9, Travel Channel This new series uses food as a healing gesture.