It is often taken as a good thing when young people show an interest in politics—especially, it seems, when they vote to the left of their elders. In 1972, for example, young voters split evenly between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, and in 2012 they provided pretty much all of Barack Obama’s popular-vote margin.

But these were not the peak years of young Americans’ influence on electoral politics. The peak came in the turbulent politics of the pre-Civil War years and the decades after, roughly 1840 to 1900. The period is chronicled in vivid and loving detail by Jon Grinspan, a historian and Smithsonian curator, in “The Virgin Vote.”

The book’s title comes not from the snarky 2012 campaign video—the one using double-entendre to encourage young women to vote for Barack Obama—but from a label proudly self-applied in the 19th century by young men who were casting their vote for the first time. “Virgin voters were likely to vote in groups, often joined by brothers, father and friends,” Mr. Grinspan writes. And the commotion attracted notice: “While young men fluffed their beards, donned new hats and headed off to the polls, their sisters looked on with a combination of support, pride and—sometimes—resentment.”

Virgin voting and active electioneering were well-nigh universal in mid- and late 19th-century America. From 1840 to 1900, Mr. Grinspan says, between 70% and 80% of those eligible to vote did so in every presidential election, more than ever before or since. Young women were active as well, canvassing and participating in rallies. Young free blacks voted, too, until they were blocked from the polls by Democratic politicians and the Ku Klux Klan.

Drawing on a wide range of scholarship and dozens of diaries, Mr. Grinspan tells his story more in personal than statistical terms. We see 19-year-old Oscar Lawrence Jackson orating for Abraham Lincoln in southern Ohio in 1860; 15-year-old George Washington Albright sneaking out at night to tell other slaves on nearby Mississippi plantations about the Emancipation Proclamation; 16-year-old James Witham arguing politics in the caboose of a westbound train in Nebraska in 1872.

In some of these accounts we hear serious arguments about politics and policy, but they also include ridicule and rowdiness, alcohol consumption and tobacco expectoration, flirting and frivolity, and roving gangs of young men like Lincoln’s Wide Awake boys, who prowled at the edge of crowds looking for trouble. Altogether Mr. Grinspan’s narrative is a riveting picture of 19th-century politicking.

And a picture in some ways unsettling. Young Americans tended to inherit their political views from their elders and, in this supercharged political atmosphere, tended to stick with the party they supported with their virgin votes. There were some exceptions—Mr. Grinspan zeroes in on the party-switching and ultimately nonpartisan author William Dean Howells—but party loyalties then seem much like loyalties to sports teams today: You keep rooting for the Yankees or the Cowboys regardless of changes in players and coaches and owners, overlooking the team’s weaknesses and excusing its fouls. Sometimes old parties disappear and new ones are formed, as in the 1850s, just as sports leagues expand and teams relocate. But mostly this was a period, not unlike our two most recent decades, of static partisan divisions, with just a few votes making the difference between victory and defeat.

Yet the rough-and-ready politics of such a time had to deal with the great, and greatly divisive, issues of slavery and civil rights, which accounted for some of the fervor of the virgin voters. One reads Mr. Grinspan’s chapter on Oscar Lawrence Jackson’s 1860 speech aware that the victory of his candidate culminated in a civil war in which 600,000 died—and in which Jackson himself survived a shot in the face. He was elected to Congress in the 1880s and died in 1920.

By that time the age of the virgin voter was long over. Voter participation began to fall off in the 1890s. One reason was reform, starting with the ballot itself. Initially each political party printed ballots with only its own candidates listed. The ballots were distributed to would-be virgin voters by armies of young men on Election Day. Between 1887 and 1896, to prevent ballot-box stuffing and discourage straight-ticket voting, most states adopted the so-called Australian ballot, which listed candidates of all parties and was handed out by election clerks. Casting votes, including virgin votes, became a perfunctory matter, Mr. Grinspan notes, rather than a theatrical performance.

For the youth of this period, politics was clearly a form of entertainment, but it eventually met competition: The bicycle craze, the rise of team sports like baseball and the growth of vaudeville provided other pastimes and venues where young men and women could spend time together. By the 1890s, Mr. Grinspan writes, “youth and politics were quietly untangling themselves.” Even as the potential electorate was expanded by women’s suffrage and the naturalization of Ellis Island immigrants, political participation and voter turnout declined.

Should we wish for a revival of young people’s participation in politics? Implicitly throughout and explicitly in an afterword, the author answers “yes.” Amid so many distractions, he argues, the key “to getting young people involved in politics, regardless of brain chemistry or habits, is to raise them in a culture that cares.”

A skeptic may question whether the quality of the election result is improved by the participation of the otherwise indifferent and whether a caring culture will always care wisely. “The Virgin Vote” plunges readers into a pulsating political culture long vanished—and unlikely to be revived in a year when most young voters dislike both major parties’ presidential nominees.

Mr. Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of “The Almanac of American Politics.”

Summary: Michael Barone reviews “The Virgin Vote: How Young Americans Made Democracy Social, Politics Personal, and Voting Popular in the Nineteenth Century” by Jon Grinspan.


Shaking things up was Richard Neville's speciality.

As a 21-year-old uni student in the swinging 60s he was first thrust into the public spotlight with the launch of the controversial satirical magazine Oz.

Neville, who has died aged 74, co-launched the magazine on April Fool's Day 1963 - complete with risque articles about back-street abortions and chastity belts - along with Martin Sharp and Richard Walsh.

The trio set out "to create a magazine that would shake Sydney from its pompous 50s torpor," Neville later wrote.

No topic was off limits, including homosexuality, censorship, politics and Sydney's underworld.

But Australia's establishment took a dim view, with Neville, Sharp and Walsh charged with producing an obscene publication after Oz's third issue. They pleaded guilty and were fined.

It wasn't long before they were hauled before the courts again on more obscenity charges, this time over a cover photo showing Neville and two friends pretending to urinate into a sculptural fountain.

They were given three years' jail but won a lengthy appeal.

In 1966 Neville and Sharp took the "hippie trail" through Asia and headed to swinging London, where more controversy awaited.

In February 1967 they launched London Oz, which fast gained a reputation as a scandalous counterculture magazine with articles by fellow Aussie expats Germaine Greer, Clive James and Robert Hughes.

Neville and his co-editors Jim Anderson and Felix Dennis found themselves starring in Britain's longest obscenity trial over the 1970 publication of Schoolkids Oz, which featured a picture of cartoon favourite Rupert Bear with an erection.

Their 15-month jail sentences sparked public outrage. John Lennon recorded the single God Save Oz to raise money for their legal fight.

The convictions were eventually overturned on appeal, thanks to lawyers John Mortimer QC (creator of Rumpole of the Bailey) and fellow Australian Geoffrey Robertson, who went on to become a world-renowned human rights barrister.

But not everyone was a fan of Schoolkids Oz. Among those horrified was Neville's daughter Lucy.

"I just couldn't believe my dad had done that," she later said.

London Oz closed in November 1973. Neville put it down to exhaustion, drugs and boredom.

"The moment had passed. I'm grateful to have been part of it."

Neville returned to Australia in 1973 where he again teamed up with Richard Walsh on a youth counterculture magazine, Living Daylights.

He also worked as a broadcaster for the ABC and contributed to newspapers and magazines.

Neville met his future wife, journalist Julie Clarke, when she interviewed him in the mid-1970s.

The couple moved to New York in 1977 and co-authored a biographical best-seller about serial killer Charles Sobhraj before returning to Australia in 1980 and settling in a house they called Happy Daze at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. Guests included Oscar winner Jack Nicholson, author Salman Rushdie and Irish singer and activist Bob Geldof.

They had two daughters, Lucy in 1983 and Angelica in 1989.

Even in his later years Neville continued to shake things up. As child sexual abuse became a much-examined topic, he spoke out about the abuse he witnessed as a boarder at Sydney private school, Knox Grammar, in the 1950s.

He claimed that vicious assaults on children were "almost a daily occurrence" by teachers who "repeatedly stroked our bare bottoms with canes".

He was diagnosed with dementia in his 60s and died from complications of Alzheimer's disease.

Summary: Richard Neville loved to shake things up, shocking Britain and Australia with his iconic Oz magazine in the 60s and 70s.


Police outside the home in Yanchep. (Scott Cunningham/Twitter)

A boy and a girl are believed to have been stabbed to death in a home in Perth overnight.

Police arrived at a home in Yanchep about 9pm last night to find two people dead and a third with serious injuries.

It has subsequently been reported the bodies were that of a boy and a girl, aged about seven or eight.

A man in his thirties was taken to Joondalup Hospital before being transferred to Royal Perth Hospital.

Perth police would not confirm the ages of the victims.

It is not known the relation of the man to the children.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: A boy and a girl are believed to have been dead in a home in Perth overnight.


As punters lick their wounds after a day at the races, one almost dead cert lived up to expectations - the Reserve Bank left the cash rate unchanged at a record low 1.5 per cent at its monthly board meeting.

Economists were virtually unanimous in expecting a steady cash rate on Melbourne Cup day this year, although the central bank had changed rates six times in the past 10 years on this day.

"Having eased monetary policy at its May and August meetings, the board judged that holding the stance of policy unchanged at this meeting would be consistent with sustainable growth in the economy and achieving the inflation target over time," governor Philip Lowe said in a statement on Tuesday.

Last week's consumer price index was slightly higher than economists had expected as a result of higher fruit and vegetable prices.

But underlying measures of inflation, which smooth out big price swings, remained benign and below the central bank's two to three per cent target.

Dr Lowe expects inflation to remain low for sometime yet given subdued labour costs in Australia and very low cost pressures elsewhere in the world.

"With inflation only likely to track along the bottom of the 2-3 per cent target band next year there will be scope to ease (rates) further should growth, and the labour market in particular, profoundly disappoint," Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said.

"That is not our forecast but we acknowledge that if rates are to move next year, it will be down rather than up in 2017."

Dr Lowe also noted higher commodity prices have supported a rise in Australia's terms of trade, albeit after substantial declines over the past few years.

In its annual report, the Australian Taxation Office blamed the drop in commodity prices in 2015/16 for the worst collection of company tax in five years as they flowed through to weak growth in company profits and capital gains.

The report shows companies paid $62.6 billion in income tax in 2015/16 compared with $66.9 billion in 2014/15, the lowest amount since 2010/11.

Dr Lowe said the economy is growing at a moderate rate, but while household consumption has been growing at a reasonable pace, it appears to have "slowed a little recently".

Consumer confidence, a key pointer to future retail spending, edged up just 0.4 per cent in the past week after a solid 3.6 per cent drop the previous week.

The weekly ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index remains well above its long-term average.

"(But) the uptrend looks to have lost momentum, with the four-week moving average at its lowest level since mid-June,". Felicity Emmett, ANZ head of Australian economics, said.

She believes this may reflect some concerns over the global outlook, with the US presidential election driving renewed volatility in financial markets.

"With the election a week away, global uncertainty is likely to dominate domestic events in the very near term," she said.

Summary: Most economists expect the Reserve Bank will keep the cash rate steady at a record low 1.5 per cent at its monthly board meeting on Tuesday.


Brad Mangin | MLB Photos | Getty Images

Green Monster, Fenway Park, Boston

The United States' most iconic baseball wall is going social.

The Boston Red Sox's "Green Monster," a 37 foot 2 inch high outfield wall, will be the home of hashtags and selfies when the team plays its home opener against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday, CNBC has learned.

Together with interactive marketing firm SapientNitro, a unit of Sapient, the Red Sox plan to feature fans' favorite moments on the back of the 102-year-old wall throughout the game. Social media users on Twitter and Instagram will be asked to submit photos, videos and memories using the hashtag #SoxStory for the chance to have those posts broadcast to fans down below on Lansdowne Street.

The campaign will officially bring the Green Monster into the digital era.

"The Red Sox have not used the Green Monster or hung additional fan-generated LED signs around the park in the past," said Adam Grossman, senior vice president of marketing and brand development for the Red Sox. "For us, this is a continuation of our emphasis on fan-generated content."

Read More140 things you don't know about Twitter

As it is with every digital campaign, though, the team will need to be on the lookout for posts shared by spammers.

"Sapient and the Red Sox are working with a third-party company that filters content," said Bill Kanarick, chief marketing officer at Sapient.

What about content from Brewers fans?

"All fans are welcome [to submit posts] as long it is family friendly and mentions #SoxStory," said Kanarick.

Summary: The most iconic baseball wall in the U.S. is going social.


John Torney (left) and Nikki Francis-Coslovich.

Child protection workers reportedly knew murdered toddler Nikki Francis-Coslovich's stepfather was a "violent criminal" two months before she was found dead in her Mildura home.

John Torney, who was acquitted of two-year-old's murder last week, was not being monitored by case workers even though they reportedly had concerns for the toddlers safety, The Herald Sun reports.

Nikki’s badly beaten body was found in a roof cavity of her mother Peta-Ann Francis’s Mildura home in August last year.

Her liver was split in several places and she lost between one quarter and one third of her total blood volume.

The Crown said the damage was caused by the repeated infliction of a clenched fist to the abdomen and chest of the child.

John Torney was acquitted of the murder last week.

Mr Torney admitted he hid Nikki’s lifeless body in the manhole, but maintained he didn't kill her.

Nikki's biological father, Nick Coslovich, told the newspaper that case workers "need to acknowledge where they’ve gone wrong" in regards to their investigation.

"If you ask me, if they had have done more we would not be sitting in court dealing with the fact that a two-year-old got beat up, I would not be dealing with the loss of a daughter," Mr Coslovich said.

"They need to acknowledge where they've gone wrong and they need to correct the mistakes, otherwise we are going to be dealing with this every couple of years.

"I sure as hell don’t want to see another child in that cemetery."

Social workers who investigated Mr Torney prior to the murder were reportedly told by Nikki’s mother that the 32-year-old was not living with them at the Mildura home.

The case workers reportedly believed Ms Francis, even though Mr Torney was living there full-time, and closed the investigation on July 13.

"Child protection decision making is complex and judgments are made based on the facts that are known at the time. The decision to close a case is made in consultation with senior staff and is based on the risks to children and the family’s engagement with support services," Department of Health and Human Services spokesman David Stockman said.

Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth suppressed information about Mr Torney during the trial that can now be revealed, including suggestions of domestic abuse towards a previous girlfriend and that he had undergone anger management treatment.

His defence team claimed the toddler’s mother Ms Francis was responsible.

Minister for Children Jenny Mikakos said she would await the findings of a coronial inquest before commenting.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: Child protection workers reportedly knew murdered toddler Nikki Francis-Coslovich’s stepfather was a ‘violent criminal’ two months before she was found dead in her Mildura home.


Cigarette company Phillip Morris has agreed to donate $300,000 to the NSW Rural Fire Service after it was found to have sold cigarettes that didn't meet fire safety standards.

According to the consumer watchdog, two cigarette firms, Zen Sensation and Phillip Morris, supplied cigarettes in Australia that did not self extinguish when left unattended as required by law.

In 2015, Phillip Morris supplied more than 300,000 of the dodgy cigarettes to the Australian market. Zen Sensations were unsure how many non-compliant cigarettes it had sold but the company supplied a total of 24.5 million cigarettes possibly connected to a similar issue between 2013 and 2015.

Both issued recalls following the discovery of the issue.

"Before the Reduced Fire Risk Standard was adopted, discarded cigarettes and related products started over 4500 fires and killed an average of 14 people each year," ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said on Thursday.

Manufacturers and importers need to have stringent controls in place to ensure their products protect consumers by meeting safety standards, Mr Sims says.

Summary: Cigarette company Phillip Morris has agreed to donate $300,000 to the NSW Rural Fire Service after selling cigarettes that didn't meet fire safeguards.


NEW YORK (AP) — Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz is stepping down as CEO of the coffee chain he joined more than 30 years ago and transformed into a global brand.

Schultz will become executive chairman in April to focus on innovation and social impact activities, the Seattle-based chain announced Thursday. Kevin Johnson, who was named president and chief operating officer last year, will be chief executive as of April 3.

Schultz, 63, is credited with turning around Starbucks’ fortunes since returning as its CEO in 2008. He has overseen the expansion of the chain’s food and beverage offerings and the growth of its popular loyalty program and mobile app.

The company has credited the rewards program and app for helping its strong sales growth in the U.S., although expansion has slowed more recently. Schultz has said such technology adaptions will become increasingly critical for brick-and-mortar retail businesses to thrive as shopping habits change.

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Shares of Starbucks slid 3.6 percent to $56.44 in after-hours trading.

During a conference call to discuss the announcement, an analyst called Schultz a ‘‘master merchant’’ who has been able to determine and even stimulate ‘‘what the Starbucks customer wants and needs’’ and asked if that ‘‘merchant gene’’ would still be present in the leadership team. Another noted that Starbucks struggled after Schultz stepped away as CEO in 2000, and asked what was different this time.

Schultz said the company has built a strong leadership team in recent years. He also noted that he is not leaving the company, and would be working on developing the Starbucks Reserve Roasteries, which are high-end retail concepts featuring coffee beans and drinks like ‘‘cold brew’’ coffee. Schultz called it the ‘‘next wave of retail innovation.’’

‘‘But Kevin and the team are in charge,’’ Schultz said.

Over the years, Schultz has also said that people expect more from public companies, and has aligned himself and Starbucks with social issues like race and jobs for underprivileged youth. In September, Schultz publicly endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in an interview with CNN, and did not rule out running for office at some point.

Schultz said during the call that he has been working closely with Johnson.

Johnson, 56, will take charge of the company’s global business and operations. He spent years at technology companies including 16 years with Microsoft and five as Juniper Networks CEO. He joined the Starbucks board in 2009.

Summary: Starbucks says CEO Howard Schultz is stepping down from the coffee chain that he joined more than 30 years ago.


16. One Rincon Hill North Tower (left)Year completed: 2014Height: 541 feet

16. One Rincon Hill North Tower (left) Year completed: 2014 Height: 541 feet

12. One Embarcadero CenterYear completed: 1971Height: 569 feet

12. One Embarcadero Center Year completed: 1971 Height: 569 feet

9. 50 Fremont Year completed: 1985Height: 600 feet

9. 50 Fremont Year completed: 1985 Height: 600 feet

8. 101 CaliforniaYear completed: 1982Height: 600 feet

8. 101 California Year completed: 1982 Height: 600 feet

6. Millennium TowerYear completed: 2009Height: 645 feet

6. Millennium Tower Year completed: 2009 Height: 645 feet

5. 345 CaliforniaYear completed: 1986Height: 695 feet

5. 345 California Year completed: 1986 Height: 695 feet

4. 555 California Year completed: 1969Height: 779 feet

4. 555 California Year completed: 1969 Height: 779 feet

Year complete: 2017Height: 802 feet

Year complete: 2017 Height: 802 feet

2. Transamerica PyramidYear completed: 1972Height: 853 feet

2. Transamerica Pyramid Year completed: 1972 Height: 853 feet

1. Salesforce Tower (under construction)Year complete: 2018Height: 1,070 feet

1. Salesforce Tower (under construction) Year complete: 2018 Height: 1,070 feet

San Francisco's tallest buildings ranked

Salesforce Tower may still be under construction but it’s already changed the San Francisco skyline. Upon completion the structure will tower at 1,070 feet, outdoing the Transamerica Pyramid by 217 feet, as the highest building in the city.

With the new addition, Salesforce Tower marks a transforming skyline in San Francisco and demonstrates how our city has moved beyond its apprehension with height, the San Francisco Chronicle’s John King wrote.

“This remains a city where the watchdogs aren’t shy about doing battle on a variety of fronts, and that’s a good thing,” King wrote. “But the simplistic notion that height is bad is long out of date — that horse left the barn when all those blunt towers north of Market Street overwhelmed the 1920s skyline.”

Salesforce Tower additionally will add allure and activity to a part of downtown that was previously terra incognita, King added.

Up until October the Transamerica Pyramid, rising at 853 feet, reigned for 44 years as the tallest building in San Francisco.

Despite the Transamerica Pyramid losing its title as the tallest structure in the city, it will remain one of San Francisco’s most prominent symbol given its "unforgettable setting."

“Sit in a Columbus Avenue cafe sipping cappuccino, or step out the door of City Lights, and the Pyramid stands serenely above the clutter of overhead wires and sidewalk fuss,” King wrote.

And with that said, there are plenty of other buildings in the city that call for attention and we've ranked our city's skyscrapers here from shortest to highest.

Take a look at San Francisco's current tallest buildings in the slideshow above.

Summary: Salesforce Tower may still be under construction but it's already dominating the San Francisco skyline. Upon completion the structure will tower at 1,070 feet, outdoing the Transamerica Pyramid by 217 feet as the highest building in the city.


Perth is on Santa's nice list if Christmas Day weather is anything to go by.

It's expected to reach a sunny 33C on Christmas, before dropping slightly to 30C on Boxing Day and cooling down to 23C on Tuesday.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Luke Huntington said it would be a good day with clear skies and some wind, but beach conditions would not be as perfect.

"Unfortunately it won't be beach weather on weekend, with strong sea breezes expected both days," he said.

"The swell is high for this time of year, especially on Christmas Day when it will be 2-3 metres."

It's a mixed bag of Christmas weather for the rest of the state, with a potential cyclone to hit the Pilbara coast, 40C forecast for Exmouth and 20C in Albany.

Ex-tropical cyclone Yvette was downgraded to a tropical low on Friday, but is expected to re-intensify and hit the Pilbara coast on Sunday.

Bureau regional director Mike Bergin said there shouldn't be significant impacts in terms of wind, but rainfalls could total 100mm.

* 20C with a possible morning shower in Albany

* 32C with likely storms in Broome

* 29C with clouds clearing in Bunbury

* 21C and a possible shower in Esperance

* 40C and partly cloudy in Exmouth

* 30C and sunny in Geraldton

* 32C on Saturday, December 24

* 33C on Sunday, December 25

* 30C on Monday, December 26

* 23C on Tuesday, December 27

* 27C on Wednesday, December 28

Summary: Perth can expect a sunny, clear day of 33C on Christmas Day, although beach goers will be disappointed with strong winds and large swells.


Wednesday, October 29th 1997, 2:03AM

Fred and Carol Williams of the South Bronx strolled by the stock exchange building yesterday and keenly watched the frenzy.

The newest Lotto jackpot winners have $17 million to invest. They don't own a single stock, but they planned to play the market with some professional guidance. The couple chose to receive their winnings in 25 annual installments of $425,000.

"Markets fluctuate," Fred Williams said, sounding more like a millionaire than a counselor for the state's Office of Children and Family Services. He has no plans to quit his job.

Aside from taking the financial plunge, the Williamses, who have been married 26 years, intend to buy a condominium and travel.

On a whim, Fred Williams purchased his Quick-Pick ticket at Stadium Grocery, near Yankee Stadium. He found his winning numbers 10, 18, 24, 36, 47 and 50 in Sunday's Daily News.

Summary: Fred and Carol Williams of the South Bronx strolled by the stock exchange building yesterday and keenly watched the frenzy. The newest Lotto jackpot winners have $17 million to invest. They don't own a single stock, but they planned to play the market with some professional guidance. The couple chose to receive their winnings in 25 annual installments of $425,000. "Markets fluctuate,"Fred Williams said, sounding more like a millionaire than a


7/6/2007 7:05 AM PDT by TMZ Staff

Lauren Conrad may be giving "Laguna Beach" bad boy Jason Wahler another chance ... for ratings, at least. TMZ caught LC filming portions of the next season of her MTV reality show, "The Hills," and Wahler was by her side during the taping outside of Ketchup. For those not savvy to the dating habits of the blonde from "The Real OC," LC and Jason broke up -- for the second time -- last August and Wahler has since been arrested four times ... in four different states! LC's enemies Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were also spotted inside the restaurant -- sounds like a night full of winners for Conrad!

Tags: TV, The Hills, Jason Wahler, Lauren Conrad

Summary: Lauren Conrad may be giving "Laguna Beach" bad boy Jason Wahler another chance ... for ratings, at least. insertBCSinglePlayer(1078606378); TMZ caught LC…


9/7/2010 10:30 AM PDT by TMZ Staff

The latest woman claiming to be Michael Jackson's illegitimate child will never be able to prove it ... because a judge has shut her down.As we first reported, Mocienne Petit Jackson filed documents back in July -- claiming she's the love child created by Michael and Diana Ross' sister, Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee -- asking for a court-ordered DNA test.An L.A. County Superior Court judge just ruled ... a DNA test is not in the cards. Mocienne also wanted custody of MJ's kids and a cut of the inheritance -- but those claims also went down in flames.So MPJ's claims involving murder and abduction will never reach a jury ... damn.

Tags: Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Celebrity Justice, Developing Stories

Summary: The latest woman claiming to be Michael Jackson 's illegitimate child will never be able to prove it ... because a judge has shut her down. As we first…


By DENENE MILLNER Daily News Staff Writer

Sunday, September 22th 1996, 2:00AM

Spend 14 years together and chances are that your buddy/soulmate will know you just as well if not better than yourself.

And her criticism well, you may not show you take it to heart, but you tuck in that lip, soak up the info and use it to your advantage.

Which explains why Stuart Matthewman, Andrew Hale and Paul Spencer Denman knew that when it came time for them to weave their moody, jazz-inflected grooves onto an album, a listening party was in order for their girl, Sade Adu.

After all, they knew they could count on Sade who has been the frontwoman to the trio's vibes for almost a decade and a half for feedback.

"I played Sade something I was working on and if it lasted for more than 30 seconds without her saying, `What is this s?' then I knew it would work," laughs Matthewman, who, with Hale and Denman, make up the group Sweetback, Sade's bac kup band.

"She's like totally honest very down to earth," Matthewman continued, leaning back in his chair, sitting high atop Manhattan in Sony's midtown offices. `We either got her brutally honest comments or nothing at all. If she didn't comment at all, then I knew it was even worse. I don't think we would have put anything on the album that she didn't like not for any other reason than that we like her taste. She's not an in-the-middle kinda person. For her, something's either great or it's not good at all. She's pretty direct, and we tend to appreciate her honesty and advice."

They obviously took it to heart on their self-titled album, "Sweetback," due for release next month. The trio metes out a plethora of misty, ambient soul vibes that propel the infectious Sade sound forward without the help of the lady herself.

Sweetback instead turns to the sweet-voiced Amel Larrieux, of Groove Theory, and soul sensation Maxwell for help on their solo debut, as well as hip-hop smoothster Bahamadia. Sade's long-time background vocalist, Leroy Osbourne, also contributes a cut on the CD.

Naturally, some will venture to say that Sade without Sade doesn't work a criticism Matthewman says Sweetback fully expects.

"If people say that, it's fair enough," he said. "I don't think any of us have any egos, though. We didn't do this for us to get a chance to say, `Okay, now we want to be upfront.' You have to feel the artwork. There are no prolific solos on there; it's just an extension of the Sade thing."

It would be hard for their music to be anything but, considering how long the trio has grooved with Sade.

The songstress was but a background singer with a London-based group called Pride in 1981, when she met Matthewman. He had just been hired to gig for the eight-piece Latin funk band. Denman later signed on as the group's bass player.

The three would go on to jam with Pride all across Europe before deciding to kick around some of their own musical ideas after showtime, "not necessarily for the group, but for ourselves."

"It was more of a laid-back kinda thing we were into more soul, jazzy kinda vibe," recalls Matthewman, who plays saxophone, guitar and experiments with digital programming. "We ended up doing some little gigs before the main band started just an intimate thing."

Soon, they added a keyboardist Hale and launched an all-out collaboration, with Sade on vocals. No one has been able to copy that unforgettable and certainly, unmistakable sound.

"Our music has a lot of soul but I don't think it's soul music necessarily," Matthewman offers. "It's difficult for us to describe it. But what we do is, we just go into the studio and we just write songs. We don't write songs for any specific purpose. We don't write for radio, then say, `Now we're going to write a ballad and a hip-hop track.' It just kinda happens it's whatever feeling we feel.

"I think working that way, our music is more permanent. We're a four-piece band, and if you take any member out, it's going to sound slightly different because she has such a strong pull on the way the songs go. Sade doesn't play guitar, but she plays it through me. ... We all kinda play each other that way."

The group has been on top of each other for the past few years, coming off of a huge world tour, releasing both a new album and an album of greatest hits, and filming a live concert. Last year, though, Sade took a hiatus to have a baby, Stuart moved to New York, Denman went to L.A., and Hale took up in London.

But the instrumentalists got the jones for writing music, and decided to do an album of songs while they waited for Sade to do her thing.

The new album by Sweetback the name is a nod to the 1971 granddaddy of blaxploitation, Melvin Van Peebles' "Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song" is just as ambient and tempered as any Sade album. But the vocals from the popular Larrieux and Maxwell add a different flavor to the sound not to mention more appeal for a group that may not automatically click for today's more hip-hop/vibe crowds.

"We're not thinking of music in commercial ways, Matthewman says. If it does well and people appreciate it, then that's great. But we don't make music for that purpose."

Summary: Spend 14 years together and chances are that your buddy/soulmate will know you just as well if not better than yourself. And her criticism well, you may not show you take it to heart, but you tuck in that lip, soak up the info and use it to your advantage. If you're smart. Which explains why Stuart Matthewman, Andrew Hale and Paul Spencer Denman knew that when it came time for them to weave their


BY KAREN BALL and TIMOTHY CLIFFORD

Wednesday, February 21th 1996, 1:95AM

Dec. 1995 Dole is the favorite to win the first-in-the-nation primary with eight competitors lagging far behind him. But then publisher Steve Forbes launches a multi-million-dollar negative TV ad campaign against the Kansas senator driving down Dole's approval ratings.

Feb. 12, 1996 Iowa caucusgoers give Dole a narrow win, but Pat Buchanan finishes a close second and Lamar Alexander is a strong third. Forbes falls to a disappointing fourth place, after voters are turned off by his negative blitz.

Feb. 14 Texas Sen. Phil Gramm drops out of race, solidifying Alexander as the chief mainstream challenger to Dole. Dole launches a new round of attacks on his top rivals calling Buchanan extreme (particularly for his writings on women) and Alexander liberal. Alexander's "folksy" image takes a hit when he is unable to quote the price of a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs.

Feb. 15/A.M. One of Pat Buchanan's campaign co-Chairmen is linked to white supremacy groups. Although Larry Pratt takes a leave of absence, Buchanan denying being racist himself stands behind him. The next day, a Buchanan volunteer in Florida is fired for being a leader of a white rights group.

Feb. 15/P.M. The candidates meet in a raucous debate that sees Alexander and Buchanan attack Dole for running negative ads and providing no fresh ideas for the future. Voters come away thinking more favorably of Alexander and less attracted to the 72-year-old Dole.

Feb. 16-17 Questions heat up about Alexander's personal finances including one deal while he was Tennessee governor in which a $1 investment in a newspaper yielded a $620,000 payback. The candidate pleads guilty only to capitalism.

Feb. 18 Gramm endorses Dole, leading other establishment Republicans in rallying around the beleaguered front-runner as the only candidate who can unify the party. They step up their attacks on Buchanan, who keeps making controversial comments about such issues as Godless evolution.

Feb. 19 Bob Dole risks looking out of touch with voters conceding at a campaign stop, I didn't realize that jobs and trade and what makes America work would become a big issue in the last few days of this campaign.


By RICHARD HUFF DAILY NEWS TV EDITOR

Friday, March 21th 2003, 7:28AM

Shocking scenes of America's war with Iraq were beamed live into homes yesterday, leaving viewers with images of sometimes-shaken TV news correspondents reporting while wearing gas masks and shouting over air-raid sirens.

"Now the anti-aircraft guns - oh, huge, huge flash, huge explosion. Get away from the window! Get away from the window!" CNN's Nic Robertson said on-air via phone from Baghdad during a midday bombing run. "Okay, no need to panic, but a huge detonation there, right in the center of the city. There are huge plumes of smoke coming up."

He wasn't alone. From early in the day, reporters in Kuwait and Iraq, and those "embedded" in military units in the region, worked through sporadic battles and constant threats of chemical attack.

"We're pretty well protected, but honestly, I hope we don't have to put this on again," NBC News' Don Teague said, showing viewers his gas mask while standing atop a building in Kuwait City.

"We have not gotten the all-clear signal yet here at Kuwait City," said Fox News' William LaJeunesse, struggling to speak through his mask.

Broadcast stations blew out daytime talk shows and soap operas to air wall-to-wall war coverage, leaving viewers few options other than footage from the battlefield.

With talk of a rapidly increasing attack - which never really materialized early on - the broadcast networks and cable news channels stayed with the story, giving viewers a chance to watch the day pass in Iraq and Kuwait, and then see the sky light up with tracer fire and explosions.

"We've had gunfire of one kind or another all day long," said CBS' Scott Pelley.

Coverage was carried throughout the day on NY1 News, CNN, the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and elsewhere.

And with news coming from around the globe, producers juggled feeds from Washington, Kuwait, Iraq and elsewhere, forcing cuts in and out of events as they happened.

"Sirens are sounding in Baghdad," MSNBC's Brian Williams said, breaking into a White House press briefing. "We'll let you know if it goes beyond that."

CNN's Robertson, SkyNews' David Chater and National Geographic's Peter Arnett were the voices viewers heard, over images of barren streets and occasional flashes in the skies.

All three had left Iraq's Ministry of Information before the bombing started - it's been labeled a prime target - so viewers could hear their voices but not see their faces.

Throughout the day, correspondents in Iraq had to curtail the information they reported, because they were being monitored by Iraqis. And those assigned to military units in the field are allowed to report on missions only after they've occurred.

CNN's Robertson, for instance, said he could see buildings in Baghdad being struck by U.S. bombs, but could not identify them, because an armed Iraqi was nearby. (Identifying buildings would tell U.S. commanders whether bombs were on target.)

"There's no way for a television to display the horror on the ground," CBS' Dan Rather said yesterday. "There's smoke on the right, rising ever higher."

Summary: Shocking scenes of America's war with Iraq were beamed live into homes yesterday, leaving viewers with images of sometimes-shaken TV news correspondents reporting while wearing gas masks and shouting over air-raid sirens. "Now the anti-aircraft guns - oh, huge, huge flash, huge explosion. Get away from the window! Get away from the window!"CNN's Nic Robertson said on-air via phone from Baghdad during a midday bombing run.


BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA RUSH MOLLOY With Jo Piazza and Chris Rovzar

Thursday, February 23th 2006, 1:10AM

Kimora Lee Simmons is hosing down talk that her blissful marriage to hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons is a sham. Ever since they wed in 1998, the power couple has battled gossip that their union was one of "convenience" - that business, more than passion, held them together, and that their interests, shall we say, lay elsewhere.

Kimora argues: "One thing my marriage is not is convenient. I am inconvenienced, s-!

"Honey, Russell and I have been together 14 years," she adds. "That's almost half my life."

The bodacious model and fashion czarina admits she and Def Jam founder have had their rough patches.

"The things we go through are very regular things that regular people in Middle America go through," she tells Margeaux Watson in Vibe Vixen magazine.

Folks in Kenosha, Wis., may not have Âexactly the same issues. Take that time Russell slapped her picture on a Phat Farm T-shirt without her permission.

"He didn't pay me, which is totally illegal," she points out. "That's like putting a print of ÂBeyoncÃ© on my shirt - she would sue the s- out of me! But I never did sue him. See, that's one of the things about being married.

"I think he probably feels that he's paid me in so many other ways, and I feel like that's true," she said.

Kimora's rep yesterday denied the couple was headed for divorce, even though career demands often keep them apart.

A friend of the couple admitted that, even though Kimora is often seen with an entourage of girlfriends, "in private, she and Russell are very much in love."

She clearly enjoys the bounty their union has brought her.

"I don't apologize for my diamonds, Rolls-Royce, Range Rover or anything," she says. "Look, Queen Elizabeth has more diamonds than me. Why don't people attack her for it?

And she even sounds flattered that Russell slapped her image on "a line of underwear - all over the boys' d-s ... I've been all over their a-; they just sittin' all over me."

N.J. pol running for his life?

Running for mayor of Newark can be dangerous, according to candidate Cory Booker.

The Oxford-educated underdog didn't worry much about his safety when he ran against entrenched Mayor Sharpe James in 2002. But now that he's garnered national attention (and the support of Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg), Booker says he's received threats of violence.

"I have armed security guards driving with me," he said at Tuesday's screening of "Street Fight," the Oscar-nominated 2005 documentary about his last race. "I think it's because we stand a much better chance of winning."

Booker didn't want to discuss the alleged threats in detail, telling us, "We want this campaign to be about how to build a safe city, how to deal with poverty." (A call to the mayor's office wasn't immediately returned.)

Booker said he's also been offered major "bribes" to drop out of the race - including one from "a developer who tried to slip $40,000 into my pocket."

Speaking to a crowd that included Glenn Close, Uma Thurman and Andre Balazs, Winona Ryder, Liev Schreiber, Bobby Kennedy, Moby, Rosie Perez, Karen Duffy and "Street Fight" filmmakers Marshall Curry, Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus, Booker said that, besides dethroning James, "We're trying to sweep the whole city council."

Designer Cynthia Rowley asked him if he has a "First Lady," should he win. "No," said Booker. "But I have 75 days."

Drummer says Joel moved him out

Drummer Liberty DeVitto has been on every Billy Joel tour since 1974. So why wasn't he hammering the skins at the Piano Man's recent run at Madison Square Garden?

"Artistic differences," says Joel's rep.

"I guess that's what they call it when you try to tell a friend the truth," DeVitto tells us.

DeVitto, who has known Joel since they were teenagers, says their trouble started at the end of their last tour.

"I told him I was getting divorced, my ex-wife was getting everything, could he help me out? I helped him create hits, but I wasn't getting any royalties. The next day, he had the tour manager tell me, 'No way.'"

When Joel didn't invite him to his 2004 wedding to third wife, Kate Lee, DeVitto says, "I wrote him a letter, confronting him about his drinking and certain management issues. People said I discredited him. But then he went into rehab and proved me right."

Lately, DeVitto says, "Billy has said no one is allowed to talk to me." Seeking conversation, DeVitto has been talking to Mark Bego, whose Joel bio, "River of Dreams," is due out next December. (It's Bego's 50th book.)

Meanwhile, DeVitto has put together a smoking band, the NYC Hit Squad, featuring vets from Deep Purple, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and the Asbury Dukes. They play the Cutting Room tonight.

KID ROCK doesn't want you seeing two strippers pleasuring him. The proud redneck has persuaded a U.S. District Court judge in Detroit to block the sale of that sex tape (which co-stars former Creed front man Scott Stapp). Judge John Feikens issued a temporary restraining order barring Red Light District Video from peddling the tape until a court decides whether Rock (real name, Robert Ritchie) can obtain a permanent injunction. Kid's lawyers claim the tape was stolen from Stapp and violates the rockers' privacy and trademark rights. ... WATERGATE SLEUTH Bob Woodward says his "darkest fear" is that the reprieve in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil came about merely because enemies are waiting until "multiple, high-stakes attacks" can be made. "Nine-11 will be a footnote, but it could happen, and if it does, we will become a police state," he told business leaders in Texas. Another prediction? "You're going to think I'm crazy, but you heard it here first. I think [Republicans] could nominate Dick Cheney [in 2008]." The San Antonio Express-News reports that Woodward also worries about the "immense" secrecy of the Bushies:

"Democracies die in darkness."... THE BIDDING for a diamond-studded glove allegedly worn by Michael Jackson starts at $250,000, but some die-hard Jackson fans are questioning its authenticity. In 2002, Jackson told Webster Hall's Baird Jones that he gave his gloves only to charities, never "to individuals, even if the person is someone very close to me." The glove had belonged to Liza Minnelli's ex David Gest, who produced Jacko's 2001 Madison Square Garden concert, and is now being offered by a Parisian seller. A rep for Gest insists that it belonged to Jackson.

Summary: Kimora Lee Simmons is hosing down talk that her blissful marriage to hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons is a sham. Ever since they wed in 1998, the power couple has battled gossip that their union was one of "convenience"- that business, more than passion, held them together, and that their interests, shall we say, lay elsewhere. Kimora argues: "One thing my marriage is not is convenient. I am inconvenienced, s-! "Honey, Russell and I have been


NEW YORK (AP) — The Department of Justice said today that drugmaker Merck will pay $950 million to resolve investigations into its marketing of the painkiller Vioxx.

The agency said Merck will pay $321.6 million in criminal fines and $628.4 million as a civil settlement agreement. It will also plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge that it marketed Vioxx as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis before getting Food and Drug Administration approval.

The government will get $426.4 million from the settlement, and $202 million will be distributed to state Medicaid programs for 43 states and the District of Columbia.

Merck stopped selling Vioxx in September 2004 after evidence showed the drug doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke. In 2007 the company paid $4.85 billion to settle around 50,000 Vioxx-related lawsuits. The Justice Department said the settlement resolves allegations that Merck made false, unproven, or misleading statements about Vioxx’s safety to increase sales and made false statements to Medicaid agencies about its safety.

Merck said the settlement does not constitute an admission of any liability or wrongdoing, and it said the government acknowledged that there was no basis to conclude that Merck’s upper-level management was involved in the violations. Merck will accept federal monitoring as part of the agreement.

The Whitehouse Station, N.J., company took a charge of $950 million in the third quarter of 2010 to cover the anticipated settlement payments.

Vioxx was approved by the FDA in May 1999, but the government did not initially approve the drug for use in rheumatoid arthritis. That meant doctors could write prescriptions for Vioxx for rheumatoid arthritis patients, but Merck could not promote the drug for that use. The Justice Department said Merck promoted Vioxx for rheumatoid arthritis for three years and continued to do so after getting an FDA warning letter in September 2001. The drug was approved as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis in April 2002.

Summary: The drugmaker will pay $321.6 million in criminal fines and $628.4 million as a civil settlement agreement over its marketing of the painkiller Vioxx.


Getting an extra two days to file tax returns beyond the usual April 15 deadline isn’t likely to cure procrastination. More than 30 percent of taxpayers filed the week before Tax Day or later via extensions in 2011, and Internal Revenue Service statistics show the pace is similar this year.

Procrastinating may come at a price.

“The amount of work that’s going to need to be done at the last minute is no less just because you’ve waited, and the potential for errors is greater,’’ says Suzanne Shier, at Northern Trust Bank. “There’s not really an upside to waiting.’’

So you probably should dive in now. Here are some points to keep in mind:

■The price of rushing. It’s easy to miss deductions that will lower your taxes. You might not try as hard to look for them.

Along with making math errors, late filers are prone to transposing Social Security numbers or birthdates. Not only can such snags delay your refund, you might not be allowed to file online if all the numbers don’t match up.

Don’t use estimates because you’re short on time. Round-figure estimates don’t help you avoid an audit.

■Deductions. There’s only about one action you can take at this late date to reduce your taxes: contributing to an individual retirement account for 2011. Taxpayers have until Tax Day to do that.

Make sure you claim all eligible deductions for moves you made last year.

Charitable contributions are high on any list of deductions often missed. Diligently go through your checking account and credit card accounts to check for specifics of that $300, or $500 you recall giving to your church favorite charity.

If your health expenditures shot up last year, be aware you may deduct the amount by which your total medical care expenses for the year exceeded 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income.

A lot of taxpayers also fail to take deductions for eligible gambling losses. Just as gambling winnings are fully taxable and must be reported, losses from horse races, casinos, and other legal wagers may be deducted.

■Getting help. If you had no significant changes from the previous year, it should be easy to file online, until midnight Tuesday. Do-it-yourself software walks you through trouble spots. If you’ve had a life change such as a move, new job, baby, or withdrawn money from a retirement account, that might be the trigger to see a tax preparer.

■Easy extensions. Those who think they may miss the deadline should ask for more time by submitting form 4868. Six-month extensions are granted automatically.

■Pay up. If you owe taxes, you still have to pay by April 17. The extension is just to get your filing in. Whatever you do, don’t skip the process. Not filing a return is considered tax evasion - with civil and criminal penalties.

Summary: Getting an extra two days to file taxes beyond the usual April 15 tax filing deadline isn’t likely to cure a nation of procrastinators this year. Tens of millions of us routinely wait until just before the deadline to file returns. More than 30 percent of taxpayers filed the week before Tax Day or later via extensions in 2011, and Internal Revenue Service statistics show the pace is similar this year. Perhaps working under deadline pressure helps you focus better on the task at hand. But procrastinating may come at a price. “The amount of work that’s going to need to be done at the last minute is no less just because you’ve waited, and the potential for errors is greater,’’ says Suzanne Shier, a tax strategist


Those dots are one of the “tehtar” (diacritical marks) in Quenya. Three dots indicate the vowel “A” preceding a consonant when placed above that consonant; a vowel by itself is placed above a vowel-carrier, short or long. I’m not sure why they would have Bilbo place an “A” above the Latin “A.”

Summary: The pen is mightier than the sword. If you know what I mean.


Call it a personal advisory board, of sorts. It’s a concept that more and more women executives have found useful for vetting ideas and helping solve career and work problems.

But it doesn’t end with the close-knit group. Women also need a primary advocate. That’s where a sponsor — the career woman’s equivalent to a movie star’s agent — comes in. That sponsor is a person found within their organisation who will advocate for them whenever their name comes up for a promotion or a plum opportunity.

In the new world of getting ahead, it’s not just about saying yes to big assignments (and getting paid for it) or networking smarter. Top women executives have found success by eschewing antiquated notions of mentoring as a key to climbing the ladder and embracing concepts like advisory boards and sponsors.

“You cannot make a decision without asking for guidance from others,” said Laura Pincus Hartman, a professor of business ethics at Chicago’s DePaul University.

A woman executive’s personal advisory board, also called a ‘shadow cabinet’, should be made up of an informal cadre of three to six professional mentors, friends, and counterparts, women and men, whom you can call with questions that you can’t ask your colleagues, she said. Hartman herself turned to her own shadow cabinet for advice when she struggled with a decision earlier in her career to leave DePaul for another job and then to return.

But, to be truly useful, women can’t shy away from asking their shadow cabinets about topics that seem too personal, such as compensation details, expat packages or interpersonal dynamics in the office. Hartman said women need to just “get over it”. It’s easy to make bad or unwise decisions without an outside viewpoint, making it worth your while to broach the difficult topics alongside the more mundane. Then shed your squeamishness at telling your best friend how much money you make, she said.

The idea of a board of advisers resonates with many women executives. Abbe Luersman, a top human-resources executive at grocery company Royal Ahold, stays in contact with Carol Kauffman, an executive coach and a professor at Harvard Medical School, whom she met at an executive-development program at her previous job as head of human resources for Europe at personal care product company Unilever.

Luersman phones Kauffman “if I want to bounce something around to someone who’s not in” her own workplace, she said. She also calls her counterpart at Coca-Cola, Ceree Eberly, the beverage company’s Chief People Officer, for disinterested advice, she said.

One place for future corporate executives to find shadow-cabinet members: business school. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for instance, female students in the Masters of Business Administration program band together to put on conferences, events, and panels, where they can meet one another as well as alumnae now in the corporate world. But women can and should also connect at work events, conferences and through career-specialised networks.

Becoming the protégé of a senior executive is a time-tested way to get ahead. Because men have often benefited from these kinds of relationships more than women, many large companies have formal programmes set up to connect junior women with senior managers for mentoring. But women are realising that even more important than mentors are sponsors, who take an active role in pushing a junior employee’s career forward.

THE NEW ART OF GETTING AHEAD: Read more...

Royal Ahold’s Luersman also has benefited from a sponsor, as well as her own personal board of advisers. A sponsor — someone male or female who backs you up and advocates for your abilities in front of others — has replaced a traditional mentor as the hallmark of a successful woman executive. While mentors offer advice, sponsors act as your personal spokesperson within the organisation.

Luersman found her advocate in Alexander (Sandy) Ogg, who is now an operating partner at the Blackstone Group. When Luersman first applied for an HR position at Unilever, Ogg (who worked in HR for Unilever at the time), was a vocal proponent of her abilities and promise. He later acted as a key reference when she interviewed for the top HR job at Dutch grocery company Royal Ahold, a role she assumed on 1 Nov.

Sponsors can be bosses who admire your work and continue to champion your career as you both move up, offering you advice and standing up for you even when you’re not in the room. They can also be senior executives that you seek out deliberately, at company events or just by making an appointment to meet. The key is to build a relationship of trust and confidence, so that the executive is comfortable asserting that you will perform well in new roles that are a stretch for you. (Of course, this requires you to turn in that high-quality performance — or you’re likely to lose your sponsor.)

Women frequently say they wish they could have more opportunities for sponsorship, according to Catalyst, a New York-based non-profit that studies executive women and leadership globally. Those who do have sponsors say they benefit from the exposure, said Deborah Gillis, the chief operating officer of Catalyst, who will take over as head of the group in January.

One female oil-and-gas executive, Gillis said, was under consideration for a position running her firm’s Indonesia operations. She learned later that senior managers had a discussion about whether she was ready for the role. Fortunately, she had a champion at the meeting who spoke up for her.

“Without that intervention, she would not have had that chance,” the executive later told her, Gillis said.

Chantal Glenisson, 54, is also a sponsorship success story. Now a senior vice president at Wal-Mart Canada overseeing all the retailer’s Quebec operations, Glenisson started her career at the Canadian grocery retailer Loblaw Companies Ltd, where she worked for 17 years before moving to Wal-Mart in 2006.

“When I started my career, retail was and still is a very male-dominated environment when you’re talking about leadership positions,” said Glenisson, who helped launch a women’s networking group for Wal-Mart.

Glenisson attributes much of her success to her long-time boss at Loblaw’s.

“Each time the company had a new challenge, he came to see me and said, ‘Chantal, you could do a good job here,’” she said, Not wanting to disappoint him made her work hard to learn new areas of expertise.

Glenisson won his sponsorship after a hard first year on the job, when she was told that “you have to prove yourself or you’re out.” After saving the company money, and outperforming her male predecessor, she said, her boss “really believed in me all the following years.”

Follow BBC Capital on Twitter @BBC_Capital or join the conversation on Facebook. What are your tips for successful networking? BBC Capital on Facebook.

Sponsor: A superior who stands up for you and pushes you ahead at work.

Advisory Board: Trusted friends, colleagues and counterparts from whom you seek advice.

Mentor: A senior manager who gives advice and helps you navigate your career.

Summary: Taking a page from the movie-star handbook: What women execs can learn from celebrities about entourages and agents in the corporate world.


NEW YORK — As Sini Anderson tells it, “The Punk Singer” started as a kind of double dare between her and Kathleen Hanna, fiery lead singer of the influential ’90s punk band Bikini Kill and cofounder of the riot grrrl movement. The documentary film, which opens on Friday for a weeklong run at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, is a portrait of Hanna’s career as a pioneering punk and feminist icon, as well as recent personal turmoil.

“I said, ‘Listen, I think it’s time that you told your personal story outside of a band,’” says Anderson, then a fledgling filmmaker. “I thought a lot people could really benefit from hearing her story — especially at this point in time, 20 years after she started making work.”

Having largely receded from the public spotlight after unofficially retiring from Le Tigre in 2005, Hanna was at first hesitant, but agreed to consider Anderson’s proposal.

“A couple weeks later, she called me over to her studio in Chinatown and was like, ‘This totally freaks me out. But I think you’re right. If you make it, I’ll do it,’” Anderson recalls. “I was daring her to tell her story, and she was daring me to make the film.”

When Hanna first stepped away from Le Tigre, she told even close friends it was because she had said everything she wanted to say as an artist. The truth was far more complicated. Starting around 2004, Hanna he had been suffering from a mysterious illness that left her mentally and physically drained and sometimes barely able to walk or even speak.

Heather Kennedy/Getty Images for SXSW

“I was really, really sick. I was deteriorating very quickly, and I was only having a good week here or there,” Hanna says. “So that was a big motivator in agreeing to do the film. I was like, ‘This could be my last chance to tell my story.’”

It’s also why she chose to donate much of her personal archives to the fledgling Riot Grrrl Collection at New York University’s Fales Library several years ago.

In late 2010, after six years of doctors misdiagnosing her with everything from Crohn’s disease, lupus, and multiple sclerosis to anxiety and depression, Hanna was finally told that she had late-stage Lyme disease. She underwent more than a year of intensive treatments and extended therapy. After a long recovery, she says she’s at her healthiest in years. She’s even been touring and recording again with a new band, the Julie Ruin, whose debut album, “Run Fast,” was released in September.

Known for an indie punk aesthetic and unique on-stage attire, today Hanna, 45, is dressed casually in jeans and a snug white sweater, with a large cursive “K” monogrammed on the front. Her shoulder-length hair is as black as jet-engine oil.

Despite her illness, it’s clear that Hanna hasn’t lost any of the fierce energy she displayed as a feisty, outspoken young punk singer elbowing her way into a male-dominated music scene and advocating for women’s place at the table. Her provocative, in-your-face performances and wailing voice made her a polarizing figure and a lightning rod for cultural critics.

“People either, like, totally love her or totally hate her,” Anderson says. “It’s because she’s got such a powerful message and such a distinct aesthetic and voice.”

She also grappled with a sometimes contentious relationship with the media. Still, her reemergence after a long time away has perhaps engendered a more measured outlook from the fiery performer.

“Because I’m older, I think I come off as more confident. And people are not asking me about being a stripper in my 20s,” she said of her time working as an exotic dancer in college to pay her bills. “It’s a more adult conversation. I also came at it with this renewed perspective of how lucky I am that people care enough to do interviews with me — instead of me being like, ‘Oh, this is such a drag’ or ‘People are being mean.’”

“The Punk Singer,” Anderson’s debut feature, chronicles Hanna and Bikini Kill bursting onto the scene in 1990 in Olympia, Wash., the female-centric vibe they fostered at shows, and her role in helping to spearhead riot grrrl, the underground feminist-punk movement of the ’90s. There’s old concert footage of Hanna bopping away, cajoling young women to the front of the stage, and confronting aggressive moshers in the pit. Viewers hear about Hanna coining the phrase “smells like teen spirit,” which her friend Kurt Cobain adopted as the title for Nirvana’s game-changing 1991 hit. She also discusses the sexual trauma she experienced, and her backstage altercation with Courtney Love at a 1995 Lollapalooza concert.

Anderson interviewed Hanna’s former band mates and contemporaries, the female rockers who influenced her, including Joan Jett and Kim Gordon, and the musicians whom she herself inspired. Her husband, Adam Horovitz, a.k.a. Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys, appears both in front of and behind the camera.

Exposing herself in such a nakedly personal way wasn’t always easy, but she says the illness may have helped her to open up.

“For the first half of filming, I thought I was [expletive] dying,” she says. “And when you think you’re dying, you will tell everyone the truth. If someone cuts in front of you in line, you will tell them to get the [expletive] out of your way, because you’re just like, ‘I only have so much time.’ ”

Her candor also extended to the intense nature of the collaboration between her and Anderson.

“There were lots of times that I got mad at her,” says Hanna. “I told her at the very beginning, ‘We’re gonna have conflicts. And we’re gonna have to work through them. There are still issues, but we’re still friends.”

In a strange twist of fate, Anderson herself was diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease during production on the film. (She’s now working on a documentary about the disease.)

Anderson calls the making of the movie a “very feminist process.”

“What I mean by that is a willingness to sit down, to really pull things apart, and try to get to the deeper answer. I feel like that’s what good feminist art does,” she says. “One of my favorite parts of the film is Kathleen showing this side of herself that isn’t totally resolved about certain issues. When we see our heroes being unresolved, it makes them more human, and it feels possible for us to do the things that we want to do. It’s empowering to see.”

Hanna says that she’s pleased with how the film turned out, but feels like the good-news conclusion to her story didn’t actually make it onto the screen. “I kind of have this fantasy of, like, someone watching the movie, and then maybe the next day coming to see us play a show and thinking, ‘There it is. There’s the happy ending.’”

Summary: As Sini Anderson tells it, “The Punk Singer” started as a kind of double dare between her and Kathleen Hanna, fiery lead singer of the influential ’90s punk band Bikini Kill and cofounder of the riot grrrl movement. The documentary film, which opens on Friday for a week-long run at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, is a portrait of Hanna’s career as a pioneering punk and feminist icon, as well as recent personal turmoil. “I said, ‘Listen, I think it’s time that you told your personal story outside of a band,’” says Anderson, then a fledgling filmmaker.  Having largely receded from the public spotlight after unofficially retiring from Le Tigre in 2005, Hanna was at first hesitant, but agreed to consider Anderson’s proposal.


Too much to digest ... A visitor takes in Non Finita – Infinita at the Italian pavilion. Photograph: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

Ah, the Venice Biennale. You start out with the best of intentions, and then, the minute you get there, you go straight to the Giardini. These are the gardens containing many of the national pavilions, the largest of which – a Fascist-style building formerly known as the Italian pavilion – has been renamed Palazzo delle Esposizione. They are also, interestingly, a map of Edwardian colonial world power: Britain at the end of the main avenue, flanked by France and Germany, the US occupying the central position, and everyone else in a supporting role. They provide an ambience that can't help but colour your viewing experience.

Three days follow, throughout which you are doing pretty much nothing but looking at art, but when you leave it's clear that you've seen practically nothing at all. Did I see Krossing in Mestre? No. Did I catch Blue Zone at Campo San Zaccaria? I'm afraid not. What about Seduction into the Sign in the Campo della Chiesa? There was no time. And perhaps these are much more interesting than anything that did pass under my gaze. So the guilt sets in: what was I doing all that time? What was I thinking of?

The press pack includes a 27-page list of exhibitions, all of which are, in one way or another, related to the biennale. In addition to the main sites, these can be found spread right across Venice. Some are nationally sponsored shows on a par with those in the Giardini itself. The rest, in that somewhat disturbing, quasi-military way beloved of modern art, are referred to as collateral events. Taken together, they constitute an unfeasibly large and indigestible set of offerings. I could comfort myself with the certainty that no one else managed to see this multi-national glut either, but guilt doesn't work that way. Oh, and yes, there's even an exhibition of work by Robert Rauschenberg at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection called Gluts.

So much of the biennale experience is vicarious, virtual. Roman Ondak's transformation of the Czech/Slovak pavilion into a walk-through continuation of the Giardini's gravel path with shrub planting to either side is the most succinct, humorous and thoughtful expression of this fact. It seems to say: you're here to be here, isn't that enough? And even what you do see is problematic. An installation by Blinky Palermo, first shown in 1976, has been carefully recreated in the main Pallazzo delle Esposizioni, right down to a careful distressing of the walls to take them back to something like their state at that time. Somewhere along the line, the artist's name – a soubriquet he picked up at art school – has for no apparent reason been reduced simply to Palermo. Close by, and in many other locations, there are examples of the multi-coloured poles that Polish artist André Cadere would leave propped against the wall in other people's exhibitions in order to disturb and ask questions about what was on show. Here their presence is not only sanctioned: the poles have been screwed into the walls so they can't 'walk' anywhere else. Both artists have been dead for three decades. What's real about any of that?

This year, one of the pavilions really is virtual. Jan Aman and Miltos Manetas are constructing an Internet pavilion – padiglioneinternet.com – that will remain online for the duration of the biennale. The inclusion of various net-based operations in this project introduces multiple routes by which the festival can bleed out from Venice into the world beyond. How far it will manage to do this, we can judge in the months to come. Whatever the case, its existence in virtual space may be safer than its real-life extensions, given that one such – the Embassy of Piracy, run by thepiratebay.org – was raided by the Guardia di Finanzia just as its members were packing up to head back to Sweden. No reason was given for the Italian authorities' interest in this show, which the Swedish ambassador had carefully avoided endorsing. Pirate Bay report this on their site under the tag Diplomacy Piracy War – somewhat overstating a small incident of collateral damage in which few were hurt and much publicity was gained.

One problem with getting to see stuff is that extra hurdles – quite apart from zealous guardians of civil propriety – are placed in your way. People begin turning up at the Giardini a little before the pavilions open in the morning. The queues are usually quite orderly, but this year there is a febrile atmosphere and a heightened tension among the agitated throng. Word is, you have to get to the British pavilion fast, or you're screwed. As the gates open there's an unseemly spectacle as people push, jostle and run as fast as they can to line up at the bottom of the pavilion steps. Contrary to what you might reasonably suppose, this line isn't actually a queue to get in – it's a line to gain permission to come back later for a specific screening of Steve McQueen's film. Pleasant young women walk up and down the line with clickers, checking to see if you're near enough to get one of the prized tickets. Naturally, this arrangement drastically limits the number of people who are able to see the work. And so the British contribution will remain a virtual presence for many people who come. The blogger for Artforum suggests this might be "a near fascistic act of bureaucratic procedure". Myself, I wondered whether it was simply standard-issue British bad planning.

Summary: I went to Venice to catch up on contemporary art. So why did it feel like I was out of my depth?


Raising a private army was no problem last month for the Rev. Ian Paisley, the Northern Ireland Protestant leader, but raising money in the United States could be more complicated.

The State Department, criticizing Mr. Paisley's "divisive" rhetoric, last week invalidated Mr. Paisley's visa, forcing him to cancel plans for a two-week American speaking and fund-raising tour next month.

In a letter to Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., 126 members of Congress protested Mr. Paisley's travel plans. They noted that Owen Carron, a militant Roman Catholic republican, who (like Mr. Paisley) was elected to Britain's Parliament from Northern Ireland, had been denied an American visa earlier this year because of his support for violence.

In November, Mr. Paisley paraded his force of 4,000 "men willing to fight Ulster's enemies"; last week, a dozen of them were arrested and charged with operating an illegal checkpoint. But Mr. Paisley insisted the cancellation was part of "the conspiracy between the Thatcher Government and the U.S.A. Government to sell out Ulster."

Not at all, said a British official; London had privately urged Washington to permit the Paisley trip to let "the Americans see the kind of thing we are up against."

But the State Department ruled that "Mr. Paisley's presence in the United States (would be) prejudicial to U.S. public interests."

The visas of Peter Robinson, deputy leader of Mr. Paisley's militant Protestant Democratic Union Party, and others planning the fund-raising tour remain valid.


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Drive without discipline is a dangerous thing, particularly at the highest rungs of power. In 1974, when former White House aide Jeb Magruder became a confessed felon, he made a candid statement about the source of his moral failures. “Somewhere between my ambition and my ideals,” he admitted, “I lost my ethical compass.”

Magruder, who died on May 11 at 79, was among the inner circle of top Nixon advisers who helped plan the 1972 break-in at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex. Among the first of the conspirators to cooperate with investigators, he went on to serve seven months in prison.

This appears in the June 2, 2014 issue of TIME.

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Summary: Watergate conspirator


Airbnb has agreed to reveal the identities of 124 hosts who use its apartment-rental service to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the company said in a blog post on Friday.

Earlier this year, the online service agreed to provide Schneiderman’s office with anonymous information about 16,000 Airbnb hosts in New York City. The agreement also came with the understanding that the state could request the names and addresses of users who the state suspects of illegal activity.

The deal came after the state of New York filed multiple subpoenas for Airbnb’s user data to determine if any users were violating New York law barring landlords from renting out apartments for less than 30 days when the resident is not present. Schneiderman claims that some people have turned their apartments into defacto hotels, In the process, the state has lost out on millions of dollars in unpaid taxes, he says. Normally, New York hotels pay a 15% occupancy tax that Airbnb hosts have so far avoided.

The company’s head of public policy, David Hantman, said in Airbnb’s blog post that “this request represents an incredibly small fraction of our New York hosting community – far less than 1 percent.” He adds that the company has already reached out to each of the 124 hosts individually. Those hosts all operated multiple listings and most of them are no longer active on the website.

Airbnb itself scanned its service for “bad actors” earlier this year and removed more than 2,000 listings from its own community. “As this process progresses, we will continue to strive to be as transparent as possible,” Hantman wrote.

At the beginning of this month, Airbnb closed a $475 million funding round that brings the total amount of funding the company has raised north of $800 million.

Summary: The apartment-rental service agreed to give the state with anonymous information on 16,000 hosts in May and disclose identities of any hosts skirting state's multiple dwelling law.


So, it turns out that everything really is awesome after all.

Lego Group, the Danish-based maker of plastic bricks, became the world’s biggest toymaker by sales in the first half of the year, knocking Barbie-maker Mattel Inc. MAT off its perch thanks to the huge success of “Lego: The Movie” .

The company’s sales rose by more than 10% from a year earlier to 11.54 billion kroner ($2.03 billion), while net income rose 14% to DKK2.72 billion.

“Our revenue in the first half of 2014 has more than tripled compared to first half year revenue six years ago, in 2008. It is a very satisfactory result that shows our significant growth in recent years in a tough economic environment. The result for the first half of 2014 is an outcome of our ability to develop, launch and distribute LEGO products, which children all over the world put at the top of their wish lists. We are particularly pleased that classics such as LEGO City, LEGO Creator, LEGO Technic, and LEGO Star Wars™ continue to deliver very strong growth globally.”

“Consumer sales growth in Europe, the Americas, and Asia was in the double digits, which is very satisfactory in the light of the global toy market which experienced a slow start in 2014,” chief financial officer John Goodwin said.

Whether it can keep up that performance on the second half will depend largely on whether the launch of the DVD of the movie can sustain sales at their current rate, he added.

Lego has now more than tripled its revenue in the last six years, a conspicuous achievement in a world where children’s play has increasingly migrated to electronic platforms.

The company is still expanding capacity, having started construction of a new factory in China in April. A major expansion of its plant in Monterrey, Mexico (which serves the American markets) was completed in June.

Lord Business would surely approve.

Summary: Emmet and Lord Business drive 14% rise in profit.


The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday November 5 2006

The Maggie's Centre for Lanarkshire, referred to in the article below, is designed by Reiach & Hall, of Edinburgh.

Zaha Hadid, the most acclaimed female architect of our age, has struggled for years with a hurtful dilemma. Despite her fame and success, despite an international reputation that has seen her win the biggest prizes and the most exciting commissions, and despite making London her professional headquarters for 26 years, she has never built a building in Britain. 'It's ridiculous,' she says in the vast conference room at her office in Farringdon, London. 'I have no idea why they don't choose me! I can't speculate any more. Nobody has actually come up to me and said, "They don't want you here ..."'

In a few days, this peculiar state of affairs will come to an end, when her first building - small, elegant, perfectly designed for its intended use - will be unveiled in the grounds of the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, Fife. It is a tribute to a friend of hers, and unlike most buildings that go up by stellar architects these days, it has partly been made possible by the old-fashioned notion of public subscription. Hadid has worked on it for expenses only, and it may turn out to be the most life-changing piece of work she has ever been involved with.

'The idea was that it should be hovering over the edge,' she says as she consults her drawings. 'The idea for the building is that it's like a fold, like one whole piece that just wraps around. These shapes here are openings for light ... inside there are curved walls ... here you can have a consultation with a nurse, and here you can have a relaxation course, and here is the toilet, and this is the library area, and here is the main kitchen area with this big table where you can have tea and just chat to whoever else is there.'

The building she has designed, which cost a little over £1m to construct, is quite far from the avant-garde anti-gravitational creations that sealed her reputation. It is, in fact, like a small house, which befits its purpose: a home from home for people with cancer.

Hadid, 55, manages to combine an air of imperious regality with that of a comely matron. She was born in Iraq, but her creative career took flight at the Architectural Association in London. It was here, in the mid-Seventies, that she became friends with Charles Jencks, a teacher at the AA, and Maggie Keswick, one of his students. Jencks, an American, was establishing himself as a leading architectural critic and theorist, while Keswick, born in Scotland, would later establish herself as a writer and designer specialising in landscapes and gardens. They met Hadid primarily through mutual friend Rem Koolhaas.

In 1988, at the age of 47, 10 years after she married Charles, Maggie Keswick Jencks was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy followed by a mastectomy, and in the next five years did some of her best work; she wasn't the sort of woman to hang around waiting for the worst. Five years later, the cancer reappeared in her bone, bone marrow and liver, and she was given a grim prognosis. A specialist advised her not to compound her problems by searching for desperate treatments or quack remedies, and if it hadn't been for her two children she might have given up. Instead, with the help of her husband, she gathered as much information as she could from all possible sources, occasionally travelling abroad for new therapies.

Her main course of treatment took place at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, where she underwent a course of high-dose chemotherapy and stem-cell replacement. She also changed her diet and learnt reflexology, and the more she took control of her treatment, the better she felt. She was surrounded by people doing their best to help her, but she was still often confused by the wide variety of choices presented to her, and her grasp of aesthetics made her wonder if the strip-lit clinical environments she spent so much time in couldn't be improved to alleviate the stress. 'I would drive her for two hours to her chemo,' her husband remembers, 'and then we would often wait for an hour in a room with no windows, and on the way back, when she was often in pain, she would talk about how she didn't mind waiting, but that she wished it could at least be in a nicer place.'

Maggie was encouraged by her surgeon to put some of her thoughts on paper, and the result was an article entitled 'A View from the Front Line', published in the medical journal The Breast. 'I am a sanguine character,' she wrote, 'and for 48 years my life was exceptionally easy. So easy that for me breast cancer seemed almost like a payment of dues.' She went on to describe how most of the treatment and advice she received was well-intentioned and often of a high standard, but it was clear that the NHS found it difficult to cope with the huge pressures placed upon it ('I'm so sorry dear, but could we move you to the corridor?')

She read that having cancer was a bit like a parachute jump behind enemy lines, and she agreed. 'There you are, the future patient, quietly progressing with other passengers towards a distant destination when, astonishingly, a large hole opens in the floor next to you. People in white coats appear, help you into a parachute and - no time to think - out you go.' Her account, which her friends point out is just as quick-witted and eloquent as she was in person, goes on to consider her own case in some detail - how she learnt about Chinese medicine, the part played by meditation in her recuperation, her erudite but relaxed attitude towards dietary supplements and nutrition.

Maggie reached a significant conclusion: what matters most is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying. She found that the more information she obtained, the less fearful she became. But she continued to loathe her environments: 'Waiting areas could finish you off.' Her experience was one of tiring expeditions round huge institutions, terrible lighting and miserable seating. She saw how 'patients who arrive relatively hopeful soon start to wilt'. And she felt there was nowhere she could go to cry.

At the time of her writing in 1994, she was in remission, but the cancer returned within a few months. She resolved 'to die as well as possible', and she did so in June 1995. But before she died she laid the groundwork for an important new step in the way this country cares for its cancer patients and those close to them. The idea could be considered revolutionary if it wasn't so straightforward, and so overdue.

Maggie had visited the Wellness Foundation in Santa Monica, and her spirits immediately lifted. Here was a vision for ideal care, a place where the patient was not just another unit being processed through an entrenched hospital system. And so she and her husband and her friends began thinking about a place where waiting time could be used positively by studying the latest literature, or relaxing, or talking to other patients in a comfortable but inexpensive environment. They imagined that this place would have a large kitchen with a kettle seldom off the boil.

It would ideally have a placid and healing view, and do everything to discourage gloom. Soon the architect Richard Murphy drew up plans to convert a stone stable block in the grounds of the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, into a place of colour and light. Maggie studied the plans with her husband in the days before she died, and discussed her ideas with her oncology nurse Laura Lee. 'Her big thing was that the patient should feel empowered,' Lee says. 'And to feel that your life doesn't end when you get your diagnosis.'

And so it was that the first Maggie's Centre opened 100 yards from the hospital's oncology unit in 1996. Since then, three similar drop-in centres have opened - in Glasgow in 2002 (designed by the local firm Page/Park), in Dundee in 2003 (Frank Gehry), and Inverness in 2005 (Page/Park again). The Maggie's programme also runs within the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, and is due to get its own building there in 2008. Site work has just commenced on the Maggie's Centre designed by Richard Rogers on the edge of the Charing Cross Hospital, and there are more planned in Cambridge, Cheltenham, Nottingham, Swansea and Lanarkshire, by the architects Daniel Liebeskind, Richard McCormac, Piers Gough and Kisho Kurokawa.

Zaha Hadid's building is not the sort of thing you would expect to see within the grounds of any NHS trust hospital, much less one whose main exposed feature beyond its rectangular tower block is its car park. But Hadid and her client spotted an opportunity. On the edge of the car park there is a wilderness dipping into a hollow, and by placing a small building on its edge facing away from the hospital a sense of calm may be obtained by those within it. The seamless fold of the steel structure suggests a single cell before it starts to multiply and cause havoc; after the bad news and the uncomfortable treatment in the main building, a person may return to a state of wellbeing and poise in an atmosphere of mutual support.

The outside is clad in a black liquid-applied polyurethane coating with a silicon carbide grit that makes it glisten in the sun. Inside, the scene is white, the curves and ramps contrasting with the taut external frame. Once again, allegory: the harsh reality softened by clean comfort and impregnability.

'I think that fundamentally architecture is really about wellbeing,' Hadid told me. 'Every building you make, people should feel good in it.' Hadid's most famous works - the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, the Tram Station in Strasbourg, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg - all reflect the tone of their intended purpose. Her Maggie's Centre in Fife is no exception. She remembers conversations with Maggie Keswick Jencks in hospital about the impact of surroundings on one's mental health, but only began to fully interpret the brief for her project after visiting Scotland's other Maggie's Centres and imagining an interface between the isolation and turmoil that treatment for cancer can create, and the ability to alleviate this with the benefits of shared experience, professional guidance and fortitude. In strict architectural parlance, Hadid concluded that she was actually building 'a place were people can just chill out'.

I was escorted inside the structure earlier this month by the project manager Tiago Correia, and we had trouble hearing ourselves above the drilling and the slapping of paint. The gas and electricity had recently gone in, and the shelves were going up. The furniture had just arrived from Germany. Once in a while, Correia broke off from the tour to observe how the light affected the outside walls: 'Look, there's the sparkle!' He was born in Portugal, where he had seen cancer strike his grandfather. He showed me how the hard furniture followed the curves, and the computer shelf and seat formed part of an inner wall. Then there was the library area, the counselling room, the staff office and toilet, and the clever curtain-and-door system that could either open up all the rooms to the hub of the kitchen, or seclude them. He was fairly sure everything would be ready and smoothly coated by the time Gordon and Sarah Brown come up to open it at the beginning of November.

The building will have three full-time staff and two part-time benefit advisors, and the range of help on offer will include sessions with clinical psychologists, art therapists, nutritionists and beauticians; there will be assistance with prostheses, stress management and much advice for family and friends. One of the permanent staff will be Elizabeth Adams, who for the past two years has steered the fundraising campaign. The centre received £400,000 from the Lottery, and has raised more than that again from a number of private donations and the usual dinners and sponsored hikes to exotic lands. 'It's captured the imagination of Fife,' Adams says, 'for who hasn't been touched by cancer?' The fundraising continues: with all services provided free of charge, the annual running costs are estimated at between £250,000 and £300,000.

Maggie Keswick Jencks's oncology nurse is now the chief executive of the Maggie's empire. A decade after the first opening, Laura Lee says, 'The centres have become a beacon, but it still feels that we're not going fast enough.' Lee finds that everywhere she goes in Kirkcaldy she hears people talking about the new building. Not everyone is quite sure about the shape of it yet - the public have not been inside, after all. But Lee says that Hadid has got it 'spot-on', and she feels her own anxieties drop away as she walks in. She hopes that its users will soon feel 'hugged by the building', the way they do in the others.

'Maggie would have been amazed, delighted, stupefied,' Charles Jencks says. 'She did the blueprint, but would never have imagined the impact.' Jencks uses a good word to describe the ethos of his former wife's concept, and its subsequent interpretation by passionate architects: kitchenism. 'You can just go in and slip into a relationship without having to fill in forms,' he says. 'It's an institution which is not an institution, a home that is not a house, a church which is existentialist.' And he may as well have added: a door that is always open.

· To make a donation to the running costs, please go to www.maggiescentres.net

Summary: For people seriously ill with cancer, a positive outlook is essential. Yet so much of their time is spent in soul-destroying waiting rooms and strip-lit clinics. How much better for a patient to 'feel hugged by a building'. Simon Garfield reveals why Zaha Hadid's new Maggie's Centre - the architect's first commission on home soil - will be a fitting tribute to her late friend, Maggie Keswick Jencks.


It’s time to look forward to cheaper video game consoles, GPS devices, wireless headsets and a whole load of other high-tech goods–although not in time for this holiday season.

The U.S. and China reached a landmark agreement early Tuesday on cutting tariffs for a whole range of high-tech goods, paving the way for the first global agreement on free trade in information technology in nearly 20 years.

The deal, which has been years in the making, is a welcome piece of positive news in an economic relationship between the two countries that has run into trouble of late against a background of increased , with China aggressively pursuing some leading U.S. companies for alleged antitrust violations.

“This is encouraging news for the U.S.-China relationship,” Reuters quoted USTR Michael Froman as saying on the sidelines of meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing.

“It shows how the U.S. and China work together to both advance our bilateral economic agenda but also to support the multilateral trading system.”

For China, which is by far the world’s biggest exporter of such equipment, the agreement is a welcome boost to an economy that has lost momentum this year, and fits with a government strategy of trying to move the country’s economy up the value chain, rather than having it stay the low-cost workhouse of the world.

The deal was announced by President Barack Obama after bilateral talks with China on the sidelines of the APEC summit. Froman’s office said in a statement it would “allow substantial expansion of ‘Made in America’… exports to growing markets without the imposition of burdensome tariffs, and support tens of thousands of well-paying U.S. manufacturing and technology jobs.”

The deal covers more than 250 types of product not included in the original 1996 Information Technology Agreement. As a result of bringing these products under the ITA, tariffs on most of them will either be cut entirely or substantially reduced.

The agreement paves the way for a global deal to be agreed at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, possibly by the end of the year. However, the last word still has to be spoken, as other countries such as Japan and South Korea will likely have issues of their own that need to be addressed.

The ITA covers some $4 trillion a year in global trade, but the list of products covered by it hasn’t been expanded since 1996.

Summary: Agreement paves the way for the first major liberalization of global trade in over a decade.