PET INSURANCE ANYONE? How do unlimited vacations sound? And please drop by the weekly wine tasting hosted by a “senior executive sommelier.”

Welcome to the world of employee perks, Cambridge-style.

As scores of biotechnology companies vie for talent in Cambridge, a global hub for life sciences business and research, they are offering prospective employees an ever-growing list of fringe benefits. Syros Pharmaceuticals Inc., which moved to Cambridge recently from Watertown, provides unlimited vacations along with limitless snacks, on-site yoga, and a company-sponsored ski trip. At three-year-old startup Jounce Therapeutics Inc., bennies range from pet insurance and tuition reimbursement to a fridge stocked with food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For dessert, the freezer has every flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Oh, and there’s fresh fruit, too.

“It’s a very, very competitive job market,” says Leslie Kaufman, senior director for human resources at Syros. “These perks used to be the thing that differentiated companies, but they’re not that unusual anymore. It’s something that everyone does.”

Voyager Therapeutics Inc. hosts a Stimulate Your Neurons happy hour on Wednesday afternoons, complete with wine tastings and lectures by Bob Pietrusko, a senior vice president of regulatory affairs who doubles as the company’s sommelier. The events typically draw more than half of the company’s 74 employees, says Kathleen Hayes, Voyager’s human resources vice president. “People who probably couldn’t tell red from white are now asking, ‘Is there a Barolo this week?’ When we went public, we had congratulatory bottles. Some of these wines are quite expensive. One week we had a $250 bottle.”

Read the full list of winners and more stories about worker happiness.

The largesse is part of an employee-nurturing culture that migrated to Cambridge from California in the 1990s. That’s when alums of San Francisco Bay Area biotechs like Genentech came east to lead pioneering local companies such as Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., according to Kaufman. She says she learned at Millennium that mingling at happy hours and other company gatherings “absolutely helps build the foundation for good relationships.”

Ultimately, says Kaufman, employees are still drawn by compelling science and the chance to make a difference for patients — but the perks don’t hurt. At Mersana Therapeutics Inc. in Cambridge, every day is bring-your-dog-to-work day. Such is the directive from chief business officer Eva M. Jack, who is a volunteer puppy raiser for the nonprofit Canine Companions for Independence. “We have one person who brings her dog in every day,” Jack says. “I bring my dog in four days a week. You can walk into a meeting and you could have two or three dogs in the meeting.” The company recently hired a new head of regulatory affairs who is allergic to dogs. He’s been fine so far, though, and “if he’s in a meeting with a dog, they sit at opposite sides of the room,” Jack says.

Robert Kotin and Valerie Rateau share a laugh at a company wine tasting.

Startups aren’t the only ones that are perk happy. Takeda Pharmaceuticals Co., the Japanese Big Pharma company that bought Millennium, provides fitness reimbursement, paid days for volunteering, and up to $10,000 in assistance for adoptions. Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research offers flextime, rejuvenation periods, and mini-sabbaticals where employees can spend three weeks to three months at another Novartis site or academic lab to connect with new ideas and expertise. Outings at Cambridge’s Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. range from child-focused “family fun days” to employee socials with Bollywood or Oktoberfest themes.

Can all the perks discourage people from doing actual work? Unlimited vacation time sounds suspect, for sure. But Kaufman says employees seldom abuse the policy, and many take less than four weeks. The goal, she says, is to let employees and their colleagues figure out how and when to complete their tasks without heavy management involvement. “It’s treating people like adults,” she says. “Everybody knows what they have to get done, and we’ll assess their performance on whether they do that.”

Summary: From wine tastings to pet insurance, Cambridge biotechs roll out perks in competition for talent.


A taxi driver in Melbourne was forced to grab the blade of a knife, cutting his hands, as a man attempted to rob him.

The driver picked up the passenger in Essendon after 9pm on Thursday evening, only to have the man hold a knife to his throat and demand money.

A struggle ensued, with the victim grabbing the blade and receiving moderate injuries, before the offender ran.

News footage shows the man's taxi splattered with blood.

The driver was taken to hospital while his taxi remains parked in Essendon.

Police believe his attacker was involved in another robbery in a nearby suburb just a few hours earlier.

The other driver, Muhammed Raza, told reporters on Friday he thought the man was getting his money out before he produced the large knife.

"He asked 'give me everything you have'," he said.

Detective Senior Constable Stacey Dwyer said the offending was very brazen and violent considering it was targeted at people just doing their jobs.

Police have released CCTV images of the man who is shown wearing a cap, sunglasses and a hoodie with the number 23 on it.

The attacker remains on the run.

Summary: Two taxi drivers have been threatened with a knife in the space of three hours in Melbourne, with one receiving cuts to his hands.


Queensland police have put all road users on notice ahead of Christmas with its annual crackdown on drink- and drug-driving getting under way.

Operation Stopper is set to run across the state from Friday night until Sunday, involving thousands of officers across the state.

Assistant Commissioner Mike Keating says they're focusing on drink-driving in the lead-up to Christmas because of the number of parties at this time of year.

"I think the evidence is pretty clear, it's overwhelming, there are social events for families, for friends, for work groups, for associations at this time of year," Mr Keating said.

While police will be targeting drivers with RBTs this weekend, he said all road users, including pedestrians, need to take care.

"We've had 34 pedestrian-related fatalities this year and we know a number of those fatalities have involved people who have been intoxicated through either alcohol or drugs.

"I spoke to a member of the community, (to have him) tell me that he saw a man move out of a taxi yesterday afternoon and lay on the roadway."

After projecting a relatively low road toll for 2016 earlier in the year, there have been 17 fatalities on the state's roads in December alone - more than one a day.

"These are not made-up stories, these are lives lost and unfortunately, we will see people who are a memory this Christmas, not present for the event."

Summary: Police have launched the annual Operation Stopper in the lead-up to Christmas, focusing on drink and drug driving across the state this weekend.


Before you go, we thought you'd like these...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. housing starts and permits rose in September, a signal the market's modest recovery is supporting what appears to be growing strength in the broader economy.

Groundbreaking rose 6.3 percent to an annual 1.02 million unit pace, the Commerce Department said Friday.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a slightly smaller gain.

Housing is clawing back after it imploded during the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession. It suffered a setback last year when interest rates spiked, but rates have been falling lately.

last week to its lowest level since June 2013, and the level of housing starts is not far from a seven-year high.

"If you look at the trend, you are still seeing an upward trajectory," said Michelle Meyers, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York.

U.S. stock futures jumped following a batch of solid corporate earnings reports and on hopes the Federal Reserve might slow the winding down of its stimulus in light of recent weakness in the global economy. Yields on U.S. government debt, however, extended gains after the release of the housing data.

New housing starts for single-family homes, the largest part of the market, rose 1.1 percent in September, while the more volatile multifamily homes segment jumped 16.7 percent.

Permits advanced 1.5 percent to a 1.02 million unit pace last month.

Does Your Home Live Up to the American Average?

Housing Market Recovery Rolls On as Groundbreaking Rises

In 2013, the median lot size of a new sold single-family house was 8,596 square feet, or just under 0.2 acres. While that might not seem like a lot for you suburban homeowners, a regional breakdown shows that the small average size isn't due to urban inhabitants alone. The Northeast enjoys the largest average lot, at 13,052 square feet, while the less densely populated South and West lay claim to just 8,649 square feet and 6,796 square feet, respectively.

From a footprint of 1,650 square feet in 1978, the average American home has grown 50 percent, to 2,478 square feet. Yet tough times seem to be squeezing our expansionary attitude. Although new single-family homes sold in 2013 clocked in at a median 2,478 square feet, single-family homes completed in 2013 amounted to just 2,384 square feet. Homebuilder confidence has

in the last few months, hinting that the housing market's road to recovery might be rougher than expected.

While birth rates have held relatively steady for the past 40 years, everyone apparently needs more elbow room. The share of homes with four or more bedrooms has jumped from 27 percent in 1978 to 51 percent in 2013. And where would a bedroom be without a bathroom? While just 8 percent of 1978 homes had three or more baths, 37 percent of homes now fall in that category.

From 2008 to 2013, both the share of homes with four or more bedrooms and the share of homes with three or more bathrooms have jumped 10 percentage points, while median square footage is up 10.9 percent for the same period.

If there's one strong sign of new housing demand, it's home prices. After nose-diving during the Great Recession to a median sales price of just $216,700, home prices have been roaring back up. In 2013, the median sales price for a new single-family home was $268,900. But for those on the housing hunt, don't be discouraged. Home prices today still don't hold a candle to costs in 2006, according to the well-regarded Case-Shiller Home Price Index. In 2006, the index topped 200 before plummeting to less than 140, and current rates put the index just above 170.

It is America, after all. Our industrialized nation was built on the back of Henry Ford, and America is in no danger of breaking its automobile addiction. In 2013, a whopping 300,000 of the 429,000 new single-family homes sold included a two-car garage. And 98,000 new homes included a three-car garage -- the highest amount since 2007. Of all new homes built, only 10,000 failed to include a garage or carport.

American homebuyers are building bigger homes than ever before. But if there's one thing the recent recession has shown us, bigger isn't always better. Although 30 percent of Americans

, homeownership isn't for everyone. There are plenty of reasons to spend less or invest elsewhere -- and leave keeping up with the Joneses to Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Summary: Housing starts and permits rose in September, a signal the market's modest recovery is supporting what appears to be growing strength in the larger economy.


By JAMI BERNARD DAILY NEWS MOVIE CRITIC

Friday, August 20th 1999, 2:11AM

TEACHING MRS. TINGLE. With Helen Mirren, Katie Holmes, Marisa Coughlan, Barry Watson. Written and directed by Kevin Williamson. Running time: 93 mins. Rated PG-13: A few curse words and a teacher in peril. At area theaters. 2 Stars

Helen Mirren can act with her hands tied behind her back. Or tied to the bedpost, as they are throughout most of "Teaching Mrs. Tingle," a sour comedy about teens who take revenge on a crusty high-school teacher.

The wonderful Mirren, star of the PBS series "Prime Suspect," plays the crisp, sarcastic Mrs. Tingle, a history teacher who takes perverse delight in humiliating her students. We've all had such a teacher at one time or another, but thanks to the classically trained Mirren's finesse, Mrs. Tingle is not such an ogre that you care to see her life in danger at the hands of some surpassingly silly teens who don't like their grades.

With whom should we sympathize? Everyone acts very badly in "Mrs. Tingle," the first script ever penned by Kevin "Scream" Williamson. He has dusted it off to make his directorial debut, but the screenplay shows its greenness by veering awkwardly between black comedy and low-grade horror. For every interesting plot turn, there are several crashing clichs and an inordinate number of cute-dog reaction shots, one of the laziest ways of coaxing an audience into your corner.

Mirren spends most of the movie tied to a bed with a gag in her mouth, and still you can see how good she is in comparison to the young actors who surround her. You can almost read the movie as a metaphor for how the best actors are hog-tied by the crummy roles they're offered.

Fetching "Dawson's Creek" star Katie Holmes plays Leigh Ann Watson, one of a trio of students caught cheating. Leigh Ann is innocent, more or less the stolen copy of an upcoming test was foisted on her just as Mrs. Tingle walked in but this will kill her chances of winning a scholarship that will rocket her out of this small town.

Also in the soup are Leigh Ann's best friend (Marisa Coughlan) and the cute boy (Barry Watson) who threatens to come between them. The three temporarily solve their problem by keeping Mrs. Tingle hostage, but every time the gag comes off, the deliciously skeptical schoolmarm manages to pit the teens against one another, using only psychology and a few well-chosen looks.

Williamson obviously imagined this as a chess game that taps into the teen Zeitgeist. But "Mrs. Tingle" is very much a freshman effort, lacking focus, edge and much of anything to do for a talented supporting cast that includes Jeffrey Tambor, Lesley Ann Warren, Vivica Fox and Michael McKean.

Summary: TEACHING MRS. TINGLE. With Helen Mirren, Katie Holmes, Marisa Coughlan, Barry Watson. Written and directed by Kevin Williamson. Running time: 93 mins. Rated PG-13: A few curse words and a teacher in peril. At area theaters. 2 Stars Helen Mirren can act with her hands tied behind her back. Or tied to the bedpost, as they are throughout most of "Teaching Mrs. Tingle,"a sour comedy about teens who take revenge on a crusty high-school


COMPILED BY ADAM RUBIN AND HANK WINNICKI

Sunday, January 28th 2001, 2:20AM

1 Celebrities expected to attend the Super Bowl include: Jennifer Lopez, Kirstie Alley, Carmen Electra, Tyne Daly, Marion Jones, Mayor Giuliani, Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley, Evander Holyfield, Jay Leno, Natalie Cole, and Miss America Angela Perez.

2 The NFL pays for up to 125 rings at $5,000 apiece for the Super Bowl winner.

3 To date, 2,700,969 have attended Super Bowl games. The largest crowd was 103,985 at Super Bowl XIV at the Rose Bowl.

4 The Miami Hurricanes have six former players in the Super Bowl, and Jessie Armstead and Mike Barrow have proudly mentioned it - even bragged about it - every time they have gotten a chance. "People want to talk about Linebacker U and Quarterback U, but Miami is NFL U," Barrow said.

5 Each player on the winning team gets $58,000. Each losing player: $34,500.

6 This is the third Super Bowl in Tampa, and the first at Raymond James Stadium. Only New Orleans (eight), Miami (eight) and Los Angeles (seven) have had more. Next year's Super Bowl will give New Orleans nine.

7 Tampa's nickname is "the Big Guava." According to VisitTampaBay.com, the name comes from Gavino Gutierrez, an early Tampa pioneer, who tried to cultivate guavas commercially but was unsuccessful because of the climate and rising land prices. A local newspaper columnist then said that if New York is "The Big Apple," it would only be right to refer to Tampa as "The Big Guava."

8 Gerry Austin will referee his third Super Bowl, heading a crew that has only one other official with championship game experience. Austin was also the referee in the 1990 and 1997 Super Bowls.

9 The Ravens and Giants enter Super Bowl XXXV riding a combined 17-game winning streak. Baltimore has won 10 straight and the Giants seven straight. That is the second-highest total behind the 18 combined victories by the Dolphins and Redskins entering Super Bowl VII.

10 Neither the Giants nor the Ravens made the playoffs last season. When was the last time that happened? Well, last year, when the Rams and Titans played.

11 Discount broker Charles Schwab is looking smart with Jason Sehorn and Shannon Sharpe playing in the Super Bowl. "Last year, Shannon had a broken collarbone and I had a broken leg. Suddenly those Schwab people are sitting high," said Sehorn.

12 In a recent nationwide survey of 500 adult men, eBay asked which they would prefer: an all-expense paid trip to the Super Bowl or a date with a supermodel. Seventy-two percent of the men said they would rather go to the Super Bowl.

13 Ravens owner Art Modell is going for his second NFL title. His 1964 Cleveland Browns also were champs.

14 Giants backup QB Jason Garrett has three Super Bowl rings from his time with the Dallas Cowboys.

15 Ravens kicker and former Giant Matt Stover was the entire Baltimore offense during the five weeks the Ravens went without a touchdown. The Ravens were 2-3 in that stretch.

16 CBS is charging advertisers $2.3 million for 30-second spots.

17 About 30,000 hotel rooms are needed for Super Bowl visitors. Jacksonville, which will host the 2005 game, plans to create about 11,000 temporary hotel rooms by docking cruise ships.

18 The Budweiser.com Airship, a 165-foot blimp, will be airborne nearly 12 hours today. It will fly 1,000 feet above the stadium and provide aerial footage.

19 Bern's Steak House in Tampa houses the largest wine collection in the world, according to the Tampa Convention & Visitors Bureau.

20 The Super Bowl got its name from a little rubber ball - a Super Ball that Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt saw his children playing with. Inspired, he suggested a new name for the championship game - the Super Bowl.

21 Levi Strauss makes its Super Bowl commercial debut with an ad for "Reissued" 569 jeans. A would-be cowboy falls off a kid's coin-operated mechanical pony. Medics find him unconscious. Then they find his Jeans Donor Card. They strip him of his Levis, which they rush to a recipient. The victim later awakes, bewildered to find he's in his skivvies.

22 Trent Dilfer will be the fourth ex-Buccaneer to quarterback a Super Bowl team. The others: Doug Williams, Steve Young and Chris Chandler. The Bucs have never been to the Super Bowl.

23 Giants linebacker Jack Golden turns 24 today.

24 The strong defenses in this year's game could result in the lowest score in Super Bowl history. The current record for fewest points: 21 in 1973 (Miami 14, Washington 7).

25 The Ravens are the third AFC wild-card team in four years to reach the Super Bowl.

26 Ravens quarterback Trent Dilfer has only 23 completions in Baltimore's three playoff wins. That's the same number Giants quarterback Kerry Collins had in the first half of the NFC Championship Game against Minnesota.

27 Tight end Howard Cross is the only Giant left from the Super Bowl XXV win against Buffalo.

28 Bill Parcells will participate in the coin toss, along with Ottis Anderson, the Super Bowl XXV MVP.

29 Although this will be the first Giants-Ravens Super Bowl, it will be the third title game pitting Baltimore and New York. The first was the 1958 NFL Championship between the Colts and the Giants and the second was Super Bowl III between the Colts and Jets.

30 The NFL tags each of the 120 game balls with a strand of synthetic DNA to try to deter counterfeiters. The FBI estimates as much as 80% of sports memorabilia is fake.

31 The Giants allowed only two runs longer than 20 yards this season, fewest in the NFL. They allowed 72.3 rushing yards per game, second only to Baltimore (60.6).

32 "Survivor II" debuts after the Super Bowl on CBS. The terrain shifts to Queensland, Australia.

33 Babe Ruth hit the longest home run in Tampa history at Plant Field on April 4, 1919. He smacked a 587-foot home run that set a record in a spring training game.

34 Today's game will be broadcast to an estimated audience of 800 million in 201 countries in 26 different languages. Raul Allegre, who won a championship ring with the Giants in Super Bowl XXI, will be one of the commentators for Televisa, a Mexican television station.

35 The Backstreet Boys will perform the National Anthem and Ray Charles will sing "America the Beautiful." Aerosmith and *NSYNC will perform during halftime.

Summary: 1Celebrities expected to attend the Super Bowl include: Jennifer Lopez, Kirstie Alley, Carmen Electra, Tyne Daly, Marion Jones, Mayor Giuliani, Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley, Evander Holyfield, Jay Leno, Natalie Cole, and Miss America Angela Perez. 2 The NFL pays for up to 125 rings at $5,000 apiece for the Super Bowl winner. 3 To date, 2,700,969 have attended Super Bowl games. The largest crowd was 103,985 at Super Bowl XIV at


Indeed. There were 23,000 runners of all shapes and sizes who passed over the start line of the 10-mile race.

On the minibus from our hotel to the start Ben Fogle, the Bupa Team Telegraph captain, got his excuses in early. "I've been a bit under the weather this week,” he explained. "I'm not sure how I'm going to get on today.”

None of us really knew what we were letting ourselves in for. My collegues Andrew Pettie and Lloyd Hook are both sporty types but neither had run a long-distance race before. As we drove past a caterpillar of runners wearing hi-tech shorts and wind-proof jackets, I cursed my decision to wear leggings.

Within seconds of starting the race, my superficial concerns about kit were quashed when a man in a skin-tight alien suit dodged through the crowd followed by someone in a wedding dress. As it turned out, wearing an underwired bra was the real faux pas. Don't ask!

We ran past the naval warships and were high-fived by children as we trooped through the suburbs. The miles didn't exactly fly by but by mile nine, thanks to jelly babies from the Bupa Boost Zone, I still had some energy for a half-hearted sprint finish beside the Solent.

My time, one hour 27 minutes, seemed respectable enough until I met up with Lloyd (one hour 18 minutes), Andrew (one hour 16 minutes), and Ben, who despite the man flu, had managed one hour 13 minutes, a personal best. This was nothing, though, compared with the winner, Joseph Ebuya of Kenya, who finished in just over 45 minutes, a record for the event.

Despite the aching legs this week, I've enjoyed the challenge of training for a race. But with the clocks going back and winter stretching out in front of us, how do I maintain my fitness?

Ben says that unless he has a race or expedition to aim for he can't motivate himself to exercise. "I have to have a goal if I want to keep fit as I'm naturally very lazy,” he says. The day after the race he left for Antarctica for a month and he already has the London Marathon in his sights for next year.

For those of us with desk jobs, it's going to be difficult to force ourselves to run in the dark, cold mornings or evenings.

Phuong Luong, senior physiotherapist at the Bupa Centre in Reading, suggests joining a local running club — it is easier to stay motivated and focused if you're running with others.

As an incentive to train in winter, she's signed up for the Reading Half Marathon in March. There's also Parkrun, which arranges free, weekly, 5km timed runs in parks across the country at weekends (www.parkrun.com), and British Military Fitness (www.britmilfit.com), which organises circuit training and boot camps.

Luong recommends wearing a rain jacket, gloves and full-length tights on winter runs. "You should start a run feeling warm and then take off layers as you get hot,” Luong says.

For the next week or so though, Team Telegraph is on a well-deserved break. "You've got to give your body time to recover,” Luong says. "You need to eat plenty of protein and a balanced diet.”

But after that I'll be on muffin-top alert again. "There's a danger of putting on weight after a race as your body still craves the calories it was having while you were training,” Luong says.

The only thing to do will be to put my trainers back on and start running.

Advice on staying motivated in winter

- Find a running buddy. It helps to have someone about the same level of ability as you to run with.

- Join a running club. This is the perfect way to find like-minded people with similar goals.

- Mix it up. Keep your training interesting by varying your runs. Try different distances and new routes, and experiment with faster runs. You could also try the quaintly-named "fartlek” training, where you alternate fast and slower paces throughout a run by selecting landmarks to run at maximum speed to (at effort level nine or 10), then jog to recover, before repeating.

- Buy winter running clothes. Start your run feeling warm and remove layers as you go.

- Don't exercise vigorously if you have a cold. Remember that if you over-exercise you suppress your immune system.

- Set yourself achievable goals. Make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-based.

- Take Bupa's free online running check www.bupa.co.uk/readytoruncheck

- For free training programmes and health advice see www.bupa.co.uk/running

Summary:
Team Telegraph's Anna Tyzack enjoyed the challenge of the Bupa Great South
  Run, and now wants to maintain her fitness over the winter.


By ELLEN TUMPOSKY in London and BILL HUTCHINSON in New York With Dan Whitcomb

Monday, April 20th 1998, 2:04AM

Linda McCartney, the photographer and animal-rights activist who inspired her husband to write chart-topping love ballads, lost her battle with breast cancer Friday.

The wife of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney died at 5:04 a.m. at the age of 56 as her husband and children sat by her bedside in Santa Barbara, Calif., where they had been vacationing.

"The blessing was that the end came quickly, and she didn't suffer," a statement from Paul McCartney's office said.

The grief-stricken singer and his children were in seclusion yesterday. They requested privacy from fans and the media.

Long-time family friend Carla Lane said the McCartneys were consoling each other. "They are doing just what I expected them to do. There's this great unity, this great togetherness.

"Paul ended up consoling me. You could say he's being very spiritual about it," the British screenwriter told Sky News. "I said to him, 'I don't know what to do with myself, Paul. I can't leave it. And he said, 'Well, ask her [Linda], she'll tell you what to do.' "

Since being diagnosed in late 1995 with breast cancer, Linda McCartney had endured painful surgery and chemotherapy treatments.

An ardent vegetarian, she appeared to be getting well. But in March it was found that the cancer had spread to her liver.

Two days before her death, Linda and Paul, who had been married for 29 years, went horseback riding, which was one of her main passions.

The sad news, announced by the BBC at 8 p.m. yesterday, sent shock waves throughout Great Britain and the world.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "Linda showed extraordinary courage throughout her illness. She made a tremendous contribution across a whole range of British life."

Paul McCartney's publicist Geoff Baker said the coming days will be hard for the singer and his family.

"People may not realize that with the exception of one occasion, Paul and Linda never spent a night apart in the 30 years that they have loved each other," Baker said.

Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department officials said neither they nor the county coroner were contacted. They assumed McCartney's remains were immediately returned to England on a private jet.

Paul McCartney, 55, asked people to remember his wife by donating to charities supporting cancer research, animal welfare, "or best of all the tribute that Linda herself would like best: Go veggie."

Linda Eastman of Scarsdale, married Paul McCartney in London in 1969.

After the breakup of the Beatles, Linda joined her husband's new band, Wings, in 1972 as a keyboard player and backup singer.

Lane said that after Linda was diagnosed with cancer, "She never complained."

While fighting the disease, McCartney mustered the energy to sing "Heaven on a Sunday" with her husband on his 1997 hit album "Flaming Pie."

"Any love song I write is written for Linda," Paul McCartney once said.

In recent years, she was rarely seen in public and missed the 1996 ceremony in which Queen Elizabeth II knighted Paul.

Linda McCartney was last seen in public in March, when she and Paul attended the Paris Fashion Show, where their daughter Stella showed her latest designs for Chloe.

McCartney is survived by her husband and four children, Mary, Stella, James; and Heather from a previous marriage. Funeral arrangements were pending.

Her death was the latest in a string of tragedies to strike the Fab Four, including the 1980 murder of John Lennon and the death from leukemia in 1995 of Ringo Starr's first wife, Maureen Cox Starkey Tigrett.

Summary: Linda McCartney, the photographer and animal-rights activist who inspired her husband to write chart-topping love ballads, lost her battle with breast cancer Friday. The wife of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney died at 5:04 a.m. at the age of 56 as her husband and children sat by her bedside in Santa Barbara, Calif., where they had been vacationing. "The blessing was that the end came quickly, and she didn't suffer,"a statement from Paul McCartney's office said.


NEW YORK (AP) — A wave of selling is sweeping across Wall Street and stock markets around the world after Greece’s prime minister said he would call a national vote on an unpopular European plan to rescue that nation’s economy. Treasurys and other safe assets surged.

The Dow Jones industrial average finished down nearly 300 points. It swung in 100 point bursts throughout the day as investors reacted to sometimes conflicting headlines about the next steps in Greece’s long-running debt crisis.

The Dow plunged 297 points, or 2.5 percent, to close at 11,658 Tuesday. The S&P 500 fell 35, or 2.8 percent, to 1,218. The Nasdaq dropped 77, or 2.9 percent, to 2,607.

Five stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was heavy at 5.6 billion shares.

Intense selling roiled markets in Europe. Italy’s main stock index dropped 6.8 percent. France’s fell 5.4 percent and Germany’s fell 5 percent.

The value of the dollar rose, and bond prices jumped so dramatically that analysts said they were stunned. Analysts said the bond action reflected fears that the turmoil in Greece would tear at the fabric of Europe’s financial system.

‘‘The Greek referendum puts the connections between European countries at risk, from free-trade agreements to the common currency,’’ said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.

The prime minister of Greece said unexpectedly Monday that he would put the European rescue plan to a binding vote, the first referendum to be held in Greece since 1974.

The plan requires banks that hold Greek national bonds to accept 50 percent losses to help keep the Greek economy afloat. It also beefs up a European bailout fund and requires banks to strengthen their financial cushions.

International creditors have demanded that Greece enact painful tax increases and drastic cuts in public welfare programs, and Greeks have shown their hostility to those measures in violent protests and strikes.

If the European rescue falls through and Greece defaults on its debt, the ripple effect would be global. Europe could fall into recession, hurting a major market for American exports, and banks could severely restrict lending.

‘‘The market is being held hostage by a random event that is overshadowing everything else,’’ said John Canally, an economist at LPL Financial. Canally noted that US manufacturing continued to expand in October and that builders spent more on projects for the second straight month.

In the United States, the market sank Monday before the surprise Greek announcement. MF Global Holdings, a securities firm led by former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, was driven into bankruptcy in part because it held European debt.

The selling accelerated after the Greek announcement, and the US market opened today with a drop of almost 300 points.

Some of the selling in stocks came because investors were eager to lock in profits after an almost uninterrupted rally in October. The Dow had its best month in nine years, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index its best in 20 years.

Summary: Selloffs swept Wall Street and stock markets around the world today after Greece said it would let its people vote on an unpopular plan to rescue its economy.


GENERAL ELECTRIC would like you to know that it makes the world's most efficient electric generators, part of its Ecomagination program of clean technologies. BP, which used to be an abbreviation for British Petroleum but is now the company's official name, is promoting itself as "Beyond Petroleum," with solar cells and wind.

Ford, which before its profits fell off a cliff was promising to increase the fuel economy of its S.U.V.'s by 25 percent, still cares about the environment, company executives insist. Now it has found a way to paint cars that drastically cuts emissions of pollutants, and has patented technology that lets cars run on fuel from corn.

These industrial Goliaths want to be Jolly Green Giants. They have investors to impress and public images to maintain so that they can pursue high-profile projects that need government approvals.

They may also have profit motives; most of the green technologies that make money now are profitable only because of government tax incentives or subsidies. But if oil and natural gas become expensive enough, some technologies could become commercially viable on an unsubsidized basis.

Green is in fashion  the new black, the must-have, this decade's version of business imperatives like "total quality management" or "management by objective." How else to explain why the National Football League plants hundreds of seedling trees to offset the greenhouse gas emissions produced by Super Bowl events? Did it help sell out the stadium or make football a more popular sport? The last World Cup soccer championship was also carbon-neutral. So was the 2002 tour by the Dave Matthews Band.

Business is going green for many reasons, not just the most obvious one, public image. There is also competitive advantage.

"You don't just compete on cost or quality of new products; you can also compete on environmental performance," said Donald B. Rosenfield, a senior lecturer at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. At first, he said, companies simply dealt with regulations; later, they anticipated regulations.

"Now I think that a lot of this is evidence that companies are viewing environmental capabilities as a strategic criterion by itself," he said.

In other words, add environmental impact as an element of consumer choice. "Norms change," Mr. Rosenfield said.

Andrew L. Shapiro, chief executive of GreenOrder, a New York consulting firm that helped G. E. develop its Ecomagination campaign to stress its environmental credentials, called the current stress on green the "third wave" of business interaction with the environment.

The first, he said, was the familiar conflict with governments and environmentalists over pollution. The second was business concern about the environment and about public image, but with an underlying attitude that environmental good behavior incurs a financial cost. The third, now taking hold, he said, is "seeing environmental leadership or stewardship as a source of business value for firms, in the long term."

Some specialists are not sure how far that trend goes. Mark C. Trexler, for instance, who founded a company in 1991 to advise corporations on carbon mitigation strategies, cited the Super Bowl, the soccer championship and the rock band tour in an article in the current issue of Environmental Forum, a publication of the Environmental Law Institute.

"I would venture to say 98 percent of the people attending those events don't have a clue," he said. "So what are we doing it for?" To educate the people attending, he answered, but consumers have yet to demonstrate much willingness to pay for being carbon-neutral.

Ford is testing that proposition, now offering to sell car buyers "carbon-offsets," essentially certifications that somebody somewhere is going to build a windmill, make electricity from cow manure or do something else to cut carbon emissions to balance what the new vehicle will emit.

Business, in a step beyond the consumer mainstream, is proceeding with the conviction that there is profit in greenness. And even though the Bush administration, rejecting the Kyoto climate treaty and all mention of a carbon tax, is trying to shield businesses from carbon limits, some are calling for such a system.

Cinergy, a utility with nine large coal-fired power plants, has called for regulations on carbon dioxide emissions. One reason is a simple desire for regulatory certainty. American Electric Power, the country's largest investor-owned coal burner, decided in 2004 to look into the threat posed by global warming.

Summary: Most of the green technologies that make money now are profitable only because of government tax incentives or subsidies. Send in the lobbyists!


Her work has been seen everywhere from Mass MoCA, where mounds of industrial rope spilled from one gallery into another, to a New York boutique, where underwear-clad models lay inside the endless knots.

Now, Orly Genger’s art is being recognized by the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, which announced today it is naming her the 12th recipient of the institution’s Rappaport Prize. Genger, 32, will receive $25,000 and a morale-boosting endorsement for creating pieces that, she says, can take as long as two years to complete.

“What it’s going to do is help me continue working on the scale I want to work,’’ she said in a phone interview from New York, where she lives. “It’s kind of a pat on the back that keeps you going.’’

In winning the Rappaport, Genger joins a roster of artists that includes Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and Liza Johnson. The prize is awarded to artists with New England ties. In Genger’s case, that’s her exhibition history in Massachusetts and her study at Brown University, where she earned her undergraduate degree.

A committee made up of deCordova curators selected Genger from a group of nominated artists.

Orly Genger and Larissa Goldston Gallery

“I like the sheer ambition of her work,’’ said Nick Capasso, the deCordova’s deputy director for curatorial affairs. “There’s something about all that rope. It’s like a spectacle of labor. It just prompts this immediate, visceral reaction because of the size and the scale and the complexity.’’

Genger’s work is created by knotting rope in large sections, painting it in the studio, and bringing the pieces to a site to build it. She often hires crews to work with her creations, which she compares to “wrestling with an octopus.’’

“When it gets most challenging,’’ she said, “is kind of when you’re in the thick of it. Another reason is that so many times, if something’s taking you a year or two to make, you grow and your ideas change but you have to stay committed to whatever you started with.’’

Capasso said that he’s seen Genger’s work in New York and also at Mass MoCA, where she was part of 2010-2011 group exhibition “Material World: Sculpture to Environment.’’ Still unclear is whether the deCordova will buy or show one of the Genger’s pieces, though the museum and the artist are having discussions.

At the moment, Genger said she’s creating a large public work commissioned for a park in New York and a piece meant to be included in the Art Basel Miami Beach, which takes place in December. She said she would love to be able to show a piece at the deCordova.

“I adore the museum,’’ she said. “When I first went there, I thought the landscape was actually quite romantic, much more than any other museum I’d been to.’’

Summary: Her work has been seen everywhere from Mass MOCA, where mounds of industrial rope spilled from one gallery into another, to a New York boutique, where underwear-clad models lay inside the endless knots. Now, Orly Genger’s art is being recognized by the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, which announced this week it is naming her the 12th recipient of the institution’s Rappaport Prize. Genger, 32, will receive $25,000 and a morale-boosting endorsement for creating pieces that, she says, can take as long as two years to complete.


This weekend, young cinephiles will eagerly anticipate which films will win best picture, best animated short and best live-action short.

And they won't even have to stay up past their bedtimes. These aren't the Oscars, and the academy in question isn't the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Rather, it's the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which will present its eighth annual BAMkids Film Festival, where moviegoers from preschoolers to preadolescents will vote for the best of more than 40 international films. The awards? The Bammies, of course.

"A great many of our films are New York premieres," said Suzanne Youngerman, the academy's director of education and humanities. "We also have a world premiere." That's "Capelito: Ingenious," in the shorts program for ages 2 to 5. Part of a Spanish series, it features an unusual hero: a little mushroom.

The festival, organized by Nicole Dreiske and presented in association with the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, also includes shorts for ages 5 to 9, 7 to 11 and 9 to 13. One for the oldest viewers, "Badgered," is also an Oscar nominee. Actors will read the subtitles on the foreign-language entries, which include the festival's three features.

If those three have a unifying theme, it's human-animal interaction. "My Brother Is a Dog" (German, ages 5 to 10) concerns a little girl who wishes for a puppy; the title is a clue to the outcome. The heroine of "Misa Mi" (Swedish, ages 9 to 13) is a 10-year-old whose mother has died and who befriends a wolf and its cubs. "Her experience with the wolves helps her in her own maturation," Ms. Youngerman said. In "Pelican Man" (Finnish, ages 7 to 10), a curious bird elects to become human, with mixed results.

The festival will also offer food, face-painting, Beatles music (by the band Bubble, for $5), filmmaker discussions and even moviemaking. "Kids can make a short video and take it home," Ms. Youngerman said. So enter a fan, exit a star.

BAMkids Film Festival, tomorrow and Sunday, starting at 10 a.m., at the BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene; (718) 636-4100. Each screening: $10; ages 65+, under 13 and Cinema Club members, $7. Advance tickets: BAM.org or (718) 777-3456.

It is the eve of a new century, and a newspaper reporter visits a small town's most famous citizen to ask her what great changes she expects in the next hundred years. The woman is at first dismissive: it takes more than tearing a sheet off a calendar to transform the world, she says.

She should know: she is Harriet Tubman, and before she focuses on the 20th century, she takes the reporter and the audience on a journey through her own life in the 19th. The vehicles include one she helped create: the Underground Railroad.

This is the framework for "Steal Away: The Living History of Harriet Tubman," a fascinating and poignant production from the New Perspectives Theater Company's World Voices Program. Although aimed at children 4 to 12, the play, by Rick Balian, is also enlightening for adults. In less than an hour, it covers Tubman's sad girlhood as a slave; her relationship with her father, who taught her to use the night sky as a map; the head injury inflicted by a cruel master, which left her prone to narcolepsy; and her rise as a leader of the Underground Railroad, where she was known, fittingly, as Moses.

Directed by Melody Brooks, "Steal Away" uses both actors and, for flashbacks, large puppets. Denise Lock plays Tubman, lending her rich voice to spirituals, which she teaches to the audience at the drama's end, explaining that the lyrics were coded messages for slaves. Brett Maughan plays the journalist, and Natalie Lebert and Miebaka Yoannes operate Sandra Eckert's papier-mâché puppets, which children can later touch.

Near the play's conclusion, Tubman finally answers the reporter's question. I won't reveal her response, except to say that in one simple, devastating sentence, she sums up the exhausting, still unresolved struggle.

"Steal Away," tomorrow and March 11 at 11:30 a.m. at the WorkShop Theater Company, 312 West 36th Street, fourth floor, Manhattan; (212) 695-4173, ext. 5; Tickets: $10; under 12, $8; families of four or more, $6 each.

You don't usually expect to see the Cat in the Hat, Wonder Woman, the Justice League and Harry Potter performing their wizardry under the same roof. But they will be together this weekend, thanks to some other magicians: artists and animators.

They are all to be found at the Animation Pavilion of Artexpo New York. For instance, tomorrow from 3 to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m., children will work on a big canvas alongside the animator Dick Duerrstein. "He's an amazing artist," said Sean-Patrick M. Hillman, an expo spokesman. "His subjects are primarily Looney Tunes characters, like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote."

Tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Bill Melendez, the animator who brought "Peanuts" to television, will also visit the booth. And at 1 p.m. in the expo's center court, the Cat in the Hat will preside over the unveiling of a bronze statue from Dr. Seuss. Its subject will be "a character we all know and love," Mr. Hillman said.

The booth for the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity will hold a silent auction through Sunday to benefit Children's Hospital in New Orleans, and the Clampett Studios Booth will exhibit art related to Harry Potter. And for fans throughout the pavilion, "you've got Muppets, you've got Narnia, you've got pirates and you've got Pooh," Mr. Hillman said.

Artexpo New York, tomorrow and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Monday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 655 West 34th Street, Manhattan; artexpos.com. Admission: $15; 60+ and students, $5; under 12, free.

Summary: The Academy Awards,.


1.The Golden Hat: Talking Back to AutismBy Kate Winslet (Simon & Schuster, $29.95, non-fiction, on sale March 27)

What it's about: Inspired by a friend's autistic son, Winslet asked famous pals to snap portraits of themselves wearing her favorite fedora (the one on the cover). Proceeds benefit the Golden Hat Foundation to help those with autism.

The buzz: This project has A-list written all over it, from Winslet herself, to participating friends including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Timberlake, Conan O'Brien and Julianne Moore. And all for a good cause.

2.Girl Walks into a Bar…Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters and a Midlife MiracleBy Rachel Dratch (Gotham, $26, non-fiction, on sale March 29)

What it's about: From the highs of SNL to the lows of getting bumped from 30 Rock to the new high of having her first baby in her 40s, Dratch tells all.

The buzz: A "Debbie Downer" of a book? Nah, Dratch is just the latest funny lady aiming for the best-seller list a la Tina Fey (Bossypants) and Mindy Kaling (IsEveryone Hanging Out Without Me?).

3.Guilty WivesBy James Patterson and David Ellis (Little, Brown, $27.99, fiction, on sale March 26)

What it's about: A dream vacation for Abbie Elliot and her three best friends (private helicopter, hotel overlooking Monte Carlo) turns into a nightmare after they are arrested and accused of a heinous crime.

The buzz: It's only March, but writing machine James Patterson already has had two new books in USA TODAY's top 10 this year (Private: # 1 Suspect and Private Games). Expect a third.

4. Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect KnuckleballBy R.A. Dickey with Wayne Coffey (Blue Rider Press, $26.95, non-fiction, on sale March 29)

What it's about: With opening day around the corner, baseball books are hitting the shelves, and in this one the Mets' knuckleballer recounts the ups and downs of his career.

The buzz: Dickey was an English lit major in college, and this winter he proved his writing chops in The New York Times as he filed from Mount Kilimanjaro, which he climbed for charity.

5. The New RepublicBy Lionel Shriver (Harper, $26.99, fiction, on sale March 27)

What it's about: A satire set in Portugal about a free-lance American journalist trying to track down a missing fellow scribe — and an elusive gang of terrorists.

The buzz:The New Republic has an interesting back story. Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin) first wrote it in 1998, but felt the world wasn't ready for a satirical book about terrorism until a decade after 9/11.

Summary: We scope out the hottest books on sale the week of March 25.


Alyson Hannigan and Alexis Denisof

It's a girl – and she shares her birthday with her mom!

star Alyson Hannigan and her husband, actor Alexis Denisof, who

during pregnancy, have welcomed a daughter, her rep tells PEOPLE.

The girl is named Satyana Denisof and was born March 24 in Los Angeles, which also happens to be Hannigan's birthday. "They're very excited, and mom and baby are doing great," says the rep.

to PEOPLE last October, craved ginger ale during her pregnancy and revealed she felt absent minded. "I have pregnancy brain, which I never realized was a thing but it is," she said on

. "I sort of feel like a Koala bear where I'm slightly stoned all the time and say the wrong word."

This is the first child for Hannigan and Denisof, 43, who met on the set of

during the 1999-2000 season and were married at the Two Bunch Palms resort near Palm Springs, Calif., in 2003.

Summary: It's the first child for the How I Met Your Mother star and actor husband Alexis Denisof


Running around the track or going for a walk around town can be great exercise but it isn't very fun or exciting. Many adults like to exercise outdoors but feel that playground activities are no longer appropriate for their age.

Well, New York City has taken the first step in creating a fun, outdoor workout environment for adults. Kids that play on playgrounds get in a good deal of exercise by just having fun. Running around, doing the monkey bars, running up the stairs as fast as you can just to slide down the slid ... there are so many exercises that can be done on a playground without really having to think about it.

But the playgrounds in many local parks are a little too small for a 200-pound man to be exercising on. A park in the Bronx decided to create a playground for adults. It is located in Macombs Dam Park. This genius idea is already being used in China and some parts of Europe where outdoor physical activity is very popular. Unfortunately, many Americans would rather sit on the couch and watch TV than go outside to a playground and perform pullups on the monkey bars. That is the goal of this playground, to get people moving.

The obesity epidemic in this country is getting out of hand and we all need to try new things to get people exercising. This idea has become so popular that many cities and parks all over the country are now adding adult playgrounds and even some other fitness equipment. The creators of these playgrounds are trying to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer in many Americans by introducing exercise into their lives.

Besides introducing a more fun and exciting way of exercising, an adult playground has many other upsides to it. For starters, these playgrounds are much cheaper to build than a regular children’s playground. A superintendent of parks in Los Angeles says that he spends only $40,000 on an adult playground versus $300,000 spent on a child’s playground.

A lot of the pieces used in a children's playground are not used in the adult setting. Things such as slides, small rock climbing walls, tic-tac-toe boards, slides, and swings are not a part of an adult playground. Those are the pieces that can get pretty pricey. The adult playground is full of stationary equipment such as pull up bars, dip machines, and incline benches.

Many people think that to get in shape or lose weight that they need a ton of fancy fitness equipment or a gym membership. Both can get pretty expensive. One of the greatest things about the adult playground is that it is free and it's open to the public. Though you may not have all the equipment at the playground that you may find in the gym, you have all that you need for a full body workout.

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Social support is another great benefit of an adult outdoor playground. If you have a buddy that wants to get in shape with you but can’t afford the gym you go to, it's much easier to meet up at the park and work out together on the playground. Many people have actually been using the playground as their friendly get together rather than sitting around drinking coffee.

It's great for parents with small children. Many of the adult playgrounds are purposely placed next to the children's playgrounds so that parents can get in a workout while their children are playing on the playground. Some playgrounds are even combined with an "adult" only area. The great thing about the New York playgrounds is because of the law against adults using playgrounds without small children. This gives the adults their own playground without getting in trouble for using the children's.

Some outdoor gyms are even getting cardio equipment such as ellipticals and stationary bikes. These playgrounds offer a great environment with fresh air, no TVs, and a beautiful scenery. You can't get any of that in a stuffy gym.

Another advancements is that some outdoor playgrounds are starting to use green energy. Want to have the ability to provide electricity to lights at a park or some local buildings? Try out a green energy gym. These outdoor gyms create energy by bikes or ellipticals. Not only will you be working out your own body but you can provide energy to buildings and the park. The coolest thing is seeing the lights at the park light up as your pedaling.

Adults of all ages and fitness levels can use these outdoor playgrounds. You don't have to be in perfect physical condition to workout at the playground. One of the greatest things is the friendly environment. Many people at the playground in the Bronx reported that strangers were helping other strangers out with some exercises and using some of the equipment. Unlike in the gym where young teens are paid to stand there and say hi to you, these playgrounds are full of genuinely nice people that want to help you get fit and healthy.

Now that it is summer, switch up your fitness routine and head to an adult fitness park. If there isn't one near you, use a children's playground to start. Hopefully this fitness trend will really take off and every town will invest in an adult playground.

Many adults need to start moving and exercising to fight the obesity epidemic. Everyone needs to get out more and a playground is perfect. Take a trip back to your childhood and burn calories while you're doing it.

Summary:
By DualFit.com
Running around the track or going for a walk around town can be great exercise but it isn't very fun or exciting. Many adults like to e...


NICOSIA, Cyprus — Lawmakers in Cyprus approved three key bills Friday that aim to raise enough money to qualify the country for a broader bailout package and help it avoid financial ruin in days.

A total of nine bills were approved, including a key one on restructuring the nation’s banks, which lost billions on bad Greek debt; one on restricting financial transactions in times of crisis; and one that sets up a ‘solidarity fund’ into which investments and contributions will flow.

More bills to meet the total target of $7.5 billion Cyprus needs to secure an international bailout will be brought for a vote during the weekend.

They include a crucial one that would impose a tax of less than 1 percent on all bank deposits, said Averof Neophytou, of the governing DISY party.

‘‘We are voting for the least worst option,’’ Neophytou said in a speech. ‘‘We owe an apology to the Cypriot people because we all share in the responsibility of bringing this place to this state.’’

Approval of the tax would come just days after Parliament decisively turned down a plan that would have seized up to 10 percent of residents’ bank deposits. The plan triggered an outcry from those who condemned it as an unfair grab of their life savings, while politicians saw it as causing irreparable damage to the nation’s financial center status.

Cyprus’ president, Nicos Anastasiades, travels to Brussels on Saturday to present his revised package to the nation’s prospective creditors and its fellow countries that use the euro currency. There has been no indication yet that they will accept it.

Cyprus has been told to raise $7.5 billion to qualify for rescue loans. The European Central Bank has said it will stop providing emergency funding to the country’s banks on Monday if a new plan is not in place.

Summary: NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Lawmakers in Cyprus approved three key bills Friday that aim to raise enough money to qualify the country for a broader bailout package and help it avoid financial ruin in mere days. A total of nine bills were approved, including a key one on restructuring the nation’s ailing banks, which lost billions on bad Greek debt; one on restricting financial transactions in times of crisis; and one that sets up a ‘solidarity fund’ into which investments and contributions will flow. More bills to meet the total target of 5.8 billion euros ($7.5 billion) Cyprus needs to secure an international bailout will be brought for a vote during the weekend. They include a crucial one that would impose a tax of less than 1 percent on all bank deposits, said Averof Neophytou, deputy head of the governing DISY party. ‘‘We are voting for the least worst option,’’ Neophytou said in a speech. ‘‘We owe an apology to the Cypriot people because we all share in the responsibility of bringing this place to this state.’’


The state’s new Health Policy Commission is moving forward with a cost and market impact review of Partners HealthCare System’s plan to acquire South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, the first test of its ability to influence the hospital consolidation trend in Massachusetts.

A statement issued by the commission’s staff Wednesday afternoon said executives at South Shore and Boston-based Partners, which owns Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals, were notified that the commission will examine how the proposed merger of the two health care providers is likely to affect costs and the overall health care market.

Its preliminary inquiry found that “given Partners’ size and high costs, an expansion of the system to include South Shore Hospital, a large, high-cost community hospital, is likely to have a significant impact on the Commonwealth’s ability to meet its health care cost growth goals, and on the competitive market,” the commission’s statement said.

The commission was created by last year’s state health cost containment law as a watchdog to monitor changes in the health care business. It was formed at a time when providers had been banding together to better coordinate care, while insurers had been shifting toward fixed payments for overall patient care, rather than reimbursements for individual doctors’ visits, tests, and procedures. The state law set a goal of tying the overall increase in medical spending to the growth in the state economy, which is projected to be 3.6 percent this year.

It was widely expected that the commission staff would review the Partners-South Shore alliance, the largest merger now underway. The commission’s executive director, David Seltz, is set to report to the 11-member panel on June 19 regarding the staff’s initial findings. The commission will then determine whether to move forward with a more extensive review.

The proposed acquisition has been approved by the state Department of Public Health, which last month granted a license to transfer ownership of the 378-bed Weymouth hospital to Partners. But the transaction can’t be completed until 30 days after the commission issues its final report. The commission has no authority to block a merger, but it can refer its findings to the attorney general’s office for potential further action.

The US Justice Department has also been examining the deal.

The commission is set to decide by June 6 whether to review two other hospital merger deals: Mass General’s proposed takeover of Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s plan for a clinical affiliation with Cambridge Health Alliance.

Summary: The state’s new Health Policy Commission is moving forward with a cost and market impact review of Partners HealthCare System’s plan to acquire South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, the first test of its ability to influence the ongoing hospital consolidation trend in Massachusetts. A statement issued by the commission staff Wednesday afternoon said executives at South Shore and Boston-based Partners, which owns Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals, were notified that the commission will examine how the proposed merger of the two highly paid health care providers is likely to affect costs and the state’s health care market. The commission was created by last year’s state health cost containment law as a watchdog to monitor changes in the health care market.


A lot of New Yorkers have clamored for the furniture Bart Bettencourt and Carlos Salgado make in their Brooklyn factory, yet nobody wanted the raw materials they used.

The pair's sleek, striped pieces, which have attracted the notice of ABC Carpet & Home, are made from wood scraps from other Brooklyn furniture makers and Steinway & Sons piano factory in Long Island City, Queens.

Recycling wood from the refuse pile brings a green cachet to Scrapile, the Greenpoint business started by the pair, who met a decade ago when both worked at the Guggenheim Museum's SoHo wood shop. But the eye-catching designs and craftsmanship that mark their work has the business on track to be a success. And free materials sure help the bottom line.

"This project is about local reclamation-based manufacturing," said Salgado, 39, a Parsons School of Design grad raised in Bogotá, Colombia. When he met Bettencourt, a Trinity College English major with a knack for carpentry, Salgado was an art handler. Bettencourt was on the construction crew.

"We were both blown away at the amount of material that would get thrown away," said Bettencourt, 34.

Later, Bettencourt rented warehouse space in Williamsburg and launched a line of furniture made from renewable resources like bamboo and wheat board, which he soon found were hard to get and costly.

"We were buying small amounts of material for the furniture, and paying crazy prices," he said.

He began to wonder if he should make furniture out of scrap wood instead. In September 2003, right before Firstop, a walking tour of Williamsburg design studios, he sat down with Salgado, who was also making furniture.

They filled a notebook with ideas - and built a bench and a stool in time for the show. Those two designs became staples of their furniture line.

At first, they were frustrated turning scraps into workable material. Then Ted Badea, a woodworking expert in Greenpoint, told them how to shape discards into blocks 8-inches wide by 10-feet long.

The pair also got help from the nonprofit East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corp., where they took a course on running a small business.

Their retail prices range from $400 for a stool to $3,600 for a dining room table. Locally, the furniture is available at The Future Perfect, a Williamsburg shop.

Sales for the first half of this year have surpassed last year's $85,000 total, though Scrapile hasn't yet turned a profit.

One big issue: the company, which employs four woodworkers, has a small wood shop - just 2,000 square feet of the Greenpoint warehouse it shares with Bettencourt's building supply company. They'd like to double that.

"With more space and machinery, we could quadruple our sales," said Bettencourt, who said they're talking to HSBC about a line of credit to expand.

Rent for the Freeman Street facility is just under $10 a square foot - and the lease is expiring soon.

Bettencourt anticipates they'll have to pay $14 to $18 a square foot for their next place. They could get space for half as much just a few miles away in New Jersey, but they're determined to stay in Brooklyn.

On a recent morning, they had the shop's roll-up gate open to let in fresh air.

And above the buzz of an electric sander, a stereo blared a Donald Byrd funk song with this refrain: "Change means just rearrange."

Summary: With a lot of creativity, a Brooklyn duo manufactures popular high-end furniture using wood others throw away.


For a growing number of workers, job satisfaction is about more than just their monthly pay packet. It’s the little extras they enjoy week-to-week that encourage them to stay with a firm. And these hidden bonuses have become the new hot topic to brag about on social media or with friends over the weekend.

You don’t have to work for an internet start-up to get in on the act. In a tough economic climate where wages have been slow to increase, more businesses are thinking out of the box when it comes to keeping their workforce sweet.

For some lucky employees, amazing fringe benefits are already par for the course so what was the best employee perk or benefit you ever had access to? BBC Capital was curious and a little jealous so went to question-and-answer site Quora.com to see what people had to say

Evasive driving lessons, plus access to police lights and sirens “for rare, rare use” were some of the perks enjoyed by David S. Rose, in his first job after college. As the personal assistant or ‘body man’ to US senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Rose also had access to “airport security passes (pre-9/11) that let me bypass security lanes and even get on to the tarmac at [airports] JFK and LGA, the ability to request a helicopter if really, really necessary...and quite a few other things”, he wrote. Now an entrepreneur and angel investor, Rose wrote that leaving his government job to enroll at business school was “a real let down”.

Working for Major League Baseball gave Stephanie Vardavas, now a small business owner, regular front row seats to New York Mets and Yankees home games as well as “easy access to — not free but excellent — seats at Madison Square Garden and the various Broadway theatres.” She wrote: “I could also get excellent seats to any Major League Baseball game anywhere in the US or Canada.” Although she always offered to pay for the tickets she was routinely compensated by her employer.

Sometimes workplace perks can make a significant difference to employees’ wallets. For software engineer, Mark Yang, the best benefits are those more closely-tied to money matters. “Income tax equalisation for employees who move from a lower-tax country to a higher tax one.”

Free food in the office is seen as both a blessing and a curse by many employees. For Jason S.Mow, a computer science student, hot breakfast lured him in to work at Google, where he interned, promptly every morning. “Free food and breakfast in particular is an awesome and underrated perk. I often skip breakfast, but being able to go in to work at Google and have eggs and pancakes prepared and ready every day is amazing.”

Other simple little extras that improve workers health and well-being are greatly appreciated. Shruti Garg,a marketing and advertising, wrote that her favourite perk was “awesome medical insurance which not only covers the general medicines but also homeopathic and ayurvedic treatments.”

What workplace perk would make your day? Or do you already show off to friends about the great hidden extras of your job? Share your thoughts and experiences on BBC Capital's Facebook page or message us on Twitter @BBC_Capital

Quora respondents are required to use their true names under the site’s Real Names policy. To help ensure legitimacy and quality, Quora asks some individuals, such as doctors and lawyers, to confirm their expertise.

Summary: You donât need to work for a dot com to enjoy some amazing workplace extras


More than two dozen countries, from Romania to Vietnam and Israel have switched from old-fashioned cotton paper notes to polymer ones. Recently, The Bank of England announced that the Sir Winston Churchill £5 note will be made with plastic in 2016. Fiji and Canada also ditched their crinkly paper notes for plastic in 2013. And Australia, which pioneered plastic-based money, has successfully used the notes since the late 1980s.

These newer, non-paper notes are meant to be more secure and to last longer than paper-based bills. There are some drawbacks to the new-fangled money, too (have you ever tried to fold plastic in a wallet?).

Here’s what you need to know.

The polymer-based notes are made from a thin, clear plastic film that can be printed on like paper. By turning to plastic, central banks worldwide will be able to slow the movement of faked currency by adopting high-tech security devices, such as holograms and see-through windows that contain hard-to-forge images. These tools make counterfeiting, which plagues countries like China and Peru (which do not use polymer-based banknotes), harder than it currently is with cotton paper notes.

“The technology for counterfeiting is rapidly advancing,” said George Cubaj, editor of the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money. “To be secure, money has to stay on top of new technologies.”

Besides being more secure, the new banknotes are also tough — and potentially cleaner than paper money, which is alive with bacteria. Paper-based money, for instance, can transfer live flu viruses for up to 17 days. The new notes can last longer too: at least 2.5 times as long as paper currency—a typical five-dollar bill has an estimated life of 4.9 years, while a 20-dollar bill lasts an estimated 7.7 years, according to the US Federal Reserve. Another benefit of the plastic -based currency is that it can also be recycled and survive searing heat and freezing temperatures.

“Polymer notes can withstand heat as high as 140 degrees Celsius,” said Richard Wall, the director of currency at the Bank of Canada. “And you can even clean them by wiping them down with water.”

Sun spots and wallet woes

These new notes aren’t without problems.

Nigeria, which is still a largely cash-based society, is going back to old-fashioned cotton paper cash this year. The country began testing low-denomination polymer notes in 2007. But the ink on the notes faded under the blazing sun experienced year-round in the African country — and Nigerian bus conductors and other merchants began rejecting the blurry notes.

Polymer currencies also suffer from another problem: they don’t always stay folded.

“They have memory and can spring back from being flat,” said Cubaj. That was a problem in parts of Thailand, he added, where it’s traditional to fold banknotes. Other people complain that the new notes are slippery and stick together.

For now, some big countries like the United States are sticking with their paper money. There are no plans for the US to convert paper dollars into plastic ones, said Cubaj. One reason: the exorbitant cost to replace the high number of vending machines nationwide so that they would take the new polymer notes, he said.

What’s more, US dollars are also already coveted in their current form and hoarded globally because they’re seen as the safest, most stable currency. Despite the rapid rise in digital payment options, in year-end 2013, the amount of US currency in circulation soared to a record $1.23 trillion, up from $1.16 trillion the year before, according to the Federal Reserve.

Although Cubaj believes plastic currency is here to stay, he conceded that people will continue to stash money under their mattresses at home or keep paper bills in their safety deposit boxes.

“Cash is a comfort zone for people,” he said.

Summary: The notes people carry in their wallets may not always be made from paper. What you need to know â the good and bad â about high-tech plastic currency.


Gov. HICKS has published an address to the citizens of Maryland, giving his reasons for refusing to convene the Legislature. It fills two columns of the American, and abounds in the most emphatic Union sentiments. The following are extracts:

I firmly believe that a division of this Government would inevitably produce civil war. The secession leaders in South Carolina, and the fanatical demagogues of the North, have alike proclaimed that such would be the result, and no man of sense, in my opinion, can question it. What could the Legislature do in this crisis, if convened, to remove the present troubles which beset the Union? We are told by the leading spirits of the South Carolina Convention that neither the election of Mr. LINCOLN nor the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave law, nor both combined, constitute their grievances. They declare that the real cause of their discontent dates as far back as 1833. Maryland and every other State in the Union with a united voice, then declared the cause insufficient to justify the course of South Carolina. Can it be that this people, who then unanimously supported the cause of Gen. JACKSON, will now yield their opinions at the bidding of modern Secessionists? I have been told that the position of Maryland should be defined so that both sections can understand it. Do any really misunderstand her position? Who that wishes to understand it can fail to do so? If the action of the Legislature would be simply to declare that Maryland is with the South in sympathy and feeling; that she demands from the North the repeal of offensive, unconstitutional statutes, and appeals to it for new guarantees; that she will wait a reasonable time for the North to purge her statute-books, as to do justice to her Southern brethren, and if her appeals are vain, will make her common cause with her sister border States in resistance to tyranny if need be, it would only be saying what the whole country well knows, and what may be said much more effectually by her people themselves, in their meetings, than by the Legislature, chosen eighteen months since, when none of these questions were raised before them. That Maryland is a conservative Southern State all know who know anything of her people or her history. The business, and agricultural classes, planters, merchants, mechanics and laboring men; those who have a real stake in the community, who would be forced to pay the taxes and do the fighting, are the persons who should be heard in preference to excited politicians, many of whom, having nothing to lose from the destruction of the Government, may hope to derive some gain from the ruin of the State. Such men will naturally urge you to pull down the pillars of this "accursed Union," which their allies at the North have denominated a "a covenant with hell." The people of Maryland, if left to themselves, would decide, with scarcely an exception, that there is nothing in the present causes of complaint to justify immediate secession, and yet against our judgments and solemn convictions of duty we are to be precipitated into this revolutian, because South Carolina thinks differently. Are we not equals? Or shall her opinions control our actions? After we have solemnly declared for ourselves, as every man must do, are we to be forced to yield our opinions to those of another State, and thus in effect obey her mandates? She refuses to wait for our counsels. Are we bound to obey her commands? The men who have embarked in this scheme to convene the Legislature will spare no pains to carry their point. The whole plan of operations, in the event of the assembling of the Legislature, is, as I have been informed, already marked out, the list of ambassadors who are to visit the other States is agreed on, and the resolutions which they hope will be passed by the Legislature, fully committing this State to secession, are said to be already prepared. In the course of nature, I cannot have long to live, and I fervently trust to be allowed to end my days a citizen of this glorious Union. But should I be compelled to witness the downfall of that Government inherited from our fathers, established, as it were, by the special favor of God. I will at least have the consolation [at my dying hour that I neither by word or deed assisted in hastening its disruption.


Bertha Alicia contemplates the portrait of her murdered daughter, Brenda Berenice, at first with little expression on her face. Then she nods approvingly, turns to the wall of her little home in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and takes down a picture of a chicken from Looney Tunes that is hanging there, and puts the portrait in its place. It is as though the dead Brenda had, in some form, returned home.

Brenda is one of some 1,400 factory girls working in Juárez who have been abducted, violated, mutilated and killed since the so-called feminocidio began in 1994. The scene, which arrives towards the end of Blood Rising, a new documentary about the slaughter by director Mark McLoughlin, is so poignant one has to turn away from the screen. Brian Maguire, the Irish artist who painted the portrait of Brenda for her mother, and who collaborated on the film with McLoughlin, clearly feels similarly. In the scene, he stands ill at ease as Bertha thanks him for the portrait and hugs him; the embrace is utterly sincere, almost desperate, from both sides.

"Brian was so relieved, he hugged her so hard he nearly strangled her," says McLoughlin. In an earlier scene, mother and painter had sat together on a sofa talking about Brenda's life and death, and they joined hands. Then they continued to sit, intimately but awkwardly, not knowing what to do, not wanting to let go.

I know that feeling, from reporting the feminocidio for this newspaper and later for a book – that of total but unbearable immersion in this appalling narrative. So does any writer, film-maker, painter who confronts this depth of depravity.

There have been several attempts – on screen and on the page – to convey the horror and the disbelief of the feminocidio and the humbling defiance of the dead girls' mothers. But McLoughlin's film is in a class of its own in showing and handling not only the barbarism of its subject matter, but its delicacy, and the sensitivities inherent in covering it at all. As Maguire learned while painting portraits of prisoners in the jails of Ireland, as he did for many years, the sitters stay, he goes home. Narrators of stories of this kind, if they care, have a fear of exploiting grief as they walk the high wire between narrative and voyeurism. For the first time in a report on the feminocidio by foreigners, manipulation is entirely absent from the telling.

This is in part due to the craftsmanship of its visual narration. And it's in part due to the extraordinary undertaking of the film's "presenter", Maguire, who tasked himself to paint (in a way that becomes all-consuming, almost obsessive) portraits of scores of these murdered girls. These portraits he then presented to the girls' mothers.

Blood Rising was premiered in Dublin last year at a packed screening presented by a mother called Elia Escobedo García whose 29-year-old daughter, Erika, was one of those abducted, tortured and murdered. The Dublin screening was followed by another in Galway at which Elia and the director broke down, leaving the "entire audience in tears", as McLoughlin recalls. Its UK premiere was at the Soho Curzon last month; soon it will tour Britain, presented by Elia and Bertha Alicia, mother of Brenda Berenice Castillo García.

Stories about the feminocidio in Ciudad Juárez emerged slowly during the late 1990s, not least because media and observers across the border in America were unable to grasp serial violence of this nature and scale. By 2002, when I went to report the story, 340 young women had been murdered in ways that beggared belief. The figure of murdered women has now reached 1,400. Equally but differently shocking was the response of the local, state and national authorities: they were not merely indifferent, but blocked any attempt to track the killers. There were convincing signs that these authorities were sometimes behind the death threats to any mother or activist who tried to seek justice.

The girls were invariably captured while running errands in the centre of town, or on their way to or from work in the hundreds of maquiladoras: sweatshop assembly plants that constitute the economy of Juárez, manufacturing (for rock-bottom wages) the goods that America and Europe deem essential to keep their supermarket shelves and car-concession outlets stocked. The reactions to the killings of their employees by the multinational corporations that own the factories has ranged from callous indifference to offensive disregard.

One 16-year-old, sexually assaulted and murdered, was last seen in a police station. And after the murder of Erika Perez Escobedo a modest monument was built, later bulldozed into the dust. In McLoughlin's film, Erika's mother, Elia, lays flowers on the rubble left behind. The murdered girls are blamed for going out alone and their parents for allowing them. "The message," says Maguire, "is that here you can kill working-class women with impunity."

By the close of 2007, the slaughter of these women became subsumed within the wider carnage of Mexico's drug war, which has to date claimed some 100,000 lives, with an estimated 20,000 missing, and which for many years made Juárez the murder capital of the world.

There were connections between the feminocidio and the drug war. First, in what Mexican-American anthropologist and writer Cecilia Ballí calls the "style of killing", whereby the perverse ferocity of the narco war (its mutilations and decapitations) seems to have been "predicted" by that of the feminocidio. Second, and more directly, some of the murders of women seemed to have been committed by members of an embryonic branch of the Juárez narco-trafficking cartel called La Línea, the Line, whose executioners overlapped with local police forces.

Among the many themes with which Blood Rising grapples is that the feminocidio, far from being ended by the narco war, continued and continues within it. Appearing in the film, Julian Cardona, a former maquiladora worker-turned-photographer, stands at the rubbish dump where the first body was found in 1994. He says: "It begins here. It continues and it doesn't look like it's going to stop."

Brian Maguire was born in Dublin, to a family from Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, in 1951. In the early years of the Troubles, he joined the leftist Official IRA, from which the militant Provisionals split in 1969, and which declared an early ceasefire in 1972.

Maguire started exhibiting during the 1980s, depicting what one of his exhibition catalogues called "various incarcerated groups on the island of Ireland, from mental hospitals to prisons". Critics refer to Maguire's style as "neoexpressionist", meaning, presumably, that his paintings stand in defiance of what another catalogue calls the "ragbag of postmodernism", favouring instead emotional gravitas and physical mass. Maguire, compelled towards the raw realities of prisons and mental institutions, describes himself as "entirely outside that new British school of art which has left reality, [which is] all kitsch and commodity". Maguire is substance, the real thing.

His portraits deploy bold strokes. His palettes superimpose cold greys and greens on to warm pink flesh to depict a blighted, often sepulchral human species. Suddenly, there'll be a head sculptured in charcoal and blue gouache, deep-toned and severe, but beautiful. One of his prison projects was a residency for the 1998 Bienal in São Paulo, Brazil; reflecting the haunting aftermath of a prison riot, Maguire painted bodies in boxes against vortices of grey masonry and vast but stifling space.

Maguire says he tries to work within his own rules of commercial engagement – "to be in situations," as he describes it to me, "where there is no charge for the paintings themselves. This is work for which I am paid a wage, and the painting itself has no value to me. It is free to the person whom I've painted. There've been occasions when the paintings ended up in auctions – but it's the prisoner selling the work, not me."

Around a decade after the São Paulo residency, his Juárez project began. Maguire was there, not for the customary weeks and months that reporters like me invest, but for four years. "When I heard about what was happening in Juárez," says Maguire, "I figured, of course – women come below men, poor come below rich, brown comes below white and Mexico comes below America. They don't fucking count, and that is why they die." He says he learned that "these people wanted their story told, in the event of their being no justice for them. The only thing they ask is that the memory of their daughters, and the actions done to them, not disappear with their deaths."

In the case of Brenda Berenice Castillo García, Maguire says: "I was in a state of cold fury. Here was a 16-year-old, the age at which women in Juárez begin to make families. But unlike women in the Netherlands or France, the law is not applied [in Brenda's case], she is denied maternity leave and laid off by her employer, Philips, because she's pregnant. There's no money for milk to give baby Kevin, so she goes in search of work at a jewellery store – and disappears."

Maguire made his Juárez portraits in pairs, one to exhibit, the other for the families to keep. They are more intimate and closely focused than his previous work, lighter of touch, but no less impactful. Two years into the project, he was joined in Mexico by director McLoughlin. Together they started filming Blood Rising.

"The killings of these women in Juárez were not tit-for-tat killings," says McLoughlin. "They are killings at a level of psychic perversion I simply couldn't understand. And that was the challenge. We had to take this on board emotionally. We built relationships with the mothers and families, but all the time this anger and fear was building up, frustration and bewilderment. And you take on the fear and grief of the people themselves, until sometimes you'd hit an emotional brick wall, out of exhaustion. Brian would call me up and say, 'I've been crying, have you?' And I'd answer, 'Yes, I have.'"

In the film, we learn little details of the horrors: Erika Perez Escobedo was found in the street, strangled, her underwear disturbed; Guadalupe Verónica Castro Pando was abused and drugged for 21 days, and her left breast was cut off before she was buried alive. But the film is really about struggle and defiance, not the crimes themselves. "The mothers bring us on a journey back," says Maguire, "to where their daughters were murdered, where they were found, what the state did and did not do." Violence is not the subject of this film; the subject is the surviving mothers, families and friends and their struggle to live on.

"Most work," Maguire says in the film, "is a negotiation, most work is an exchange... [One in which] you have to give something back." During a Q&A with the audience after the London screening of Blood Rising, he added that the murdered girls' families "were in our hands, and we were in their hands too. They had to trust that we would not exploit them".

In conversation with me, Maguire expands on this. "You have to bring some value to the place and people, which gives you the right to work there. And that value can be negotiated. For a start, I can take their story outside Mexico, and tell it to Europe… I can campaign for them by showing my paintings in museums… I try to give something to their children." The artist not only paints the portraits, he also teaches the children of the murdered girls. One of the film's most heart-rending scenes shows one of these art classes and the joy these children experience when painting.

After years of conversation with the mother of one victim, Maguire says: "I have some idea as regard [the victim's] personality. And I also have a photographic image. I felt that if I had some relationship with their relatives, then, and only then, I could paint their portraits."

There is something talismanic about Maguire's recreations by portrait. In the film, we see him pacing around his studio in which he based himself across the border in El Paso, Texas, covering its walls with victims' photographs, writing their names in enraged grief, and setting to work.

Watching Blood Rising and talking to Maguire, a thought occurred to me, forcefully. Mexico is a country in which the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is more important to most people than God himself. Popular faith in Mexico tends to be "folk Catholicism"; it is by no means entirely separated from Aztec and Mayan beliefs, nor the lore and deities that preceded the Hispanic Christianity that incorporated them. Popular faith in Mexico is sensitive to the occult, the veil between the living and the dead thin. The image, the icon, is everything.

Painting two portraits of each selected victim, Maguire often seems to create one of a girl's life and the other of her death; one portraying effervescence, the other murder. This is the case with Brenda. The first portrait, in monochrome, shows her features distorted only slightly but in such a way that vividly and disconcertingly seems to convey her doom. Another, in colour, exudes the life of the young woman. Brenda's mother, recounts Maguire, "saw the black-and-white picture, but she wanted something that recalled her living child. She had another photograph, from school days – and from that I painted the second in colour, which she put on the wall. However, I did notice a copy of the first on her dresser – I felt strangely gratified that she wanted that portrait too, but privately."

There are two ways to report or film crimes such as the Juárez feminocidio. One is to convey some distant horror, exotic in its way, in places or circumstances separated from our own by Manichaean morality; some evil in Mexico, against which our legitimate society, appalled, campaigns or crusades.

The other way is to insist – as writers such as Roberto Saviano in Italy or Anabel Hernández in Mexico do, and as Maguire does passionately in this film – that these atrocious narratives are integral to our own routines; that the blood stains our everyday lives; that "this is not another world", as Maguire told his audience during the Soho Q&A, "it is directly connected to our world, in fact it is our world. It's right under the bonnet of your car."

When we sit down to talk he says: "Juárez is not happenstance, it's part of an economic construct, our economic construct. These girls make those things like the electrical distributors in cars, they make all the junk – everything – we use all the time. Juárez is a city that does not care about its people, [who are] human fodder for the factories. They're now building a new factory to make iPads and things, 25 miles out in the desert from Juárez. That's 50 miles a day by bus for the workers to and from a place with no shops, nothing but the factory, to be paid less now than they were 10 years ago. It's our system. It's the telephone I talk on."

And in this statement lies the final, haunting theme in Blood Rising and in Maguire's art – which happens to be the story of my own life: the feeling of ineffectuality, the impotent pointlessness of this work; these films, these paintings, writing articles, books, whatever. On his last night at work on the portraits, Maguire recalls: "I was having dinner alone in the safety of El Paso. After four years, it was over. There were two emotions: one happy, that I'd had the experience, and that we'd made the film. But also: it's worthless, it's meaningless, it's nothing. We are totally ineffective.

"The mothers have been glad to see us, and I'll tell their story. But there is this sense of total helplessness. All I know for certain is that more poor factory girls will die in Ciudad Juárez, and that those iPads will be all shiny and new. So I went back to Juárez in despair and Julian Cardona, the photographer, rescued me. 'Look, Brian,' he said, 'let's just do our work as best we can, shall we?'"

Summary: Since 1994, more than 1,400 women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, have been murdered. Brian Maguire set out to paint portraits of some of the victims. Ed Vulliamy reports


So much for Michael Kors KORS being a has-been.

Concerns that the fashion company’s days of torrid growth could be soon coming to an end evaporated after Kors on Monday reported stronger than expected comparable sales in North America and Europe and raised its sales and profit forecast for the fiscal year.

Since going public in late 2011, Kors has been a Wall Street favorite, reporting quarter after quarter of double-digit sales gains and snatching away many of Coach’s COH customers with its handbags, eyewear and shoes. But shares, which rose in premarket trading, came under intense pressure last month when several Wall Street firms put out notes saying they were seeing much more Kors merchandise on discount and that the retailer was slower to refresh its assortment. As of the close of trading on Friday, Kors shares were about 20% below a 52-week high.

They needn’t have worried: Kors reported total revenue rose 43.4% to $919.2 million in the first fiscal quarter ended June 28. That includes an 18.7% increase in comparable sales in North America, by far its biggest market, and above the 17.6% Wall Street analysts were expecting, according to Consensus Metrix. (In contrast, Coach, which is in the middle of radical reset to win big its customers, is expected to report a 21% drop in North America when it reports its results on Tuesday.)

What’s more, Kors’ gross profit margin rose slightly, increased 0.2 percentage points to 62.2% of sales, likely meaning Kors did not have to resort to as much price cutting as feared. Kors’ European comparable sales rose 54.2%, an encouraging sign for what is a nearly untapped market so far for the company and one in which Coach has only a tiny presence.

Kors now expects revenues of $4.25 billion to $4.35 billion for the fiscal year that will end in late March, $250 million more than in its initial forecast. It also raised its profit forecast.

A few weeks ago, veteran retail analyst Robin Lewis predicted the Kors brand would at some point crash because of its aggressive expansion: “Michael Kors, the brand, is becoming ubiquitous, and that’s the kiss of death for trendy fashion brands, particularly those positioned in the up-market younger consumer sectors,” Lewis wrote in a blog post.

And while it looks like the Kors party will continue for at least a little while longer, several analysts on Twitter pointed out a detail in the retailer’s results that could portend trouble later on: Sales inventories rose 65% compared to a year earlier, far outstripping sales growth, and therefore setting the company up for potentially having to discount, discount, discount if its locomotive starts running out of steam. And on the call, executives warned investors that its gross margin at its own stores would fall in the coming quarters because of more discounting”

Summary: Fashion company also raises its sales and profit forecast for the fiscal year.