Property developer and former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has reportedly been arrested in Ibiza after a heated argument with a taxi driver over spilled food and drink.

Footage aired by the Nine Network's A Current Affair showed Mehajer and two of his friends being handcuffed and bundled into Spanish police vehicles on Friday evening local time.

The flamboyant former councillor and businessman is no stranger to controversy, amid his raft of ongoing legal battles and rumoured recent split from his bride Aysha only a year after walking down the aisle.

Summary: Flamboyant former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has reportedly been arrested in Spain.


When Elise and Barry Webber left the NSW Central Coast for their honeymoon they had a healthy seven-month-old son.

But a few days later, "catastrophic" injuries inflicted by a family member would leave the little boy quadriplegic, brain damaged and vision-impaired.

Andrew Nolan, 34, was on Thursday sentenced to at least eight-and-a-half years jail for bashing little Bobby Webber, his partner's nephew, in September, 2014.

Elise Webber cried as District Court Judge Philip Ingram detailed the impact of the attack, which included broken ribs, skull fractures, a bite mark and forehead wounds covered in butter.

A cry of "f***ing dog' was heard in the court as Nolan was led away.

"As far as I'm concerned he doesn't deserve to breathe," Ms Webber said outside.

"He doesn't deserve any of our time, any of our tears. We cry for Bobby, we don't cry for him."

Bobby was taken off life support and placed on an end-of-life plan but managed to keep breathing by himself.

In handing down his sentence via AVL, Judge Ingram said the "offence involved a grave breach of trust of the victim who was especially vulnerable due to his tender age".

He said Nolan had given four versions of what happened on the night Bobby suffered injuries consistent with motor vehicle accidents or falls from a great height.

He at first told police an intruder must have entered the little boy's home while he was sleeping on the couch but later admitted putting his foot on the child's back with force and rubbing him along the carpet.

He also said he hit him twice with an open hand and threw him into his cot.

But Judge Ingram did not accept the account, given it wasn't sworn on oath and didn't explain the infant's fractured ankles.

The court heard Nolan denied hurting Bobby to police in the days after the bashing.

"Whoever did this, I hope you find them before I do," the court heard he told officers. "What has happened here is disgraceful."

Nolan was left alone with the child as his partner of 11 years, who is Bobby's maternal aunt, went to a drive-in movie.

When she returned five hours later, Nolan told her the baby had dropped a mobile phone on his head but that it was nothing to worry about.

When she went to check on him, Bobby was sobbing in his sleep and limp.

Judge Ingram accepted Nolan, who the court heard had been in protective custody, was belatedly remorseful.

He put the offence in the high category of seriousness and sentenced Nolan to a maximum 12-and-a-half-years jail.

The Webbers say that's not enough.

"My son's got life," Ms Webber said.

"He'll always know what it's like to be confined to a wheelchair or a walking frame.

"He doesn't get to walk freely so neither should Andrew."

A GoFundMe page to cover Bobby's medical costs has raised more than $47,000.

Nolan will be eligible for parole in April 2023.

Summary: A judge has sentenced a NSW man to at least eight-and-a-half years' jail more than two years after he bashed his partner's baby nephew.


If you've bought a home recently, you may have purchased or received a home warranty.

However, consumers frequently expect more from these plans than they deliver.

Home warranties aren't insurance policies. They're service contracts. Like a service contract that covers repairs to your computer, a home warranty is a company's agreement to pay for fixing -- and, if necessary, replacing -- specified home components.

A home insurance policy, in comparison, covers losses if your home and its contents are damaged or lost to theft, fire or other causes.

A basic home warranty costs about $350 to $500 a year or more. It typically covers kitchen appliances, plumbing, water heater, furnace, sump pump, whirlpool tub, and ceiling and exhaust fans, Angie's List says.

"Enhanced" plans, purchased for another $100 to $300, provide added coverage for such things as a washer and dryer, air conditioning, refrigerator and garage door opener. Optional items can be added, including pools and septic systems.

If someone gives you a home warranty, accept it -- at least while it's free. But understand that, even with someone else paying the premiums, you'll likely pay a service fee (typically $50 or $75) each time you need a repair, according to Angie's List.

Before buying a home warranty, learn what coverage you may already have. For example, if you're buying a newly built home:

The home appliances and systems typically have one-year warranties.

Most states require builders to warranty the home's structural elements for up to 10 years.

Also, when you buy new furnishings and appliances, use a credit card that extends the product's warranty. That can add as much as an extra year of protection.

Sellers may offer a year's coverage as an incentive to home shoppers. Owners of new homes frequently pay the premiums after their free year expires.

Real estate agents sometimes give home warranties to clients as a thank you gift for purchasing a home. Some buyers of older homes find that a warranty gives them confidence.

Other homeowners decide they're better off setting aside savings to cover home repairs and replacements.

One way to think about your needs: Compare the age of each covered item with its average life span. To do so, use this chart from the

With expensive components near or past their life expectancy, a home warranty might be a good idea. Components that have pre-existing problems, however, typically are excluded from protection.

Buyers who purchase a previously owned home inherit used appliances and home systems with wear and tear. A home warranty can help cover the cost if things break down.

New Jersey real estate agent Lorraine Labonne-Storch told HSH.com that a few days after closing on a home she purchased, the boiler caught fire. It cost her $12,000 to replace.

A home warranty would have covered a portion of the cost, she said. She'd had the option to purchase a warranty when she bought the house, but declined it.

Home warranties top the list of complaints received by Angie's List. One reason, Angie's List says, is the difference between customers' expectations and what the plans actually deliver. Homeowners also complain about the quality of service from warranty companies.

Before buying a home warranty, read the contract and understand exactly what it does and doesn't cover. For example, some contracts won't provide coverage if:

If you haven't read carefully, be prepared for surprises. Don't assume:

Find out what's covered, and what the warranty provides. There may be exclusions and limitations. Perhaps the refrigerator is covered, but the ice maker is excluded. Claims may be rejected because of pre-existing problems or insufficient maintenance.

Learn who will perform the repair work. Also, find out if you can cancel the policy. Most contracts allow a 30-day "free look" that allows a buyer to cancel within 30 days and get a full refund, says the Service Contract Industry Council.

Research a company using these sources:

Summary: A home warranty can help you repair or replace home appliances and systems. But don't enter into a contract before asking key questions.


In a world waking up to the importance of protecting the environment and the threat of global climate change, ABC News is marking Earth Day 2007 with a daylong look at the state of our planet.

We will report on the most crucial environmental issues of today and what solutions are currently being employed across the globe. From issues like water shortages, to species extinction, to alternate energy sources, this unprecedented global news event will feature ABC News anchors and correspondents reporting live from all seven continents throughout the day.

Elizabeth Vargas will report from a game preserve in Africa, Chris Cuomo will be in the heart of Paris, John Quinones will be in the Brazilian rain forest, Jay Schadler reports from an astonishing solar power array in Arizona, Cynthia McFadden will be live in China and Bill Weir will be above (and below) the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We will also bring you a live shot from the South Pole.

ABC News has assembled seven leading experts on the environment -- from scientists to businessmen -- to tell us the most important problems, and the most promising solutions.

Witness for yourself how the Earth is changing, and what you can do to about it. The coverage will outline the most pressing environmental issues:

Water: Too much water (from melting glaciers and ice packs) may flood the coasts. Too little water in drought-stricken Australia and Africa is caused by the changes in weather and habitat.

Forests: Up to 20 percent of our greenhouse gas problem can be attributed to loss of forests and trees, often called "the lungs of the planet" by environmentalists. Trees take in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and give off oxygen. But in countries with vast forest acreage, like Brazil, the forests are disappearing as people harvest the timber, plant crops and look for pasture land for animals.

Summary: Seven Continents, Seven Ways to Save the World


BY MITCHELL FINK With Lauren Rubin

Tuesday, August 10th 1999, 2:11AM

Sixties singing legend Grace Slick has a message for the organizers of Woodstock '99: Don't try it again.

The poster girl for flower power says this year's raucous rock festival was nothing like the original - she calls it less fun-loving and far more dangerous. "They shouldn't have called this one Woodstock," she says. "It should have been called Fred, or anything else. Any time you try to imitate something, you run into

"Whenever you have 250,000 people at one event, inevitably there will be trouble," she adds. "We had trouble, too. But it was different trouble. No rape."

Aside from crusading for the original Woodstock, these days the 59-year-old one-time lead singer of Jefferson Airplane has another crusade: vegetarianism.

She's spearheading the latest all-veggie campaign from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - dubbed "Cauliflower Power."

"I've been a nonmeat eater for years," she says. "Nondairy, too. Fat looks funny and is not good for you. But it's hard to be a fat vegetarian."

Of course, you can't be on the phone with Slick, as I was yesterday, and not ask her about whether she ever intends to perform again.

"I'm not all that fond of old people on a rock 'n' roll stage," she quips. "I'm almost 60! Maybe it's just my opinion, but I think standing up there saying, 'Up against the wall, mother----,' sounds sort of stupid."

Invitation is the sincerest form of flattery. At least that's what Linda Wells thinks.

The Allure editor thought she was seeing double recently when she received an invitation to attend the Aug. 17 premiere of Miramax' "Outside Providence," starring Alec Baldwin, Shawn Hatosy, Gabriel Mann and Amy Smart.

The invite arrived in the form of an actual lobster bib, complete with the written warning that dress should be "very casual (bib optional)" - exactly like the one she sent out last month for a clambake she hosted in Sag Harbor. Right down to the wording, in fact.

Allure insiders say they recall someone at Miramax commenting on how adorable the Allure invite was.

But Miramax rep Andrew Stengel says he didn't rip off the idea. "There are a finite number of ideas in the

Stengel says. "We thought, 'Hey, we're having a clambake. Why not put the invite on a lobster bib?'"

Newlyweds Courteney Cox and David Arquette are taking more cold showers than they ever imagined.

The "Friends" star says she and her husband spend endless time singing together in the shower and sometimes need a cold-water kick to make them get out.

"David probably wouldn't want me to tell you this," says Cox in the September issue of Glamour magazine, "but we have these two showerheads and we get in there and we start making up songs and singing these duets. Sometimes the only thing that gets us out of there is when the hot water runs out."

Singing in the shower is not the only thing Cox and Arquette have been doing together since their June wedding in San Francisco. They're also co-starring in a romantic comedy, "The Shrink Is In," in which Cox plays a therapist.

One thing Cox says she doesn't do with Arquette is exercise.

"I get so bored," Cox says of exercise, either by herself or with anyone else. "I had a treadmill ... I gave it to my mom. I had a StairMaster ... gone. I had a recumbent bike ... I don't know where that is now."

Maybe she should try exercising in the shower - with Arquette, of course.

Steven Brill is promising to name names.

For now, though, the publisher of Brill's Content will say only that "a significant number of journalists" have responded favorably to the notion that the media should back off from covering grieving familes, including children, in the immediate wake of a personal tragedy.

On July 26, three days after the Kennedy-Bessette memorial service in New York, Brill's magazine sent a questionnaire and proposal, "Voluntary Restrictions to Protect Privacy," to 150 of the media elite around the country.

Every response, according to Brill, will be published in the magazine's October issue, which comes out in September.

Brill says his own opinion on the matter "is self-explanatory.

"We had these same guidelines in place [when he ran] Court TV," he says. "My own personal view is, if you balance the newsworthiness of taking a picture of one of Caroline Kennedy's kids, I don't think it's worth the price of their privacy."

Brill calls the issue "a matter of taste.

"Every editor should make his or her decision," he says. "But the larger point is, the public thinks the press ought to think about this a lot more."

To that end, Brill is also conducting a national poll on the subject.

"I hope the results are a little more enlightening," he says, "than the basic assumption that the public hates the press."

Summary: Sixties singing legend Grace Slick has a message for the organizers of Woodstock '99: Don't try it again. The poster girl for flower power says this year's raucous rock festival was nothing like the original - she calls it less fun-loving and far more dangerous. "They shouldn't have called this one Woodstock,"she says. "It should have been called Fred, or anything else. Any time you try to imitate something, you run into trouble. "Whenever you


As we all know, there is a remarkable story taking shape in the United States and it is one that is mesmerising the world. This prospect is so contrary to the American image abroad that our international audience is very eager to understand it.

Al Jazeera's international news channels - both English and Arabic - have devoted more air time covering this campaign than perhaps any other international network.

Americans appear on the brink of electing their first black president in history, which would have been thought unimaginable a few years ago. If it happens, this would be a historic development not only for America, but for any major Western nation. For most people - and this is widely evident in Al Jazeera's coverage - it is a story that reflects exceptionally well on Americans and its democracy.

Mr King's column highlighted a single news report on Al Jazeera's international English channel that included interviews with people attending a Sarah Palin rally in St Clairsville, Ohio on October 12. Many of the comments in this report included characterisations of Barack Obama as "he's a Muslim, not a Christian", "a relative of a known terrorist", "he regards white people as trash", etc.

This report has since been rebroadcast on YouTube with more than 1.8 million people watching it. And even Colin Powell, in comments after his "Meet The Press" appearance this weekend, expressed concern about how Americans are viewed abroad as a result of these rallies: "Those kind of images going out on Al Jazeera are killing us."

But then Mr. King's column veered into the ditch with a gratuitous and uninformed shot at Al Jazeera's motives: "Was this fodder served up by Al Jazeera to feed anti-American sentiment overseas? To be sure. But the camera didn't lie. Did Al Jazeera, however, record the whole truth?"

Let's get real. No single news report - like no single newspaper column - can "record the whole truth". But this piece explored an important aspect of the overall story, which is being largely ignored in America's docile mainstream media. The intense interest in this report - not only worldwide but throughout the US - is evidence of that.

But the Al Jazeera report came to no judgment about whether these views in St Clairsville, Ohio, reflected mainstream America or a small minority. The reason for that is the one given by Mr King himself in his column: "At this point, no one really knows."

Let me make a final point with great emphasis. Al Jazeera has provided hundreds of hours of diverse coverage of this amazing American story in ways that have been fair, comprehensive and respectful of different points of view. If they had the opportunity, I am certain your readers would have been impressed, even enlightened, by what they would have seen.

But the fact is that Al Jazeera English - an award-winning and respected news channel seen in 120 million households in more than 100 countries worldwide - is effectively being blocked from being broadcast in the United States of America. That's appalling in a country that regards itself as the world's leading democracy. But maybe the interest in this Al Jazeera story - and the historical events which are still to come - will help change that.

Summary: Al Jazeera English's Managing Editor responds to a column by Colbert I King.


Customer satisfaction is something that most chief executives pay a lot of attention to. They use fancy statistical and research mechanisms such as the Net Promoter score to track if customers are happy and getting happier. Happy customers mean more repeat business, more recommendations, more loyalty and more positive energy radiated out into the world about a company's products.

Why is it that chief information officers almost never think about customer satisfaction when it comes to their users, the people who must live with the information technology solutions that CIOs provide? When you login to your email or enter a purchase order or put a lead in the customer relationship management (CRM) database, you never see a screen pop up asking, "How are we doing? Could we do better? Is there any thing missing from our offer?"

It shouldn't be a radical thing for a CIO to consider whether the offerings he provides to the rest of the company are pleasing and easy to use, or perhaps annoying and difficult. Yet CIOs are hesitant to ask about customer satisfaction is because they know what the answer would be: negative. A Net Promoter score, which measures customer propensity to recommend a product, wouldn't make sense. A more accurate measure would be the Net-IT-Hater score, a measure of the percentage of people who hate their IT solutions.

In the history of IT, customer satisfaction has never been a goal. But the rise in software-as-as-service (SaaS) and the fragmentation of more businesses are going to make IT customer satisfaction a large problem for CIOs. Companies that pay attention to providing solutions to employees at all levels are going to find themselves with more information about their businesses and more opportunities for automation.

IT customer satisfaction has never been an important priority because IT for the most part is inflicted on the workers in a company. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are purchased by the C-suite to create a more sophisticated model of the company's operations and to increase automation of standard business processes for tracking products and inventory, and for collecting and paying out money. CRM has been forced on companies to increase sales force automation and automate many customer-facing tasks. The beneficiaries of these systems were the bosses, who can track operations better than before. That it was unpleasant and unwieldy to enter the data was not their problem.

Much of this data collection is forced and wouldn't happen without some sort of threat hanging over the end user. Time and again, if workers have a choice, they choose differently. Salesforce.com ( CRM - news - people ), Basecamp, wikis, and other solutions enter the operations of companies through the back door. In many companies, such solutions are forced on IT by users who have found that company-provided solutions have failed. As the scope of SaaS offerings increase, IT and on-premise software vendors will come under more pressure.

But this option of switching is only available for parts of IT. You can't choose your own ERP system and run with it. You can't switch everyone in a company to Google ( GOOG - news - people ) Apps just because you think it has better search for your e-mail.

The distributed nature of the modern business ecosystem is going to be an even more potent force for change as companies need to track operations in a large ecosystem.

One of the unacknowledged victories of enterprise software is that even when ineptly implemented, it provides a vast amount of information about the operations of a company. In the best cases, you can see what is happening with a microscope and then optimize processes to a degree never before possible. When more data is needed, you can start collecting it. The cost of complying with regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley can be made much less onerous. These benefits come from the expanded model of the operations of the enterprise.

Summary: The days of arrogant treatment for IT end users are over.


Sat Dec 20, 2008 1:13pm EST

OTTAWA Dec 20 (Reuters) - The C$4 billion ($3.3 billion) in Canadian loans to the auto industry will be going to General Motors Corp and Chrysler <GM.N F.N CBS.UL> only, government spokesman Darren Cunningham said on Saturday.

"Ford didn't have a specific ask" for short-term funding, said Cunningham, spokesman for Industry Minister Tony Clement. "When Ford asks to be involved, the program is open to them."

He said Ford would benefit from two separate programs announced by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, one to provide additional account receivable insurance coverage to automotive suppliers and the other to set up a facility for consumers.

Summary: (Adds detail) OTTAWA, Dec 20 (Reuters) - The C$4 billion ($3.3 billion)in Canadian loans to the auto industry will be going to GeneralMotors Corp and Chrysler <GM.N F.N CBS.UL> only, governmentspokesman


David Sutherland’s critically acclaimed documentaries are known for their depth of intimacy and long-form commitment to the filmmaking process, often taking three years or more to capture their subjects’ daily lives, and battles, in revealing detail.

Even by those standards, though, Sutherland’s latest film, “Kind Hearted Woman,” represents a milestone achievement in what he calls “cinematic portraiture.”

The five-hour film, airing in two parts on PBS April 1 and 2, focuses on Robin Charboneau, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe in North Dakota. A single mother struggling to raise her two children on the Spirit Lake Nation reservation, Charboneau faces daunting odds living in a community plagued by poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and a systemic unwillingness to address its own worst problems.

Charboneau’s path is made no easier by her own troubled childhood. From the age of 3 she was brutally assaulted by family members, then placed in a foster home at 13. Alcoholism, depression, and troubled relationships with abusive men, including her ex-husband, marked her young adulthood. The couple’s custody battles over their children — daughter Darian, now 17, and son Anthony, 14 — frame much of Sutherland’s story, which he began filming in 2008, following Charboneau as she fled the reservation and tried to establish an independent life for herself and her kids.

By 2010, Sutherland had shot 500 hours of footage. He spent another two years editing the film, his 13th in a body of work that includes “Out of Sight” (1995), “The Farmer’s Wife” (1998), “Country Boys” (2006), and biographies of artists Paul Cadmus and Jack Levine.

Sutherland, 67, who lives in Wellesley, maintains that he did not set out to make an “issues” film, but events caught up with him last October, when the US Bureau of Indian Affairs seized control of child services on the Spirit Lake reservation. The takeover follows years of complaints about mismanagement and maltreatment of tribal children. The broadcast of “Kind Hearted Woman,” a copresentation of “Frontline” and Independent Lens, is likely to intensify the spotlight on those issues. At its heart, though, is one determined and resilient woman’s journey toward healing and recovery.

Q. How did you find Robin Charboneau?

A. I’d just finished “Country Boys” and felt burned out, so I took a year off. Then I got an e-mail from Pat Harrison at Corporation for Public Broadcasting, asking what I was doing next. That got me thinking about what I’d missed in my films. In my last two, there was abuse in the background, but we never got into that. OK, I thought, I’d missed this issue. Whose portrait am I going to do next?

My first step was going back to North Dakota, where I went on tour with rural mental health groups, talking to recovering abuse victims. Let me just say, though, that I did not set out to choose a Native American woman to portray.

Q. What are your criteria for choosing a subject?

A. They have to be articulate, have a quest, a back story, and want to see [the film-making process] through. When I first met Robin, I was scared of her. She was really emotional. I liked her, though. She’s smart, articulate, a good writer. She’s also funny, even though her back story was horrible.

We stayed in touch until I narrowed my field down to five [candidates]. When I chose her, I knew she would go the distance, even though her drinking problem had come on big-time. The day I flew out to start filming, she landed in rehab. Nevertheless, I knew she’d go the distance. And, man, did she go the distance.

Q. Did you worry about her children going the distance, too?

A. Two points. One, I never dreamt — and neither did Robin — that her own daughter would be molested, too. Two, I chose Robin in part because her kids were so magical. And so outspoken. Right from the beginning, they told me if they didn’t want to be filmed.

Q. Without giving too much away, there’s a powerful scene in which Robin hears a game-changing admission by Darian that lands her ex-husband behind bars. How did you get that on film?

A. I’m a dinosaur. I do long-form documentary. When I got that bedroom scene, whether I eventually used it or not, I knew it would be years down the road before the film was finished and Darian was older. We were just there when it happened. We didn’t know she was going to talk about anything like [being molested]. The conversation just evolved. Robin doesn’t bring it up, you’ll notice. Darian does.

When I showed Darian the finished film, she felt self-conscious about that scene, but I never put pressure on her to leave it in. They could have stopped the film at the press tour. Here’s what Robin said about it: “All that time I spent with the abuse, they told me not to speak out. My kids will always speak out, though, because that’s what they’ve been taught to do.”

Q. Due to the abuse and custody issues involved, do you regard this film as your most intimate? One where your presence had more impact on your subjects’ lives than with your other films?

A. There’s no doubt that Robin’s adoptive family did not want this film made. Look, she was accused of sexually molesting her own kids. They went out of their way to hurt Robin because she was doing this film, absolutely. I was only trying to follow Robin on her quest, though. There was no intention of building a case against anyone with this film.

Bottom line is, Robin is the most flawed protagonist I’ve ever filmed. Maybe in doing these films my subjects try harder — Robin would probably agree — but I’m not telling them to try harder. It’s not a prize to be in one of my films.

Q. How’s Robin doing today?

A. Still struggling. I hope she doesn’t have more bouts of depression, but you can’t go through what she has and not have any. She’ll certainly get some speaking engagements from the film, because her insights are special. I’m sure she’ll take two steps forward. But she always seems to take one step back, too.

Helping her people and becoming a good mother is all the meaning she really has in life. When she talks about learning how to love, how to be a real mother — she didn’t know it then, but she knows it now.

Summary: David Sutherland’s critically acclaimed documentaries are known for their depth of intimacy and long-form commitment to the filmmaking process, often taking three years or more to capture their subjects’ daily lives, and battles, in revealing detail. Even by those standards, though, Sutherland’s latest film, “Kind Hearted Woman,” represents a milestone achievement in what he calls “cinematic portraiture.” The five-hour film, airing in two parts on PBS April 1 and 2, focuses on Robin Charboneau, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe in North Dakota. A single mother struggling to raise her two young children on the Spirit Lake Nation reservation, Charboneau faces daunting odds in a community plagued by poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and a systemic unwillingness to address its own worst problems.


Many of us are one-stop shoppers when it comes to home telecom, opting for a “triple play,” the industry term for a discounted bundle of TV, Internet, and phone service.

The majority of Consumer Reports readers who bundled are happy with that arrangement, according to a new survey by Consumer Reports National Research Center. Three of four surveyed said they would definitely or probably buy that bundle of services again.

Deep discounting helps explain the bullishness about bundling. You can get big savings by bundling three services with one provider. You can get more discounts by adding cellphone service. Verizon and AT&T offer such “quad plays.”

Such breaks are welcome relief from the upward climb of telecommunications rates, driven in part by the rising costs of TV programming. Industry analysts forecast continued increases over the next few years.

This report should embolden you to tackle your telecom costs head-on. Consumer Reports’ ratings of bundles from 14 companies, along with individual phone, TV, and Internet services from many more, show that most people have at least one decent choice in telecom.

Here are key findings from Consumer Reports’ survey, along with advice on how to use the info to get better or cheaper telecom service:

Verizon’s fiber service satisfies. Among major carriers, the highest proportion of subscribers who said they would pick “triple play” again had bundles with FiOS, Verizon’s fiber-optic-based TV, digital-landline phone, and high-speed Internet service. “Quad play” customers who added Verizon cellphone service to the bundle were even more enthusiastic. FiOS received standout scores for its broadband speed and reliability, TV picture and reliability, and even phone call quality and reliability.

Ooma is a top phone option. Ooma, which provides VoIP service (the same technology used by cable and fiber companies), was one of the top-rated phone services of any type in the survey. It requires a $180 device (often discounted to $150) that connects to your broadband service and a regular phone. There’s no charge for unlimited local calls and 5,000 minutes a month of domestic long distance (though you have to pay a few dollars a month in taxes), and international rates are very low.

Verizon and satellite are TV standouts. Verizon FiOS TV and DirecTV’s satellite service had higher ratings than most other providers for picture and sound quality, channel selection, and reliability. Satellite rival Dish Network also fared well with survey respondents, as did a few (mostly smaller) cable companies.

Try to bundle your cellphone, too. Bringing your cellphone into your telecom bundle, if it’s an option, is as close to a no-brainer as you can get in the complex world of telecom savings.

For example, AT&T gives you $5 a month off your wireless bill for two years if you sign up for U-verse services for one year and will discount U-verse services as well. AT&T’s U-verse Choice bundles offer savings to new customers who sign up for any combination of wireless, TV, landline, and Internet.

Too few people bargain. The experiences of Consumer Reports’ survey respondents should empower you to bargain for lower rates.

Only 1 in 3 survey respondents with a triple or quad play negotiated with their carrier. But many of those who did got a reduction in their monthly bill, fees waived, or an upgrade in service. About 44 percent of bargainers reported savings of up to $50 a month, and 7 percent chopped more than $50 off their monthly bill.

Summary: Many of us are one-stop shoppers when it comes to home telecom, opting for a “triple play,” the industry term for a discounted bundle of TV, Internet, and phone service. The majority of Consumer Reports readers who bundled are happy with that arrangement, according to new survey by Consumer Reports National Research Center. Three of four surveyed said they would definitely or probably buy that bundle of services again. Deep discounting helps explain the bullishness about bundling. You can get big savings by bundling three services with one provider. You can get more discounts by adding cellphone service to a triple play. Verizon and AT&T offer such “quad plays.” Such breaks are welcome relief from the upward climb of telecommunications rates.


General Motors squeezed out a small profit in the first three months of 2014 after setting aside $1.3 billion to cover the cost of recalls that followed a deadly ignition-switch defect linked to 13 deaths, the company reported Thursday.

The report marked the 17th consecutive profitable quarter for the giant automaker, which has been walloped by a storm of lawsuits, federal and congressional investigations, and negative publicity since it began recalling 2.6 million Chevrolet Cobalts and other small vehicles in February.

With the heightened scrutiny prompted by the ignition switch problem, GM recalled 4.5 million more vehicles in the first three months of the year.

The recalls are taking a huge financial toll that is likely to persist with GM facing the prospect of both civil and criminal penalties because of the slow recall. The company’s $100 million profit was just a fraction of the $900 million that flowed to its bottom line in the first quarter of last year.

GM disclosed Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has made inquiries about the recall and confirmed for the first time that the US attorney’s office in New York and an unidentified state attorney general are conducting investigations.

The SEC is probably investigating whether GM failed to disclose the switch problem to investors quickly enough, said Peter Henning, a former SEC lawyer who now is a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

The recall charges marred what would have otherwise been an impressive quarter for GM. Overall, revenue was up in the first quarter of the year, going to $27.4 billion, $500 million more than during the first quarter of 2013.

‘‘Sure, there have been setbacks,’’ GM chief executive Mary Barra said during a conference call with analysts. ‘‘That’s part of our business. Nevertheless, our overall progress has been sure and steady.’’

GM has been soaring since its 2009 bankruptcy and $40 billion federal bailout that allowed it to shed burdensome legacy costs and update its vehicle lineup. Sales have been up — increasing by 4 percent in 2013 and by 2 percent in the first quarter of this year.

But the progress being made by what Barra and others call ‘‘the new GM’’ is being threatened by the legacy of the ‘‘old GM,’’ which Barra and others have depicted as a cash-strapped giant that fostered a culture focused more on cost savings than quality and safety.

GM is exploring setting up a compensation fund for accident victims.

The company has hired Kenneth Feinberg, who organized efforts to compensate victims of the BP oil spill and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, to explore options.


Have you ever admired a work of art so much you've considered having it permanently inked on to your skin?

As the Guardian reports, a gallery is currently seeking funding to mount a Chapman brothers' exhibition in pair's home town of Hastings – featuring a tattoo parlour run by Jake, raising the tantalising prospect of the south coast soon being filled with people sporting permanent Chapman designs.

This meeting of high art and skin is nothing new. In recent years Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Richard Prince have designed tattoos, and David Shrigley's website features images from dozens of fans who've had Shrigley images tattooed on to themselves.

Is there any artwork you'd consider having tattooed on yourself? Have you already had it done? Let us know in the thread below.

Summary: Open thread: Following news that the Chapman brothers are planning to open their own tattoo parlour, we want to know which works of art you'd consider getting indelibly inked onto your body


This week the US government confirmed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be moving to a new facility in Maryland or Virginia – officially abandoning its hulking J Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, DC. The massive concrete structure on Pennsylvania Avenue now seems set for destruction, as even its few defenders concede that most citizens of DC react to the Hoover Building with unbridled hatred. Yet even unsuccessful buildings are part of our cities’ history, and part of the pleasure of being a city-dweller is finding buildings that you can love to hate, like these six:

Delicate anti-modernists love to hate Brutalism, the 1960s architectural movement whose large-scale concrete projects are under constant threat of destruction. But few Brutalist icons have as bad a reputation as this arm of Boston’s City Hall – an unfinished and unloved work by the great Paul Rudolph, dean of the Yale School of Architecture. Its overscaled pedestrian plaza was supposed to have been counterbalanced with a tower that never got built, and the architect’s signature striated concrete feels a little sinister on a building that houses a mental health facility. Saddest of all are the chain-link fences that now ring the plaza, giving the Brutalism haters even more ammunition to tear the thing down.

Edward Durrell Stone’s squat, stubborn update of Venetian Gothic architecture was reviled, when it first opened in 1964, as an abandonment of all the modernist principles the architect propounded at his Museum of Modern Art around the corner. As the home of the campy Huntington Hartford Gallery (the no-abstraction-allowed collection was nothing special, while the leather-clad lounge upstairs, called “The Gauguin Room,” served pseudo-Polynesian pork and pineapple skewers), it seemed to revel in bad taste. Over time the so-called Lollipop Building became a surprisingly lovable work of architecture, but its supporters were too late – in 2005, after the city refused to grant landmark protection, the architect Brad Cloepfil tore off the façade and gutted the interiors to make way for its current tenants, the Museum of Arts and Design. The resultant mishmash has pleased no one.

The Emerald City is home to the greatest work of contemporary architecture in America: Rem Koolhaas’s crystalline Seattle Central Library. Unfortunately it is also home to this thing – a fifth-tier multi-colored hodgepodge by Frank Gehry, which opened in 2000 and utterly failed to do for Seattle what his Guggenheim did for Bilbao. Commissioned by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, it was initially a museum devoted to rock music; the bizarre glass strips resting on the roof are, strange to say, a metonym for guitar frets. Some of Gehry’s work, such as his own house in Los Angeles, looks better with age. This one is the opposite: a monstrous relic of the CD-ROM era.

Smack in the center of the capital’s West End, looming over Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, Richard Seifert’s notorious tower outraged Londoners not only for its scale and its dreary, water-free fountains at street level, but because it remained empty for more than a decade after. (In 1974, homeless demonstrators occupied the vacant skyscraper, but they were turfed out before long.) Now that central London has been transmuted into a hollowed-out non-dom tax shelter and money laundering facility, Centre Point is now fulfilling its destiny. It is being converted into apartments, though who knows if the international buyers will ever move in.

When it opened in 1973, towering over the 14th and 15th arrondissements in the south of the capital, almost no one had a good word to say about the first – and only – skyscraper to rise in central Paris. Well, they hated the Eiffel Tower and the Pompidou too, at first, but the Tour Montparnasse has only got worse with age. From a distance it glowers obnoxiously over Paris’s sea of Haussmannian gray, while at street level, tethered to a neighborhood-blighting shopping center, it’s even worse. Its most deleterious effect was to kill off the possibility of any tall buildings in Paris for a generation: the capital essentially banned skyscrapers until last decade, though a new project by Jean Nouvel in the southeast is now underway.

Designed at the start of the century by Santiago Calatrava, Valencia’s hometown hero-turned-villain, the opera house and concert hall on the bank of a dried-up river once seemed a symbol of Spain’s roaring economy and buoyant cultural scene. Now the bubble has burst, years of austerity have taken their toll – and Calatrava’s space ship is literally falling to pieces, the façade’s ceramic tiles dropping on the heads of passersby. (Inside the house the story isn’t any happier; this week Helga Schmidt, the Palau de les Arts’s too-long-put-upon director, announced she’s stepping down.) The city and its native son are now in court.

Summary: The US confirmed the FBI will move to a new facility, abandoning the hulking J Edgar Hoover Building in Washington. Here are six other ‘unsuccessful buildings’


Molson Coors’ second-quarter results are winning praise from shareholders.

The beer company is the best performer in the S&P 500 index Wednesday, lately rallying 6 percent on the heels of good earnings that were driven by successful new products in the U.S. and higher beer prices.

Though Molson Coors’ worldwide beer volume slid 0.9%, investors appeared pleased that sales and profit results exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. The company reported net sales grew 0.9% to $1.19 billion, lifting underlying after-tax income 7.9% to $1.57 a share. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected $1.18 billion in sales on $1.47 in profit.

The results are the first Molson Coors has reported since disclosing CEO Peter Swinburn will retire at the end of the year after a 40-year career in the beer business. He will be succeeded by the company’s top European executive.

Volume jumped 22% for the international segment due to strong Coors Light growth in Mexico and Latin America, as well as growth in India. Volume fell 1.3% in Europe, and also softened in Canada.

Separately, a Molson Coors-SABMiller joint venture known as MillerCoors reported second-quarter underlying net income climbed 8% to $445.7 million in the second quarter, boosted by a 2.2% jump in sales. MillerCoors, which sells beers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, reported strong volume growth for the Redd’s and Leinenkugel’s franchises, while Miller Fortune boosted market share in the latest quarter. Sales to retailers declined for Coors Light and Miller Lite.

MillerCoors this week began to stock shelves with the latest apple-flavored line extension of Redd’s, while Miller Fortune has a higher-than-average alcohol content and is maltier than the company’s other products, angling to court Millennial drinkers. Both are fairly new franchises for MillerCoors.

The strong early performance for some of the brewer’s newer offerings comes as big brewers look to take on rising interest in the craft beers segment and also win back market share stolen from spirits brands in the U.S. in recent years. Small and independent craft brewers in the U.S. sold about 10.6 million barrels of beer in the first half of 2014, up 18% from the prior year’s level. That growth signals that smaller players are still performing far better than large brewers like MillerCoors.

Summary: Profit up thanks to the early success of new products in the U.S. and higher beer prices.


FORTUNE — It’s a woman’s World Wide Web. Today’s online experience is increasingly about connecting with people and sharing information — and female users have responded enthusiastically. Some 56% of Twitterers are women; they are more than half of Facebook subscribers; and they make up 70% of Pinterest’s users.

None of those services were specifically invented for women, though. Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest all have male founders. The male principals at Pinterest investor Andreessen Horowitz admit that initially they didn’t really understand the appeal of the site. Female researchers had to explain what all the fuss was about.

MORE: 50 Most Powerful Women in Business

That’s changing. Emboldened by statistics that show that women spend 25 hours a month online — two more hours than the guys — and account for about 60% of e-commerce dollars, entrepreneurs are unleashing a slew of new female-centric sites. And more and more of those sites are founded, and funded, by women. “In Silicon Valley there is a much, much bigger appreciation of the power of the female consumer,” says Patricia Nakache, a partner with Trinity Ventures in Palo Alto. “It’s dramatic.”

Nakache backs OneJackson.com, an online kids’ clothing store launched in August by Anne Raimondi, a retailing and e-commerce veteran. Women have long been players in online retailing: Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and Alexis Maybank founded flash sales site Gilt Groupe in 2007; Susan Feldman and Alison Pincus started houseware site One Kings Lane in 2009.

OneJackson is trying to offer more than cute clothes. Raimondi envisions OneJackson as a community, where moms get to know the indie designers behind the clothes — see their pictures, their drawings, their stories. Users can vote on which designs they like best, “like” them, and pin the photos on Pinterest. It’s sort of like Facebook FB meets Project Runway for Kids meets Suri Cruise. “Hopefully they’ve made new friends or made connections,” Raimondi says. “And it becomes more meaningful than straight shopping.” In a similar vein, woman-run Minted.com lets women vote for and purchase their favorite indie stationery or invitation designs. (Raimondi is an investor in Minted.)

MORE: Why women matter more online

While these latest woman-centric sites are starting to gain traction, they remain, at heart, e-commerce sites. None has emerged as a utility or a platform à la Facebook or Twitter. That could change, though. In an open letter on his blog to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, venture capitalist Dave McClure urged her to “think pink” and focus the company on women. Only Mayer and her team know whether that’s the right approach for Yahoo YHOO , but plenty of people are betting that a pink strategy will translate into lots of green.

This story is from the October 8, 2012 issue of Fortune.

Summary: As the Web grows more social and more mobile, women - entrepreneurs and users - are heeding the call.


Steve Arrington is one of funk music’s more fascinating footnotes: a drummer and singer with various bands, whose legacy has grown more potent in recent years even though he turned his back on music for nearly two decades. He went away, but his music lived on.

Last year, around the time he released a new album with LA producer and musician Dam-Funk, Arrington posted a YouTube video summarizing his career. Narrating his own story, he crammed nearly 40 years of milestones into two minutes and 30 minutes. Impressive, but far too elliptical.

The short version of Arrington’s arc goes like this. Raised in Dayton, Ohio, he gigged around town before migrating to San Francisco to play with the Escovedos, the Latin soul musicians who included Coke, Pete, and Sheila (later to be known as Sheila E.). He returned home in 1978 to join Slave, an influential Dayton funk ensemble, first as its drummer and then as its lead singer on hits such as “Just a Touch of Love.” Moving on to form his own group, Steve Arrington’s Hall of Fame, he racked up some more hits (“Weak at the Knees,” “Nobody Can Be You”).

Then he did the unthinkable — or at least it seemed that way to those around him. In 1990, after what he calls a “religious awakening,” Arrington left music altogether to become a minister. In his YouTube video, he addresses his abrupt detour with a rather offhand comment: As a photo of Arrington standing in front of a church flashes across the screen, he says, “I then made a career change.”

“The spirituality in music is very important and evident in the music I listen to, and hopefully in my own,” Arrington says recently on the phone from Ohio. “I think more like a jazz musician. I was known as an R&B guy, a funk cat, but remember that I played Latin music before that at a high level.”

“So for me to say, you know, I’m going to do some different things and go in a different direction, it was an easy transition for me emotionally,” he adds. “It wasn’t such a great, easy transition in terms of business. Music is not who I am. It’s just what I do. And I never lost sight of that.”

Arrington comes to the Middle East Upstairs on Sunday — his first Boston-area performance, he estimates, since the early ’80s. It’s one of a handful of concerts through which he’s previewing the forthcoming “Way Out (80-84),” a career-spanning two-disc retrospective that also includes previously unreleased and unfinished material.

And a funny thing happened on Arrington’s way to obscurity. His music suddenly began to crop up in hip-hop through various samples, most notably “Weak at the Knees,” which was used in some form on songs by Jermaine Dupri and Jay Z (“Money Ain’t a Thing”), N.W.A (“Gangsta Gangsta”), and Mariah Carey (“Get Your Number”). A Tribe Called Quest sampled Arrington’s “Beddie-Biey” for “The Chase, Part II,” and “Nobody Can Be You” was flipped by everyone from Snoop Dogg to LL Cool J.

Arrington was delighted. He says that even though he wasn’t part of music while he was away, he still kept an eye on what was happening.

“For your work to move past decades and for younger people to decide that it still speaks to them today — I don’t take it lightly,” says Arrington, who’s 58. “That’s a blessing.”

What’s astonishing about “Way Out,” set for release on Sept. 29, is how well Arrington’s material holds up even now, an obvious precursor to the G-funk sound of the early 1990s and a touchstone for groups such as Chromeo and even Daft Punk’s 2013 hit, “Get Lucky.” No matter what shape the music takes, it’s always anchored by Arrington’s voice, an elastic croon that’s a little thin but also soulful and surprising.

“I started out as a drummer, so when I started singing I just came from the heart,” he says. “Because I was a drummer, I was more prone to listening to instruments. I was into listening to saxophone players like [John] Coltrane, and my vocal style lends itself more to singing as an instrument, rather than a traditional vocal perspective that I would have grown up with, imitating hot singers of the time.”

Arrington focused mainly on his ministry for close to 20 years, finally returning to secular music with 2009’s “Pure Thang,” which touched on funk, R&B, and gospel. After he self-released that album, word of his return reached Dam-Funk — vocalist, instrumentalist, and producer Damon Riddick — who reached out to Arrington via social media. The contact led to last year’s collaborative “Higher,” released on the indie label Stones Throw.

“He was my hero, and I was always searching for him,” Riddick writes of Arrington in an e-mail. “Knew he went off into the church for a while, yet when I saw that there was a website up of his original and new, self-produced music in the form of a snippet, I had to reach out from there.”

“The most unique funksta, singer, and drummer,” Riddick adds by way of summing up Arrington’s legacy. “A force who upon his own choice chose another route at his peak. Respected.”

Summary: Prodigal ’80s R&B maverick Steve Arrington talks about returning to the music scene after nearly 20 years away as a minister, in advance of his show on Sunday night at the Middle East.


The Abbey Church in Weltenburg on the Danube in Germany has the most dramatic Baroque interior in the world. It's right in the middle of the countryside, in a dark gorge next to the river, and you expect nothing of it. Yet when you walk inside you get compete sensory overload - it is packed with coloured marble, and every surface is gilded or painted. It makes you gasp.

Over the main altar is a polychrome statue of St George slaying the dragon. But you can barely see it, because it is drowned in light from behind - not from a window, but from an opening into a completely separate room. You can't get into the room, but it has huge windows on its side walls. These throw light to the back of the room, on to a fresco of God the Father. It is the light reflected off this fresco that swallows up the sculpture. You never see the source of the light at all.

The church was built in about 1715, just at the moment when the baroque hit Germany. It's the least appreciated period of architecture. True, it's not exactly about truth to materials. Or sensible use of space. The Weltenburg church, after all, devotes a whole room just to creating a light effect.

The Pompidou Centre totally ignores its context. Now that it has aged a bit it looks awful, particularly at the back. It destroys a lovely part of old Paris, whose beautiful streets are ruined by the centre's rusty grilles and dirty tubes. This is all about an architect having a good idea and clinging to it without listening to anyone else in case he "compromises" himself. You wouldn't get away with that in any field other than architecture.

· Desmond Shawe-Taylor is director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Summary: Wonder:  Abbey Church, Weltenburg, Germany   Blunder:  Pompidou Centre


Can you imagine light transmuted into three solid dimensions and then shaped into the guise of a modern house? To put the question another way, can you imagine a new house formed almost entirely from a rigorous study of daylight? This is exactly what Gianni Botsford, a young London architect, has conjured for the design of a secret and quite remarkable family house, newly completed at the back of a west London mews.

Like light itself, the house is all but invisible. Although constructed of solid concrete, along with steel, aluminium and a great number of sheets of glass, what proves to be one of the finest new city homes to be found anywhere in the world is hidden behind a dense meshed-steel wall; for the casual passer-by, there is absolutely nothing worth seeing.

Behind the screen, though, Botsford's house of light is a thing of architectural sorcery made possible not by sleight of hands or smoke and mirrors, but by patiently applied science. Lit almost entirely from a great glass roof and a number of courtyards, some glazed, others open to the sky, this unexpected and quietly revolutionary structure was designed using a process the architect had been researching and developing while at the Architectural Association school in London. It is his first major commission, and it is quite brilliant.

Although they wish to remain anonymous, Botsford's clients need introducing. They are a cultured family who have spent several years living and working in Rome. They liked the idea of building a modern house, but like so many others coming to central London with such a dream, they soon discovered that planning authorities have no love for new design, no matter how good. You are allowed to rip the physical and emotional heart out of just about any handsome early Victorian terraced house you like in the quest for a modern home, but you cannot build anew with the verve and or audacity our predecessors did. At least, if you do, the results must not be seen from the street.

By commissioning a new house that gives absolutely nothing away, and therefore causes no possible offence to planners, Botsford's clients have ended up with a home that perfectly suits their particular set of preferences while taking the city house into new territory. It takes it into ancient territories, too; hiding behind a high wall, grouped around courtyards and with its spaces connected by sliding screens, the house refers, if only tangentially, to the city haunts of well-to-do ancient Romans and to Edo-era Japanese homes.

The anonymous, decidedly 21st-century corrugated steel front opens from the mews into a hard courtyard, giving on to a garage, a workroom and what might be called the facade of the house proper. This is little more than a workaday wall of concrete, steel and glass. Nothing stylised. Nothing, apparently, to write home about.

In fact the house is so internalised, so remote from the need to present a formal face to the city, that it proves to be rather like a shoebox hiding a pair of particularly refined and beautifully made bespoke shoes. The box is divided up into a number of courtyards, some square, others oblong, one of which just happens to be a full-scale lap pool screened by rows of Tibetan cherry trees. The pool leads off the main bedroom and its dressing room.

Childrens' bedrooms give on to courtyards, too. These low-lit dormitories are all on the ground floor, along with a games room, store and utility rooms, including a boiler room equipped, or so it seems, with more substantial electrical wizardry, dials and switches than a nuclear submarine. This is truly a machine for living.

A sensational, day-lit stair rises from the entrance hall, in slow and stately fashion, up a 10m-high, exposed concrete wall into a grand arrangement of double-height, glass-roofed living rooms and a kitchen that could serve a restaurant. The paterfamilias is a keen cook: just as well. These capacious rooms face one another across another generous courtyard and through floor-to-ceiling sliding glass screens. The only views from them, except into the house itself and to the pool below, are of prickly neo-Gothic bits of the former church next door, the occasional wobbly London chimney pot, vapour trails and the feathered rush of pigeons and surprised starlings.

Up front, on the first floor beyond the kitchen, is a handsome library, complete with a masterful bookcase by Adolf Loos, the great Viennese architect and author of Ornament and Crime (1908). There is no ornament in the Botsford house, not because this is viewed as an aesthetically criminal activity here, but because books and paintings, as one would expect of art historian clients, provide all the necessary distraction.

What there is, in abundance, is intelligent planning, generous rooms, ingenious internal views through and across the building, and light and air exactly where these are wanted. Botsford, by the way, says that he did not have the idea of an ancient courtyard house in mind. Or, at least, not self-consciously.

"The design," he says, "is based on what was possible and what seemed right for the site. But, I suppose that in the back of mind, somewhere, I had thoughts of those Roman houses and also of traditional Japanese courtyard houses. What was most important to the project was the nature of light, how it would get into all corners of the house, and how the house could be serene even though in a densely packed part of the city. What was special, a real privilege, was the fact that my clients allowed me to spend six months researching the nature of light."

Here we are, back with light, the starting point and primary building block of the house. Given its corseted location, daylight was always going to make or break the house's design. Only the windows of the study at the front of the house are designed to offer an axial and carefully framed view of the length of the mews and the street that crosses it. Without this, the house could be almost anywhere. For the most part, it seems utterly disconnected from the city around it.

"The design process was an experiment," says Botsford. "Usually architects design a building and then test it. Here we spent six months testing what we call the 'solar geometry' before the design was even thought about. This gives the building a different set of attributes and creates a design best suited to this unusual enclosed site."

In practice, what Botsford did was to plot a light plan of the site into a computer programme that enabled him to see how daylight fell across on every day of the year. Armed with this information, he was able to produce a 3D model of the house based entirely on the play of daylight. This intriguing model is architectural space represented as solid light. Now all Botsford had to do was to translate the model into concrete, steel, aluminium and glass.

This analysis explains why Botsford put, for example, the bedrooms down below and the living floors above. To ensure that the quality of light is always at its optimum, there are no fewer than four different grades and patterns of glass aimed at increasing or decreasing the density of light admitted to particular spaces and rooms. Most of us make do with one.

If this sounds a little too clinically scientific for domestic comfort, the experience of the house trounces such thoughts: throughout, light washes, weaves and dances its way into the most remote corners of living rooms and the courtyards they give on to. As there are children here, the house wallows in clutter when the photographers have gone home.

Although economically built on sound scientific foundations, this is not, of course, a cheap house. It boasts five bedrooms, two studies, a living room, kitchen and dining room with six-metre high ceilings, the pool, an outdoor terrace and even a small chapel, accessed via a spiral stair.

On a hot and clear day, the family can choose to temper the sun's rays through a series of blinds and opening screens. The mass of the concrete walls keep extremes of both heat and cold at bay, while the structure is also designed to funnel warm air up and out of the living spaces. There is no need for air-conditioning despite the enclosed, box-like structure of the house.

Although expensive and the product of several years' thought, research and design, Botsford's mews house could serve as a prototype for much cheaper homes in tight, city centre sites. "Given the knowledge we have now," he says, "we could, I think, carry out a light study of a house in more or less 24 hours."

This would mean an end to dark and dreary, spec-built housebuilders' box-room misery. Quite how many developers would be willing to invest even this amount of time and care is anyone's guess.

Summary: Gianni Botsford spent months studying the fall of light on a building plot. Then  he set about designing the house that would sit on it. Jonathan Glancey reports.


Artist Sophie Calle and architect Frank Gehry, friends for more than 20 years, are to collaborate on a project called Exquisite Pain, to be shown in Luxembourg in June. Combining the openly emotional aspects of Calle's art with Gehry's more introspective, industrial designs, the artwork is about the breakdown of Calle's relationship in 1984, when her lover failed to show up for a rendezvous in New Delhi.

Housed in a 19th-century industrial building, it will consist of a diary with photographs and documents indicating the remaining "days until unhappiness", a reconstruction of the room in New Delhi and 36 diptychs on linen depicting emotional pain. Gehry, meanwhile, is creating the set: a reflective circular labyrinth.

Summary: Artist Sophie Calle and architect Frank Gehry are to collaborate on a project called Exquisite Pain, to be shown in Luxembourg in June.


North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (right) accompanied by younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, (left) in Wonsan, Kangwon Province, North Korea, in a file photo. (KCNA)

North Korea's ruling party today celebrated its 69th anniversary with no sign of leader Kim Jong-Un, whose unexplained absence for more than a month has fuelled rampant speculation about his physical and political health.

South Korea, which has largely distanced itself from the guessing game surrounding Kim's disappearance, said it believed Kim remained in full control of the country.

"There are continuous reports (in North Korea's state media) concerning the exercise of Kim Jong-Un's leadership," Seoul's Unification Ministry spokesman Lim Byeong-Chul told reporters.

"Judging from these, it seems that Kim Jong-Un is ruling normally," Lim said, adding that the government had no specific intelligence on Kim's health.

Although the North Korean ruling party's official newspaper the Rodong Sinmun published an editorial today extolling Kim's leadership, it mentioned no appearance by the man himself.

For the past two years, Kim has marked the anniversary with a midnight visit -- along with other top leaders -- to the mausoleum in Pyongyang that houses the bodies of his father Kim Jong-Il and grandfather Kim Il-Sung.

The North's official KCNA news agency usually reports the event early in the morning, but as of midday (0300 GMT) there was no mention of any visit by the agency or state television.

While he could make an appearance later in the day, a complete no-show will likely send an already whirring rumour mill into overdrive.

Kim, believed to be 30 or 31, has not been seen since September 3 when he attended a music concert with his wife in Pyongyang.

Competing theories for his disappearance range widely from an extended rest period to a leadership coup, via a long list of possible illnesses and ailments including broken ankles, gout and diabetes.

The explanation with the most currency is a health issue that has left him temporarily incapacitated.

Kim, a heavy smoker, has shown striking weight gain since coming to power following the death of his father in 2011, and recent TV footage had shown him walking with a pronounced limp.

"My own feeling is that there has been a health problem, but not a particularly serious one," said Chung Young-Chul, a professor of North Korean studies at Sogang University in Seoul.

"A no-show would certainly force us to consider the possibility that it's more serious than we thought," Chung said.

In a front-page editorial today, the Rodong Sinmun described Kim as the symbol of the ruling party's "dignity and invincibility" and said his authority should be protected by all means necessary.

"The steel-like unity of the party, with the leader at the centre, is the source of invincible power," the party mouthpiece said.

What little light North Korea has deemed necessary to shed on the rumours surrounding Kim's absence has only added to the confusion.

State media alluded at one point to his "discomfort", but one member of a top-level North delegation that visited South Korea last week insisted Kim had no health problem at all.

"He certainly doesn't want to be seen while he is sick and looking weak," said Bruce Bennett, a senior defence analyst with the RAND corporation.

"Looking weak is not good for a North Korean leader who is trying to maintain control," Bennett said.

The uncertainty means that every move or comment by North Korea is now seen through the unreliable prism of what it might say about Kim's situation.

Some saw the surprise visit by the high-ranking delegation as a message that all was normal in Pyongyang.

Others saw the presence of Kim's de-facto number two in the delegation as possible evidence that the leader may have been sidelined or pushed out altogether.

It is by no means unprecedented for a North Korean leader to drop out of the public eye for a while.

But it is more noticeable with Kim, who has maintained a particularly pervasive media presence since coming to power after the death of his father Kim Jong-Il in 2011.

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Summary: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has today failed to show up to a key party celebration after not having been seen in public for a month, fuelling concerns he is suffering from a serious illness.


Samsonite thinks it has found the formula for grabbing a share of the growing luxury luggage market.

First, take a classic but dusty U.S. brand favored by dapper pop culture icons like Don Draper and James Bond (not to mention a late president or two). Then revive it by using Samsonite’s technology and distribution clout to improve the product and get retailers and landlords to give it a chance. And then after that, proceed with an aggressive retail expansion plan.

Two years after Samsonite, known for its sensible, quality luggage and bags, bought Hartmann for $35 million from a private equity firm, the company is in the midst of re-launching the 137-year-old brand with a big retail push: Hartmann will end the year with 25 stores compared to zero at that start.

The acquisition came a few years after Samsonite tried to launch its own luxury brand, Black Label, but quickly found that shoppers didn’t take to it because they associated the ubiquitous Samsonite name with mid-tier wares. And starting a brand from scratch was not an option.

“We were missing a play at the top end of the market,” Samsonite’s newly minted CEO Ramesh Tainwala told Fortune in an interview at Hartmann’s six-week old flagship store on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue. “To really get into the luxury end of the market, you need a story, you need a brand with DNA.”

The Hartmann DNA Tainwala speaks of harkens back to when travel was glamorous and luxurious, with high end, elegant, and well-crafted luggage like Hartmann’s de rigueur to complete one’s globetrotting look. At the same time, Tainwala says the brand has to modernize itself with new features. That’s where Samsonite’s muscle comes in. The company owns a number of patents that has allowed it to develop suitcases that are light but nearly unbreakable for all its brands, not just its namesake. Tainwala says that function is as important as fashion and design to today’s luggage buyer, which is why he believes Samsonite’s backing is such an advantage for Hartmann.

Tainwala thinks the brand has the potential to reach $500 million in annual sales within five to seven years. (In the first half of 2014, Hartmann’s sales were a modest $7.9 million, the result of Samsonite not doing much with the brand after the acquisition to instead focus on resetting it. Sales had been about $50 million a year when Samsonite bought Hartmann.)

Samsonite’s net sales in the six months ended June 30 rose 13.8% to $1.11 billion, with its namesake and American Tourister brands leading the way.

But the combination of rising luxury spending (Bain & Co expects global luxe spending to rise 4-6% a year through 2017) and more international traveling (the United Nations World Tourism Organization said international arrivals rose 4.6% in the first half of 2014, and are set to rise 3.8% a year through 2020), has put Hartmann at the center of Samsonite’s growth plans. Samsonite has made a series of acquisitions of late to fill in gaps in its offerings, and says it is ready to make others, so how Hartmann grows is likely to inform that part of its strategy.

While Hartmann’s products are sold at department stores from Macy’s M and Bloomingdale’s in the U.S., to Galeries Lafayette in Paris and Harrod’s in London, the push for the brand will come from its own stores primarily, since it can more fully control the experience and manage how ubiquitous the brand gets, a problem that has felled many another brand.

Befitting a brand wanting to serve the modern day jet set, Hartmann is planning new stores all over place, with a focus on the U.S., China and Japan. But Hartmann’s U.S. roots are front and center in how Samsonite plans to build a niche for the product in a competitive space led by French brands Louis Vuitton and Longchamp.

“We want to position Hartmann as true American luxury because there are few true American luxury brands around,” Tainwala said.

Summary: Samsonite is relaunching the classic Hartmann luggage brand with an eye on winning sales from Louis Vuitton, Longchamp.


This week offers two more examples of how James Franco’s intriguing career as an artistic multi-hyphenate is often just about throwing his creativity at the wall and seeing what sticks. In “Good People” (2014), a serviceable crime thriller from Danish director Henrik Ruben Genz (“Terribly Happy”), Franco and Kate Hudson star as a debt-saddled couple who learn some hard lessons about trying to play finders keepers with dirty money. Tom (Franco) and Kate (Hudson) are semi-plausibly living in London with a vague idea of making a fresh start after some tough times back home. It doesn’t seem like things are going any better when their reclusive downstairs tenant winds up dead. But then they find $400,000 stashed there — money that they nervously decide to keep, landing them in one ugly mess with a gangster (Sam Spruell, “The Last Ship”); the kingpin he ripped off (Omar Sy, “X-Men”); and a righteous police detective (Tom Wilkinson). It’s standard fare boosted by some nice character touches — the couple are struggling with infertility — and a tense climax. Franco smartly hooks up with a capable cast, particularly lower-billed Spruell, who’s got a memorably sinister way with a pool cue. Then there’s Franco’s other new release — and one of his increasingly frequent directorial efforts — the Cormac McCarthy adaptation “Child of God” (2014). This study of a country misfit (Scott Haze) and his descent into isolation and violence is filmmaking so raw, we get a necrophilia scene and graphic defecation. We’ll hang with the good people, thanks. (“Good People,” Millennium, $28.99; Blu-ray, $29.99)

In this adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel “The Switch,” Jennifer Aniston plays a melancholy ’70s housewife who’s kidnapped by idle criminals John Hawkes and Yasiin Bey (a.k.a. rapper Mos Def) for a $1 million ransom. The hitch: Her husband (Tim Robbins) decides not to pay. Indie filmmaker Daniel Schechter tries to split the difference between Leonard’s humor and soulfulness, but you’ll wish he didn’t focus so much on the straighter elements, which quickly start to drag. Extras: Schechter supplies commentary with cast member Will Forte, who could use more screen time as Aniston’s dweeby would-be paramour. (Lionsgate, $19.98; Blu-ray, $24.99)

WKRP IN CINCINNATI: THE COMPLETE SERIES (1978-82)

It doesn’t really work to do a TV show about a rock radio station without the rock. Ultimately, that’s the reason we’ve barely seen “WKRP” on DVD until now — music rights restrictions meant that a first-season release several years back blasphemously edited out the original tunes. Finally, though, it’s all been worked out so that we get to hear Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap deliver their patter and spin the Cars, Boston, and many more. Extras: 2014 panel discussion with series creator Hugh Wilson, Howard Hesseman, Tim Reid, Loni Anderson, and Jan Smithers. (Shout! Factory, $139.99)

Summary: New releases on disc include “Good People,” “Life of Crime,” and “WKRP in Cincinnati: The Complete Series.”


The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced federal air-pollution regulation that would strengthen limits to ground-level smog.

The agency said it wants to limit ozone pollution to between 65 to 70 parts per billion of ozone in the air, a range the EPA said is based on extensive scientific data about the harmful effects of smog. The EPA said it will take comment on a level “as low as 60 parts per billion.” Those limits are below the current level — set at 75 parts per billion — which was set in 2008 under the then-President George W. Bush administration.

“Bringing ozone pollution standards in line with the latest science will clean up our air, improve access to crucial air quality information, and protect those most at-risk,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a statement.

Ozone in the air is an oxidant that can irritate the air ways and cause coughing, a burning sensation, shortness of breath, and other lung diseases. Children, people with lung disease, older adults, and those who are active outdoors are most sensitive to ozone, according to the EPA. Ozone, or smog, is particularly likely to reach unhealthy levels on hot sunny days in cities. The agency on Wednesday said the proposed standards would also help low income and minority families who are “most likely to suffer from asthma or to live in communities that are overburdened by pollution.”

The EPA said its scientists examined numerous studies as it considered the most recent review of the ozone standards, including more than 1,000 new studies published since the last update.

The proposal is expected to reignite a spat between businesses and environmental groups, Wall Street Journal reported. Back in 2011, the EPA estimated that the proposed standard — then set at the toughest level the agency had yet considered — could cost $90 billion a year to utilities and other businesses. President Barack Obama delayed issuing it, WSJ reports.

Seemingly anticipating some resistance on costs, the EPA statement on Wednesday said every dollar invested to meet clean air standards would return “up to three dollars in health benefits.” For example, the EPA estimated that health benefits gained from fewer asthma attacks, premature deaths and other health effects would be valued at $19 billion to $38 billion annually in 2025 for a standard 65 parts per billion. Annual costs were estimated at $15 billion for that same standard.

The EPA didn’t disclose how it determined those estimates.

The agency, which is seeking public comments on the proposal and will hold three public hearings, expects to issue final ozone standards by next October.

Summary: Regulation will be aimed at smog from power plants and factories across the country, a report says.


Updated JAN 27, 2015 12:19a ET

Commissioner Gary Bettman at Sunday's NHL All-Star game tried to allay the fears of some big-market teams when he addressed the potential impact the struggling Canadian dollar could have on the 2015-16 salary cap.

"I assure you that even with the decline in the Canadian dollar, the salary cap doesn't fall off a cliff," Bettman told reporters. "When we gave you the rough estimate projection in December -- the same estimate that I gave to the clubs -- we were projecting a cap of $73 million, assuming the 5-percent increment under the collective bargaining agreement, based on the Canadian dollar at 88 cents to the U.S. dollar for the rest of the year.

"That would be 73 at 88. At 82 cents for the rest of the year, the cap would be 72.2, and at 80 cents, the cap would be 71.7.

"These are not -- in the context of a $70-million-plus cap -- dramatic numbers. As of Friday, I think the Canadian dollar was 81 cents. Nobody can project exactly where it's going, but the point that I'm making is you're not going to see a dramatic difference. The cap is computed based on currency on a daily basis. It's averaged over the season, so even as I said with an 80-cent Canadian dollar, we're still looking at a cap of almost $72 million."

Even so, that small drop could have an impact on teams currently bumping up against the cap and have bigger salaries coming on the books next season. The contract extensions for Chicago superstars Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews both kick in next season when each will be paid an average of $10.5 million annually. Several other teams could have cap issues, as well.

Even a slight drop in the cap projection could lead teams to trade players, like Chicago did with defenseman Nick Leddy and Boston did with defenseman Johnny Boychuk this offseason, to the delight of the New York Islanders.

When: 5 p.m. Tuesday Where: Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia TV: FOX Sports Arizona Season series: Coyotes lead 1-0. Records: Coyotes 16-25-5, Flyers 19-22-7 Injuries: Arizona F Mikkel Boedker (spleen) is on long-term injured reserve. Philadelphia F Michael Raffl (ill) and G Steve Mason (lower body) are day to day. D Kimmo Timonen (leg blood clots) hasn't played all season. D Nicklas Grossman (lower body) and D Braydon Coburn (lower body) are on injured reserve. Quick facts: The Coyotes recalled F Lucas Lessio and D Andrew Campbell from Portland of the AHL on Monday. ... Flyers F Ryan White could make his Philadelphia debut. After signing as a free agent, he tore a pectoral muscle during offseason workouts and has missed the entire season to date. ... C Antoine Vermette had a hat trick in the team's only other meeting this season, a 4-2 Arizona win at Gila River Arena on Dec. 29. ... Flyers winger Zac Rinaldo was suspended by the NHL for eight games Monday due to an illegal hit on Pittsburgh's Kris Letang last Tuesday.

If that happens, the Coyotes could be beneficiaries.

"Absolutely," Coyotes GM Don Maloney said on Monday. "Ideally for us, the Canadian dollar tanks and the cap goes down, not up."

Maloney was joking, it should be emphasized. He doesn't want to see the Canadian economy collapse. He is Canadian, after all.

But the point remains: if more players make their way to the market as cap casualties, the Coyotes could hasten their rebuilding project by acquiring quality players in the Boychuk and Leddy vein.

"All in all for us in Arizona, ideally the cap stays flat or sees as little a raise as possible and that will create opportunities," Maloney said.

The Coyotes are better positioned than most teams. They have just five players under contract beyond next season: defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, goalie Mike Smith, center Martin Hanzal, wing Lauri Korpikoski and center Joe Vitale.

Maloney said that fact was not a conscious decision, but more a product of the ownership uncertainty surrounding the team before last season. With financial flexibility and a long-term plan finally being instituted now that majority Andrew Barroway is in place, the Coyotes could look to fill some holes with veterans on defense while infusing more youth and speed into the forward group next season with prospects such as Max Domi.

"We want to stay as flexible as possible and if we need to grow this thing and run at a low payroll for a couple years, so be it," he said. "I think you see the problems a lot of teams get into when they get tied into long-term contracts."

Flexibility should also allow the Coyotes to take care of players they feel are pat of their future. Maloney had brief contract discussions with injured forward Mikkel Boedker's agent last week and may engage in lengthier discussions soon. Boedker will be a restricted free agent after this season. He could choose a one-year deal after which he becomes unrestricted, but Maloney hopes to sign him to a longer deal.

"I spent the weekend with Andy (Barroway) at the All-Star Game and really got a sense of who he is and what he's all about," Maloney said. "He really does want to do this right. He wants to build for the long term and he understands that there is some suffering involved to do what you need to do to build a winner that is sustainable."

Follow Craig Morgan on Twitter

Summary: A depressed Canadian dollar could mean a smaller increase in the NHL's salary cap next season. That could force some teams to shed players to get under the lower-than-expected cap ceiling.


When Ayse Ildeniz looks at the world, she sees all the ways technology could make it better.

She envisions wearable devices that keep elderly women in close touch with their doctors and families, that track what kids eat or watch on TV while their mom is away at work, that help women in rural India make sure their children arrive safely at school.

“I can think of about 50 different uses for wearables that would be fantastic for women,” she says, “but we haven’t done it yet as an industry. My humble view is that we women have been ignored. It’s my sense that now everybody’s pretty much waking up to that, which is very, very exciting.”

As the vice president of Intel’s INTC New Devices Group and general manager of business and development strategy, Ildeniz—who defines her job as “exploring uncharted territories and trying to create things that don’t exist”—is one of several leaders who are tackling the women-and-wearables challenge wrist-first.

In the last few months, she’s guided Intel’s efforts to release a jewelry communications device (MICA), to develop a wearables chip for fashion designers (Curie), and to forge partnerships with prominent fashion brands. “For me, wearables is a wonderful opportunity to learn about women’s needs,” she says, “and to make sure technology companies are producing things that are defined and designed for women.”

Part of the reason women haven’t embraced wearables sooner, according to Ildeniz, stems from visual appeal—or, more specifically, a lack of it. In late 2013 and throughout 2014, she says two kinds of wearables ruled the category: those devoted to sports and fitness but with limited aesthetic value, and those with multiple uses (“I call them the Swiss army knife approach”) with, again, limited aesthetic value.

When Intel surveyed men and women in early 2014, the company discovered something interesting. People said they wanted their wearables not only to perform technical acrobatics, but also to look great. “It was probably the biggest surprise in our research,” Ildeniz says, “but it’s so no-brainer.”

That’s when Ildeniz’s group, led by former Apple APPL vice president Mike Bell, got to work on MICA. They teamed up with fashion designers from Opening Ceremony to create My Intelligent Communication Accessory, which hit Barneys stores in December. It sells for $495 and looks like an upscale bracelet, but it also sends notifications, loads calendar entries and trades text messages.

Ildeniz says collaborations between fashionistas and engineers are the key to developing wearable tech that women actually want to wear. On MICA, for instance, she recalls that Intel’s engineers thought the display should sit on top, like a watch face. But their fashion counterparts argued for a hidden underside screen, insisting that their customers wanted camouflaged functionality—a wearable no one would recognize as such.

“That was shocking for our technologists,” she adds. “Our engineers were like, ‘Well, are you sure?’ But it was fantastic feedback.”

That’s why Ildeniz thinks designer-engineer teams are so important: they can fill in each other’s knowledge gaps. But Intel’s also working on closing that gap, at least on the fashion side. They have a Curie chip in the works, named after the famous scientist and due out later this year. It’s a button-sized hardware module, small enough to fit in rings or purses or pendants, and Ildeniz says it will encourage fashion designers, entrepreneurs and the accessory industry writ large to design wearables without needing their own engineers.

The New Devices Group is also working on collaborations with Fossil—reportedly a smartwatch—and Luxottica, including a smart glasses project for the Oakley brand. Beyond aesthetics, Ildeniz says her team is focused on the particular uses women have for their devices—things like communication with friends and family—with each project. “If you’re into sports, it’s wonderful to know how many steps you’ve done during the day,” she adds. “But if you’re not, what is the purpose of this thing?”

Ildeniz believes wearables can truly help women in ways they actually need: checking on their children, taking medication, managing their schedule and workloads. “There are so many opportunities out there, and part of my job is deciding which ones to bet on,” she says. “That’s a lot of responsibility, and we have a lot of open dialogue to ensure we’re making the right decisions.”

But at this point, Ildeniz is used to making big choices and working at the cutting edge of technology. Before she joined the New Devices Group in 2013, she was the regional director of Intel’s Middle East, Turkey and Africa region for 10 years. Working with Bell, Ildeniz helped create devices—including Yolo, a smartphone for Africa—“designed for the people, particularly for their needs,” she says. “Over there, the technology really doesn’t matter if it doesn’t enrich people’s lives.”

“There is no category defined yet, or existing for that matter,” Ildeniz adds, referring to her current role with the New Devices Group. “It’s very exciting to be a maverick.”

Watch more of the latest news about Intel from Fortune’s video team:

Summary: Ayse Ildeniz is on a mission to make wearable technology actually, well, wearable.


We are the angry birds, with plumage of red, yellow and white, streaking across the floor of this desert wasteland. There’s not much alive in California’s Death Valley, at least not to the naked eye, but you surely wouldn’t miss us. With 1,950 horsepower and 24 forward gears among our trio, you’d hear our collective cry from 20 miles away.

My raptor is the brilliant yellow Corvette Z06, and I am in the lead. Two friends and colleagues follow closely behind in their own borrowed Chevy Z06s, a fleet flock rupturing the fabric of the still, tepid air.

When I had envisioned driving the all-new, 2015 model-year Z06, the dream wasn’t even half as good as this. The Z06 is the top-tier Corvette. This is more than just an upgrade over the base Corvette Stingray, it’s basically a new car. And it is world class; a supercar at a fraction of the competitions’ prices.

The cheapest Z06 starts at $80,000. Outfitted in full racetrack-ready armament (and the nicest interior), expect to pay closer to $105,000. That’s about the price of a handful of options on a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta (which has a base price $320,000).

The seventh generation of the Corvette has been a surprise, a feel-good story for General Motors in an era where good news has been in short supply. The Corvette program almost died on the table during GM’s bankruptcy. Evidence of the quality of cars now coming off the line — with the Stingray as the prime example — was overshadowed by the grievous recalls of substandard products of old.

In addition to legalities and politics, Corvette has long faced another challenge: cultural. Corvettes are often the butt of jokes among supercar cognoscenti, who have traditionally viewed them as lower class and not comparable to cars made in Italy or Germany. But I want to get past all of that and talk about the visceral world. The one where your butt is in the seat and the sound of the engine makes your blood bubble, your heart yammer and the reptile part of your brain squeal. When it comes to a car like the Z06, that’s the world that most matters.

The Z06 is a fundamentally changed car. The 6.2-liter, supercharged V-8 creates 650 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque, 190 more hp than the base, $55,000 Stingray. The brakes are bigger and better, and Brembo carbon-ceramic stoppers are an option. The suspension has been artfully manipulated. And it has gained an array of exterior appendages designed to play tricks with the air.

The end result is a car that posts numbers on par with cars vastly more expensive. The Z06 is capable of reaching 60 miles per hour in three breathless seconds. Spin the Corvette around on a flat expanse of asphalt and it pushes well beyond 1 G before tire traction breaks away. The Michelin tires and suspension are mated in an incredible way, giving as much grip as many racecars.

The overall takeaway is this: The Z06 can frolic with Ferraris and tussle with Porsches. The ‘Vette’s engineers are heroes, having over-thought most everything. Using magnetorheological shocks — a trick system that softens or stiffens electronically — the car is surprisingly supple even on so-so tarmac. It’s taut, but it’s a far better ride than, say, the new Jaguar F-Type coupe.

They’ve also used tricks learned from endurance racing at Le Mans, leveraging the electronic stability controls to make the car even faster at the very edge of control when piloted by a skilled driver. It’s the kind of thing only achieved on a racetrack, with the proper (and quite complicated) controls set just right. Consider these features performance Easter eggs, only experienced by 1 percent of the drivers who will ever own the car. And these improvements are baked into the DNA of the car; it’s better than it needs to be.

And unlike any new Ferrari or Lamborghini, you can still get it with a stick. It’s a seven-speed, and lovely to use. Most buyers will go for the eight-speed automatic with paddle shifters, which is actually faster off the line, and very easy to live with.

But can you really consider a Corvette a supercar? It’s a matter of semantics — some would argue that even a Ferrari 458 doesn’t qualify. But the Z06’s performance numbers certainly put it within the sphere. And the physical attributes are different from anything else on the road. Nobody would confuse it as a regular commuter car—or a product of Stuttgart.

As I move across the desert, the car alive around me, my own senses on high alert, I have my answer. I’ll take it to the racetrack in the afternoon. And I’ll just begin to push and prod the higher levels of performance the Z06 is capable of. I’ll want to spend more time — a lot more — with this car.

At this very moment, though, compatriots in my rear-view mirror and a desert road unfurling over the brow of a distant hill, I feel utterly adrenalized. Joyful. It’s special in a way that only a very few cars automobiles can achieve. And that’s what a supercar should really be all about.

Summary: This is way more than just an upgrade of the Corvette Stingray.


MPW Insider is an online community where the biggest names in business and beyond answer timely career and leadership questions. Today’s answer for: How do you manage email overload? is written by Sheri Hickok, chief engineer of Next Generation Full Size Trucks at General Motors.

Emails can be the death of productivity or, on the other hand, a critical enabler. Here are some lessons I have learned over the years to not feel at the mercy of my inbox:

Don’t let your inbox become your to-do list Try not to open your inbox in the morning until you have completed your most pressing matters first. Otherwise, it can very quickly dictate what you are focusing on, which is usually urgent but not necessarily the most important.

Choose a certain time to answer emails I find that if I am multitasking in meetings (such as answering emails), I get much less out the meeting than I could. Instead, I schedule a few blocks of time throughout the day to focus on email, even just a few minutes at lunch or before heading home. Answering emails in one fell swoop is much more manageable and efficient.

Get comfortable with the delete button I used to feel that I needed to know about everything going on. Now, I have learned that if someone else on my team is responsible for a topic, I should let that individual manage those details — this means deleting emails I’m cc’ed on. This also works to empower your team, which is a win-win in my book!

Categorize your inbox Label emails. A few categories I use each day are: due in 24 hours, due in one week, for review, waiting for follow-up. These help me respond to the urgent items I can’t miss in a timely manner. It also helps me manage the information that I can’t delete yet, but want to keep in sight.

Get rid of the junk Don’t get sucked into every ad email or sale offer (even if it is your favorite store). We each have the same 24 hours in a day – make sure to spend your time on the issues that will have an impact.

Read all answers to the MPW Insider question: How do you manage email overload?

How to manage your inbox (before it manages you) by Camille Preston, founder of AIM Leadership.

Ivanka Trump: 5 tips for managing email overload by Ivanka Trump, executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization.

Summary: Make email your friend, not the enemy.


WHAT NERVE! ALTERNATIVE FIGURES IN AMERICAN ART, 1960 TO THE PRESENT A show that presents an alternative history of contemporary art by focusing on a series of artists associated with several influential groups in different cities: the Hairy Who in Chicago, Funk in San Francisco, Destroy All Monsters in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Forcefield in Providence. Artists include H.C. Westermann, Christina Ramberg, Gary Panter, and Elizabeth Murray. Through Jan. 4. RISD Museum, Providence. 401-454-6400, www.risdmuseum.org

FIBER: SCULPTURE 1960-PRESENT Featuring works by Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and Claire Zeisler, among others, this bold and colorful survey looks at developments in fiber art from the mid-20th century through to the present. (Pictured: “Capa pluvial II [Raincoat/Cope II]” by Aurèlia Muñoz.) Through Jan. 4. Institute of Contemporary Art. 617-478-3100, www.icaboston.org

DONATELLO, MICHELANGELO, CELLINI: SCULPTORS’ DRAWINGS FROM RENAISSANCE ITALY A fascinating look at the relationship between sculptures and drawings, featuring drawings and a terra cotta by Michelangelo, an extraordinary congregation of works by Cellini, and paintings and drawings by their rival Baccio Bandinelli. Through Jan. 19. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 617-566-1401, www.gardnermuseum.org

MARK ROTHKO’S HARVARD MURALS Painted murals made in the 1970s for Harvard University’s Holyoke Center, subsequently faded by sunlight, have been temporarily restored to their original colors with the help of digital projections in a controversial new — and noninvasive — approach to conservation. Through July 26. Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. 617-495-9400, www.harvardartmuseums.org

Summary: Sebastian Smee’s picks for noteworthy art exhibitions on view in Boston and the surrounding area this week.