The sharing economy — think Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Couchsurfing, TaskRabbit — is on a revolutionary path that is disrupting established industries in ways few had ever conceived.

If you’re in the taxi or limousine business, Uber and Lyft are your worst nightmare. These companies have emerged almost overnight to become major players who are luring customers away from old habits with a combination of convenience, price, efficiency and even “cool”. Airbnb is similarly taking market share from hotels, motels and inns. While TaskRabbit — really only one of many startups that connect people who need stuff done with the people who can do it for them (do my shopping, write my term paper, clean my garage) — is happy to change how you go about buying almost any service.

It’s a revolution, for sure, but a decidedly one-sided one so far, driven by demand. What does that mean for all these sharers who are, in large part, working for big companies without ever being deemed employees? For now, they’re an unorganised group of suppliers. But that could change, with disruptive results.

The sharing economy depends on people with excess capacity to provide something of value to others. And those people must have a desire to monetise that capacity. For Uber and Lyft, that’s people with cars; for Airbnb and Couchsurfing, it’s a spare room or apartment; for TaskRabbit, it’s a small degree of expertise and lots of free time.

Uber, for instance, relies on regular people who have a car who decide to drive someone from point A to point B for compensation. These people aren’t employees of Uber, so the company even limits its cost of managing this outsourced workforce. Pay enough to entice people to drive their cars, and let the computer and mobile interface manage everything.

The net result is a huge population of individuals who effectively work for Uber despite the fact that they have no formal employment status. And their compensation is completely determined by Uber, without regard to any “employee” rights or other considerations. Call it employees without benefits.

Sometimes called a "revealed infrastructure,” this economy requires only that individuals are willing to enter a transactional relationship with a company to deliver services to customers generated by that company. End of story. Individuals bear all the fixed costs (car repairs, insurance, safety risks) and most of the overhead costs (training, equipment).

But what about the supply side? What about all those people with cars, spare apartments or couches, or time to run errands for others? The big question is what will they do? Will they continue to operate as sole proprietors in a transactional way, or will they seek to organise in some fashion to gain power — that is, more money — from the companies that send them all these customers?

On the one hand, why would these people do anything to disrupt what they’ve got? They run their own show, choose when they want to work, and get paid for something they’ve had all along, something that previously just sat there and generated no income.

On the other hand, what would happen if Uber drivers decided to form a union, or some agglomeration of people who can drive a harder bargain? In some ways, such a move is almost predictable. Add in the incredible company valuations — and wealth — that is accruing to the people who run the revealed infrastructure economy, and it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where the picture changes. Uber et al are currently exploiting a tremendous opportunity, and it’s worthy of applause. But it can change.

Of course, it’s hardly as simple as that. For one thing, if Uber drivers join forces to demand higher pay, couldn’t Uber just rely on those drivers who choose not to? The drivers who subscribe to the notion that they are entrepreneurs, rather than interchangeable data points in a massive algorithm. This prisoner’s dilemma is a nontrivial barrier to organising.

The other challenge is even simpler than the prisoner’s dilemma. Like individual shareholders who are completely disenfranchised by modern rules of corporate governance, individuals who happen to drive for Uber, or rent a room to Airbnb customers, may care less about anything other than what they get for their troubles. Organising shareholders into a common force is incredibly difficult.

Maybe the new revolution will come from within. Unions are a very twentieth century solution to unequal distribution of gains among owners and workers. Uber relies on thousands upon thousands of drivers, each working independently and anonymously.

I can imagine some young man or woman developing an app that allows drivers to share information seamlessly, a first step to creating a coherent collection of people who have something in common. And an even smarter young man or woman might figure out how to create a startup that offers services to this community while simultaneously exploiting the inherent power imbalance that has characterised the first wave of the sharing economy.

Just like Uber, Airbnb, and the rest all seemed to come out of nowhere to establish themselves as disruptive players, why can’t the scenario I describe not come to pass, this time disrupting the disrupters?

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Summary: What will happen if the people who âworkâ for the likes of Uber and Airbnb want more of the pie?


A JetBlue Airways plane. (Supplied)

A JetBlue Airways pilot who scared passengers by yelling about Jesus and al-Qaeda in 2012 has sued the airline for $16 million, saying it jeopardised the flight by failing to recognise he was ill.

Clayton Osbon filed the lawsuit yesterday in Manhattan federal court.

No one was seriously injured on the March 27, 2012 flight from New York to Las Vegas when Osbon was restrained after running through the cabin shouting irrationally.

The plane made an emergency landing in Amarillo, Texas.

The lawsuit said Osbon's behaviour resulted from seizures.

The lawsuit accused JetBlue of ignoring warning signs Osbon was not well before the plane took off.

In a statement, JetBlue praised the "heroic actions of the crew," saying ongoing litigation prevents it from commenting further.

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Summary: A US pilot who scared passengers by yelling during a flight is suing JetBlue Airways for ignoring warning signs he was not well before the plane took off.


U.S. employers added far fewer jobs in March than economists had anticipated, the worst showing for the labor market in more than a year and ending a year-long streak of monthly job additions above 200,000.

The Labor Department published March’s employment figures Friday morning, with the report showing U.S. employers added just 126,000 jobs in March. That missed Wall Street’s expectations by 121,000 new jobs and was the weakest job growth since December 2013. Ahead of the report, observers had warned that job growth looked poised to take a step back in March, hurt by weak oil prices and the surging value of the dollar. The Labor Department reported weakness for jobs that supported oil and gas extraction, as well as a slowdown in job gains from the food services industry.

Here are the highlights from this morning’s report.

What you need to know: March was the 54th straight month of employment gains in the U.S., but the job growth failed to exceed 200,000 after a 12-month streak of gains above that threshold.

Hourly wages rose by just 7 cents to $24.86 and over the year, average hourly earnings grew by 2.1%. The wage gains in early 2015 have fallen short of the 3% annual wage growth that was seen prior to 2007.

The labor market has added jobs steadily as the nation’s economy has rebounded and grown in the years following the global financial crisis. Job growth has spread across many pockets of the economy, though wages haven’t improved much and the long-term unemployed have missed out on the jobs rebound. Meanwhile, weak oil prices have led to some notable layoffs in the energy sector. Of the 140,214 job cuts announced in the first quarter of 2015, 34% of them were attributed to falling oil prices, according to outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The big numbers: The U.S. labor market added 126,000 jobs in March, falling short of economists’ estimates of 247,000 jobs, according to a Bloomberg survey. The nation’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.5% in March, matching analysts’ estimates.

Job gains for February were downwardly revised. The figure dropped to 264,000 from 295,000 jobs. The number of long-term unemployed was little changed at 2.6 million.

What you may have missed: The job market has been stung by weakness in the mining sector. That industry has shed 30,000 jobs so far in 2015, after adding 41,000 jobs for all of 2014. The employment declines in the first quarter of this year, as well as the gains reported last year, were generally tied to jobs that supported oil and gas extraction. Observers have warned the falling price of oil would take a significant toll on industries such as oil field services, energy providers and related manufacturers this year.

Among other sectors, job growth in retail matched the 12-month average gain, while the health care sector, food service industry, and professional and business service providers all added jobs last month. Notably, the food services industry added just 9,000 jobs in March, after posting an increase of 66,000 in February. The job growth for that sector in March badly lagged the average monthly gain for 2014, which was at about 33,000 per month.

Summary: Gain of 126,000 jobs was the weakest job growth since December 2013.


THE COLORED MUSEUM Uneven though it is, George C. Wolfe’s 1986 satire still packs a punch with its clever, creative, and incisive takes on the complexities and challenges of African-American identity, culture, and history. Billy Porter directs with brio, and his cast (Capathia Jenkins, above) is immensely talented and versatile. Through April 5. Huntington Theatre Company, at BU Theatre, Boston. 617-266-0800, www.huntingtontheatre.org

COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA Director David Cromer, who won plaudits for his reimagined production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,’’ tackles another play by an American writer who is often underestimated and condescended to: William Inge. “Come Back, Little Sheba’’ is about the emotional upheaval that results when a Midwestern couple, Doc and Lola Delaney, take in a female college student as a boarder. Through April 26. Huntington Theatre Company, at Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts. 617-266-0800, www.huntingtontheatre.org

GOD’S EAR This 2007 play by Jenny Schwartz treats a conventional theme — a couple have lost their 10-year-old son — in an unconventional manner, as the husband and wife speak in clichés and non sequiturs, and the cast includes not only their 6-year-old daughter but also the Tooth Fairy, a blond barfly, a transvestite flight attendant, and a GI Joe action figure. Directed by Thomas Derrah, the production is as imaginative as the script, and the cast, headed by Tamara Hickey, Gabriel Kuttner, Marianna Bassham, and John Kuntz, is superb. Through April 12. Actors’ Shakespeare Project at Davis Square Theatre, Somerville. 866-811-4111, www.actorsshakespeareproject.org

Summary: Globe critics offer their picks for the best in local theater, including “God’s Ear,” “The Colored Museum,” and “Big Fish.”


California-raised jihadist Adam Gadahn. (Supplied)

An outspoken American al-Qaeda member who threatened a major terror attack in Melbourne has been killed in a US counterterrorism drone strike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Adam Gadahn, raised on a goat farm on the outskirts of Los Angeles and who converted to Islam around 1995, became a key member of al Qaeda's propaganda machine and often appeared alongside the terror group's leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

He regularly sent out video messages in English.

After deadly terror attacks in Britain and Europe in 2005 Gadahn released a video where he foreshadowed bombings in Melbourne.

"Yesterday, London and Madrid," Gadahn said in the taped message.

"Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, Allah willing. And this time, don't count on us demonstrating restraint and compassion."

White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced Gadahn's death on Thursday along with the accidental deaths of two aid workers, American Dr Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto.

Weinstein, Lo Porto and a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader and US citizen, Ahmed Farouq, were likely killed in a separate US drone strike in the border region to the one that hit Gadahn, Earnest said.

The US military did not realise Weinstein and Lo Porto were being held in the al-Qaeda compound.

"As president and as commander-in-chief I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni," US President Barack Obama said in the White House briefing room.

Earnest said Farouq and Gadahn were not specifically targeted "and we did not have information indicating their presence at the sites of these operations".

In 2006 Gadahn became the first US citizen to be charged with treason since World War II and would have faced a death sentence if arrested, extradited and found guilty in the US.

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Summary: The White House has confirmed a drone strike has killed a California-raised al-Qaeda terrorist who once warned Melbourne would be targeted.


The Leadership Insider network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in business contribute answers to timely questions about careers and leadership. Today’s answer to the question “How do you go from a worker bee to a decision maker?” is by Dominic Paschel, vice president of corporate finance and investor relations at Pandora Media.

People often make the mistake of equating career advancement and growth solely with the accumulation of bullet points on their resume. And while skills and work experience are important, they are really only half the equation. The other half consists of intangible things you must embrace to continually advance your career and not only learn how to accept the decisions of others, but learn how to make your own, wisely.

Trust your instincts I interviewed for three jobs after leaving my first job out of college in investment banking–four months after I started and more than $40,000 in debt. Two of the companies were reputable, established corporations and both were offering positions that were clearly paths to the traditional definition of career success. Anyone and everyone told me that taking a job at one of these places was the right decision given my circumstances–living in San Francisco, an already expensive city and jobless. The third was a startup in every sense of the word–an open floor plan filled with quirky, edgy people working hard for a guy in a Hawaiian t-shirt with his dog at his side. But the energy was palpable and I decided the risk was ultimately worth the reward. That company was Salesforce.com. To this day, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made even though it probably didn’t make sense to anyone but me at the time. Nonetheless, it introduced me to the world of high tech and fueled my passion for innovation. And most importantly, it just felt right.

Look for the opportunity in adversity In 2008, after a period of tremendous growth, the first company I joined to take public, SuccessFactors, had to lay off 23% of its workforce, largely a reaction to the financial crisis ailing the entire country and to preserve capital. It should’ve scared me. But instead, I dug in. I took on more responsibilities and new roles. The circumstances actually opened new doors and presented opportunities for leadership. Eventually the business retrenched and grew both domestically and internationally affording me the opportunity to work abroad. I became a trusted advisor to the executive team and an ambassador for the company.

Invest in your relationships Above all else, people are the most important asset. I often tell people I’ve never interviewed for my next job. Why? Because in every role, I surround myself with smart, motivated people who connect me to new ideas and ways of thinking. As actor Martin Sheen, once said in West Wing, “I surround myself with the best and the brightest.” By committing to learn from those around you, you foster trust and knowledge sharing; you become an advisor with limitless potential and value. Everyone has a spot on their team for someone like that but more importantly, people want to work with someone like that.

Never stop growing In 2011, I had the opportunity to join the team at Pandora and lead my first consumer technology initial public offering as well as align my passion for new challenges with my passion for music. I knew the world of cloud computing well but was excited to dive into this rapidly growing, highly innovative company sitting at the intersection of music and consumer tech. It’s been a wild ride ever since and I probably have a few more white hairs. However, at the end of the day, Pandora is constantly presenting me with new opportunities to learn and allows me to be with awesome people, all of whom are working towards a larger mission: helping unleash the infinite power of music.

Summary: Are you comfortable making difficult decisions?


Floyd Mayweather Jr., left, and Manny Pacquiao

05/01/2015 AT 03:50 PM EDT

but afraid to admit you have no idea what it's all about?

Boxing fans already know Saturday's slugfest between Manny Pacquiao and

at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is a colossal deal, and now you can too after reading up on these five facts about the highly anticipated match-up.

The veteran welterweight fighters are considered the two greatest boxers in the world. Mayweather, 38, is undefeated and the richest professional athlete in the world, even nicknaming himself "Money." The Michigan native comes from boxing lineage: His father once fought Sugar Ray Leonard. Pacquiao, 36, grew up in the Philippines and is a politician in his home country. Some believe he will

For years, boxing fans have been dying to see these two duke it out, but various negotiations inevitably broke down. However, the pair made a breakthrough in January when they bumped into one another at a Miami Heat basketball game and had a private powwow afterwards,

The fight's total purse (and yes, it's okay to snicker at the term) is expected to top $200 million,

, with some estimates coming in at close to $400 million. Per the terms of the contract, Mayweather gets 60 percent of the pot and Pacquiao gets the rest. It's expected to be the biggest payday in the history of professional sports for both men.

With fighting fans finally seeing their dream-fight become a reality,

in 60 seconds flat. However, with many of the tickets snapped up by ticket brokers, there are still seats available –

The competition for the best seats rivals what will happen in the ring.

, Robert De Niro and Clint Eastwood all scored sweet seats to the fight. So did Michael J. Fox,

and Jimmy Kimmel, per the

$250,000 on the match-up – are expected to be there. So is

, a Mayweather fan who ran onstage during a pre-fight news conference, adding to the spectacle of it all.

Catch the fight on Saturday, May 2, at 9 p.m. ET on pay-per-view through Showtime and HBO.

Summary: Learn more about the boxing match-up that has everyone talking


IF ONE divides the figures in President Reagan's speech of Feb. 5 by the number of households in the country, 70 million, the results become very interesting.

I suddenly realized that my income for many years has been supporting two households, the second one run for me by the Federal Government. And if I am an average taxpayer, I will be contributing about $8,500 to my second household this year.

That is a lot of money, but apparently not enough, because the present budget calls for my household to spend about $9,700 a year. A loan of $1,200 would cover the difference, and all the loans to date add up to a debt of between $13,000 and $14,000.

What worries me in particular is that my second household must pay about $1,100 a year in interest and that the loan is getting bigger, instead of smaller, from year to year.

Sometimes, we look abroad for good ideas - for example, to Europe - but that will not help this time. My friends, relatives and colleagues in several well-to-do European countries have incomes comparable to mine, but their second households cost them between $15,000 and $20,000 a year.

One of them is an engineer in Copenhagen, and he tells me that he works eight months a year for his government and four months for his family.

So I am all in favor of a reduction in my income tax, and I would welcome it if those who run my second household could lower expenses even more and thus eliminate the need for additional borrowing.

And while I am trying to find things to cut, a $2,500 item for military expenses stares me in the face. It is there, I am told, because I cannot trust the Russians.

Somewhere in Russia, there must be an engineer figuring that he spends about the same amount each year to prevent me from overrunning his country, which I have no intention of doing in the first place.

Would it not be a good idea if he and I, with our pocket calculators, could draft a SALT III agreement? The $500 or $1,000 per household per year, which they and we would save initially, would make life so much easier for budget directors on both sides of the ocean.

But that is not all. Engineering experience tells one that all materials, even the strongest specialty steels, have a stress limit. If they are loaded above the limit, they break.

And the arms race is giving me the terribly unsettling feeling that both sides are putting more and more stress on the barrier that separates us from a nuclear war. If it breaks, there will not be any second households in Washington or Moscow anymore. There will not be any first households in Princeton, either.

The income-tax form asks if I wish to spend $1 on future Presidential elections, and it hastens to reassure me that it will not affect my taxes if I say yes.

My answer will be that the President may gladly take an extra $1 out of everybody's $8,500 to do some quiet talking with the Russians about SALT III. It may be the best $70 million that Washington has ever spent.


Peter K. Nevitt is president of the BankAmerilease Group, the leasing subsidiary of the Bank of America. From this position, Mr. Nevitt has closely followed the changes being wrought in the $30 billion tax leasing industry as a result of the Administration's new tax plan.

By wiping out many of the complex rules that have defined this complicated business, the Administration is attempting to aid ailing industries and create billions of dollars of tax shelters for healthy ones. As a result, it is expected that tax leasing will become an even more common method of financing assets.

A typical tax leasing arrangement generally involves three parties: A company that seeks low-cost equipment financing, a lessor that owns the equipment and a bank that finances the equipment. The lessee trades the tax benefits of ownership - depreciation and investment tax credits -to the lessor for low-cost financing.

Much of the concern has come from lessors who feel the new rules have wiped out one of their major sources of profit: the residual values on the assets they lease out. Now, lessees will be allowed to purchase the asset at a prearranged price at the end of the lease term instead of being required to pay fair market value.

These changes could cause a flood of new entrants into the leasing business because any company with taxable income to shelter may find it attractive to become a lessor. Today, many equipment lessors are bracing for the pending industry transformation. But they remain uncertain over just exactly what will happen.

Q. What is a lessor's perception of the changes?

A. From the standpoint of the lessor, the loss of residual values takes a lot of the pizazz out of leasing. The prospect of being able to realize something on residual value was very important to lease pricing. These values provided some upside potential that helped hedge the inflation risk inherent in giving fixed-rate financing. This is something I wish had been left in.

On the positive side, the new law will stimulate a lot more leasing. I think the volume of leasing will double or triple in the next year or two.

Q. What will cause this increase in business?

A. At present, there is a shortage of equity capital in the lease marketplace. The new legislation is going to permit the complete transferability of tax benefits such as investment tax credits and depreciation. That means a company like Eastman Kodak, for example, will be able to invest in a lease with practically no risk whatsoever. I don't think corporate treasurers of these companies can ignore the profits that are possible by becoming a passive lessor.

Q. Will this really aid ailing industries, as the Administration says?

A. At present, ailing companies have to compete with stronger companies to get someone to do a tax-oriented lease. If a lot more companies with tax liabilities can be made eligible as lessors, that should be good for companies that are basically good credits from a cash flow standpoint, but may be going through troubled times. More persons will be offering a tax-oriented lease, which means that more leases will be available.

Q. Do corporate treasurers appear to be interested in becoming lessors?

A. Corporate treasurers and corporate finance departments of big corporations are sophisticated and understand what you are talking about pretty quickly. In the past, companies that wanted to get into the leasing business had to start a full-fledged financing company. Most companies were unwilling to do that. They felt their capital resources could best be used in some other way. Under the new law, they don't have capital resources tied up for more than a few months.

There's interest in investigating this further. Any time you call a corporate treasurer and say you know how to save money, he's interested.

Q. Will these changes aid capital formation?

A. The alternatives to this were investment tax credit (I.T.C.) refundability plans and talk of selling I.T.C. certificates. Those kinds of schemes were like taking a 747, flying over the United States and dumping out the dollar bills. The money wouldn't necessarily end up where it would be most efficiently used.

I think this is a fairly efficient use of a tax stimulant. You will have lenders who will screen out noncreditworthy transactions. It should channel the funds, which is essentially Government subsidy money, into projects that make sense.


WASHINGTON, Dec. 11— At one time the Atomic Energy Commission and an 18-member joint Congressional committee were in charge of America's mightly nuclear arsenal.

Nowadays, however, much of the responsibility for it and for the Reagan Administration's big planned weapons buildup rests in other hands. They belong to Herman E. Roser.

Mr. Roser, a 59-year-old career civil servant who was appointed Assistant Secretary of Energy for defense programs by President Reagan, is not actually a one-man sucessor to two major Federal bodies, but he does function as a sort of nuclear weapons czar.

His name is virtually unknown to the public, or even to the movement that opposes nuclear arms. Yet Mr. Roser is directly in charge of a weapons complex that employs 54,000 people and whose annual budget of almost $5 billion exceeds that of such departments as State, Interior, Justice and Commerce.

He supervises the design, testing, production, storage and security of all nuclear warheads. But neither he nor his nominal chief, Energy Secretary James B. Edwards, has much to do with decisions about whether the nation actually needs, say, the MX missile. Not How Many or What Kind

''It's not our function to determine how many or what kind of weapons systems we should have,'' Mr. Roser said in an interview at his trim, very secure office in suburban Maryland. The Pentagon, acting through the Military Liaison Committee and with the coordination of the National Security Council, ''asks us what we can furnish that can meet their requirements,'' he said.

That statement in itself reflects how much authority has changed since the days immediately after World War II when, after a bitter fight between military and civilian scientists, the Atomic Energy Commission was set up with the explicit idea of maintaining civilian control over nuclear weapons.

In principle, the commission was to review the Pentagon's annual weapons requests and determine whether nuclear warheads should be developed and built. In practice, the commission generally went along with the Pentagon's ''buy orders,'' although it occasionally rejected some warheads wanted by the military, as it did, for example, in the Kennedy Administration. Not a Dr. Strangelove

Mr. Roser, who was born in New Mexico, has spent his career working on nuclear weapons, but it would be hard to imagine anyone less akin to the maniacal Dr. Strangelove stereotype. In Washington, where he dons three-piece suits instead of the Western sport shirt and string tie garb he prefers, he looks like a Wall Street banker or a corporation president.

It is also hard to find, even among those skeptical of the Administration's arms policy, anyone who will whisper a critical word about him.

''He is the perfect example of the technical professional civil servant,'' said John Deutsch, a former Under Secretary of Energy who is now a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ''There's no person in the country more qualified for the job.''.

John J. Burke, a former Atomic Enercy Commission official who plucked Mr. Roser from the ranks of the Zia Company, a contractor at Los Alamos, in the early 1960's, added, ''I regard him as the quintessential public service executive.'' Up From Retrenchment

As deputy manager and then manager of the Energy Department's giant Albuquerque Operations Office, Mr. Roser was widely credited with carrying the nuclear weapons porgram through what one official calls the ''retrenchment mode'' of the 1970's when the topic of nuclear arms was about as popular as the Vietnam War.

What he did was keep up the standards and morale of an agency at a time when few people had any use for things military. In the words of N. Douglas Pewitt, assistance science adviser to President Reagan, nuclear weapons ''were sort of in the dustbin of the Federal bureaucracy and I think he did an exceptionally good job of keeping up the standards.''

Albuquerque Operations embraces nine major facilities stretching from California to Florida, including production plants, test sites, the warhead final assembly plant in Amarillo, Tex., and research laboratories that are often locked in competition with one another. Very Few Who Can Say 'No'

Some people lament the fact that with the 1977 demise of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and the disappearance in 1975 of the Atomic Energy Commission there has been a diminution of civilian control over the nuclear stockpile.

Today there is no one outside the White House who can say ''no'' to the Defense Department's weapons requests, which are transmitted annually in top-secret ''stockpile memorandum.''

Although the joint committee did, at least, sometimes veto elements of the Pentagon shopping list, some officials say that its oversight job has been spread so thinly among many committees that none seems to care.

''We used to have strong civilian control,'' said John T. Conway, former executive director of the joint committee, now a lobbyist for nuclear utilities. ''But we don't have that today. It's so diversified - with no expertise.''

In addition to working these days on the latest generation of missiles, Mr. Roser is involved in a program begun by the Carter Administration to modernize the weapons-making plants themselves, many of which date from World War II.

''We have some rebuilding to do,'' he asserted. But to call the facilities dilapidated, as some have done, he said, ''is probably an overstatment.'' As Always, Time and Money

One of his biggest problems, Mr. Roser said, is inflation, which has raised the Government's weapons costs no less than its other programs. He pledged at his Senate confirmation hearings in June to continue to seek ways to improve productivity.

''It's always a matter of time and money,'' Mr. Roser said recently, but ''we're doing the job more efficiently than we've ever done it'' before.

Despite a heart attack and bypass surgery that has forced him off a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit in favor of a pipe, Mr. Roser maintains a punishing schedule that includes heavy travel to his farflung empire.

''My style of managment calls for me to get out and kick the tires,'' he said. Friends say that while Mr. Roser, a widower who remarried last year, is probably ''a good bit more wound up and coiled than he appears,'' as one put it, there is little sign that he worries much about what his arsenal might be called upon to do.

He regards himself primarily as manager of an enterprise ''very much like an industrial organization - with perhaps higher standards,'' he said, one filled with professionals in whom he has gained confidence over many years.

''We'd all like to see the day when you don't need weapons,'' he declared just before the arms negotiations resumed recently in Geneva. ''But I don't see anything on the world horizon that indicates we'll be going out of the nuclear weapons business anytime soon.''

Illustrations: photo of Herman E. Roser


''To the I.R.S. - 'Nuts!!!' '' With this front-page headline, the Rev. Brian Wallace, editor of Today's Catholic, the official weekly newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, flung down the gauntlet before the Internal Revenue Service in June 1980.

He was protesting an I.R.S. ruling that if a religious paper endorsed a political candidate on issues of interest to the religious group, it could lose its tax-exempt status.

''I dare them,'' Father Wallace said in an editorial that backed Ronald Reagan as ''the only Presidential candidate who is clearly opposed to abortion.''

Father Wallace dug in for a First Amendment court fight. He thought the I.R.S. might wait for the November 1980 national election to end before suing his paper.

''I never received any direct communication from the I.R.S.,'' he says. And there was a ''a sort of deafening silence on behalf of the official spokesmen of the Catholic Church,'' he adds.

Father Wallace is associate director of fund-raising for the Oblate Missions in San Antonio today. He gave up his post with the paper, he says, because it had ''financial problems'' that he could not solve.


With the New York City Council's reapportionment experience as a warning, state legislative leaders hope to redraw Assembly district lines next month so that minority-group legislators will not be affected by an expected loss of four Assemblymen in the city.

The Legislature plans to return to Albany early next month to redraw its own districts, and possibly also those of the state's Congressional delegation, which will shrink by five because of population shifts revealed by the 1980 census.

Assemblyman Melvin H. Miller of Brooklyn, the Democratic cochairman of the Legislative Task Force on Reapportionment, emphasized last week that no final plan had yet been agreed upon. A number of sources, hoever, suggested scenarios that are already emerging for the drawing of new district lines.

The task of the Democrats in the Assembly will be complicated, since the state's most severe population losses are in the Democratic strongholds of New York City and Buffalo. Bronx and Brooklyn Losses Seen

In New York City, the number of white Assembly members is expected to shrink. This is the case, said Assemblyman Miller, because the city is losing overall representation and cannot cut the number of minority seats, given the growth in the city's minority population and the strictures of the Federal Voting Rights Act.

New York City's losses will be concentrated in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Especially threatened are Assemblywomen Rhoda S. Jacobs and Helene E. Weinstein and Assemblyman Harry Smoler, all Brooklyn Democrats. This is so because their districts have large black and Hispanic populations that will be the key to building districts that will be represented by minorities.

On the other hand, white candidates in Brooklyn have often shown an ability to do well, even in heavily black districts. Assemblywoman Jacobs, for example, has won in a district that is already heavily black.

Another Brooklyn seat now held by a white Assembly member is also likely to disappear. Reapportionment experts say this seat could be cut from almost anywhere in Brooklyn. Democrat's Surprise Victory

But one factor influencing the seat affected will be an effort now under discussion to create a district with a substantial Hispanic population. This district, map makers say, would probably not elect a Hispanic person immediately, but would do so later in the decade, if population trends continued.

Assembly members whose districts have substantial Hispanic portions and thus might be vulnerable under such a plan include Joseph Ferris, Eileen C. Dugan and Florence M. Sullivan, Brooklyn's only Republican.

But the Brooklyn reapportionment could be complicated by the unexpected victory of Louis Freda, a Democrat, in a special election last week. Mr. Miller noted that Mr. Freda's victory came in what had been regarded as one of the most Republican districts in the city. ''It shows that you can draw a map and have all the numbers on one side and still not have things come out the way you expect,'' Mr. Miller said.

In the Bronx, the minority members of the Legislature are regarded as safe, as are Assemblymen G. Oliver Koppell and George Friedman. But the rest of the white members of the delegation will have to share a loss of two seats. Regarded as particularly vulnerable are Assemblyman Guy J. Velella - the Bronx's Republican Assemblyman and thus a prime target for the Democrats -and two Democratic incumbents, John C. Dearie and Sean P. Walsh. Queens Republicans Threatened

But depending on how the lines are drawn, Assemblymen Vincent A. Marchiselli and Elliot L. Engel could also be vulnerable. However, Mr. Engel has a strong base in Co-op City that could difficult to threaten.

In Queens, four Republicans could be the target of Democratic redistricting -Douglas N. Prescott, John A. Esposito, John G. Lopresto and John T. Flack. Mr. Flack's district, for example, is close to that of Assemblyman Frederick D. Schmidt, a Democrat. Mr. Schmidt's district now straddles the Queens-Brooklyn line, but could be redrawn as a Queens seat and include part of the area currently represented by Mr. Flack.

Mr. Miller also noted that Mr. Lopresto's district had been ''gerrymandered'' by Republicans, with parts of it connected by ''the southbound roadway of the Whitestone Expressway.'' A gerrymander is, by definition, a drawing of district lines by the other party, and so Mr. Miller's ''correction'' of the gerrymander would likely make Mr. Lopresto's district more Democratic.

Staten Island gains a seat, and Manhattan loses a fraction of a seat under the census. But one Manhattan Democrat, Paul Viggiano, represents a large share of Staten Island, and the main impact of reapportionment on Mr. Viggiano might be that he would have to move out to Staten Island.

Assemblyman Edward C. Sullivan, a white Democrat who represents a heavily black district that includes parts of Harlem and the area around Columbia University, is also considered vulnerable if his district is redrawn to include more blacks. But Mr. Sullivan has demonstrated considerable appeal to black voters. Long Island Change Mulled

On Long Island, Democrats are considering creating a separate district that might send a black to the Assembly. The district would focus on the area around Roosevelt and could cut some population from districts now held by three Republicans, Kemp Hannon, Armand P. D'Amato and Dean Skelos.

There has also been speculation that two Assembly members, John J. Flanagan and Antonia Rettaliata, might be placed in the same district. But Mr. Miller noted that it was possible to reduce Republican strength without forcing incumbents to run against each other.

Upstate, the Democrats will be mainly concerned with preserving their existing seats, although Carol Siwek, a freshman Republican from Buffalo, may face reapportionment problems.

The Republicans who control the Senate will be looking mainly to strengthen their hold on the 35 seats they now control, and will benefit from population growth in upstate rural areas that are generally sympathetic to their cause. The Senate's size will grow beyond its current 60 members, so that while New York City will see its relative strength diluted, it is not expected to lose any seats.

Senate Republicans are likely to focus their efforts on damaging the re-election chances of Senator Carol Berman, a Democrat who represents a district that straddles the Queens-Nassau line, and Senator John D. Perry, a Rochester Democrat. The Republicans have repeatedly failed to defeat Senator Perry at the polls, but they may have more luck using redistricting. Senator Berman's seat, in the meantime, may not exist at all once the new lines are drawn.

There is also discussion of figuring out a way to add a Republican seat in Queens and to damage an incumbent Democratic Senator, Anthony M. Masiello of Buffalo.

The Congressional reapportionment, in the meantime, faces further postponement. Mr. Miller said the Legislature might put off redrawing Congressional lines until next January, a delay that would give political leaders more time to decide who will lose their jobs.

Illustrations: photo of Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein photo of Assemblywoman Rhoda Jacobs photo of Assemblyman Joseph Ferris


The occasion had taken three years to arrange, and when it was all over Monday night, there was still a tingle of excitement in the air and nobody felt much like going home.

Instead, Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne celebrated their first joint operatic engagement by joining 250 special guests at Sybils, the West 53d Street disco, where there was enough food to feed the elephants in ''Aida.''

How, the stars were asked as they attacked their plates, had the evening's performance gone? ''Dreadful,'' said a playful Miss Sutherland, who acknowledged that Mr. Pavarotti had been ''all right.'' ''A triumph,'' said Miss Horne, echoing a broader view. ''The ladies sang beautifully,'' said Mr. Pavarotti, who left it to others to judge his own performance. Among those present was Dr. Umberto Boeri, an Italian-born East Harlem pediatrician who has achieved derivative fame as Mr. Pavarotti's ''oldest and closest friend in New York,'' and there was the mysterious woman in the striking red dress that has, according to Lincoln Center officials, become a fixture at Met openings.

One official asked who she was. ''Lillian Williams,'' she said, asserting that she was the No. 1 opera fan in San Francisco and Mr. Pavarotti's No. 1 fan anywhere. ''I have a 33-room house in Sausalito,'' she said, ''and each one is devoted to a different opera.''

Summary: The occasion had taken three years to arrange, and when it was all over Monday night, there was still a tingle of excitement in the air and nobody felt much like going home.   So they didn't.


CAIRO, June 26— President Anwar el-Sadat said today that his meeting with President Reagan in Washington in August would mark a new phase in the Middle East peace effort, and that he wanted an agreement on autonomy for the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to be signed by the end of the year.

Mr. Sadat made his comments in an interview published in the semiofficial Al Ahram. It reinforced the Egyptian leader's determination to go ahead with the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty steps at a time when anti-Israeli feeling has been rising in Egypt and despite reports from officials that he is still furious with Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Mr. Sadat was angered because Mr. Begin ordered the Israeli air strike against Iraq's nuclear reactor center outside Baghdad only three days after he met with the Egyptian leader.

Three weeks after the attack, the anti-Begin sentiment here is very strong. Some of the language sounds like the anti-Israeli commentary that was commonplace before Mr. Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977. Begin Requested a Meeting

Mr. Begin requested a meeting with Mr. Sadat on June 4 at Sharm el-Sheik, in that part of Sinai still occupied by Israel. The purpose, according to the Israeli leader, was to discuss the missile crisis in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where Syria has installed SAM-6 missiles. Israel has threatened to destroy them.

Mr. Sadat, aides say, agreed to the meeting despite a strong disinclination to get involved in any way in the fierce Israeli campaigning for elections to be held next Tuesday.

Three days later Mr. Begin ordered the attack on Iraq. Despite swift Egyptian denunciation of the raid, its timing greatly embarrassed Mr. Sadat.

Mr. Begin is still being assailed in political cartoons in the press here, which is closely monitored by the Government. One by Salah Jaheen, who might be called the Herblock of Egypt, appeared in Al Ahram the other day showing Mr. Begin holding the latest favorable Israeli poll and telling a colleague: ''This means if we raided two more Arab countries we would win all the Knesset seats.'' Devouring the Dove of Peace

Another that appeared in this week's issue of Ash Shaab, the organ of Egypt's only opposition party represented in Parliament, depicted Mr. Begin as a fanged snake, emblazoned with a swastika, about to devour the dove of peace.

The intensity of the attacks on the Israeli Prime Minister recall similar bouts in January 1978, when the peace movement was at a low point. At that time Mr. Begin threatened to halt negotiations with Egypt if the attacks did not cease.

Ever since the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor center, Mr. Sadat has been relatively cool in his public comments about Mr. Begin but has quelled the more radical suggestions coming from members of Egypt's Parliament, such as expelling the Israeli Ambassador.

''Unfortunately, Begin has opened the old wounds and put salt in them,'' an irate official said yesterday. But he added that Mr. Sadat was bent on fulfilling the terms of the peace treaty and had no intention of letting the issue cost him the full return of the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel captured in 1967.

''We will not succumb to the emotions of the moment and let the Israelis off the hook,'' the official said. Accord Reached on Sinai Force

This was supported yesterday when an American, Egyptian and Israeli negotiating team, meeting in Cairo, announced that an agreement had been reached on the creation of a multinational peacekeeping force to patrol Sinai after Israel's final withdrawl by next April.

So far the Egyptian response, aside from the fiery oratory, has been limited to a slowing down of the process of normalization of relations with Israel, a process that has been sluggish in any case.

The Iraqi attack prompted Egypt to cancel a youth exchange program planned for the summer and to put in abeyance several agricultural projects that had been agreed upon during the recent visit of Israel's Minister of Agriculture, Ariel Sharon. Some commercial visits have also been canceled.

Most Egyptians expect Mr. Begin to be the victor in Tuesday's voting. In recent weeks, the elections have been a key topic of political conversation here and each poll and shift of mood in Israel is reported and discussed.

In the interview, Mr. Sadat raised one of the thorniest issues in the peace process - the fate of the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who have been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

''I expect an agreement on autonomous government for the Palestinians to be signed before the year is out,'' Mr. Sadat said, and he indicated this would be a focus of his talks with Mr. Reagan in August.

Mr. Sadat emphasized, as he has in the past, that Egypt was not negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians but wanted to end the Israeli presence in the two areas so that the Palestinians could decide on a form of self-rule.

Many Egyptians believe that much of the recent Middle East turmoil has been engineered by Mr. Begin for election purposes. An Egyptian official said that the Israeli leader was appealing strongly to the anti-Arab emotions of Israel's so-called Oriental Jews - those from places like Morocco, Yemen, Syria and Iraq - because he had done so little for them economically since taking office four years ago. Israel's inflation rate, for example, is running at over 130 percent.

That segment of the Israeli population bolted the Labor Party in 1977 and voted for Mr. Begin, who was a surprise victor.


High interest rates have jeopardized the prospects for the start of a business recovery this spring, Murray L. Weidenbaum, the Reagan Administration's chief economist, said in an interview. His comment underscored the possibility that the Administration will scale back its forecast in the revised budgetary outlook that is due next month. That would mean lower projected revenues, and a larger deficit. (Page A1.) The President said he wouldn't hesitate to use his veto to preserve his proposed spending cuts. (A1.)

A court-ordered revision in a Federal plan to spur offshore oil exploration was announced by Interior Secretary James G. Watt. Changes in the timing and size of individual lease sales were included, but environmentalists are dissatisfied with the plan. (D17.)

The industrial decline in the Middle West may be slowing. State governments are scurrying to attract new investments, and there are some tentative signs of success, officials say. (D6.) Companies

The pace of new-car sales by the Big Three fell 31.1 percent in the first 10 days of March, the largest drop this year. Chrysler's sales fell 33.3 percent, G.M.'s 32.9 percent and Ford's 24.9 percent. Total sales so far this year were 17.8 percent below last year. Analysts cited the recession, high interest rates and high car prices. (D1.)

G.M. and the U.A.W. resumed contract talks, with the company proposing nearly the same wage-concessions-for-job-security pattern that the union recently accepted at Ford. The union's response was generally positive, although officials insisted on seeing more specifics before committing themselves. (A1.)

National Steel will freeze the wages of 7,000 nonunion employees and cut senior managers' salaries by up to 25 percent in anticipation of a first-quarter loss, the company announced. It would not disclose how big it thought the loss would be. National, the nation's sixthlargest steel producer, took similar steps in 1980. (D1.)

A J.P. Morgan plan to be the first bank holding company to trade in financial futures for the general public has encountered stiff opposition from commodities dealers concerned that Morgan and other banks will lure away their customers. The Federal Reserve Board is expected to rule soon on Morgan's proposal. (D1.)

Kaiser Steel's shares plunged $13.50 in reaction to Friday's decision by Stanley Hiller Jr. and his group to withdraw an offer to purchase the company. Nearly 6 percent of Kaiser's shares changed hands. Much of the selling was by arbitragers, analysts said. (D8.)

Marshall Field asked the Big Board not to open trading in its stock while its board of directors weighed a ''proposed extraordinary transaction.'' The move followed a sharp increase in the Icahn group's investment in the Chicago retailer. (D4.)

The Soho News was closed by its British owner, the Associated Newspaper Group. Although the 10-year-old weekly had been gaining circulation, it lost $2 million last year, the publisher said. (B3.)

A Federal appeals court refused to reverse the dismissal of Sam Goody's conviction on charges involving the sale of counterfeit tapes, but it criticized the trial judge. (B7.)

The Schenectady Savings Bank has merged with Hartford Federal Savings and Loan, which lost more than $7 million in 1981. (D5.)

The Arcata Corporation has accepted a $251 million offer for the acquisition of the company by ALB Ventures. (D4.) Markets

The stock market was pushed slightly higher by rebounding technology issues. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 3.62 points, at 800.99. (D10.) Prices rose slightly for debt securities due in over five years, but fell slightly for shorter-term issues. (D9.)

Gold's price was fixed at $312 an ounce in London, down $11.25 from Friday, but it gained $6 an ounce later in New York to close at $323.50. (D14.) Commodities futures prices advanced broadly. (D14.) Today's Columns

A reason often given for the plunge in gold prices is heavy selling by Moscow to pay for huge grain purchases and to earn hard currency. But that isn't necessarily so, according to Timothy S. Green, an expert on gold trade. Talking Business. (D2.)

The safety of municipal bonds shouldn't be taken for granted any more, an analyst says. Their reliability has been weakened, he argues, by untested financing methods and by early bankruptcies encouraged by a 1979 change in Federal law. Market Place. (D10.)


Periscope, the Twitter-owned livestreaming app that has taken the world by storm in recent months, is coming to Android.

Previously available only on iOS devices, the livestreaming app is now available in the Google Play store two months after first arriving for iPhone.

Periscope lets users livestream video content to their followers directly from a mobile device. It’s become popular for journalists and experts to do video chats, and for people at big events like political rallies or sporting events to show followers what’s going down on the scene.

Twitter announced its purchase of Periscope only weeks after a similar app called Meerkat launched to much fanfare among the tech press and early adopters.

The Verge notes that the features of the new app are pretty similar to those available on the iOS version.

Summary: Now everyone can watch the sun set in San Francisco


In November 2011, Roy Lichtenstein's 1961 I Can See the Whole Room … and There's Nobody in It! was sold by Christie's for $43.2 million. The painting depicts a large back square, out of which a circle has been cut. From behind the circle peers the face of a jutting-jawed comic-strip man, illuminated by a bright background of yellow. He is looking through a peephole, at the viewer; above him a dialogue bubble declares that he can see no one in the room where we, presumably, are standing. The irony shoots in many directions, not least towards that perennial question demanded of modern art: is there any there there?

Painted in the same year as his breakthrough Look Mickey, the work in which Lichtenstein first discovered the possibilities of using cartoons and comic strips, I Can See the Whole Room … and There's Nobody in It! encapsulates Lichtenstein's wittiness and insight. The painting quotes abstract expressionism – the image suggests such seminal works as Kazimir Malevich's 1915 Black Square – while entirely subverting its tone. The avant garde confronts kitsch, the old world confronts the new, the individual confronts the mass-produced, and the confrontational confronts the jocular, even as the visible is declaring its viewers invisible. But Lichtenstein is just as willing to efface the image, and its maker, as his audience: in his 1978 Self-Portrait, he puts a blank mirror where the artist's head should be.

At the same moment that Lichtenstein was discovering that he could use popular culture to ask searching questions about concept, form and technique, Andy Warhol was, quite independently, also using cartoon in his experimental work: neither artist knew it yet, but Pop Art was about to spring fully formed from America's forehead. The nation did not initially enjoy looking in the mirror that Lichtenstein and Warhol were thrusting toward it: in 1964, Life magazine asked of Lichtenstein, "Is he the worst artist in America?"

Half a century later, the first major exhibition since Lichtenstein's death in 1997 has arrived at Tate Modern, having travelled from the Art Institute of Chicago, where it opened last year. Although it took a while for museums to warm to Lichtenstein's then heretical blending of high and low art, the original and the copy, the serious and the trivial, satire and homage, mechanical and handmade, produced and reproduced, far-seeing connoisseurs recognised something new and exciting, and immediately began collecting him.

His work explores ideas of clichés and icons, the ersatz and the manufactured. In the beginning, cartoons and comic strips provided his source material, although he soon moved away from them. But he never abandoned his signature method, the Ben-Day dot (named after inventor Benjamin Day's 1879 technique for reproducing printed images by using dots to recreate gradations of shading), ensuring that his work would remain as recognisable as it was quotable.

Lichtenstein's paintings are far more technically demanding than it seems at first glance. His work was described by the critic Hal Foster as the "handmade readymade": not industrially mechanised, but blending careful techniques of handwork (drawing, tracing, painting, emphasising brushstroke, line, and Ben-Day dot) with the reproduction and screening of found images. It is not art trouvé but art retrouvé: refashioned, recovered, reframed. And in the process, our simplistic distinctions between making and manufacturing begin to dissolve.

Like Marcel Duchamp before him, Lichtenstein was criticised for not producing original art but plagiarising the originals. Unlike Duchamp, however, Lichtenstein couldn't even offer the avant-garde defence of aggressive "obscenity": his work is resolutely unconfrontational, tonally serene, even when the subject matter (such as Drowning Girl or WHAAM!) is pain or violence. This led to persistent accusations of detachment, distance, a frigidity that some say makes his work hard to love. Conversely, others charge that Lichtenstein's art is too lovable: too accessible, commercial, art "lite" for the merely acquisitive.

His work tests the contradictions at the heart of our ideas about art and taste: reproduction enables accessibility and democratisation (good), but prompts anxieties about vulgarisation and popularisation (bad). But vulgarisation, Lichtenstein said, was what he was exploring: "The colour range I use is perfect for the idea, which has always been about vulgarisation." The Ben-Day dots, too, were meant to suggest the manufactured and simulated: "The dots I use to make the image ersatz. And I think the dots also may mean data transmission." The work is "supposed to look like a fake, and it achieves that, I think," he explained.

It is no coincidence that Lichtenstein's painstaking, hand-made works about reproduction do not themselves reproduce well: when they are reproduced, they lose their individuality, specificity, scope and delicacy. But the ideas remain, and they are wiser and more prescient than is sometimes acknowledged. Along with the other pop artists, Lichtenstein helped to suggest that any representation is mediated, emphasising new ways of seeing in the age of the industrialised image.

What is the relationship between imagination and the images that have shaped it? As I Can See the Whole Room … and There's Nobody in It! suggests, Lichtenstein asks questions about perception and environment: apertures and camera shutters, peepholes and voyeurism, frame and screens define the way we view our surroundings. "My work isn't about form," he once said. "It's about seeing. I'm excited about seeing things, and I'm interested in the way I think other people saw things."

What he saw, and saw others seeing, was mid-century America in all its tawdry grandeur: a brash, jazzy, garish world of bright colours and arrested motion, industrialised and mechanised, through which real human experience keeps pushing its way. Lichtenstein brings noise and narrative into painting, introducing time and motion into a still life. The sensibility of much of his work is not far from the mid-century Hollywood musical: an unnatural, stylised world of primary colours, formulae and clichés, featuring carefully designed outbursts of spontaneous emotion, painstakingly recreated. Lichtenstein's meticulously hand-painted dots may be no more reminiscent of French pointillism than of Fred Astaire re-recording each tap in a tap dance for the film's soundtrack. And like the Hollywood musical, his work has been accused of nostalgia, conservatism, appeasement, even as it is celebrated for its energy, technical skill and charm.

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born on 27 October 1923, and raised in New York City, the son of affluent middle-class parents. It was the jazz age; Scott Fitzgerald was in the midst of the parties that would inspire The Great Gatsby. The young Lichtenstein grew up surrounded by that world of exploding mass culture and commercial advertisement, jazz and prohibition (the peephole in I Can See the Whole Room has suggested the speakeasy to some viewers). Surrounded by the art moderne of the 1930s, influenced by the geometrical, modernist world of art deco and futurism, Lichtenstein also loved the superheroes of radio and film serials, and the popular music of his day, especially jazz. One of his finest paintings, The Melody Haunts My Reverie, features one of his perfect blondes (recently, and accurately, likened to Betty Draper in Mad Men) crooning a line from "Stardust" by the great Hoagy Carmichael.

He studied art at Ohio State University until the second world war interrupted his studies. Sent to Europe, he worked as a draughtsman, among other duties, and encountered European art, including exhibitions of Cézanne and Toulouse Lautrec in London. After the war, he returned to Ohio, where he completed his degree and taught art for the next 10 years, while he pursued his painting, searching for an original style. He returned to New York in 1957, and four years later had his breakthrough with Look Mickey.

When the dealer Leo Castelli took him on in 1961, Lichtenstein joined a group of artists that included Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and whom Warhol would soon join and eclipse, at least in the celebrity stakes. For the next 45 years Lichtenstein remained at the forefront of the American art world. The conspicuous in America interested him, he said in 1965: "I think there's the apparent lack of subtlety and sort of make-believe anti-sensibility connected with American art. I think this is a style and it does relate to our culture and I think it would be anachronistic maybe to pretend to be involved with subtle changes and modulations and things like that because it's really not part of America."

But such a statement was not necessarily a criticism. "The things that I have apparently parodied I actually admire," Lichtenstein said, and humour is as central to his work as is a very American buoyancy. Even the 1963 Drowning Girl is defiant: "I don't care! I'd rather sink – than call Brad for help!" the girl's thought bubble declares. Lichtenstein added later that, as far as he was concerned, the drowning girl didn't drown. This relentlessly sanguine perspective, his cheerful willingness to celebrate rather than to excoriate, continues to mean that some will always view him as a lightweight, an artist manqué who sold out to the juggernaut of American popular culture. But context is crucial to parody and pastiche: pastiche reframes the work of art both literally and metaphorically, making us look at it anew. As with most modern art, parody and pastiche mean that the artist must also be a critic, engaging with a tradition that has been inherited without being overwhelmed or suffocated by it.

And cliché, Lichtenstein maintained from the start, was central to his work. He was fascinated by the possibilities of reanimating a dead metaphor, playing with the bromidic visual formulae of mass culture, asking questions about inarticulacy, probing the tension between surface and depth. For an artist so interested in reproduction, he also understood the dangers of repeating himself, and worked hard to keep reinventing his work by turning to new themes and source material.

Reimagining Monet's iconic series of Cathedrals and Haystacks, for example, Lichtenstein explained that they were "meant to be manufactured Monets", at the same time as they were "a play on cubist composition", borrowing imagery from the 1930s. "The theme is hackneyed, which is part of the idea": the Monets "deal with the impressionist cliché of not being able to read the image close up — it becomes clearer as you move away from it."

When he turned to Van Gogh's famous room at Arles, Lichtenstein's sense of humour itself became a way of exploring that painter's romanticised "madness". Lichtenstein painted Bedroom at Arles, not after The Artist's Room at Arles, but after a postcard of it, offering a tongue-in-cheek explication of how his painting "improved" Van Gogh's: "I've cleaned his room up a little bit for him; and he'll be very happy when he gets home from the hospital to see that I've straightened his shirts and bought some new furniture. Mine is a rather large painting and his is rather small … His is much better, but mine is much bigger." This might seem merely facetious, but it subverts our supposedly straightforward evaluative criteria, while affectionately poking fun at American values, reminding us that bigger is not always better.

Lichtenstein added in a more serious vein: "Where the Van Gogh is so emotional, and feverish, and spontaneous, my work is planned and premeditated, and painfully worked out." Lichtenstein is a conceptual artist who uses conventional representations to explore his abstract concepts. He liked using cartoon symbols, such as seeing stars, or the curving lines that indicate an arm in motion, because, he said, they "related to the way the futurists would have portrayed motion. There are certain marks, like these, that I am fond of using because they have no basis in reality, only in ideas." And yet they convey ideas about how to depict the most physical of our realities: motion, time, collision. When Lichtenstein is faulted for being emotionally reserved, this is to deny that humour has an emotional impact. It can be defensive, but it can also be a profound point of connection, connectedness, even of sorrow and regret, and certainly of self-deprecation in an art world often accused of overweening narcissism.

Look Mickey, in which Donald Duck exclaims that he's hooked a big one, features Donald raptly leaning toward his own image in the water, a Narcissus confronted not by his face, but by the artist's signature, a small, sardonic, "rfl." Or take the famous Masterpiece, which features another Hitchcock blonde admiringly telling the square-jawed artist: "WHY, BRAD DARLING, THIS PAINTING IS A MASTERPIECE! MY, SOON YOU'LL HAVE ALL OF NEW YORK CLAMORING FOR YOUR WORK!" He wasn't wrong, but he kept laughing at himself, and that in itself is a virtue worth preserving.

When Lichtenstein died of pneumonia at the age of 73, his last words were: "Well, here I go," a sentiment that could have appeared in one of his dialogue bubbles – humorous and forward-looking to the end.

Summary: By blending high and low art, Roy Lichtenstein tested the contradictions at the heart of our ideas about art. He was labelled a heretic, but half a century later, we get the joke, writes Sarah Churchwell


Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux

08/12/2015 AT 04:40 PM EDT

have apparently discovered the perfect way to make their wedding bliss even more blissful – beachside yoga!

The newlyweds did some oceanfront downward dogs on Tuesday during a yoga session on the sands of their luxurious Bora Bora resort during their tropical honeymoon.

in the backyard of their Bel Air home, invited a few of their closest friends to join them on their honeymoon at the posh Four Seasons resort, including

director Will Speck, and Tobey Maguire and Jennifer Meyer.

Maguire and Meyer, a close friend of the couple who designed their

, touched down in Bora Bora Wednesday morning with their two children, and the whole family was promptly lei'd as they boarded a boat headed for the resort. Meyer later posted an

of the resort's breathtaking view.

Several members of the group joined the couple for the yoga session, which concluded when the friends ran into the ocean, with Aniston spotted wearing a purple bikini.

She looked equally cheerful as she walked through the resort with her new husband on Tuesday. Aniston, 46, had her arm wrapped around his waist while Theroux, 44, had his arm slung around her shoulder. In the spirit of the beach vacation, Aniston walked through the resort in a skimpy string bikini, a towel wrapped around her waist and her wet hair twisted up behind her.

The duo are staying in the $4,000-a-night three-bedroom

. Located along the beachfront and featuring picturesque sunset views of Mount Otemanu and the lagoon, it features four bathrooms, a private swimming pool and more than 2,000 square feet of expansive decks and shaded lanais.

The couple and their pals have emerged from their slice of paradise to enjoy everything the resort has to offer. On Monday, Theroux

with a boys-only boat trip. The group has hit the water for some oceanside fun, and also enjoyed celebratory dinners.

The newlyweds love the tropical spot so much they

even before their intimate wedding – and who can blame them?

"It's such a romantic place," Beverly Hills travel agent Robin Van Zak told PEOPLE. "The sunsets are incredible."

Summary: Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux and pals run into the ocean to wrap up a yoga session


Caterpillar on Thursday reported earnings and revenue that beat expectations, but CEO Doug Oberhelman warned: Don't expect a repeat.

Share prices of the heavy equipment maker were up more than 1 percent Thursday afternoon. (Get the latest quotes here.)

"We saw construction in the U.S. and North America up. And that's the bright spot we have right now," Oberhelman told CNBC. "It's fairly anemic but it's growing ... kind of quarter by quarter."

He said the U.S. economy was growing "fairly slowly" but steadily, while the rest of the world was struggling. "China is down significantly year over year. Brazil is weak economically. Europe is still kind of flat, but in our case, down year over year."

Caterpillar reported earnings of $1.86 a share, which included a 14 cent gain on an asset sale. So the adjusted earnings is $1.72 a share.

Revenue decreased to $12.7 billion from $13.24 billion a year ago.

Summary: Caterpillar reported earnings and revenue that beat expectations. But CEO Doug Oberhelman warned on CNBC: Don't expect a repeat.


Wolff, who splits her time evenly between being a traditional financial advisor and what's termed a "financial neutral," added that "the ones who went through litigation seem worn out and exhausted; they often need a year or so to recover before they're able to focus."

Financial neutrals serve as an advisor to both spouses, providing financial guidance and planning and facilitating joint financial decisions to bring about optimal results for both parties.

The clients' longtime advisors can play an important role within the collaborative paradigm, said financial neutral Cathy Daigle, a certified financial planner and owner of financial divorce consultancy Cathy Daigle.

4 key elements of collaborative practice

Source: International Academy of Collaborative Professionals

"We're building and enhancing their relationships with their clients by engaging them as part of the process," Daigle said. "They want to put their clients in good hands."

She added, "We'll engage them in the collaborative process to educate us about the clients' assets, especially in the cases of high-net-worth families. We also consult with the advisors about the parties' equity incentives, such as restricted stock units."

Specialized financial neutrals also address other family needs.

Read MoreGrieving over, widows must grow

Gigi Robson, certified public accountant and owner of Respond, which specializes in divorces and business dissolutions, said she sees two major aspects to her role: "First, education; typically, one of the spouses is less financially savvy than the other," she said. "And secondly, it's for the children; parents need to learn to work financially together for years."

Summary: Collaborative divorce, in which divorcees negotiate outside of court with help from neutral professionals, can ease much of the trauma of separating.


The need for a good retirement savings plan would not be the first thing most people would think of as they considered the plight of coffee farmers in remote mountain communities in Colombia, one of the world’s leading producers of high-quality arabica coffee beans.

Surviving as a coffee farmer can hard enough on a short-term, daily basis. Not only does the best coffee grow at over 2,000 metres and is thus often difficult to access, but its production is very labour-intensive. Coffee crops are sensitive to climate change with yields often cut by intense rainfall, temperature change and pests. In addition, prices that the farmers receive from buyers can fluctuate wildly, dependent on world supply dictated by climate change and production levels across the globe.

However, when Nespresso, together with Fairtrade International, looked at new ways of helping smallholder farmers overcome their difficulties, it was a long-term goal that emerged as a high priority – retirement planning.

Harriet Lamb, CEO of Fairtrade International, says when she met Colombian farmers: “Pensions came up time and time again. You see really old people working on coffee farms, lots of men with missing teeth, and yet many of them visionary people who helped found their cooperatives. If they stopped working, where would they get their income from?”

One farmer, 38-year old Luz Modene Betancor, told her: “I have aunts and uncles who have spent all their lives in the countryside and now they have nothing - no money, no protection, nothing.”

One thing many can’t expect is for their children to take over the traditional family smallholding and support them in their old age. With young people increasingly turning their backs on coffee to seek more reliable employment in the towns, the average age of a Colombian coffee farmer is around 55.

The need to provide coffee farmers with financial security is behind a unique partnership between the Colombian government, Fairtrade International, portioned coffee brand Nespresso, and Expocafé, a leading national umbrella body for coffee farmer cooperatives.

The Farmer Future programme is an extension of the Nespresso AAA Sustainable QualityTM Program, which it had established in 2003 to secure a sustainable supply of the world’s highest quality coffee (only1%-2% of coffee beans grown globally are of sufficient quality to meet the company’s taste and aroma requirements).

The Swiss coffee giant began sourcing quality coffee direct from smallholder farmers rather than world coffee markets, paying an average premium of between 30% and 40% above the standard market price and 10%-15% above prices for coffee of similar quality. Through the company’s AAA Program, Nespresso also worked with them to improve their production processes, providing training and technical support.

But improved incomes alone were not enough to secure farmers’ futures; the potential for accidents and the inevitability of old age were still a concern.

That’s where the initiative has broken new ground – by arranging for retirement savers to receive up to 20% matched funding from the Colombian government. Other ideas proposed to the farmers within the Farmer Future initiative include health, accident and crop insurance, covering events such as mudslides.

So far, more than 860 farmers have signed up to a pilot for the scheme, run by the Aguadas Cooperative in the Caldas region of west Colombia. “This has been a relief to many,” says Juan Carlos Ardila of Expocafé. “The people who will benefit will be the middle-aged and younger farmers. We have half a million farmers and every time an old farmer dies, the property is split. We now have steelworkers aged 17 to 50 taking over plantations. We’re trying to get more educated youngsters into the business, supporting them with technical input and cost accounting.”

Colombia is not the only country where such sustainability initiatives are being piloted. A similar initiative within the AAA Program aimed at enhancing farmer welfare has been running in the coffee-producing Huehuetenango region of Guatemala since 2010, and has been replicated in Costa Rica. In those countries the focus has been on helping farmers with financial planning and accounting, so that in addition to cultivating exceptional coffee, they can better understand the revenues and costs associated with running their farms and develop financially successful coffee businesses.

“They are seen as elite producers of arabica coffee. It tastes great, customers like it, and they get good prices for it,” says Lawrence Pratt, a senior lecturer on sustainable development at INCAE Business School, Costa Rica, which works with Nespresso. “So why [were they] so poor?”

The answer was surprising: “Two thirds didn’t keep written records of anything. They were not getting the best prices on fertiliser, and not necessarily using best practice.”

Out with the oldLong-held traditional practices (and some more modern models) were out of date and a lack of financial knowledge meant that even simple microcredit schemes to improve coffee production could not be accessed.

Nespresso called on Root Capital, a US-based, non-profit social investment fund for poor rural communities, to provide financial training in tailored workshops and in one-on-one coaching sessions.

Root Capital’s Tyler Clark, global director of advisory services, says the farmers were quite positive. “It was a light-bulb moment for some, understanding how to run things. The more sophisticated Farmers have a good grasp of their cost structure, but many did not.”

By helping the farmers to improve the financial management of their farms, access credit and acquire new business skills, the project has helped all the farmers in the coffee cooperatives run more profitable businesses.”

Jérôme Perez, Nespresso’s head of sustainability, says one of the biggest goals of the Farmer Future programme is to increase the capacity of farmers to invest in their own futures by saving. “We have found just over 7% of farmers save. We need our farmers to be happy, healthy and wealthy. If we are not involved in ensuring that coffee farming provides a profitable livelihood, security into old age and attracts young farmers, it will endanger the future of our business.”

Summary: With no pension schemes and younger generations turning their backs on the family business, coffee farmers work well into retirement just to keep the money coming in. But change is afoot


Standing at 314 meters, the 77-storey MahaNakhon building in Bangkok's central business district will not just be Thailand's tallest building when completed by year-end.

It will also be a representation of Thai building boss Sorapoj Techakraisri's faith in his homeland's ability to withstand the economic downwinds it faces.

The mixed-use development, which began construction in 2013 and will cost $500 million to erect, has been grabbing attention for its distinctive appearance, designed by renowned German architect Ole Scheeren.

Shaped like a square prism, the skyscraper is encircled by a three-dimensional spiral framed by cubical surfaces. Glass walls lining the mega-tower are divided horizontally and vertically, adding to the building's "pixelated" exterior and increasing the complexity of the construction.

Read MoreBangkok bombing exposes frailty of Thai economy

"It's been very challenging. To create the pixelated view, every floor has to be different so it's an extremely complicated building to build," Techakraisri, CEO of luxury property builder PACE Development Corporation, told CNBC's "Managing Asia."

But the real test for the residential and hotel tower lies in the macro-environment of Thailand.

In a quarterly report released on Monday, the Southeast Asian economy expanded 2.8 percent in the April-June period, down from 3 percent in the preceding quarter, on the back of weak local demand and exports.

And when, later in the day, a bomb exploded at the popular Erawan shrine in central Bangkok, killing 22 people and injuring hundreds more, economists said the deadly blast could take a toll on the one bright spot in Thailand's sputtering economy - tourism.

Following the tragedy, the benchmark SET index fell to its lowest since the start of the year, led down by tourism-related names, while the baht sank to a six-year low.

Read MoreThai market, baht hammered after Bangkok blast

While the 37-year-old chief executive acknowledged, in an interview conducted ahead of the bombing, that plans to build the skyscraper couldn't have "come at a worse time," he remained optimistic on Thailand's real estate market, particularly in the upmarket property segment.

"Both economically and politically, Thailand is facing the most challenging [period], I would say, in the past 20 years. To introduce the tallest building and the biggest project at such a time has [many] challenges," the scion of the country's prominent Techakraisri family said.

"But Thailand is still a growing economy. With the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community, the higher end of the market will continue to grow because there will be many expatriates and foreign companies [who] come to invest and set up their offices here," he added.

Data from global property consultancy CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) seconded Techakraisri's view.

In a March report, CBRE analysts said the outlook for Bangkok's super-luxury projects remained bright, as factors such as continued demand from a growing middle class and expatriates offset a growing oversupply of condominium units. Around 80,000 high-end apartments are expected to be completed in 2015, the report said.

Further buoying the project is strong interest from overseas buyers such as a Dubai-based business group who invested $27 million in MahaNakhon's Ritz-Carlton branded residences in 2013, according to a report by local media Pattaya Mail.

Summary: The MahaNakhon in Bangkok's CBD represents this Thai builder's faith in his homeland's ability to withstand economic downwinds.


David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images News

Pump jacks and wells on the Monterey Shale formation in California

"People are writing off Saudi Arabia, saying they have just relinquished their role as spare capacity holder to more expensive non OPEC suppliers like the US," energy markets analyst in the commodities research team at Barclays, Miswin Mahesh told CNBC.

"Saudi Arabia has signaled that it is moving away from its traditional role as swing supplier of crude, relaying the role to more expensive non-OPEC suppliers. As the kingdom focuses on market share, it still has the potential to become one of the most flexible suppliers of petroleum," he said.

Mahesh's comments come as former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve claimed that America's shale oil revolution mean OPEC's oil pricing power may never be regained. Prices have collapsed by as much as 60 percent since summer 2014.

Read MoreSome tech firms winning while oil is falling

U.S. crude inventories rose to 425.6 million barrels last week, up by 7.7 million barrels, data from the Energy Information Administration showed Thursday, marking the sixth straight week of record high gains.

"What we are saying is Saudi Arabia can actually send refined products to markets where they can't really undercut an oil producer directly – possibly because of long-term contracts and by providing refined products, the underlying refinery cannot process the competitors' crude. It gives them a lot of flexibility and also for the oil markets, the composition of the spare capacity changes," Mahesh said.

"Our expectation is $60 a barrel for 2016, but for the next few months we see a lot of weakness coming," he added.

Summary: Saudi Arabia's tactics mark a shift in policy rather than an irreversible loss of market share according to Barclays.


Carlos Barria | AFP | Getty Images

Secretary of State John Kerry leaves his hotel on the way to mass at the St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, Austria July 12, 2015 where the Iran nuclear talks meetings are being held. World powers raced to clinch a landmark deal to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb, with a source close to the marathon talks saying an agreement was '98-percent' completed.

NBC News learned that a deal could possibly be announced early morning Vienna-time, but there has not yet been any officially announced extension of a midnight deadline.

People close to the talks said experts were reading through the text of an agreement, NBC News reported.

Reuters, meanwhile, originally reported that a western official said a photo opportunity for foreign ministers of Iran and its negotiating partners was scheduled for midnight GMT (8 p.m. ET) with a news conference potentially to follow. But the wire service later reported that officials said the midnight photo op was unlikely.

Read MoreRichardson: I'm 'dubious' Iran will behave

One diplomat told the AP that some of the top officials involved in the negotiations needed to leave Vienna early Tuesday, thus hastening the announcement.

The diplomats weren't authorized to speak publicly on the status of the negotiations and demanded anonymity.

Iran and the major powers have been negotiating for more than two weeks in Vienna in an effort to strike a deal under which Tehran would restrict its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions that have crippled its economy.

—NBC News, Reuters and CNBC contributed to this report.

Summary: People close to the talks said experts are reading through the text of an agreement, NBC News reported.


Ted Cruz's entry into the presidential race should be cause for celebration among advisors and friends of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Instead of pressuring Bush to move further right toward Cruz's positions on immigration, education and fiscal policy, the entry of the firebrand Texas senator into the 2016 presidential race will do the exact opposite.

Cruz's supporters were never going to back Bush, who supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and national education standards. But many of them might also support Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee or other more conservative candidates who could get into the GOP presidential race.

Cruz does not align exactly with any of these candidates. He is more tea party and less libertarian than Paul. And he is making a big push for evangelical voters. But there is much more overlap than with Bush, who is running in the centrist, Wall Street-friendly establishment lane of the GOP, which in recent cycles has reliably produced the eventual nominee.

What first mover Ted Cruz will mean for the race

Cruz's entry makes it less likely that any alternative to Bush will come to dominate early in the nominating process. Instead, Cruz, Paul and others will likely split up the hard-right conservative vote in Iowa, giving the eventual winner something less than a clear mandate as the leading non-Bush candidate. Bush would then hope to win New Hampshire, come in at least third in South Carolina and then use his expected vast money advantage to roll up delegates—including in his native Florida—when the race goes national in March.

Bush's main concern is not Cruz or Paul—though he will want to maintain viability with social conservatives and libertarians—but rather with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and possibly Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Both Walker and Rubio are making plays for establishment support, and Bush's big fundraising effort is in part designed to lock up that lane before his would-be challengers can get a foothold.

There is another element to Cruz's candidacy that could work to Bush's advantage.

The Texas senator in his initial campaign manifesto cited his support for the 2013 shutdown and his hard line in recent debt ceiling fights as a credential in the "Jobs and Opportunity" section.

Cruz wrote that he "[d]emanded a 60-vote threshold vote on a clean debt-ceiling increase in February 2013, when Republican leadership wanted to allow the Democrats to raise the limit with a simple majority vote." He also "[i]nsisted on a commitment from Democrats and Republicans in the Senate that the debt ceiling would not be increased as part of a deal to pass the budget."

Summary: Ted Cruz could wind up splitting the anti-Bush vote and giving the former Florida governor clear opportunities, Politico's Ben White says.


09/01/2015 AT 02:35 PM EDT

's rumored feud has taken on a life of its own since the MTV VMAs on Sunday. Sure, a lot has been said about one of the show's most buzz-worthy moments, but perhaps nothing can sum up the drama better than emojis.

On Monday night's episode of

, the host with the most did a solid for everyone by explaining the timeline with the help of some familiar icons. Each step of the way, Kimmel had the perfect emoji for the stars involved, including

As Kimmel geared up to make light of the viral interaction on Monday, a source close to the rapper told PEOPLE her

. "Nicki was joking, as you could see her laughing toward the end," the source said. Still, other sources insisted it was a "very real thing."

It all started when Minaj took to Twitter after the VMA nominations were announced in July. Minaj explained why she felt "Anaconda" was overlooked for video of the year, writing, "If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year." Soon, Taylor Swift responded to the tweet, resulting in a

that eventually led to a resolution and their

While Swift and Minaj have moved on, Cyrus has found fault with Minaj's reaction to the snub. In an interview with the

released in late August, Cyrus said the rapper was "not too kind."

Minaj waited a few days to respond, choosing to confront Cyrus on the VMAs stage as she accepted the best hip-hop video award Moonman for "Anaconda."

If you're still baffled by the VMAs highlight everyone has been talking about, watch Kimmel's synopsis in the video above.

Summary: The late-night host has the most colorful explanation of the pop stars' spat


An April survey of investment managers by Bank of America Merrill Lynch showed that there had been "minimal change" in Japanese positioning, with exposure to the country decreasing by only about 3 percent from March to April. Shorts on the yen even increased slightly in recent weeks.

Read MoreWhy Japanese bonds look 'terrible': Kyle Bass

One example of continued bullishness despite losses came from Eton Park Capital Management, the Eric Mindich-led firm that managed $9.67 billion as of Dec. 31.

"We continue to be very positive on our positions in Japan. We believe in the company-specific stories and industry dynamics of the stocks we own and feel that their valuations are attractive on both an absolute and relative basis," Eton Park wrote in a letter to investors on April 15 in noting that Japan was the firm's biggest focus.

"Additionally, we have seen that strong management and leadership can really drive change and create shareholder value in Japan, a dynamic that we feel is sometimes underestimated by the market."

The Eton Park Overseas Fund gained just 0.23 percent net of fees in the first quarter. The firm suffered unspecified losses over the first three months of the year on its Japanese positions, the letter said. Current positions include Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Coca Cola East Japan.

The firm cited several reasons for its bullishness, including continued domestic support for aggressive economic stimulus, or "Abenomics," the central bank's commitment to a 2 percent inflation target, and tax and other regulatory reforms.

A spokesman for Eton Park declined to comment.

Another to suffer is Hugh Hendry's London-based Eclectica Asset Management. The firm's largest regional exposure is Japan at nearly 30 percent of the portfolio, and equity investments in real estate and local indexes cost a combined 0.6 percent in the first quarter, according to a letter sent to investors in the $427 million Eclectica Fund.

The firm said its "long-standing thesis remains intact" that "radical monetary policy will lead to an upside acceleration in Japanese equity markets." But it also noted that the recent losses had caused it to restructure its bets using call options that would benefit if the market had large gains or losses, effectively hedging Eclectica's positions for further market swings.

The firm, which is down 5.8 percent overall in the first quarter, didn't respond to a request for comment.

A third example is Henderson Global Investors, whose $358 million AlphaGen Japan Absolute Return strategy fell 3.1 percent in the first quarter.

"Our view is that we would seem to be at, or close to, a point of maximum uncertainty. Valuations remain very attractive," fund managers William Garnett and Jeremy Hall wrote in a recent letter to investors.

Its largest long positions—bets on the appreciation of a stock—include Fujitsu and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. The firm did not respond to arequest for comment.

Other firms burned by investments in Japan earlier this year include Balestra Capital, Caxton Associates and Brevan Howard Asset Management.

Read MoreThese big hedge funds got crushed by Japan in January

Summary: Hedge fund managers like Eton Park and Eclectica are still bullish on Japan despite a painful start to the year.


EBay shares fell as much as 3.2 percent after the latest high-profile hacking attack on a U.S. company.

"For the time being, we cannot comment on the specific number of accounts impacted. However, we believe there may be a large number of accounts involved and we are asking all eBay users to change their passwords," eBay spokeswoman Kari Ramirez said.

The attack was made through compromised employee accounts that allowed unauthorized access to its corporate network, the company said in a statement. It said the breach was first detected about two weeks ago.

The company said it found no evidence of unauthorized access to personal or financial information for users of its online payment service, PayPal.

"Working with law enforcement and leading security experts, the company is aggressively investigating the matter and applying the best forensics tools and practices to protect customers," the company said in a press release.

EBay earlier issued a notice on its PayPal website asking users to change their passwords, but took down the message a short time later without explanation.

Summary: EBay said a database was compromised in a hacking attack between late February and early March, and clients' non-financial information was stolen.


The zoo in Georgia's capital has reopened three months after a devastating flood that killed more than half of its 600 animals, including about 20 tigers, lions and jaguars.

The Tbilisi zoo has restored only its upper section, abandoning the lower section that was hit by a torrent of muddy floodwaters on June 13.

Plans call for moving the zoo entirely to another location, but it will take several years to build the new enclosures.

Among the animals greeting the first visitors on Sunday was the zoo's hippopotamus, which escaped during the flood and was found lumbering through a flooded city square nearby.

Zoo director Zurab Gurielidze said some new animals already have been born since the flood and the zoo plans to acquire others by next spring.

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Summary: A Georgia zoo that had half its animals killed during floods in June has reopened.


Central bank officials whom Reuters contacted couldn't immediately confirm the injection plan.

Regulators were concerned by signs of slowing loan growth this summer, but yuan loans picked up in September, relieving worries that demand was slackening.

Read MoreWhat a change of guard at PBOC would mean for markets

However, the Friday standard lending facility shows the central bank is still engaged in targeted easing to keep cash in the system.

China has injected a net 44 billion yuan for the year through open market operations, compared with 113 billion yuan in 2013. But it has begun to intensify its use of short-term facilities extended directly to banks in 2014, a method which some analysts criticize as being relatively opaque.

Read More Is this the China stimulus we've been waiting for?

The PBOC has so far held back from a deeper across-the-board easing such as a reduction of bank reserve requirement ratios (RRR) that would result in a big, sustained upward adjustment to the base money supply. Some economists question how long it can rely on short-term targeted tools to keep credit flowing.

"There was very weak loan demand in the third quarter, which would generally indicate lower lending in the fourth quarter, but this is likely to be offset by continued monetary loosening and lending support," wrote Oliver Barron of NSBO in a research report on Friday.

"We consider an interest rate cut is likely in the fourth quarter, while continued tight liquidity also makes an RRR cut in the first quarter of 2015 likely as a way to replace the maturing 500-billion yuan SLF."

Summary: The PBOC plans to inject about $32.66 billion of loans into select listed banks to keep liquidity ample and support the economy, sources told Reuters.