"When I grow up I want to be a mommy and a doctor."

That is how 5-year-old Zahara, who suffers from sickle cell anemia, answered the classic question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" She was asked as

for the world's largest nonprofit blood marrow donor center – Delete Blood Cancer.

"Zahara is a beautiful girl, she's very brave and intelligent," says model

Jagger, 22, who is the daughter of Mick Jagger and model Jerry Hall, serves as ambassador to

for Coty, a beauty products manufacturer.

âLittle Zahara touched my heart," Jagger tells PEOPLE. "She deserves to live a long and beautiful life. As the Coty global ambassador for the fight against blood cancer, it is my mission to help Zahara find a match. I am a registered donor with Delete Blood Cancer and I hope everyone will take a few minutes to register today."

Finding a match is proving to be difficult for Zahara. Most patients require shared ancestry with their donors, and a mere seven percent of registered donors are African-American. (July is African-American Bone Marrow Awareness Month.)

"A bone marrow transplant is really the only way to ensure that she lives a long healthy life," says Zahara's mother, Keisha Lucas. "She got a chance to meet Georgia May Jagger and she just fit in, sat on her lap, had a good conversation – it was just really nice to see that she's backing up this effort. People like Georgia May have a voice and an ability to reach people that I'd never be able to reach."

Jagger also makes appearances at

"From the heart of a mother, who wants to hear the doctors tell you your daughter may not live to be as old as you are?" says Lucas. "I'm always two seconds away from a teardrop."

Jagger wants people to know that getting tested to be a donor is easy. Test results from a cheek swab are sent to a national bone marrow registry, and if the marrow is a match, donors undergo a minor outpatient surgery to extract healthy stem cells that will replace the patient's unhealthy cells.

"If I could help someone like little Zahara and give her a bone marrow transplant, I would, in a second," Jagger says.

Summary: The model works to raise awareness and find more blood donor matches


The world shown in Thomas Demand's photographs is without adjectives. Things are described with such plainness that their particularity has been stripped to the nominal. It is a world of nouns and names: a room, a table, a cooker, a plate, a document, a jug, a fence, a window, foliage, a bomb.

This starkness takes the visible world to a point beyond ordinariness. We might do a double take, and ask whether this is a real broken eggshell or real electrical flex or a real chain-link fence in actual night, but in the end that's not what Demand's perspicacious images are about. Nor is the fact that his often terrific formal compositions habitually begin with another - a photo in a magazine or clipped from a newspaper or culled from a photographic archive. The scale and sheen of Demand's images, behind their thick layer of clear plexiglass, lends them an air of the definitive. But what I am ultimately left with is unease, disquiet, a sense of alienation. These are not words I bandy about lightly.

I imagine that he looks at the images he works from for a long time, and that this examination plays a big part in what happens next. Since the early 1990s Demand has followed the same procedure: working from a source photograph, he builds a table-top paper model, which he then lights and re-photographs. Following this, the paper model is destroyed. It is a laborious business, almost perverse in the sense that he undertakes such a long-winded process in order to make things appear simpler and more stripped down than they are in the real world. In order to describe the world more clearly, he fabricates it.

In a sense, this is closer to what a writer or a painter does than photography. One thinks, perhaps, of the objects and rooms in Edward Hopper's paintings, or the terse descriptive bleakness in hard-boiled American noir fiction, or in the writings of Alain Robbe-Grillet, which have both the peculiar vividness and ungraspable slipperiness of a kind of mental photography. Demand, I think, is as wary of photographs and what they mean as any painter; and as fascinated by them as any writer. Those writers who have dwelled on photography most effectively are more often than not fiction writers as well as theorists - think of Susan Sontag, John Berger, WG Sebald, Roland Barthes.

As for the high-definition images he ends up with, Demand doesn't think of them as "pure" photography, any more than that he is "purely" a sculptor or even a "painter by other means", as we might take him to be. Definitions, in any case, are for other people. Artists do what they want.

I first paid Demand a visit when he was a Goldsmiths College MA student in the early 1990s. I remember him showing me a cut, folded and glued paper-sculpture of a plastic flip-flop. It looked just like the real thing. It probably made me think of the exact Styrofoam copies of real objects by Swiss duo Fischli and Weiss, and still-life painting in general; otherwise I was lost for words. This, clearly, was not just the old-hat, art-school "simulationism" that was doing the rounds at the time, because it wasn't the object that seemed to interest the artist, but I had no idea where Demand was going and, at that point, I doubt he did either.

Demand has just held a major solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and his first solo exhibition in London since 1999, at the Victoria Miro Gallery, includes some of his more recent works from the MoMA exhibition - although why a gallery like the Serpentine didn't take the MoMA exhibition is beyond me. The territory of Demand's work is now well-known, and has attracted many commentators and storytellers (the essentially fictional aspect of Demand's work should never be underestimated). I like visiting his images and entering their world, but I wouldn't want to live there; although the disquieting thought that we already do inhabit such a psychological as well as visual space can't be dismissed easily. You come out of a Demand show and the world appears somehow more suspect than when you went in. This is a good test of an artist's persuasiveness.

Unlike Jeff Wall or an older generation of Düsseldorf photographers - notably Andreas Gursky or Thomas Ruff - Demand doesn't concoct digital images. He has opted for a different kind of manipulated reality, and his use of an intermediate sculptural model says something about the relationship he has with the physical world: he makes a photograph solid, in order to make a further image from it.

There isn't anyone in Demand's photographs, although they are often much concerned with history, historical events, places that might be regarded as momentous. The traces of human presence, and of events, are everywhere, even though it is an absolute and generic anonymity that strikes you first of all. The interior of a lift, with its rubberised flooring and shiny panels, its door open on to darkness; or a neat room with a table before a window - a table with a bomb on it, wires dangling from the piled-up detonators. This last is based on a bomb the Red Army Faction tried to plant in their 1970s terror campaign in West Germany.

Demand's subjects often turn about such consequential settings: the corridor behind one of whose doors serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer has his apartment, a destroyed room derived from a photo of the aftermath of the failed attempt on Hitler's life. Because we know this, even the blandest of Demand's images takes on a sense of the threatening or ominous. As John Berger pointed out in Ways of Seeing, what we are told about an image conditions how we read it, and how it may affect us.

These works are as much concerned with the authority and power of images, what is revealed and what is not shown. Demand may have been attracted to an image of the interior of a photography light-box or Nasa's 1960s space simulator for rather more formal reasons, but it is impossible to look at them without some sense of threat and unease about technology. The prosaic details of a messy kitchen, modelled on Saddam's hideaway near Tikrit, might make us ask how the Iraqi despot liked his eggs - scrambled, fried, poached, lightly boiled with soldiers - but the real point is more than the evidential. Demand never lets us forget that these are photos of a model: the not-quite-real book of matches on Saddam's cooker, or the folded card egg-tray on the side (a nice in-joke, Demand remaking in card what were already card and paper objects). Sometimes you can see the joins, the fit of a paper surface. His almost trompe l'oeil approach never attempts an absolute verisimilitude. Instead, his work plays on differences, on ordinariness unhinged. Demand gets close to Hannah Arendt's banality of evil, in this and other images. Some things can't be reduced to inconsequential physical traces.

His images of an airport security gate with x-ray machine and metal detecting arch, or of a chainlink fence at night, are more about authority, power, a sense of disinterested malice. His short 35mm film at Victoria Miro, called Trick, depicting bowls and plates endlessly spinning on a trestle table, is in part a homage to the early history of film, but also an exercise in futility. That perpetually spinning paper crockery, on the paper trestle in a paper room, is somehow marvellous, and completely empty, like the turn of Duchamp's famous bicycle wheel. These things appear to have a life of their own, but it is a fabrication. Perhaps Demand's "trick" is more a metaphor for artistic production, and of time passing. In which case, he sells himself short, but it's the sort of thing one might think in one's bleaker moments.

· Thomas Demand is at the Victoria Miro Gallery, London N1, until July 2. Details: 020-7336 8109.

Summary: Thomas Demand's photographs look banal - but that belies the sense of threat and alienation at their core, says Adrian Searle.


09/24/2014 AT 08:30 AM EDT

put a ring on it.

Renner, 43, confirmed his wedded status to

magazine, noting he's not spoken about his marriage to actress and model Sonni Pacheco to keep his job as a movie star from getting in the way of his happy home.

"I have tried to protect my family's privacy, my wife's privacy. I don't need her to get hammered with my life," says Renner, who showed up Tuesday at a Washington, D.C., screening of his latest film,

, wearing a wedding band.

"Privacy issues are important because I want her to go about her day without being bothered,"

, who both stars in and produces

Becoming a father, he explains, has refocused his priorities a bit, even as he continues a fast pace, now shooting

"It's the best thing I have ever done – doing it later on in life," the Academy Award nominee says of becoming a dad to

, now 17 months, in his 40s. "By then I achieved a lot of things that I wanted to achieve; I'm so blessed for that. Now I can really spend time with the family."

Time without Ava, he says, makes him miss her all the more. "The only thing I think about when I'm not with

is, How do I get to my baby? I need to get to her, and I'm very miserable when I don't see her. I really love being a father."

Work still moves him creatively but family now comes first, Renner says.

"The only thing that has changed is my perspective on things," he says of fatherhood. "I still work, probably even more. It used to be for myself so I'm not old and broke. All these things I still do, but I do it now for the future of my baby, and if it gets in the way of her well-being, then I stop."

Renner says his daughter is now "at the best age."

"I can't wait for her to get older, but I really enjoy her now," he says. But he warns: "As a father, I'm going to make it very difficult for her to find a man."

Summary: The Kill the Messenger star says he's still working hard but fatherhood is a priority


FORTUNE — “The world is watching how Samsung is treated by the United States in this ‘smartphone war.’ The administration has a significant interest in avoiding the perception of favoritism and protectionism toward U.S. companies.”

That’s what Samsung wrote the Obama administration’s trade representative after the International Trade Commission ruled in August that two Apple AAPL patents had been infringed by a raft of older Samsung devices, including the Galaxy S 4G, Fascinate, Captivate, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1.

The administration had just issued a presidential veto of a controversial ITC ban on the iPhone 4, and Samsung expected no less.

The issues in the two cases, however, were very different.

The Samsung patents covered industry standards that the company had pledged to license under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. The Apple patents were not industry standards, and the company had not offered — nor was it required — to license them.

Nonetheless, Samsung was demanding the same treatment Apple got. The world, it warned, would judge the Obama administration harshly if it showed favoritism toward a U.S. company.

The Obama administration ignored Samsung’s warning.

“After carefully weighing policy considerations, including the impact on consumers and competition, advice from agencies, and information from interested parties,” wrote Trade Representative Michael Froman in a statement issued Tuesday, “I have decided to allow the Commission’s determination in Certain Electronic Digital Media Devices and Components Thereof, Investigation No. 337-TA-796, to become final.”

The devices covered by the ban are pretty long in the tooth and not big sellers for Samsung.

Summary: When the ITC's iPhone 4 import ban got a Presidential veto, Samsung expected the same.


David Hanbury grew up in Needham and first hit his stride as a performer with Ryan Landry’s Gold Dust Orphans in Boston and Provincetown. Now a Minneapolis resident, he’s back in town this week playing his popular alter ego, Mrs. Smith, in her thoroughly demented and funny one-woman show, “Mrs. Smith Live!,” at Oberon.

Mrs. Smith is looking for her lost and much-beloved cat, Carlyle. To win public sympathy, she performs an autobiographical cabaret that might remind you of Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, or Elaine Stritch. She is assisted by two singing-and-dancing “Broadway Boys,” along with puppets and props. Mrs. Smith also shows off a skill she shares with Hanbury: heavy-metal guitar shredding.

In short, it’s a familiar type of show, but one that seems to have gone off its meds. “What’s really surprising is that there are moments of actual poignancy,” Hanbury said last week.

Q. So it’s been years, and the cat is still missing?

A. He’s still at large, unfortunately. The core story line is her search for him. Performing and creativity and doing a one-woman show are all part of her process, dealing with the emotions of what she calls “the grief and rage of living without him.” But it’s also how she spreads the word, so people can keep an eye out.

Oberon, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge 617-547-8300.

Q. Mrs. Smith is a native Bostonian?

A. Beacon Hill, actually. Her dialect is what I’d call finishing-school Brahmin, high Boston. Out here people always ask me, “Is she British?” And I say no, this is the New England accent of finishing school and Wellesley College, way back in the day. Her father was an attorney, and they were well-off for a while, but then calamity struck, and she had to go to live on a farm in upstate New York. And from there it’s a kind of rags-to-riches tale. She got involved in vaudeville, and she and Carlyle got famous, and there’s a storyline through the history of show biz that is told in the show.

Q. She’s been divorced, I gather.

A. Six divorces and 14 husbands. That’s a whole separate show, which tells about each and every one of them and the ways that they died. But she’s left with an easy lifestyle, because they were all wealthy.

Q. How do audiences react to her?

A. Audiences often report the uncanny feeling they have met someone like Mrs. Smith before. People think it’s like someone you would run into at a fund-raiser, a lady of a certain age who has some wealth and is on a few foundation boards, and that’s kind of an entry point for people. “Oh, I recognize this woman.” And then it goes to the deep end of eccentricity and bizarreness with the cat and the performing.

Q. This started with the Gold Dust Orphans?

A. I did “The Gulls,” which was [a parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”]. I played the mother character, who was Jessica Tandy in the movie, and I would say that role definitely paved the way for Mrs. Smith. Ryan [Landry] saw something in me. I had never done a female role, so everything was new to me — the wigs, the makeup, everything — but it was really kind of exciting and amazing to transform so far away from yourself. I was a very young-looking 25 or 26, and Ryan saw this thing in me. I was kind of a nervous kid, so maybe that was what it was, but he cast me as these neurotic, postmenopausal women, like nosy neighbors or schoolmarms.

Q. And when did Mrs. Smith arrive on the scene?

A. It was at Ryan’s “Showgirls,” the amateur night he does in Provincetown. I went thinking I can’t compete with these queens with their lipstick and their makeup and their costumes. I’m just not a drag performer, I don’t have the skills. I always approach this stuff as an actor, and I thought maybe I could do a character. I thought, what’s the opposite of a fierce, flamboyant, over-the-top drag performer? What if I just played this older depressed woman who has wandered out onto the stage for some reason and she’s seeking the audience’s help? And I came up with the idea of the missing pet. It was actually Ryan who came up with the name Carlyle. In the wings I asked him what a good name for a cat would be, and he looked at me and said, “What are you doing?!?” And I went on and just played a bunch of minor chords on the piano and danced and cried, and the audience loved it.

Q. Do you get compared to Dame Edna a lot?

A. Of course. Dame Edna, what can you say? This is a master at work. A megastar. What I do is different. I interact with the audience, but Mrs. Smith’s orientation to the audience is very different. Dame Edna has her “possum” thing, and you are there to worship her, and rightly so. Mrs. Smith has more of a need for the audience. [A fellow actor] described it as, “She’s always needing love, and she’s never attractive.”

An earlier version had the incorrect credit for the photograph. Dan Norman took the photo.

Summary: David Hanbury grew up in Needham and first hit his stride as a performer with Ryan Landry’s Gold Dust Orphans in Boston and Provincetown. Now a Minneapolis resident, he’s back in town this week playing his popular alter ego, Mrs. Smith, in her thoroughly demented and funny one-woman show, “Mrs. Smith Live!,” at Oberon. Mrs. Smith is looking for her lost and much-beloved cat, Carlyle. To win public sympathy, she performs an autobiographical cabaret that might remind you of Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli or Elaine Stritch. She is assisted by two singing-and-dancing “Broadway Boys,” as well as puppets and props. Mrs. Smith also shows off a skill she shares with Hanbury: heavy-metal guitar shredding.


It's a horrible pun, but it's true: The Left Shark crazy has officially jumped the shark.

After striking down the attempts of others to cash in on the Internet craze that is Left Shark, Katy Perry has churned out an opportunistic product of her own.

You -- yes, you -- can now own your very own Left Shark onesize, courtesy of Katy Perry's online store.

This iconic item covers you top to bottom and is available for the low introductory price of $130 -- an absolute bargain if you're an heir to the Hilton fortune or a member of Forbes' recently published list of billionaires.

Easily the best feature of this onesie is that, according to the pictures, you can zip up your head-hole to completely envelop your body in Left Shark.

That's right -- it doubles as a body bag.

It wasn't hard to see something on this order coming down the pike, considering that Katy Perry's legal team filed a trademark to Left Shark just five days after her Super Bowl performance. Her representatives went so far as to send cease-and-desist letters to people selling Left Shark products online.

Still, it's a bit sickening to imagine how many people will leap at this opportunity.

Perry will be roaring all the way to the bank.

ATTENTION INTERNET: NO LONGER DO YOU HAVE TO DIY LEFT SHARK COSTUME LIKE THIS GUY: pic.twitter.com/s5RjIa4RiC

— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) March 2, 2015

From the Super Bowl performance:

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Summary:
It's a horrible pun, but it's true: The Left Shark crazy has officially jumped the shark.
After striking down the attempts of others to cash in on the...


Nintendo’s stock is up 24% in New York intraday trading at noon Tuesday following an announcement that it will finally make games for smartphones and tablets. The company also saw a 1.4% boost Tuesday on the Tokyo markets where it’s primarily traded, but the news came after markets closed there.

The Nintendo NTDOY announcement was an unexpected departure from its past refusal to make titles for iPhones and other similar devices. The company is working with Japanese mobile game developer DeNA on the project, Fortune reported earlier:

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told reporters that the alliance “will allow us to build a bridge between smart devices and gaming consoles.”

Iwata had consistently refused to acknowledge a trend that has been undeniable for most industry observers in recent years. While online gaming through smartphones and other mobile devices has exploded, demand for console-based games has withered. Nintendo recorded three straight years of operating losses before its last fiscal year and delivered another profit warning in January after a near 40% year-on-year drop in sales of its 3DS console.

The deal doesn’t mean every game in Nintendo’s arsenal will immediately become available for iPhone or Android. But all of Nintendo’s intellectual property from Mario to Donkey Kong is on the table.

The move could be a major step for Nintendo, whose Wii U console has consistently come in third behind Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. The company has also seen its stock fall 80% since 2007, as Fortune wrote earlier.

Moving into mobile gaming seems to be an acknowledgement that if gamers aren’t coming to Nintendo, it has to meet them where they are — on their phones. The NDP Group found that people spent around 3 hours a day playing games on smartphones and tablets in 2014, up from 2 hours, 20 minutes two years earlier. Mobile gaming is currently a $25 billion market.

Summary: The stock is up more than 20% in New York


The battle between traditional taxi drivers and Uber drivers appears to be getting violent in Europe.

In one incident last week, an Uber driver was allegedly restrained and threatened while attackers wielding brass knuckles and hammers doused his engine in liquid and slashed his tires, English-language Dutch news site NLTimes reports. The Uber driver involved told authorities one of the assailant’s cars was an Amsterdam taxi.

All the victims involved drive for UberPop, Uber’s European service.

The battle between Uber and traditional taxi companies has often been contentious, but these incidents seem to be some of the most violent on record. Uber, which has often entered markets regardless of local regulations, has faced fierce resistant from some area governments and taxi unions, particularly in Europe.

Uber completed a new round of funding in December valuing the company at over $41 billion, making it the most valuable private startup in the world.

Summary: Some Uber drivers have allegedly been threatened and attacked


Chinese phone maker Xiaomi sold more than two million phones in 12 hours during its “Mi Fan Festival” celebrating the company’s fifth anniversary, according to Re/code. The half-day event generated approximately $335 million in revenue for the company.

Xiaomi has a loyal fan base in China and other parts of the world, and events like the Mi Fan Festival help the company cultivate that community.

Xiaomi sold 61 million smartphones in 2014, pulling in revenue of $11.98 billion and making it the world’s third-biggest smartphone maker by units shipped, according to IDC. The company has increasingly been looking outside China’s borders to fuel its growth, recently starting sales in Malaysia, India and Indonesia, Re/code notes.

Summary: Xiaomi held a festival celebrating its fifth anniversary


This season, as more billion-dollar businesses pop up seemingly overnight and more old-economy fortunes fade into irrelevance, a host of upcoming titles are dedicated to depicting the landscape that disruptive innovation hath wrought. Here, some predictions from the hottest releases about what to expect next.

China’s Disruptors July 14, 2015 By Edward Tse

For years, state-sponsored development was the driving force behind an emerging China. But Tse argues that it’s the country’s 12 million privately owned firms (four times the number a decade ago) that will ultimately change how the world does business. Entrepreneurs like Alibaba’s Jack Ma, Tencent’s Pony Ma, and Xiaomi’s Lei Jun represent the first in a coming wave of internationally influential private-sector companies that will drive innovation, shift the order of world politics, and lead global markets.

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future May 5, 2015 By Martin Ford

Think you’re too creative to be replaced by a machine? Probably not, says Ford, who warns that artificial intelligence is supplanting humans even in routine-resistant professions like journalism, music, research, and more. In the coming age of robots, Ford’s ideal outcome would be a world where people earn a guaranteed wage and machines do all the work. The alternative, he says, is inequality on steroids.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future May 19, 2015 By Ashlee Vance

In his roles as CEO of Tesla and chair of SolarCity, arguably no one else has moved the needle on green technology as much as Musk—or made as much money doing it. But those projects are secondary to the undertaking that Vance says is Musk’s main focus and most remarkable achievement: SpaceX. The spaceflight company is working on a rocket Musk thinks will land on Mars by 2026. Vance believes it could happen.

Coal Wars: The Future of Energy and the Fate of the Planet April 14, 2015 By Richard Martin

The “end of coal” is now a foregone conclusion, Martin says. With increasing government regulation and the sinking cost of other fuels, the question is no longer if coal-fired plants will be phased out, but when. The stakes are high: Coal accounts for 44% of global carbon dioxide emissions and is wreaking environmental havoc. If consumption isn’t dramatically reduced within the next couple of decades, Martin writes, it could be “game over” for the climate.

No Ordinary Disruption: The four global forces breaking all the trends May 12, 2015 By Richard Dobbs, James Manyika, and Jonathan Woetzel

In this book, directors at the McKinsey Global Institute pinpoint four major shifts they believe will change the way the world economy works: the aging global population, rapidly emerging markets, the freer flow of world trade and migration, and the breakneck pace of technology. The authors also look to advances in 3-D printing, energy storage, and autonomous vehicles to upend the existing business order.

This story is from the May 1, 2015 issue of Fortune magazine.

Summary: These books look at the brave new world of rapid change.


Chris Soules and Whitney Bischoff

05/08/2015 AT 06:15 PM EDT

did not capture the Mirrorball Trophy on

star has a pretty fantastic consolation prize in fiancée,

and Soules, 33, resides on his

, Soules isn't anticipating any long-distance problems.

"It should be a pretty easy transition for both of us," he told PEOPLE at WE tv and Ian Ziering Raise Awareness For Canine Companions in Hollywood on Thursday.

"I'm looking forward to getting back there this weekend and just being with her, and she's going to probably be riding in the tractor a little bit with me," he says.

But it won't be all work and no play for the new couple. "We've got to wrap up planting season so that's what I'm going to be doing the next couple of weeks – planting corn," the farmer explains. "Obviously I've got to go back for the finale for

, but after that's over it's back to farming."

, he's okay with not having the distraction in his relationship anymore. Being on the show "did have its challenges, no question," he admits.

"I mean, anytime you're that preoccupied mentally and physically with something else ... we just didn't have that opportunity to really focus on [our relationship] and spend that time together, so it will be nice to not have that distraction anymore."

When will Bischoff make the big move to Arlington? "We can be kind of flexible with that," says Soules.

One thing that might entice her? Soules' culinary skills: "I made dinner for her a few times," he shares. But he didn't give Bischoff your average meat and potatoes.

"I was trying to eat really healthy because I knew I was probably going to have to take my shirt off at some point during

so [I made] fish and broccoli," he says. "I can make a mean tilapia. And steak. That's my specialty."

Summary: The newly engaged Bachelor talks about the "challenges" of a shared life with fiancé Whitney Bischoff since the show


WASHINGTON, May 2— On Monday morning, 100 foreign businessmen who control hundreds of billions of dollars in investments are to assemble in the Old Executive Office Building for the start of a three-day, invitation-only conference on the Reagan Administration's policies toward foreign investment in the United States.

The listed host for the opening meeting Monday, according to a spokesman for the General Services Administration, is the Treasury Department, and Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan is the chief speaker.

Similarly, the hosts for many of the other sessions will be top Administration officials, most of the meetings will use Government facilities at no cost, and the Army's Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps is to provide what the program terms ''a fanfare reception.'' Some White House aides, such as Richard V. Allen, assistant to President Reagan for national security, have helped make the arrangements. Each to Pay $3,000 Fee

The organizer and actual host of the conference, however, is The National Journal, a weekly magazine of governmental affairs, and its publisher, the Government Research Corporation, which is hoping, according to its chairman, Anthony C. Stout, to make a sizable profit from the conference by charging the businessmen an average of $3,000 each.

For some, the conference is an example of the accepted interplay in Washington between information and influence. But for others it raises questions about the intertwining roles of public officials and private, profit-making activities, as well as questions about the methods by which news organizations try to gain access and influence within Government.

Mr. Stout, who is the principal owner of the research corporation, said it had paid a retainer to Charls E. Walker, a leading Washington corporate lobbyist who is a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board, to help obtain as speakers about a dozen top Administration officials, who are the principal attractions for the visitors.

Mr. Allen, who not only helped with arrangements but also is to address the conference, and other Administration officials said they viewed the conference as a valuable and valid undertaking. But other White House officials said privately that they viewed it as symptomatic of an occasional tendency in a new Administration to blur the distinction between public and private activities. Termed a Balanced Endeavor

Even some reporters for The National Journal, which provides specialized information mostly for businesses and institutions, privately expressed skepticism about the conference. But Mr. Stout said that because it also included critics of the Administration, the undertaking was a balanced and worthwhile endeavor for the research service and the magazine. And he contended that it was typical of the marketing practices of Washington information businesses.

Mr. Stout and others, like Mr. Allen, compared the conference to recent gatherings sponsored by the research corporation and other news organizations. However, none of the previous conferences, according to promotional literature, have used Government facilities, charged so steep a fee for participants or paid someone close to the Administration to produce speakers.

The Economic Policy Advisory Board, of which Mr. Walker is a member, is an appointed, unpaid committee of 12 prominent persons who advise the President on domestic and international policy.

The idea for this conference, as Mr. Stout explained it, was taken from private, ''Administration-supported'' conferences in 1967 and 1970 that were aimed at stimulating foreign investment.

Mr. Stout said that before Mr. Reagan's election he approached Mr. Walker, who at the time was a member of Mr. Reagan's economic coordinating committee.

Mr. Stout knew Mr. Walker as a result of work he and his consulting and lobbying concern, Charls E. Walker & Associates Inc., had done for Mr. Stout's research corporation. Talked With Reagan Advisers

Mr. Walker says he then discussed the conference, both before and after the election, with such key Reagan advisers as Caspar W. Weinberger, now the Secretary of Defense, and received their concurrence.

Mr. Stout, after receiving from Mr. Walker the indications of support by Reagan advisers, sent out invitations to executives of foreign financial institutions, such as trust officers at large Swiss banks, who handle giant investment assets.

Included in the invitation was a memorandum that, according to a copy provided by Mr. Stout, noted that the Government Research Corporation ''has secured the cooperation of the senior economic advisers of President-elect Reagan and the leadership of the economic committees of the Congress in organization of the following program.'' 'Quite a Bit of Money' Expected

Mr. Stout said he hoped ''to make quite a bit of money on the conference'' and was charging participants $2,500 to $3,500 each because of expenses such as hotel accommodations and lavish receptions. In addition, he said he regarded the participants as potential subscribers to the magazine, which costs $415 a year.

Soon after President Reagan's inauguration Mr. Stout says he wrote Mr. Allen seeking his help in organizing the conference. When Mr. Allen did not reply, he went to Mr. Walker for assistance.


On taxi stands at La Guardia Airport, at hotels in midtown Manhattan, in the city's flower market and in the airline industry itself, the air traffic controllers' strike is beginning to take its toll.

In New York City and its environs, the strike is causing some businesses little more than inconvenience and delay, while others are suffering measurable financial losses and, in some cases, layoffs.

Around the country, airlines report chronic problems, amounting to a daily loss of $30 million to $40 million for the industry as a whole, according to the Air Transport Association, with some airlines doing worse than others.

Braniff Airways, for example, laid off 1,500 of its 10,000 domestic employees on Tuesday. The 1,500, drawn from all departments, were ''furloughed'' because of service cuts imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration, said Ray Chanaud, vice president of public relations for the airline.

In Queens, several taxi dispatchers met the same fate as the Braniff workers - unscheduled unemployment - because not enough passengers were around to fill the cabs that usually line up at La Guardia Airport.

''We've been devastated,'' said Betty Lawrence, assistant director of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, the organization that runs the Share-a-Cab program at La Guardia and had to lay off seven of its nine dispatchers.

Arthur Gore, publisher of Taxi News, said yesterday that business had been ''slower'' for taxi drivers. The cab business at Kennedy International Airport, he said, is having some difficulties, but they are not as severe as those at La Guardia.

Cancellations and just plain no-shows are the big problem for the airlines, and, in turn, for businesses that depend at all on people who ride airplanes, according to airline industry representatives. Flights Less Than Half-Full

There are delays, and the number of daily flights has been cut from about 14,000 to 8,000. But those planes that have been flying are often less than half-full, the airlines report.

''There have been empty seats on the shuttle and whenever there are empty seats on the shuttle, there's something wrong.'' said Paula Musto, a public-relations director for Eastern Airlines, which operates the normally crowded shuttle flights between New York, Boston and Washington.

The decline in passengers has begun to have a ripple effect around the city. Figures are hard to come by, but there are some. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey estimates that in the region, the strike means a loss of $9 million a day to the airlines, concessionaires and airport operators alone - and an additional $4 million a day to New York City's economy.

Restaurants, theaters and the like are expected to lose some business, but spokesmen for these industries say they have not been able to measure any losses yet. Hotels, however, have begun to feel some economic pains.

No conventions have been canceled, said Charles Gillett, president of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau. But cancellations in general are about 10 percent above normal at most hotels in the city, he said. And some hotel managers say they are hurting much more than that, particularly since the industry had already been suffering from a dip in summer tourism.

''This is a tragedy for our industry,'' said Jorgen Hansen, general manager of the New York Hilton Hotel. Cancellations are running 33 percent a day at the Hilton - about double what they usually are, according to Mr. Hansen. And yesterday reservations stopped coming in altogether, which could mean layoffs starting next week, he said.

The Sheraton Centre reported a cancellation rate of about 35 percent, while other hotels were doing better. Alan J. Rose, general manager of the Summit Hotel, who said business was only off a bit, noted that there was a flip-side to the strike. His hotel has picked up some unexpected guests because some people are extending their stays in New York or have stayed over in the city because they missed connecting flights. No Severe Delays for Freight

Another modestly cheerful note came from companies in the air freight industry. They had expected to suffer dramatic reversals during the strike, but so far, they said, they have not.

Most flights carrying freight fly at night, when air traffic is low, and the freight companies say there have been delays but nothing severe.

Those freight concerns that own their own planes are feeling the least impact, but even companies that rely on commercial airlines say they are managing to operate despite the strike.

One problem has been that some of their customers are afraid to ship by air, just as some passengers are afraid to fly. Some shipping companies say that has meant a financial loss of about 10 percent of their normal business so far.

New York businesses that rely heavily on air freight are coping with the delays - as New Yorkers have learned to cope with most inconveniences.

There is, for example, the flower market in the 20's on and around the Avenue of the Americas. Flowers come in from all sorts of places - California, South America, the Netherlands - and flowers are, of course, perishable.

Delays can mean flower damage, so when necessary and where possible, the wholesale flower suppliers are using trucks. And when they cannot, they are using faith.

''I had a shipment from Australia -cymbidiums,'' Vincent DeRobertis, sales manager for the Mutual Cut Flower Company, said yesterday. ''I still haven't received them. But, see, this happens to very hardy flowers. If you're going to an affair, ask your florist to give you a cymbidium corsage. They're gorgeous. And like leather.''

''They'll get here,'' he said. ''Somehow the flowers will get through.''


Dr. Louis B. Fierman of Guilford, Conn., and Ella Fierman of Woodbridge, Conn., have announced the engagement of their daughter, Lauren Cecile Hoj Fierman, to Paul Hattam, son of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Hattam of Cramlington, England.

Miss Fierman, a student at Case-Western Reserve University and her fiance, a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Akron, plan to be married May 23 in the Dwight Chapel of Yale University in New Haven.

The bride-to-be is in the graduate program at Case-Western Reserve, where, next year, she expects to receive a master's degree in English studies as she also completes her undergraduate work. Her father, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale, is medical director of the Elmcrest Psychiatric Institute in Portland, Conn. Her mother, a psychologist, is executive director of Psychotherapy Associates in New Haven.

Mr. Hattam received a bachelor's degree and a master's in chemistry from the University of Lancaster in England. His father is office manager for Nairn International Companies, a manufacturing enterprise in Newcastle, England.


Every year the names change, but the scenario can be depended on to stay pretty much the same. The jury of artists and teachers at the famous musical competition decides, after bitter backstage debate, in favor of Pianist A, a brilliant technician with a firm grasp of many historical styles and a coolly professional approach to performance. However, a few outraged dissidents want it known that they disagree with the majority, insisting that Pianist B, who plays with his emotional thermostat turned all the way up at all times and a flamboyant disdain for convention, is the true winner. Getting these two temperamental types of musical jurist to agree on anything is about as easy as setting up a quiet lunch between an anarchist and a monarchist.

Down in Fort Worth today young pianists are beginning a struggle for cash and glory in the Sixth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, a two-week obstacle course from which the first-prize winner will emerge with $12,000 and a sheaf of major international concert and recital engagements. A total of $36,000 in cash will be awarded, which sets the stakes extraordinarily high. This you may count on: whether Dionysus or Apollo is declared the winner, somebody will be unhappy.

At the last Cliburn competition in 1977, for instance, the first prize went to a South African, Steven DeGroot, the very model of Apollonian restraint and coolness. But acolytes of Dionysus sent up howls of protest in favor of two candidates from the Soviet Union: Aleksandr Toradze and Youri Egorov. Mr. Toradze was eulogized by one jurist, Lili Kraus, as ''a mixture of the animal and the angel.'' For her, ''this shy boy is a force of nature, like a volcano.'' Mr. Egorov, an emigre, did not even make it to the final round but he so enchanted some local piano lovers with his fiery temperament that they raised $10,000 and gave it to him as a consolation prize. When they console in Texas, they console.

A somewhat similar history of controversy precedes Ivo Pogorelich, the 22-year-old Yugoslavian pianist who comes to Carnegie Hall on Tuesday evening for his New York debut. He apparently swept audiences away with his headlong style of pianism and his magnetic stage manner last fall at the Chopin competition in Warsaw, and his name was splashed all over the international press when the jury of distinguished pianists refused even to place him in the finals. The first prize went to a Vietnamese, Thai Son Dang, and Soviet pianists were second and third.

A report in The New York Times described Mr. Pogorelich as appearing onstage in leather pants, a frilly shirt and string tie. He played ''wildly and passionately, striking notes in clusters, banging out the pianissimos and treading lightly on the fortissimos.'' Doesn't that sound interesting? In any event, his elimination seems to have brought him more notice than a first prize would have. One judge of Dionysian tendencies, the Argentine pianist Martha Argerich, resigned from the jury in protest. Twenty-five of Poland's top music critics are said to have awarded Mr. Pogorelich a special prize. When he gave a recital in Warsaw a few days after the contest, he was given the pop-star treatment, complete with mass gate-crashing, chants of ''Ivo, Ivo'' and a smashed dressing-room door.

Mr. Pogorelich's quality or lack of it is still unknown to us at this moment, but it would be foolish to pretend that contest notoriety does not predispose most listeners either to approve or disapprove of the artist involved. Few of us are so sane that Dionysian and Apollonian elements of temperament balance exactly in us. Quite aside from such uncontrollable leanings and prejudices, however, it is clear that the kind of launching enjoyed by Mr. Pogorelich often does a career as much harm, eventually, as good. When Eugene Fodor shared second prize with two Soviet violinists in the 1974 Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow (there was no first-place winner), the world was flooded with news of his dark good looks, his abilities as a scuba diver, skier, jogger and horseman. He was trumpeted as the all-American boy from Turkey Creek, Colo., and quickly invited to the White House by President Ford, a fellow skier and music lover. Everyone seemed to be trying to recapitulate the Van Cliburn Story, although it should have been clear that, even in press agentry, history does not repeat itself.

Musical competitions, when kept in perspective, can help mightily in pushing a young artist along the road to acceptance. Previous winners in the Warsaw contest alone include such pianists as Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini and Garrick Ohlsson. John Browning has said that the public was unaware of him before he won three important piano prizes. For Vladimir Ashkenazy, winning a major competition was ''the turning point in my life.'' Murray Perahia's career was similarly boosted by a first prize. But the record books are filled with names of great pianists who did not follow the competition road to success: Claudio Arrau, Artur Schnabel, Alicia de Larrocha, Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin, Arthur Rubinstein, and many others. Some of them despise the whole business as degrading and antimusical. Mr. Horowitz, one of those who disapprove of contests for artists, tells with glee about the great piano competition around the turn of the century that was won by a certain Mr. Heinz. Ferruccio Busoni came in third.


In a modern newspaper office, the text of copy about to be printed is displayed to editors on a video terminal. If the computer operators suspect that a word is misspelled, it will be underlined for the editors' attention.

Patent 4,290,105 was received this week by the American Newspaper Publishers Association, Reston, Va., for apparatus to check spelling and typographical errors. The Micromark, as it is trademarked, is being manufactured under license by Telcon Inc., Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The inventors are Richard J. Cichelli, manager of computer applications at the association's research institute in Easton, Pa., and two associates.

The equipment checks a 20,000-word vocabulary but not word-by-word in dictionary style, as this would be time-consuming. All words go through a random process called ''hash'' coding and are recorded in 20 locations. A computer process indicates any probable misspellings.


A State Supreme Court referee is likely to rule tomorrow on whether Assemblyman Frank J. Barbaro will be the only challenger to face Mayor Koch on the Democratic primary ballot.

The referee is to decide whether two relatively unknown Democratic mayoral contenders - James Smith and Melvin Klenetsky - will be on the ballot for the Sept. 10 primary. They have been challenged by Mr. Barbaro, who would like to be the Mayor's sole Democratic opponent.

For two weeks, the Barbaro camp has spent much of its resources and time pursuing its challenges in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Mr. Barbaro's representatives have been going over the 13,558 signatures on Mr. Smith's petitions, name by name, and have been trying to show that Mr. Klenetsky is not a bona fide Democrat but a U.S. Labor Party partisan.

Mr. Klenetsky, who ran on that party's line for Illinois Governor in 1978, spent three days on the witness stand. The Barbaro forces did not directly challenge his 25,000 signatures because they did not have enough people to check each of those names, too.

The importance that Mr. Barbaro attaches to these legal challenges is measured by the effort of his campaign organization, which has limited manpower and money to start with. ''It's been too draining on the campaign,'' said a Barbaro attorney, Paul Asofsky, a veteran of battles against the Brooklyn Democratic organization. Noting that as many as 20 campaign workers had been involved in the legal work, Lou Gordon, a Barbaro press aide, said that ''You're supposed to tie up the other's guy's resources.''

There has also been the problem -which Mr. Barbaro admits is an embarrassment - of having to go into court with the challenges. The Assemblyman has been affiliated with the New Democratic Coalition, which has often bitterly criticized efforts by the Democratic organization to eliminate foes in the courts rather than at the polls. Conceding some uneasiness, Mr. Asofsky contended that the challenges were ''not technical objections.''

Mr. Klenetsky, while declaring that the U.S. Labor Party had not run any candidates since 1978, asserted that it was ironic that Mr. Barbaro intended to run on a Unity Party ticket in November even if he lost the Democratic primary. ''I don't intend to run for any other party,'' Mr. Klenetsky said.

Times have changed. Maggi Peyton, a West Side Democrat, was once a top campaign aide of Bella S. Abzug. Now Miss Peyton is campaign manager for Borough President Andrew J. Stein of Manhattan, who while sometimes allied with Mrs. Abzug was more often a strong critic of her and the subject of her criticism. Miss Peyton has been on the Borough President's staff but is on leave for the campaign.

Elizabeth Holtzman began her campaign for Brooklyn District Attorney with a $165,000 debt from last year's unsuccessful Senate campaign, including $90,000 in personal loans. The debt was even larger at the end of the campaign last November - $305,000 - but Miss Holtzman has whittled it down through two mailings and by obtaining large contributions. The whittling will halt now until the Brooklyn race is over. Miss Holtzman has spent the time between campaigns as a lawyer.

Concerned by the 42-day deadlock in approval of the state budget last spring, Lieut. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo suggested last week to Governor Carey that the Governor and legislative leaders try to agree on major policies each year even before the Governor's annual which Mr. Cuomo described as usually ''the first thrust in a political duel.''

The suggestion didn't get very far, even among Mr. Cuomo's fellow Democrats. The Governor said he had ''a habit of composing the State of the State very much myself.'' Stanley Fink, Speaker of the Assembly and a possible rival of Mr. Cuomo for Governor someday, said there would be less trouble if officials like Mr. Cuomo ''stop sending letters to each other and releasing them to the press before the recipients have a chance to react.''

State Comptroller Edward V. Regan, a Republican, recently reported that the that the budget delay cost the taxpayers at least $36 million in interest costs for borrowing that was necessary to tide over the state and localities.


The Penn Central Corporation received about $2.11 billion from the Federal Government for railroad properties transferred to the Consolidated Rail Corporation in 1976, ending a five-year-old valuation dispute.

Agreement on value of the properties had been reached in November 1980 with the United States Railway Association and the Government after extended court proceedings.

The company said about $2 billion of the settlement would be used to pay off securities it issued during its reorganization and to satisfy other claims. The remainder will have the effect of increasing shareholders' equity. With about 16,500 employees, Penn Central has interests in energy, amusement parks, resort hotels and real estate.


Can an embattled accounting firm turn the New York attorney general’s greatest strength against him?

Ernst & Young may try to do just that as it braces against a civil fraud suit claiming it helped conceal Lehman Brothers’ accounting games in the years before its 2008 collapse.

Ernst promised in a statement this week to defend itself vigorously in the complaint, which seeks at least $150 million in damages. The firm said it believes there is “no factual or legal basis for a claim to be brought against an auditor in this context,” arguing Lehman’s books didn’t run afoul of accounting rules.

But the accounting firm also took aim at the statute that New York is pursuing much of its case under, a 1921 law known as the Martin Act that thanks to its broad sweep has become a favorite of crusading prosecutors in the state.

Ernst & Young served notice Tuesday that it will argue the attorney general, Andrew Cuomo (right), and his staff are overreaching by causing an old law to perform new tricks.

What we have here is a significant expansion of the Martin Act. Although the Martin Act is almost 90 years old, we believe this is the first time that an Attorney General is attempting to use this law to assert claims against an accounting firm, rather than the company that took the alleged actions.

Cuomo’s office didn’t return calls seeking comment, but E&Y’s attack on its use of the Martin Act is no surprise. The Martin Act, which was passed to crack down on securities fraud, has been interpreted by New York courts in a way that gives the attorney general unparalleled license.

Under the law, the government needn’t prove a defendant intended to defraud its victims, as it must under many other circumstances. A 2000 appeals court ruling held that offenses under the act include “all deceitful practices contrary to the plain rules of common honesty and all acts tending to deceive or mislead the public,” regardless of intent.

That sets the bar pretty low, which is certainly useful for the state in this case. Two years later, after all, seemingly reasonable people are still debating what exactly brought Lehman and other financial giants down. What’s more, this case will revolve in large measure around interpretations of arcane accounting rules.

“These sorts of claims are not slam dunks for anyone,” said Sam Rosenfarb, a certified public accountant who is the partner-in-charge of the advisory services group at Marcum LLP. “The state could have some high hurdles to clear.”

Of course, trying to get the courts to narrow the scope of the law is no Sunday afternoon stroll either.

The Ernst & Young statement suggests the firm will argue that it can’t be prosecuted under the Martin Act because Lehman, not E&Y, was the outfit actually producing the financial reports, and because it was Lehman, not E&Y, that was peddling billions of dollars of securities just months before its implosion.

In this view, E&Y was just a gatekeeper hired to vouch for Lehman’s books, something it will claim it did well within the confines of the law. This strikes lawyers who are familiar with the law as an eminently reasonable approach, if not exactly a surefire recipe for success.

“If I were Ernst & Young, I would assert I was not a primary actor,” said Margaret Bancroft, a partner at Dechert LLP and author of a 2004 memo that explained the Martin Act soon after Spitzer began brandishing it against Wall Street. “You can say that with more than a straight face.”

One gathers Bancroft is not exactly betting the ranch on that defense working. Even so, it is worth a try in a case where the news for Ernst & Young could yet get much worse.

Consider the silence so far from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, both of which presumably have heard by now that Lehman Brothers has collapsed and possibly have even read the Valukas report on which the Cuomo suit is largely based.

“It’s always easier said than done to match the actual conduct in a case with the statutory language,” said Wally Dietz, a co-chair of Bass Berry & Sims PLC’s Internal Investigations and Special Projects group. “But in terms of what Ernst & Young is up against, the big story isn’t this case. It’s what happens next in Washington.”

Summary: Can an embattled accounting firm turn the New York attorney general’s greatest strength against him? Ernst & Young may try to do just that as it braces against a civil fraud suit claiming it helped conceal Lehman Brothers’ accounting games in the years before its 2008 collapse. Ernst promised in a statement this week to defend…


SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appellate court on Tuesday upheld a ruling that determined Apple to be the leader of an industrywide conspiracy among book publishers to raise the prices of digital books.

By a 2-1 vote, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City said it agreed with the conclusions of US District Judge Denise L. Cote, who rendered the decision in Manhattan in 2013.

“We conclude that the District Court’s decision that Apple orchestrated a horizontal conspiracy among the publisher defendants to raise e-book prices is amply supported and well reasoned, and that the agreement unreasonably restrained trade,” the Appeals Court wrote in its decision.

In the case, brought in 2012, the Justice Department accused Apple Inc. and five book publishers of conspiring to raise e-book prices above Amazon’s standard price of $9.99 for new titles. The idea, the government said, was to allow publishers to set their own prices rather than letting retailers do so. The five book publishers settled the case before the trial.

When Apple entered the e-book market, it changed the way publishers sold books by introducing a model called agency pricing, in which the publisher — not the retailer — set the price, and Apple took a cut of each sale. The Justice Department argued that left Amazon.com, the other big e-books retailer, no choice other than to raise prices.

Apple fought the accusation in 2013 and lost after a monthlong trial. The words of Steve Jobs, the company’s cofounder, who died in 2011, proved damaging.

An e-mail written by Jobs that referred to the agency model was frequently brought up at the trial. In the e-mail, sent to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, Jobs wrote of the contracts negotiated with publishers:

“I can live with this, as long as they move Amazon to the agent model too for new releases for the first year. If they don’t, I’m not sure we can be competitive.”

In her ruling, Cote said that e-mails and spoken statements by Jobs made clear he knew that publishers were unhappy with Amazon’s price of $9.99 for e-books, and that Apple’s entry would drive up prices across the industry.

“Apple has struggled mightily to reinterpret Jobs’ statements in a way that will eliminate their bite,” Cote wrote. “Its efforts have proven fruitless.”

The Justice Department said it was gratified by the court’s decision.

“The decision confirms that it is unlawful for a company to knowingly participate in a price-fixing conspiracy, whatever its specific role in the conspiracy or reason for joining it,” William J. Baer, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said in a prepared statement.

Tim Cook, Apple’s current chief executive, called the e-book case “bizarre,” and the company fought to overturn the judge’s ruling. The company Tuesday reiterated its disappointment in the decision in a statement.

“Apple did not conspire to fix e-book pricing and this ruling does nothing to change the facts,” said Josh Rosenstock, an Apple spokesman. “We are disappointed the court does not recognize the innovation and choice the iBooks Store brought for consumers. While we want to put this behind us, the case is about principles and values. We know we did nothing wrong back in 2010, and are assessing next steps.”

Summary: SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld a ruling that determined Apple to be the leader of an industrywide conspiracy among book publishers to raise prices of digital books.


Solar energy advocates are pressing for the state to continue a controversial program that has fueled the industry’s growth in Massachusetts.

Environmentalists, labor groups, and low-income representatives are among those calling for the state Legislature to eliminate the caps that limit how many solar installations can claim a key incentive that has made it cheaper to get solar panels. Detractors argue the incentive, known as “net metering,” simply shifts costs onto other ratepayers.

Solar workers rallied at the Legislature Tuesday before lawmakers heard testimony on several bills regarding the industry’s future. The Legislature will also consider long-term policy fixes for the state’s solar industry -- including net metering and other incentives -- that a state task force proposed in April.

Among those backing the solar industry was Attorney General Maura Healey. Although she didn’t commit to a specific bill, the State House News Service reported that Healey called for a “limited cap increase” to allow more large-scale solar projects to be built. Additionally, a coalition of 44 groups led by environmentalists at the Acadia Center proposed scrapping the caps and conducting a more comprehensive study on how to help the industry grow.

“Suggestions that solar is being unfairly subsidized are frankly absurd,” said Steven Strong, the president of Solar Design Associates, in a statement. “With climate change accelerating faster than anyone thought possible, this is no time to slow down renewable energy development.”

Some groups said even a temporary increase in the caps would be a giveaway to the solar industry, however. According to estimates cited by the Baker administration, the costs of all state solar incentives will average $357 to $571 million per year between 2014 and 2020. Utilities say the costs are even higher.

Bob Rio, the senior vice president of government affairs for the business group Associated Industries of Massachusetts, said the existing system amounts to a subsidy for solar owners and the solar industry that other ratepayers ultimately pay.

“Even those who use solar for all their electricity needs rely on the electric grid to supply power when the sun isn’t shining,” Rio wrote in a blog post. “The cost of maintaining the grid, and backup power for the solar users, is not currently paid by the solar user and this cost is basically added to everyone else’s bill.”

Summary: Solar energy adovcates are pressing for the state to continue a controversial program that has fueled the industry’s growth in Massachusetts.


08/03/2015 AT 10:00 AM EDT

promises to round out season 1 with the same delightfully quirky comedy that has made the show a hit.

In this exclusive sneak peak of the episode, Jill (

) grapples with her knowledge of Lex's (Sean Kleier) affair at Brooke's (Abby Elliot) benefit gala. The humanitarian bash is for a humorous cause – as the announcer says on the loudspeaker, "Those hefty kids need hefty donations."

"Okay, I already had rhea explosiva because of Vanessa, but now this whole Lex thing is making me basically pee out of my a--hole 'round the clock," Jill complains.

Meanwhile, Jill's mother-in-law Candace (Joanna Cassidy) causes controversy as she teases Jill with hints about her "gentleman caller," a phrase to which Candace soundly objects. "Jill," she snaps. "I'm not in a Tennessee Williams play, and my lover isn't exactly a gentleman."

) is not taking the success of

– the Bravo favorite which she not only stars in but also created – for granted.

"I feel like it's been this warm tidal wave of good reviews," Kargman told PEOPLE at NBC Press Day in June. "I just feel really lucky. We've been so embraced by the gay community and the mom community. There's a lot of crossover."

Kargman said that she cooks up ideas for a potential second season "all the time." She added, "I have so many stories in my head. It could really write itself if we get so lucky."

airs Monday at 10 p.m. ET on Bravo.

Summary: In the preview, Jill attends Brooke's party – and things start to go haywire


08/04/2015 AT 01:15 PM EDT

With political excitement building for Thursday's debut debate by the major Republican presidential candidates,

had more than a little fun Monday night imagining how

might be preparing – with some unexpected, high-placed help.

"It's a big debate, It's 'yuuuuuge,'" Fallon-as-Trump (complete with an impressive Trump wig) tells a President Obama impersonator telephoning with debate advice.

"Wait. Why would you want to help me become president," Fallon's Trump asks Obama.

"Because, it'd be hilarious!" Obama replies. "Look, I've been president for eight years. I'm ready for some entertainment."

"I just want to grab some popcorn, sit back and watch this whole [bleep]-show go down."

Tune in Thursday night for the real thing!

Summary: Jimmy Fallon offers a master class playing Donald Trump ahead of Thursday's GOP debate


But there could be a bright side, in the long term, if Venezuela breaks away from Cuba. Cuba's President Raul Castro could be prompted to speed economic reforms he's been pushing and open the door to more foreign capital.

"They are realizing now what can happen if Venezuela disappears, and that they better start changing their model faster than before," said Piñon, a Latin American oil industry analyst.

This month, the Cuban National Assembly is expected to pass a new foreign investment law that would make Cuba more open and flexible to foreign investment.

"Cuba is getting ready for the eventual lifting of the U.S.embargo," Piñon said. "Everyone is prepositioning themselves for a post-embargoed Cuba."

Brazil, an increasingly important partner for Cuba, is already deepening its economic relationships with the island nation with the upgrade of the Cuban port of Mariel, a nearly $1 billion project that is being mostly financed by Brazil. Cuba also has started to supply Cuban doctors to Brazil, where there is a shortage of health-care professionals.

Brazil is betting in the economic potential the port would bring from traffic between the United States and Cuba through the Panama Canal if the U.S. embargo on trade with Havana is lifted, said Julia E. Sweig, senior fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"This is a pragmatic and strategic play by Brazil to expand its investment and political, economic presence in Cuba because there's an opportunity there," Sweig said. "It's a bit of a bet because we don't know what the new foreign investment law is going to look like yet. That's going to be a significant indicator of how much opportunity, not only for Brazil, but for other countries, exists in Cuba."

(Read more: This president may be deposed next)

But could new legislation pave the way for Cuba to mend its relationship with the United States?

"I am skeptically optimistic," Sweig said. "I don't think it would trigger any massive changes in Washington's policy towards Cuba until Washington is ready to marginalize the opponents of change in the U.S. Congress."

But Piñon is more optimistic.

"I think the embargo is going to be lifted within the next five years," Piñon said. "Now, what will be the catalyst? I don't know. Is it going to be an economic or political event? I think it will be a combination of both."

Some others say Cuba's political system will weigh more than any economic progress it makes.

"The Helms-Burton law explains that Cuba needs to change its political system, not opening up a little more with another foreign investment law. The law talks about Cuba becoming a free and democratic country," said Jaime Suchlicki, head of Institute for Cuba and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996, also known as the Libertad Act, extended and toughened the U.S. embargo against Cuba, seeking to mainly pressure the Castro regime to transition into a democracy through economic sanctions. The law has requirements, including Raul and Fidel Castro to be out of power and the release of political prisoners.

Suchlicki points to an additional issue: "Cuba is an ally of Iran and Russia … Cuba is not a friend of the United States."

Although it's still unclear if there will be any benefits for Cuba in the long run, one thing is for sure. Cuba will have to endure some pain caused by Venezuela's turmoil.

—By CNBC's Silvana Ordoñez. Follow her on Twitter @newsdumonde

Summary: As Venezuela's economic woes deepen and violent clashes increase, Cuba's economy is walking on a tight rope.


WHEN: Tomorrow, Wednesday, February 18th

WHERE: CNBC's Business Day Programming

CNBC's Sara Eisen will be live from the CAGNY conference in Boca Raton, FL for a series of CNBC EXCLUSIVE interviews airing on Wednesday, February 18th during CNBC's Business Day programming. Topics include: strength of the consumer, changing tastes in consumer habits, global headwinds, effect of the strong dollar, and M&A, among others.

The CNBC EXCLUSIVE guest line-up includes:

CNBC's "Squawk on the Street":

10:00am ET – Mondelez International Chairman & CEO Irene Rosenfeld

10:30am ET – Jarden CEO James E. Lillie

2:30pm ET – The Clorox Company CEO Benno Dorer

5:40pm ET – WhiteWave Foods Chairman & CEO Gregg Engles

With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, CNBC World and CNBC HD , CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to approximately 371 million homes worldwide, including more than 100 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.

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Summary: CNBC Media Alert: CNBC Exclusive: CNBC's Sara Eisen Live from CAGNY Conference Wednesday, February 18th


Besides CPI, there are new home sales at 10 a.m., expected to be down more than 4 percent, and Markit flash manufacturing PMI at 9:45 a.m. The FHFA home price index is released at 9 a.m.

Markets though will pay closest attention to any change in inflation, which has been stubbornly low. The Fed expects to see inflation gradually rise toward its 2 percent target but so far it is sputtering. The central bank's preferred inflation gauge—the PCE deflator—is released Monday.

Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, in remarks Monday, reiterated the central bank's view on slowly rising inflation and said it is likely to raise rates this year. Market opinion is mixed on whether the Fed will wait to see stronger signs of inflation before raising interest rates.

Read MoreFischer: Fed fund rate increase likely this year; 'no plans' for regular hikes

Last week, the Fed signaled it was on a path to raise rates in the near future. It also lowered its economic forecasts, cut its inflation outlook and changed its estimated timeline on rate hikes. The market has greater expectations now that the central bank will move to hike rates for the first time in September, though Fed officials continue to stress that June is possible.

Markets on Monday continued to adjust to the Fed's latest announcements, which sent the dollar reeling after its meeting last Wednesday. The U.S. currency was lower again, and strategists say the Fed could have pushed it into a short-term correction, but the longer-term trend remains higher.

"I think the most important leading indicators (on inflation) will be the CRB and the dollar. Watch them and they'll point us in the right direction," said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies. The Thomson Reuters/Core Commodity CRB is an index of 19 commodities, and it bounced when the dollar fell last week.

"The low was on March 18, and we've been ticking up since then. You're at the low end of a pretty ugly bear market," said McCarthy. The CRB has been trading at a six-year low.

He said the Fed is looking for flexibility. "They want to be in a position where if some one thing suggests we're getting inflation and something suggests we're not, it doesn't hamstring them," McCarthy said.

Read MoreAn eighth of a point Fed rate hike? Seriously?

MacNeil Curry, global head of technical strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said it appears the CRB index did bottom on the day of that Fed meeting March 18, along with other markets.

"You have a lot of conditions for it. It looks like a bullish reversal. Gold did it too," said Curry. "You saw a bunch of stuff start to indicate a squeeze to the topside."

Curry said the gains by the euro, yen and pound against the dollar appear to be short-term trends. His target for the euro is $1.10 to $1.11 on the upside and $1.04 should be the bottom of the current range. The euro was trading above $1.09 to the dollar Monday.

Read MoreWhy housing has a supply problem

The rallies in the Australian and New Zealand dollars and gold, however, appear to be medium-term trends and could continue, he said. Curry has a target of $1,307/$1,345 per ounce for gold. Gold futures were at $1,188 per ounce late Monday.

"I think Treasurys put in a medium-term yield top and that's why the dollar is likely to suffer as well," said Curry. The high yield on the 10-year was 2.26 percent, and on Monday, it was yielding 1.91 percent.

Treasury yields declined on apprehension about Greece's debt talks Monday. They also were lower as Fischer repeated the Fed's dovish message—it will raise rates but slowly.

Read MoreUS gas prices fall 4 cents, ending weeks of increases: Survey

Curry is eyeing 2,145 as a target on the S&P 500, but he added the market could pull back temporarily before it reaches that level.

Stocks were lower Monday, with the S&P down 3 at 2104, while the Dow fell 11 to 18,116. The Dow transports, led by rails, were sharply lower, off nearly 2 percent to 8,968. and the Nasdaq was down 15, at 5,010.

Biotechs, winners for nine sessions, reversed course Monday. The iShares Nasdaq Biotech ETF IBB fell 2.25 percent.

Summary: CPI is expected to have edged higher in February, but the gain could be small and potentially fleeting.


09/02/2015 AT 02:45 PM EDT

It's not me, it's you.

admits that when it comes to dealing with breakups, sometimes you just need to write down your feelings before you can really move on. So when it came time for Farrell to end his relationship with cigarettes, he did just that.

"I wrote a breakup letter to the Spirit of Tobacco," the

in their September cover story.

To make it official, he set the letter on fire.

"I got a frying pan and tossed the letter with a load of tobacco, put some paraffin over it, and lit a match that sent a big, wallowing cloud up into the sky. Then I didn't have a cigarette for another two years."

Farrell has been working on kicking bad habits and shedding his

by prioritizing what's important in life:

The actor has put his romantic life on the sideline for the past five years to focus on raising his two sons, James, 11, and Henry, 5. And while he admits he can get lonely at times, he's in no rush to delve into a relationship.

"The most significant aspect of my life lives far away from anywhere that a camera is needed," Farrell explained. "You play the part and do interviews but don't overextend yourself or put on a mask or change your name."

He added, "When you get home, the only thing that matters is your son is not eating his turkey sandwiches and he's not into avocado anymore, so you have to find something new that he'll eat for lunch."

Summary: Colin Farrell resisted cigarettes for two years after lighting the note on fire


Tech CEOs Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seemed to have all the pieces in place to take advantage of the nationwide GOP surge. But with tin ears aimed at voters, they couldn’t even win their companies’ headquarters counties.

Carly! Meg! What happened? You were both so promising. A dream team of former Silicon Valley CEOs—female CEOs at that; Republican challengers in an election favoring Republican challengers; women who knew how to prevent bankruptcy in a state that’s on the verge of one. And now? Now pundits—including this one—are speaking about you in the past tense, as if your political defeat yesterday means you’ve also died. Maybe, for political purposes, you have.

You were the candidates with the highest business profile—unless you include Connecticut’s wrestling entrepreneur, Linda McMahon—and the Los Angeles Times still declared your races over the instant the polls closed. Did you really have to spend $200 million to prove that Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer can still break a sweat?

It’s tempting to say that you were both too rich and too bureaucratic to win in an economy like this. You are, after all, two former CEOs, otherwise known to voters as rich people who can fire people. But elsewhere in the country several former CEOs prevailed. Rick Snyder, the former CEO of Gateway is the next governor of Michigan. Rick Scott, a man who ran a company accused of Medicare fraud, looks like he has probably eked out a win in Florida.

So, what, or whom, should we blame on your defeat? Your pals in Silicon Valley are a good place to start. The Bay Area was as blue as ever. As of this writing, eBay’s EBAY home county, Santa Clara, voted 60% for Brown, the Democrat. And Hewlett Packard’s HPQ headquarters, San Mateo County, was just as left, with Boxer getting 65% of the vote. It’s these voters who were supposed to see both of you as more than just another Republican. They were supposed to regard you as one of them. But that didn’t happen. Maybe you should have spent some of your money on adapting Christine O’Donnell’s ad strategy.

Silicon Valley wasn’t a huge help during the campaign, either. Carly, you were overpowered by the number of favors owed Barbara Boxer. Reuters pieced together a comprehensive report on the Valley’s financial support, and found that you got only a third of the money that Boxer did from the tech industry. This is what happens when you run against someone who has spent 18 years representing the tech industry in Washington. (And also what happens when you cut 30,000 tech jobs at home, “right shoring” – Fiorina’s euphemism for off-shoring – those jobs to workers overseas.) Meg, you got more financial support, but in the end you didn’t really need it. You spent $141.5 million of your own money only to lose. If only the governor’s mansion came with a Buy It Now button.

Your struggles add the latest chapter to the odd relationship between politics and the Valley. California has never elected someone to be governor or senator who has extensive experience as a technology CEO. And there have been very few who tried—Meg, you dispatched the most recent, Steve Poizner, a former tech entrepreneur, earlier this year. And yet, as evidenced by Snyder’s win in Michigan, the tech industry carries sway outside California. There just doesn’t seem to be much interest within California.

Ironic, given that the Valley has become more of an attraction than ever for politicians not from California. President Obama, elected with the help of online fundraising, paid a visit to Steve Jobs and had dinner at Google exec Marissa Mayer’s house. Politico listed a host of other senators and congresspeople who have swung through for fundraisers or info sessions. And even Russian President Dimitri Medvedev came to San Francisco to offer his first tweet. In politics, talking to innovators is still innovative.

Maybe that explains your losses. Technology captures the public’s—and politicians’—imagination because it’s creative, not because it’s profitable. It’s only the business press that obsesses over Apple’s returns—the normal people only care about whether new iPod Nano’s features mean they have to find a spare $200. That iPods drive revenue is important – to Apple AAPL . But it’s not inspiring to the average voter.

Both of you forgot that lesson. You ran as business leaders who proved their worth in the tech industry (At least until the HP board fired you, Carly.) Perhaps you should’ve run as technologists – lovers of innovation and making peoples’ lives easier – who went on to prove their worth as CEOs. Then again, that’s not what either of you really were, earlier in your careers. Carly, you came up as a manager at AT&T T and Lucent. Meg, you were in charge of marketing Mr. Potato Head before joining eBay. So maybe we should have known better about your chances. You were never going to be what the state wanted. But now, you’ll always be who they didn’t.

Summary: Tech CEOs Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seemed to have all the pieces in place to take advantage of the nationwide GOP surge. But with tin ears aimed at voters, they couldn't even win their companies' headquarters counties. By Chadwick Matlin, contributor Carly! Meg! What happened? You were both so promising. A dream team of…


Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner photographed on Sept 3.

09/14/2015 AT 11:25 AM EDT

After a successful first week back to school,

enjoyed a day of family fun with their three kids, Violet, 9, Seraphina 6, and Samuel, 3, on Sunday.

They made a stop at their local farmers' market before attending a morning church service together as a family.

"Ben and Jen looked like they had a fun Sunday with their kids," a source tells PEOPLE.

The couple appeared relaxed while strolling the streets and picking out fruits and vegetables from the different stands.

"They were both smiling. Jen shopped while Ben spent time with the kids," the source says. "He got them balloon art and took them around the market for tastings. Ben was very patient and seemed happy."

Affleck also joined Garner and the kids for the 10 a.m. service at the Community United Methodist Church of Pacific Palisades.

After the service, the family went to lunch together where "Jen and Ben were chatting a bit and things seemed much more relaxed between them."

Although they have stopped wearing their wedding rings and Affleck is living in a rental house down the street from Garner, they continue to spend time together with their children, holding firm to their commitment to put their kids first in the wake of their June 30

On Sept. 8, Affleck and Garner

for their first day of school.

"They smiled and chatted during the morning run," said a source. "There was no obvious tension between them."

Earlier that week they were even spotted visiting a

But despite the show of solidarity, a source says, "There is no

. They are working with a professional because there are emotions involved and they want to make this transition as easy as possible for their family."

Summary: The family went to their local farmers' market and attended a morning church service together


It resembles a casino that's been shipped in from Vegas, or a building that has somehow dropped acid and gone off on a psychedelic trip. Sitting right there at the side of Leicester's roaring Vaughan Way, it also happens to look like a giant rectangular box that's been covered it in an equally giant pair of tights - those fancy patterned ones that were big in the 1980s.

Hosiery and fabrics are tightly woven into the history of Leicester. They are also mainstays of John Lewis stores. So perhaps it should come as little surprise that Leicester's new John Lewis, due to open at the end of the summer, seems to have been made from a giant roll of fabric, or even hosiery. But come as a surprise it does. This building, with its hundreds of mirror-finished swirls and curls, is an extraordinary piece of architectural eye-candy. Its striking facade was derived from a fabric design commissioned by Richard Ovey, a London linen-draper, way back in 1803. The architects found it while sifting through the John Lewis textile archive in Carlisle.

As Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera Polo - founding partners of Foreign Office Architects - explain, this fabric effect was to give the building's bulk a "layered transparency". It might also be read, they say, as a net curtain, or a play on traditional Indian decoration, a nod to the city's sizeable Asian population. More prosaically, the screen acts as a sunshade, necessary since the walls of the four-floor store are almost all glass. The £44m building is a part of the muscular extension and revamp of the old Shires shopping mall in the city centre. Renamed Highcross, and now boasting an adjacent 12-screen cinema (also by FOA), 120 flats and more mall than ever, this beefy urban "regeneration" is part of Leicester's attempt to revitalise the city.

Highcross is a place people mostly come to by car, to shop, eat, shop some more, then drive home. The car park, reached by an airy pedestrian bridge over Vaughan Way, is actually bigger than the new John Lewis store. FOA - who have built very little in Britain since they set up shop in 1995, but much abroad - have shown how a massive city building can truly be part of the streetscape, but in a brand new way, offering a fresh take on what such edifices can be and do. I'm not talking about the John Lewis store here, though; I'm talking about FOA's superb ferry terminal at Yokohama, Japan, opened in 2002 and designed as a form of urban landscaping; its undulating roof is a new city park, topping a building that is for everyone, whether they plan to take a boat or not. The terminal changes the way you see the city from the sea.

Leicester may not be on the sea, yet we are missing a trick in being so reliant on the retail sector, and developers, to reboot our city centres. For all their intelligence and skill, FOA have really only created a chimera of inventive design at Highcross. As for John Lewis, it used to work with architecture in a far more 3D way. The rebuilding of its flagship Peter Jones shop on Sloane Square, Chelsea, was a fine modern addition to the capital's existing streetscape when completed in 1937; and the John Lewis store on London's Oxford Street, although disjointed in appearance (the second world war interrupted building) is another thoughtful, much liked creation. Both those buildings fit a much older streetscape. The Leicester John Lewis is not really a part of any recognisable streetscape at all. As the retail sector has waxed ever fatter, new shops have grown fatter too - so much so that today they all but obliterate the sites they are supposed to champion, if not adorn.

FOA have done their best with this John Lewis, as with the cinema multiplex alongside, clad in its pleated skin of metal shingles. Their decorative treatment is undeniably beguiling; and, as we demand ever more fancy goods to keep ourselves entertained, shops will continue to grow and grow. In such a world, we will need clever architects to think of how we can dress them up, in hosiery if necessary, to look somehow civilised.

Summary: John Lewis's newest store looks like a big box wrapped in fancy tights. Is this really what Leicester needs? By Jonathan Glancey


Quick, what's the hot topic among socially minded financiers? If you said financial literacy, you get a gold star.

Any number of banks, brokerages and other financial service companies are offering games and software that promise to help people, especially students, get smarter about money. The problem is, not many of these efforts have had much effect.

(Read more: Financial literacy games: tools or toys?)

Research by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, shows that financial literacy actually deteriorated slightly between 2009 and 2012, and the results were worst for the youngest group of people.

(Read more: Financial literacy education efforts get failing grade)

What would work better? Teens themselves have some ideas. Just listen to the students in Maggie Wohltmann's business education classes at New Jersey's Teaneck High School.

Many of the students at this large, ethnically diverse suburban school tend to prefer active learning. Keressa Morgan, a 10th grader, said the best part of Wohltmann's class so far has been a real-life simulation.

"We right now are doing a family budget," Keressa said, describing an exercise where Wohltmann pairs off her students into "couples" and has them use real-world prices and rates to manage scenarios like the arrival of a new child or the purchase of a car.

(Read more: Warren Buffett: How to teach your kids about money)

"It's nice to budget our incomes and mortgages and monthly expenses, things that are fixed and variable. It's really helpful. Now when I go out into the real world, I know how to do things for myself," Keressa said.

She said the partner exercise "gives you a real feel for real life and how things are going to go rather than have the typical classroom setting."

Students also like lessons about money issues that are relevant to them right now. Chris Lee, a sophomore at Teaneck, dreams of attending a top college and becoming an engineer. Since he is already thinking about careers, he wants to know "more about getting jobs and the availability of jobs, credit ratings and having good credit," he said.

Lessons with immediate, concrete value also resonate. Deja Marsh, a Teaneck junior, has a part-time job at ShopRite. She has been happy to have money coming in, since she is saving up for a car. But her paycheck was mystifying to her—until Wohltmann showed the class what all those deductions mean.

"I didn't know that since I was a minor I wasn't supposed to get taxes taken out of my check," Deja said. "After that class, I went to my boss and told him I learned this, and he said, 'Oh yeah, you can fill out this form.'"

(Read more: 8 tips to stick to your holiday budget)

Plenty of teens are less than sensible with their money, overspending on clothes and fast food and putting little or nothing away. But they respond much better to helpful suggestions for changing their ways than they do to negativism about their habits.

For example, Deja and Keressa appreciate the positive suggestions they've received to make saving easier. Deja now allows herself to spend every other paycheck, and she puts the other away. "Before, I used to always spend my money and never think about saving it," she said. Now, "I'm saving so much more. I have a check for one week, say $200, and I know that has to last." Wohltmann, she said, ""is really gentle with us and it sticks."

Summary: Financial literacy teaching tools are everywhere, but young people aren't getting any smarter about money. Here's what kids say they want to learn.


Betterment is part of a growing number of investment start-ups that believe they can provide a technology-based alternative to traditional wealth advisors.

Jon Stein, a boyish-looking engineer who majored in economics at Harvard, started the company in 2008 in New York City. He believed that Betterment's cloud-based software could help guide investors to better results than more expensive traditional advisors.

Read More FULL LIST: 2014 CNBC DISRUPTOR 50

Unlike competitor Wealthfront, Betterment has no minimum amount that customers need to invest to get started. The company, with about $650 million of assets under management, charges a fee of .35 percent for those with less than $10,000 invested, and drops off to .15 percent for customers with more than $100,000 under management.

With backing from Citi Ventures, Northwestern Mutual Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and others, the company's goal is to manage $100 billion by 2020.

Summary: Betterment is part of a growing number of investment start-ups that provide a technology-based alternative to traditional wealth advisors.


BERLIN, Sept 1 (Reuters) - German unemployment fell more than expected in August, with the jobless rate holding steady at a record low, offering reassurance that consumer spending will continue to drive growth in Europe's largest economy this year.

The Federal Labour Office reported on Tuesday that the seasonally-adjusted unemployment total dipped by 7,000 to 2.79 million. Economists polled by Reuters had been forecasting a fall of only 2,000.

The jobless rate remained at 6.4 percent for the fifth straight month. That is the lowest since German reunification in 1990.

German unemployment had unexpectedly risen in July, posting its biggest increase since May last year. But the latest data suggested this was just a blip.

"Economy and employment trends in Germany are pointing upward. Companies are well advised not to be unsettled by the recent excesses of the financial markets," KfW chief economist Joerg Zeuner said.

"The depreciation of the euro and the cheap oil have considerably strengthened competitiveness and demand," he noted, adding that German companies would probably keep on hiring more staff in the coming months.

The labour market in Germany stands in stark contrast to the job situation in southern European countries such as Greece and Spain, which have unemployment rates of around 25 and 22 percent respectively.

At a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Berlin on Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised Spain's reform efforts.

"The situation on the labour market is still serious, but many new jobs are being created and thus Spain is contributing to Europe pulling itself out of the crisis step by step," she said.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Caroline Copley and Catherine Evans)

Summary: BERLIN, Sept 1- German unemployment fell more than expected in August, with the jobless rate holding steady at a record low, offering reassurance that consumer spending will continue to drive growth in Europe's largest economy this year.  "Economy and employment trends in Germany are pointing upward. Companies are well advised not to be unsettled by the recent...


After 43 years of steadily expanding in the continental U.S., Southwest Airlines is going international.

The carrier is launching flights to three destinations in the Caribbean as it begins expansion into uncharted territory, adding international routes. The airline's first flight to the region took off Tuesday morning from Baltimore to Aruba.

"Our opportunity is to grow beyond the 48 states to all of North America, potentially, serving it all with 737s and even having the range to reach the northern part of South America," said Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines.

While Southwest subsidiary AirTran has run flights to the Caribbean for several years, this is the first time expansion has been centered on the Southwest brand.

Read MoreDelta, United lead the way in airline fees

It comes as several of the carrier's competitors are adding flights to the region.

"They face stiff competition from airlines such as JetBlue, American and Delta, but I think Southwest will bring lower fares and a lot of promotion and a great name and a great reputation," said Henry Harteveldt, an airline consultant with Atmosphere Research Group.

"I am not convinced [Southwest's flying to the Caribbean] will be an out-of-the-ballpark smash."

Summary: Southwest Airlines is launching three flights to the Caribbean after 43 years of steadily expanding in the continental U.S.