A cluster of 10-year-old boys loiter beside a ghetto street, waiting. The one in the middle holds a blue gun. When an old white gas-guzzler, most likely a Cadillac, meanders down the street, the boy calmly shoots out its tires. Then he fires at the occupants inside, starting with the driver and then killing the passengers one after the other.

Never fear, parents of America—it’s only boys being boys at San Francisco’s F.A.O. Schwarz toy store. They’re playing a harmless little videogame, the felicitously named Lethal Enforcers, a $70 gem that runs on your kids’ Sega CD system. While this may not be your idea of age-appropriate fun, it has corporate America all excited. Why? Because boys like these form the heart of the videogame industry (so far, girls aren’t a factor). And videogames are a $6.5-billion-a-year U.S. business—bigger than the movie box office take—that’s on the cutting edge of both technology and investment in the so-called electronic information highway.

Whatever else is offered to consumers on that highway—the coming convergence of telephone, television, and computer—you can count on one thing: You’ll be able to play videogames. Lee Isgur, a partner at Volpe Welty, a San Francisco investment bank, has followed the games industry since its creation by the Atari Corp. (see timeline below). Says Isgur: “You can talk all you want about the electronic highway and video on demand, but the only place anyone has ever sold anything interactive is in games.” Walter Miao, an analyst at LINK Resources/IDC, sees the market growing to $7.5 billion next year.

1972: Atari founder Nathan Bushnell puts Pong, the first video arcade game, outside a tavern in Sunnyvale, Calif. Lines form around the block. The videogame era is born.

1984: After selling more than 20 million home machines, Atari flop and is broken up. Consumers still play Pac-Man in arcades, but the home market is hurting.

1986: Nintendo revives the industry with nationwide introduction of its eight-bit entertainment system. Mario the plumber becomes a household name.

1989: Sega delivers its 16-bit Genesis machine, and Sonic the Hedgehog makes his debut. Nintendo fights back in 1991 with the 16-bit Super Nintendo.

1992: Sega offers a CD-ROM attachment to Genesis. Sales are slow at first, but many see CD as the technology of the future.

1993: The Panasonic REAL Multiplayer brings 3DO’s 32-bit CD-ROM technology to marketo Atari makes a comeback with the 64-bit Jaguar, but software developers play wait-and-see.

1995: Nintendo is scheduled to introduce a 64-bit machine with Silicon Graphics computer chips. Will it play CDs or cartridges? Will it arrive in time for Christmas? Mario’s not talking.

That’s why companies like AT&T t , Matsushita, Paramount, Viacom viab , Blockbuster, IBM ibm , Silicon Graphics, and Time Warner twx (parent of this magazine’s publisher at the time of publication) are trying hard to elbow their way into an industry that until this year was pretty much the exclusive domain of two Japanese giants: Nintendo and Sega Enterprises. In the past seven years, those firms have put a total of 64 million game machines in U.S. households. They have also made or licensed all of the software—i.e., games—that run on those machines.

Nintendo and Sega sell the hardware cheap—that’s how they got just about every kid in America to play. But software drives the profits. A typical game costs $60 and can sell over one million copies. Indeed, software drove the combined 1993 profits of Nintendo and Sega to $1 billion worldwide.

That Nintendo-Sega hegemony has, until now at least, made breaking into the business as difficult as rescuing the princess from Mario’s nemesis, Bowser. But it has also rescued the industry from near oblivion following the great Atari disaster. Years of overexpansion and bad management unleashed a mudslide of dismal titles—notably a pallid 1983 version of the film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial—that soured the public on videogames and led to Atari’s dismemberment. Says Nintendo of America senior VP Howard Lincoln: “Atari had a wonderful franchise, but it was irresponsible in terms of quality control.”

Enter Nintendo. The firm single-handedly re-created the market in 1986 with twin gestures: (a) introducing an inexpensive eight-bit player (bit numbers measure how much data a computer chip can process at one time), and (b) carefully, even dictatorially, controlling the quality of the software that could be played on its machines. While competition from Sega and pressure from the Federal Trade Commission forced the company to loosen its software licensing policies in 1990, the quality of games has remained high.

For more on Nintendo, watch this Fortune video:

Nevertheless, the games business can still be as dangerous as a round of Mortal Kombat. Reason: Kids are fickle. Terry Munson, 29, a former paralegal who is now one of the 412 employees at Nintendo’s Redmond, Washington, service center answering telephone queries from stumped players, reports that a really successful title is one that kids enjoy for a month. Says Nintendo of America President Minoru Arakawa (who led a team of investors that bought baseball’s Seattle Mariners last year): “If we don’t supply kids with interesting and new products all the time, we’ll get killed and buried.”

Some would say that Sega has the shovel in its hand. Three years ago Nintendo made nearly nine out of ten game machines sold in the U.S. This year, predicts Sean McGowan, a toy industry analyst at the New York City institutional brokerage Gerard Klauer Mattison, more than half of all second-generation game players—those run by 16-bit processors—will be sold by Sega. Says McGowan: “You can’t make a big distinction in terms of the machines, but Sega’s marketing has been much hipper than Nintendo’s.” Ask your kid: Sega has cooler ads than Nintendo; and Sonic the Hedgehog, the company’s lead character, is faster and less dowdy than Mario, Nintendo’s plumber. (For one 10-year-old’s assessment of the game players available in stores this holiday season, see box.)

Sega will try to pile on more trouble for Nintendo next year when it test-markets its Sega Channel via cable TV. Genesis owners will pay around $12 a month for unlimited playing time. Most games offered will be old ones, but the company will also deliver teasers of new titles. Sega wants savvy kids, who test before they buy, to rush off then and purchase the new games.

But don’t count Nintendo out. Its tiny Game Boy dominates the market for battery-operated portable machines, and the firm still commands respect. “Nintendo is the Disney dis of this industry, while Sega is the MTV,” says Steve Eskenazi, an analyst at Alex. Brown in New York. “Like Disney, Nintendo is a great company.” One potent reminder that Nintendo is a major player: its new alliance with Silicon Graphics, the $1.1-billion-a-year maker of workstations. The two companies are developing a powerful 64-bit game machine due on the market by 1995. Code name: Project Reality.

That alliance is just one example of the complicated stratagems major U.S. companies are using to get into games. Try to follow the web of AT&T’s investments, for instance. Ma Bell owns portions of Spectrum Holobyte, a gamemaker; PF. Magic, a startup company that will make networking equipment to link Sega Genesis players; the ImagiNation Network, with 40,000 subscribers who play games against one another on PCs; and 3DO, which licensed Matsushita’s Panasonic to produce its new game and multimedia machine.

One of AT&T’s partners in 3DO is Time Warner. US West, which has invested $2.5 billion in a Time Warner subsidiary, will use 3DO technology in an interactive test in Omaha next year. For its part, Time Warner will offer the Sega Channel to its cable TV subscribers. Time Warner also has its own 4,000-home test of an interactive cable network in Orlando, Florida, scheduled for next year. Silicon Graphics chips will power the Orlando television-top boxes. And as noted above, Silicon Graphics and Nintendo are collaborating on Project Reality.

Got that? Lee Isgur describes this as “defensive investing.” Says he: “Interactive is growing faster than any other form of entertainment. If you’re Time Warner or another big company, you can get in now relatively inexpensively.”

How’s this feeding frenzy likely to play out? Here are some major trends that are turning the videogame industry into the fast lane of the info highway:

Videogame machines are actually small computers. The 16-bit chip that powers the Sega Genesis also ran Apple’s first Macintosh. Like the PC on your desk, Nintendo’s boxes have ports to which keyboards and modems can be attached. Half a million Japanese have networking devices that allow them to use their Nintendo machines to bank electronically and trade stocks. In coming months, the company will try networking its U.S. game players in a similar fashion.

As the price of putting serious power on tiny microprocessors continues to fall, the potential for the computerization of household electronics grows. Says Silicon Graphics Chairman Jim Clark: “Computer chips will be at the core of all future consumer devices.” Accordingly, after Silicon Graphics bought semiconductor maker MIPS Computer Systems in 1992, he went in search of machines into which he could place his new chips. Clark realized that Nintendo had the country’s largest installed base of chip-driven devices in the home—48.8 million game players, according to LINK Resources. Says Clark: “No one cared in the early Eighties when Intel microprocessors were chosen to be the heart of IBM computers. I think this is the same kind of market, where in ten years you’ll get an ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that was going on’ reaction.”

So far, Project Reality is little more than Project Vapor. Silicon Graphics has not yet sent specifications for the new machines to software developers. And since it takes 12 to 18 months to design and deliver a game, Silicon Graphics and Nintendo could have a hard time introducing arcade versions of their machines by Christmas 1994, as promised. (Game companies often launch products in arcades to generate excitement among the mall rats before making home versions available.) Meanwhile, other manufacturers, including Sony, have announced that they too will make game machines for the home. Even Atari is back; its 64-bit Jaguar game player just debuted in San Francisco and New York, and will go national next year if Atari raises additional funds.

3DO doesn’t really make anything. Rather, it licenses its technology to game-box makers (Matsushita, AT&T, Sanyo) and software developers. First to reach the hardware market is Matsushita, with its Panasonic REAL 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Despite a $700 pricetag, seven times the cost of a Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo, analysts expect Matsushita to sell just under 50,000 machines this Christmas. Meanwhile, more than 400 software developers have signed on. They were attracted by the chance to use sophisticated graphics and by 3DO’s royalties, which are less than half those demanded by Nintendo and Sega. Of that $60 retail price for a typical game cartridge, a developer must pay Nintendo around $20, which covers manufacturing costs and a royalty. 3DO charges a royalty of only $3, and the developer does the manufacturing; but instead of cartridges, 3DO machines use CD-ROMs, which cost only a dollar or two to produce.

Many gamemakers believe the future lies with CD-ROM (for compact disk with read-only memory). Not only are the disks cheaper to make than cartridges, they can store a lot more data, including film and photographs. That means games that are beginning to resemble movies.

Tom Zito, CEO of tiny Digital Pictures, is one of the first to take advantage of the technology. Zito, who used to write for the New Yorker and Rolling Stone, spends some $2 million filming real actors for his CD-based interactive games. Corey Haim (The Lost Boys) and Debbie Harry (Hairspray) are among the performers who have starred in his miniproductions. His most interesting title this Christmas is Prize Fighter, directed by Ron Stein, who choreographed some boxing sequences in the 1980 Martin Scorsese classic, Raging Bull. Besides trying to knock out a series of actors portraying boxers, you the game player become part of a story. In this case, a crippled boy on the sidelines cheers for you. In Double Switch, actor Haim tells you exactly how he wants you to help him escape from the basement of a haunted mansion. Free him and he becomes part of the action, another character under your direction. Zito thinks that kind of interaction will transform the industry. Says he: “Right now kids are exposed to this mind-numbing medium day after day. But when they can interact with a live actor, they take back control. Seeing that you can change what happens on TV tells you that your imagination counts.”

Most of the population—women—have largely avoided videogames, and small wonder: The leading titles are based on such activities as street fighting, car racing, and football. Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, for one, would like to change that. He has formed a task force composed of the top female marketers and game developers in his company. Their goal: software products available by next fall that appeal to female tastes.

Kalinske suggests that such titles might be offered on CD-ROM, where they can have more developed, interactive story lines than games currently available on cartridges. But Kalinske is largely out of the loop on this development effort. The women in charge won’t let him sit in on task force meetings, and he reluctantly endorses their decision. Says Kalinske, who once marketed Barbie dolls for Mattel Toys: “They will develop this on their own, even though I’ve probably sold more product to women than anyone in this company.”

Several companies are scrambling to make real money out of virtual reality. The technology immerses you in a computer-generated 3-D world. High-powered microprocessors relate your movements to that environment, giving you the feeling of interacting with an imaginary universe, not just a TV screen. This year thousands of people have been exposed to virtual reality in arcades around the world, ranging from Sega’s entertainment centers in Japan to a three-month show at Boston’s World Trade Center, where 90,000 visitors paid $20 a head to blast away at each other in a virtual shooting gallery.

To see that interaction in action, observe the dozens of lunchtime spectators who surround CyberMind, a temporary virtual reality game center in the lobby of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center. There helmeted executives, hands waving and neckties flying, twirl around in circular pods to no apparent purpose.

But inside those helmets, businessmen paying $5 to play four minutes of Dactyl Nightmare see 3-D guns in their hands. When they pull the trigger they see gray bullets fly in the direction of, say, the green 3-D representation of the fellow in the green pod nearby. Spectators can tell when a computer-generated pterodactyl flies down and carries a player away—the man in the pod looks disconcerted, almost weightless. He also looks really dumb.

Expensive and cumbersome pods and helmets won’t work for the home market. Says Kicha Ganapathy, head of the machine perception research department at AT&T’s Bell Labs: “At home, people are couch potatoes. They want interactivity without slipping on a body suit or a helmet.” Now, he says, Bell Labs has developed a technology that will allow users to interact with games in a virtual world without wearing cumbersome equipment. He’s mum about what makes it fly but says AT&T would like to have a virtual reality product on the market soon. By next Christmas, Sega should also be offering its Sega VR, a set of virtual reality-inducing goggles it promises for under $200.

Ganapathy thinks that such gaming efforts will help lead virtual reality into all sorts of other fields, including surgery and education. That kind of crossover is already under way. Evans & Sutherland and Martin Marietta, which create highly sophisticated flight-simulation technology for the aerospace industry, are working with software developers to bring those techniques to the games world. Coopers & Lybrand, the consulting firm, has called on Maxis, a developer of PC games, to produce a simulation that will teach Coopers employees about the telephone industry, as well as help client companies train new workers.

The strangest crossover of all may be sitting in an office near you. A generation that played the early Nintendo machines in high school is just now entering the work force. David Shpilberg, Ernst & Young’s director of financial services consulting, finds that new hires who grew up playing videogames are more at ease with the company’s sophisticated computer programs, including business simulations, than staffers with years of experience. And discussions with the new hires reveal that they acquired a better feel for the technology from playing videogames than from working on PCs.

“Think of reengineering a company,” says Shpilberg. “The first thing you have to do is represent the obstacle course that the company is now. For instance, how a document gets from an application to an actual loan—through credit reviews, checking of income statements and balance sheets, approval from superior officers, and so on. If you think of it, it’s just like a Mario Brothers game. Our new hires understand this—that you can get through those obstacles only so fast before you have to redesign the game so that the obstacles go away.”

Far-fetched? Maybe. But isn’t it weird—and yes, somehow comforting—to think that those boys shooting car passengers in F.A.O. Schwarz may someday be reengineering your company?

A version of this article was originally published in the December 27, 1993 issue of Fortune.

Summary: The video game industry is winning over corporate giants like AT&T.


Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has questioned the stability of the South Australian electricity grid following a state-wide power blackout in the midst of a major storm.

But South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill denies the outage has anything to do with the state's reliance on intermittent renewable energy and the recent closure of its last coal-fired power station.

More than one million homes are without power and the hospitals across the state are operating on back-up power after the state lost electricity about 4pm on Wednesday.

Mr Frydenberg says the state-wide blackout is "clearly not adequate" and wants to convene a meeting of the COAG energy council to make sure it never happens again.

"The ramifications are huge for so many people involved," he told ABC Television on Wednesday evening.

The outage is understood to have been caused when the storm knocked out transmission towers, cutting the frequency to the system.

Mr Weatherill says that tripped the system, which shut down and severed interconnection with the Victorian electricity grid - South Australia's only connection to the national electricity grid.

South Australia relies on renewables - mainly wind power - for more than 40 per cent of its power.

But the premier insists that isn't the cause of the outage and says the same "dramatic event" would have shorted any system in the world.

"This is the system protecting itself," he said, adding it had nothing to do with the May closure of Port Augusta's coal-fired power station.

"For people to be saying those things without being appraised of all the facts shows people are using this to play politics."

Mr Frydenberg said the system's stability must be questioned after the outage, but cautioned that the underlying cause was the storm.

"Questions are raised by the virtue of the increasing amount of renewables," he said.

It's not clear how long it could take for power to be restored across the state, but some homes could be without power until Thursday.

Summary: Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has questioned the stability of the SA grid which relies heavily on renewables, after a storm knocked out power.


When it comes to helping investors visualize the effect of Apple’s AAPL entry on the mobile phone market, nobody does it better than Asymco’s Horace Dediu.

It’s not just that every new phone that arrives looks like an iPhone and comes with an app store.

Or that Apple has helped shift the industry from so-called “feature” phones, dominated by Nokia NOK , to “smartphones,” a market that was dominated by Research in Motion’s RIMM BlackBerry until Apple came along.

It’s that Apple is selling iPhones as fast as it can make them and raking in huge profits in the process.

Everybody else is playing catch-up while trying to match Apple’s manufacturing efficiency and cost structure. To hold on to market share they either have to sell at razor-thin margins or give their product away in two-for-one deals.

The proof: These two pie charts. One shows Apple’s share of the worldwide cell phone market in terms of unit sales (4%). The other shows Apple’s share of the profits (50%).

As Dediu puts it: “The disruption continues.”

Dediu has created a set of six pie charts that compare the mobile phone market in 2007 and 2010 in terms of unit share, sales share and profits. See here.

NOTE: In the last chart, he is using EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) for the mobile phone division of each company as a proxy for profits.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Summary: When it comes to helping investors visualize the effect of Apple's entry on the mobile phone market, nobody does it better than Asymco's Horace Dediu. It's not just that every new phone that arrives looks like an iPhone and comes with an app store. Or that Apple has helped shift the industry from so-called "feature"…


A man has been charged with murder over the stabbing death of an elderly man at a house near Ballarat.

Emergency services were called to a Langstaffe Drive property in Wendouree around 1.30am on Wednesday and found the 72-year-old man was dead.

A 37-year-old man was arrested at the property and has been charged with one count of murder.

He was known to the victim and both men are Wendouree residents.

Locals took to social media to express their shock and sadness over the death.

"This is very sad. Sending my condolences to the deceased family. Thinking of you at this sad time," one posted.

The Wendouree man has been charged with one count of murder and was remanded to appear at Ballarat Magistrate's Court on Thursday.

Summary: A 37-year-old Victorian man has been charged over the fatal stabbing of an elderly man near Ballarat on Wednesday.


A Queensland man missing in bushland for 10 days is unlikely to have survived unless he got a lift after abandoning his car, police say.

Authorities are yet to uncover any trace of Aaron Flynn, 29, and have stopped physically searching for him, prompting his family to hire a helicopter for their own search.

Mr Flynn was en route from the Sunshine Coast to Charters Towers for his uncle's funeral when he was last seen on November 12 walking with a jerry can near Rubyvale in central Queensland.

His car was found last Thursday alongside Rubyvale Road, abandoned after it had ran out of fuel.

Inspector Dave Peff said authorities scoured 50sq/km of difficult terrain, but called off the search after two days based on expert advice the conditions weren't survivable.

"I want to be clear that doesn't mean we say that he hasn't survived," Inspector Dave Peff told reporters on Tuesday.

"But in the circumstances and in the area that we were searching, survivability was determined to be zero.

"That doesn't mean he hasn't been picked up by someone or hasn't managed to get a lift."

Temperatures in the area have soared to 40C over the past week and a number of Mr Flynn's personal items, including his mobile phone, were found in the car.

Insp Peff said it was possible Mr Flynn had left his vehicle although he had made no contact with anyone since and there was no way of ascertaining his whereabouts.

Although police weren't physically searching for Mr Flynn, he said, they were still investigating his disappearance.

"I want to assure the community and the family we have not given up," he said.

Mr Flynn's family are still hoping to find him alive but acknowledge their prospects aren't looking good.

"But we have to try our best," his sister Renee Napthali posted on Facebook.

Summary: The family of a man missing in central Queensland has hired a helicopter to search bushland as police and emergency workers scale back their efforts.


Harry Elam’s brother had an alter ego. In his everyday life he was a smart kid from Roxbury, prone to allergies, drawn to the theater, born to a judge and a public schools library director.

But when Keith Elam dropped out of graduate school at the Fashion Institute of Technology in the mid-1980s to become a rapper, he took on a stage name — GURU. It was, he explained, an acronym for Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal.

“That’s a superhero name,” says Harry, who is vice provost and a professor of drama at Stanford University.

With his two-man group, Gang Starr — himself on the microphone and the Houston native DJ Premier creating the beats — Guru forged a path as one of the most thoughtful, tradition-oriented MCs on the scene during the “golden age” of hip-hop. Though he died at age 48 in 2010, Guru’s legacy continues to inspire: Each episode of the new Netflix series based on Marvel Comics’ superhero Luke Cage is named for a Gang Starr song.

“Hip-hop is the greatest motivational music in the world,” says Cheo Hodari Coker, a noted music journalist who wrote a biography of the Notorious B.I.G. before becoming a TV producer. He is the showrunner for “Luke Cage,” a 13-episode series about an unassuming superhero in Harlem, which rolls out its entire first season Friday.

“If you listen to a rapper talk about himself, you can imagine talking about yourself,” Coker says. “You feel like, ‘I’m unstoppable, man.’ I have friends who, before they go into meetings, listen to Jay-Z.”

As an undergraduate at Stanford in the early 1990s, Coker took a class with Professor Elam. Meanwhile, he was moonlighting as a rising hip-hop journalist, writing feature stories for VIBE before becoming a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times.

“My life at Stanford was almost like a hip-hop college version of ‘Almost Famous,’” he says. “I was interviewing guys who were or would become rap superstars, and I was still a kid, living in a dorm room. I always loved Gang Starr’s music, and I always read every interview with Guru and took every opportunity to interview him.”

For Coker and many of his peers, Gang Starr represented the empowering side of hip-hop. (One of the group’s breakthrough tracks was called “Positivity.”) Long before “Luke Cage,” phrases from the group’s song titles — “Deep Concentration,” “Check the Technique” — had entered the lexicon.

After serving as a co-executive producer on Showtime’s “Ray Donovan,” Coker was invited to write a treatment for the proposed “Luke Cage” series, which stemmed from the character’s appearance in “Jessica Jones,” another of Marvel’s recent forays into atypical superhero content.

He is, he says, a big fan of Shonda Rhimes, who names each episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” after a pop song. Preparing for his first pitch meeting with the head of Marvel Television, Coker organized his story arc by taking a page from Rhimes’s book, titling each of his episodes after Gang Starr songs: “Moment of Truth,” “Code of the Streets,” “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?”

Cage, a contemplative character played by Mike Colter, has unbreakable skin, the product of a cell regeneration experiment conducted on him while he was imprisoned. In New York City, trying to get back on his feet by working menial jobs, he becomes a neighborhood superhero despite his reluctance.

Besides his impressive strength, Luke’s superpower is simple: He’s bulletproof. He doesn’t wear a cape or tights; he’s more likely to dress in a hoodie. While the original “Luke Cage” comic book series was conceived during the blaxploitation film craze of the early 1970s, the new series is plugged directly into the contemporary realities of Black Lives Matter protests and renewed debates over what it means to be black in America.

Like Luke Cage, Guru combined a modest kind of heroism with a rich inner life.

“He was an interesting mix of having hard-core cred but making music that was about something, that didn’t shy away from politics or higher intellectual thought,” says Coker. With Gang Starr and the side project known as Jazzmatazz, Guru highlighted hip-hop’s place on a continuum of the African-American musical history he learned from his family elders.

In his private life, as his brother recalls, Guru lived a “Clark Kent-like existence — just a loving father, a guy in the street pushing a baby carriage.”

Onstage, however, he came alive with charisma.

“Some people have that when they step onstage,” says Harry Elam. “He had it.”

A superhero, he says, is someone who possesses the power and virtues the rest of us would like to have, with a sense of “doing good, making the world better.” He counts his little brother among them.

Summary: Roxbury’s Guru, MC of the hip-hop duo, was a huge influence on Cheo Hodari Coker, the showrunner for the new Netflix superhero series.


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A version of this archives appears in print on April 11, 1955, on page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: DRIVE ON 'WETBACKS' CUTS CRIME IN U. S. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Swing repts wetback drive gains, House com


A seven-month-old boy has died after his pram was hit by the family car south of Brisbane.

The boy's mother was reversing the four-wheel-drive when it hit and crushed the pram on Jean Street in Woodridge about 1.50pm today.

The boy was rushed to the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital, where he died with his mother and father at his bedside.

The child was in a pram when it was hit by a car. (9NEWS)

The woman was not physically injured in the incident.

She had recently left a funeral at a nearby Catholic church when the pram was hit.

The Forensic Crash Unit is investigating.

You can get breaking news alerts on your phone by downloading our app, 9NEWS Alerts, available on iPhone and Android.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2017

Summary: An infant is in a critical condition after a pram was hit by a car south of Brisbane.


BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA RUSH MOLLOY WITH JO PIAZZA AND CHRIS ROVZAR

Tuesday, June 20th 2006, 1:03AM

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have finally confirmed they're getting married this weekend - but not because a baby is making them. Kidman's rep swears the Oscar-winning bride-to-be is not expecting - despite exhaustive media analysis of her lovely tummy.

"She's not pregnant," spokeswoman Catherine Olim tells us. "This is a rumor that comes around every month. It has for past year or two. Believe me on this one: She is religious, and that would never do."

Kidman and country and Western star Urban - two Aussies who hit it big in the States - flew into Sydney Sunday night.

"We are very happy to be back in Australia," they said in a statement. "We have come home to celebrate our wedding with our family and friends."

Loved ones and wedding planners quickly flocked to Kidman's home, which she bought with ex-husband Tom Cruise. Kidman and Urban will be celebrating her 39th birthday today. But, word is, they'll spending their nights apart before their wedding Sunday.

"They were given choices, but the main idea was for Keith to be doing his own thing with his family and friends and Nicole to be doing her sort of things with hers," a source told Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

London's Daily Mirror reported the generous couple would be putting up guests in 120 rooms at the Intercontinental Hotel to the tune of $300,000. But one invitee told us that, while Nic and Keith are seeing to all arrangements, guests will be getting a bill.

Kidman is sparing no expense after her phone-tapping nightmare with paparazzi in January of last year. She's said to have hired extra security and trained a 24-hour surveillance camera on the media pack outside her home.

Kidman's children from her 10-year marriage to Cruise, Isabella, 13, and Conor, 11, are expected to arrive in Sydney later this week.

The nuptials are due to take place at a Catholic church in a northern Sydney suburb near Kidman's high school. Kidman is hosting a femme affair at a day spa Friday night; Urban is expected to have his stag party the same night.

What do you get for the Commander-in-Chief who has everything? May we suggest guns, wine and manure.

Jordanian King Abdullah II gave President Bush 11 collectible handguns worth $12,000, plus a $10,000 Dakota Arms sniper's rifle, according to a State Department declaration of the gifts Bush received from foreign leaders in 2004. The king also gave him six jars of fertilizer.

Brunei's waggish Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah gave the President the "Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook," as well as DVDs of "Singin' in the Rain" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Bush's well-known sobriety didn't stop other leaders from giving him 78 bottles of wine. Lest he be tempted, U.S. law requires that all the gifts be turned over to the National Archives or other institutions for display.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sent an $8,500 marble sculpture of Hercules. Gabon President Omar Bongo Ondimba offered a machete. French President Jacques Chirac, who opposes the war in Iraq, gave Bush a two-volume set of the 1850 edition of Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democratie en Amerique" - in French, which Bush does not speak.

Meanwhile, one of the Bush twins turned up at one of last week's Radiohead concerts here - even though the band hates her dad. Rocker Thom Yorke wasn't sure which of the First Daughters was at the Garden show (odds are it was Barbara, who was in town) but tells the New Musical Express that it's "probably a good idea" his handlers didn't tell him a Bush daughter was there - otherwise he might "ask if she had a valid ticket."

MICHAEL JACKSON'S legal battle with former porn producer Marc Schaffel has been postponed till next Monday. Schaffel, who produced Jackson's 9/11 tribute song, "What More Can I Give," has sued the pop star for $3.8 million he claims he's owed. Schaffel also told "Access Hollywood" last night that the singer has a fake nose. Jackson family lawyer Brian Oxman tells us Schaffel is going on TV because his case is so weak. What's more, the singer "does not wear a prosthesis."... CYNDI LAUPER shocked even the most outrageous burlesque performers at "Broadway Bares" on Sunday when she ripped off her robe to reveal sparkly pasties and a large pink male prosthetic. And we're not talking about Michael Jackson's nose. The largely gay audience, who donated to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Âwildly applauded the shapely 52-year-old "Threepenny Opera" star. ... BRUCE WILLIS has hit back at an L.A. photographer who claimed Willis jammed the paparazzo's camera into his face, cutting the snapper's nose and chipping his tooth. Willis has filed a $1 million suit in L.A. Superior Court, claiming photographer Anthony Goodrich "is a known stalker-paparazzi who ... attempts to incite some physical contact." ... JUDE LAW and Sienna Miller have been shacked up in the Carlyle Hotel. The on-again couple briefly came out of their room to accept a hand-delivered invite to the Ford Models/Margarita King party tonight at Naima on W. 27th St.

Summary: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have finally confirmed they're getting married this weekend - but not because a baby is making them. Kidman's rep swears the Oscar-winning bride-to-be is not expecting - despite exhaustive media analysis of her lovely tummy. "She's not pregnant,"spokeswoman Catherine Olim tells us. "This is a rumor that comes around every month. It has for past year or two. Believe me on this one: She is religious, and that would never do."


BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA MOLLOY WITH PATRICK HUGUENIN AND CRISTINA KINON

Thursday, October 26th 2006, 1:11AM

It wasn't enough of an indignity that his boss, Sumner Redstone, drop-kicked him out of his CEO's office at Viacom last summer. Yesterday at the Pierre, Tom Freston had to relive the whole ordeal when "friends" honored the unemployed exec.

"I don't think there's anyone in this room today who feels Tom was treated fairly," News Corp. President Peter Chernin told a crowd that included media and entertainment bigs like Rupert Murdoch, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Doug Morris, Harvey Weinstein, Ahmet Ertegun and John Sykes. "There's no doubt in my mind that Tom's continued success will haunt Viacom for years to come."

Pause. "But enough about Tom Cruise," said Chernin, firing up the rotisserie. "We're here to talk about Tom Freston, and Tom Freston is an a-hole. ... How can you roast someone who's already toast?

"I can only imagine how tough it must have been for Tom to be screwed over by a guy [Redstone] so old that he had to take a little blue pill to do it."

Making note of Freston's corporate rival Les Moonves (who made nice with Freston at the lunch), Chernin added that MTV, the network Freston founded, "now officially stands for 'Moonves Takes Viacom.'"

Chernin recalled that Freston had created the MTV Networks back when "Google was just the name of his bong."

MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath said, "Everybody talks about the size of Tom's package ... and his severance," reported to be as much as $72 million.

Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert congratulated Freston as "one of the secular, uber-tolerant, liberal, anything-goes, me-first, who-cares-what-my-country-wants, I-want-my-MTV-istas who are tearing America apart."

Colbert also noted that Freston green-lit Nickelodeon - now "every time I clean my cheese grater, my children scream, 'You're killing [SpongeBob]!'"

Rather than return fire, Freston made sport of himself. Goofing on reports that Redstone fired him because he let Murdoch buy MySpace, Freston said that, thanks to his "unplanned vacation," he'd finally bought a computer. He proceeded to show his MySpace profile, where he posted one video clip of himself eating a peanut butter sandwich and another of him singing Daniel Powter's "Bad Day."

"When you were all at Michael's [restaurant] yesterday, I was home creating content," said Freston. "I could go on forever, but if I don't leave now, I'm never going to get a seat at Starbucks."

- IS RUSSELL Simmons' eye on Petra Nemcova? The tsunami-surviving supermodel, who's said to have jettisoned singer James Blunt, looked awfully cozy with the hip-hop mogul Tuesday night at the P.M. party for John Legend's new CD, "Once Again." Simmons, who's separated from wife Kimora Lee, assured us yesterday they're "just friends" and charity partners. "I don't know anyone as dedicated to lifting people up as Petra" ...

- LIZA MINNELLI excited Joe's Pub Friday night, where she watched Miss Coco Peru perform and received a warm round of applause from the mostly gay crowd waiting to catch the next show ...

- ANY ATTEMPT at normal conversation backstage at Tuesday night's Stony Awards at B.B. King's went up in smoke after about 15 people, including co-hosts Redman and "Marijuana-Logues" comedian Doug Benson and several High Times editors, crammed into a tiny room full of a suspicious-smelling mist, only to exit chomping on the gift bag's peanut-butter-filled pretzels. Later, nominee Adrienne Curry of "America's Next Top Model" fame told us how she battles the dreaded munchies: "Taco. F-ing. Bell. But it has to be connected to Pizza Hut so I can get breadsticks."

Her hubby, onetime Brady Christopher Knight, prefers Cheetos ...

- RYAN STAR is a man of his word. Before the star of CBS' "Rock Star: Supernova" was, well, a star, he played to crowds of no more than five at Rockwood Music Hall. He vowed that one day he'd come back and "pack the place." So Tuesday, after the native New Yorker entertained the likes of Elizabeth Berkley and Constantine Maroulis at a sold-out Bowery Ballroom, he kept his pledge to pal Ken Rockwood, turning in an SRO set at the Allen St. club. ...

BOTTLE BLONDS Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson were dining together at Koi in L.A. last week when one polite patron told Hilton, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like Paris Hilton." With the irony clearly lost on her, the heiress flatly replied, "I am Paris Hilton."

IT'S BEEN almost a decade since they broke off their engagement, but Gwyneth ÂPaltrow still keeps on eye on Brad Pitt. The actress (below) checked out her ex in

Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's eloquent "Babel" at Andrew Saffir's Cinema Society screening Tuesday. "It's the best performance Brad's ever given," the Oscar winner told us, predicting Pitt could get an Oscar of his own. The movie, which spins around a Moroccan boy's tragic blunder, "makes you want to take good care of your children," added Paltrow, who skipped the SoHo Grand party to head home to little Apple and Moses. Also on hand for the Wall Street Journal-sponsored evening were Gael Garcia Bernal, Jane Fonda, Spike Lee, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Matt Dillon, Aidan Quinn and David Byrne. ... THE "GREY'S Anatomy" scuffle between Patrick Dempsey and Isaiah Washington has spiraled into infamy, but at least the boys are talking again. ÂKatherine Heigl, who plays Izzie Stevens on the medical drama series, told Ellen DeGeneres, "If it had been women, we wouldn't be speaking for years." ... WHO KNEW what naughty thoughts lurked behind George Whipple's bushy eyebrows? New York 1's red-carpet royal has turned his penthouse into a pleasure palace, says Jeff Bercovici on Radaronline.com. ... AND WE hear that Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and his Spy mag co-founder, National Public Radio's Kurt Andersen, were both able to laugh at themselves in Radar's imagined E-mails between them. Carter dropped editor Maer Roshan a note, and Andersen said, in Ocean Drive magazine, "Whoever did it, my hat's off."

Summary: AXED EXEC THE ROAST OF THE TOWN It wasn't enough of an indignity that his boss, Sumner Redstone, drop-kicked him out of his CEO's office at Viacom last summer. Yesterday at the Pierre, Tom Freston had to relive the whole ordeal when "friends"honored the unemployed exec. "I don't think there's anyone in this room today who feels Tom was treated fairly,"News Corp. President Peter Chernin told a crowd that included media and entertainment


WASHINGTON — Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills fell in Monday’s auction with rates on six-month bills dropping to the lowest level in nearly two years.

The Treasury Department auctioned $30 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.020 percent, down from 0.030 percent last week. Another $25 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.035 percent, down from 0.055 percent.

The three-month rate was the lowest since three-month bills averaged 0.010 percent on Jan. 9, 2012. The six-month rate was the lowest since those bills averaged 0.030 percent on Sept. 19, 2011.

The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,999.49, while a six-month bill sold for $9,998.23.

Separately, the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable rate mortgages, edged up to 0.15 percent last week from 0.13 percent the previous week.

Summary: WASHINGTON — Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills fell in Monday’s auction with rates on six-month bills dropping to the lowest level in nearly two years. The Treasury Department auctioned $30 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.020 percent, down from 0.030 percent last week. Another $25 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.035 percent, down from 0.055 percent last week. The three-month rate was the lowest since three-month bills averaged 0.010 percent on Jan. 9, 2012. The six-month rate was the lowest since those bills averaged 0.030 percent on Sept. 19, 2011.


Investors embraced signs of a political compromise that could avert a default on government debt, sending stocks surging Thursday.

Yet Wall Street’s relief was tempered by the realization that a fiscal deal was not yet at hand.

A Republican proposal to push the debt deadline facing the government off for six weeks sent stocks to their biggest gains since January. The mood was diminished after the market closed when the White House signaled that it was not prepared to sign off on the deal, although it pledged to keep talking.

In the futures markets, which are open after stocks stop trading, US stock index futures were slightly lower. The price of oil, which had risen earlier in the day, fell modestly in the evening. Wall Street will remain focused on any indications of progress in the talks. Investors fear that the Treasury Department will miss payments on some of its debt after hitting its borrowing limit later this month. Markets showed some skepticism about the offer of a six-week reprieve on the debt ceiling, as Treasury bills that come due after Nov. 22 — when the Republican plan would end — fell in value.

“The political situation has gone from horrible to bad, but we’re still a long way from a constructive resolution,” said Michael Purves, chief global strategist at Weeden & Co.

Still, the biggest threat hanging over the markets — a government default — appeared to ease after Speaker John Boehner said that House Republicans were willing to raise the debt ceiling until Nov. 22 if Democrats opened negotiations on a longer-term budget deal.

After that news, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index climbed to end the day up 2.18 percent, or 36.16 points, at 1,692.56. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 2.18 percent, or 323.09 points, to 15,126.07, while the Nasdaq composite index jumped 2.26 percent, or 82.97 points, to 3,760.75.

Thursday’s gains helped make up nearly half of the losses stocks have suffered in recent days as the debt ceiling neared. But the progress of a debt limit agreement became less certain when President Obama declined to immediately endorse it Thursday evening.

Wall Street never went into full panic mode about a potential default. Most strategists predicted that Republicans would be forced to compromise before the Treasury ran out of money.

In recent days, though, investors did begin to prepare for the possibility that the government might delay some payments on short-term government debt in the days after hitting the debt ceiling.

The pessimism was evident in money market funds, the popular mutual funds that invest in short-term debt.

Over the last week, institutions sold $20 billion of money market funds that specialize in government debt, 2.5 percent of the total money in the funds, according to figures out Thursday from the Investment Company Institute. Money market funds and banks, in turn, were dumping short-term government debt, known as Treasury bills, set to come due in October and November.

On Thursday, those bills were popular again, but debt coming due after Nov. 22 fell out of favor and dropped in value. “The relief is only a repositioning of risk a few weeks out,” said Adrian Miller, the director of fixed-income strategy at GMP Securities. “It’s another can-kicking episode.”

Elsewhere in the market for government bonds, the price of the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell 6/32, to 98 14/32, and its yield rose to 2.68 percent, from 2.66 percent late Wednesday

The price of insuring against losses on US government debt fell only slightly Thursday and was still almost twice as expensive as it was in early September.

The weekly data on new unemployment claims was released Thursday, and it showed new claims jumping 66,000 from a week earlier. Some of this was because of distortions in the data, but the figures still left economists anxious.

“It suggests that payroll growth after the shutdown might not strengthen as much as we had been hoping,” Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote to clients.

Summary: The Dow Jones industrial average soared more than 300 points Thursday after Republican leaders and President Obama finally seemed willing to end a 10-day budget standoff that has threatened to leave the United States unable to pay its bills. The news drove the Dow to its biggest point rise this year and ended a three-week funk in stocks. It also injected some calm into the frazzled market for short-term government debt. Republican leaders said Thursday they would vote to extend the government’s borrowing authority for six weeks. A spokesman for Obama said the president would be ‘‘likely’’ to sign a bill to increase the nation’s ability to borrow money so it can continue paying its bills.


Editor's note: As the 49ers play their 43rd and final season at Candlestick Park, The Chronicle recounts memorable moments in the stadium's storied history. This week, we reprint parts of Ira Miller's story on the team's 41-16 defeat of Tampa Bay in the fourth home game of the 1994 season - a season that would end with Steve Young's first Super Bowl win as a starting quarterback.

Historically, the 49ers often have played down to the level of their opposition when the opposition was one of the NFL's weaker teams. Frequently, they have won games without looking good.

That wasn't a problem yesterday against Tampa Bay. Try as they might, particularly early in the game, the 49ers just couldn't quite get down to the Bucs' level.

One drive was killed by a penalty, another by a fumble, a third by a penalty followed by a sack. "We felt sluggish early on," said 49ers offensive tackle Steve Wallace.

The result of such a slow beginning? The 49ers crushed the Bucs, 41-16. Ricky Watters scored two touchdowns and nearly doubled his previous best this season by rushing for 103 yards on 14 carries. Steve Young completed 20 of 26 passes, and the defense held the Bucs scoreless until the middle of the fourth quarter.

By winning, the 49ers reached the midpoint of the season - and their bye week - with a 6-2 record, a three-game winning streak, and a two-game lead in quest of their 11th NFC West title since 1981.

- Ira Miller, Oct. 24, 1994


NEW YORK — The maker of classic American whiskeys Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark has agreed to be acquired by a Japanese company in a $13.62 billion deal that would create the third-largest global premium spirits business.

Shares of Beam Inc. rose 24 percent on Monday after it said it agreed to be purchased by Suntory Holdings Ltd. The combined company would have annual sales of about $4.3 billion.

The deal follows other recent acquisitions in the alcohol industry, including Anheuser-Busch InBev’s $20.1 billion deal last year to buy the other half of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo that it did not already own.

It also comes as the taste for bourbon — a type of American whiskey that is made primarily of corn and typically distilled in Kentucky — continues to grow domestically and abroad.

In the United States, sales volume for bourbon and Tennessee whiskeys such as Jack Daniels has grown 26 percent over the past decade, according to the Distilled Spirits Council, an industry group. Exports of US whiskeys have grown to roughly $1 billion last year, more than double what it was a decade ago.

Demand is so robust that Beam last year even considered reducing the alcohol content for Maker’s Mark because of a supply shortage. The company scrapped the idea after a backlash by fans of the higher-end bourbon.

‘‘We’re basically in the middle of a global whiskey renaissance,’’ said Frank Coleman, a spokesman for the Distilled Spirits Council.

Suntory and Beam already had a relationship. Suntory distributes Beam products in Japan and has a portfolio of spirits with whiskeys, including Yamazaki and Hakushu as well as Midori liqueur and other beverages. And Beam, which is based in Deerfield, Ill., distributes Suntory’s products in Singapore and other Asian markets.

Suntory president Nobutada Saji said in a statement that the acquisition will help the company continue to grow globally. In recent years, Suntory has also purchased French beverage maker Orangina Schweppes Group and GlaxoSmith Kline’s Lucozade and Ribena drinks.

Beam spokesman Clarkson Hine said for now, the deal will result in few changes for fans of Beam’s bourbons. He also said that Beam, which was spun off as a stand-alone liquor company in 2011 from conglomerate Fortune Brands Inc., will continue with its current management.

‘‘It’s business as usual,’’ Hine said, noting Suntory has indicated it wants the company to ‘‘keep doing what we’re doing.’’

Allen Adamson, managing director of Landor Associates, a New York-based branding firm, said Beam can gain a competitive advantage from being part of bigger company with deeper pockets. He said that ownership by a foreign company shouldn’t hurt the All-American images of Beam’s brands.

‘‘The trick is to maintain its authenticity and not muck with the core elements,’’ he said.

Suntory will pay $83.50 per share, a 25 percent premium to Beam’s Friday closing price of $66.97. The companies put the deal’s value at about $16 billion, including debt.

Suntory plans to fund the deal with available cash and fully committed financing from The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ. Both companies’ boards unanimously approved the transaction, which is targeted to close in the second quarter.

The deal needs approval from Beam Inc. stockholders. Shares of Beam rose $16.14 to $83.11.

Summary: NEW YORK — The maker of classic American whiskeys Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark has agreed to be acquired by a Japanese company in a $13.62 billion deal that would create the third-largest global premium spirits business. Shares of Beam Inc. rose 24 percent on Monday after it said that it agreed to be purchased by Suntory Holdings Ltd. , a Japanese beverage companyThe combined company would have annual sales of more than about $4.3 billion. The deal follows other recent acquisitions in the alcohol industry, including Anheuser-Busch InBev’s $20.1 billion deal last year to buy the other half of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo that it did not already own. It also comes at a time when as the taste for bourbon — a type of American whiskey that is made primarily of corn and typically distilled in Kentucky — continues to grow domestically and abroad.


Ana Costagliola learned more than a year ago that her employer planned to move its Boston operations — including her job as a computer database assistant — to New York.

Determined to stay in the Boston area, the 47-year-old mother of two entered Boston University’s graduate certificate program in database management to hone and expand her skills — and it paid off. A few weeks ago, she landed a better, higher-paying job as database analyst with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

“It really opened doors,” Costagliola said of program at BU’s Metropolitan College. “It gave me a little extra edge to advance my career.”

Costagliola is among the many people taking advanced, post-college courses to build skills sought by Massachusetts’ fastest growing industries and open doors to new jobs and careers. As Costagliola’s experience shows, many of the high-demand fields are in technology, but health care, biopharamaceuticals, and other industries also have demand for workers with special skills.

The programs to help gain these skills can cost anywhere from $12,000 for a graduate certificate to $70,000 for a master’s degree. Here’s a look at some of the fields that are in high demand by employers and programs offered by local universities that might help you break in.

As one of the largest industries in Massachusetts, health care has an almost insatiable demand for workers, especially those with information technology and health care management expertise.

One of the more popular graduate fields at Northeastern University is the master’s degree program in health informatics — information technology applied to health care. Health informatics is basically the IT guts of health care, from electronic medical records to digital files of drugs administered to patients.

The health care informatics degree program provides courses on emerging medical technologies, legal and privacy issues, and introductions to areas, such as genomics, that require extensive IT services.

“What we developed is in direct response to what Boston area [health care] employers told us they needed,” said Sean Gallagher, senior strategist and market development officer at Northeastern University.

At Simmons College in Boston, the high demand for health care employees prompted the school in January to launch its health care MBA program, with a heavy emphasis on information technology courses, said Cathy Minehan, dean of the Simmons School of Management. The program aims to combine elements of a general MBA program with a master’s degree in health administration.

Initially, Simmons hoped to enroll eight students in the program, but ended up with 18, said Minehan, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “It’s a natural for Boston with all the health care institutions here,” she said.

Sean Cunniffe, 26, a registered nurse, enrolled in the Simmons health MBA program in the hope of one day making the transition from practitioner to administrator.

“It’s going to make me more appealing to a lot more organizations,” said Cunniffe, who is getting the advanced Simmons degree while working part-time jobs at Boston Medical Center and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.

The technology industry has played a major role in the state’s economic recovery as companies scramble to hire workers with computer skills of all types. Local university officials say companies from banks to tech firms are specifically looking for workers with skills in cyber security and database management.

In recent years, government, corporations, and other institutions have become increasingly alarmed at widespread cyber attacks and thefts of sensitive data. They’ve also become nearly overwhelmed by the vast amounts of information their computer systems must process, store, and manage.

At Northeastern University, a master’s degree program in “information assurance,” also known as cyber security, is “growing dramatically,” said Gallagher. The information assurance program teaches the basics of cyber sleuthing with courses that include cryptography, network security practices, and information-system forensics.

Master’s degree programs in computer science and computer information systems at BU’s Metropolitan College are also highly popular, due largely to the demand for workers who can work with complex databases, said Tanya Zlateva, interim dean of BU’s Metropolitan College.

A fast-growing specialty is known as “big data,” or the analysis of massive amounts of digital data collected from Internet clicks and other sources that might be used to improve operations, expand services, and market new products.

Students can concentrate in big data within two computer-science graduate programs at BU, said Zlateva. Boston University is even considering a new management degree program with a heavy focus on big data tech courses, she said.

Due to the Boston area’s large number of biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies seeking approval for products from the US Food and Drug Administration, there’s a need for employees who understand the regulatory process.

Getting new drug and medical device approvals has become a high-stakes priority for many companies — and a number of prestigious schools, from John Hopkins in Baltimore to the Harvard Extension School, offer degree programs or introductory courses in regulatory affairs, with some specifically aimed at how to deal with the FDA.

Northeastern offers a master of science in regulatory affairs in drugs, biologics, and medical devices. It’s not a law-degree program, but rather a nuts-and-bolts review of what’s required when complex medical products have to go through extensive clinical trials before they can be sold to the public.

The program includes courses on drug and medical device regulation, the legal intricacies of human medical experiments, and the process of clinic trials.

“Companies need specialists who understand the regulatory process and can implement what’s required by regulators,” said Gallagher.

Digital games are all the rage on mobile devices and laptops — and they’ve become a multibillion-dollar industry on par with Hollywood. But it’s not all about developing programs in which evil zombies or medieval dark knights can be digitally zapped by game players.

Game design also entails developing digital training simulators for police, firefighters, military personnel, physicians, helicopter pilots, and other professionals who need to fine-tune skills before using them in the real world.

MIT’s Game Lab offers game-design courses and degree programs. Northeastern University also offers a master of science in game science and design.

Across many industries, companies need people who can analyze, plan, implement, and complete projects that achieve corporate goals. As a result, project management is becoming an increasingly popular post-college field of study.

Northeastern offers a master’s degree in project management, which can take 18 months to three years to complete on a part-time basis. The program, which focuses on such topics as project scheduling and monitoring, cost and risk management, and budget and personnel management, is attracting students working in technology, finance, construction, and health care.

Summary: Health informatics and management As one of the largest industries in Massachusetts, health care has an almost insatiable demand for workers, especially those with information technology and health care management expertise. One of the more popular graduate fields at Northeastern University is its master’s degree program in health informatics — information technology applied to health care. Health informatics is basically the IT guts of health care, from electronic medical records to digital files of drugs administered to patients. The Health Care Informatics degree program provides courses on emerging medical technologies, legal and privacy issues, and introductions to areas, such as genomics, that require extensive IT services. At Simmons College, the demand for health care employees prompted the school to launch its Health Care MBA program.


Earlier this week, when Amnesty International announced the launch of its new, straightforwardly titled Stop Torture campaign, the organization’s officials singled out a surprising cause for the global torture crisis: TV shows.

Though the UN Convention Against Torture was first adopted a full 30 years ago, Amnesty International reports observing torture in more than half of the states that have ratified that convention. In addition, the organization’s surveys have found that while a large majority of respondents believe that laws against torture are good, 36% thought torture was justified in some situations.

Part of the problem, Amnesty officials have said, is that torture seems like something that’s necessary and useful in the course of global political and security business — thanks in part to 24, which just launched its rebooted incarnation 24: Live Another Day this month, as well as Homeland. The French news agency Agence France-Presse has reported that Kate Allen, an Amnesty official, said that those shows “have glorified torture to a generation” and have made viewers confuse “a dramatic depiction by screenwriters” with what really goes on in “torture chambers” around the world. The idea is not really that those who commit torture in the real world are doing it because they saw Jack Bauer do it; it’s that the rest of the population, having seen so much of it on shows like 24, aren’t as shocked as they should be to learn that it doesn’t only happen on TV.

But, with 24‘s return so recent, some are questioning whether Amnesty’s condemnation of the show will have any effect on public opinion: Jeune Afrique, a news site for French-speaking Africa, notes that the show is incredibly popular across the continent, which is also home to a majority of the countries that have not ratified the Convention Against Torture, and that its influence even extends beyond its air times (for example, the West African police show Super flics has, according to the site, been influenced by 24‘s structure).

This isn’t the first time 24 has been accused of normalizing torture. In 2005, for example, the New York Times pointed out that the amount of torture on the show had increased, highlighting one particular episode that showed torture as an effective and justified interrogation tactic. In that particular episode, a suspected terrorist was freed by a misguided do-gooder lawyer — and that lawyer was working for a fictionalized version of Amnesty International.

Summary: Amnesty International officials have said that <i>24</i> and its ilk have made torture seem normal


updated 07/28/2014 at 03:00 PM EDT

Most meteorologists just speak about the weather – not about how they should look and feel behind the camera.

That's unless you're Julya Johnson at

in Knoxville, Tennessee, who posted an unpleasant letter that she received in the mail Friday on Facebook.

"Please change your appearance!! Those high bodice dresses are not for you. Do you have any dress or dresses that donât fit snugly under your bust? Please! You are beautiful – but you need a change,"

The letter had no return address, so Johnson wrote her response in the post.

"So, it's not fun to wake up to things like this," Johnson begins. "I will never, ever be able to please everyone with my appearance. It's not possible. I have tried for 12 years on-air to do that. I have 'changed my appearance' to try and please people before."

But she admits that trying to please others has never worked.

"So, I please myself. I like my dresses," she continues. "I am always covered, dressed modestly and professionally."

Similar to the support for

– a TV news anchor who was also harshly criticized for her appearance – people came forward to back up Johnson.

"You're beautiful! You don't wake up every morning to please others," one commenter writes.

"I think you look just fine. Don't change a thing," another adds.

At the end, Johnson makes her final point.

"Don't do this, please. Just don't. It's very rude. That's my opinion, and it is as valuable as anyone else's opinion."

Summary: "I like my dresses. I am always covered, dressed modestly and professionally," WATE-TV's Julya Johnson says


Three teenagers are fighting for their lives after a fellow student shot each in the head, as it emerged that a staff member attempted to stop the attack at a US high school.

Two girls, 14, and a boy, 15, were in critical condition in the hospital after Friday's bloodshed in the northwestern state of Washington that also left one student and the young shooter dead in yet another US school attack.

Another boy, 14, was in a serious condition after he was shot in the jaw. Both male students were reportedly cousins of Jaylen Fryberg, a popular first-year student at the Marysville-Pilchuck High School who opened fire in the school cafeteria.

Joanne Roberts, a doctor at Providence Regional Medical Centre in the city of Everett, 50km north of Seattle, said the girls had undergone surgery for head wounds.

"The next three days are going to be crucial," Roberts said, explaining the surgery aimed to relieve brain swelling.

Student Eric Cervantes told KIRO-TV that a staff member intercepted Fryberg - who shot himself in the neck during a brief tussle. The bullet killed Fryberg but it was unclear if it was intentional.

Snohomish County Sheriff's Office said detectives "were able to confirm that a cafeteria worker attempted to stop the shooter", while local media said the employee was a teacher.

"There's all these heroes in this type of a thing, even though it's a horrendous tragedy," Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring said.

Police are attempting to ascertain a motive. The student that died was a girl, though authorities did not immediately release her name.

Don Hatch, a grandfather of one of the wounded boys, told CNN affiliate KOMO that the shooter and the boys were related.

"All three of them are cousins, and they live right close to each other," he said.

Students gave graphic details of the moment Fryberg began his shooting spree.

"I could see Jaylen standing up with a gun, and he started shooting," Josiah Gould, 14, told The Seattle Times.

"They were sitting down and he was behind them shooting. After that I just ran."

A student identified as Austin told KING 5 television how the shooter was initially quiet.

"He was just sitting there. Everyone was talking. All of a sudden I see him stand up, pull something out of his pocket," Austin said.

Many in the community were baffled by the shooting.

Fryberg was a well-liked student who had played on the football team and had been named a homecoming prince just a week ago, local media reported.

Fryberg, a Native American, had left a series of tortured posts on Twitter, suggesting a teenager used to handling guns, and hinting that a failed romance may have led to the shooting.

One post on Instagram showed him brandishing a hunting rifle.

In his final post on Twitter on Thursday, Fryberg had stated: "It won't last...It'll never last...."

In August he had issued threats to an apparent love rival: "Your not gonna like what happens next."

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: Two 14-year-old girls are fighting for their lives in hospital after the latest school shooting in the US which left one student and the shooter dead.


11/13/2014 AT 11:30 AM EST

We had to ask: Has

's full-frontal nude scene in

Turns out he didn't have to. You'll have to watch Damon's deadpan delivery in this video – and Affleck cracking up beside him – for the hilariously awkward answer. But suffice it to say Damon has always been quite impressed with his buddy.

"I always look at Ben and go, 'That's, that's

The pair recently reunited to

of season 4 of HBO's

, which will air next spring and follow Jason Mann as he directs a feature-length film, with Affleck and Damon as mentors.

With executive producers including Peter and Bobby Farrelly and Adaptive Studios co-founder Marc Joubert, the show is returning for the first time in a decade.

"Jason should be doing this, this is what he is meant to do, and he's really, really good at it," says Damon. "I think he's somebody who, in 25 years, we'll look back and he'll have made a lot of wonderful movies."

In fact, the series reminds the two stars of themselves when they were

, before their Oscar win for co-writing

"We've known each other for more than 30 years, and the fact that we have a company together is kind of a part of the whole thing," Damon says. "We used to have business lunches together in high school when we had no business to talk about."

Summary: The Gone Girl scene has gotten people buzzing, but it's nothing Damon hasn't seen before


12/02/2014 AT 01:45 PM EST

Time flies when you're newlyweds in love!

Jessa Duggar (now Seewald) and her husband, Ben, celebrated

on Monday with more online PDA – though

was cuter and less steamy than the

days after their Nov. 1 wedding.

"Today we're celebrating our 1 'monthiversary!' @ben_seewald, you're amazing! I'm so blessed to call you mine!" Jessa, 22, wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of Ben kissing her on the cheek.

Ben posted the same photo

, with the caption: "Crazy to think we've been married for a month! I love you Sweetheart!" He also posted one of their wedding photos

, writing: "One month ago today, I married my best friend! I love you, Baby!"

stars have been posting photos of themselves regularly since their wedding day, including one in which

that Ben has "the softest, most gorgeous blue eyes!"

Summary: "I'm so blessed to call you mine!" newlywed Jessa tells her husband of 30 days


It’s fair to say that this iteration of the Greek debt crisis is different. But that doesn’t justify the kind of complacency financial markets are showing.

Things may indeed be different in the details from 2012, when Greece nearly left the currency union, dragging half a dozen other countries with it. The problem is, the big picture has changed, if anything, for the worse. This time is just as dangerous as last time because the Eurozone still doesn’t have the political institutions to back its currency, and probably never will have.

True, the worst phase of the crisis in 2012 led it to create the European Stability Mechanism, a €500 billion ($600 billion) safety net for governments that accepted the doctrine of aid in return for structural reforms and budgetary austerity. It also adopted, at least in principle, a mechanism for vetting each other’s budgets. And those of a charitable disposition can also believe that the Eurozone’s banks are now solvent after big capital increases in the last three years.

Most of all, there was European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s promise to do “whatever it takes” to keep the Eurozone together, a comment has been widely understood as a blanket underwriting of all Eurozone sovereigns.

For all those reasons, financial markets (and, to judge by German media reports, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her entourage) believe that, even if a new radical left-wing government in Greece wins the Jan. 25 elections, walks away from its debts and leaves the Eurozone, the rest of the union would be able to survive.

This is why people are still willing to buy 10-year Italian government bonds at a yield of only 1.85%, despite the fact that its economy, like its population, is dying, and even though Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has yet to deliver any sort of reform that will allow the country to grow out of a debt that now totals 133% of gross domestic product.

The problem is, the big flaws in the Eurozone’s institutional architecture haven’t been fixed. There’s still no single Treasury, no pooling of debt liabilities, no single Eurozone economic policy: nothing to force the people of Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, et al., to stand behind the debts of Greece, Portugal or Italy.

This means that the only effective firewall the Eurozone has in the event of a Greek exit standing is the ECB’s “Outright Monetary Transactions” program, which has never been tested, and is currently in legal limbo due to a preliminary opinion by Germany’s Constitutional Court that it violates the German constitution. (Ex-IMF official Alessandro Leipold argues the point well here.)

But even OMTs are legal, the ECB will only buy a government’s bonds if it accepts in return a formal adjustment program with lots of unpopular conditions that will prolong the seemingly endless economic pain. OMT was designed to stop markets expelling well-meaning members from the Eurozone by accident. It wasn’t designed to cope with governments which have a clear democratic mandate to overthrow the austerity doctrine.

Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based think tank, points out that governments accepted harsh bailout terms in 2010 and 2011 because they knew they had no alternative, and because “a recovery seemed just around the corner.” After four years of recession and stagnation, Tilford says, that no longer holds, which is why Syriza is leading in the polls, and why a majority of Italians–according to some polls–want out of the euro altogether.

With the revolt against austerity spreading, Antonio Fatas, a professor at INSEAD business school in Singapore, thinks Berlin might try to make an example of Syriza and force Greece out of the Eurozone in order to scare other countries back into line. That applies to Italy and Spain, where another radical left party, Podemos, is currently heading the polls.

“If Spaniards see bad things happening in Greece (after a Euro exit), you can guarantee that they won’t vote for Podemos,” he says.

Such thinking, he says, may explain recent comments out of Berlin playing down the risks of a “Grexit”.

Draghi made a big deal in 2012 of the euro being an ‘irreversible’ project. But if Greece leaves, under any circumstances, then so can other countries, and it would be folly not to expect markets to test that thesis with Italy, Portugal or any country that hasn’t proved it can grow in the 21st century. Even if that bet fails, it will take the Eurozone at least another year to get over the volatility and uncertainty.

There is arguably a bigger gap between Syriza and the German-led creditors than in any previous comparable bailout negotiations, and domestic politics has moved against the Euro project in both Greece and Germany in the last four years. Merkel, Tilford notes, is already “running scared of the Alternative für Deutschland,” an anti-euro party with stubbornly high poll ratings, and will find it hard to get anywhere near to Tsipras’ demand that over half of Greece’s bail-out debts are written down.

The Eurozone is going to need all its capacity for negotiation and compromise to avoid a blow-up—and that’s assuming it still wants to.

Summary: Greece and others have tired of austerity. Do Berlin, Frankfurt and Brussels still have the will to face them down?


Leave it to Larry Summers to ruin a party.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank is widely expected to announce that it will begin a bond-buying program similar to the what the U.S. Federal Reserve has done with quantitative easing. Many expect QE will generate a huge boost for the European economy, much like it appears to have done in the U.S.. One person not in the group: one of Obama’s former top economic advisors and Harvard professor, Larry Summers.

During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos on the eve of the ECB’s QE announcement, Summers threw cold water on what it might do. Summers said that while he was he was “all for” European central bankers buying bonds, he thought we should be less optimistic about what economic benefit it might have.

“Does anyone here really believe that if QE happens, Europe is in hand?” asked Summers. “QE in Europe will be less successful in the U.S.”

The main reason that is the case, Summers said, is that longer-term interest rates, which QE is supposed to drive down to spur economic growth, are already low in Europe. Rates were higher in U.S. when the Federal Reserve first started buying bonds, increasing the potential impact of QE.

Instead, Summers says what Europe really needs is direct stimulus spending by governments. “Europe has to be more creative with its fiscal policy,” said Summers, who has long been an advocate of additional government spending to try to create jobs in the U.S. as well. “We need QE, but it’s not going to do it on its own.”

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, who was on the Davos panel with Summers, said the prospect of QE is already having positive effects. She said a lower euro will help exports and create jobs. “QE in Europe has already worked in anticipation,” said Lagarde. “Look at the currency.”

Summers countered that the drop in the currency has yet to produce a real gain. “That’s why I am worried,” said Summers. “We have already had an impact, and the economic forecast for Europe has not improved.”

The weaker euro hasn’t yet, for example, been able to support business in Italy. New orders to industry fell 1.1% in December and were down 4.1% on the year, well below expectations. However, it has helped to turn around business confidence in Germany, which was badly dented last year by the Ukraine crisis.

The real problem Summers said is that all of Europe seems set on austerity and cutting back government spending at the same time. Summers said that collective belt tightening is going to lead to lower economic growth in Europe.

“It’s like standing up in an audience,” said Summers. “If you do it, you can see better. But if everyone does it at the same time, no one is better off.”

Summary: Summers says he's "all in" for bond buying program, but that quantitative easing on its own won't save Europe's economy.


When I read the news last week that Japan’s ministry of health, labor and welfare was about to order its own employees to call it quits by 10 p.m. as a way to counter workaholic behavior, I glanced up from my laptop and mentioned it to my wife. A bemused smile crossed her face.

“You realize you’re telling me this after 11 p.m.—because you’re still on your computer, working?” she said.

Being a workaholic is clearly not good for you. Researchers have associated the condition with sleep problems, weight gain, and high blood pressure. A study published last month found that those who worked at least 49 hours a week were up to 13% more likely to engage in “risky alcohol use.”

“Some workaholics . . . find themselves alone, unable to feel, and cut off from everyone they care about,” psychotherapist Bryan Robinson writes in Chained to the Desk. “Marriages crumble, and health problems hit crisis proportions.” In Japan, scores of cases of Karoshi, or death from overwork, are reported each year.

But how can we square this bleak picture with one that management experts are touting these days: “work-life integration”?

This is the term that many, myself included, have come to favor over “work-life balance” because “balance” implies that what you do professionally and what you do personally are somehow at odds, a zero-sum game. Work-life integration, by contrast, suggests that at their very best, what you do at work and what you do outside of it with family, friends, and community are driven by the same fundamental values and passions. Ideally, you can bring your talents and strengths and personality to both arenas, making one’s work life and home life parts of a seamless whole.

What’s tricky is determining the point at which this romantic notion of work-life integration tips into the all-consuming reality of overwork.

“There is often a very fine line” between the two, admits Christine Lai, chief of staff at Delivering Happiness, an organization that grew out of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s book of the same name and that is dedicated to helping companies create cultures with more purpose and passion.

The term passion comes up over and over again when exploring what makes people inclined to work a lot. Deloitte’s Center for the Edge has characterized the “dream employee” as someone who is filled with this attribute. And by Deloitte’s reckoning, those who fit this profile are 18% more likely than their non-passionate peers to offer “around-the-clock availability” to their employers.

On the surface, that looks like a recipe for work swallowing life, not merely meshing with it.

In calling work-life integration “the new norm,” Gen Y management consultant Dan Schawbel noted last year that nearly two-thirds of executives check their email every hour or two during their off time. “Of course, employees who are really passionate about their work become addicted and are actually excited about new emails coming in,” he remarked.

Addicted? That doesn’t sound good under any circumstances.

Despite the red flags, many of us swear that we can work far more than 40 hours a week, all while maintaining a rich family life, cultivating deep friendships, and taking care of our bodies, minds, and souls.

Lai, who says she typically works 80 to 100 hours a week, believes the key question to ask is, “What are the things that energize you, and what are the things that detract from your energy?” The work she does, Lai adds, “spurs me on. It keeps me fueled.”

Tracy Brower, director of Human Dynamics + Work at Herman Miller and author of Bring Work to Life by Bringing Life to Work, applies a similar test when distinguishing between work-life integration and workaholism. “Are you working hard because you love it, because you’re drawn to something?” she asks. “Or are you running away from something,” such as a troubled relationship at home?

Brower, who collects stories of people who appear to have mastered work-life integration, says it’s also crucial to remember that we’re all different. Some have a strong desire to tuck their work and home lives into “totally separate containers.” Others want more porous boundaries. Some may spend a bunch of time on one set of priorities but then need to recalibrate, depending on what’s happening with children or aging parents.

“What’s important,” asserts Brower, who says that she works about 70 hours a week on average, “is that we each get to make our own choice,” with managers who are respectful and supportive of what we decide.

Stew Friedman, director of the Work/Life Integration Project at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, agrees with Brower. But the first step in making the right choice, he stresses, is being honest with yourself—and that’s not always so easy to do in environments that celebrate money and status above all else.

“Internal calm and harmony has to be the result of a true understanding of what your values and interests are,” Friedman says. “If you’re deluding yourself—as many, many people do—then the end result is going to be some kind of breakdown in your ability to integrate work and the rest of life.”

Once you figure out what matters to you most, you can then begin to take small steps to arrange your life accordingly. Even if this leads you to work fewer hours, Friedman’s research shows, you’ll actually have more success on the job. “It might seem counterintuitive that you will perform better at work if you spend more time with your kids, leave work early to volunteer at a local nonprofit, or take an hour out of your workday to go to the gym,” Friedman has explained. “But that’s just what happens.”

Meanwhile, some derive genuine pleasure and fulfillment from their work, and these people should focus on that. More than a decade ago, Friedman dubbed this type of person “the happy workaholic”—which may sound like an oxymoron, but for some of us is an accurate description of our very best selves.

Rick Wartzman is the executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. The author or editor of five books, he is currently writing a narrative history of how the social contract between employer and employee in America has changed since the end of World War II.

Summary: It’s a matter of perspective, and much of it comes down to how passionate you are about your job.


At least one major car executive is less than concerned about the idea of Apple getting into the automotive game.

Dieter Zetsche, chairman of of Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz, said he isn’t losing any sleep over the rumors of an Apple Car, according to Australian car website Motoring.

“If there were a rumor that Mercedes or Daimler planned to start building smartphones then [Apple] would not be sleepless at night. And the same applies to me,” he said.

Rumors of an Apple Car have been swirling for weeks thanks to reports that the Cupertino tech giant has been hiring engineers for an automotive project. It’s still unclear what an Apple Car might look like, what it would do or if it will ever exist at all. Still, Apple getting into the car industry would be a major new entry to the sector.

Summary: Pretty rough zinger


Seated dancer figurine (late fourth century CE, Greece).

‘Suburbia is the cutting edge of social change,” wrote the novelist J.G. Ballard. “Everything started here, from the fitness crusade to wife-swapping.”

Ballard’s point, arrestingly made, is well taken: In the late 20th century, suburbanites in affluent countries had more leisure time, more money, and more space to experiment with new occupations and attitudes. They did so with gusto, often leaving urban elites — the people who thought they were driving the agenda — looking nostalgic and unadventurous by comparison.

Fine. So wheel back two millennia to the great Roman Empire — at its peak, under Trajan (98-117 CE), well over a million square miles, and by the fourth century encompassing more than 100 provinces.

What was the relationship between the center and the periphery? How did these people — who amounted to 97 percent of the Empire’s population — experience life as “provincials”? How did they relate to Rome, the Roman elite, and to Rome’s official idea of itself?

“Roman in the Provinces,” a fascinating new show at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, addresses these questions. Drawn from the holdings of the Yale University Art Gallery, with supplementary loans from other institutions and private collectors, the exhibition is an attempt to complicate a narrative that, in times past, has tended to be about the one-way process of “Romanization.”

In thrall to the idea that Roman ideology, propaganda, engineering, and military might during the so-called “pax Romana” — the 200-year period of relative stability beginning with Augustus — were all spectacularly effective, scholars looking at material culture have been taken up with finding Roman influences everywhere.

They found them — and not just because they were looking for them. They are there. (In the same way, during the so-called pax Americana, you could buy Coke in the foothills of the Himalayas, Big Macs in Tripoli, and M-16 rifles throughout Southeast Asia.) But such clues to the existence of a dominant culture scarcely tell the whole story.

So what remained of provincial culture in the Roman empire, in what ways did it thrive, and how much was the process of influence actually two-way? How much did the provinces affect Rome?

This show, backed by a catalog with 15 scholarly essays by experts in the field, wants to know. Beautifully installed, it’s a rewarding experience, although you emerge from it wondering if the subject isn’t simply too ambitious.

Textile roundel with nimbed bust (possibly the goddess Tyche, fifth-seventh century CE, Egypt).

The objects themselves are, by and large, small: gorgeous textile fragments (lent by Donald and Barbara Tellalian), pitchers, figurines, coins, column capitals, horse trappings, vases. There are also some stunning mosaics, sculptures, and wall paintings.

Each one has been chosen in large part, you feel, because it is so mysterious, so challenging to received wisdom. It might suggest, on the one hand, an adaptation to Roman influence, and yet, on closer inspection, the persistence of preexisting religious beliefs, customs, or decorative traditions.

Thus, the whole show is fraught with subtle questions of interpretation, many of which must be left open-ended because who, in the end, can be sure?

And then of course there is the fact that the empire was so vast and so much in flux, and the provinces so heterogeneous, that as you navigate the show it can be difficult to be sure where you are geographically, let alone in what era, unless you do a lot of close reading of the small print on the labels.

Nonetheless, the exhibition makes its overall point well. The upper gallery is devoted to objects made for public settings. Many of them dance with ambiguity, respecting official (Roman) culture while also promoting older allegiances.

A number of objects, including a textile roundel made in fifth-to-seventh-century Egypt, seem to show the Greek goddess of fortune, Tyche. But her mural crown is deliberately ambiguous and could easily be interpreted as the halo of a Christian saint.

Marble bust of Julia Domna (203-217 CE).

Other works, including a stunningly vivid marble bust, show Julia Domna (170-217 CE), the Syrian-born empress. Her husband, the emperor Septimius Severus, was born in Africa, while their son, Caracalla, was born in Gaul — a poignant reminder that power often moves, at least in individual cases, from the periphery to the center.

(Christianity itself, of course, was a provincial affair that was eventually adopted by Rome, thereby transforming an unlikely, put-upon cult advanced by a Jew from Roman-occupied Judea into an official state creed.)

Julia Domna, who grew up speaking Greek and Aramaic (Latin was only her third language), is also represented in a tiny ivory carving, part of a toy doll of a kind given to elite girls to encourage them to emulate the beautiful empress. Nearby is a Greek inscription, in marble, saluting Julia Domna in the temple of Artemis at Dura-Europos in present-day Syria — thanking her, perhaps, for using her position of influence to intercede on behalf of her native region.

Dura-Europos was a trading city and Roman garrison town on the Euphrates. It succumbed to a Sasanian siege in 256 CE, but was miraculously preserved, and in the 1920s and ’30s it was excavated by teams from Yale University and the French Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

Among the discoveries were the earliest known Christian baptistery, a Jewish synagogue richly painted with biblical scenes, and a temple of the ancient cult of Mithraism, as well as all sorts of evidence relating to the Roman military, to commerce, and to everyday provincial life.

In 2011, Yale University’s Lisa Brody and Boston College’s Gail Hoffman organized a marvelous exhibition at the McMullen devoted to the full range of the discoveries at Dura-Europos. That show gave them the idea to explore this larger theme of the relationship between Rome and the provinces.

Although it was ultimately vanquished by the Sasanians, the Roman military force at Dura-Europos does trigger key questions about the role of the imperial army.

Since it was largely made up of soldiers from the provinces, and since it was so mobile, the army played a huge part in transmitting cultural influences around the empire. Not only did it absorb weapons technology and military techniques from the foreigners it subdued, but it also spread artifacts and customs rapidly around the empire so that, for instance, Celtic belt buckles from the farthest reaches of the western empire were found at Dura-Europos, in the east.

Interestingly, according to one of many fascinating wall labels, the citizens of Rome worried that their soldiers were becoming “barbarianized” by their exposure to foreign customs. The soldiers, on the other hand, saw themselves as the most Roman of all peoples.

Seasons beaker (first century CE, Eastern Mediterranean).

The lower-level gallery is focused on private settings — dining, dressing, praying, funerary rites, and trade. The range of objects alone is exciting: One goes from a child’s tunic made from linen to a silver pitcher adorned with scenes depicting Bacchus, a woolen textile fragment showing a rooster, and a beautiful Greek figurine of a seated dancer from the late fourth century CE.

The latter figure, whose pose echoes the famous Greek figure of the “spinario” — the boy removing a thorn from his foot — is from the Museum of Fine Arts. According to the wall label, the dancer was probably also a prostitute, making her part of a sad sorority addressed again 15 centuries later by Edgar Degas. Degas’s popular pictures of ballerinas in tutus show us young girls who were also, in most cases, obliged to sell their bodies.

One sub-theme of the entire show is the ongoing relationship between Rome and the peoples of Greece and Macedonia. Although both were subdued during the Republican era, well before Augustus, the Greeks continued to exercise a strong influence on Rome. They had long ago been reduced to the status of provincials and openly patronized for their political naivete, but their cultural inheritance continued to be revered.

This nuanced dynamic is one of many that play out across the show, a reminder of how many fresh and powerful stories even the humblest of objects can tell.

Summary: “Roman in the Provinces,” a fascinating new show at the McMullen Museum of Art, examines the transmission of cultural ideas, customs, and artifacts among Rome and its disparate provinces.


04/17/2015 AT 01:05 PM EDT

Actress, singer, and now author?

has landed a book deal.

star will pen a collection of autobiographical essays, scheduled to hit shelves in fall 2016,

"I'm excited to publish my first book, and because I get uncomfortable when people have high expectations, I'd like to use this opportunity to showcase my ineptitude, pettiness, and the frequency with which I embarrass myself," the Oscar winner said in the announcement.

She also joked, "while many of my female inspirations who have become authors are incredibly well-educated and accomplished comedy writers, I'm very, very funny on Twitter, according to BuzzFeed and my mom."

already boasts an impressive résumé that includes an Academy Award nod for 2009's

in February and a hit single with

that she debuted Thursday on

Summary: The untitled book project is scheduled to hit shelves fall 2016, the publisher announced Thursday


05/19/2015 AT 01:00 AM EDT

, and it might be time for

to start shopping around another idea – Celebrity Password.

for a hilarious version of the old game show (which ran in the 1960s and early '70s).

Before the competition began, Offerman (who needed crutches to get to his seat) dryly commented that if he and his teammate got married, his name would be Hugh Jackofferman.

Then when it came to Sarandon's turn, she tried to use ESP combined with some sort of Jedi mind trick, and stared deeply into Fallon's eyes. It worked.

But when Fallon tried to do the same thing, he failed.

Summary: The teams competed on Monday's Tonight Show