Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire co-founder of Blackstone Group LP, said a former admission dean of Harvard College later told him it was a mistake to have rejected him as an undergraduate.

“I guess we got that one wrong,” Schwarzman said the dean told him a few years ago. Schwarzman spoke Tuesday in a Bloomberg Television interview with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle in which he recounted his application.

Schwarzman, who instead attended Yale University, graduated from Harvard Business School three years after finishing at Yale. The 68-year-old, who’s worth $13.3 billion, on Monday said he’ll give $150 million to Yale for a student center that will include performance, exhibition, meeting, dining and gathering spaces. The Schwarzman Center is expected to open in 2020.

Schwarzman started New York-based Blackstone in 1985 with Pete Peterson as a leveraged-buyout and merger advisory firm. The company has grown to manage $310 billion in assets across private equity holdings, real estate, credit assets and hedge funds.

Schwarzman’s other philanthropic efforts include founding the Schwarzman Scholars program, which starting next year will fund a residential advanced-degree program at China’s Tsinghua University, with $100 million of his money. In 2008 he gave $100 million to the New York Public Library.

Summary: Harvard College rejeced the billionaire co-founder of Blackstone Group as an undergraduate.


JERSEY CITY VOTERS here have been to the polls twice in the last month, but they still must go one more time - on Tuesday - to finally elect a Mayor.

The month that began with the first mayoral election on May 12 has been one of the most dramatic in recent local political history, and has seen the political fortunes of Walter N. Sheil and Thomas F.X. Smith ebb steadily.

When it began, Mr. Sheil was the Hudson County Democratic chairman and a State Senator who was running for Mayor here; Mr. Smith, the incumbent Mayor, was running for Governor. The two men held whatever broad political power there was in the county.

Within three weeks, Mr. Sheil was forced into a runoff for the mayoralty, lost his bid for another Senate nomination to a candidate backed by Mayor Dennis Collins of Bayonne - his arch political foe - and gave up the chairmanship of the county organization.

In the first mayoral election, Mr. Sheil received only 34 percent of the vote; to win, 50 percent plus one vote is needed. In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, Mr. Smith finished sixth in a field of 13 candidates.

Mr. Sheil's runoff on Tuesday against Councilman Gerald McCann is all that stands between the Sheil-Smith regime, which took control of the city and county political organization four years ago, and virtual retirement.

Although it appears that the anti-Sheil forces have the momentum - and there is no doubt that the incumbent organization has been hurt - it is too early to count Mr. Sheil and Mr. Smith out. City Hall is still the big prize, and the man who occupies the Mayor's seat has usually been considered the de facto county political leader.

Mr. Sheil has a few things going for him. He finished first in the first mayoral race, and one of his opponents, Councilman Anthony Cucci, who placed third, has now endorsed him.

Also, although Mr. Sheil lost his bid to remain in the Senate when it reorganizes in January, he won in the Jersey City portion of the Senate district (the 3lst). He lost heavily in the Bayonne portion.

However, since he does not have to contend with Mr. Collins Tuesday, Mr. Sheil could pull his supporters together and, with help from people like Mr. Cucci, win the Mayor's seat.

Mr. McCann has run an aggressive campaign, and if there is any continuation in the slide of Mr. Sheil's support, he should be able to capitalize on it.

If there is anything hurting Mr. McCann, it is the published reports of an investigation by a Hudson County grand jury into an allegation by Mr. Cucci that Mr. McCann offered him part of a large campaign contribution from a contractor prior to the last mayoral election.

Mr. McCann has denied this. If Mr. Sheil can weather the newest challenge, he and Mr. Smith could still be in an important position when the gubernatorial race heats up in the fall. They could have time to mend fences with Mr. Collins and those North Hudson leaders who have become alienated with their hot and cold relationship.

The two longtime friends from St. Peter's College had eveything going for them at the time of their split a year ago. The split stemmed from Mr. Sheil's insistence that Mr. Smith, after one term as Mayor, had agreed to allow him to run for that office while he (Mr. Smith) sought the governorship.

Mr. Smith later tried, in vain, to unseat Mr. Sheil as county chairman. The two men later shook hands in public and vowed to support each other in their separate campaigns. But what they apparently failed to realize is that their feuding had divided the organization into two camps.

People who once supported both men were forced to choose between them during their squabbles, and the bad feelings persisted among the loyalists.

In the Democratic primary for Governor, Mr. Smith won Hudson County with one of the smallest votes ever given a local son (about 27,000). He might have almost doubled it with a unified and hard-working organization behind him.

The real challenge on Tuesday is whether the two men can weld the serious cracks in their once-unified organization to survive.


Declaring that he can no longer support either the ''publishing methods'' or the ''new administration'' of the company for which he served as president and publisher for 21 years, John J. Geoghegan resigned yesterday as chairman of Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. Mr. Geoghegan also sharply criticized ''the corporate business school mentality'' that he said increasingly dominates trade-book publishing. ''What's coming into publishing,'' he said, ''are finance and administration guys telling editors what kind of product and what kind of marketing will be done.''

Mr. Geoghegan's resignation follows a recent shake-up at Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, a subsidiary of the Putnam Publishing Group. Last week, Patricia B. Soliman resigned after being replaced as president of Coward, McCann & Geoghegan by Donald Braunstein. He joined Putnam's last year from Dell Publishing Company, where he had been vice president of finance and administration. Mrs. Soliman had succeeded Mr. Geoghegan as president on Jan. 1, 1980.

Mr. Geoghegan is one of the first insiders to publicly criticize what many industry observers say is the recent -and perhaps inevitable - dominance of sales and marketing people in bookpublishing positions formerly occupied by people who have come up through the editorial ranks, as conglomerates increasingly become involved in publishing. 'With My Guns Smoking'

''I'm not going gentle into that good night, I want to go out with my guns smoking,'' said Mr. Geoghegan, who denied that his criticism was motivated by spite. His resignation, effective June 30, was submitted in a letter to Peter Israel, president of the Putnam Publishing Group.

''I concurred in the merger with MCA because I felt the corporation had to be strengthened to meet competition,'' he said, referring to the Putnam Publishing Group's acquisiton by MCA, the entertainment and leisure-time conglomerate, in December 1975. ''A man should adapt to change and give new arrangements a chance. There are those houses where the finance boys are restrained from overkill, like Viking, Morrow and Knopf, where they can work under a corporate setup and are given freedom to practice their art. But I'm concerned about the fate of the independent imprint under the corporate umbrella, and what's happened here lately seems to signal the death of that kind of publishing. Within the structure Putnam created, they took away the authority, responsibility and creativity of the independent publishers - myself, Soliman and, I assume, Richard Marek.''

Richard Marek Publishers, another Putnam imprint, is rumored to be on the verge of dissolution. But both Mr. Israel and Mr. Marek have said they hoped to retain the Marek imprint if a mutually satisfactory arrangement can be reached. 'Treated as a Stepchild'

Mr. Geoghegan, who said he intended to stay in publishing, declined to cite specific examples of corporate interference in the editorial product. But he said the principal problem was that Coward, McCann had been ''treated as a stepchild'' in recent months, to the detriment of the house and its authors.

Mr. Israel, himself the author of four books, said: ''I don't feel that we've treated Coward, McCann anything like a stepchild. I am genuinely shocked by what Jack said, and I feel great regret that if he feels that way he never talked to me about it. Whether his opinion about the company or mine is right, only time will tell.''

Mr. Geoghegan said: ''The fact is that when the instruments of publishing authority are removed from the house - a strong voice in advertising, promotion, sales goals and the effective way to sell subsidiary rights - and turned over to corporate decision makers, publishing becomes a parent-house operation,'' he said. 'Kicked Upstairs'

At the time of Mrs. Soliman's resignation, industry sources said the move reflected Putnam managment's disappointment with the financial performance of Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ''When I was kicked upstairs as chairman, they didn't show me the figures anymore,'' Mr. Geoghegan said yesterday, ''so I was not privy to what their dissatisfactions were. But I was told 1980 was a reasonably profitable year for us.''

Incorporated as Coward-McCann in 1927, the company issued its first book, a novel by MacKinlay Kantor, ''Diversey,'' a year later. The firm was acquired by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1936, but preserved its autonomous operations.

Mr. Geoghegan, who served during World War II with the Flying Tigers, joined the company as editor in chief in 1959, 14 years after he began as a salesman with J.B. Lippincott & Co. He was named president two years later, and his name was added to the company on Jan. 1, 1971.

Over the years, the company published Thornton Wilder, Siegfried Sassoon, Alexander Woollcott, John le Carre, Edward Albee and Jack Kerouac. Current authors include Muriel Spark, Leslie Epstein and Kate Millett, as well as Edmund Morris, who won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for his biography ''The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.''

In another reflection of the unsettled situation in the industry, Rollene Saal resigned as editor in chief of Bantam Books Monday after Jack Romanos, the 38-year-old director of marketing, was named publisher of Bantam.


NEW JERSEY residents see a difference between the problems at the national and state levels, and perceive differently the ability of the representatives of the two major political parties to handle those problems, according to a New York Times survey completed last week.

The survey, which gathered detailed responses from 1,118 registered voters between Oct. 13 and Oct. 18, found that New Jersey residents had substantially more faith in the Republicans than in the Democrats to deal with the major problems facing the nation.

But when asked who could better handle the major problems facing the state, those responding split almost evenly between the Republian candidate for Governor, Thomas H. Kean, and the Democratic candidate, Representative James J. Florio.

Overall, The Times survey found that, among all registered voters, Mr. Florio was leading Mr. Kean by 48 percent to 40 percent. This included those who said they were leaning to one candidate or another. However, among the half of the registered voters most likely to vote, Mr. Florio's lead was only 2 percentage points, a difference that was within the poll's margin of error for this core group of voters.

The poll also indicated the possibility of a substantial shift before the election on Nov. 3. About one-fifth of the registered voters interviewed said they had no firm choice for Governor or were merely leaning to one candidate or the other, and about one-quarter of those who had made a choice said they could change their minds before the election.

In addition, 36 percent of Mr. Florio's supporters and 28 percent of Mr. Kean's made their choice, even though they said they did not know enough about their candidate to have a favorable or unfavorable impression about him.

All of this means that what the candidates do in the nine days that remain before the election - and how many of their borderline voters they can urge to the polls on Election Day - will prove crucial to the outcome.

The Election Day effort would be particularly important to Mr. Florio, since some of his strongest support comes from groups such as young people, lower-income people and blacks, who have traditionally voted in lower proportions than other segments of the public.

The difference in the perception of what the major difficulties were at the national and state levels could help account for the apparent closeness of the race for Governor this year in a state that Ronald Reagan carried by an overwhelming margin in last year's Presidential election, even though the Democratic enrollment is considerably higher than the Republican.

Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed by The Times named the economy in general as the major problem facing the United States, and another 21 percent specifically mentioned inflation. Eight percent named unemployment or recession, 4 percent mentioned general foreign policy concerns and 4 percent more gave war or the need for peace as the nation's most urgent problem.

When asked which party could better handle the problem they had named, 39 percent of those interviewed by The Times said the Republicans, 26 percent said the Democrats, 4 percent said the parties would be equal and 15 percent said that neither could adequately handle the problem.

On the home front, however, New Jerseyans saw things somewhat differently. Twenty percent cited taxes, government waste and state and local budget difficulties as the most important problem facing the state. Seventeen percent named unemployment as the major problem, and 14 percent called inflation or other economic problems their chief concern.

Ten percent said that crime and the need for more policemen and more jails was the major problem facing the state; 7 percent called the environment and pollution their top concern.

Of those who cited a problem, 28 percent said that Mr. Kean would better be able to deal with it, 27 percent replied that Mr. Florio would do the better job, 23 percent said it would make no difference and 4 percent said that neither man would be able to handle it adequately.

In many cases, those surveyed reflected their chief concerns in their choice for Governor. For example, those who cited the environment as the state's major problem chose Mr. Florio as their candidate by 50 percent to 26 percent, a substantially higher margin than among registered voters as a whole.

Mr. Florio has been stressing environmental problems in his campaign and has been endorsed by several environmental groups. During his tenure in the State Assembly, Mr. Kean sponsored several environmentally oriented bills. But that, as well as other liberal aspects of his voting record, was obscured somewhat by his attempt during the primary to give his image a more conservative cast.

While that image appealed to Republican voters enough to carry Mr. Kean to victory in the primary (he lost to Raymond H.Bateman in 1977), it may have hurt him with some less conservative voters who are now considering his fate.

''It's interesting the way that Tom Kean has changed over the years from liberal to moderate,'' said Tom Kracinovich, the assistant manager of a Burger King in Bricktown. ''I think it would have been a lot tougher decision for me if he hadn't.''

As it is, however, Mr. Kracinovich, who was interviewed informally after being surveyed by The Times, has decided to vote for Mr. Florio.


SEA CLIFF ''ALL this fuss in a little one-square-mile village; it's a tempest in a teapot.'' The speaker was an antiques dealer, Lois Eklund, commenting on the storm that broke at a recent hearing on a proposed ordinance in this picturesque village south of Glen Cove. If enacted, the law would mandate photographing and fingerprinting, licensing and bonding of all dealers in secondhand goods, including owners of antiques shops.

Dealers would be required to make available to the police the names of people from whom they make purchases and to whom they resell merchandise, and in certain instances to hold goods for 15 days before resale.

Similar laws have been enacted in Nassau County's three towns, two cities and 16 of its 31 incorporated villages at the behest of the county's Police Department. Stemming the tide of burglaries is made easier, the police say, when the potential for quick disposal of stolen goods is limited by strict control of the places where used articles can be sold.

In Sea Cliff, Antique Row is clustered on a block of Sea Cliff Avenue, which winds westward from Glen Cove Road past gingerbreadtrimmed houses with broad verandas to Memorial Park, where a bronze plaque is engraved with the names of fallen heroes and there is a picture-postcard view from the clifftop of sailboats in Hempstead Harbor and Long Island Sound beyond.

There are five antiques stores in the same building as Mrs. Eklund's shop, the Junk Hound, and another one nearby. The Junk Hound was the first of the group, which the merchants call the commercial mainstay of the village. Several years ago, Mrs. Eklund and the six other dealers initiated the Sea Cliff Mini-Mart, held on the last Sunday in October, which draws thousands of collectors and browsers annually.

The dealers are deeply affronted by the implication that they may be involved, even unwittingly, in fencing stolen goods. ''We are honorable citizens,'' they protested in an indignant letter to a local weekly newspaper. ''The proposed fingerprinting and 'mug shots' is abhorrent; it is a treatment reserved for criminals.''

After the hearing, Mayor Francis Deegan said that another draft would be made of the proposal and shown to the merchants for their comments.

Meanwhile, in Mineola, Nassau Police Commissioner Samuel J. Rozzi has sent his legal bureau staff members to their law books with orders to come up with a countywide ordinance that he intends to submit to the Board of Supervisors. It would replace the current patchwork of local laws that have similar but not identical provisions.

''If the Police Commissioner feels they need that law, we'd be delighted to assist in preparing it,'' said Edward McCabe, the County Attorney.

A countywide law would offer two advantages, the Commissioner believes. It would provide uniform regulations for licensing enforcement and penalties, and it would prevent burglars from hopping over the boundary to the next village to fence their goods.

And a countywide law might be easier to pass, said one longtime Sea Cliff resident; opposition from local merchants has less effect in a hearing on County Seat Drive than it does in a tiny municipality like Sea Cliff. Here, according to that resident, everyone knows the trustees, and everyone questioned their actions when the antiques dealers complained.

Detective Robert Hillman of the Property Recovery Squad, who represented the Nassau Police Department at the Sea Cliff hearing, said, ''I don't think the people in Sea Cliff really understood the ordinance.''

Mayor Deegan and the four trustees are all members of the Civic Progress Party, which has controlled the village administration for years. Joe Krupinski, secretary of the Sea Cliff Business Association and a public champion of the merchants, is a moving force in the Soundview Party, which has yet to put a candidate in office, notwithstanding its hard-fought campaigns in the last four elections. The new party's adherents believe that the incumbents are too conservative, all of a kind, and unrepresentative of the variety in their constituency.

Despite its small size and a population of 6,000, Sea Cliff has a diversified demographic mix. There are people who have lived and worked in or near the village all their lives; there is a colony of pre-World War II White Russian immigrants; there are artists and craftsmen who conduct classes in their studios; there are homeowning commuters, and there are young singles who frugally double up and triple up in the legal and extralegal apartments into which many of the Victorian buildings are subdivided.

These old frame hotels and houses date to the turn of the century, when the village was a fashionable summer resort. That era followed the founding of Sea Cliff in the 1880's as a Methodist campground, complete with tents and tabernacle. Now the big old Methodist Church on Sea Cliff Avenue houses both the library and the village hall, where the controversial hearing took place.


ON LEARNING TO READ The Child's Fascination With Meaning. By Bruno Bettelheim and Karen Zelan. 306 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $13.95.

IN past centuries, an entire Jewish community celebrated the day when a young boy began school. The child would first be shown an alphabet chart, onto which his father would toss a candy or coin while the teacher explained, ''An angel threw this down so that you will want to study.'' Next would come a gift of cookies and cakes, each inscribed with a biblical passage. Finally, honey would be smeared all over the alphabet chart, and the child would be allowed to lick it off. After the ceremony at school, friends and family would go to a nearby river, and a blessing would be recited.

Nowadays, an American youngster is likely to be introduced to literacy by the cheerful refrain '' 'Sesame Street' has been brought to you by the letter W.'' Further education is typically carried on through a primer, perhaps one of the Janet-and-Mark series,which have replaced the fabled Dick-and-Jane readers. The first day of school rarely involves the written word, let alone the pursuit of knowledge.

The renowned and highly outspoken child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim has surveyed the teaching of reading in the United States, and he does not like what he sees. With the same gusto he brought to his earlier criticism of the treatment of autistic children, the behavior of student radicals and, most recently, children's literature published in America, he now takes on the American r eadingestablishment.

Bettelheim loathes the reading primers now in use, characterizing them as lifeless, patronizing, superficial and dishonest. In masterly fashion, he dissects these books and finds nothing of substance in them. He shrewdly points out their ambivalence about education; exalting fun above all else, the readers reveal a thinly veiled contempt for school and for work. The real value of learning to read and the rewards it can ultimately yield are hardly ever mentioned.

His particular bete noire is the emphasis on phonics, or the sounding out of words. For Bettelheim, the need to crack the code through graphemes - a skill deemed crucial by nearly all reading specialists - is a distinctly secondary concern, one which diverts the child from understanding that reading is the royal road to knowledge.

Enter the psychoanalytic perspective, leavened with a dose of John Dewey. Before we can hope to teach reading, Bettelheim suggests, we need to have a faithful picture of what children are like. These complex creatures, filled with fears, strong drives and powerful if usually unconscious motivation, are eager to unlock the secrets of the adult world and to meet new challenges. Easily seduced by the wonder and magic of words, which in fact exert a special power over the young mind, children can also be turned off by words.

Initially, children are pleasure-seeking creatures, but they have ample potential for learning discipline and skills. It is to these ends that school and education more generally should be directed. In Freud's terms, the child must move from being ruled by the pleasure principle to the reality principle; in Dewey's terms, from impulse to intelligence.

In order to investigate this process, Bettelheim, along with coauthor Karen Zelan and several other researchers, visited eight schools over a four-year period. The team worked with approximately 30 teachers and 300 children to discover how reading is taught and how children's early reading efforts are handled. After familiarizing themselves with the children, the researchers focused particularly on the students' errors or misreadings.

Just as Freud saw ''slips'' as a pivotal cue to an individual's concerns, so do Bettelheim and his colleagues regard children's misreadings. In their view, understanding such misreadings is central to an understanding of the reading process, and extremely valuable in helping children to negotiate it. In the lengthiest (and to my mind the most eccentric) part of the book, the Bettelheim team reviews dozens of errors made by children and interprets these misreadings in terms of the children's personal agendas.

According to this analysis, children's reading errors are neither random accidents, nor simple manifestations of immaturity, nor symptoms of dyslexia. The mistakes don't signal inexperience, inattention or decoding problems; rather, they reveal the children's true feelings and thoughts - what is important to them, what they fear, what they desire. When seen as subjectively m eaningful, the errors reflec t a conflict between what is printed on the page and the child's o wn concerns: In fact, these mistakes are an act of selfexpressio n by the child.

Consider a few of the examples on which Bettelheim dwells. A child whose ability to read had been blocked for three years insisted on reading ''Mom'' for ''Mother,'' Bettelheim writes, because the more formal word failed to connote his feelings for his own mother. The researchers suggest that one child who consistently read ''saw'' for ''was'' or ''was'' for ''saw'' did so not out of an inability to read the words but because he was struggling in his own life to separate past from present. A first grader read ''can't'' for ''can'' because he wanted to protest against a picture in his primer of a watchdog who was inexplicably asleep. And a little boy read ''mane'' for ''name'' because he wanted the cat in the story to be another more ferocious animal, such as a lion, that could protect him from a real dog that he feared.


Few businesses have seen more expansion than the pet business in recent years. As pet owners increasingly treat their cats, dogs and small furry animals like members of the family, sales for luxury pet services, wellness products and apparel are exploding. According to the American Pet Products Association, last year Americans spent $60 billion on their pets, with more expensive, healthier food accounting for the largest part, at upward of $22 billion—a figure that's more than doubled since 2000.

But fancy organic food is just the beginning. Those who have decided to cash in on this ever growing market are offering everything from yappuccinos to pet weddings.

Here is a look at some of the entre-pawneurs who have made it big in the pet economy. They appear to be barking up the right tree.

—By Barbara Booth Posted 10 April 2015

Summary: Consumers are spending billions on luxury items for their pets, and novelty businesses are popping up—from pet hotels to doggie bakeries.


FORTUNE — Don’t hate me because I’m rich.

So says JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, the highest paid executive among the six biggest U.S. banks. At an investors’ conference in New York, Bloomberg reported that Dimon grew mystified when someone in the audience asked him about hostility toward bankers.

“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” said Dimon, whose 2010 compensation totaled $23 million.

Dimon just doesn’t get it. It’s not that Americans think the rich are “bad.” Actually, as investment advisor and blogger Joshua Brown points out, the nation has long been fascinated by the untouchably wealthy. It’s the basis for countless reality shows, from the Kardashians to the housewives; it’s why millions tuned in for the royal wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William this year; it’s why celebrities keep the paparazzi in business.

And it’s not as if Americans think there’s too many of the filthy rich running around. In a June Gallup Poll on wealth (taken several months before the start of the Occupy Wall Street movement), 42% (the highest number) said the number of rich people in the country was “just right,” compared with 31% who said there were “too many” and 27% reporting “too few.”

And the nation’s wealthiest 1% aren’t necessarily the envy of the bottom 99%. In a separate Gallup Poll conducted in late November, Americans (which earn a median annual household income of roughly $50,000) say they would consider themselves rich if they made $150,000 a year. Needless to say, that’s pennies to the nation’s billionaires.

What’s irking Americans isn’t that the rich are simply rich. To underscore the rallying cries of Occupy Wall Street-ers, it comes down to how wealth is distributed. And perhaps more importantly, how it’s gained.

JP Morgan JPM is one of a handful of major banks tangled in lawsuits tied to collapse of the U.S. financial market. The latest, filed earlier this month by Massachusetts, alleges that JP Morgan and four other banks conducted unlawful foreclosures and deceived homeowners. And it probably doesn’t help JP Morgan’s good graces with the public that it was among several lenders accused of improperly foreclosing on military family’s homes. JP Morgan settled the case in April, agreeing to pay $56 million on claims it overcharged service members on their home loans.

So the point that Dimon and others seem yet to have caught onto is this: Americans don’t disdain all rich people. They aren’t picketing outside Mark Zuckerberg’s home or vilifying Steve Jobs for his personal wealth or boycotting New York Yankees games over Derek Jeter’s salary. Being successful isn’t bad, nor is being rich. What matters is how you created your own wealth.

Summary: Wealthy financiers are trying to turn the Occupy movement into a rich vs. poor debate. What they still don't understand is that Americans don't hate the rich. They hate the rich in finance.


FORTUNE – For nearly a decade, McDonald’s has been wildly successful. Even in the years following the financial crisis when tough economic times weighed on U.S. consumers, the Oak Brook, Il-based fast food hamburger chain rarely let investors down. In 2011, it generated revenue topping $27 billion, higher than the $24 billion it posted the previous year. And as Fortune featured last summer, McDonald’s is well positioned, since consumers tend to eat there in good and bad times.

But the chain’s golden arches have unexpectedly dimmed. Net income fell 4.5% to $1.35 billion or $1.32 a share during its most recent quarter, from $1.41 billion or $1.35 a year earlier, McDonald’s reported Monday. Wall Street analysts had expected earnings of $1.37 per share.

Various factors led to the profit miss: A sharply strong dollar that cut profits; high food prices gnawed on margins; high labor costs abroad. In particular, the chain broadly blamed consumers: “We’re seeing more markets that are having consumer confidence issues,” CEO Don Thompson said in a conference call with analysts. “It’s a little more than a European cold, if you would.”

No doubt Europe’s worsening debt crisis combined with a sluggish U.S. economy have dampened consumer confidence. And expectations of a slower growing China and India, among other economies, don’t help ease investor worries.

MORE: Our Executive Dream Team

But as much as executives focus on general economic weaknesses across the globe, business moves within McDonald’s MCD headquarters deserve a closer look. The chain has struggled to keep up with competitors, Bank of America analysts have noted. As McDonald’s sees softer earnings, other fast-food rivals, including Burger King BKW and Taco Bell YUM have, enjoyed a rebound in sales. Regional chains, such as Sonic SONC and Jack in the Box JACK , have also enjoyed stronger sales in recent quarters.

McDonald’s has done an impressive job turning itself around since 2002, but the latest earnings reflect symptoms of a chain that in recent years has moved further away from its core burgers and fries business – essentially, what’s kept customers returning all these years.

Take McDonald’s Dollar Menu, says Howard Penney, restaurant industry analyst with the investment research firm Hedgeye and a Fortune contributor. In March, amid higher food costs, executives announced it was removing small drinks and small French fries from its Dollar Menu, replacing those items with fresh baked cookies and ice cream cones. The chain also launched its extra-value menu, which included, among other items, 20-piece chicken McNuggets, double cheeseburgers, chicken snack wraps, Angus snack wraps, medium iced coffees and snack-sized McFlurries. (See McDonald’s new menu is about inflation more than value)

Looking back, the move probably wasn’t the wisest. The Dollar Menu had been around for years. And it seemed counterintuitive (arguably, perhaps even a little unjust) to take one of the most popular items off its recession-friendly menu.

MORE: Hostess is bankrupt … again

“You’re basically telling a set of customers you don’t want them anymore,” Penney says.

The latest quarter suggests McDonald’s has struggled to upsell the new menu to budget-conscious Americans. Sales at stores open at least 13 months in the U.S., a key measure of business performance, rose 3.6% during the quarter that ended June 30, the slowest growth in five quarters.

McDonald’s has also expanded too much into beverages, Penney warned in January 2011. While the chain’s focus in specialty coffees (sold at relatively higher prices) has given it considerable success, the returns are uncertain because the operations are more complex. “It takes more to make a latte than to pour a Coke,” he said.

A McDonald’s spokeswoman says the chain’s classic core favorites, as well as new additions to the McCafe beverages in the U.S. have added to the company’s performance. And as far as its extra value menu, the company says it “builds on the Dollar Menu favorites by offering affordable meal options.”

Andy Barish, senior equities analyst at Jefferies & Company, says much of the downward pressures that McDonald’s faces are beyond its control. “They’re still running the business really well but things are normalizing,” says Barish, pointing out that rivals have followed McDonald’s playbook to plant the seeds of their own successes.

He wonders, however, if it might be time for McDonald’s to do something markedly different. “It has been doing the same old thing; they haven’t done much. Maybe customers are getting a little tired of the same old thing?”

Summary: McDonald's cites poor consumer confidence as a reason why it missed profit expectations last quarter, but it may want to redirect some of that blame toward its own strategies.


The New York Stock Exchange will suspend trading in RadioShack and delist the stock.

The retailer is considering selling off half of its stores to Sprint, and then closing the rest, Bloomberg reported, citing "people with knowledge of the discussions" between the two firms.

Those surviving stores would continue under the Sprint branding, so RadioShack would essentially "cease to exist as a stand-alone retailer," according to Bloomberg.

Read MoreInvestors bet on RadioShack default as loss grows

According to Bloomberg's two unnamed sources, the struggling retailer and the wireless carrier have also discussed co-branding the storefronts.

These moves come amid a planned bankruptcy auction for RadioShack, according to the Wall Street Journal. The paper reported that hedge fund Standard General is in talks to be the lead bidder for the auction.

The hedge fund led a consortium that provided a rescue package to RadioShack in October.

—CNBC's Bob Pisani contributed to this report.

Summary: RadioShack is considering selling off half of its stores to Sprint, and then closing the rest, according to one report.


The United States was successful in assembling an international coalition to impose tough economic sanctions. Restrictions on access to technology, international banks and their electronic payments systems imposed double digit unemployment and inflation and brought Iran to the negotiating table.

Read MoreNetanyahu seeks better deal on Iran

Simply, finding buyers for oil shipped via 3 million barrel supertankers was one thing, but the inability to transfer funds through western banks made securing $150 million payments quite another.

The Obama administration sought to dismantle Tehran's nuclear infrastructure, including its underground centrifuge machines, which enrich uranium into fissionable material. However, Tehran balked and other events in the region made Obama desperate for a deal-the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, its spinoff in Libya, and deteriorating relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia on issues transcending the Iranian nuclear challenge.

The agreement significantly reduces the number of Iranian centrifuges and other nuclear infrastructure, but only limits Tehran's ability to quickly "break out" from these restrictions and accumulate enough fissionable material to create a nuclear weapon in less than one year. Theoretically, we are told that is enough time for the West to detect Iranian violations and respond — but it is not.

Read MoreFive takeaways from Iran nuclear deal

The lifting of economic sanctions has the potential to create an economic superpower with malevolent, anti-western aspirations.

Iran has the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia, the natural gas reserves of Russia, the mineral resources of Australia-including iron ore, bauxite, cooper, and the world's largest supply of zinc-a sophisticated manufacturing sector, a stock market with strong corporate reporting requirements, a well-educated population of 80 million, and a large middle class.

In 2010, Iran produced 1.6 million automobiles — across virtually all vehicle classes — through indigenous manufacturers and joint ventures with western firms. Although sanctions pushed that number down to 1 million in 2014, it bears noting autos are among the most difficult and complex mass production items to make, and Iran's technological potential could quickly put it in the same category as South Korea or even France.

Iran provides Western Europe and China with an alternative to Russian natural gas.

Read MoreWhy a deal with Iran is good for stocks

The surge of European, Chinese and American investment into Iran will be a reminder of the Gold Rush that gave rise to modern California. And once those euros, yuan and dollars are in, political pressures will make it very tough to reimpose western economic sanctions.

Were Iran to start making weapons-grade material, any western actions would be preceded by talks. But as with Russia in the Ukraine, Europe's largest economy, Germany, would be cautious about losing access to Iranian natural gas and its other commercial interests, and similar distractions would impede other European and Asian cooperation.

The U.S. trump card has been its unique grip on the global banking and payments system, but China's success in recruiting European allies to join its Asian Infrastructure Bank demonstrates that Asian alternatives to U.S. dominated western financial institutions will soon emerge.

Even as sanctions handicapped Iran, it has projected power directly and through surrogates in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. Once the Iranian industrial juggernaut gets rolling, a society with an anti-western theocratic bent, sophisticated technology and manufacturing industries, and the resource wealth of Saudi Arabia, Russia and Australia combined will emerge as an economic and military power on a par with our European allies.

Ultimately, Iranian nuclear aspirations will prove awfully difficult to contain within 12 months with U.S. threats to assemble an international coalition to take military action or impose sanctions.

A decade from now, when UN inspectors discover Iran is building a nuclear weapon, western leaders will ask how they could have let this happen.

Barack Obama will still be around and perhaps will offer some answers.

Summary: The nuclear deal struck with Iran will prove unenforceable for one reason — economics, says Peter Morici.


"It's not surprising because so much tinkering was done with defaulted borrowers over the last five or six years. It's not surprising they're running into problems again," said Guy Cecala, CEO and publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance.

Read MoreBoston housing in a deep freeze: Don't blame the snow

During the worst of the crisis, banks were put under increased pressure to modify loans even outside the government bailout program. They lowered interest rates, but in the end, many of their borrowers simply didn't have the basic cash flow to pay, whatever the rate. Re-default rates were expected to be high, with some calling even 40 percent conservative.

In the meantime, completed foreclosures have been decreasing more rapidly than the backlog of seriously delinquent loans. The hope had been for the opposite and a quick return to a more normal level of distress. There are still more than twice as many troubled loans than normal, despite rising home values and an improving economy. In other words, the mortgage mess isn't all cleaned up just yet.

Summary: Repeat foreclosures rose 11 percent in January and accounted for more than half of all new foreclosures.


(Corrects paragraph 16 to s how that TheRealReal was founded in 2011, not 2012, and has 3.5 million members, not monthly users.)

NEW YORK, April 24 (Reuters) - The Nasdaq's March 2000 peak brought with it a plethora of colorful personalities - Wall Street analysts, bankers and tech moguls - who saw their reputations tarnished once the bubble burst. Many found solid second acts long after the dotcom implosion hit them hard.

Now that the index has surpassed its prior peak, here is an update on some of the most notable names of the last Nasdaq boom.

HENRY BLODGET: ULTIMATE BUSINESS INSIDER

Then: In his initial heyday, Henry Blodget called Amazon's success early and earned $12 million a year analyzing internet stocks at brokerage Merrill Lynch (now owned by Bank of America). In 2002, he agreed to a permanent ban from the industry in a settlement of securities fraud charges - he was alleged to have trash-talked companies privately while publicly promoting them to investors.

Now: Backed by big players including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Blodget co-founded in 2007 business news site "Silicon Alley Insider" which was rechristened "Business Insider" in 2009, where he still serves as CEO and editor-in-chief. The site has 25-plus million visitors a month. (Disclosure: It is a client of Thomson Reuters and uses Reuters articles on its site.)

"Thankfully, for all of us, I'm not in the stock-market prediction business anymore. I do think the tech industry is in a boom that will end the way all booms do - in a bust," Blodget said in an email. "But the magnitude of what's happening today is just a faint echo of what happened in the 1990s."

Business Insider made about $30 million in revenue last year, according to a source familiar with the firm. Asked if he intended to take it public, Blodget said, "there's no reason to hurry."

FRANK QUATTRONE: FROM BANNED TO BENEFACTOR

Then: The leading Silicon Valley banker of the dot-com era helped take dozens of companies public, including Amazon.com and Cisco. In 2000, his best year, Frank Quattrone made $120 million at Credit Suisse First Boston. Quattrone spent four years fighting charges that he obstructed a federal investigation into whether CSFB doled out hot IPO shares to favored clients in exchange for inflated commissions. In 2004, he was convicted of several charges and banned from the securities industry; that was overturned on appeal in 2006 and the ban was rescinded. The charges were dropped in 2007.

Now: Quattrone founded San Francisco-based investment bank Qatalyst Partners in 2008. It has been involved in dozens of multi-billion dollar merger and acquisition deals, such as Texas Instruments' $6.5 billion acquisition of National Semiconductor in 2011 and Google's acquisition of Motorola for $12.5 billion in 2012. Quattrone volunteers for the Northern California Innocence Project to address wrongful convictions and established the Quattrone Center for Fair Administration at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He could not be reached for comment.

MARY MEEKER: NOT ROYAL, STILL RICH

Then: Anointed "Queen of the Net" for her enthusiastic coverage of Adobe, eBay, Apple and more, Mary Meeker was one of a generation of bank analysts championing the Internet in the 1990s. Meeker, then Morgan Stanley's analyst, was swept up in a massive investigation of Wall Street's research practices, led by the New York attorney general's office and the Securities and Exchange Commission. She was never accused of violating securities laws but the global case against Morgan Stanley and nine other brokerage firms led to a record $1.4 billion settlement in 2003.

Now: In 2010, Meeker joined Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner. She leads KPCB's Digital Growth Fund, targeting high-growth Internet companies. Meeker serves on the boards of Square, Lending Club and DocuSign and has been actively involved in KPCB's investments in Twitter, LegalZoom, Spotify, Waze (acquired by Google) and Groupon.

Meeker was not available for comment. In mid-March, Meeker testified in the Ellen Pao gender bias case, calling Kleiner Perkins "the best place to be a woman" in venture capital.

DAVID WETHERELL: INTERNET TO BIOTECH

Then: David Wetherell was CEO of the public holding and venture capital company CMGI, which he helped grow to more than $1 billion in annual revenue with his energetic buying of then-notable internet companies, including Lycos and Alta Vista. He developed a tool called Engage to sell data that aided early versions of targeted advertising on the web. But shares of CMGI topped at $199 in 1999 and fell to about $6 in 2000. CMGI later became ModusLink Global Solutions via a merger.

Now: Wetherell is on to biotech - the sector some now call bubbly. He is a managing partner at Biomark Capital in Greenwich, Connecticut, which provides venture capital to life-sciences companies aiming at Alzheimer's, diabetes and genetics testing.

He is still bitter about former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's policies circa 2000, which he said he believes contributed to the big fall. "The market price-to-earnings ratios for the Nasdaq are far more reasonable than they were 15 years ago, and we have had a far more responsible Fed for the last decade, which, unlike Greenspan, did not raise interest rates six times in six months despite low inflation."

JULIE WAINWRIGHT: NO MORE SOCK PUPPETS, JUST LUXE WEAR

Then: Julie Wainwright was CEO of Pets.com, which became a well-worn example of the tech boom and bust. She raised $82 million when she took the company public in 2000. But later the same year, the company failed to raise a second round of funding and folded.

Now: In 2011, Wainwright founded the luxury resale and consignment website TheRealReal, which claimed $100 million in revenue last year with 3.5 million members - figures that are unverified independently as it is not a publicly held company.

She's optimistic: "Investors are starting to look for unique business models again, something they didn't do during the great financing desert between 2000 and 2010."

STEPHAN PATERNOT: FIRST SOCIAL NETWORKING KING

Then: Taking early aim at social networking with chatrooms and cybergames, Stephan Paternot and a Cornell classmate co-founded TheGlobe.com in 1994. The pair raised nearly $1 billion after it debuted on the Nasdaq in 1998, and Paternot became infamous as a symbol of young hedonism when he was filmed in a nightclub saying "Got the girl. Got the money. Now I'm ready to live a disgusting, frivolous life." By 2000, the company had become a penny stock and the founders were out.

Now: He's tried to pass on the lessons learned. In 2012, Paternot posted a letter to Mark Zuckerberg on his Facebook page just before that company's IPO. Innovate, Paternot said, but also be aware of the investors' agendas.

In 2010, he co-founded Slated, a service that connects investors with film producers and creators. In 2014, investors using Slated sent $1 billion into the film industry and backed 65 percent of the films that won distribution deals at the Sundance Film Festival.

"Now, people understand the new internet economy they are investing in," Paternot told Reuters. "Business models are more sophisticated and values are 20 times earnings, rather than 100 times earnings like it was in the bubble."

(Reporting by Jennifer Ablan and Heather Struck; additional reporting by Jennifer Saba; editing by Linda Stern and Nick Zieminski)

Summary: NEW YORK, April 24- The Nasdaq's March 2000 peak brought with it a plethora of colorful personalities- Wall Street analysts, bankers and tech moguls- who saw their reputations tarnished once the bubble burst. Then: In his initial heyday, Henry Blodget called Amazon's success early and earned $12 million a year analyzing internet stocks at brokerage Merrill Lynch.


It's that time again! Jim Cramer rang the lightning round bell, which means he gave his take on caller favorite stocks at rapid speed:

Pacira Pharmaceuticals: "I know this company...they did have some news recently. I've got to parse the news because half the people said it was good, and half said it was bad."

Chevron Corp: "Chevron I think is okay, the dividend, I think you would sell the stock here. It's having a little bit of a bounce. I would sell it into the bounce. There are better, higher quality oil companies that are down much more."

Neophotonics Corp: "Lightweight circuits. This is very hard for me, I am not going to be able to make a snap judgment on this company. I wish I knew it better, I've got more work to do."

YRC Worldwide: "No, not with United Parcel under pressure. I think United Parcel has a much better situation, that's what I would go with."

Blackrock Inc: "I think Blackrock does a terrific job, they've got a lot of good interesting products. I know there were some interesting statements back and forth at Delivering Alpha, but when it comes to a well-run company—Blackrock is a well-run company. That's what I care about."

Mobileye NV: "I'm going to see you on Mobileye and I'm going one better, I want you to think about Ambarella, which has got a lot of the intellectual properties that I like about Mobileye but also has drones."

---------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: When to take a bite out of Apple Cramer: Growth stocks to grab in the next selloff Cramer game plan: Oh my! Earnings are a minefield ----------------------------------------------------------

Alcoa: "Remember what I said: When this deal closes is when Alcoa is going to go up. The deal must close first. When it's closed, you'll get a revaluation and re-ranking and that's when Alcoa will go higher."

Insys Therapeutics: "We looked at this stock and have a very high feeling for it. We think it is speculative but it's a good one."

Summary: Jim Cramer provides his advice on caller favorite stocks at lightning speed.


09/20/2015 AT 02:10 PM EDT

's stage, you've got to play by her rules.

The "New Attitude" diva ripped into a fan after he started to strip onstage during her concert Friday night at the Hard Rock Casino in Vancouver.

While performing hit "Lady Marmalade," LaBelle invited several audience members onstage to dance. However, according to a

, when one man began to unbutton his shirt, the singer immediately scolded him.

"Don't you dare, not on my stage," she commanded, adding, "I am 71-years-young I am not Nicki Minaj or that little, uh, Miley."

The fan began acting coy and then struck a provocative pose, which caused LaBelle to call to have him removed.

"Get off of my goddarn stage, b----," the former

contestant yelled as he was escorted out. "And stay off. Put him out of the building. Put him out! How dare you!"

Later on during the show, LaBelle expressed embarrassment over her outburst, and apologized for using a "bad word."

"I'm so sorry," she said "I'm a Gemini and things come out of my mouth sometimes that I try to control."

Regardless, she maintained the concertgoer was "rude."

"Don't ever come in my face again," she said.

Just this week, the singer said that young pop stars need to "put some clothes on," reported the

"You know, I watched the VMAs and I was totally turned off with what I saw," she said. "I need these young girls to put some clothes on!"

LaBelle didn't name names, but told the

"you know who I am talking about."

Summary: Patti LaBelle had a fan escorted offstage after he began to strip during her performance on Friday


Gold on Monday saw its biggest one-day rise since January as some dealers scrambled to cover short positions and the May options expiry triggered more buying.

U.S. gold futures for June delivery settled up 2.4 percent, its best percentage jump since January 15, at $1,203.20 an ounce. Meanwhile, spot gold rose 2.1 percent to $1,204 an ounce. On Friday spot prices slipped as low as $1,174.73 an ounce.

"It's quite undervalued and we've had a long period of consolidation around the $1,200 mark," said Mark O'Byrne, research director of bullion dealer GoldCore, noting that the breach of the $1,200 level spurred additional technical buying.

O'Byrne said that while there were several factors spurring the session's rally, short-covering could be the primary driver

Options-related buying also buoyed prices with U.S. May options set to expire at the end of the day with relatively heavy open interest at the $1,200 strike price, traders said.

Read MoreArt and real estate are the new gold, says Blackrock CEO

The spot market jumped around $8 within a five-minute span shortly after 10 a.m. EDT, when technical buyers lifted prices above the 50-day moving average.

Summary: Gold rose above $1,180 an ounce on Monday, recovering from the previous session's five-week low.


If you're a parent, Jim Cramer says there's something you can do to help minimize the terrible financial burden of student loan debt: offset your son's or daughter's college tuition as much as possible.

And the "Mad Money" host believes one of the best ways to do it is by opening a 529 College Savings Plan.

"The rules differ from state to state, but generally speaking, in a 529 you pick between a mix of different mutual funds, just like with many 401(k) plans," Cramer said.

He suggests choosing a low-cost fund that mirrors the market.

"Although the contributions are not tax deductible, once your money is in the 529 plan, you don't pay any taxes on your gains, so they can compound, tax-free, year after year," Cramer said.

The principal can grow significantly.

Because of federal gift tax laws, you can only contribute $14,000 a year if you're single, or $28,000 if you're married and you file your taxes jointly.

However, in a 529 College Savings Plan you can front load up to five years' worth of contributions without incurring that tax (as long as you don't write any checks to the beneficiary as gifts.)

Therefore, "you could potentially invest $70,000 into a 529 right from the start, or if you're married and filing jointly, you could contribute $140,000," Cramer said.

If you can swing it, the compound interest generated by a flat $70,000 over 18 years may be all you need.

"Contribute $70,000 right off the bat, and put that money in a low-cost index fund that mirrors the market, and the rule of thumb is that over time, you'll make an average of roughly 8 percent per year," Cramer said. "So if you make that contribution right when a child is born by the time he or she is ready for college, the value of your 529 plan will have doubled and doubled again. If you started with $70,000, then after 18 years, barring some kind of market catastrophe, you could have as much as $280,000."

They key to the 529 is to front load as much as possible, so the money can grow as much as possible for as long as possible.

----------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer adds CEO to Wall of Shame New energy company attracts Cramer's attention Cramer's top charity holding may surprise you -----------------------------------------------------------

Of course, Cramer realizes that most people can't drop $70,000 into a 529 Savings Plan the day their child is born. But he says doing what you can, as early as you can, will make a big difference in the long run.

The 529 Savings Plan is a powerful tool that can offset the costs of college. And as noted above, "students who graduate with no debt end up being worth a lot more money than their classmates who have outstanding student loans."

Summary: Student loan debt may be among the biggest issues facing younger Americans.


"One might expect him to be a little bit more adventurous in terms of acquisitions, especially on the international and digital fronts where he seems to be quite engaged," said S&P Capital IQ analyst Tuna Amobi. James did a good job running Britain's dominant pay TV-provider BSkyB, and since he moved to New York in 2012 he has improved his reputation on Wall Street, Amobi added.

The hip hop record label James began as a young man, Rawkus Records, was bought by News Corp, the company that later split into publishing arm News Corp and television and movie-making arm Fox.

The scion joined News Corp in 1996, at the age of 23. Over the years he was particularly lauded for his work as CEO of BSkyB, now known as Sky, as it became a pan-European operation.

Read MoreRupert Murdoch preparing to step down as CEO from 21st CenturyFox

Investors were particularly impressed with his role in spearheading Fox's digital investments include the purchase of a 5 percent stake in Vice, the acquisition of True X, which helps broadcasters sell digital advertising and an investment in Roku, the streaming video player, sources said.

The biggest setback to his reputation likely was as head of News Corp's British newspapers. In that role, he was criticized with failing to adequately respond when journalists at The News of the World were alleged to have illegally tapped phones and bribed officials in pursuit of stories. But a British parliamentary committee cleared James of any wrongdoing.

A big remaining question is how James will work with his brother, Lachlan, in what the source familiar with the matter described as a partnership, and whether the family will prosper without the help of a strong outsider in the executive ranks.

Well-regarded Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey is expected to step down from the role, a departure that analysts at MoffettNathanson called "unfortunate".

Read MoreAfter CEO exit, Twitter says no strategy change

Some analysts said they had been happy to have an outsider with Chase's experience in one of the top jobs at Fox.

What's clear, said Cowen's Creutz, is that founder Rupert Murdoch had decided it was time to pass the baton.

"I think Rupert will have a say, but I think it is James's company to run now," he said.

Summary: James Murdoch, a Harvard drop out, will take the CEO job at Twenty-First Century Fox with the backing of some important investors.


There are plenty of vehicles that garner attention for their superior fuel efficiency, luxe accommodations, and impeccable safety records. But other vehicles hold themselves to a completely different standard altogether: their audacity to take on hell or high water.

These vehicles are built to face the worst conditions Point A to Point B could throw at them, and still deliver their passengers to the intended destination. We found an array of such vehicles on Quora.com, the question and answer community, where users listed the most indestructible vehicles in the world. Below are some of the best answers we found, and all are vehicles we’d gladly keep in our garage or, airplane hanger, if need be.

If you’re looking to make Hummer owners burn with envy, then consider the Paramount Marauder your new best friend. Quora user Brad Loewen says the Marauder is the, “Single-most indestructible consumer-level street legal vehicle on the planet,” and with good reason.

This South African-built armored vehicle weighs up 28,000-pounds, can be outfitted in either 4x4 or 6x6 variations, and — just in case you need it — can take an 8kg TNT explosion directly under the hull.

For drivers who are looking for something almost as sturdy, but a bit less menacing, then the Toyota HiLux may be just the thing. As Quora user Payam Adlparvar put it, “For land and wheeled vehicles, the Marauder seems to be designed to be the most indestructible vehicle,” but also noted that,“‘Top Gear' claimed the Toyota HiLux truck to be pretty much the most indestructible, and after what they did to it, well… you be the judge.”

Adlparsvar’s referring to when the show drove a HiLux headfirst into a tree, submerged it into the ocean for several hours, had a small RV dropped on top of it and, adding insult to injury, lit it on fire. After each purposeful attack, the HiLux’s resilient engine turned over, and the small pickup drove away with just basic engine tuning and no new parts added.

Eventually, the Toyota was placed on top of an apartment building 240-feet above the ground, which was then imploded. Afterwards, the battery was reconnected, the fuel tank topped off with a bit of diesel, and the monster of a little truck started back up and drove onto the show’s set.

Luxury autos don’t typically exude a sense of impenetrable resilience — unless we’re talking about the President of the United States’ Cadillac One, affectionately referred to as “The Beast.”

While the Secret Service doesn’t exactly publish the details of the President’s limo, there’s enough information out there to place Quora user Himanshu Rai’s suggestion firmly on the most indestructible vehicle list.

The Beast can withstand a scrum involving bullets and bombs due to its 8-inch thick, armor-plated doors and 6-inch thick bulletproof windows. The vehicle also has its own fire suppression system, and its cabin is fully sealed to keep passengers safe from a chemical attack. Cadillac One also sports reinforced Kevlar run-flat tires and has night-vision cameras mounted under the front grille.

The Secret Service builds the limos with help from an R&D team from General Motors, and each of the 12 vehicles in service costs about $1.5 million a piece. But as the Secret Service proved on a trip to the UK a few years ago, The Beast can be a bit of a bear to park.

This plane’s built for much more than turbulence

While land vehicles get most of the attention, a few Quora users highlighted mythically-strong aircraft as well. Colin Baxter said the Fairchild Republic A-10, a plane known as the Warthog, deserves the indestructible designation. “The redundancies in this plane are absurd. Do you think it needs two engines that massive? Ha, nope! Do you think it even needs most of its wing area to get around? Nah,” Baxter wrote.

According to the US Air Force Center for Systems Technology, the A-10 has multiple redundancies in place to keep the plane flying after taking severe hits. The plane has an extra hydraulic system and a backup mechanical system to keep it flying after an attack, has self-sealing fuel cells to protect the fuel tank, and titanium armor protects the pilots and flight controls. All of which has given the A-10 a reputation for talking a beating and still making it back to base.

“There are two ways to go about survivability. Today, the preferred method is the elegant stealth approach. If the enemy can't see you they can't shoot you. The A-10 took another tack: get shot and don't give a damn,” he said.

If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

Summary: Quora users name their picks for the most indestructible vehicles.


IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said Greece can now only receive further funding from the global lender once the arrears are cleared. He confirmed that Greece asked for a last-minute repayment extension earlier on Tuesday, which the fund's board will consider "in due course."

The left-wing Greek government's 11th-hour bid for an extension of its international bailout and a two-year funding and debt restructuring program offered no concessions to creditors' demands for economic reforms, according to text seen by Reuters.

A one-page letter from Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis to the chairman of the Eurogroup of finance ministers of the euro zone said Greece was "fully committed to service its external debt in a manner that secures the viability of the Greek economy, growth and social cohesion."

But it made no mention of the conditions set by Greece's three lenders - the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF - for releasing frozen aid to avert defaulting on the IMF repayment. Instead, Varoufakis cited legal grounds for requesting a two-year loan of an unmentioned amount.

Read MoreChina stocks turn positive after twin PMI data

"The loan will be used exclusively to meet the debt service payments of Greece's external and internal debt obligations," he wrote. It was not clear whether that includes payment arrears to Greek government suppliers, civil servants and others.

The letter went on to say, "Until this loan is agreed and in force, Greece requests for the program to be extended by the Eurogroup for a short period of time in order to ensure a technical default is not triggered."

Before the payment deadline, Varoufakis indicated on a call with European counterparts that Athens might scrap the upcoming referendum if a deal was reached, according to euro zone sources.

But the latest Greek proposals came too late to prevent Greece's existing aid package - with locked-up funds it needs to pay wages, salaries and debt - from expiring at midnight.

Now, Greece will lose access to a 1.8 billion euro loan tranche and 10.9 billion euros for recapitalizing banks.

The flurry of diplomacy came as tens of thousands of people descended on Athens' central Syntagma square over the past 24 hours in two different rallies - one to reject additional austerity measures and the other to push for Greece to agree to the terms in order to keep the financial spigot open.

In a sign that European officials have not given up on finding a solution, finance ministers said they would confer on Wednesday over Greece's latest loan request and debt restructuring.

It was unclear how much the Wednesday call could achieve. Trust between Athens and European capitals is in tatters after five months of acrimonious negotiations, and the relationship further deteriorated after Athens on Saturday decided to put creditors' proposals to a referendum.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said the plebiscite is the democratic way for Greeks to decide if they will accept more budget cuts and taxes in return for international aid. He has urged a "No" vote.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out further negotiations until after Sunday's referendum.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chairman of the euro zone's group of finance ministers, warned that Athens was welcome to ask for new aid but that it would come with conditions.

"What can change is the political stance of the Greek government that has led to this unfortunate situation," Dijsselbloem said.

In what appeared to be a further attempt to gain traction with creditors, Varoufakis indicated during Tuesday's call that Athens might urge Greeks to vote in favor of bailout terms if a deal on a new loan was reached, the euro zone sources said.

Yes or no to euro?

Greece has received nearly 240 billion euros in two bailouts from the European Union and IMF since 2010. The money has allowed it to stay afloat but at a high cost to its population, which has absorbed cuts to pensions, wages and public services.

It is the first time in IMF history that an advanced economy has defaulted on a loan from the world's financial backstop, putting Athens, whose economy has contracted by more than 25 percent since 2009, in the same bracket as Zimbabwe, Sudan and Cuba.

On Tuesday, Fitch ratings agency cut its long-term rating on Greece to CC from CCC, saying the breakdown of negotiations had significantly increased the risk that Greece would not be able to meet its debt obligations in the next few months.

With its missed IMF payment, Greece is on a path out of the euro with unforeseeable consequences for the EU's grand project to bind countries through a single currency and for the global economy.

Read MoreEuro zone inflation slips to 0.2% in June

On Monday, Standard & Poor's lowered its sovereign rating on the country and said the probability of Greece exiting the euro zone was now about 50 percent.

"What would happen if Greece came out of the euro? There would be a negative message that euro membership is reversible," said Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who a week ago declared that he did not fear contagion from Greece.

The imposition of capital controls to prevent the banking system from collapsing has given Greeks a bitter foretaste of what could follow exit from the euro. The government began a week-long shutdown of the banks and the stock exchange on Monday.

Bank withdrawals are limited to 60 euros a day, and a crisis mentality has gripped the country, with people queuing at petrol stations and stripping supermarket shelves bare.

"So far there are no problems with suppliers, but if the banks are still closed next week there will be a bit of a problem if they demand purely cash payments," said Charisis Golas, owner of a small meat and dairy shop in Athens.

In Athens, opposition leaders - echoing EU officials - hammered home that the choice facing Greeks in the referendum is whether to stay in the euro zone or return to the drachma, even though the EU has no legal way of forcing a member state to give up the single currency.

Former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, leader of the main opposition party, said a "No" vote would push the country out of the single currency and wipe out wages and pensions.

Opinion polls show a majority of Greeks favor holding on to the euro, but the referendum is shaping up to be a close call.

Summary: Greece's last-minute overtures were not enough to save the country from defaulting on a loan with the International Monetary Fund.


Interestingly, there's one stock that doesn't make the Bufferoo cut: Insurance Australia Group (IAG), which became Berkshire Hathaway's maiden acquisition in Australia earlier this year with the purchase of a 3.7 percent stake.

But has the Bufferoo lived up to the Buffett legend?

Read More Challenger sells 25% stake in Kapstream for $34m

Credit Suisse thinks it's done pretty well: "The portfolio has kept up with the Aussie market over the last 14 years and even outperformed more recently. Not bad for working one day a year," it said.

That compares, however, to an estimated 20 percent per annum for Berkshire's U.S. holdings, according to Credit Suisse.

"It seems Buffett has suffered from Dull Returns Outside The U.S. (DROTUS)," Credit Suisse noted, citing his median return on non-U.S. investments was an "uninspiring" around 8 percent a year, in line with market benchmarks outside the U.S.

—By CNBC.Com's Leslie Shaffer; Follow her on Twitter @LeslieShaffer1

Summary: Australia has a small club of shares Warren Buffett might buy, Credit Suisse said in the wake of the storied investor's first acquisition Down Under.


U.S. bond yields slipped from one-month high on Friday after the nonfarm payrolls data.

Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes—used to calculate mortgage rates and other consumer loans—dipped to 2.32 percent, after rising 18/32 in price. The yield was 2.404 percent before the employment data. Yields and prices are inversely related.

The 30-year bond price rose 25/32 in afternoon trading to yield 3.064 percent.

The Labor Department said the U.S. added 214,000 nonfarm jobs in October with an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent. Economists had forecast that 231,000 jobs were added to nonfarm payrolls in October, with the unemployment rate unchanged at 5.9 percent.

"The number was good, not great," Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group, said. "I think this post-number change [in yields] is just adjusting."

Read MoreChart: What's the real unemployment rate?

"The unemployment rate of 5.8 percent is not too far from the Fed's year-end 2015 target range of 5.4-5.6 percent thus putting the Fed even further behind the ball," Boockvar said in a note. "Expect a March rate hike."

The yield on two-year Treasury notes, which are sensitive to investors' views on changes in Fed policy, was last 0.507 percent. It retreated from a one-month peak of 0.567 percent shortly before the jobs data.

Summary: U.S. bond yields struggled to find direction on Friday after the all-important nonfarm payrolls data.


China cuts, new ECB purchases

The pan-European Euro Stoxx 600 index closed over 2 percent higher as mining stocks - with their heavy exposure to the world's second largest economy - surged close to 6 percent on the news. China's central bank announced it was cutting its benchmark lending and deposit rates and giving banks more freedom.

In early afternoon trade, the ECB also announced it had started its planned purchase of asset-backed securities, in a move to encourage banks to lend and revive the economy, helping to buoy sentiment further.

Read MoreStocks surge as China central bank cuts rates

Construction stocks and energy firms also saw impressive gains that helped the German DAX to provisionally close 2.6 percent, while the French CAC 40 logged gains of around 2.7 percent at market close. Italy's FTSE MIB officially ended 3.9 percent higher.

The rally brings a strong week for European market to a close, with the DAX and the FTSE MIB ending over 5 percent higher and CAC finishing 3.5 percent higher on the week.

In the U.S., stocks traded nearly 1 percent higher following the action from both China's central bank and the ECB.

Ahead of China's announcement, the president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi, made a speech at a European banking conference in Frankfurt. He said that the euro zone economy is likely to remain stagnant in the short-to-medium term. He added that the central bank stands ready to act fast to combat low inflation and that the inflation situation in the euro area has also become increasingly challenging.

The announcement of the ECB's new stimulus measures followed on Friday afternoon.

Read MoreECB must act to tackle low inflation: Draghi

Summary: European shares closed sharply higher as investors reacted to a surprise policy move by the Chinese central bank and new ECB stimulus measures.


A United Nations panel considering the alleged illegal detention of Julian Assange has reportedly ruled in favour of the WikiLeaks editor.

The BBC says it is understood the UN panel, which is due to release its findings on Friday, has ruled the Australian has been "arbitrarily detained" in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012.

Earlier today, Mr Assange said that if he lost his unlawful detention case against the UK and Sweden, "I shall exit the embassy at noon on Friday to accept arrest by British police as there is no meaningful prospect of further appeal".

If successful he said he would expect the immediate return of his passport and an end to attempts to arrest him.

However, since news broke of the ruling reportedly in Mr Assange's favour, London's Metropolitan Police has said their instructions have not changed and if Mr Assange leaves the embassy he will be arrested.

WikiLeaks has tweeted that it is still waiting for official confirmation from the UN.

Mr Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in central London since June 2012 when the Ecuadorian government granted him asylum due to his fear of extradition to the United States for the release of sensitive information.

The Australian-born cyber-activist also faces extradition to Sweden for questioning in relation to a 2010 sexual assault investigation in which he has denied responsibility.

The UK government has threatened to arrest him if he leaves the embassy.

In his application to the UN body, Mr Assange argued that his situation constitutes a deprivation of liberty because he is forced to choose between being confined or forfeiting his right to political asylum.

The application says he has been confined in an area of 30sq metres with no access to fresh air or sunlight for 816 days, while his communications are restricted or interfered with and he has no access to adequate medical facilities.

It notes he has not been charged with any offence.

The five members of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention are academics and experts in international law and human rights and include Australian Leigh Toomey, a former member of Australia's delegation to the UN General Assembly.

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Summary: Julian Assange has announced he will leave the Ecuardorian embassy on Friday to hand himself over to British and Swedish authorities.


People who lost money in TelexFree Inc., the alleged $3 billion global Ponzi scheme, will be able to start filing claims online starting April 1. But any payments will take much longer.

The trustee in the bankruptcy of the former Marlborough- and Brazil-based company said the system will help handle a vast volume of information. TelexFree is believed to be the largest Ponzi fraud ever in terms of participants, with 1.9 million people in 240 countries.

The claim system will be available in three languages -- English, Spanish, and Portuguese -- and will have online videos to assist claimaints, according to the trustee, Stephen Darr.

But alleged victims will likely have to wait months more for any potential repayments. Federal authorities have seized about $150 million in assets from the former company and its owners. But those funds will not be available until a verdict is reached in the government’s criminal case against them.

Darr also is trying to get more money back for victims. He is suing 15,000 US residents and 78,000 people abroad who reaped profits improperly in TelexFree. In a Ponzi scheme, new participants’ money is used to pay off earlier participants.

The company purported to sell Internet phone service but brought in most of its money from people who purchased “accounts” of $1,400 each, prosecutors have alleged. As investors spread the word to friends and family, the enterprise ballooned in size.

Claimants can seek only the money they put into TelexFree, the court has ruled, not the profits they were promised. Even then, there isn’t nearly enough money to cover all the losses.

The trial is scheduled to start in October. James Merrill of Ashland and Carlos Wanzeler, formerly of Northborough, both face civil and criminal fraud charges in the case. Merrill is out on bail with a GPS monitoring device; Wanzeler has taken refuge in his native Brazil, and US authorities have been negotiating to bring him back for the trial in Massachusetts.

For TelexFree’s alleged victims, it’s been a long wait already. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2014.

A federal judge in January approved the trustee’s recommendation of BMC Group Inc. of Seattle to build the claims system within 60 days. The firm will be paid $187,500 in two parts, plus $7,500 a month to host the website, according to court records.

Sorting through the claims will be an enormous process, said Darr, who has heard from alleged victims from Chelsea and Framingham to Russia and China. He has also been contacted by lawyers saying they represent large groups, including 60,000 people in South Africa.

As part of the claim process, Darr said, payments will have to be approved by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, part of the US Department of the Treasury, to ensure the money is not being paid to terrorists or traffickers.

Summary: Web-based filing system is set to open April 1. Any payment of money lost in the alleged $3 billion Ponzi scheme will take much longer.


Photo: Eric Gay, Associated Press

QB Vernon Adams to the 49ers? Odds are against it

Is Oregon quarterback Vernon Adams the next Russell Wilson?

It’s possible, but it sounds as if Chip Kelly would think it’s folly to try to find out.

Adams, of course, is an intriguing late-round prospect. Before he was the East-West Shrine Game’s Offensive MVP in January, he threw 26 touchdowns and six interceptions and led the nation in passing efficiency in 2015. His one-season stint with the Ducks was preceded by three seasons at Eastern Washington, where he was a two-time runner-up for the Walter Payton Award, given to the top player in FCS.

Adams achieved great heights in college, but many question if his height will prevent him from achieving NFL success. Adams measured 5-10 7/8 inches at the combine, and his stature has drawn endless comparisons to Wilson (5-10 5/8).

For his part, Kelly said teams that spend a draft pick in hopes they’ve found the next Wilson are facing long odds. He noted before teams were seeking Wilson 2.0, they wanted the next Doug Flutie, a 5-10 Heisman Trophy winner who made his NFL debut in 1986.

“For 25 years, everyone was looking for the next Doug Flutie,” Kelly said. “And there really wasn’t one, arguably, until Russell came around. There’s a big span between 5-10 quarterbacks. It’s a lot easier to take a bunch of 6-5 guys and figure out who’s going to be your quarterback. Because they have a better chance of being successful at it. You’re just really playing the odds.”

Many have connected Adams to the 49ers, presumably because he shares an Oregon connection with Kelly. At the combine, Adams said he’d be a quick study in Kelly’s offense based on his season in Eugene.

“I watched them in Philly last year, and pretty much 80 percent or 90 percent of the plays I’d see I could call out that we run at Oregon,” Adams said. “I think I could really come in and run that offense, too.”

Despite the comparisons, Adams and Wilson have some different combine measurables. Wilson ran faster (4.55 to 4.83 in 40), jumped higher (34 inches to 29 ½ in vertical jump) and leapt farther (9-10 to 9-6 in broad jump) in Indianapolis. In addition, Wilson has huge hands (10 ¼ inches), which Kelly suggested has helped him overcome his lack of height. Adams (9 1/8 inches) had the fourth-smallest hands of the 18 quarterbacks at the combine.

Kelly said he wouldn’t completely dismiss a short quarterback, but it sounds as if Adams better have a heck of a highlight reel to land with the 49ers.

“It’s not a rule -- it’s more of a guideline,” Kelly said. “You still have to put the tape on.”

Summary: Before he was the East-West Shrine Game’s Offensive MVP in January, he threw 26 touchdowns and six interceptions and led the nation in passing efficiency in 2015.  Adams achieved great heights in college, but many question if his height will prevent him from achieving NFL success.  Adams measured 5-10 7/8 inches at the combine, and his stature has drawn endless comparisons to Wilson (5-10 5/8).  [...] Kelly said teams that spend a draft pick in hopes they’ve found the next Wilson are facing long odds.  Because they have a better chance of being successful at it.  [...] Wilson has huge hands (10 ¼ inches), which Kelly suggested has helped him overcome his lack of height.  Kelly said he wouldn’t completely dismiss a short quarterback, but it sounds as if Adams better have a heck of a highlight reel to land with the 49ers.


The names and amounts they spend may surprise you.

AdAge got their hands on some secret Google documents over the weekend which detail how much some big companies spend on Google Adwords. Here’s the big graphic:

Not surprisingly, BP BP blew out its normal spend in June, trying to recover from the Gulf Oil Spill catastrophe.

AT&T T Mobility was the big spender for the month, mostly because they had two big new summer products. The iPhone 4 and the BlackBerry RIMM Torch (where’s that Android marketing AT&T?) were both marketed heavily. Apollo Group, the advertising monster that is the University of Phoenix college, spent almost 7 million in June. eBay EBAY and Amazon AMZN both also spent over $5 million.

One big surprise: Google phone OS and advertising rival, Apple AAPL , spent almost a million dollars in June on Google’s advertising.

Google GOOG isn’t too happy about the leak and the exposure that its biggest ad spenders are now receiving.

“We can’t comment on these figures because we haven’t seen the document in question or determined what these numbers represent,” said Dennis Woodside, VP of Google Americas Operations. “We’re now looking into the possibility that someone improperly disclosed confidential information about our clients, and [we] will take all appropriate action.”

Summary: The names and amounts they spend may surprise you. AdAge got their hands on some secret Google documents over the weekend which detail how much some big companies spend on Google Adwords.  Here's the big graphic: Not surprisingly, BP blew out its normal spend in June, trying to recover from the Gulf Oil Spill catastrophe. AT&T…


The "selfie" was posted on Instagram late Sunday by user "speeeeeed_of_white." The user's profile page identifies the person in the picture as Tom White, "making the world a better place since 1997."

The Omaha World-Herald, the daily newspaper owned by Berkshire Hathaway, reports there were multiple sightings of Buffett and McCartney Sunday night in the Dundee section of Omaha.

McCartney is scheduled to give a concert in Lincoln, Nebraska Monday night. That's about a one-hour drive from Omaha.

According to the newspaper, Buffett and his daughter Susie had a 2-1/2 hour dinner with McCartney and two others at an Italian restaurant called Avoli.

Afterwards, they walked up the street for ice cream at eCreamery, which they ate on a bench outside the shop.

Here are some of other photos posted on Twitter of McCartney and Buffett, as storified by the World-Herald. (McCartney seems to be getting most of the attention.)

Summary: A young man's "selfie" photograph with Warren Buffett and Paul McCartney sitting on a bench is getting a lot of attention on the Internet today.


Score one for the “gig economy” — a slice of the working world where young companies offering products and services through mobile apps rely on independent contractors long on flexibility and short on benefits.

A pair of federal lawsuits, brought by a Boston labor lawyer on behalf of drivers in California and Massachusetts, sought to force Uber Technologies Inc. to classify the drivers as employees, an enormously expensive change that would have threatened the ride-hailing company’s business model and sent ripples through the start up world.

But the legal challenge fell short, with a settlement announced Thursday night that will cost the company as much as $100 million but leave it free to use freelance drivers.

The Uber cases had been closely watched for their potential to rein in the use of contractors by on-demand companies, a trend that some business thinkers predict will replace 9-to-5 employment for many workers. But because the cases were settled, rather than decided by a judge or jury, it’s not clear whether all companies will plow forward along with Uber.

Some venture capitalists have pulled back from the on-demand sector, spooked by the potential for huge legal bills. At least one well-funded startup, cleaning service provider Homejoy Inc., said it shut down partly because of lawsuits over its labor practices. Other startups have bucked the Uber trend, deciding to make their workers official employees.

Boston Uber drivers don’t expect a big cut of the deal, or for much to change.

For Uber, a company with a private market value of $62 billion in December, the $100-million settlment was seen as a relatively small price to pay to avoid the costs of health care, payroll taxes, and other expenses that come with full-fledged employees.

The settlement was not a complete victory for the California-based company, which says some 450,000 drivers use its app each month in the United States, including more than 20,000 people working as drivers in Boston.

Under terms of the deal, which still needs a judge’s approval, drivers can only be removed from Uber’s system for sufficient cause and will be represented by a nonunion “Drivers Association” that will hold quarterly meetings with management. Passengers will be informed that Uber fares do not automatically include tips.

Boston-based attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who brought the cases against Uber, conceded in a statement Thursday that “some will be disappointed not to see this case go to trial in June. We were looking forward to this trial.”

But, she added, “the case is being settled — not decided. No court has decided here whether Uber drivers are employees or independent contractors and that debate will not end here. . . . Many companies have chosen to go the other way and not fight this battle, and instead to classify their workers as employees with all the protections that accompany that classification.”

Some labor experts said not all companies will take Uber’s controversial stance of trying to maintain a degree of control over its workers while still keeping them as contractors.

“They decided to reopen what seemed like a pretty closed question,” Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman said, referring to Uber. “This was sufficiently well settled in most states — certainly in Massachusetts, California, and New York — that most employers wouldn’t want to play this game anymore. Because it’s an expensive game.”

Uber’s top competitor, Lyft Inc., agreed to a similar settlement in January.

Instacart, a grocery-delivery service, announced last summer that it was converting some of its in-store shoppers from contract labor to employment after a pilot experiment in Boston. Hello Alfred, a New York-based startup that provides personal assistants to its subscribers, decided to hire front-line workers at a rate of between $18 and $30 an hour rather than treat them as contractors.

Hello Alfred’s chief executive, Marcela Sapone, said the decision likely increased her startup’s costs by 20 to 30 percent and gave it less flexibility as it seeks to grow quickly.

“On the plus side, it gave us the ability to train our employees without feeling like we were stepping over a line,” she said. “And it signaled to an emerging supply pool that we were serious about having good jobs and paying well.”

The Uber case, and similar lawsuits brought against other on-demand startups, made investors more wary of pitches from new companies seeking to be the next Uber, said Roger Lee, a venture capitalist with Battery Ventures.

“You had some of the first-generation guys not work, and you had uncertainty on the business models going forward. So I think in general, investors have been cautious in diving too deeply into it,” he said.

Investments in on-demand companies plummeted at the end of last year, dropping from $7.3 billion in the third quarter to less than $2 billion in the fourth quarter, investment analysis company CB Insights found.

Some observers said the Uber settlement could help establish a new model for front-line labor forces, with nonemployee workers who still have more protections and rights than a traditional independent contractor.

These workers may want the benefits that come with regular full-time jobs while maintaining the ability to work whatever hours they choose, said Arun Sundararajan, author of the upcoming book “The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism.”

“You’ve got this Faustian bargain: You either get the flexibility or you get the benefits,” said Sundararajan, a New York University professor. “All we’ve got to do is come up with a funding model that allows both.”

Summary: A pair of lawsuits failed to force the ride-sharing company to make its drivers full-fledged employees.


The U.S. robotics industry has been powered in large part by the military, which provides funding and field testing for drones and disaster-relief robots, while Silicon Valley has nurtured innovations in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems such as Google's self-driving car.

"To be honest, the U.S. is a concern," said Osamu Sudo, who helped to craft Japan's robotics strategy as director of the industrial machinery division at the trade ministry, where he served until early July.

Other countries are also pushing robotics to the forefront of industrial policy: China, where sales grew 32-fold over the last decade to eclipse Japan as the biggest robot market in 2013, aims to make one-third of its own robots by 2015. .

South Korea has a five-year plan to spend $500 million a year on its robotics industry, while the European Union has earmarked 100 million euros ($125 million) a year to its Horizon 2020 program that aims to pull in a further 2 billion euros annually in private funding.

Japan is trying to keep up: ministries have requested 16 billion yen ($138 million) for direct investment in robotics in the next fiscal year.

Read MoreRobots 'invade' Starwood Hotels

But success will depend largely on reforming a fragmented regulatory process that can set insurmountable hurdles by mandating absolute safety, said Atsuo Takanishi, a professor at Waseda University specializing in robotics.

The trade ministry has convinced health ministry officials to relax certification procedures for medical devices and introduce affordable robots to nursing homes on a trial basis.

It also pushed for an international safety standard for care robots that Panasonic Corp cleared in February with a robotic nursing bed that folds up into a wheelchair, eliminating the need for care-givers to lift their patients.

With the freeing of regulations, Kiyoshi Sawaki, who recently replaced Sudo as head of the trade ministry's industrial machinery division, is confident that the government has created sufficient opportunities to succeed in robotics.

"The approval process is being simplified," he said. "So companies can't use the same excuses that they did before."

Summary: Japan, with the world's largest robot population, is awakening to a crisis as its lead in robotics comes under threat from better-coordinated efforts abroad.


05/04/2016 AT 03:45 PM EDT

has had a constant smile on her face. Now, the singer is opening up about her new style, which may have a little to do with her boyfriend.

"My life has changed dramatically in the last year. I think that style definitely reflects your mood," she says in a new interview with

, shared exclusively with PEOPLE. "Maybe it's a little more feminine right now."

coach – who has a new collection of sunglasses and eyeglasses through her L.A.M.B. and gx by Gwen Stefani lines – had her life turned upside down when she went through

"Definitely my life has gone somewhere else – that's for sure – so maybe my style is reflecting that, which is great. It's always fun to evolve, so I feel good about that."

The "Made Me Like You" singer demurred when it came to naming specifics about what made her

, but admitted he was a strong shoulder to lean on

"When you're going through a really tough time, there are people that come in your life, like a friend that can help you get through things, and he's definitely one of those people," she explained. "That's it. I feel like, when it comes to my life, I can say so much already in my songs."

Summary: "Definitely my life has gone somewhere else – that's for sure – so maybe my style is reflecting that," she says


Billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban isn’t hiding what he thinks about real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

On his Cyberdust app, the Shark Tank star took aim at Trump’s net worth and just how much cash he has in the bank to run for president. Trump currently sits atop the polls among Republican presidential hopefuls.

“Hey, Dusters, let’s talk Trump. So much to say that it can’t happen in one blast. But the first place to start is his net worth,” he wrote. “He has been bragging that he is worth north of ten billion dollars.”

Cuban continued that while the number sounds large, it’s actually a “play number.” He explained his reasoning: “Let’s say you own a painting that gets appraised at 10 billion dollars. That gives you a net worth of 10 billion. But that does not mean you have a lot of cash. In fact it’s possible to be worth billions, but not be able to pay your rent.”

But Cuban continues. He said that we won’t know how much cash Trump actually has, but that running for president “takes a lot” of it. “We have yet to see Trump spend much on building an organization, which is critical to getting votes. We have yet to see that he has raised money from supporters. After all who feels the need to donate money to a guy who says he is worth 10 billion dollars?” he said.

And maybe the most damning sentence of it all: “It’s the Trump Conundrum. He is a Paper Tiger.”

Trump’s campaign announced his $10 billion net worth last week. In recent days, Trump has lost numerous business partnerships based on controversial comments about immigration.

For more about Trump, Fortune spoke with winners of his reality television show The Apprentice about his leadership qualities.

Summary: He calls him a "Paper Tiger."