OPERA fans have much to anticipate when the fall television season gets under way -a far cry from the days, not so long ago, when opera on the home screen was considered television box-office poison. The turning point came with the first ''Live From the Met'' telecast over the Public Broadcasting Service on March 15, 1977, a ''La Boheme'' with Renata Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti that attracted an unprecedented 7,655,000 viewers. Since then, opera has become an increasingly important ingredient in PBS's programming, and the 1981-82 lineup promises more than ever.

The Metropolitan leads off on Sept. 30 with ''La Traviata,'' taped last March 28, with Ileana Cotrubas, Placido Domingo and Cornell MacNeil. Also scheduled is a ''Rigoletto'' starring Christiane Eda-Pierre, Mr. Pavarotti and Sherrill Milnes, and the company's new production of ''La Boheme.'' James Levine conducts all three operas. Two or three other ''Live From the Met'' telecasts are in the planning stage, with operas and casts to be announced later.

PBS's ''Great Performances'' series will include at least one live broadcast from the New York City Opera, and Janacek's ''The Cunning Little Vixen'' is under discussion as a possible candidate. Later in the season PBS plans to show the San Francisco Opera's ''Samson et Dalila,'' taped last September with Shirley Verrett and Placido Domingo. From Europe there will be a Monteverdi festival, three productions staged in Zurich by Jean-Pierre Ponelle and conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Last year's ''L'Incoronazione di Poppea'' by Monteverdi proved so popular that it will be repeated, along with the composer's ''Orfeo'' and ''Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria.''

Another coming Ponelle extravaganza, Mozart's ''La Clemenza di Tito,'' is based on his Salzburg production. James Levine conducts with Carol Neblett, Tatiana Troyanos and Catherine Malfitano taking the leading roles. The film version was shot on location at the Forum, the Baths of Caracalla, Hadrian's Arch and other historic Roman sites, all at night, so that Mr. Ponelle could control the lighting and atmospheric effects.

Around Christmas, there will be a ''Fledermaus'' featuring Gundula Janowitz and the late Wolfgang Windgassen, with Karl Bohm conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. The Leonard Bernstein ''Fidelio'' will be reshown as part of a three-part Bernstein package completed by a lieder recital with Christa Ludwig and a performance of the Mahler Fifth Symphony, all originating in Vienna.

According to Peter Weinberg, WNET-TV's director of music programming, Patrice Chereau's Bayreuth ''Ring'' cycle, taped at last summer's festival, will be shown in the 1982-83 season. Meanwhile, the Houston Grand Opera's present revival of Scott Joplin's ''Treemonisha'' is about to be filmed for television distribution. Upstate Flute Farm

Next Monday, the seventh annual weeklong Flute Farm will be held in Woodstock, N.Y., and Harvey Sollberger is again nurturing this year's crop. The Flute Farm is not, as its name irresistibly suggests, a pastoral spot where rows of piccolo sprouts ripen into fields of golden flutes, but an intensive summer course in contemporary flute literature and techniques, open to both beginners and experienced players.

Mr. Sollberger is a well-known New York composer and conductor, a co-director of the Group for Contemporary Music and a much-admired flute virtuoso. He has just received a special performance grant from the Fromm Foundation of Harvard University in recognition of his services to contemporary music.

During the summer he adds teaching duties to his other activities, passing on his practical knowledge of the instrument to budding professionals. ''The Flute Farm course is built along very simple and basic lines,'' Mr. Sollberger said - ''no deans or committees on academic policies, just a teacher and students with a receptive attitude to new challenges.''

The Flute Farm is just one more indication of the instrument's popularity on the concert scene today, especially in the area of contemporary music. Methods of playing the flute have expanded so dramatically over the last 20 years that the sort of instruction Mr. Sollberger offers is becoming a necessity for any young flutist who wants to keep pace with the developments.

Packed into next week's course are private lessons, master classes, ensembles and recitals as well as seminars in recent literature and new techniques, including electronics. ''It's great fun,'' Mr. Sollberger added, ''but we work very hard and usually accomplish a great deal, even in just a few days.''

Interested future flute farmers may reach Mr. Sollberger at 270 West 91st Street, New York, N.Y. 10024. Jet-Hopping Artists

Anyone who suffers from jet lag should think twice about a career in music these days. In the last week, a random sampling of musicians on the wing found Placido Domingo singing ''La Gioconda'' on the 20th in Berlin, offering ''La Marseillaise'' at President Francois Mitterrand's inauguration in Paris the next evening and jetting back to Berlin for more ''Giocondas'' the next day. The tenor arrives in New York on June 14 for a ''Tosca'' with the Metropolitan Opera in Central Park and will take off the next morning for ''Otello'' in Buenos Aires.

Mignon Dunn left the Met tour in Minneapolis last Friday, flew to Germany for a ''Tristan'' in Dusseldorf on Sunday and rejoined the tour in Detroit on Monday in time to sing ''Cavalleria Rusticana.'' The mezzo-soprano reports that she never even bothered to reset her watch. Erich Leinsdorf, in Vienna a couple of weeks ago, found a few days at his disposal to take the Los Angeles Philharmonic on tour to Mexico City, Dallas and Ames, Iowa, returning to Vienna handily for his next engagement there. With a two-week break between Met ''Traviatas'' in Minneapolis and Cleveland, Sherrill Milnes took up the slack by dashing off to Prague for a ''Don Giovanni'' last Saturday night and a ''Macbeth'' on Tuesday. Some Other Tunes

The Ensemble for Early Music has declined its grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the 1981-82 season in protest of the endowment's cutbacks, which were ordered before the Reagan Administration proposed other cuts. The ensemble would have received $1,300, compared to last year's $2,000. ... Two unusual collaborations between dancers and musicians take place next week. On Tuesday in Alice Tully Hall, Jerry Brainard will play Bach's ''Art of the Fugue'' on the harpsichord and organ with choreographic accompaniment by the Battery Dance Company. In Carnegie Hall the next evening, Garrick Ohlsson plays Chopin on the piano, joined by the dancer Annabelle Gamson. ... Jens Nygaard is planning to direct a series of outdoor concerts during June in a park adjacent to 242 Snediker Avenue, Brooklyn, the house where George Gershwin was born in 1898. The concerts are designed to call attention to the fact that the building has not been deemed eligible for landmark status and will shortly be demolished.


It may be difficult for Republicans to displace Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, but they don't have to worry about finding a replacement for Bruce F. Caputo, their original choice to take on the one-term Democrat. Last week, days after Mr. Caputo bowed out following ''misstatements'' about an Army record he didn't possess, Whitney North Seymour Jr., a former United States Attorney, bowed in.

''I think the party needs all the help it can get right now,'' said Mr. Seymour, a moderate who lost a 1968 Congressional race to Mayor Koch. Other potential G.O.P. candidates include Glenn E. Warren, a Dutchess County Assemblyman admired by Conservative Party leaders who had backed Mr. Caputo but are unethusiastic about Mr. Seymour, and Representative Hamilton Fish Jr., who has said he would not run if it meant entering a primary.

Though he thinks ''very highly'' of Mr. Seymour, George L. Clark Jr., the Republican state chairman, said he has no plans to endorse him, or anyone else, soon. Mr. Clark, of course, could be preoccupied with the gubernatorial contest, which, with the withdrawal of State Comptroller Edward V. Regan, was narrowed to a field including businessman Lewis E. Lehrman, Assembly minority leader James L. Emery and Richard M. Rosenbaum, a Republican national committeeman.

The Democrats were assured of a gubernatorial primary of their own last week, when Lieut. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo formally announced his candidacy. Mr. Cuomo thus sets up a rematch with Mr. Koch, who defeated him in the 1977 Democratic mayoral primary and election.


Summer is upon us. And, although the index of leading indicators showed the first increase in a year last month, additional signs of a recovery that many analysts expect to build between now and Labor Day are few and far between. Personal incomes are rising, but so is unemployment. Inventories are being liquidated, but short-term borrowings are still growing at a rapid rate. Rather than gaining momentum, the economy seems to be struggling to stand fast. Output, despite hopes to the contrary, seems likely to remain in a rolling trough through the summer.

Economists have until now based their upbeat second-half scenarios on the July tax cut and a meaningful budget compromise. Together, the two would lift incomes and bring real interest rates down to more realistic levels. Now, however, it seems increasingly likely that that stimulus may founder in indecision, leaving the economy in its current muddle.

The tax cut is coming, and it could boost spending. Congress, however, seems no closer to a budget consensus than it was last winter. And the longer the economy can hold up against high interest rates, the less likely a summer solution to the budget impasse becomes. Leaner Inventories

These days, the leaner the warehouse stocks can get, the better. And, while some economists assumed that last quarter's record $17 billion inventory reduction marked the end of the run-off, others say it could go lower. As a consequence, April's Commerce Department figures, due Wednesday, are expected to show further declines. High real rates of interest and decaying balance sheets are forcing companies to lower their estimates of desirable inventory levels, said Donald Ratajczak, an economic forecaster at Georgia State University. The pace of liquidation is slowing, he said, but another $12 billion worth of inventory is likely to come off the shelves in the second quarter. The lower rate of reduction should help G.N.P. this quarter, but the advantage isn't likely to be as great as some analysts project. Inventories aren't likely to start growing again until the third quarter, Mr. Ratajczak said. The pace of the buildup should quicken in the fourth quarter, he said. A Detroit Rebound?

These are strange times in Detroit. For the past 20 days, sales have risen at an encouraging clip. The nation's auto makers don't seem to think the upswing will last, however, and have lowered June production schedules. But the building blocks for a strong recovery seem to be falling into place. Some analysts predict that consumers will wake up to that fact in the second half and will resume buying cars despite high interest rates.

In conjunction with lower gasoline prices and a nine-month freeze on sticker prices, the rise in real income from the July tax cut and increased Social Security payments could lift sales by as much as 1.2 million units from current levels, said David Levine, an economist at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. The gains from those areas, Mr. Levine said, will be enough to offset a rise in interest rates - almost certain in the second half. As a result, sales, which reached an annual rate of 7.2 million units in April, are likely to jump to 9.3 million in the third quarter and 9.9 million in the fourth. Bonn's Bleak Outlook

After hearing complaints about the adverse effects of his Administration's monetary and fiscal policies upon other industrial countries for more than a year, President Reagan will have an opportunity this week to see what all the shouting has been about when he begins a nine-day swing through Europe. The Versailles summit meeting may be the focal point, but visits to West Germany and elsewhere are likely to provide hard evidence of prevailing economic conditions.

Although the worst of the current recession may be over in West Germany, unless the United States economy bounces back strongly, its outlook is less than luminous, said David Rolley, an international economist at Chase Econometrics.

In the past two years, unemployment has nearly doubled. A cheap German mark has been a boon to exports, but high interest rates have hampered investment. Inflation, now around 5 percent, is likely to go lower, however, improving purchasing power and laying the groundwork for a domestic recovery, Mr. Rolley said.

If the rest of the industrialized nations, and particularly the United States, recover in the second half and into next year, West Germany's real gross national product could rise as much as 2 percent this year, and another 3.5 percent in 1983. But continued stagnation elsewhere would nearly halve those forecasts, he said. Kenneth N. Gilpin

Illustrations: chart of changes in inventories in billions of '72' dollars

Summary: The Rolling Trough   Summer is upon us. And, although the index of leading indicators showed the first increase in a year last month, additional signs of a recovery that many analysts expect to build between now and Labor Day are few and far between. Personal incomes are rising, but so is unemployment. Inventories are being liquidated, but short-term borrowings are still growing at a rapid rate. Rather than gaining momentum, the economy seems to be struggling to stand fast. Output, despite hopes to the contrary, seems likely to remain in a rolling trough through the summer.   Economists have until now based their upbeat second-half scenarios on the July tax cut and a meaningful budget compromise. Together, the two would lift incomes and bring real interest rates down to more realistic levels. Now, however, it seems increasingly likely that that stimulus may founder in indecision, leaving the economy in its current muddle.


, the Framingham-based corporate wellness arm of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group empire, announced Wednesday that it had

The 11-year-old company has developed incentive programs for Coca-Cola, CBS, AOL, BP, and Zappos, but this is the first time it has raised funds. Chief executive Chris Boyce said the funding round will help support the company’s international growth and allow it to continue to build its local team.

In the decade since Virgin Pulse was launched, it has become corporate gospel that healthy employees are better for the bottom line.

And over time, wellness plans have become more inventive and dynamic, with federal regulators recently approving the use of financial incentives to reward employees and nudge them toward better habits. The influx of wearable devices on the market has also allowed companies to pull information from their employees’ fitness trackers and sync it with their preexisting programs.

That the market is increasingly crowded may explain why Virgin Pulse saw fit to raise money. The round was led by Insight Venture Partners of New York; two of its partners will join Virgin Pulse’s board.

“Insight is a fantastic partner. They bring a ton of B2B tech and SaaS experience, and those two strengths will make us a better company in the long term,” Boyce said, referring to “business to business” and “software as a service” expertise.

Boyce said the funds will help Virgin Pulse rapidly expand its reach. The company would like to move beyond helping employees count steps and calories to offering programs on financial wellness. Boyce said he also hopes to draw on the reputation of the Virgin brand and bring Pulse programs to more international clients. The company employs 200 at its Framingham offices, and Boyce anticipates a larger team will help Virgin Pulse dive deeper into the data it has collected over time.

The company currently serves 250 corporate clients and provides its services to 2 million users.

Summary: The corporate wellness arm of Richard Branson's Virgin Group empire, which has developed corporate incentive programs for Coca-Cola, CBS, AOL, BP, and Zappos, has never raised funding until now. But chief executive Chris Boyce said that the funds will help support their international growth and allow them to continue to build their local team.


At least nine people when a suicide bomber detonated himself at a funeral for victims of a roadside bomb attack (AAP)

At least nine people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated himself at a funeral for the victims of a roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, provincial officials said.

"A suicide attacker detonated himself when he was identified by the police," said Khawani, the deputy security chief of eastern Laghman province where the attack took place, who goes by one name.

"Nine people were killed -- five police and four civilians -- as a result of the attack," he told AFP, adding that 34 people were also wounded by the bomb.

Earlier a local official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said at least eight people were killed in the attack in the city of Mehtarlam.

Laghman governor spokesman Sarhadi Zwak placed the death toll at 16, with another 39 wounded.

No one has claimed responsiblity for the attack but suicide bombings are a hallmark of the Taliban's war against foreign and Afghan security forces, now in its fourteenth year.

The insurgents are able to mount regular attacks across swathes of the country, particularly southern and eastern provinces.

Thursday's funeral was being held for a police commander and three other people who were killed in a roadside bomb blast, according to Zwak.

Afghanistan saw a surge in violence last year as international forces wound down their combat mission, which began in 2001. It has now been downgraded to support and training duties to help the Afghan army and police.

About 17,000 foreign soldiers, most of them from the US, will remain in Afghanistan as part of the new mission.

But US troop numbers are set to halve within 12 months and fall to almost nothing in two years.

Civilian casualties rose 19 percent from the previous year to a record high in 2014, with nearly 3,200 civilians killed and over 6,400 injured, according to a UN report released in December.

Casualties among children jumped a third and among women by 12 percent by the end of November, in the deadliest year for non-combatants, said the report.

Afghanistan is also grappling with political instability after lawmakers Wednesday rejected most of President Ashraf Ghani's nominees for the new cabinet, a fresh setback for the newly formed "national unity government".

Ghani, like his predecessor Hamid Karzai, has promised to reach out to the Taliban to find a lasting peace for his country, without compromising on fundamental values including women's rights.

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: At least nine people were killed Thursday when a suicide bomber detonated himself at a funeral for the victims of a roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, provincial officials said.


US equities turned in the best week since April as investors were captivated by the Fed’s script for managing the US economy and mostly ignoring Greece’s situation.

The S&P 500 finished higher even as it slipped in Friday’s session. Equities rose as Fed chair Janet Yellen signaled the central bank won’t raise interest rates quickly as officials hold out for more decisive evidence of an economic rebound.

With the Fed taking center stage, US investors pushed the situation in Greece to the wings. While a Greek default would have a symbolic impact, the nation is likely too small for the impact to spill over to US markets.

Health insurers surged on speculation the industry is headed for a round of mergers to boost profits. In biotech, Kythera Biopharmaceuticals Inc. soared on Allergan PLC’s $2.1 billion purchase.

Summary: Investors were captivated by the Federal Reserve’s script for managing the American economy, ignoring the improvisations on the Greek stage.


In the late 1950s, a pair of American entrepreneurs set out to manufacture a sporty convertible in Ireland. Called the Shamrock, it placed a super-lightweight body of fibreglass on a chassis powered by a small Austin engine. It resembled the then-new Ford Thunderbird, but was planned to sell at half the price of its American inspiration.

The Shamrock was an engineering disaster, underpowered and inept, and hilariously required dropping the axle to change a rear tire. Eight were completed. Parts for dozens – perhaps hundreds – of others were dumped into Lough Muckno in County Monaghan.

This year, an Irish inventor and designer named Tom Finnegan, working with a company called Swift Composite Prototypes, has announced plans to develop and build a sporty electric vehicle called the Alex eroadster. This Tesla-inspired two-seater will feature a lightweight composite body and a pair of electric motors driving the rear wheels.

But there is reason to believe that the Alex will not be a Shamrock sequel. Finnegan and Swift are working with a host of universities and research centers in Europe, including Denmark's Ecomove, which will apply its innovative Qstrung composite chassis technology to the eroadster. And unlike the Shamrock, the Alex won't embarrass itself on the road: Swift promises the car will hum from zero to 62mph in less than 10 seconds and cruise for at least 155 miles between charging.

The pre-prototype design is cartoonishly futuristic, with a tilt-forward canopy for entry and oversized wheels. But it looks fast, and looking fast was enough to make a middling success of Ireland’s other big automotive adventure, the DeLorean DMC-12.

(Credit: Tom Finnegan/Swift Composite Prototypes)

(Credit: Tom Finnegan/Swift Composite Prototypes)

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

Summary: An innovative two-seater called the Alex eroadster could be the first Irish car in three decades.


Teen Choice Awards 8 p.m., FoxThe goal of this annual gala is to honor serious achievements in movies, music, TV, sports, and fashion — and not to promote entertainment products to younger demographics, definitely not that. Performers Little Mix and 5 Seconds of Summer and celebrities Cat Deeley, Adam DeVine, Sarah Hyland, and Bella Thorne are scheduled to appear.

P.O.V.: Neuland 10 p.m., WGBH 2

This documentary looks at the young migrants in a Swiss integration class, who are looking to start new lives. Apart from their families, they work to learn a new language and prepare for jobs. Among the pupils: a young man from Afghanistan who must raise $20,000 to repay a loan or his parents, still in Afghanistan, will lose their property.

CSI: Cyber 11:35 p.m., CBS

No, I’m not suggesting you watch this repeat, although it might not be a bad distraction. I want to point out that yet another major late-night landmark of 2015 — after the departures of David Letterman and Jon Stewart — is approaching, and it will take over the 11:35 spot that CBS has been filling with repeats of procedurals. On Sept. 8, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” will premiere, and the first guest will be George Clooney.

Dating Naked: Playing for Keeps 9 p.m., VH1

VH1 describes this series, which features naked people with blurred-out genitals playing dating games, as an antidote to connecting with people online. Being naked, as the channel’s website explains it, enables the singles to bare their souls more easily. My nickname for the show? “Dating Naked: Playing for Peeps.” This season, two new men and two new women strip down each week to compete for “primary daters” Kerri and Chris.

Documentary Now! 10 p.m., IFC

This new series could be fun, as it parodies well-known documentaries, including “Grey Gardens.” The irresistible stars? “Saturday Night Live” alums Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, who has been showing his range in movies such as “The Skeleton Twins” and “Trainwreck.” Also in the mix across the six-episode season: John Slattery, Jack Black, and Helen Mirren.

Maz Jobrani: I’m Not a Terrorist But I’ve Played One on TV

Comedian Maz Jobrani, whose TV shows have included “Better Off Ted” and “The Knights of Prosperity,” and who is often on NPR’s “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me,” follows up his memoir of the same title with this special. He looks at political and social issues in connection with his Iranian-American background.

The Unauthorized Full House Story 8 p.m., Lifetime

Lifetime continues its “Unauthorized” film franchise with this scripted look at the “Full House” cast dealing with the pressures of being in a hit sitcom. How much of a hit was the show? It ran for 192 episodes.

Summary: The goal of Teen Choice Awards is to honor achievement in movies, music, TV, sports, and fashion — and not to promote entertainment products to younger demographics, definitely not that.


Like dating websites, the advisor platforms use an initial questionnaire to gather information about the user. An investor can input the services desired—i.e. investment management, tax planning, estate planning. They can add more specific information, including income, risk tolerance and investment time horizon. Or even more specific sub-categories, like alternative assets, socially responsible investing, an advisor who specializes in small businesses or advising women.

Once the proprietary algorithms match them with a list of advisors, it's up to the investor to make the first move by emailing, calling and, ultimately, if they want, meeting in person—all free of charge to the prospective investor.

Read MoreThe biggest risks to your portfolio in 2015: Advisors

If GuideVine is hoping that an investor and advisor "click" on any one of a number of shared traits and interests, Finom is a matchmaker that wants to get to the heart of the matter quickly. It's designed to screen advisors based solely on their performance history and area of expertise. It requires advisors to provide client level holdings information across all their portfolios so an investor can judge whether they'd be better off breaking up with their current advisor.

"We give them all our data, and they rip through our trades to look at our performance," said John M. Nowicki, president of Chicago-based LCM Capital Management and a Finom user who had tired of endless rounds of cold-calling or buying leads for potential clients from 401(K) plans.

"I've been in this business for over 20 years, and I have never seen anything that gave investors this sort of accessibility in an objective way," said Dan Timotic, an advisor at Naperville, Illinois-based T2 Asset Management.

Summary: The referral method of finding a financial advisor has met its match—namely, Match.com-like sites that set up investors with advisors.


Intel's biggest problem is a generational one, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday.

"[PC's] is not where the market is going," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." "It's all hand-held; 55 percent of people can't live without their hand-held [devices]. Intel is not known for its hand-held."

"When you're on a plane, people are using their cellphones to watch movies," Cramer said.

Cramer made his remarks shortly after the chip-making giant cut its first-quarter guidance from about $13.7 billion to about $12.8 billion. The company's stock plunged after the announcement. (Click here for the latest price.)

Intel blamed the lower outlook on poor demand for desktop upgrades, as well as "challenging macroeconomic and currency conditions, particularly in Europe."

The euro recently fell to near-12-year lows as the dollar soared on expectations that the Federal Reserve would raise rates this summer.

Read MoreMicrosoft is coming after Google in wearables

Microsoft stock also traded lower after Intel's warning, which said the Windows upgrade cycle had been weak.

Nevertheless, Cramer believes Intel will continue to make a lot of money. "[Brian] Krzanich is doing a great job, but you're really fighting a tide, which is a Microsoft tide. [Satya] Nadella really had to do something big, and he didn't deliver."

Click here to see how U.S. markets are doing now.

Summary: CNBC's Jim Cramer says Intel's biggest problem is a generational one.


Stocks have turned lower since the Nasdaq hit 5,000 on Monday, leaving some investors to wonder if this is the market top.

"Markets do eventually peak, generally because the Fed has tightened sufficiently or because a recession occurs. We do not see a recession on the horizon," Julian Emanuel, executive director of U.S equity and derivatives strategy at UBS, told CNBC's "Power Lunch" on Wednesday.

Read MoreYellen during crisis: Things are so bad people are 'breaking into their piggybanks'

The Fed is expected to raise interest rates this year after keeping them near zero since 2008.

"Our work shows that on average, once the Fed starts to hike, the market does not peak until 2 year later and moves 33 percent higher from the first hike." Emanuel said. For now, Emanuel believes the bull market is intact and any pullback is a buying opportunity.

Summary: Market pullbacks are a buying opportunity


A retail outlet well-placed to become one of the world’s busiest and most profitable

More than four months after construction began last summer, Apple AAPL is finally set to unveil a new store — its fifth in New York City — on the upper balcony of Grand Central Terminal at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street.

The company announced Thursday that the space will open to the public at 10 a.m. Friday December 9. The media has been invited to a preview two days earlier.

Apple’s expenses on the new store were relatively low by New York City standards because of restrictions imposed by the terminal’s landmark status. And according to the New York Post, the terms of the lease offered by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the building, were unusually favorable — especially for a location with so much well-heeled foot traffic — and are being investigated by the state comptroller.

Some 750,000 people pass through Grand Central’s marble halls every day, and traffic swells to more than 1 million per day during the holidays. According to the terminal’s official website, 50% of its commuters’ household incomes are over $100,000, and 20% are over $200,000.

Several press accounts put the size of the new retail space at 23,000 square feet, which is big for an Apple Store but smaller than London’s Regent Street (25,000 sq. ft.) and Covent Garden (24,600) outlets. As is its practice, Apple declined to offer square footage numbers.

Summary: A retail outlet well-placed to become one of the world's busiest and most profitable More than four months after construction began last summer, Apple is finally set to unveil a new store -- its fifth in New York City -- on the upper balcony of Grand Central Terminal at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. The company…


The Turkish central bank announced its first extraordinary meeting since 2011, immediately stemming some of the selling in emerging markets Monday. Erdem Basci, central bank governor, vowed Tuesday to take whatever action was needed to fight inflation and the falling lira, which hit a record low Monday.

"It's very important the central bank get in front of this rout that's going on. I think it's more difficult because of the political situation," said Jens Nordvig, global head of G-10 foreign exchange strategy at Nomura. "We'll see them changing their tune and becoming more traditional."

Basci said Tuesday the bank could tighten in a "lasting way," but he ruled out capital controls. Turkey's problems are complicated by a corruption investigation that has led to the resignation of three ministers in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.

Erdogan's government, until recently, was seen as a staunch supporter of free-market stability, and Erdogan was expected to easily take the presidency in an election this year. Erdogan claims a former supporter, Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, now in the U.S., is behind the allegations of bribery and money laundering.

Referring to the Turkish central bank, Nordvig said: "They've had low rates for a long time. They need to signal they are willing to do a big one (rate hike) at this meeting to get ahead of it."

Early Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of India surprised markets by raising its bench mark interest rate by 25 basis points to 8 percent to fight inflation. Since September, it has raised its policy repo rate—what banks pay to borrow money from the RBI—by 75 basis points. The once hot Indian economy has been weakened by slower investment and rising inflation.

"You can see investors are much more confident that they are getting ahead of it," said Nordvig of the RBI. "That's a good template for Turkey to follow. They have issues as well that they are starting to deal with, and the market is getting much more comfortable."

Marc Chandler, chief currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman, said the Indian rate increase did help. "It's just another piece that helped fit into this stability. I still think it's kind of fragile. People don't have a lot of conviction on the upside," he said.

Chandler said Turkey's central bank could cause more pain if it simply raises rates. "Everybody's looking for 200, 250, 300 basis points of rate hikes. I just think that's the death-knell for the economy, so I'd be more inclined to see them do a smaller rate increase and do something like capital controls. They are counting on hot money."

Nordvig said he believes the markets are consolidating and there are individual countries with issues, not one big emerging market crisis. "I think it's more position liquidation. It doesn't mean we can't wash out a bit further," he said. "When we look at the balance sheet of Turkey relative to other countries, they are more vulnerable. ... It's the same thing in a number of other emerging markets where they've issued debt in their own currency."

"Everyone talks about Argentina, but Argentina is an isolated part of the global economy and it doesn't matter very much," he said. He added that the selling wasn't just in emerging markets—noting, for instance, that the Spanish stock market was off sharply in the rout.

Chandler also pointed to individual cases in the emerging world. "Look at what happened in Ukraine. If this is a few of these locally grown hot spots, so what," he said. "If it's a global emerging markets meltdown like we saw last week, it's a different story. The weekend acted as a circuit breaker. People came back Monday and things did not worsen and they are acting better today."

The selloff started last week when China manufacturing data showed a surprise contraction in activity, sparking a global growth scare. The selling spread to developed countries, and drove the Dow down 3.5 percent last week.

The People's Bank of China made another liquidity injection Tuesday in the country's financial markets.

(Read more: Are emerging markets on brink of another crisis)

Summary: Turkey's central bank's call to action helped stabilize emerging markets, but India's rate hike provided an added boost to confidence.


Emerging markets are in free fall. Currencies are reeling, stocks are tanking and commodities are sinking, evoking memories for many investors of the financial crisis that hit Asia hard in 1997 and 1998.

Concerns over a slowdown in China have dented confidence, while investors have also fretted over the impact on emerging markets of an imminent increase in interest rates by the U.S. Fed.

Read MoreWhy emerging market currencies are collapsing

But Morgan Stanley has identified eight reasons why it believes this latest turmoil is not as grave as the crisis in the late 90's. Here they are, in the bank's words:

Debt profile: A large part of the debt buildup in this cycle has been in domestic rather than external debt. Moreover, the limited buildup of external debt has been denominated in local currency and has been raised by the public sector. In contrast, the external debt buildup during the 1990s cycle was denominated largely in U.S. dollars and was debt raised by the corporate sector.

Inflation: A large part of the region today is suffering from low-flation in CPI (consumer price inflation) and persistent deflation in PPI (producer price inflation). In typical cycles, inflationary pressures act as a constraint to central banks' response but this constraint is largely absent in this cycle.

Summary: Morgan Stanley has 8 reasons why the latest turmoil in emerging markets isn't as bad as the Asian crisis in the late 90s.


Perhaps it was the thousands of pilgrims whoÂ braved rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs just to kiss its wooden doors.

Or the mystery of its legacy, the shrine being theÂ place where Shia Islam's last imam disappeared.

Maybe it wasÂ the fact thatÂ it was a Shia shrine, looked after for generations by a hereditary line of Sunni imams, in a northern Sunni Iraqi city where every street wraps in meandering circles around its spiritual heart.

The shrine'sÂ 1000-year-old tilework of aqua blue and salmon pink was lovelyÂ and its unique and protected status made it hopelessly beautiful.

The more so now that it is gone.Â And so it was with Atwar Bahjat, the Al-Arabiya correspondent who was shot and killedÂ in Samarra the day the shrine was destroyed.

If you had ever known her, you would have found something just as rare and precious.Daughter of IraqÂ Â "A very revealing article about journalist in Iraq. I was deeply saddened to see the destruction of the mosque. I cannot begin to understand who would do such a thing."Bill, USAMore comments...Atwar was born in Samarra to a Sunni father and a Shia mother from Karbala.

"A very revealing article about journalist in Iraq. I was deeply saddened to see the destruction of the mosque. I cannot begin to understand who would do such a thing."Bill, USA

She began her career as a reporterÂ with theÂ Iraqi Satellite Network, then joined Aljazeera and in the past few months shiftedÂ toÂ Al-Arabiya.Â

Atwar was more than a new reporter burning to prove herself.

She was a young Iraqi who found herself telling the story of her country under foreign occupation, on the brink of division and chaos. Â "People saw this young Iraqi woman, reporting from hospitals,the scenes of explosions,Â deserted streets, the family homes of the deceased. People felt she belonged to them. They felt she represented them," says Uday al-Katib, aÂ colleague at Aljazeera.

Atwar was not objective, as she herself admitted.She was biased in favour of Iraq.

Atwar found herself telling thestory of aÂ near-anarchic IraqShe always leaned to one side in the conflict - the human one.

Atwar found herself telling thestory of aÂ near-anarchic Iraq

"Atwar never talked about Kurds and Shias and Sunnis," says Ahmad Al Samarai, another Aljazeera colleague.

"She always talked about Iraqis."Â RespectedOver the course of her career, Atwar was to become one of the most famous television personalities in Iraq.

She was respected and liked by the Sunni and Shia and some of the most hardline elements across the political spectrum.

Perhaps it was her dual heritage or that she was an accomplished poet who could harness words to unite Iraqis.

Atwar believed in Iraq and she would brave any situation to save it.Â

When the destruction of Samarra's shrine brought on a national crisis, Atwar rushed to the explosion as a doctor would rush to a dying patient.Â

In her last report, she said "whether you are Sunni or Shia, Arab or Kurd, there is no difference between Iraqis, united in fear for this nation."Â Career ladderAfter the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, Atwar joined Aljazeera as a reporter in Baghdad where the channel was training a new generation of Iraqi journalists into a vastly expanded bureau.

Though talent was brought in from Iraq's traditional media, there were also new faces: Wedding photographers became war photographers, young poets became reporters.Â Atwar neverÂ spoke of factions,Â she spoke about Iraqis Atwar stood out among 130 men as one of only three professional womenÂ with experience in reporting.

Atwar neverÂ spoke of factions,Â she spoke about Iraqis

Yet Atwar was usually assigned to culture stories, to cover women and children's issues, while other less experienced male colleagues were sent out for the more "serious" or dangerous stories.

Atwar waited, silently biding her time and working hard, knowing she had to be twice as good to be taken half as seriously.Â Over time she became a political reporter, covering every movement on the Iraqi political scene from the daily machinations of the Governing Council to the formation of a new government.

PerseveranceWhen the Governing Council shut down Aljazeera's bureau for a month, Atwar continued to call them every day, standing in the corner of the office with a satellite phone and a bad signal, doggedly trying to convince them to give her news.

When she was detained overnight by the US military and the soldiers crowded around to interrogate her, the menÂ at Aljazeera's bureau became hysterical, but Atwar kept her cool.Â

Through the daily explosions, violence and suffering, the 45 degrees celsius heat, the parade of distraught Iraqi families coming to the bureau to beg Aljazeera to cover their plight, the challenge of trying to get bad news from officials who did not want to give it out, Atwar never gave up or cried.

She put a smile on her face, thanked everyone who worked with her profusely, and ended each sentence with Arabic compliments such as "yes, my eyes," "my heart," "anything for you, my dear".Â

Slowly but surely she broke down her opponents.

One night I found one of Atwar's biggest detractors alone in the newsroom reading her reports.

When I asked what it was, he mumbled, "It's something Atwar wrote" and without lifting his eyes from the page, added quietly "it is excellent".Â TrustedWhen clashes broke out between Shia militia and US forces in Najaf in spring 2004, Atwar finally convinced Aljazeera's management to send her to the hot zone.Â Â Atwar convinced her editors to let her cover the shrine bombing

Atwar convinced her editors to let her cover the shrine bombing

Majid Khadir, former Baghdad bureau chief said: "She used to plead all the time, she would say I know it's dangerous but I can handle it. "When I let her go, some complained, saying why are you sending a girl to such places? And I said she is a correspondent, she has the right."

For two months, Atwar stood on a rooftop day and night braving sniper fire to conduct live shots and stayed put even after the death by US sniper of Aljazeera colleague Rashid Wali.Â

Atwar used her pulpit to give a balanced picture of the fighting and to emphasise human losses.

Day by day she began to obtain privileged information from Iraq's top officials as well as the militias they were fighting.

Atwar laughed: "They knew if they didn't give me information, I would go to the streets of Najaf at 2am and get it in person. They would tell me, 'Please Atwar, we'll tell you everything, just don't go out and get hurt.'"Â Even when Aljazeera was permanently banned from Iraq, Atwar managed to convince top Iraqi officials to give her exclusive interviews.Â Â DeterminationWhen the al-Askari shrine was blown to pieces, Atwar convinced her reluctant editors at Al-Arabiya to let her cover the scene.Â

She was always so determined it seemed nothing could stop her.

Not bad phone lines, car bombs, exhaustion or legal injunctions, not colleagues, the Iraqi government nor the US forces - and they had all tried.Â Â "She used to plead all the time, she would say I know it's dangerous but I can handle it"Majid Khadir,Former Baghdad bureau chief

"She used to plead all the time, she would say I know it's dangerous but I can handle it"Majid Khadir,Former Baghdad bureau chief

Her death was no less shocking than seeing the golden shrine reduced to a pile of rubble.Â In her last live shot from Iraq, Atwar stood on the outskirts of Samarra at dusk wearing her favourite necklace - a gold pendant in the shape of Iraq, the unified Iraq that she embodied and believed in.Â

As she emphasised the fact that the Sunnis of Samarra did not support the attack on the Shia shrine, the sun was going down, her image increasingly dark and grainy in the waning light.

It isÂ hard not to see her passing as a final act in Iraq's long twilight towards civil war.Symbol of IraqAs the scene gets uglier in Iraq, perhaps it isÂ difficultÂ for such a person as Atwar to even exist.

As long as Atwar was present there would always be, like the al-Askari shrine, a living monument to co-existence. There would always be a daughter's voice shaming the fathers. There would always be a person who believed in Iraq and who would neverÂ surrender the country and never give up.Â Â Some say Atwar was targeted by the Shia.

Others contend she was targeted by the Sunni.

The same arguments are made about the shrine.

The truth is: It does not matter.

Those who destroyed the shrine and Atwar are the same.

When they shot her, they murdered not only an Iraqi national icon, a beautiful young woman and a brave journalist, they targeted the very idea of Iraq.

May Ying Welsh was a producer for Aljazeera and worked with Atwar Bahjat in Baghdad.

Summary: If you ever saw the al-Askari shrine before its destruction you would know how beautiful it was.


China shares have surged this year, but with active fund managers still underexposed to the market, the rally isn't over, Goldman Sachs said.

"Funds of various mandates are underweight the market in a range of 140-600bp, and thus have marked benchmark stress and a need to raise exposure to China," Goldman said in a note Monday, citing EPFR data. "If emerging market funds alone increase allocations in the largest underweight sectors in China to marketweight, inflows could be worth $26 billion."

China shares have already rallied strongly, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index up around 21 percent year-to-date to its highest levels since early 2008, while the Shanghai Composite jumped around 39 percent over the same period to its highest since late 2007. Shanghai A-shares price-to-earnings ratio rose to -five-year high of 15.5 times, according to data from Nomura.

Read More A Veteran of the Financial Crisis Tells China to Be Wary

But despite the rally making China shares more expensive, pressure for active funds to add more mainland exposure is likely to build as so far this year, those funds have underperformed their benchmarks for their worst performance since 2009, Goldman noted. Only 20 percent of emerging market funds and 40 percent of Asia ex-Japan funds have beaten their benchmark this year, compared with a 60-70 average over the past five years, it said, reiterating its overweight call on China shares.

"Underexposure has directly led to underperformance," Goldman said, noting that China is now the largest market in both the Asia ex-Japan and emerging market indexes, contributed about half of their year-to-date performance. Almost all Asian markets outside Hong Kong and China have underperformed the MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan index and within emerging markets, Russia, China and Hungary are the only three, out of 23, which have outperformed, it noted.


TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, fresh from a bruising battle over unpopular military legislation, announced on Thursday an updated plan for reviving the world’s third-largest economy, setting a GDP target of $5 trillion.

Abe took office in late 2012 promising to end deflation and rev up growth through strong public spending, lavish monetary easing and sweeping reforms to help make the economy more productive and competitive. So far, those "three arrows" of his "Abenomics" plan have fallen short of their targets though share prices and corporate profits have soared.

"Tomorrow will definitely be better than today!" Abe declared in a news conference on national television. "From today Abenomics is entering a new stage. Japan will become a society in which all can participate actively."

Abe recently was re-elected unopposed as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. He has promised to refocus on the economy after enacting security legislation enabling Japan’s military to participate in combat even when the country is not attacked directly.

Thousands of Japanese held noisy street protests last weekend over the "collective self-defense" law, and Abe’s popularity ratings took a hit.

"He has to deliver the message that he is so committed to achieving the economic agenda, that is, to make people’s lives better," said analyst Masamichi Adachi of JPMorgan in Tokyo.

Abe said he was determined to ensure that 50 years from now the Japanese population, which is 126 million and falling, has stabilized at 100 million.

He said his new "three arrows" would be a strong economy, support for child rearing and improved social security, to lighten the burden of child and elder care for struggling families. But with Japan also committed to reducing its massive public debt, it is unclear how he intends to achieve those goals.

"There’s nothing wrong with him saying he wants to achieve a better life for everybody. But how to achieve it is a different matter," Adachi said.

Abe recently announced plans to accelerate reductions in corporate taxes. The central bank also is widely expected to add to its already unprecedented monetary easing by pumping more cash into the economy later this year.

Japan’s economy, estimated at $4.6 trillion in 2014, contracted at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter. Economists have warned that China’s slowdown and market turmoil might weaken an expected recovery in coming months.

At Japan’s recent pace of growth, achieving Abe’s goal would be a stretch. Real GDP growth averaged 1.7 percent over the past five fiscal years. That’s less than half the 3.0 percent pace needed to attain a GDP of $5 trillion, or 600 trillion yen, by 2021.

The Japan Center for Economic Research, an independent think tank, is forecasting growth at 0.9 percent this year and 1.5 percent in 2016. A sales tax increase planned for April 2017, to 10 percent from 8 percent now, is expected to dent growth for that year.

Japanese officials acknowledge in private that the country needs a "great leap" in productivity, which is hard to attain at a time when the labor force is shrinking due to the aging population.

Given that reality, Japanese employers have been reluctant to invest or to raise wages, even when many are short-handed.

With wages still barely rising, families have tended to save, and increases in demand from monetary stimulus have been weaker than expected.


The so-called backdoor Roth is one way to avoid a big tax bill when you're over the income limit for a Roth.

If you're also covered by an employer retirement plan, such as a 401(k), you wouldn't be able to fund a deductible IRA, because of IRS rules. But you could contribute to a nondeductible IRA and then convert right away to a Roth.

When you contribute to a nondeductible IRA, you're in effect depositing after-tax dollars, so you'd only owe tax on the earnings. If you do the Roth conversion shortly after the nondeductible contribution, the tax due to conversion will likely be nominal.

Read More3 ways to save on taxes

This method is most beneficial tax-wise if you don't have other deductible IRAs. However, there is an important caveat here: If you do have IRAs that you deducted contributions for or that you rolled out of old 401(k) plans, the taxable portion of any conversion you make is prorated across all your IRAs.

As you can see in this Roth conversion example, if you have $15,000 in traditional IRAs for which you've received a deduction and you want to deposit $5,000 into a nondeductible IRA and convert it to a Roth, you would divide $5,000 by $20,000 (the total value of all IRAs) to get the portion of the $5,000 you can convert tax-free, which is 25 percent, or $1,250. So you would owe tax on the other $3,750, based on your current tax bracket.

Summary: Looking to avoid taxes on Roth IRA conversions? Choose a "backdoor" Roth or wait for a life event to lower your tax bracket.


Nearly two months since Beijing rushed to the aid of its battered markets, stocks appear to have stabilized, and now investors are wondering: what next for China's market intervention?

Shanghai equities have climbed 3.6 percent over the past 30 days after officials unleashed a wave of bold stabilization policies starting June 27 in a bid to halt panic selling and prevent a systematic crash.

By allowing a trading halt on equities equaling almost half the market and instituting a ban on shareholders selling their stocks, the government was "digging itself deeper into the unwanted role of lender of last resort for the economy and buyer of the last resort for the stock market," Lim Say Boon, DBS chief investment officer, remarked in a note on Friday.

Indeed, it's not in Beijing's interest to continue since aggressive intervention dents investor confidence and goes against the country's goal of pursuing market-oriented reforms.

Read MoreWelcome to China's new 'managed float' regime

"How the government will exit its market bailout has therefore become a key concern. Investors should prepare themselves for a slow and painful process," one that could last more than six months and likely involve more market declines, BNP Paribas warned in a report on Friday.

BNP set out out the steps Beijing could take to extricate itself from markets:

Summary: Nearly two months since Beijing rushed to the aid of its markets, stocks have stabilized, raising the question of what's next for Chinese market intervention.


MEXICO CITY, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Mexican economic growth picked up in the second quarter as the services sector expanded at its fastest pace in a year, offsetting flat industrial output on wobbling exports and sinking oil production.

The economy expanded by 0.5 percent in the April-June period compared with the second quarter, when growth reached 0.4 percent, the national statistics agency said on Thursday. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast 0.4 percent growth.

Services picked up to 0.9 percent growth from 0.7 percent in the prior quarter, its fastest pace since the second quarter of 2014. Industrial output, which includes factory and crude oil production, was flat compared with the previous quarter.

Slowing production at state oil giant Pemex and a steep drop in crude prices have hit government revenues. Total exports to the United States, Mexico's top trading partner, have been inconsistent.

On an annual basis, gross domestic product (GDP) grew 2.2 percent in the second quarter from the same period in 2014 . Analysts polled by Reuters saw a 2.1 percent expansion in the period.

Mexico's central bank earlier this month cut its growth forecast to between 1.7 to 2.5 percent for this year.

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper Editing by W Simon)

Summary: MEXICO CITY, Aug 20- Mexican economic growth picked up in the second quarter as the services sector expanded at its fastest pace in a year, offsetting flat industrial output on wobbling exports and sinking oil production. Total exports to the United States, Mexico's top trading partner, have been inconsistent. Mexico's central bank earlier this month cut its...


Mahan is the first active pro athlete to be sponsored by 91-year-old Ace Hardware, according to Jeff Gooding, the company's director of consumer marketing (Ace worked with NFL legend John Madden during his broadcasting days.)

Gooding pointed to the golfer's decision to put family before career. "Hunter is not only a standout player on the tour, but a standout person and family man as well," he said in a statement.

Ace declined to pin a dollar value on the deal. Under the deal, Mahan will add Ace's logo to his golf apparel. He also filmed a "Golf Swing Away" TV commercial that will debut on ESPN and 30 other cable networks in April to promote Ace's Free Store Pickup program. The merchant-owned hardware cooperative has more than 4,900 stores globally, generating over $3 billion in annual sales.

Read MoreTrump and Tiger team up in Dubai

Mahan's move in Canada struck a positive chord in corporate America, according to his agent Chris Armstrong, senior vice president of Wasserman Media Group. Mahan's other sponsors include: Under Armour, RBC, Titleist, Ping, FootJoy and NetJets.

The "story behind the story" is that sponsors are putting more value on character than statistics, said Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck. Athletic endorsers from Ray Rice and Michael Phelps to Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods have run into scandals in recent years.

"These are major companies—and image is a big part of what they do," Buck told CNBC. "I think companies will be a lot more selective. You will have to have a lot longer track record of acting the right way, and representing yourself and potentially a company, than you would have to have before."

Summary: PGA golfer Hunter Mahan signed a multiyear endorsement deal after forgoing a possible million-dollar payday in 2013.


"Hopefully, the QZ8501 crash will galvanize the states to make technical harmonization a priority," said Alan Khee-Jin Tan, professor of aviation law at the National University of Singapore.

ASEAN is pushing ahead with plans to establish a single aviation market or "Open Skies" by 2015, that will allow its members' airlines unfettered access to each other's markets.

Read MoreWill this new airline transform travel in India?

However the group, whose 10 member states range from developed Singapore to impoverished Myanmar, has made scant progress on adopting uniform technical and safety operating procedures.

"These are the harder issues that will be more difficult to harmonize since they impact on national sovereignty and the states are at very different levels of development and capacity," added Tan.

Experts point to Europe as the model to follow, where the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) oversees the region's safety standards and crew training, while Eurocontrol co-ordinates the region's air traffic control.

While Eurocontrol was established back in the 1960s, EASA was only set up in 2002 when the European Union was already a much more unified and better-funded bloc than ASEAN is today.

The growth of the middle class in Southeast Asia has pushed the likes of AirAsia group and privately owned Lion Air to place record plane orders as they bet that low fares will prompt more of the region's 600 million-strong population to take to the skies.

However the industry's expansion has far outpaced developments in co-ordinating the region's aviation regulation and protocol.

"Leaving aside all the accidents, we are going to see the largest growth of air traffic in this region in the next 20 years. Do we have the infrastructure, do we have the rules and regulations to meet it?," said Ken Mclean, regional director of safety and flight operations, Asia Pacific at the International Air Transport Association, referring to Asia.

For now, the answer is probably no.

While Singapore and other countries are seen as having a robust aviation infrastructure, fast-growing markets such as Myanmar and Vietnam are only just starting to develop theirs.

"If you cannot guarantee the safety before the demand reaches, then you'll be in trouble," said Hsin Chen Chung, director of the Air Traffic Management Research Institute, established jointly by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University.

The stakes are particularly high for Indonesia, which is set to emerge as one of the world's top aviation markets by 2020. Despite improvements, the air safety record of Southeast Asia's most populous nation remains patchy.

"There is a lot of work to be done to address, identify deficiencies and to strengthen regulatory oversight and that's true in Indonesia and it's true in a number of other markets," said Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines.

Summary: The rapid growth in Southeast Asia's airline industry is showing up the pressing need for reforms to the region's fragmented safety framework.


Li is a former trader at Raj Rajaratnam's Galleon Group, which collapsed amid insider trading charges. Rajaratnam is now in prison for the illegal activity, but Li was never accused of wrongdoing.

Li's lieutenant at Canarsie is Ken deRegt, who joined in 2013 after retiring as the global head of fixed income sales and trading at Morgan Stanley. His son Eric deRegt also worked at Canarsie, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commissionas of March 2014.

Read MoreHedge fund managers swarm Davos

Li and the deRegts did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. No one picked up a phone call at Canarsie's offices and no valid voicemail was available, according to an automatic telephone company recording.

Li said in the letter that he made a series of "aggressive transactions" over the last three weeks to make up for poor returns in December. He said he bet on stock price options, predicated on the broader market rising. But stock indexes fell, causing the huge losses along with several undisclosed direct investments, according to the note.

Summary: Canarsie Capital's Owen Li told clients of his hedge fund that he is "truly sorry" for losing virtually all their money.


It's the Rolls-Royce of well … Rolls-Royces. A Hong Kong tycoon placed the single-largest order ever of custom Phantoms to chauffeur uber-rich guests who will stay at his hotel-casino, which is set to open in Macau next year.

Stephen Hung placed the $20 million order for the 30 luxury vehicles for the Louis XIII, which boasts on its website that it will be an "unprecedented, luxurious hotel and entertainment destination."

One of the richest cities in the world, Macau is a gambling center off China's mainland. Hung has said he wants to turn a strip of Macau into an exclusive playground for the ultra-wealthy.

When it's complete, the Louis XIII will include the most expensive suite in the world, according to its site. The penthouse will cost $130,000 a night, The Financial Times reports.

Read More Bling, bling! Russian student selling 'crystallized' Mercedes on eBay

Hung is the joint chairman of Louis XIII Holdings Limited. The group said in a press release that the customized Rolls Royce Phantoms are the best fit with the standard of luxury it's targeting for the hotel.

"Louis XIII and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars share the same philosophy: to deliver the perfect experience to the world's most discerning customers," Hung said in a press release.

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars helped design the hotel's driveway and will train the chauffeurs on driving and handling of the vehicles.

Summary: Mark Ellwood of CNBC’s “The Filthy Rich Guide” weighs in on Hong Kong tycoon Stephen Hung’s order of 30 Rolls-Royce Phantoms for his Macau hotel.


Source: Biogen Idec | Twitter

Biogen Idec's Doug Williams, the company's executive vice president of research and development, accepted the challenge.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a progressive, muscle-wasting disorder that affects about 30,000 Americans at any given time. About 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year, and life expectancy is typically about two to five years.

There is no cure for ALS, and current treatments do little to stop its progression. The ice bucket challenge was started by 29-year-old Pete Frates, a former Boston College baseball star who's been living with ALS for two years, the ALS Association said.

Read MoreWhy there's no end in sight for higher drug costs

Biogen Idec was a focus of the community's hope two years ago as it was developing a compound called dexpramipexole for ALS. The compound ultimately showed no benefit in the last stage of trials, and Biogen shut the program down. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company, though, is still working in the area. It started a consortium of academic researchers in ALS as well as a gene sequencing program with Duke University and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology.

Progress against the disease has been difficult, due to a lack of understanding about what causes it, said Cowen & Co. analyst Eric Schmidt. He estimates the market for a drug could be more than $1 billion.

Michael Yee at RBC Capital puts the market between $1 billion and $2 billion, and he also noted a lack of understanding of the disease and good targets for potential medicines as challenges.

Summary: Propelled by Facebook and Twitter, the ice bucket challenge has become a viral sensation. Now Biogen executives and CNBC are rising to the challenge.


Belgium has maintained the highest security alert for Brussels with the metro system and schools to reopen only on Wednesday after authorities said there was an imminent threat of a Paris-style attack in the Belgian capital.

The alert level for Brussels would remain at the highest level four while in the rest of the country it would stay at three.

"We are still confronted with the threat we were facing yesterday," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told a news conference. He said potential targets remained shopping malls, shopping streets and public transport.

"We want progressively to return to normality.... Schools in Brussels will open on Wednesday and the metro on Wednesday as well. For the metro it could be in a progressive way," he said.

Belgian prosecutors on Monday said they have charged a man with participating in the Paris attacks in an ongoing investigation in Brussels, which is currently on maximum security alert.

He is being held in custody. Another 15 people who were arrested in an operation on Sunday night have been released after being questioned, the Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.

Two of five people detained earlier on Monday were also released, it said.

Summary: Belgian police detained five more people as the hunt went on for a suspected Islamist militant following the Paris terror attacks.


We have no language in which to praise gentleness. A century of revolution since Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon has made it almost impossible to say: "This art is pretty, unchallenging and middle-class, and I like it." Well, I like the art of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and it is all those things.

I'd love to be able to show you the dark side of Renoir's art, but close as I look, I can't find social criticism or anxiety in his canvases. Even when it rains, his Paris is a joyful place where people don't so much cower under their umbrellas as flirt and chatter beneath a dancing cluster of bobbing blue canopies. His painting Les Parapluies (The Umbrellas) in London's National Gallery may as well be called I Love Paris in the Rain. How smart and stylish the people are under their parapluies, and how the wet sky sets off the brightness of their clothes - the different blues in a woman's hat, the lighter blue headgear worn by a little girl. The feathery, soft textures of these garments corresponding with melting, tender glances between people who belong to the same happy, confident world.

Not many artists have been able to look at modern life and see nothing but joy and pleasure, but Renoir could, and it has made him the least fashionable impressionist painter among critics and art historians. The National Gallery's forthcoming exhibition, Renoir Landscapes 1865-1883, ought to do something to change that, with its focus on the experimental, avant-garde art of the young Renoir. Yet if we're going to love him, we need to love his chocolate box qualities, too.

Once upon a time, people were shocked by Renoir. When a group calling itself the Société Anonyme held a show in Paris in 1874, critics were appalled to see what looked like mere oil sketches displayed as finished works. One wit looked at these vague daubs and called the artists "impressionists". In 1876, the critic Albert Wolff shuddered: "Try to explain to M Renoir that a woman's torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh."

Wolff saw in Renoir's 1876 painting Woman's Torso in the Sunlight the monstrous essence of the new modern style. Renoir and his associates did not do as artists had been taught since the 16th century, and look beyond the surface randomness of bodies and scenery to reconstruct the essential underlying truth. In all previous art, it had been taken as given that an object should be shown to the eye in its fullness, its essential nature.

The impressionists, as their apt nickname recognises, recorded instead what they saw and how they saw it - if sunshine dappled breasts, it was dappled breasts Renoir painted. In his Boating on the Seine, two women row on the river. Their faces draw the eye, all the more because we can't really see them: the closer you look, the more they become veils of colour. There isn't a single solid line in the painting; sails, leaves, a house are all just congregations of brushstrokes. To see such a scene, in which characters seem to drift accidentally into view and the painter to accept whatever passing light hits his eye as he works in the open air - it was the first great trauma of modern art, the beginning of the dismantling of every preconception of the visual world. And yet Renoir would make it his life's work to betray the radicalism of his youth.

As early as 1882, when he was already starting to sell at good prices, Renoir refused to exhibit with the radical impressionists led by the anarchist Camille Pissarro. By 1897, his paintings were being purchased by the French state. Renoir lived to see his art collected by New York's Metropolitan Museum and exhibited in London's National Gallery. Shortly before his death in 1919, the paralysed old painter was given the accolade of seeing one of his canvases displayed next to the work of his hero Paolo Veronese in the Louvre. Even after his death, his name was a living force in French culture through his son Jean, the great film director. He came to stand for tradition, for painting as such, in a way it was easy for youngsters like Picasso to mock. Even Degas laughed at his friend's style, calling it as puffy as cotton wool.

Renoir translated his warm appetite for middle-class beauty into society portraiture; for example, in his 1878 Mme Charpentier and Her Children. Such a picture showed how the new style could become a respectable art of the salon. This irredeemably compromised side to Renoir has stuck to his reputation. It can be quite ugly to read a letter from him refusing to exhibit with the leftwing "Israelite" Pissarro, because it would risk his new-found society success.

Renoir was not born rich. He was apprenticed as a painter of little scenes on porcelain - not a lavish start. He was a self-made man and when he got into the elite, he wanted to stay there. This didn't stop him being one of the first supporters of Cézanne's "difficult" art. Yet nowadays, Renoir's reputation is far lower than Monet's or Cézanne's, let alone that of Manet. Impressionist art has been reimagined by a generation of radical art historians. It's surprising how much subversion you can find in scenes of boulevard cafe life when you look: every barmaid becomes a marginalised proletarian, every Pissarro woodcutter has a bomb in his satchel. But you can't find any such subversion in Renoir. Even his scenes of sleazy Montmartre bohemian life - his Dance at the Moulin de la Galette is the original Montmartre painting, long before Toulouse-Lautrec - have something sweet and reassuring about them. Maybe the men are adulterers and the women prostitutes, but it's still a bourgeois idyll.

Well, if you can't enjoy a bit of escapism, you probably shouldn't be looking at impressionist art. Renoir may have been the first impressionist to betray the movement's avant-garde potential, yet he is also the purest of all impressionist painters - and remained so all his life. Perhaps it is not so much Renoir who is hard to defend, as impressionism. As a movement, it lasted less than a decade; why was that? It was such a delicate, vulnerable idea. To rejoice in the passing loveliness of urban life, and find pastoral delight in the countryside without seeing its oppressions - the illusory nature of this has always been so easy to point out.

The clue to what impressionism really is, as a view of life, is there at the very end of Renoir's career when he was taken, in a great state, to see Veronese's Wedding at Cana in the Louvre. This vast 16th-century Venetian painting of an open-air banquet teems with life and colour. Nearby is Titian's Concert Champêtre, whose scene of two clothed men and two naked women in a soft, yielding countryside was another iconic work for the impressionists. In other words, it's wrong to see impressionist art as a realistic portrayal of contemporary life. It is a modern pastoral from which life's cares are deliberately excluded. All pure impressionist painting is like this, but only Renoir makes it explicit. Far from merely being Monet's assiduous follower, he is the movement's most articulate theorist - and it is this pure dedication to the idea of art as pleasure that makes him so hard to take in our joyless age.

Renoir is the guardian of a courtly tradition that stretches from the Renaissance through the French rococo to the boating parties of the 19th-century bourgeoisie. He lived through two wars, but it never occurred to him that art was about war or politics. It existed to enhance life.

· Renoir Landscapes 1865-1883 is at the National Gallery, London WC2, from February 21 to May 20. Details: 0870 906 3891 or nationalgallery.org.uk

Summary: Degas teased him, Picasso mocked him. But Renoir wasn't always a painter of happy, inoffensive scenes, writes Jonathan Jones.


01/07/2016 AT 01:20 PM EST

Their on-screen alter egos may just be getting accustomed to telephones ("Is this an instrument of torture?" as

's Dowager Countess would say), but the real-life cast of

), Allen Leech (Tom Branson) and Kevin Doyle (Joseph Molesley) shared the last emojis they used – and even did facial interpretations of the text standbys.

Dockery and Leech proved their time in the '20s hasn't left them out of touch with the rest of us – her most recent emoji is the smiling-too-wide grin, and his is the favorite laughing-while-crying emoji.

But Leech is ready to switch things up, saying his emoji of choice is "overused" and pleading with the avatars' creator: "Come up with a new one, emoji man!"

Doyle, however, is still stuck in the past: He admitted he's never used an emoji!

"You haven't lived!" Dockery exclaimed in faux-horror.

Classic Molesley, am I right?

airs Sundays (9 p.m. ET) on PBS

Summary: Which one of the period piece's stars has (gasp!) never used an emoji?


02/08/2016 AT 11:40 AM EST

keep her body in such great shape?

In this week's issue of PEOPLE, the actress, 36, who is

in her new lifestyle book,

, reveals four ways readers can jump-start their own fitness routines:

Afterward you'll feel "energized and open," writes Hudson, and ready to start the day.

Blocking out "me time" will make you feel "centered and grounded" says the actress. "I love to knit. My mom [

] taught me when I was young, and it's still my go-to relaxation method."

Kate Hudson Pretty Happy: Healthy Ways to Love Your Body

Hudson suggests beginners pick one exercise and commit to doing it three times a week. "That's it!"

The actress does DVDs like Insanity or Tracy Anderson or streams Ballet Beautiful routines. "Exercise really comes down to moving in a way that makes you feel good," she writes.

Hudson insists the key to success is all about embracing a lifestyle that makes you look and feel good. "It's about health and mindfulness," she tells PEOPLE. "Because you can have the greatest body and you can be really unhappy if that's all you're working toward."

Summary: The actress is hoping to inspire others in her new lifestyle book, Pretty Happy


02/22/2016 AT 07:35 PM EST

, sometimes you just need a little comfort food.

, that involves a grilled cheese sandwich – with a twist.

"Something that I love to eat that's kind of weird ... I like to make my grilled cheese with mayonnaise spread on the outside instead of butter," the singer – whose new album

is available now – tells PEOPLE.

The star first discovered the sandwich hack when he was up late working late on an album. "A guy that used to work with us who was also from North Carolina came up to make us grilled cheeses and that's how he made them," he says. "It's like we had just seen Jesus!"

As for what exactly the mayo does for the sandwich? "It just tastes better," he says. "That's all I can say. It's my jam."

Daughtry, 36, will also be starring as Judas in Fox's upcoming Biblical live musical

. "It's the only one that would've made sense for me," he says of taking on the role. "Everyone's made that mistake where you felt just overwhelming amounts of guilt, and almost immediately after you do it, you're like 'Why the hell did I do that?' There's a very human side to this guy."

Summary: The star reveals his secret ingredient for an epic grilled cheese sandwich


Google parent Alphabet Inc. has put the Boston-area maker of Atlas the humanoid robot up for sale after concluding the company is unlikely to produce a marketable product in the next few years, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The news comes just a few weeks after the company, Boston Dynamics, published a new video of its latest version of Atlas that was awe-inspiring and scary. The robot trudges through the snow, somehow maintaining its balance; another crouches to lift a brown box and delicately places it on a shelf — then somehow stays upright while a human tries to push it over with a hockey stick. A third robot topples over and clambers back to its feet with ease.

Tens of millions of people viewed the video and Google and Boston Dynamics were seemingly pushing the frontier in robot technology.

But behind the scenes another drama was playing out. Executives at Alphabet, absorbed with making sure the companies under its corporate umbrella have plans to generate real revenue, concluded that Boston Dynamics did not anytime soon.

Possible acquirers include the Toyota Research Institute, a division of Toyota Motor Corp., and Amazon.com Inc., which makes robots for its fulfillment centers, according to one person. Google and Toyota declined to comment, and Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Regardless of Boston Dynamics’ future, their videos show the power of what robots can do.

Google acquired Boston Dynamics in late 2013 as part of a spree of acquisitions in the field of robotics. The deals were spearheaded by Andy Rubin, former chief of the Android division, and brought about 300 robotics engineers into Google. Rubin left the company in October 2014. Over the following year, the robot initiative, dubbed Replicant, was plagued by leadership changes, failures to collaborate between companies and an unsuccessful effort to recruit a new leader.

At the heart of Replicant’s trouble, said a person familiar with the group, was a reluctance by Boston Dynamics executives to work with Google’s other robot engineers in California and Tokyo and the unit’s failure to come up with products that could be released in the near term.

Tensions between Boston Dynamics and the rest of the Replicant group spilled into open view within Google, when written minutes of a Nov. 11 meeting and several subsequent e-mails were inadvertently published to an online forum accessible to other Google workers. These documents were made available to Bloomberg News by a Google employee.

The November meeting was run by Jonathan Rosenberg, an adviser to Alphabet chief executive Larry Page and former Google senior vice president, who was temporarily in charge of Replicant.

In the meeting Rosenberg said, “We as a startup of our size cannot spend 30-plus percent of our resources on things that take ten years,” and that “there’s some time frame that we need to be generating an amount of revenue that covers expenses and (that) needs to be a few years.”

Aaron Edsinger, director of robotics at Google in San Francisco, said he had been trying to work with Boston Dynamics to create a low-cost electric quadruped robot and felt “a bit of a brick wall” around the division, according to the minutes of the meeting.

Marc Raibert, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and the founder of Boston Dynamics, said, “I firmly believe the only way to get to a product is through the work we are doing in Boston. (I) don’t think we are the pie in the sky guys as much as everyone thinks we are,” the minutes show.

Raibert didn’t respond to multiple messages seeking comment for this story.

Part of the challenge was that Alphabet, created in 2015, was geared toward making Google inviting to startup founders and entrepreneurial executives who wanted to join companies driving toward products and revenue, which could increase shareholder value for those subsidiaries. Page wanted top-tier engineers to join the companies within Alphabet and entice them with equity.

In December, Google announced Replicant had been folded into Google’s advanced research group, Google X. In a private all-hands meeting around that time, Astro Teller, the head of Google X, told Replicant employees that if robotics aren’t the practical solution to problems Google is trying to solve, they would be reassigned to work on other things, according to a person who was at that meeting.

Boston Dynamics, though, was never folded into Google X and was instead put up for sale. After the division’s latest robot video was posted to YouTube, in February, Google’s public relations team expressed discomfort that Alphabet would be associated with a push into humanoid robotics. Their subsequent e-mails were also published to the internal online forum and became visible to all Google employees.

“There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs,” wrote Courtney Hohne, a director of communications at Google and the spokeswoman for Google X.

Hohne went on to ask her colleagues to “distance X from this video,” and wrote, “we don’t want to trigger a whole separate media cycle about where BD really is at Google.”

“We’re not going to comment on this video because there’s really not a lot we can add, and we don’t want to answer most of the Qs it triggers,” she wrote.

Summary: Executives at Google parent Alphabet Inc. have concluded that Boston Dynamics isn’t likely to produce a marketable product in the next few years and have put the unit up for sale, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans.


SHOES ON, SHOES OFFShakespeare & Company resident choreographer Susan Dibble explores our fascination with footwear in this intriguing work, which follows a shoe salesman and his clients as they search for energy in pair after pair of shoes. April 17, 2 p.m. Free. Brandeis University’s Spingold Theater Mainstage, Waltham. 781-736-2000, www.brandeis.edu

A JOOKIN’ JAM SESSION WITH LIL BUCK, CRISTINA PATO & FRIENDSWhile parents may not know what jookin’ is, dance-savvy kids will, and Lil Buck is the master. Ballet star turned director Damian Woetzel brings together the extraordinary mover with gaita player Cristina Pato and an adventurous cast of other dancers and musicians for what promises to be a high-spirited jam. April 29. Free. College of Holy Cross’s Hogan Oval, Worcester. 503-793-2011, www.holycross.edu

EVOLUTIONJoe Gonzalez and May-Lisa Chandler’s Jo-Mé Dance Theatre celebrates its fifth anniversary with accessible repertory favorites as well as new works by Gonzalez and Diaman Wood. April 30, $15-$25. Boston University Dance Theater. 617-219-3506, www.jo-medance.com

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAMTo commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Dance Prism offers a ballet version of the Bard’s magical fantasy, which intermingles mortals with mischievous fairies. Co-choreographed by company principal Miranda Bailey and artistic director Mary Demaso, this new production should appeal to all ages. May 1, $20-$26. Littleton Performing Arts Center, Littleton. 978-371-1038, www.danceprism.com

MAYFAIRThe annual Harvard Square event features activities for all ages, and for dance fans, there is a continuous series of performances on a special stage at Brattle and Eliot streets from 12:30 through 6 p.m. Performers include dancers from José Mateo Ballet Theatre’s youth program, Rainbow Tribe, BoSoma Dance Company, Boston Tap Company, and Triveni Dance. May 1, Free. www.harvardsquare.com

CHOREOLAB 2016The Boston University dance community offers a free hourlong presentation of original work that should be engaging for the whole family. It features choreography in a wide range of styles, including aerial dances using silks, trapeze, lyra hoop, and sling, capped by a big jazz/hip-hop closer. May 1, 4 p.m. Free. Boston University Dance Theater. 617-353-1597, www.bu.edu/fitrec/2016/04/12/choreolab-5-1/

CAMBRIDGE YOUTH DANCE PROGRAMOne of the best ways to interest kids in dance is through performances by other kids. Deborah Mason’s “The American Dream: Expressions of Hope and Struggle in the Pursuit of Happiness” challenges young dancers and viewers with a program that explores the trials and triumphs of American culture. May 6-7. $25-$30. Boston University Dance Theater. 617-616-5124, www.cydp.org

LIGHT TO DARKJosé Mateo Ballet Theatre’s season finale may be a little austere conceptually for the youngest viewers, but the company’s cabaret-style seating gets viewers up close and personal, which can be a captivating experience. The music includes Bach and Beethoven. May 6-13. $42. Sanctuary Theatre, Cambridge. 617-354-7467, www.ballettheatre.org

RIVERDANCE: THE 2OTH ANNIVERSARY WORLD TOURRiverdance has been around so long, there’s a whole generation of kids who could have the thrill of seeing this spectacular Irish dance extravaganza for the first time. Lucky them. May 10-15. $35-$110. Citi Wang Theatre. 800-982-2787, www.citicenter.org

MALPASO DANCE COMPANYWho of any age can resist the lively music and dance of Cuba? This performance by one of the country’s top troupes promises a vivid look at Cuban contemporary dance with a live music bonus, by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble. May 14-15. $60-$75. Citi Shubert Theatre. 617-482-6661, www.celebrityseries.org KAREN CAMPBELL

Summary: Critic’s picks for family-friendly dance performances in the Boston area and beyond.


Microsoft is serious about capturing the attention of information workers who aren’t sitting at desks. That would be repair people and the like who, by necessity, are on the road as opposed to in the office.

Thursday morning, it acquired FieldOne Services, a software company that supplies field-service applications to companies like United Technologies and Mitsubishi-Hitachi Power Systems.

Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed. But it’s the first big public move out of the Microsoft MSFT Dynamics business applications teams since it was swept into the software giant’s cloud and services group as part of a massive reorg in June.

It also comes just four months after the two companies signed a strategic alliance to integrate Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management application with FieldOne’s flagship suite, which includes scheduling, routing and inventory.

In a blog post about the deal, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Bob Stutz notes:

Field service management is a specific but critically important area of customer service, providing companies with the ability to deliver end-to-end field service. This is a unique, and transformational point in time for these solutions as enterprises look to improve their responsiveness to customers with service in the field – taking service directly to the customer anytime a service cannot be managed by phone or other channels.

How big is this market? Some estimates suggest it’s worth about $18 billion. Microsoft’s acquisition pits it against ServiceMax, which is closely allied with Salesforce CRM . That company added more than 140 companies to its cloud platform last year, including enterprise accounts with up to 40,000 technicians. The deal will also get the attention of Oracle, which moved more aggressively into the market last year through the buyout of TOA Technologies.

Sign up for Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter about the business of technology.

Summary: The deal pits the software giant against ServiceMax, a close Salesforce ally, and Oracle in a battle for information workers who spend most of their time away from desks.


This week, the Oregon chub was removed from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Animals, becoming the first fish ever to shed its endangered status. When it was placed on the list in 1993, there were fewer than 1,000 of the minnow species left. Today there are more than 140,000.

In the years since the first official list of threatened and endangered species was published in 1967, 28 species have been recovered, 10 have become (or were discovered to already be) extinct, and more than 2,000 species have joined the original 78.

Though the notion of extinction entered public awareness at the turn of the 20th century and the federal government began taking steps to protect certain species then, it wasn’t until the 1960s that environmental activism pressured the government to be more proactive in identifying and taking measures to protect threatened species. The first significant piece of legislation, the Endangered Species Protection Act, was passed in 1966, followed by an amendment in 1969 and a reworking in the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

In the period leading up to these legislative acts, the zookeeper community was collaborating on strategies they could undertake toward preservation. An August 1964 article in LIFE reported on the creation of “special survival and propagation centers where pairs and herds of endangered species can propagate in peace and quiet.” The magazine sent photographer Nina Leen on an assignment to document these species in the new habitats being set aside for them.

Nineteen U.S. zoos formed the Wild Animal Propagation Trust, addressing issues that had prevented species in captivity from successfully mating in the past. Rhinos in the wild are undisturbed during mating season; their new protected habitats would ensure the same treatment. Baby orangutans abandoned by their mothers would be raised in special nursery facilities. If the Trust succeeded in regenerating species, they hoped to reintroduce some of the animals into their natural habitats.

LIFE also explored advances in the scientific understanding of mating rituals. A male and female gorilla at the Bronx Zoo, Oka and Mambo, had expressed a “mammoth indifference for one another,” refusing to mate. Researchers came to understand that male gorillas raised in captivity, having no exposure to mating in the wild, had not learned proper mating behavior. Polar bears, which in the wild are accustomed to privacy during birth, were killing their newborn cubs because of the throngs of spectators present at their births. Understanding the animals’ behavior in the wild helped zookeepers create environments more conducive to procreation.

All of the species photographed for the story remain threatened or endangered 50 years later. The attention and, ultimately, funding that certain species get can be linked to the public’s awareness of and appreciation for them—the whales, for example, are high on many people’s list of animals in need of saving. So if you want to step in and support the underdog, consider the clam, of which more than 100 species are endangered. “Save the Georgia Pigtoe Clam” has a nice ring to it.

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Summary: Meet Zata, Henry and Hilda, who took a star turn in LIFE as the magazine documented efforts to restore populations of oryxes, ocelots, orangutans, okapi and more


A look at the free-agent point guard class of 2016, which the Knicks may be more active in with the imminent addition of Jeff Hornacek as head coach:

Mike Conley, Memphis Grizzlies (age: 28): He made $9.5 million this season and seeks a max deal despite a mysterious Achilles injury. In his prime, versatile and good defender.

Rajon Rondo, Sacramento Kings (30): Had a solid season in Sacramento, leading league in assists but for a pitiful club. Concern more about defensive slippage.

Jeremy Lin, Charlotte Hornets (27): Might love a Garden return if Carmelo Anthony signs off on it. Once excelled in an offense similar to Jeff Hornacek’s.

Brandon Jennings, Orlando Magic (26): Was ticked Knicks passed him by in draft. May not have hit his prime yet and is coming off an Achilles injury, but this scoring point guard has big upside in right situation.

Tyler Johnson, Miami Heat (24): Undrafted and a restricted free agent, Miami covets the unsung guard who made $845,000 this season. Very versatile and actually would be a great triangle fit.

Matthew Dellavedova, Cleveland Cavaliers (25): Making just $1.1 million, the undrafted, gritty free agent is thriving off the bench after his excellent NBA Finals of 2015. Is he looking for starting role elsewhere?

Mario Chalmers, Memphis Grizzlies (30): Often slipped under the radar on Miami’s Dream Team, but now coming off an Achilles injury might make him a risk as a starter at age 30.

Ramon Sessions, Washington Wizards (30): Knicks have had interest in the penetrating point guard off and on. Again, not a bad, versatile triangle guy, but might be limited in a speedball system because he’s not a great 3-point shooter.

Summary: A look at the free-agent point guard class of 2016, which the Knicks may be more active in with the imminent addition of Jeff Hornacek as head coach: Mike Conley, Memphis Grizzlies (age: 28): He ma…