It seemed like the perfect answer to a manpower shortage.

When Cynthia Bowman, then 27, founded her California-based home furnishings retail business, she quickly realised she needed extra help, so she brought her husband on board.

“Retail is a seven-day week job with long hours,” said Bowman, now 43. “It wasn’t easy, and I would tell him often that if we weren’t married, I’d have fired him.”

Still, they successfully ran the business together for 13 years before selling it in 2013, retiring and moving to Spain. Bowman has since started working part-time as a freelance writer and a blogger at joyjournist.com.

One secret to their success: arranging for one day a week when each partner was in the office alone, allowing each one to have space at work while the other had time off or worked remotely. And, Bowman said, choose your battles. “Bickering about everything, even if small, is damaging to a relationship,” she said.

She wouldn’t do anything differently, but she also won’t work with her husband again. “Our personalities and work ethic are too different,” Bowman said.

The numbers are scarce on how many spouses successfully hang a shingle together, but plenty of romantic duos have made a fruitful go of it.

Boll & Branch, an organic bedding company in the US, was co-founded by spouses Missy and Scott Tannen in 2014 and earned almost $1.75m in its first year. In the UK, Helen and Simon Pattinson left jobs as lawyers to start Montezuma’s, a luxury chocolate retailer that now has six locations. In Melbourne, Australia, husband and wife team Ted Tolfree and Shey Newitt founded Crisp, a salad store that now has three shops. The co-chief executive officers of California-based organic food and drinks company Clif Bar & Company are married to each other, as are the owners of Los Angeles-based bottled water brand Fiji Water.

But it’s also a gamble. Only half of all small businesses are around after five years, according to the US Small Business Administration. And failing at a star- up with your romantic partner can be even dicier. Here’s how to work it out.

What it will take: You’ll need complementary business skills, the ability to separate your work and personal life, and the capacity to spend a lot of time with your significant other. “Your relationship should be on good footing,” said Hilary Hendershott, a financial planner in California. “It takes a healthy level of respect and trust to be in business with anyone, let alone a spouse.”

You might also be more successful if you’ve been with your partner for a while. “Couples who’ve been married for a long time sometimes manage to handle this better, because they’re used to ups and downs and good years and bad years,” said Shannon Lee Simmons, a financial planner with Simmons Financial Planning in Toronto. “New couples might still be in that honeymoon phase where everything is wonderful, but you don’t really know how that other person handles bad times and financial stress.”

How long you need to prepare: Allow time to write a solid business plan, draw up any necessary contracts or legal partnerships, and really think through the logistics. “If you can’t write a business plan together and you can’t agree on what’s happening, then that might be a clear signal that it’s not going to work out,” Simmons said.

Do it now: Plan it out. “If you listened to your financial, legal and psychological advisors, they would recommend that you sit down and outline how this is going to work, how much it’s going to cost you,” said Kathy Marshack, PhD, a psychologist in Oregon in the US and author of Entrepreneurial Couples. If you’re a young couple that doesn’t have children yet, do you plan on having them? And how would that fit into the mix?

Have an exit strategy. An exit plan is important professionally. “This is something that couples don’t talk about at the beginning because you’re excited,” said Simmons. “But if there’s a break up or a divorce, who gets to keep the business? Do you keep it running together? What happens?” Similarly, what if the business doesn’t perform well? This should be settled in writing so there’s no question of how to proceed if things head south, whether it’s the business or the relationship.

Make it official. Treat the business arrangement seriously. “If you sit down and say, ‘Hey, let’s write this up into a business contract,’ it tricks the brain into thinking about what could happen that you should plan for,” Marshack said. “It saves anguish later on.”

Examine your own business savvy. Couples sometimes jump into a business because they love both an idea and each other and they’re enthusiastic about making it work—but they haven’t thought it through. “They think, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to work together?’” Marshack said. “I know small business owners who can’t read a profit-and-loss statement, and that’s just not good. You need business skills.”

Divide responsibilities. “Clearly designate roles that don’t overlap each other, according to strengths and weaknesses,” said Bowman. For instance, one of you might handle the company’s accounting while the other one designs the product. You’ll be more successful and happier if you aren’t competing for the same tasks.

Leave work at work. Separate your work and personal lives. At home, make sure you’re treating each other as romantic partners instead of colleagues. “I can get pretty intense,” said Hendershott, who works with her husband. “We do this thing where we give each other a big hug, and now we’re husband and wife again. I consciously switch that role.”

Do it later: Hire tax help. There are a variety of ways your business can be structured — a partnership, a corporation, a joint venture, or even a sole proprietor and employee, among others. Make sure you understand all the tax implications and talk to a professional about the setup that makes the most sense for you.

Make sure both people handle the money. You probably trust your partner implicitly — but you need to make sure you both have a hand in the business’s finances. “I had a client who found out that she was being audited for unpaid taxes from four years ago from a business she used to be in with an ex-partner,” Simmons said. Both parties should know where the money is going and whether you’re taking proper care of your debt and tax obligations.

Do it smarter: Don’t neglect the rest of your life. “Couples plunge into the business and forget that they should also make time for themselves as a couple, as a family, as individuals,” Marshack said. “There are things they put on hold until the business gets off the ground and five years later there are a lot of things in their personal life that aren’t working.” Be stringent about scheduling time away from your business and with your loved ones — in a non-business capacity — to keep relationships healthy.

To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, please head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

Summary: Going into business with your spouse can make or break or relationship and the company. Consider these things first.


RICHMOND, Nov. 1— Charges of an appeal to racial prejudice are erupting in the closing days of a rapidly narrowing Virginia gubernatorial campaign.

Democratic campaign spokesmen here say the Republicans have resorted to divisive racial tactics by having surrogates for state Attorney General Marshall Coleman, the Republican candidate, emphasize the Democratic candidate's low-key, but more liberal, stand on matters important to blacks.

Mr. Coleman has denied Democratic charges that his campaign has turned ''racist'' by insisting that it was the Democrat, Lieut. Gov. Charles S. Robb, who originally raised the race-related issues that have suddenly inspired a broad Republican attack.

''I resent being branded a racist,'' Mr. Coleman said in the candidates' final face-to-face debate Friday.

Mr. Robb, who is shown leading in published polls, refuses to characterize the tactics directly as ''racist,'' going only so far as to say ''it's hard to find any other interpretaion.''

The disputed tactics began in earnest Tuesday on President Reagan's visit to a Richmond rally for Mr. Coleman. Former Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr., once an architect of Virginia's strategy of ''massive resistance'' against Federal orders to desegregate the public schools, introduced Mr. Reagan by delivering an endorsement of Mr. Coleman that scoffed at Mr. Robb's stand on several racially sensitive issues. These matters, which had scarcely been mentioned in the campaign, included Mr. Robb's longstanding support of post-card voter registration, a proposal designed to encourage greater minority participation in elections.

Mr. Godwin also singled out for attack Mr. Robb's support of a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would give voting representation in Congress to residents of the District of Columbia. The national capital, just across the Potomac River, is the urban center of northern Virginia's large suburban population, a key factor in Tuesday's voting.

Mr. Godwin did not say so, but the District of Columbia population of 640,000 is 70 percent black. The northern Virginia suburbs are largely white. The former Governor contended that Mr. Robb ''would equate the sovereign state of Virginia with the city of Washington, D.C.'' Attack on Business Plan

Mr. Godwin also attacked the Democratic gubernatorial candidate's proposal for a ''set-aside'' of state contracts to minority-owned businesses. And he assailed Mr. Robb's support of a renewal of key provisions of the Federal voting rights act. ''He would keep this state in bondage to the Department of Justice,'' Mr. Godwin said.

In his final debate with Mr. Coleman, Mr. Robb sought to blunt the sudden attack on the District of Columbia representation issue by pointing out that it was supported by such conservative Republian members of Congress as former Representative David A. Stockman, now the Reagan Administration's budget chief, and Senators Barry Golwater of Arizona, Bob Dole of Kansas and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

Republicans countered with assertions that Mr. Robb has also said that, as governor, he would sign into law a state legislative measure to make a holiday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Outgoing Gov. John N. Dalton, Mr. Coleman's foremost supporter, vetoed a King holiday bill last year.

The latest polls published today by The Washington Post and The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot suggested that the attacks on Mr. Robb might be effective.

The Post's telephone poll, taken in the 48 hours following last Tuesday's Republican salvo, showed Mr. Robb leading Mr. Coleman by 51 to 44, a seven-point spread, as against an 11-point Robb lead among the same voters a month ago. The Norfolk newspaper's poll, taken over a seven-day period extending before and after last week's sudden intrusion of racial issues, showed the candidates indistinguishably even, at about 43 percent each.


MINNESOTA RAG The Dramatic Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Case That Gave New Meaning to Freedom of the Press. By Fred W. Friendly. Illustrated. 243 pp. New York: Random House. $12.95. By NEAL JOHNSTON

MOST law suits contain the ingredients of good stories. When the bar sits down to drink, passion, principle and money are the stuff of the best tales. Hardly any dispute ever actually goes to trial unless there is real fervor pushing at least one side forward, and by the time a case reaches the Supreme Court of the United States there is an immense amount of passion motivating all parties to the argument. But no one reads court opinions to find out what was really going on, for they are all cool principle: The passion leaks out between the footnotes.

In ''Minnesota Rag,'' Fred Friendly, a former television executive, Ford Foundation official and professor of journalism at Columbia, has set out to tell the forgotten story of Near v. Minnesota, a 1931 Supreme Court case that is the critical wellspring of modern First Amendment law. The story is rich and bizarre. The principles were, and are, of first importance. Just 10 years ago, The New York Times won the Pentagon Papers case, resisting the Federal Government's effort to block publication of those portentous documents. The Times probably could not have won without the help of Jay Near, a sleazy and shadowy operator who, in the fall of 1927, published nine issues of an anti-Semitic scandal sheet that also happened to include some articles exposing local corruption and labor racketeering - until he was put out of business by the Minneapolis city fathers.

The Minnesota courts, applying freshly manufactured state law, held that as a fit punishment for the defamation already published in his paper, Near should be forever enjoined from producing any more issues of his rag. This, the judges reasoned, was not prior restraint; this was just justice. There was little in the way of legal precedent to the contrary.

Somehow the unlikely figure of Near attracted the attention and the passionate interest of a most colorful ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Neal Johnston is a practicing attorney who was formerly the secretary of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. and implausible savior: Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the truculent, xenophobic and all-in-all preposterous publisher of The Chicago Tribune. McCormick managed to see the now obvious fact that the gagging of Near threatened all newspapers, most certainly including his own. McCormick's surprising perspicacity may have been aided by his recent run of litigation with two powerful enemies: Henry Ford and ''Big Bill'' Thompson, the Republican mayor of Chicago. Ford and Thompson each would have been delighted to sue The Tribune shut. Colonel McCormick was no man's lieutenant, and he seized control, essentially pushing Near out of the case, save for the caption. The matter was carried to Washington, and the Supreme Court eventually held the Minnesota gag law unconstitutional. Near could be punished, perhaps, for what he had written, but he could not be silenced for the future.

Most people seem to think that the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution guarantees to all Americans - even the Jay Nears - the right to say what they want, when they want, with utter impunity. As with most important things, it is not so simple.

The First Amendment itself merely prohibits Congress from abridging freedom of speech and of the press. The Amendment doesn't purport to restrict the states, many of which went abridging merrily along. It was not until 1925 that the Supreme Court even hinted that the First Amendment might restrict the states as a result of the 14th Amendment requirement that the states respect the due-process rights of all Americans. Indeed, there basically was no First Amendment case law until the 1920's. For the first 150 years, neither the Court nor the American people seemed to care very much what the Amendment meant.

Unthinkable as it may be today, back when Near was first raking his muck, it was a seriously debated issue whether the First Amendment provided any protection at all from a state statute such as the one used to suppress Near. Near v. Minnesota helped settle that question.

The Court has never held offensive behavior to be legally immune simply because the central act was the speaking or printing of words. Libel is the standard example of a kind of speech that may be punished, but blackmail, attempted extortion, conspiracy to fix prices and perjury are other examples of essentially verbal acts that are criminal beyond the concept of freedom of speech and press.

Furthermore, ''freedom of speech'' is not a self-defining concept. Rather, it is what lawyers love to call a ''term of art'' - a handle for a complex bundle of essentially artificial concepts. The First Amendment does not promise that all speech will be free but only forbids government to abridge the sorts of speech that fit within the technical construct ''freedom of speech.''

Fifty years ago it was an open question whether the freedom-ofspeech concept encompassed the act of publishing defamation and scandal. The five-Justice majority in Near v. Minnesota provided a definitive answer: Since government corruption cannot be exposed without defaming the corrupt, since public scandal cannot be revealed without scandalous revelation, the vital function of the press can only be protected if the right to publish scandal and defamation is itself protected by the Constitution.

This conclusion seems self-evident to us now, but we have lived with its consequences for half a century. The four-man minority saw a different meaning, adopting Justice Joseph Story's flat contention that the Amendment meant no more than that ''every man shall be at liberty to publish what is true, with good motives and for justifiable ends.'' With one more vote, that would have become the law, and by today we might have learned to adjust to a very different set of First Amendment consequences.

Mr. Friendly includes the text of the Supreme Court's opinion in Near v. Minnesota, both Charles Evans Hughes's majestic majority statement and Pierce Butler's somewhat prissy dissent. Butler's opinion is the more important to read today: It is wrong, narrow and very foreign, but it has its internal logic, and it almost represented the winning side. The most important lesson to be drawn from this book is that the decision in Near v. Minnesota was, in every sense, a close call.

Given the quality of the story, it is unfortunate that Mr. Friendly doesn't tell it better. The difficulty arises from excessive ambition. In a very short book, he tries to cover everything, and as a result too little comes alive. He moves us from the ore-dusted brothels of Duluth, Minn., to the gothic top of the Tribune Tower, to the cloistered conference room of the Supreme Court. He tries to explicate everything from the gangster-ridden politics of Prohibition-era Minnesota to the rarified politics of Herbert Hoover's appointments to the Court. Probably it is impossible, in a mere 180 pages, to explain both American legal process and Colonel Robert McCormick to the modern reader.

Illustrations: drawing of a man speaking a puzzle


CRIME is a ''growth industry,'' and companies that provide burglary detection devices and those that offer monitoring services are beginning to grow with it. Although official statistics may understate the problem, 3.3 million burglaries were reported in 1979, an increase of 6.3 percent from the level of a year before.

The figures for 1980 are not out yet, but the trend seems obvious - certainly so to fans of a handful of small, publicly owned security alarm and central monitoring service companies. Wall Street lovingly refers to small companies in fields enjoying unusually expansive prospects as ''emerging growth companies,'' and well-run companies in such fields tend to do unusually well in the stock market.

Whether companies in the intrusion detection business will prove to be exceptional as long-term investments remains to be seen. But the promise is there, largely as a result of technological advances.

Until recently, householders strung wires to every opening large enough to permit entry. This is costly and cumbersome. Now there are a variety of new ways to deal with the problem.

Detection Systems Inc. offers devices employing three basic principles of intrusion detection: ultrasonic sound reflection, photoelectric beam interruption and infrared detection.

The ultrasonic method fills the room with ultrasonic waves, which an intruder cannot hear, but when his body interrupts them an alarm goes off. In the photoelectric technique, an invisible beam is projected between two electronic eyes, and an alarm is triggered when the beam is interrupted. The infrared device, operating on a heatsensing principle, sends out a cone-shaped pattern, and the warmth of a human body within the cone sets off the alarm.

Regardless of the system used, the alarm may be a loud bell or siren meant to scare off the intruder, or it may be wired directly to a central monitoring station or police precinct house.

Detection Systems markets its products directly to 700 of the more than 5,000 alarm-installing compa-nies in the United States. The over-the-counter shares of Detection Systems, which traded as low as 3 3/8 in 1980, are currently 33 1/2 bid, 35 asked. In a report published in January, Drexel Burnham Lambert estimated that the earnings of Detection Systems in its fiscal year ending March 31, 1982, would be $1.10 a share. The company has just reported 95 cents a share for the fiscal year 1981 - well above the forecast. Even so, the shares trade at a generous 34 times earnings expected for the current year.

Drexel Burnham Lambert's analysts will not comment on Detection Systems at this time because the investment firm will soon be handling an offering of 300,000 Detection Systems shares. After allowing for a 50 percent stock dividend last Friday and including the new shares to be issued, the company will have 1,943,500 shares outstanding.

Universal Security Instruments Inc. makes devices sold directly to the consumer through such retailers as J.C. Penney, Tandy, Macy's and Broadway-Hale. The company's most popular item uses radio waves to detect entry at any door or window. This is a do-it-yourself product, which is an advantage when it is difficult to find an installer.

Among those who watch this over-the-counter company is Robert Krauser, a registered representative in the Stamford, Conn., branch of Bruns Nordeman & Rea, which has a position in Universal Security. Mr. Krauser, who also is a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts, estimates Universal's sales in the fiscal year ending next March 31 at $20 million with earnings of about $1 a share. In the fiscal year 1981, the company earned $664,000, or 42 cents a share, in contrast to a loss of $267,000 the year before.

At 12 1/8 bid, Friday's closing quote, Universal Security sells at 29 times the latest 12-month earnings. (Universal announced Friday that it would split the shares 3 for 2.)

Stanley A. Balter, who follows detection companies for Colin Hockstin & Company, believes their industry has a bright future. ''My own experience in having to wait almost three months for a professional installer is perhaps one indication of the strength of this market,'' he said. ''Discussions with this installer and calls to others in my area and in other parts of the country confirm that this business is growing rapidly in terms of the demand for installations and in terms of the sophistication of the hardware.''

Besides Detection Systems and Universal Security Instruments, Mr. Balter follows two other unlisted companies in this field: the Electro-Protective Corporation of America and Napco Security Systems Inc.

Electro-Protective provides central station monitoring, which accounts for $13 million of its $17 million in revenues. The rest is from the sale of detection hardware to other equipment distributors. The shares are quoted at 22 bid.

Napco is ''about the same size as'' Detection Systems and serves essentially the same markets, Mr. Balter said. Napco shares were recently 22 bid.


Imagine a giant penitentiary orbiting the Earth at a height of 22,000 miles. Visionary? A futuristic dream? We at the Institute of Social Dynamics don't think so. That's why our engineers started planning it five years ago. We call it Sky Pen. With the successful flight of the space shuttle Columbia we now have the technology to make Sky Pen a reality. Shuttles able to take off and land at Earth bases will carry construction workers and materials readily to the site. Once Sky Pen is built, shuttle trips in rocket-powered paddy wagons will transport convicted felons to the proper orbit altitude for rendezvous with the penitentiary and return to Earth with parolees.

Regrettably, certain circles still fail to see the advantages of putting penitentiaries in orbit. ''Hoosegow Schmoosegow'' is the headline over a recent newspaper editorial. Its author describes our institute's brilliant strategic penal thinkers as ''boobs and crackpots.''

Normally we pay no attention to hired scribblers and their vulgar invective. This one, however, happens to work for a newspaper that successfully opposed the Government's plan to build a new maximumsecurity prison abutting the rose garden of its publisher's country estate.

This same newspaper has called loudly for judges to send more people to prison. We at the Institute have always favored sending more people to prisons, including editorial writers.

Like the vulgar newspaper's publisher, however, we don't want them sent to prisons in our neighborhood. After the latest assassination attempt, everyone agreed that nothing could be done to prevent these assaults except to imprison more people. Simultaneously, everyone agreed the only place to build prisons was in someone else's neighborhood.

The Institute recognized years ago that the American prison population could not be successfully expanded until we discovered new neighborhoods without strong block associations. Our solution: Sky Pen.

Unlike earthbound prisons, the orbiting penitentiary is economically feasible. It will have powerful support from large, efficient lobbies connected with NASA and the space-technology industry. It will have the emotional support of all patriots who want to see America put a penitentiary in space ahead of the Russians.

Persuading governments to spend for earthbound prisons is nearly impossible, despite public demand for putting more people under lock and key. With the space lobbies and patriots prodding them, however, governments will finally take action.

There is no limit to prison capacity in space orbit. Once the technology is mastered, we can provide cell space for millions. Thus we take a giant step toward solving the assassination problem.

Moreover, the escape of vicious felons will no longer terrorize law-abiding folks. To break out, prisoners will have to build highly sophisticated escape suits and portable pressurizing tanks from scraps smuggled back to their cells from the sheet-metal shop.

Even then their hopes of getting back to Earth will be slim unless a relative has sent them a small rocket engine and a fairly complex guidance system baked into a cake. And of course, they are likely to fare very badly indeed if they forget to bring along a heat shield.

Will a 10-year sentence to hard orbiting be construed by the Supreme Court as cruel and unusual punishment? We think not. Incarcerated in a condition of weightlessness, prisoners will not feel any tonnage of balls and chains the most brutal keeper might use to hold them down.

Solitary confinement will no longer be a dreary business of squatting on the floor of dark cells. Weightless in space, the solitary prisoner will be able to pass the time amusingly by floating from wall to wall and from ceiling to floor.

A few problems remain to be solved. To maintain prisoners' morale by assuring them of an ample supply of inedible swill to spark messhall rebellions, for example, we must develop a dehydrated swill substitute capable of being served in plastic packets.

We must also develop emergency evacuation procedures to rescue the inmates if a penitentiary's orbit starts to decay and it threatens to fall to Earth. Our statistical studies show that a falling penitentiary is 11 times more likely to fall harmlessly into an ocean than to strike a city the size of Chicago.

The risk of being struck by a falling Sky Pen is negligible compared to the risk of being shot if we have no space penitentiaries with which to get the trigger-happy off the streets. We at the Institute believe the slight risk of obliteration by falling penitentiary is a small price to pay to preserve our constitutional right to buy pistols.


HALF HOLLOW HILLS EVENTS have not gone swimmingly in the construction of pools at high schools in Half Hollow Hills and Deer Park. Now, as school officials prepare for final testing of the waters, they're holding their breath - wondering what else can go wrong.

Barring further floods, lack of materials, engineering mishaps, technical miscalculations and squabbles among contractors, the Half Hollow Hills pool could open in April. If Deer Park can readily correct what has been described as ''the cockeyed level'' of its pool, that district, too, could soon be ready for swimmers.

The two indoor competition-size pools have much in common. They were begun in 1978 with Federal Economic Development Agency funds; Half Hollow Hills was granted $850,000 and Deer Park received $1 million. Both pools share the same unusual design features conceived by one architectural engineer, and both were supervised by the same general contractor -the same ''cast of characters,'' according to one school official.

Unfortunately, the projects have also experienced identical delays, problems and frustrations, and the superintendents of the two school districts are in concert as to where to place the blame.

''From the beginning there was a lack of communication among the contractors,'' said Coleman Lyons, Superintendent at Half Hollow Hills. ''There was just no coordination,''

''We had very bad cooperation between our contractors,'' echoed Daniel Domenech, Superintendent of Deer Park. ''The problem with the Federal grant money was that it limited us to keeping certain contractors. If it was the district's own money, we'd have fired some of them long ago.''

The superintendents contend that Milton Costello, an engineer of Amityville, who designed the two similar pools, is responsible for much of the difficulty. According to Mr. Lyons, Half Hollow Hills intends to file a lawsuit against Mr. Costello.

A major reason behind Mr. Costello's selection by the two school boards was his development of an unusual water inflow system by which water enters the pool through tiny holes in plastic tubing glued to the floor of the pool. At both sites, however, the tubes dislodged and floated to the surface when the process was tested, resulting in long delays in the construction schedules.

''It was a patented system, but it was in its guinea-pig stage,'' said Louis A. Wenger of West Babylon, the general contractor, who supervised installation of the equipment. He said Mr. Costello's plans did not specify how the tubing was to be glued in place.

''Mr. Wenger is a contractor who doesn't even own a wheelbarrow,'' Mr. Costello countered. He, in turn, blamed the problem on contractor error and the low-bid system, which he said was responsible for the hiring of Mr. Wenger.

''They should hire the middle-of-the-road bidder, but they have to hire the low man,'' Mr. Costello said. ''They got what they paid for.''

Mr. Costello's design was defended by Lee A. Sagistano, an architect subsequently engaged by the Deer Park district to coordinate its pool construction at a time when the project had completely bogged down.

''The theory of stirring up the water from the bottom is an advancement, as far as I'm concerned,'' Mr. Sagistano said. He said Mr. Costello's idea was incorporated into the Ward Melville High School pool in Setauket some years ago and is working ''very satisfactorily'' there.

But recently both Half Hollow Hills and Deer Park experienced trouble with another of Mr. Costello's concepts, that of ''the fast pool,'' meant to accommodate competitive swimming. The water level in a fast pool rises to the top of the structure and is supposed to flow evenly over the coping and circulate through trenches situated around the outer rim of the pool. To a slight degree in Half Hollow Hills and to a greater degree in Deer Park, the coping is unevenly installed, resulting in water circulation difficulties.

Here again, Mr. Costello blamed the contractor. ''Mr. Wenger put the coping in cockeyed,'' he contended. ''He went five times beyond the allowable error.''

For his part, Mr. Wenger said Mr. Costello had found a way to build a fast pool, but had never perfected the idea. ''The schools were just innocent bystanders - it wasn't their fault,'' he added.

''Theoretically, the ideas seemed excellent, but their practicality remains to be seen - if the pool is ever finished,'' Dr. Domenech said.

Asked when he expected that might be, Dr. Domenech replied, ''Every time we see the light at the end of the tunnel, someone caves in the tunnel.''

He added that the long delays had resulted in unanticipated costs for Deer Park taxpayers. There have been added expenditures for security and maintenance personnel, as well as for heating an empty building, which at present draws no revenues.


-------------------------------------------------------------------- ESTHER BENSON, an actress and writer, lives in New York. By ESTHER BENSON

''Architecture by inclination,'' the architect Louis Kahn called it. The house that stands on a hill in Paoli, Pa., about 25 miles west of Philadelphia, was 40 years in the building. It was created by Wharton Esherick, a designer and sculptor who shaped it to his changing needs, adding a bit here and a piece there, filling it with furniture of his own manufacture.

Esherick, who was born in 1887 and died in 1970, was one of America's foremost wood sculptors and furniture craftsmen. His studio-house - now the Wharton Esherick Museum - and its furnishings are a uniquely personal environment. In it, Esherick, who started out as a painter but soon found his real vocation to be working in wood, succeeded as few have ever done in integrating every aspect of the building, from the hand-carved door latches to the color of the exterior, into an organic whole.

Esherick began the studio in 1926, when he found that the old barn in which he had been working was not large enough to accommodate the huge pieces of wood he was beginning to prefer. The first unit, set on the crest of a hill above his Paoli farmhouse, was rectangular in plan, with a makeshift kitchen. He added on to the structure as need and desire dictated - a garage with a storage loft in 1927, a twostory wing in 1930, a new bathroom in 1936, an additional wing five years later. In 1956 he built a new studio (designed with the help of Louis Kahn), and 10 years later he added the silo-like structure that draws the elements together into a pleasing whole.

On a recent visit to Paoli, I followed the fieldstone path that leads from the parking area (where the quick of eye will spot Esherick's small ceramic sculpture of a pelican nestled under a quince tree) to the museum. The exterior of the five-level structure is so complex that I had to stop to absorb the textures and colors. The building is constructed of locally quarried fieldstones of every conceivable size, shape and color, weathered cedar planks and shingles and concrete blocks. The stone foundation walls of what was the original studio swell softly, so that they seem to rise from the ground like tree trunks. The silo is covered with stucco colored in a subtle blend of autumn shades; the front door is the hue of a ripe plum.

My guide met me outside the front door, and together we walked around the house and descended to the patio, where two deep mauve tapered pillars stretch upward to support a cedar deck. The patio contains several of Esherick's ceramic sculptures, among them the green-glazed bear called ''Winnie the Pooh.''

From the patio, we entered the hall that leads to the living roomgallery. The house contains 200 pieces of Esherick's work - from sculpture in wood, stone and pottery to furniture and paintings, woodcuts and prints, kitchen utensils and games. The sculpture and furnishings are drawn from all periods of his 50-year career. Early works have the simplicity of folk sculpture; later pieces trace Esherick's progress through the complexities of Cubism, Expressionism and Art Deco to a realm of pure formal abstraction.

The living room-gallery is centered around a sculpture well that was constructed to contain such larger pieces as ''X-X,'' ''Oblivion,'' and ''Twin Twist,'' a 10-foot tall carving in red oak that is now on long-term loan from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. One side of the well is edged by a serpentine railing that is incorporated into an elegantly curved rail sofa made of walnut, cherry and poplar.

The red oak spiral staircase that links the living room-gallery to the master bedroom in the old loft is the acknowledged masterpiece of the house. The supporting column retains the form of the tree from which it was carved; the steps angle out from its twisting trunk like pruned branches. Despite its somewhat formidable appearance, the staircase is comfortable to mount. The bannisters that creep down the wall are smooth to the touch and set at exactly the right angles to assist in ascent and descent.

The bedroom contains a high, two-poster bed that overlooks the valley. I followed my guide through the small hall that leads to the bathroom, and we paused to admire a detail that gives evidence of Esherick's sense of humor - on the wall are six coat pegs that he carved into likenesses of himself, the four workmen who helped him build the original workshop and the bird that sang to them while they worked. The bathroom is of terra-cotta brick tile. Set into the wall where the shower must surely splash is a green slate relief sculpture called ''Bird in Rain.''

The kitchen, like the bathroom, is housed in the silo. It has windows on three sides, a bright green floor and a bright green ceiling; pots and cutting boards of Esherick's own design hang from the rafters. In the adjoining dining room I stopped to admire the smooth, richly patterned surface of the dining table. Esherick here made a virtue of necessity - the piece of oak from which he shaped the table had been damaged by insects, and he had scooped out the damaged wood and replaced it with the insets of cottonwood and English walnut that enrich the grain.


Caught between crude oil prices that just won't come down fast enough and refined product prices that just won't stop coming down, oil refiners across the United States are slowly but inexorably being squeezed out of business.

Barely a week goes by without some independent ''tea kettle'' refiner or major oil company announcing that it is closing down all or a portion of a refinery because it is no longer possible to sell products at a profit in the shrinking, but still viciously competitive, oil market.

Some refinery operations are being suspended in the hope that the good old days will eventually return. Others are being dismantled and sold piece by piece to the highest bidder. Still others are simply being boarded up because it is too costly to do anything else with them - steel monuments to the passing of the growth era for United States oil consumption.

Survival, Not Profit, Is the Issue

For many refiners the name of the game today is no longer to make a profit, but simply to survive, to hang on until the industry stops its current sharp contraction.

Of course, not everyone is losing money. A limited number of refiners with captive markets, access to low-cost oil and the ability to process large amounts of cheap heavy crudes have been able to maintain razor-thin profit margins. But few companies combine those advantages better than the Exxon Corporation, and even it saw refining and marketing profits plunge 57 percent last year.

''I don't know when the refinery shutdowns will stop,'' remarks Jack Hudkins, manager of refining operations for the Phillips Petroleum Company, which recently announced suspension of 21 percent of its refining capacity. ''The ones that survive can and will be profitable. But we are not there yet. We have not yet reached the new equilibrium point.'' 37% of Capacity Is Shut Down

According to the American Petroleum Refiners Association, an industry trade group, between 50 and 60 of the nation's 324 refineries have shut down completely in the past 15 months. Those still operating are doing so at sharply reduced utilization rates. The result is that of the nation's 18.35 million barrels a day of total refining capacity, 37 percent - or 6.8 million barrels a day - is now collecting dust.

''We did a little research and could not find anything this bad since the Depression,'' says James J. Tsikerdanos, manager of statistical services for the American Petroleum Institute. ''And we have not hit the bottom yet.''

And the industry probably will not hit bottom without a good deal more pain. For the basic elements governing the refining industry's profitability - the amount of refining capacity versus the level of demand, and the cost of crude oil versus the revenues from the sale of products - are still way out of balance. Broad Decline in Demand

The jump in world crude oil prices since 1979, coupled with the recession, has provoked a drop in American consumption of basic refined petroleum products - gasoline, heating oil, jet fuel and residual fuel - to a greater degree than any refiners had anticipated.

Total petroleum consumption in the United States has fallen 14.3 percent since 1979, according to the petroleum institute. In 1981 alone, consumption of motor gasoline fell 4.2 percent, distillates such as home heating oil and diesel dropped 4.6 percent and residual fuel, used by factories and utilities, tumbled 19.9 percent.

Magnifying the fall in demand was the ever-widening trend toward conservation. Since 1973, the nation has gradually shifted to more efficient modes of energy use and to nonliquid fuels. The cumulative impact of smaller cars, conservation-oriented ways of living, improved insulation and furnaces, and conversion to coal and natural gas during the past eight years has begun to alter basic consumption patterns, making a mockery of demand projections published in the 1970's, a decade during which the number of American refineries grew to 324 from 279. Misreading of Consumer Reaction

''We were just wrong in our perception of the public's response to higher petroleum prices,'' says John F. Horner, vice president for refining and engineering of the Standard Oil Company (Indiana), which closed a 108,000-barrel-a-day refinery last year and has just announced the closing of another refinery of similar size -nearly 20 percent of Amoco's total domestic capacity.

''The conservation has been much greater than anyone anticipated,'' he adds. ''A year ago, when we shut down 100,000 barrels of refining capacity, we thought we would be comfortable. Yet, here we are today, shutting down another 100,000 barrels.''

The refinery business, Mr. Horner concludes, now has to go through a wrenching transition as it adjusts its capacity ''from the demand projections of the 1970's to the demand projections of the 1980's.''

Mr. Horner notes that Amoco's decisions on closings were made after utilization rates fell from 90 percent, to 70 percent, forcing the company to spread its high fixed refining costs over fewer barrels of product. Indiana Standard lost $139.6 million in refining and marketing in 1981. Continued Decline Is Forecast


Swift's move to trademark herself and her products isn't the first mind-blowing choice to hit headlines.

Rihanna recently won another lawsuit against Arcadia-owned brand "Topshop" for printing a picture of her face on their tank tops, without her permission.

Beyoncé Knowles' lawyers are threatening to sue Etsy, after the peer-to-peer e-commerce site was caught selling mugs and other merchandise with the name "Feyoncé."

During 2011 to 2012, a lawsuit was sparked between the two fashion designer brands 'Christian Louboutin' and 'Yves Saint Laurent', all because of the red-soled high heel. In the end, Christian Louboutin achieved trademark protection over the red sole, while YSL could use that trademark red color, as long as it covered the whole of the shoe's design.

The question now is what can we expect next from Swift? Performing at the 2016 Super Bowl perhaps?

Read MoreSwift, Spotify, 'Star Wars': The talk on Twitter

Summary: Taylor Swift Inc. takes a new turn this week, and instead of hacking, she's now putting copyright on her favorite phrases.


At least one person died when two small planes collided in the air and crashed at an airshow in northern Switzerland, a day after seven people died at a UK airshow.

The two planes were part of a formation of three and they crashed just before 11:30 local time on Sunday after they touched each other in the air, according to Meinrad Stoecklin, a spokesman for police in Basel-Landschaft.

The airshow in the village of Dittingen near Basel was temporarily interrupted as rescue teams raced to the scene of the crash, police said.

It wasn't immediately clear if there were more injured people.

Swiss media reported that one pilot managed to escape by parachute.

The two planes were part of a formation of three planes, but the third plane of the formation was not involved in the crash and landed safely, they reported.

On Saturday, seven people died and more than a dozen were injured after a military jet participating in an airshow in the UK crashed into a busy road.

The Hawker Hunter fighter jet, which was participating in the Shoreham Airshow near Brighton in southern England, hit several vehicles on a nearby road as it crashed.

Witnesses told local TV that the jet appeared to have crashed when it failed to pull out of a loop manoeuvre.

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: A day after seven people were killed at an airshow in the UK, at least one person died when two planes collided at an event in Switzerland.


While many investors remain frightful as the broader markets continue to sell off, PIMCO's Tony Crescenzi, said Sunday he sees this as an opportunity.

"We would take advantage of this weakness. Consider how the interest rates will be three to five years from now," Crescenzi said. "Rates are likely going to be extremely low to historical standards, so global institutional investors will be pouncing on this opportunity.

Investors across the globe struggled to find direction, with U.S. futures trading down about 1 percent across the board after Wall Street recorded its worst trading day since 2011 and with Japan's Nikkei 225 falling about 2 percent.

"We expect further action from China and we expect further action from other central banks," Crescenzi told CNBC. "When one thinks about China and its recent devaluation of its currency, one has to also think about the actions of other central banks and what they might do."

"What ultimately will happen is, we expect further actions by ...China to stimulate its economy and net-net-net, it could turn out a positive," Crescenzi added.

Read MoreChina OKs pension funds to pour $97B into market

Still, Mohamed El-Erian, chef economic adviser at Allianz, said investors will be in for a rough ride moving forward, as this current selloff is not over yet.

"We haven't seen one of two things that we need. Either we need better economic news to calm concerns about an accelerating global slowdown, or some policy intervention, not from the ECB or the Fed ... but that holds in the emerging world," El-Erian told CNBC on Sunday.

He added that, without any of these elements, emerging market economies would have a hard time pulling themselves out of the hole since oil prices keep falling.

Summary: Investors should take advantage of this weakness and capitalize, Tony Crescenzi says.


To date, it's raised $23.5 million and counts Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer as an investor.

Read More This makes people tip more at meals

Venture capital in the food delivery space has skyrocketed this year and led to a jump in competition. About $2.17 billion has piled in so far in 2015, up dramatically from $686 million last year, according to data from PrivCo.

Once Dispatch deploys, it will work with participating restaurants' existing digital ordering websites or apps. During checkout, customers will be able to scan delivery times and price quote options from the delivery providers available. Depending on the area, this could include a range of delivery service providers like Postmates, Caviar or Groupon's OrderUp.

Meanwhile, delivery giant GrubHub provides delivery services to just a small percentage of the more than 30,000 restaurants on its platform. Earlier this year, it bought two delivery service providers, DiningIn and Restaurants on the Run, as it seeks to broaden its business.

By partnering directly with restaurants, Olo's Glass wants to make the delivery process more efficient. Couriers will no longer have to wait until they arrive at a restaurant to place an order. Instead, it will automatically be sent to the kitchen, thereby shaving minutes off the process.

Customers will be able to track their couriers in real time rather than be left starring at the clock wondering when their food will arrive.

Read More McDonald's is messing with your McMuffin

It also simplifies the process for restaurants with locations in several different pockets of the country. Instead of cobbling together partnerships with regional delivery partners, restaurants can access Dispatch's national network of providers under one umbrella.

Since customers will have multiple delivery options with different prices, this additional information coupled with more efficiency for couriers could produce an added benefit—lower prices.

"It will create some price pressure," Glass said. "That is our goal—to make delivery at scale more efficient and affordable for guests."

Summary: Already a digital ordering giant, one startup is betting its new service will speed up food delivery.


Myriam Gumuchian is the fourth generation of her family to make jewelry. But she told CNBC the visual aspect of social media is working in reaching her customers.

"Women can relate when they see a picture of a ring on a finger, or a necklace or an earring," Myriam said, adding that "we like to show how it's worn in real time. We snap pictures, women do see that and they want to try it on."

With multiple social media options, which are the best platforms for small business? Kerpen suggested that "listening and paying attention to where are your customers are today. What social network are they on the most?"

According to market research firm, IBISWorld, Facebook—which said this week it logged a billion daily active users—has by far the largest market share among social networking sites at 65.4 percent. Next up is Twitter, with a 16.2 percent share. Separately, LinkedIn is third with just over 15 percent.

Kerpen said an e-commerce company should go on Facebook first, but LinkedIn is a better option for a lawyer or accountant seeking clients.

He added that if you're a "blog or a sports or an entertainment-related business, you probably want to be on Twitter first." Kerpen suggested starting with one social network, and expanding from there.

And for those who think social media only targets millennials, Kerpen added that "the fastest growing demo is actually men 50-plus. That's because everyone else is already there."

—"On the Money" airs on CNBC Sundays at 7p.m., or check listings for air times in local markets.

Summary: More small businesses are hopping on the social media bandwagon, which may help them compete with bigger rivals.


Officials for the Walbrzych District Council, speaking at the same press conference, said they had no doubt that something was down in the structures. They stated that they would work as fast as possible to discover, using radar, the layout and inspect inside these structures.

A cross-section radar image of the tunnel, unveiled at the press conference, showed an object that looked like a barrel or canister.

Several parts of the underground Riese Project have already been found but this latest find comes amid the search for a long-lost Nazi train from World War II in the nearby area. The search has attracted a wave of treasure-hunters and journalists to Poland after two men claimed in mid-August that they knew of the whereabouts of one of these trains.

On Wednesday, the council stated that it had received notification on the location of a "railway tunnel with a multi-level complex of underground corridors from the days of World War II." However, it had remained tightlipped on giving further information until Friday's press conference.

It was originally claimed in August that a hidden Nazi gold train had a possible hoard of some 300 tons of gold, precious stones and Nazi firearms. Andreas Richter and Piotr Koper, the two treasure hunters, even gave up their anonymity and appeared on national TV in a bid to dispel critics that believed that it is a hoax.

Summary: Local officials and a treasure hunter appeared on national TV Friday to shed more light on the search for Nazi gold in the hills of Lower Silesia, Poland.


on Wednesday to post a

opens up about the time she found Jenner (then known as

) dressed up like a woman 13 years ago.

that aired in May, Kardashian West had mentioned the incident, which occurred when she was 21. Now 34, the reality star says she kept the secret for more than a decade.

In the new post titled "About Jenner," Kardashian West elaborates on the moment and her personal experience with Jenner's transition because she thinks it's "important for others who don't really understand," and perhaps her story "can help anyone else experiencing something similar."

"My mom was out of town with my little sisters, visiting my grandmother in San Diego, and I was living with her and Bruce at the time in Calabasas," writes Kardashian West. "I came home from a friend's house and walked into the garage and Bruce was there, dressed up as a woman. Heels, wig, makeup and all! I don't remember specifically what he had on because I put my head down and ran into my bedroom. Had I not overheard my dad and his friends discussing rumors that Bruce would dress up as a woman years before (when I was about 11 years old), I never would have believed what I was seeing. I thought my dad was jealous of my mom's new husband, that he was joking with his friends on the phone, but suddenly I knew it was all true."

Kardashian West goes on to describe how "within 30 seconds" she packed a bag, ran to her car, called her older sister

crying and told her she was going to spend the weekend with her.

According to Kardashian West, her sister asked if she had caught Jenner cheating on their mom,

: "No, I wish," replied Kardashian West.

Once the two sisters were together, Kardashian West explains that they searched for episodes of

on Google to try to figure out what dressing up as a woman meant.

"For over a decade, we assumed he was a cross-dresser, not transgender," writes Kardashian West.

Jenner then called Kardashian West and said it was a "deeper issue" and asked her not to say anything to anyone but that one day they would talk about it.

"So I kept the secret and didn't tell anyone other than Kourtney. We did not tell my mom, either. I'm not sure why I didn't tell my mom. I guess I thought it would break up her marriage, and

were so young, ... I just felt so bad," continues Kardashian West. "I literally tuned it out for over a decade and never even really thought about it."

Nine years later, Kardashian West says Jenner called her and asked if she was ready to talk about it.

"I happily met with him at my home and he explained to me that he always felt he was trapped in the wrong body," recounts Kardashian West. "He said he was going to therapy and had dealt with it."

Kardashian West goes on to say that after their conversation, she "never could have foreseen that, in the future, Bruce would transition into Caitlyn."

"I walked away from this talk maybe understanding Bruce a little bit better as to why he did a lot of solo sports and spent a lot of time alone, because he didn't really connect with many people – but I never walked away thinking he was a different gender," she continues. "Maybe it wasn't explained well enough to me or maybe Bruce still wasn't sure and didn't know how to communicate what he felt. We went another half decade living life as usual."

Kardashian West then describes how her mother's relationship with Jenner "started to unravel," and that the former Olympian, now 65, moved out of the family's house and to a home in Malibu.

"They were arguing more than usual but we assumed they had just grown apart and, to be honest, we thought Bruce was getting older and just irritable," writes Kardashian West. "Little did we know, the transition was happening."

"When I began seeing pictures of Bruce with his nails painted and those reports that he had his trachea shaved, I started to freak out," recalls Kardashian West. "That's when we started to talk about it; at that point, I still thought he wanted it to be a secret. I didn't understand why he was being careless and getting caught if he didn't want to reveal anything. He was saying he didn't want anyone to know but he was leaving clues for people to find out. He had been seeing a therapist and eventually decided that's how he wanted to live his life."

According to Kardashian West, Jenner's decision to live her "authentic self and become Caitlyn" was "such a huge weight" lifted off her shoulders, though it has been

for her and her sisters.

"Of course, the kids were all nervous about how our dad would be perceived and that's a normal feeling," she continues. "We all went through so many emotions, ups and downs, therapy together and meeting with heads of the transgender community to better understand what was all going on."

Kardashian West says she is "really happy" and "so proud" that Caitlyn is "so accepted" and can share her story.

"Is it weird for me? Yes, this person has been my stepdad for half my life," she admits. "But life is just about being happy – that's the one common denominator that everyone can understand. If you aren't able to be you, who can you be?"

According to Kardashian West, her relationship with Jenner is "even stronger now."

"After all, she asks me for style and glam tips all the time," she concludes. "What's more fun than that? LOL."

Summary: The reality star posted a first-person essay Wednesday, writing, "Is it weird for me? Yes. ... But life is just about being happy"


09/17/2015 AT 02:00 PM EDT

A Florida woman is facing multiple charges after she allegedly attacked a sheriff's deputy with a machete-type weapon in her mobile home filled with thousands of "bladed instruments."

Nickole Dykema, 47, of Brooksville, Florida, refused to leave her mobile home when Hernando County sheriff's deputies arrived at the house just before 10 p.m. on Tuesday and commanded her to come out multiple times, the

said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.

The release states that the deputies were assisting probation and parole officers who were at the home to serve multiple felony warrants on Dykema. The deputies forcibly entered her home.

"Dykema utilized a large sword or machete type weapon and attempted to stab [Sergeant Chris Calderon], missing his face and head by only inches," the statement reads. "These actions by Dykema put a well-founded fear in Sergeant Calderon that he would be killed or seriously injured."

Authorities said Dykema fled into a room filled with about 500 bladed weapons after an officer fired several bean bag rounds at her.

"It should be noted that many rooms in the residence contained at least that many weapons," police said in the statement. The

reports that, all together, deputies removed more than 3,500 "bladed instruments" from the home after the incident.

After fleeing, Dykema armed herself with an "unknown number" of weapons and advanced toward the deputies, at which point one sergeant deployed a "less than lethal" shotgun at the woman, hitting her in her thigh and stomach.

Dykema fled again and was ultimately taken into custody nearly five hours later after an officer used his stun gun on her.

"This person was obviously dangerous to the community," Sheriff Al Neinhuis said in the release. "It amazes me that these deputies were able to take her into custody without anyone being injured."

The 47-year-old now faces charges including three probation violations, property damage/criminal mischief, resisting an officer without violence and assault on LEO.

list Dykema's bail at $12,000. It is unclear if she has entered a plea or has a lawyer.

The case is under investigation.

The arrest comes as a relief for Dykema's neighbors, who claim the woman terrorized them for months.

"Everyone in this neighborhood was scared of that woman, everyone around here," neighbor Fuzz Spisok told

Paula Deford told the station that Dykema was previously caught on her home security cameras slashing an air-conditioning unit.

"She cut all the screens on the windows in one incident," Deford said.

Summary: Authorities found more than 3,500 'bladed weapons' in Nickole Dykema's home on Tuesday


Mobile payments are booming. But are you missing out on credit card cash-back bonuses and rewards if you use your digital wallet?

You could be. On its rewards information website, American Express warns that cardholders may not receive rewards points in eligible categories if they use digital wallets like PayPal and Google Wallet. Other card issuers, such as Chase and Discover, sent out notifications to cardholders this spring that purchases made through mobile apps may not qualify for reward points if the technology is not set up to process the purchase in that reward category.

In other words, if the mobile app purchases are incorrectly coded, issuers may not be able to identify them as qualifying for a rewards.

That's exactly what's happened to some digital-wallet users, mobile payments experts say. "This has primarily been an issue with Google Wallet and other digital wallets such as PayPal," said Kari Luckett, content director for credit-card ratings website CompareCards, who looked into the issue after receiving some complaints for digital wallet users. "The problem is that they have a card on their back-end that most consumers aren't aware of."

Although the customers have added their rewards cards to the payment app, she said, "the card being used to pay for the transaction is actually the card Google has behind-the-scenes. Then that card is later reimbursed with the real credit card."

Read MoreFraud concerns? Avoid e-retailers from this country

When someone uses the PayPal digital wallet at a merchant with a credit card in a category that offers rewards, such as a gas station, the transaction shows up as a PayPal transaction with the card issuer, not the merchant code of the gas station. "It's always been a challenge for PayPal," said Cherian Abraham, mobile commerce and payments practice lead at Experian's Global Consulting Practice. "When the merchant is masked, users are not able to receive category-driven rewards."

Apple Pay, the digital wallet on the iPhone 6, avoids this problem by working directly with the banks, Luckett said.

Summary: Some digital wallets aren't giving users all the discounts they have earned. Here's how to fix it.


As CEOs buy a record amount of stock with shareholder money, they are keeping their wallets in their pockets when it comes to purchasing shares with their own cash.

In the last six weeks, U.S. companies made buyback announcements that came to $5.7 billion a day, according to TrimTabs Investment Research.

Yet in the month of April executives at those same companies bought only $240 million worth of stock with their own money, the lowest level of insider buying in more than two years. "Insider buying virtually dried up in April, sending the insider sell/buy ratio to its highest level in more than two years," noted the TrimTabs report.

It's a troubling contrast that may speak to the true feelings executives have about the staying power of this six-year bull market.

Summary: As CEOs buy a record amount of stock with shareholder money, they're keeping their wallets in their pockets when it comes to buying shares on their own.


MIT has been working on its Cheetah robot for years, showing how it can run fast, change its gait mid-stride, and so on — but this latest achievement might be the the most impressive. The robot can now make flying leaps over obstacles as high as 15 inches. Doesn't sound like much, sure, but you try designing a robot that runs and jumps like a big cat. (Tweet This)

The MIT project aims to build a "high-speed locomotion platform" with the fastest land animal as its inspiration. Of course, the robot Cheetah is not quite as lithe or deadly as the real thing, but it's quick and light — rival quadrupedal robots BigDog and Spot are more likely to plow through obstacles than vault over them.

Summary: MIT's Cheetah robot, which has been in the making for years, can now jump over obstacles as high as 15 inches, NBC News reports.


Shake Shack shares rose more than 12 percent on Friday alone, closing above $68. The next big mover for Shake Shack comes on Aug. 10, when it reports quarterly earnings.

Kelly also noted that recent momentum could drive McDonald's shares higher. The stock has climbed more than 1 percent since the struggling fast food giant's mixed results last week.

"Earnings weren't spectacular, but people are starting to believe the turnaround story," said trader Guy Adami, who agreed that the stock could grind higher.

Trader Tim Seymour—who owns McDonald's stock—said management is "getting there" with driving change and moving to increase profitability.

Tim Seymour is long AAPL, T, BAC, DIS, F, GE, GM, GOOGL, INTC, JPM, SUNE, Tim's firm is long BABA, BIDU, MCD, NKE, NOK, SBUX, YHOO.

Brian Kelly is long BBRY, BTC=; ITB, TAN, TLT, TSL, US dollar; he is short Oil, Ruble, Yuan and Yen.

Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck.

Summary: Shake Shack and McDonald's have gained some momentum, and "Fast Money" traders picked their favorite burger stock.


In the late 1940s, William Scott (1913-1989) realised that "if the guitar was to Braque his Madonna, the frying pan could be my guitar." Described by the distinguished critic Hilton Kramer as "the best painter of his generation in England", Scott is most often admired for his kitchen-table still lifes, featuring pots, pans, bowls, plates of mackerel, pears and so on – all rendered simple and plain. "I chose … objects without any glamour," he said ("a few eggs, a toasting fork"): "I wanted my pictures to have a painting not literary success."

As is evident from the retrospective currently at Tate St Ives, Scott painted exceptional nudes and landscapes, but the "pots and pans" remain his trademark: the subject of his pictures towards the end of the second world war, they were still there in his more minimalist work of the 1970s. Yet though he said he wanted to look "through the eyes of Chardin", Scott's still lifes are far from naturalistic. All his pictures, whatever their subject, dissolve the distinction between the abstract and the figurative, so that bowls on a bare table top are actually "about" the relationship between flat forms on large areas of colour – think Rothko rather than Morandi. There is a tension and a lyricism about them, and they are immensely pleasurable and satisfying to look at.

In the 1950s, Scott was known as a pioneer of abstraction in Britain and exhibited alongside Ben Nicholson, Terry Frost, Victor Pasmore and Patrick Heron. In the British art world, abstraction was still viewed with suspicion; outside that world, it had a highly specialised appeal. In 1962, Prince Philip, gaffe-prone then as ever, almost inevitably said of one of Scott's canvases: "Are you sure it's the right way up?" (There was a fuss in the papers.)

Scott insisted he was an abstract painter in the way he felt Chardin was too: the pans and fruit were uninteresting in themselves; they were merely "the means of making a picture", which was a study in space, form and colour. So basic were the shapes he chose that they were never merely pans and crockery: serried bowls on a table could suggest rocks stacked in a dry stone wall or boats taking refuge in a harbour. And then there is the erotic element, Scott's hint that "behind the facade of pots and pans there is sometimes another image … a private one … sensed rather than seen". If the pans and pears did have an erotic feeling, he said, it was "probably due to my love for the primitive and for the elemental". The frying pan comprises, in essence, a circle and a line, and dozens of critics have discussed the intimate relations between his objects, and the sexual element to his work.

They are paintings to be treasured, and yet, in William Scott, published by the Tate to accompany the St Ives show, Sarah Whitfield writes that "if ever an artist's reputation was in urgent need of rescuing it is Scott's". The 1950s were his breakthrough decade, and in 1961 David Sylvester noted that he had acquired "the soundest, all-roundest international reputation of any living British painter, Nicholson apart". But even by the time he was given a major retrospective by the Tate in 1972, he had begun to fall out of favour. The ironies of pop art quickly made him old-fashioned. As one commentator noted, Scott had suffered "neglect … since the inception of the pop-cult and the subsequent post-McLuhan hysteria which has led to the packaging of any kind of Americana as the only stuff worth having". When the Royal Academy organised its 1987 exhibition, British Art in the 20th Century, he was left out altogether.

His stock has been low for decades, but there have been recent signs that Scott's circle of admirers is widening, not least in the auction houses: along with other 20th-century British masterpieces his works have risen sharply in price – they can now fetch £500k or more. And by the end of 2013, his centenary year, he can't help but be better known. Much Scott activity is planned: the Tate exhibition is touring and evolving after St Ives; another show will open next month at the Jerwood, Hastings; and a vast catalogue raisonné, edited by Whitfield, is due from Thames & Hudson. Scott has never been obscure exactly, but reputation rescue is nevertheless under way.

He was born in Scotland, and brought up in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, the son of a sign-painter and one of 11 children. He later remembered this environment as a "very austere one with a philosophy of life, a rigid Protestantism, from which one cannot escape easily". The idea of austerity stayed with him: "I find beauty in plainness," he said, "in a conception that is precise." When Scott's father died trying to help firefighters get people out of a blazing house, Fermanagh Council got together money to send him, aged 15, to Belfast College of Art, and he went from there to the Royal Academy. He was a successful student and lived an impecunious bohemian life in Chelsea, sharing houses with other painters and with Dylan Thomas, who never had a room of his own, just slept on the floor using his trousers as a pillow.

Scott was drawn to the early Italians and to the primitive realism of the Cornish painters Christopher Wood and Alfred Wallis – he had a lifelong interest in childlike art, "the beauty of the thing being badly done". But the painting he most fervently admired was French – he was said to be "spellbound" at his first glimpse of a Matisse still life. When in the mid- 1930s he went to Mousehole, the Cornish fishing village, to pursue primitive realism, it was because "I could see in it Rousseau, Modigliani, Bonnard and Matisse – these painters had more meaning for me than the whimsy of Paul Klee" (Dylan Thomas liked Klee).

In 1937 Scott married Mary Lucas, a fellow student at the Royal Academy, and they set off for the continent, where the living was cheap. They settled in Pont-Aven in Brittany, a town with a connection to Gauguin, and began a summer art school. In the figurative 1938 Girl at the Table, part of the Tate St Ives show, a flattened figure (clearly Mary) sits at a table, which has on it a bowl of fruit and a bottle: as with so much of his work, a few simple objects sit within a large area of colour. Scott himself said that the picture shows the profound influence on him of French art, in particular Cézanne. Girl and Blue Table, not in the exhibition but also from this time, reveals an equal debt to Bonnard. He was "madly Francophile".

In 1941 Scott moved from wartime London to north Somerset, and began teaching at Bath School of Art; he had his first one-man show in London the following year. He liked Somerset because it was "less cleaned-up" than the home counties: as Whitfield writes, he had a hatred for "English gentility … 'snug cottages with roses around the door'". If there is a political aspect to his domestic but never homely art, it's in his rejection of anything fancy, and his embrace of ordinary utensils. Tate St Ives has The Frying Pan from 1946, which he described as a real advance. A black pan, a bowl and a toasting fork sit on a folded white cloth on a dark grey table; the background is a warm brown. His objects "were the symbols of the life I knew best … Everyone had a frying pan." Scott used his own "very black" pan only for frying fish – in Enniskillen, locally caught fish had been the staple diet.

By the time of his 1948 one-man show at the Leicester Galleries in London, Scott stood apart from two influential movements in the British art scene – the neo-Romanticism of Graham Sutherland and the "rather drab and provincial" Euston Road school. He had, so the Spectator reported, "made a name for himself". Wyndham Lewis's review in the Listener is worth quoting: "He is a newcomer. What he has to offer is an original idea of colour; a very personal, flat, empty design, as if cut out in cardboard … His statement is always so strict, parsimonious, and dogmatically severe, that it looks even emptier than it is. He brings us his mackerel, and his marigolds, as a child just able to walk solemnly brings objects … a birdcage, or a colander … and deposits them as an offering before the attentive adult."

Scott liked to associate himself with the St Ives school: spending summers in Cornwall, he met Frost and Peter Lanyon, both of whom were to teach with him at the renamed Bath Academy, housed at Corsham. These painters introduced him to Nicholson, Heron and Roger Hilton, and excitement and ideas travelled back and forth between Corsham and St Ives. There is a joyfulness about the plums, garlic, pears, grapes and lemons as well as eggs and mackerel which appear on his kitchen tables of these years (an example at the Tate is Still Life with Candlestick, 1949-50); the predominant colours of which are muted light blues, yellows and greys. The critic John Russell has written of "the real and legitimate pleasure" the artist gave "by his nimble and affectionate handling of recognisable objects".

But Scott's painting never stayed the same for long, and Nicholson pushed him further towards abstraction. The table-top was always his landscape, but when he lifted it into the vertical picture plane (so it was just a rectangle of colour), it took out a figurative component of his painting. Table Still Life from 1951 has more obviously as its subject the division of spaces, with the long, thin table legs and the spindly handles of the pans doing the dividing. In The Harbour from 1952, which Heron praised for its "animal vigour", a curved black line cuts up through whiteness – a jetty, but also perhaps a tongue or the shadow between two legs.

Scott's work is a story of different influences – French, British, American – and their absorption into a body of work which evolved, yet remained distinctive. Dubuffet has some bearing on Seated Woman (1954) at the Tate show, but Scott's next really important discovery was of the New York School, at that time almost unknown in Britain. In 1953, he visited the US and met Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. He summed up his response: "By 1953 my pictures appeared to have reached a stage of total abstraction and I was one of that very small band of British abstract artists much ridiculed by our critics ... American art had not yet crossed the Atlantic … The experience was a surprise and a shock. I realised that the Americans had made a major discovery … putting abstract painting on its right scale. It was not the originality of the work … but I was overwhelmed by its audacity."

So Scott's pictures got bigger, but at the same time he reacted against what he had seen in New York, and became surer than ever of his European heritage. "There's a whole tradition, from Chardin through Cézanne to Braque and Bonnard, which has no part" in American painting, he said, "and that's the tradition I've held to". Instead of going further down the road of abstraction, he decided to return to "recognisable imagery". The pots, briefly absent, came back on the scene. Yet his pictures did also get bolder – both in their use of paint, which became thicker and more textured, and in their distortion of forms.

These were still lifes as never seen before. A trip to the Palaeolithic cave paintings at Lascaux in 1955 also rejuvenated Scott's feeling for the primitive. Ochre Still Life at Tate St Ives, in which a row of pots hugs the horizon line and the left-hand edge of the painting, is evidence of what he called a "careful-careless way of painting … I like primitive art and children's art and the things that children scratch on walls and draw on pavements". What Norbert Lynton called "painterly lavishness" took over Scott's work. In the reviews of the 1972 Tate retrospective, Whitfield writes, critics were unanimous in their praise of these sumptuously painted canvases of the late 1950s.

They were less enamoured of his abstract experiments in the 1960s, in many of which unidentified shapes float in colour fields, and of the calmer, more minimalist work of the early 1970s. These late paintings were deemed too perfect, not "badly done" enough, perhaps, and unchallenging: there was in them a marked absence of painterly lavishness. But it is arguable that rather than showing a loss of vitality, they signal another of Scott's renewals. The new and hugely impressive four-volume catalogue raisonné will do much to fill out our understanding of these later pictures. But a work such as the 1970 Still Life with Orange Note, in which his favourite thin-handled black circle appears yet again, draws you into its big spaces, and becomes another, more contemplative study in colour and simple forms. It also offers a memento of, and a comment on, the more instantly lovable work finished decades before – of the rich and longstanding relationship of a master of still life with kitchen pots and pans.

Summary: Scott's pared-down still-lifes of pots and pans were forgotten in the heady rush towards pop art. He deserves a re-evaluation


China's central bank cut its benchmark lending rates by 25 basis points to 4.85 percent on Saturday, the fourth reduction since November, as it gears up to lower borrowing costs and support a slowing economy.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) also reduced one-year benchmark deposit rates by 25 basis points to 2 percent, it said in a statement on its website, adding that the reductions would take effect on Sunday.

Why China's RRR cut reeks of desperation

The PBOC last cut interest rates on May 10, lowering one-year benchmark lending rates by 25 basis points to 5.1 percent, and lowering one-year benchmark deposit rates by 25 basis points, to 2.25 percent.

Weighed down by a property downturn, factory overcapacity and local debt, growth in China's economy is expected to slow to a quarter-century low of around 7 percent this year. That is down from 7.4 percent in 2014, even with expected additional stimulus measures.

While more cuts had been expected as economic growth sputters, Saturday's changes follow a plunge of 20 percent in China's stock market in the last two weeks.

Summary: China's central bank cut its benchmark lending rate in the fourth reduction since November, as it gears up to support a slowing economy.


There is a reason credit card companies are no longer allowed to market their products within 1,000 feet of a college campus.

Before the CARD Act was passed in 2009 setting limits on credit marketing to students, card issuers regularly marked the start of a new academic term by setting up stands on campus and offering students T-shirts and other incentives to sign up for cards. Students proceeded to acquire high-fee, high-interest-rate credit cards, often with little understanding of how they worked.

These days, it is much harder for students to obtain credit cards. Students under 21 must have an adult co-signer to get a card or demonstrate that they have sufficient income, and the constraints on campus marketing have also had results. A study by Sallie Mae found that just 30 percent of students reported having cards in 2013, down from 42 percent in 2010.

Even among all millennials (defined here as those ages 18 to 29), credit card usage is relatively rare. A recent survey by Bankrate found that 63 percent of millennials have no credit cards, compared with 35 percent of consumers age 30 and over.

Read MoreSurvey says: Millennials prefer plastic

For a generation that watched its elders overextend themselves with credit and did not see the card-marketing offers that used to pervade campuses, credit cards may well seem like a less appealing payment option. And the string of security breaches at major retailers do not exactly make credit cards look secure.

Read More43 percent of companies had a data breach in the past year

But having a credit card can be useful, even for college students and 20-somethings. Most significantly, having a card and using it prudently can help establish a credit history, which in turn opens the door to lower-cost mortgages, car loans and more.

Summary: Millennials are shying away from credit cards, but plastic is a great way to build a credit history. Here's what to look for in a card.


* Global stock markets rise as China shares recover

* Bargain-hunting further boosts oil, squeezes short sellers

(Updates with market extending rally in U.S. session; changes byline and previous LONDON dateline)

NEW YORK, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Oil rocketed more than 6 percent higher on Thursday in a snapback from a deep two-month slump as stock market rallies and news of diminished oil supplies drove a short-covering surge by bearish traders.

In a global rush to risk that catapulted oil prices further away from this week's 6-1/2-year lows, world stock markets rose as Chinese shares recovered on hopes that government measures to stimulate the economy would pay off, while the dollar strengthened as risk aversion eased.

The rally was aided by news of a force majeure on Nigerian oil exports declared by Shell and private data indicating more drawdowns in crude this week at Cushing, Oklahoma, traders said. A big upward revision in second quarter U.S. economic growth added to the market's support.

Brent's front month rose $3.05 to $46.19 a barrel by 11:20 a.m. EDT (1520 GMT), staging the biggest percentage gain since early this year and hitting session high at $46.40. On Monday, the contract had struck a March 2009 low of $42.23.

U.S. crude's front-month rose $2.80 to $41.40, after an intraday peak at $41.64. It had hit a February 2009 low of $37.75 on Monday.

Brent, the global benchmark for oil, lost about $5 a barrel, or 14 percent, over the past six sessions on worsening fundamentals from a supply glut as well as weak technicals.

Short sellers had piled into the market, amassing one of the biggest ever positions in U.S. crude, according to regulatory data. But some scrambled to unwind those on Thursday.

"It's the squeeze on short-sellers that we've been anticipating after the oil markets saw panic selling and capitulation trade in the $30 levels," said Chris Jarvis, analyst at Caprock Risk Management in Frederick, Maryland.

"Couple this with strong continued demand for gasoline and solid GDPs number out of the U.S., and China's actions to reinflate their economy with a very shorted market, the near-term bounce we have been calling for appears to be working out."

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in London, Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Meeyoung Cho in Seoul; Editing by Christopher Johnson, Dale Hudson and W Simon)

Summary: NEW YORK, Aug 27- Oil rocketed more than 6 percent higher on Thursday in a snapback from a deep two-month slump as stock market rallies and news of diminished oil supplies drove a short-covering surge by bearish traders. Brent's front month rose $3.05 to $46.19 a barrel by 11:20 a.m. EDT, staging the biggest percentage gain since early this year and hitting...


"While it comes as no surprise that Internet is the most rapidly growing media type for advertisers, television is still the leading medium by spend by a long shot," Randall Beard, global head of advertiser solutions at Nielsen, said in a press release.

"But the really exciting development is how the two can work together. We are consistently seeing advertisers turn to integrated campaigns to connect with consumers on multiple screens, reinforcing their messages strategically to maximize impact."

(Read more: Facebook to roll out video advertising in test)

Multi-screen campaigns - defined as ads that run across two or more screens (such as TVs, computers, tablets and smartphones) at the same time – are expected to make up 50 percent of ad budgets in the next three years, according to Nielsen, from the current 20 percent.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, traditional media advertisements took a hit. Ad spending on newspapers declined 2.2 percent year-on-year over the first three quarters of 2013, while cinema, magazines and radio also saw a fall, according to Nielsen's quarterly Global AdView Pulse report.

Summary: Spending on internet advertising saw the fastest rise among marketing platforms last year, according to new research.


The story is told of a Chinese peasant invited to the emperor's palace to be rewarded for his loyal service. Would he rather be paid in gold or rice? Seeing the emperor at his chessboard, the peasant chooses rice, requesting one grain for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, and so on. Laughing at the man's stupidity, the emperor agrees but is bankrupted by the 64th square as the multiplying reward now totals more than all the rice in China.

Billions of billions – how can one begin to imagine such numbers, in grains of rice or anything else? Mark Wallinger does not flinch from the task. Each work in this marvellous new show attempts to number the numberless, to make visible some unimaginably vast concept all the way from infinity to eternity: and each work makes a piercing metaphor, often humorous, out of failure.

Stretching out before the visitor to the Baltic is an immense checkerboard floor: 65,536 chessboards, to be precise, laid edge to edge. On each square of each board lies a solitary pebble. Grey, cream, the size of a pawn or perhaps a queen, each stone has some visual affinity with the chess set but each is naturally unique; and the same suddenly seems true of each square. No longer just a black or white box, each square becomes a little kingdom for the pebble it contains; and each pebble acquires its own status by the same token. Everything is made to count, separately and together.

The effect from floor level is generalised, a grey miasma stretching into the distance. But from the viewing gallery above, every square has its special graphic distinction. Mathematics is clearly central to the work – from the simple binary opposition of chessboards to the super-perfect numbers involved – but there is a beautiful order in the spectacle itself: the sheer dizzying quantity of it all held in check, piece by piece, a beach contained in a chessboard.

Just beyond, not incidentally, is the sea itself, twinkling and lapping in Wallinger's new film Construction Site, receiving its UK premiere.

Three workmen are building a scaffolding tower on the shingle, a comic proposition in itself. A pole appears from the right, followed ages later by the builder carrying it. A speedboat breezes through as if to mock this slow and Sisyphean labour. There are mishaps and forgotten buckets, and a seagull bursts into the picture just as an ideal symmetry of structure is achieved. Every moment is surprising, a series of sight gags sustained over more than an hour in a masterpiece of comic timing.

This structure looks like a gigantic drawing, or a freestanding frame. It is eventually in such exact alignment with the sea's horizon that the workmen on the top appear to be walking on water. This is not a cinematic trick – transparency is crucial to everything Wallinger makes – just a simple coincidence of different perspectives.

Space swithers between two and three dimensions, the men seem variously giants or midgets, the sea appears flat as a picture; and time becomes mysterious too. No sooner have they finished than the workmen return to dismantle the structure – unless, perhaps, it was the other way round? A palindrome emerges and repeats itself continually, like the tides, transforming boats and buckets into running gags forever.

Construction Site is a most original combination of contemplation piece and absurdist comedy. Every pun – verbal and visual – is deeply intended. Puns, palindromes, mirror images, anagrams and inversions: these are all pivotal to Wallinger's art, succinct devices for multiplying the nuances of meaning.

His work can be extraordinarily condensed, as in the colossal letter "I" adorning the outside of the Baltic on a banner. The simplest expression of the self, I says everything and nothing, describes everyone and no one. It amounts to a universal self-portrait (one sign fits all) while paradoxically denying the possibility of summing oneself up in an image or a word.

Inside, at the opposite extreme, a slideshow is flashing up photographs of the several thousand marks Wallinger has chalked on brick walls all over London in the past few years. "Mark", says the mark, speaking of its maker as well as itself, sending up the narcissism of tagging as well as the futility of trying to leave one's mark upon London. It is the pun simultaneously multiplied and reduced to the absurd.

It would be hard to overstate the subtlety of these two meditations on self-centredness, each stimulating new thoughts long after one leaves the gallery and both achieved with the simplest possible means. No sleight of hand; the separate elements of Wallinger's works are always exposed, one feels, as a matter of principle. That principle may be moral, aesthetic or intellectual but it is generally all three, as in the most powerful piece in this show.

Just outside the central gallery is a vertiginous stairwell that drops 13 landings, a plunge so abrupt you lose all sense of orientation. With the simple addition of a couple of mirrors, one above and one below, Wallinger extends this continuum to infinity. The bottomless hell below reflects the eternal heaven above, on and on in both directions. Which way is up? The viewer stares into this illusion, entirely aware of the mechanics, but overpowered by its vision of an endless fall and the impossible ascent to heaven.

A forest of iron helmets hangs upside down in the antechamber of Yoko Ono's Serpentine Gallery retrospective, conjuring the dead of two world wars. But in their upturned state, they are as reminiscent of cooking pots as dead soldiers; swords may still be beaten into ploughshares.

On either side two films are screening – an eye slowly blinking, a match gradually burning: pause, think, you might prevent disaster in a blink – and on the wall between them is Ono's famous Vietnam poster. "War Is Over" declares the faded headline; "If You Want It" whispers the tiny subtext. Hers may be a voice of perennial hope, but it is not without qualification.

This show breathes the true air of the 60s. It includes the early films of John and Yoko kissing, John breaking into an infectious slo-mo smile, Yoko suffering the clothes to be snipped from her body by strangers in Cut Piece. It has the glass labyrinth in which the wanderer becomes effectively blind and unable to find the way to the dark box at the centre, its hidden message as condensed as a haiku.

With its delicate calligraphy, translucent screens and fragile objects ceremonially presented on plinths, Ono's aesthetic appears strikingly Japanese. But her meanings are, of course, devoutly universal. For some, this will come across as sentimentality, as in her invitation to the public to smile on screen or leave a wish on a tree. But her sincerity is not in doubt.

Ono's gift is for the epigrammatic object or image; the blood-stained letter, the folded coat hanger doubling as forceps (death or birth), her footprints in step with John Lennon's on a sheet of paper, an overwhelming testimony of loss.

But most affecting of all is the remake of Cut Piece from 2003, when Ono was 70. The audience's reverence and obsession are now as much part of the performance as the artist's endurance. With every snip, they get closer to her fame while she remains resolutely dignified. The performance has turned into a life story.

Summary: Mark Wallinger makes every pebble count in a wonderful exhibition of number-crunching, while Yoko Ono's 60s message remains timeless, writes Laura Cumming


Monday: Palo Alto Networks and Workday: These are two of Cramer's absolute favorite—and most expensive—stocks. At these prices, though, he advises investors pass.

Cracker Barrel: Though the "Mad Money" host is not a huge fan of having a giant piece of cheese on his apple pie, many Americans are. This stock has been on fire recently, thanks to low gas prices, and Cramer expects it will report a terrific quarter.

Tuesday: Hewlett-Packard: "This company is doing so many things right that I can't even count them all."

Wednesday:Seadrill: Now this is one nasty stock that Cramer thinks will explain why so many offshore drillers have been horrendous. This is a dangerous stock, because of the plethora of new rigs coming online and the low price of oil.

------------------------------------------------------ Read More from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: My advice to investors Cramer's tips for teaching children about investing3 key rules for trading like Cramer------------------------------------------------------

Thursday: "Go be with your family—heaven knows that's what I'l be doing, and I mean it when I say that"

Japan will also be issuing number on Thursday and Friday, and Cramer expects them to be hideous as usual. Just remember—their weakness is not our weakness.

So yes, there is somewhat good news drifting overseas from China and Europe, but until investors see concrete actions being taken, don't get too excited. The U.S. market is about U.S. stocks, and stick to stocks that don't have too much international exposure. Stick to what's working, and be cautious about everything else.

Summary: Jim Cramer issues a stiff warning for investors regarding Europe and Asia and reveals the stocks on his mind for next week.