Sejla Holland didn’t want to mark the 20th anniversary of Bosnia’s independence in a way that would evoke images often associated with the small Balkan country: war, death, destruction, ethnic cleansing. Instead, Holland, who came to Everett in 1994 as a war refugee, wanted to highlight qualities of the Bosnian people often lost in news reports: creativity, artistry, talent, perseverance.

“I didn’t want to do something showing the war and destruction. People know about that. I wanted to do something with art, to show that something as disruptive as war couldn’t kill our creative spirit,” said Holland, who left Boston in 1998 for Southern California and in 2010 opened a Laguna Beach art gallery specializing in green and sustainable art.

So Holland, 42, started querying Bosnian artist friends about an exhibit, and received “passionate” responses. The result is “Bosnian Born,” an exhibit of nearly 50 pieces by 27 artists including photography, fashion design, sculpture, graphic design, and contemporary art. Most of the artists live in the United States, a few are in Bosnia-Herzogovina or elsewhere in Europe, but all were born in Bosnia.

The exhibit runs through Jan. 15 in a space at 38 Newbury St. offered by the American Islamic Congress, a civil rights organization that promotes tolerance and the exchange of ideas. The artworks are for sale, with proceeds going to the artists and to the Bosana Foundation, a charity that provides scholarships to Bosnian war orphans. About $8,000 , enough for three partial scholarships, has been raised so far.

Organizers hope to raise more at a Dec. 13 reception honoring four locals who have been active in Bosnian relief and social justice efforts: Thomas Butler, founder of Builders for Peace; Mirjana Rabadzija, who helped resettle Bosnian refugees during the war; Andras Riedlmayer, who testified at an international war crimes tribunal about cultural destruction during the war; and Glenn Ruga, founder of the Center for Balkan Development. The reception, at 6:30 at the American Islamic Congress, is open to the public.

“Bosnian Born” premiered in May at Holland’s California gallery and came to Boston with the help of fellow Bosnian refugees living in the city. It brings together artists whose work is being recognized in its own right, far outside of Bosnia.

Consider fashion designer Ina Soltani, who was 17 and on an exchange program in Los Angeles when the war broke out in 1992. She couldn’t return to her family in Sarajevo, which was besieged by Serbian forces. They were reunited when the war ended, but Soltani returned to California to study fashion and start her own label, and has made dresses worn by Jessica Biel, Miley Cyrus, Eva Longoria, Jennifer Lopez, Katy Perry, Kristen Stewart, and Carrie Underwood, among others. One of her designs, a short pink dress, is part of “Bosnian Born.”

Sarajevo-born Dean Zulich took up photography only recently, but has quickly gained notice, with work appearing in Marie Claire and Playboy, and as runner-up on VH1’s photographer-competition show “The Shot.” His contribution to “Bosnian Born” is the surrealistic “Mask 1,” taken at the Salton Sea in Southern California.

“Each one of these artists — their story is related to Bosnia. The war is part of that, but it’s also about survival, and staying human,” said Ria Kulenovic, who left Bosnia in 1995 and came to Boston, where she became friends with Holland. Kulenovic belongs to the recently founded New England Friends of Bosnia and Herzogovina, and helped bring the exhibit to Boston.

It’s a notion understood by Harun Mehmedinovic, who was born in Sarajevo, in 1982. His family fled their neighborhood after it was captured by Serbian forces, and were taken in for several months by artists Seyo Cizmic and Kemal Hadzic, who became refugees themselves, and whose art is also part of “Bosnian Born.”

Mehmedinovic’s image “Hailstorm,” of a young woman in a white dress walking through a landscape whitened by hail, is playful and serene.

“It’s about living in the present,” said Mehmedinovic. “It’s an appropriate image for people who survived the war in Bosnia. . . . You’re more likely to do something kind of crazy if you’ve been through war.”

The war left more than 100,000 Bosnians dead, most of them civilians, and drove another million from their homes. While “Bosnian Born” is intended to celebrate the human spirit, the artists acknowledge that they have been shaped by the war.

“I still remember the smell of blood in the air,” said Cizmic. “I know that influenced me for sure.’’ Cizmic’s piece in the exhibit, “Secret Code,” features Hebrew letters in a grid on a gold background, and is about the suffering of different peoples through history.

The organizers said that it was important to them, at a time when ethnic tensions still roil Bosnia, to include artists from all of Bosnia’s ethnic groups. They also said the exhibit has attracted Bosnian, Croat, and Serb visitors, fostering friendlier relations.

“I think we’ve succeeded in doing what Bosnia needed to do,” said Kulenovic, of New England Friends of Boston and Herzegovina.

Azra Aksamija, an art professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who fled Bosnia in 1992, believes artists can foster pluralism in Bosnia as they did centuries ago, when Christian and Muslim craftsmen helped build each other’s houses of worship.

“There are still people who buy into nationalistic propaganda, and this is where artists can play a role, by showing how we are shaped by crosscultural influences,” Aksamija said.

The exhibit will go next to Washington, D.C., while there are talks about bringing it to St. Louis and Burlington, Vt., home to two of the country’s biggest Bosnian communities.

Summary: Sejla Holland didn’t want to mark the 20th anniversary of Bosnia’s independence with images of war, destruction, and ethnic cleansing. Instead, Holland, who came to Everett in 1994 as a war refugee, wanted to highlight Bosnian creativity, art, and perseverance. The result is “Bosnian Born,” an exhibit of work by 27 artists, all born in Bosnia, showing at 38 Newbury St. in a space provided free by the American Islamic Congress, on Newbury Street.


David Hockney's Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is moved into place during the Tate Britain rehang. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Visitors to Tate Britain are in for a shock. It may take a while to register. When it does, the revolution perpetrated by the museum's director, Penelope Curtis, explodes into view.

There are no explanatory texts by the works of art.

Those wordy white panels telling visitors what paintings or installations mean have long been a controversial feature of the Tate galleries – often criticised but always there. Now they are gone, as part of a radical rethink at Tate Britain that also sees more paintings on its walls, sculptures on its floors and history in its bloodstream than ever before.

This week Tate Britain opens A Walk Through British Art, a total restaging of its permanent collection that reverses most of the decisions this museum made when it opened under its present name in 2000. Gone are the "thematic" hangs, rejection of chronological displays and sometimes minuscule representation of its enormous collection of British art. In comes a return to history, and even patriotism.

A Walk Through British Art feels like a walk through Britain itself. Not all of it is beautiful, not all of it is glamorous, but it's our country all right. And there is so much to discover when you open your eyes. This display, which Curtis promises will stay in place for a long time (overturning another Tate tradition, the regular rehang) abounds in masterpieces, curiosities and discoveries. All the treasures are on view, from William Hogarth's painting of his servants to David Hockney's A Bigger Splash, from Francis Bacon's 1972 Triptych of George Dyer's suicide to a cheerful group portrait of Mr Oldham and his Guests enjoying their pipes painted by Joseph Highmore in the 18th century.

The famous and the forgotten hang side by side in chronological order. This display glories in the advantages a straight chronological arrangement has over curatorial "interventions". Arranging art in order of when it was made does not impose anything on the visitor. It gives everyone the freedom to see connections, make comparisons, and lose themselves.

Obviously you don't really have to walk it in order, from Hans Holbein to Richard Wright. You can flit around as you like. But in each gallery, there is a deep and rich sampling of a particular moment in British art. The early galleries have an unexpected star – Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the late 18th century this painter, theorist and first president of the Royal Academy dominated the British art world. Nowadays he is often thought of as a bit tedious compared with his brilliant contemporary Joseph Wright of Derby, say. But here his masterpiece The Archers, two youths arcing and straining athletically as they fire their arrows, hangs between Wright's fiery forge and erupting volcano – and wins the face-off.

It's the kind of surprise that makes A Walk Through British Art a total delight. In later rooms, Eduardo Paolozzi's sci-fi collages compete with Bill Brandt's nude photographs, Sarah Lucas with Richard Hamilton.

Yet what truly stands out, from the sensitive choices of real gems of artworks to their spacious yet detailed placing in sumptuously redecorated galleries, is the passion for British art that fuels this epic display. It makes the case for British art, not just today but since the 1500s, as abounding in originality, ripe with personality, and often unexpectedly beautiful. It is a revelatory journey to meet the British.

Summary: More paintings and sculptures go on show as part of rethink of how permanent collection is displayed


05/21/2014 at 03:00 PM EDT

It's time to throw in a little more gratitude with your gratuity (unless you're a party of six or more, then it's included) – May 21 is

, a holiday calling restaurant patrons to throw down a little extra on their checks in appreciation of all the hard work servers do (as well as

Like many holidays, Waiters and Waitresses Day is as big as you want it to be. Looking to go all-out this year? Then why not draw inspiration from these seven real-life tales of astoundingly large tips – read them below, and then maybe think of ways you could make your own server's day.

It was, they hoped, the best shift ever. California waitress Chelsea Roff raised her little sister on her own, battled an eating disorder and ran

– and her bosses wanted to go the extra mile to show their appreciation. With the help of

, they organized a heartwarming stunt for Roff on April Fools' Day. As she worked her shift, random customers appeared and gave her a series of incredible tips, culminating with a gig teaching yoga at a eating disorder treatment clinic and a brand-new car.

When her son came down with a serious illness, Arizona's Danielle Thomas started waiting tables – the flexible hours meant she'd have more time to take care of him – and signed up for food stamps to make up for the low wages. But when Thomas tried to renew her benefits, the government told her that they'd mistakenly overpaid her; suddenly she owed them $800 she didn't have. While telling her story to a table one night, she received an unexpected stroke of luck: A $1,000 tip from a kind-hearted customer, enough for her to repay the debt.

In January, two anonymous patrons walked into a Nebraska Cracker Barrel and requested they be served by the grumpiest server on duty. Not wanting to throw any shade on a member of their staff, the Cracker Barrel's management instead gave them their happiest waitress: college freshman Abigail Sailors, who was working her way through Trinity College after a childhood filled with grief and abuse. One of the patrons happened to be a Trinity alum and, inspired by Sailors's fortitude through tragedy, left her a $6,000 tip – $5,000 for tuition, $1,000 for school supplies.

The happiest event to ever occur in an airport restaurant happened in April, when passenger Heather Hogan received news that her beagle had successfully made it through a life-saving surgery. Overwhelmed by the news, she gave waitress Mijai Wallace a $60 tip – all for one cheeseburger.

During the 2013 government shutdown, National Guard soldiers were forced to work without pay. To help them out during a tough time, New Hampshire waitress Sarah Hoidahl picked up the tab for a pair of National Guardsmen dining in her restaurant. Her kindness was repaid tenfold – or rather, 370-fold. Paying the $27 tab earned her a spot on

, as well as a $10,000 reward courtesy of the TV host.

Local millionaire Benjamin Olewine was a regular at the Peachtree Restaurant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when he decided to pay waitress Melissa Mainer's nursing school tuition on a whim. $20,000 later, Mainer has her nursing degree, and 92-year-old Olewine says he'd be happy to pay for her grad school as well.

Before he died in 2012, Aaron Collins had

– that they honor his memory through a series of "awesome" $500 tips. The family didn't have enough money to make his dream a reality, so they set up

where strangers could donate money for the project. It worked even better than they expected. Nearly two years later, they've surprised 97 different waiters, waitresses and pizza guys with five cool Franklins each.

Summary: On May 21, throw down a little more in appreciation of your server


July 21, 2014: Sky News reporter Colin Brazier has received a barrage of abuse and criticism after he went through luggage at the MH17 crash site on live television.

The Sky News reporter filmed rifling through an infant victim's luggage at the MH17 crash site has penned a lengthy apology published by The Guardian.

In the piece, Londoner Colin Brazier explained how he came to pick up the child's belongings live on air – and the tears that followed.

"While presenting Sky's lunchtime coverage of the flight MH17 disaster, I stooped down to look at a piece of debris. It was a child's suitcase," he wrote.

"I put my hand inside and lifted up a water bottle and a set of keys. As I did so my mental circuit-breaker finally engaged and I apologised instantly on-air for what I was doing."

But the damage was already done, with the veteran journalist and father-of-six having intricately described the case's contents, everyday items serving a devastating reminder of the young life lost.

Within minutes social media was alight with outrage.

July 22, 2014: A man believed to be a pro-Russian rebel fighter has appeared in an online video purportedly taking a ring belonging to a MH17 passenger.

Within hours the story had gone viral, with Sky issuing an apology for the insensitive gaffe.

Brazier, who is no stranger to aviation disasters having covered the 2004 Lake Constance plane crash which claimed 69 lives – 45 of them children, stopped short of defending his actions, instead offering critics an alternative view.

"The crash site of flight MH17 is like the set of a horror story. Except that movies are never allowed to show what we saw over the weekend," he said.

"As I type I can smell the nauseating scent of death that clings to me still. I have seen burned bodies before – I was a 17-year-old football fan caught up in the Bradford football stadium fire – but nothing on this scale."

Brazier said in the absence of law and order he had become so accustomed to, he, like many others, were free to walk around the eastern Ukraine crash site at will.

And in this particular broadcast, in a corpse-littered field, he stumbled across the intimate items.

July 22, 2014: Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine have released footage to the BBC showing flight MH17 directly after it crashed.

"They brought home the poignancy of the tragedy … And so during that lunchtime broadcast I stood above a pile of belongings, pointing to items strewn across the ground," he said.

"Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a pink drinking flask. It looked familiar. My six-year-old daughter, Kitty, has one just like it.

"I bent down and, what my Twitter critics cannot hear … is that I had lost it."

Brazier said his employer understood the stress under which the error was made.

A statement issued by Sky following the incident appeared to support his claim, noting the "human tragedy of the event".

"Colin immediately recognised that this was inappropriate and said so on air. Both Colin and Sky News apologise profusely for any offence caused," the statement read.

It's unknown whether any action will be taken against Brazier.

Source: The Guardian Author: Chloe Ross, Approving editor: Martin Zavan

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Calum Colvin's ambitious set of 25 new works revisits the mythical figure of Ossian, the "Celtic Homer". "Discovered" and published by James Macpherson in Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760), Ossian, it later transpired, was Macpherson's invention, a fake whose poetry was stitched together from a variety of sources. That is the inspiration for Colvin's sweeping journey through Scottish cultural history that stops en route to pick up (among others) Robert Burns, Walter Scott, a tattooed Maori, Harry Lauder and the Old Firm, and explores themes of authenticity, fragmentation and fabrication.

Throughout the exhibition Colvin employs a characteristic technique: he builds three-dimensional models, projects images on to these constructions, traces the lines of these images as they fall across the various forms and objects they encounter, and then photographs the results. The final image (transferred to canvas here) relies heavily on a trompe l'oeil effect in which the two-dimensional integrity of drawn or painted images appears to remain intact, despite being fragmented and distributed across a variety of surfaces and locations.

Colvin's works, then, are a place where complicated subject matter meets complicated technical effects. But this is difficult to manage, and Colvin achieves mixed results. The series Fragments I-VIII and Blind Ossian I-IX show him at his best. In these compelling images, strong composition holds fastidious detail in check, encouraging close looking and agile thinking. But in works such as Cruthni I-III and, to a lesser extent, Scota 01, composition falters and busy detail wins out. Looking at these can be a slightly frustrating experience as details vie for attention, each loaded with "meaning" and "significance".

Sometimes it is difficult to assimilate all these littered details, formal arrangements, thematic concepts, historical references and technical intricacies. Sometimes fragments remain fragments. And finally, an atmosphere of airless nostalgia reigns. The urgency of the present is smothered by the overbearing presence of a mournful past.

· Until February 9. Details: 0131-624 6200.

Summary: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh


People dig for gold on the Outer Harbour beach in Folkestone. Photograph: Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty Images

Three friends have struck gold after a German artist buried thousands of pounds worth of bullion on a Folkestone beach.

Berlin-based Michael Sailstorfer has hidden 30 bars of 24-carat gold, worth £10,000, under the sand of the Outer Harbour beach in Folkestone as part of the town's triennial arts festival.

Kevin Wood, Kirsty Henderson and her sister Megan unearthed a £500 piece on Friday after digging for an hour at low tide.

The friends had travelled from Canterbury after hearing about the gold rush on Twitter.

Describing the moment he got lucky, Wood, 28, said: "My legs went from under me and I started shaking. I put it quietly in my pocket. We left the beach, and halfway home we pulled over for a drink."

On Thursday the Guardian prompted hundreds of gold diggers to head for the town by breaking the news that the conceptual artist had buried 30 bars of the precious metal, together worth £10,000.

A family from Folkestone dug up one of the bars at around 7pm on Thursday, the organisers of the project told the Guardian. There have been other rumoured finds since then, but these have yet to be confirmed.

The Folkestone Digs project is part of the town's triennial which has previously included work by artists including Tracey Emin, Jeremy Deller and Martin Creed.

Artists including Yoko Ono are taking part in this year's festival which runs from 30 August to 2 November.

Summary: Kevin Wood and Kirsty and Megan Henderson find £500 piece left by artist Michael Sailstorfer as part of arts festival


FORTUNE — When Silicon Valley’s smartest people want to get smarter, they often turn to Benchmark partner Bill Gurley. For instance, he recently advised Travis Kalanick, CEO of startup Uber, on a less expensive version of his rapidly growing limo service. Says Kalanick: “He really pushed us to lower the price so there’s no room for competitors to squeeze in underneath us.”

The 46-year-old Gurley sits on 11 company boards, including Uber’s, and has written the popular Above the Crowd blog since 1994. The title is a play on his towering height — he’s 6-foot-9 — but it could easily refer to his point of view, which is analytical and methodical. Benchmark co-founder Andy Rachleff says Gurley is distinguished by his “powerful intellectual honesty and insight about markets that few people have.”

MORE: Trailblazers – 11 people changing business

Gurley is a finance guy who studied to be an engineer. A Texas native, he got his computer science degree in the late 1980s at the University of Florida (where he also played basketball for the Gators). In 1996, when Web 1.0’s rock star Internet banker Frank Quattrone left Morgan Stanley MS for Deutsche Bank DB , he recruited Gurley to come along. Gurley was the lead analyst on the Amazon AMZN initial public offering, a tech milestone, but his heart was in venture capital. In 1998 he decamped for Hummer Winblad, where Bill Gates put in a good word for him. But Quattrone had also introduced Gurley to the founders of Benchmark. He joined in 1999.

Among VC firms, Benchmark is a maverick. Unlike others that take the names of their founders and are structured hierarchically, Benchmark is a lean operation in which its six full-time partners share profits equally. It isn’t trendy. And it hasn’t adopted the Andreessen Horowitz model of staffing up with service providers and marketing teams. But in the past two years alone, Gurley counts 20 “exits” — six companies went public, and 14 were acquired.

MORE: Meet Silicon Valley’s hardcore recruiters

Now Gurley is in the middle of a generational shift in which he often plays the bridge between old and new. Benchmark’s founding members include pioneers like Bruce Dunlevie and Bob Kagle, who spotted the potential of eBay EBAY (see “eBay’s Back!“) early on. More recent additions include Twitter board member Peter Fenton and Matt Cohler, who led an investment in Instagram; Facebook FB paid more than $1 billion for the service last June.

Gurley helped recruit and mentor these younger partners. Last fall he flew to New York City for a dinner with former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt and Cohler to discuss 1stdibs, a retailing company in which Cohler had recently invested. Says Cohler: “Bill wrote an entire presentation about the company and shared it over dinner.” For Gurley, it was a no-brainer. “All great teams lift each other up,” he says. That kind of thinking could be why so many Valley veterans seek him out.

This story is from the February 25, 2013 issue of Fortune.

Summary: Benchmark's Bill Gurley has provided wise counsel to some of Silicon Valley's most successful entrepreneurs.


Two Indonesian soccer teams have been filmed trying to lose to reportedly avoid playing against a club with ties to the country's mafia.

Footage of the sedate league match on Sunday shows goal keepers from Yogyakarta's PSS Slemen and Central Java's PSIS Semarang moving out of the way and simply allowing balls to drift into the net.

Fans despaired as both keepers let through a total of five own goals, with Slemen emerging as victors 3-2.

Both teams were yesterday disqualified from competition by officials, quoting a gross violation of fair play.

"To enforce the law and keep the competition for competent, PSS and PSIS disqualified. Both clubs have to stop here," a league spokesman told reporters at a news conference.

It has been reported that both second-tier sides were trying to avoid an encounter with Pusamania Borneo FC, a team known to be backed by the Indonesian mafia.

The clash was allegedly played out behind closed doors due to recent violence.

The winning club will now progress to a semi-final decider against Pusamania.

This is not the first time match-fixing has made headlines in Indonesia, with the country's national side scoring a blatant own goal against Thailand in the 1998 Tiger Cup to avoid facing hosts, Vietnam.

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Kelly J. Huff/Marietta Daily Journal/AP

11/19/2014 AT 04:00 PM EST

Justin Ross Harris, the man accused of murdering his 22-month-old son, Cooper, by

, will be facing trial next year, but his lawyers are hoping to make the most serious charges go away.

PEOPLE has obtained 15 motions filed on Oct. 27 that will be argued in front of a judge next month. In one of the motions, Harris's attorney, Maddox Kilgore, argues that the murder charge should be dropped. He argues that the life sentence that Harris faces "is cruel and unusual if it is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime."

In another motion, Kilgore argues that Harris's interviews with police should be suppressed, claiming that Harris was not read his Miranda rights. "Statements to law enforcement officers were the result of custodial interrogation â¦ made without being properly advised of his rights," he wrote.

In September, Harris was indicted by a grand jury on eight felony counts, including malice murder, cruelty to children and criminal attempt to commit a felony.

Harris, 34, was also charged with two counts of dissemination of harmful material to minors, a result of his alleged

on the day his son died. One of the recipients of his sexts, prosecutors say, was 16 years old.

But now, attorneys for the

want to separate the two cases. In the documents, attorney Kilgore says that the trials should be separate because they name two different victims. He also argued that the two sets of charges are "not of a similar character or nature."

"Whenever two or more unrelated offenses have been joined for trial," Kilgore writes, "the defendant shall have a right to a severance of the offenses."

Since the beginning, questions have swirled about what Harris's wife, Leanna, knew. During a July 3 probable-cause hearing, Detective Phil Stoddard testified about a bizarre jailhouse conversation between Leanna and her husband. According to Stoddard, Leanna asked him, "Did you say too much?"

In one of the motions, Harris's attorney cites marital privilege and argues that those statements should be suppressed. "Neither party to the privileged marital communication gave consent for the private conversation to be secretly observed or recorded," he writes.

– as well as the innocence of her husband. "Ross was a wonderful father and he loved Cooper with all of his heart," she wrote in a

. "Because I saw how he treated our little boy for 22 months, I know without a doubt he would never have knowingly allowed any harm to come to our son."

Today, Leanna Harris is working a new job. According to a source close to her, she frequently visits her incarcerated husband. "She's just trying to get through each day the best she knows how," says the source. "And she's standing beside her husband."

While the prosecution alleges that Harris intentionally left Cooper in the car, the defense counters that the death was a "tragic accident." The jury trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 12.

Summary: The Georgia dad argues that prosecution would constitute "cruel and unusual punishment"


Online petition company Change.org has raised $25 million in new venture capital funding from a group of A-list technologists and media celebrities. It is the third round of outside investment for Change.org, whose CEO Ben Rattray continues to say that the San Francisco-based company will never sell nor go public.

“We are a mission-driven company, and part of that is to make sure investors eventually get a return,” Rattray says. “The whole thing doesn’t work if they just invest and then get nothing — even though some people want to stay with us for a very long time — so we’ll at some point work out some private secondary offerings for them.”

Change.org previously raised funding from Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm led by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. It returned, and was joined by such individuals as Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Reid Hoffman, Ev Williams, Jerry Yang, Gideon Yu, Arianna Huffington, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary.

Proceeds will be used to improve Change.org’s mobile product, with a particular eye toward helping to notify users of locally-focused petitions. The company also wants to grow a platform that allows businesses and politicians to directly respond to Change.org users.

Change.org currently has over 80 million users, and claims that over 40% of petitions that get at least 10,000 digital signatures have won the campaign, which typically involves a company change some policy. For example, a Change.org petition convinced Southwest Airlines LUV to stop partnering with Sea World, due to petitioner concerns over its treatment of whales. Another caused Gap Inc. GPS to stop selling fur products via its Piperlime unit.

The San Francisco-based company primarily generates revenue via native advertisements by organizations seeking to build momentum in their own movements, including nonprofits and political campaigns. Some revenue also comes in via users who want to better promote their positions.

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Summary: Online petition site how has over 80 million users, and a lot of big-name investors.


WrestleMania III set the record for the largest attendance at a live indoor sporting event in North America. Held at the Pontiac Silverdome on March 29, 1987, this edition of WrestleMania drew 93,173 fans. The card had 12 matches that featured all-time greats such as Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat, Roddy Piper, Bret Hart, Harley Race, Rick Martel and the Iron Sheik. The main event was the colossal clash between Andre The Giant and Hulk Hogan. 30 Years Of WrestleMania takes a closer look at how this historic night for the WWE was devised and developed.

In preliminary discussions for the third WrestleMania, Vince McMahon was adamant that WWE make the event a bigger, more grandiose production than WrestleMania 2. Given the success of the previous two events, for WWE the question was, "How do we make WrestleMania better?" The first step was returning WrestleMania to one location. Marketing was also key. During an early meeting to brainstorm taglines, the WWE team threw around different possible catchphrases until someone said, "This one's going to be bigger, it's going to be better, and it's going to be badder." Vince McMahon jumped from his chair and said, "Stop right there." He began to draw it in the air with his hand, "WrestleMania III: Bigger, Better, Badder." The "Better" and "Badder" aspects were an accepted mission statement in a company that hosted live events 52 weeks a year. The "Bigger” component required additional work. WrestleMania sold out Madison Square Garden. WrestleMania 2 emanated from three locations and drew over 40,000 fans, along with hundreds of thousands more via closed-circuit. What could WWE do to make WrestleMania III "Bigger?"

WWE wanted WrestleMania III to be as close to the east coast as possible. While WWE was a national company by then, their strongest fan base was in the eastern half of the United States. The Pontiac Silverdome was quickly selected as first choice. Ed Cohen remembers, "The phone rang at two in the morning. I was asleep, so my answering machine picked up. Vince started talking fast, saying, ‘Wake up! Ed, wake up!' I got on a plane to Michigan that morning with a check for $50,000 in my hand to hold the date for the Silverdome."

Selling 60,000 seats would have produced the largest crowd in WWE history, but the Silverdome could hold more than 90,000 spectators. To fill its seats, WWE needed the best talent combined with a breakthrough promotional campaign.

The Pontiac Silverdome could be configured for various seating arrangements. When asked which configuration he wanted to use, Vince McMahon replied, "The whole way, we are going to break the all-time indoor attendance record. It’s going to be over 90,000 people."

Hulk Hogan added, "Haven't you heard who’s in the main event, brother?"

WrestleMania III rested on the public's connection with Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. Crossing into 1987, Hogan became a household name and the industry’s most recognizable ambassador.

Throughout his career, Andre the Giant was the greatest attraction the industry had ever known. But heading into the mid-1980s, Andre’s body started to suffer the rigors of the business. He felt it was time to wind down his in-ring career. For WrestleMania III to fulfill its mission, Andre would have to agree to participate. Vince McMahon remembers, “Right after WrestleMania 2, I flew to England to visit Andre. He was filming The Princess Bride. He was suffering from excruciating back pain and needed surgery. Originally, he wasn't going to have the surgery but I convinced him to have it and be a part of this one last thing. I told him, 'You and Hogan will draw the biggest crowd ever for an event like this.' And he agreed."

To account for Andre’s post-surgery absence, WWE issued a statement saying that he had been suspended for not fulfilling certain contractual obligations. Very few people knew at the time that Andre was recovering at the McMahon family home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The buildup to WrestleMania III’s main event started on the January 17, 1987, episode of Piper's Pit. Hogan and Andre received awards from then-WWE President Jack Tunney. Andre took the first step toward the historic encounter by leaving in the midst of Hogan’s acceptance speech. Roddy Piper remembers, "The Andre and Hogan segments were done in the Pit because WWE needed the three biggest properties -- Andre, Hogan, and Piper -- together to get the storyline over with the fans. I needed the crowd to focus because this was serious."

Over the next two weeks, WWE personalities who had credibility with the audience as "knowing" Andre speculated on his uncharacteristic behavior. On February 7, the Piper’s Pit audience gasped when Andre appeared with Bobby "The Brain" Heenan. Staring at Hulk Hogan, Andre challenged the Hulkster to a match at WrestleMania III. To dramatize Andre's transformation to a life of evil, he tore off Hogan's shirt and cross, and blood ran down the WWE Champion's chest. The segment ended with Piper consoling Hogan in one of sports-entertainment television's most memorable moments.

Turning Andre into a villain created the ultimate showdown and maximized WrestleMania III's drawing power.

It took Hulk and Andre a long time to reach a point of mutual friendship and respect. Hulk Hogan recalls, "I'd be on the way to the building, knowing I had to wrestle [Andre], and I was so scared that I would pull the car over and vomit." However, Andre gained respect for Hogan in Japan. Hogan faced a tough situation with a wrestler named Tatsumi Fujinami who would have seriously injured Hogan if he could. When the Hulkster claimed the victory despite the challenging circumstances, Andre saw the skill Hogan displayed in the ring. Hogan said of his relationship with Andre, “I think, after that night, things changed."

Despite the collaboration the main event required from Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, there was uncertainty up until the last minute. It was crucial that Andre allow two things: the bodyslam and the ultimate defeat. Vince McMahon reflects, "It's funny because Hogan was scared to death. Hogan had been in the ring with [Andre] before, but not like this. Andre had this habit with anyone of consequence as far as size was concerned; he had to show them who was boss. [Hogan] wasn’t too sure if the result would come out like he thought it would. I knew what Andre was going to do; Hogan knew what Andre could do. Big difference."

Hulk Hogan entered the Silverdome to the deafening roar of his Hulkamaniacs. The Hulkster and Andre the Giant traded displays of power and dominance, each move eliciting outcries from the record crowd. Then Hulk Hogan performed the unimaginable. He slammed "The Eighth Wonder of the World" and pinned him with his famous Leg Drop. In the act of defeat, Andre the Giant showed his love for the business that made him an icon. McMahon recalls, “That was the highest moment that Andre would ever have in the business. He was so proud of that. Even in his later days, when he could hardly move in the ring, he lived off of that, and he should have."

WrestleMania III sold more tickets than the Super Bowl, and WWE was now the undisputed owner of the indoor attendance record. As the show came to a close, WWE, Hulk Hogan, and Andre the Giant crossed the threshold of entertainment immortality together.

-- Excerpted by permission from 30 Years Of WrestleMania by Brian Shields and Dean Miller. Copyright (c) 2014 by WWE and DK/BradyGames, a division of Penguin Group (USA). Published by DK BradyGames. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available for purchase from the publisher, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes. Follow Brian Shields on Twitter @ItsBrianShields.

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Summary: WrestleMania III set the record for the largest attendance at a live indoor sporting event in North America. Held at the Pontiac Silverdome on March 2...


FORTUNE — Sidecar CEO Sunil Paul said yesterday at a conference that U.S. auto ownership will be cut in half over the next decade thanks to social car-sharing services like his. It sounds ludicrous for any number of socio-demographic reasons, but what if you allow yourself to drink the battery fluid? What would the rise of companies like Sidecar mean for the country?

Less traffic? Likely. A cleaner environment? Probably. A massive cut in state tax revenues. Definitely.

According to an April study by the Center for Automotive Research, the auto sector was responsible for approximately $91.5 billion in state taxes for 2010 — or around 13% of all such receipts. Included in that figure was $30 billion from the sale of new and used vehicles and $20 billion from vehicle registration fees. Not included were such things as excise taxes or title fees.

The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that 51.2% of new cars in 2010 was for personal use, so let’s just use that figure even though the percentage of personal-use used cars is likely even higher.

That means that, if Paul’s theory is correct, states would lose out on a minimum of 3.4% in annual tax revenue, or $23.4 billion in 2010 dollars. Not too good for those states that already are having trouble making budgetary ends meet (i.e., almost all of them). And that doesn’t even take into account what would be lost from the $43 billion in federal revenue generated by federal fuel taxes and taxes on direct employment at car manufacturers, auto parts suppliers and dealers (or the resulting unemployment costs).

Now I know what you may be thinking: Won’t some of that lost revenue be recouped from taxes collected on drivers for companies like Sidecar? Under the current structure, the answer would be no.

Sidecar views itself an an intermediary rather than an employer, so it doesn’t issue 1099’s or any other tax forms to its drivers. In fact, Sidecar doesn’t even view its client transactions as payments — it calls them donations. So does fellow ride-sharing company Lyft, although it does issue 1099’s for drivers who reach over $20,000 and 200 “donations” in a given year.

Maybe all social ride-sharing drivers will accurately report all applicable taxes to state and local authorities, but it’s highly unlikely. After all, you know any restaurant servers or bartenders who report 100% of their tips? Me neither, and they work in an industry that’s been around longer than the country itself.

To be sure, there are all sorts of social and environmental benefits to car-sharing specifically, and to the larger notion of a sharing economy. But there also are significant national costs to decreased ownership of major goods like automobiles. At the very least, Paul and other sharing economy evangelists should be aware of both sides of the equation.

Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

Summary: If car ownership plummets, so will state tax revenue.


This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.

Does 1995 feel like just yesterday or a lifetime ago? No matter how you feel about it, these events are about to hit their 20th anniversaries:

The World Trade Organization was formed (Jan. 1): After much wrangling between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton (then Republican Senate leader and President, respectively), the U.S. agreed to sign the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade treaty. The WTO was created by GATT to monitor international trade decisions — and in 1995 it replaced the treaty as a regulator of trade.

Read TIME’s original coverage of the WTO, here in the TIME Vault: Let’s Make a GATT Deal

North America’s largest airport opened (Feb. 28): The new Denver International Airport airport was (and remains) the largest in North America, though it opened much later than planned. The airport now hosts more than 50 million passengers a year and numerous conspiracy theories.

Read the results of TIME’s 1995 polling on the new airport, here in the TIME Vault: Vox Pop

Selena was murdered (Mar. 31): The young singer was a Grammy-winning hit when she was shot to death. After a nine-hour standoff, the former head of her fan club was arrested. About three years later, Jennifer Lopez would play her in a biopic.

Read TIME’s original coverage of the murder, here in the TIME Vault: Death of a Rising Star

The Oklahoma City Bombing took place (Apr. 19): In an attack on a government building in Oklahoma City, 168 people were killed — including more than a dozen children at a day-care center at the site — and many more were injured. It was then the deadliest terrorist bombing in the nation’s history. One of the bombers, Timothy McVeigh, was executed about six years later.

Read TIME’s original special issue about the bombing, here in the TIME Vault: The Face of Terror

The last episode of Full House aired (May 23): After eight seasons, the world bid bye-bye to Danny Tanner and his three kids and various hangers-on. Other TV milestones that year include the premieres of JAG and Mr. Show with Bob and David, and the finales of Blossom and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Read TIME’s take on family sitcoms of the 1990s, here in the TIME Vault: Where Fathers and Mothers Know Best

Christopher Reeve was paralyzed (May 27): Reeve, who played Superman on film, was thrown from his horse and broke two vertebrae in his neck. He was paralyzed below the neck and relied on a respirator to breathe until his death in 2004.

Read TIME’s original coverage of the accident, here in the TIME Vault: Hospitalized

South Africa won the Rugby World Cup (June 24): South Africa beat New Zealand 15-12 to win the World Cup — and a symbolic victory for the post-apartheid nation. The events surrounding the win were later portrayed in the movie Invictus.

Read TIME’s original coverage of growing unity in South Africa, here in the TIME Vault: A Land Singing Twin Anthems

Hugh Grant was arrested for lewd conduct (June 27): Grant was caught with a prostitute named Divine Brown on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, engaged in what TIME’s Richard Corliss called “felonious fellatious activity.” The arrest marred his charming, bumbling, Four Weddings and a Funeral persona — at least temporarily — and made the actor a household name.

Read TIME’s original coverage of Grant’s reputation-rehabilitation campaign, here in the TIME Vault: Hugh and Cry

The Grateful Dead played their last concert (July 9): It was a bad year for Deadheads. Earlier that summer, over 100 fans were injured when a deck at a concert site collapsed, and another concert’s cancellation led to rioting. Then, mere weeks after their final show in Chicago, lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died of heart failure. The band would announce their official break-up later that year.

Read TIME’s obituary for Garcia, here in the TIME Vault: The Trip Ends

The Srebrenica Massacre occurred (July 11): The Srebrenica enclave was supposed to be a “safe area” in the midst of Bosnian warfare, but ethnic-cleansing leader Ratko Mladic led Serbian forces against the Muslims living there nonetheless. The massacre was later ruled a genocide by the The Hague.

Read TIME’s original coverage of the massacre, here in the TIME Vault: Tears and Terrors

eBay went live (Sept. 3): Then called AuctionWeb, the site was started by Pierre Omidyar to help his then-fiancée find Pez dispensers for her collection. Other tech milestones of that year were the launch of IMDb and the release of Windows 95 (d’uh).

Read an early TIME article about eBay EBAY , here in the TIME Vault: Online Flea Markets

Toy Story opened in theaters (Nov. 22): Pixar’s first feature was almost the first-ever full-length, entirely-CGI movie. Other notable movies of that year included Billy Madison, Friday, Batman Forever, Pocahontas, Apollo 13, Clueless, Waterworld, Babe, Empire Records, Showgirls, Mallrats and Waiting to Exhale.

Read TIME’s original review of Toy Story, here in the TIME Vault: They’re Alive!

Operation Desert Storm officially ended (Nov. 30): Though a cease-fire had been declared years earlier for the Gulf War, the conflict that arose when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the operation didn’t officially end until 1995.

Read TIME’s take on the foreign-policy implication of Desert Storm, here in the TIME Vault: What Price Glory?

The final “Calvin and Hobbes” strip was published (Dec. 31): “I believe I’ve done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels,” Bill Watterson told newspaper editors that year, shortly before he brought the story of a boy and his tiger to a close.

Read TIME’s original announcement that the comic was ending, here in the TIME Vault: Seen & Heard

Jagged Little Pill was the album of the year: At the Grammy Awards for that year (which, yes, took place in 1996) Alanis Morissette scored for her June 1995 release. She also won Best Rock Song for “You Oughta Know.” Other notable tunes of 1995 include “Gangsta’s Paradise,” “Waterfalls,” “Creep” and “Kiss From a Rose.”

Read TIME’s profile of Alanis Morissette, here in the TIME Vault: You Oughta Know Her

Want more? View TIME’s complete collection of issues from 1995 here.

Summary: 1995 was a busy year.


This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.

With auto-play videos now being a firmly established part of the Facebook FB News Feed, the social network is reportedly planning to try upping the quality of the ads displayed there. A new ad format called a cinemagraph will reportedly start appearing in the News Feed soon, according to Adweek.

The ads are moving GIFs, but the motion is restrained to just a few parts of the image. An ad for wine might show a large banquet table with just a single glass of wine swirling, for instance. Or an ad for a newspaper might show a reader slowly stirring his coffee while everything else around it is static. An agency that’s been experimenting heavily with cinemagraphs, Ann Street Studio, features several of the ads on their website.

The ads have a dreamy, hypnotic quality that makes them stand out amongst the multimedia assault most users experience as they surf the Web. Most likely, these types of ads would be played on loop, a functionality that Facebook just added to Instagram last week. The unique format might convince users to stop scrolling and actually take an ad in for several moments, which would be good news for both marketers and Facebook.

Summary: The new ads are oddly entrancing.


Campbell Soup CPB CEO Denise Morrison pointed to the growing skepticism of large food makers that has resulted from consumers’ changing tastes as a key challenge for her industry.

The company, whose portfolio of products ranges from V8 juice to Pepperidge Farm cake to its namesake soups, has found itself grappling with big changes in consumer behavior, in particular growing interest in fresh food and consumers much more keen to know what impact what they’re eating is having on their health and where it’s from.

On top of that has been a “mounting distrust of so-called Big Food, the large food companies and legacy brands on which millions of consumers have relied on for so long,” Campbell CEO Denise Morrison said on Wednesday at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York meeting in New York.

“Like other companies in our industry, we’re contending with now not just the long-term impact of the Great Recession on consumer purchasing behavior, or the increasingly complex public dialog when it comes to food, or the regulatory environment for food.” What’s more, the traditional avenue for selling Campbell’s products—grocery stores—are coming under a lot of pressure from alternative retailers she said.

Campbell recently lowered its full-year results forecast after only one quarter, suggesting it doesn’t expect much relief in the pressure on its profit margins anytime soon. In January, Campbell said it would re-organize its divisions according to product category, rather than by geographic region. It plans to eliminate some management layers as well. Campbell estimates its cost-cutting measures will save it $200 million a year.

Campbell is by no means the only food maker struggling to adapt to new consumer behavior. Last week, cereal maker Kellogg K cut its long-term annual revenue growth estimate to a range of 1% to 3%, excluding some items, from an earlier forecast of 3% to 4%, citing poor cereal and snacks sales.

Morrison’s comments about adapting to changing consumer attitudes echoed those of a major competitor. “I don’t think Kraft has done as aggressive of a job in this regard as we need to,” said John Cahill, who in December became CEO of Kraft Foods KRFT , last week. He noted that Kraft has lost market share in 40% of its U.S. businesses in 2014. Also last week, ConAgra, CAG the maker of Chef Boyardee, announced it was naming a new CEO—the ex chief at Hillshire Brands, Sean Connolly—and lowered its earnings guidance for the year ending in May.

All this turmoil is enough to give any food executive indigestion.

Summary: Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison said consumers don't trust big food makers, and the company announced a $200 million a year cost-cutting program to help its sagging profit margins.


As the many questions around Mark Hurd’s departure continue to go unanswered, a key aide to the former CEO has also abruptly resigned this week.

The mystery deepens. Caprice Fimbres McIlvaine, formerly head of internal communications at Hewlett-Packard HPQ and a top aide to ex-CEO Mark Hurd, has left the company, following her boss out the door three days after his departure. Her exit is significant because, according to two people with knowledge of her former role, McIlvaine was the key conduit in hiring Jodie Fisher, the actress-turned-corporate hostess/”marketing contractor” who later filed a sexual harassment suit against Hurd, setting in motion the chain of events that resulted in the CEO’s resignation on Aug. 6. McIlvaine resigned effective Aug. 9, HP confirmed Wednesday.

McIlvaine occupied a unique role at HP. Originally hired to work in the company’s corporate communications group, she ultimately rose to head internal communications for the company as well as serving as something of a chief of staff to Hurd. She typically was one of the few people who accompanied Hurd on trips away from company headquarters, arranging meetings, lodging and the like.

Importantly, McIlvaine organized the gatherings of top customers — dubbed CEO Summits — at which Hurd spoke and Fisher acted as a greeter for those customers. What precise role McIlvaine played in hiring Fisher couldn’t be learned. It is unusual at HP, or any large company, for a series of top-level gatherings to be coordinated by the office of the CEO, as opposed to a corporate marketing group that does this sort of thing frequently.

McIlvaine is 37 and worked at HP as the “CEO program manager,” according to her LinkedIn profile. The profile does not say what year she joined HP but indicates that she left her last employer, PR agency Blanc & Otus, in 2004. Hurd joined HP in 2005, following the firing of the company’s previous CEO, Carly Fiorina. Attempts to reach McIlvaine for comment Wednesday were unsuccessful. Fisher’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Hurd declined to comment.

Summary: As the many questions around Mark Hurd's departure continue to go unanswered, a key aide to the former CEO has also abruptly resigned this week. The mystery deepens. Caprice Fimbres McIlvaine, formerly head of internal communications at Hewlett-Packard and a top aide to ex-CEO Mark Hurd, has left the company, following her boss out the…


The Sachs family on the cover of PEOPLE

03/07/2015 AT 01:50 PM EST

What kind of boyfriend was Ashton Sachs?

"He treated me like a princess and spoiled me rotten," says Sarah Verbeek, 26, who dated Sachs for one year after the two met in a sign language class at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California.

"He was the funniest person I ever knew in my whole life – we would go to the grocery store and dance down the aisles," Verbeek tells PEOPLE in

And although Verbeek says she sometimes observed underlying tensions between Sachs a 19-year-old computer whiz and onetime honors student, and his parents Brad, 57, and Andra, 54, she also says that it wasn't something he dwelled on.

"He never spoke bad about his family," Verbeek says. "He never said, 'I hate my mom.' Nothing. "

The young couple dated for a year and broke up in the summer of 2013, after which a distraught Sachs attempted suicide by overdosing on pills. That fall, he moved to Seattle to attend community college.

Verbeek says they didn't talk again until she learned that his parents Brad and Andra, a self-made real estate mogul worth an estimated $80 million, had been

on Feb. 9, 2014, in their $2.4 million San Juan Capistrano, California, home. His 8-year-old brother, Landon, had also been paralyzed in the deadly rampage.

She says she immediately emailed Sachs, asking if he needed someone to talk to.

"He emailed me back a few hours later and said, 'I would love to talk to you. I don't really have anybody,' " she says.

For the next few weeks, Verbeek says she became Sachs's rock. She comforted him as he cried uncontrollably in the backseat of her car, listened to him as he talked about joining forces with his older brother, Myles, to get custody of his younger siblings, and supported him as he kept nightly vigils at Landon's hospital bedside.

"He would cry and say, 'Landon is 8 years old and he doesn't have a dad,' " Verbeek says. "He seemed like he was genuinely grieving."

Less than a month later, Sachs was charged with the murders of his parents and the attempted murders of Landon and his 17-year-old sister Alexis, who was unharmed.

He later told investigators he blamed his parents for his messed-up life and said that he was their "least favorite child."

Verbeek is among those who remain baffled by his motives and what could have caused him to snap.

"He never talked about guns or shooting guns," she says. "This all came out of nowhere. He hid it very well."

Summary: "He never spoke bad about his family," Sarah Verbeek tells PEOPLE


FORTUNE — Unless you have just been ignoring your portfolio for the last few years, the fact that interest rates are literally at all-time lows should be no surprise. In the chart below we look at the yield on 10-year Treasuries going back 30 years. The yield on the 10-year Treasury hit an all-time low of 1.47% in July of this year.

For the last few years, many investors have become bearish on U.S. government bonds based on the extremely low yields. For those that have actually implemented the thesis and shorted U.S. government debt, the trade was likely painful. In reality, shorting U.S. government bonds has been the proverbial “widow maker” trade over the past few years as bond prices have gone straight up and yields down.

Despite potential credit events, like the debt ceiling crisis in the summer of 2011 and a subsequent downgrade of U.S. government debt, yields on treasuries have continued to trend lower. The monetary policy implemented by the Federal Reserve has had the intended impact of keeping rates low and has, seemingly, made investors think that the Fed is the ultimate lender of last resort, albeit by printing money.

By keeping interest rates at abnormally low levels, not only has the Fed induced lower rates on U.S. government bonds, but it has also induced lower rates on many types of loans – from mortgages to corporate debt. In the two charts below, we highlight this by looking at the rates on 30-year mortgages going back 10 years versus a high yield US corporate bond index.

In some markets, like the residential mortgage rate, low rates have not increased money supply because of tightening lending standards. Conversely, the high yield market is, as they say, flush with liquidity. Related to that last point, in October the U.S. high yield primary market hit $41.9 billion in issuance. This trailed only September’s all-time high of $46.8 billion. Yes, you read that correctly . . . September 2012 was the highest month of high yield issuance in the history of capital markets. As of October, this year is 34% ahead of 2011’s full-year total and up 52% year-over-year through ten months.

Clearly, low rates are inducing corporate issuers to refinance at record rates. In fact, in the year-to-date 59% of total issuance of high yield debt has been utilized for refinancing. This is a little less than the 64% of proceeds used for refinancing in 2010, although in 2010 55% of proceeds were used to address maturities versus only 43% this year. So, corporations are taking advantage of the low interest rates to reduce their all in cost of borrowing. In addition, these issuers are taking advantage of the search for yield by many investors to sell record amounts of bonds.

Morningstar published their most recent fund flows data for flows through October. In the year-to-date, high yield fund inflows are +$27.9 billion and + $30.1 billion in the last twelve months. High yield is the second largest inflow category in the last twelve months after intermediate term bonds. On a percentage basis, though, high yield has seen the largest inflow of any of Morningstar’s top 95 asset categories growing 15.2% year-over-year.

MORE: Economists poke holes in Buffett’s tax argument

The other interesting point relating to the high yield market -in addition to record low interest rates, record high issuance and record high yield fund inflows- is that terms for the issuers are almost as flexible as they have ever been. This is best characterized by the re-emergence of covenant-lite loans, or loans with much more lenient terms for borrowers. In the year-to-date, covenant-lite loan issuance is $49 billion. According to Fitch, the recovery rate for covenant-lite loans is 55 – 60% versus an overall recovery rate of 62% for loans from 2008 – 2009.

In aggregate, it seems like a frothy market for high yield, but high yield bulls would counter that the long term spread versus treasuries is not even close to its lows. Currently, this spread is at 5.7% versus its low of 2.5% in 2007.

While the spread versus Treasuries is an important metric, the underlying creditworthiness is probably even more critical, especially with high yield bond trading at their lowest absolute level ever. The caveat is that default rates are currently very low on high yield bonds. In fact, as of September the par weighted default rate, according to J.P. Morgan, fell to 1.83% and the issuer weighted default rate fell to 2.98%. This is well below the peak on par basis of 16.3% in November 2009 and the peak on an issuer basis of 12.2% in March 2002.

MORE: Debunking private equity’s debt ‘problem

The reality is that high yield bonds in aggregate are pricing in these low default rates. On absolute basis, high yield bonds are almost perfectly priced given their all-time lows in yield. So, investors are getting paid the lowest interest rate they have ever been paid to take the risk of owning high yield debt.

Our primary concern going forward relates to the corporate earnings and cash flow outlook. One of our fourth quarter themes is that corporate earnings growth is slowing. To the extent that corporate earnings and cash flow begin to decline year-over-year, this will have a direct impact on the ability of corporations to pay their interest rates on borrowing and adversely impact their overall credit worthiness.

In addition to the outlook for corporate earnings and cash flow, the other key red flag we see for high yield is that volatility for the asset class is starting to accelerate. By a recent estimate from ConvergEx Group, implied volatility for high yield bonds is up 64% in the last month. This comes even as yields for these bonds have continued to decline. Even if the high yield asset class is cheap on a relative basis, chasing high yield is far from a contrarian call at this point in the cycle, especially as corporate earnings look to be peaking.

Follow Daryl Jones on Twitter @HedgeyeDJ

Summary: Investors are getting paid the lowest interest rate they've ever been paid to take the risk of owning high yield debt.


Less than three weeks after sounding a bearish note on Apple AAPL by dropping the stock from his firm’s “Focus List,” Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu turned around Monday and raised his price target to $152 a share, up from $120.

With Apple scheduled to release its fiscal Q2 earnings report on April 22, many analysts are taking another look at the stock — and most seem to like what they see.

Last week, Barclays Capital’s Ben Reitzes also raised his price target 26% — to $143 from $113. His move followed Credit Suisse’s Bill Shope, who rated Apple “outperform” with a target price of $133; and Canaccord Adams’ Peter Misek, who called the stock a “speculative buy” with a $143 target.

[UPDATE: Caris & Co.’s Robert Cihra also raised his price target Monday, to $150 from $120; he thinks the iPhone and the App Store may still be under appreciated by investors.]

In his report to clients, Wu argues that even though Apple has outperformed the indexes — up 45% since late November vs. 20% for the NASDAQ and 7% for the S&P 500 — there is room for upside growth. As investors gain confidence, he writes, Apple shares may move closer to their traditional multiples of 20 to 25 times earnings.

Wu cites several near-term “catalysts” to justify his optimism:

Wu also issued something rare for an analyst: a mea culpa (albeit one couched in “arguablies”). Referring to his March 24 report on Apple, he writes:

“We had arguably been a bit defensive with the stock over $107, taking it off our Focus List given we are arguably still in a bear market and investors not willing to pay more than 15x for quality hardware names. However, it appears that investor sentiment has turned a bit more constructive and willing to pay for quality names as we have seen with Apple, Research in Motion, Google, and Amazon.”

Summary: Less than three weeks after sounding a bearish note on Apple by dropping the stock from his firm's "Focus List," Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu turned around Monday and raised his price target to $152 a share, up from $120. With Apple scheduled to release its fiscal Q2 earnings report on April 22, many analysts…


Chinese stocks followed a familiar script on Wednesday: they rose 1.7%. They’ve been riding high for most of the year—in the first quarter, Shanghai stocks climbed by 16%. They’re now up nearly 90% in the last nine months–all against the background of a slowing economy with abundant signals of stress–if not yet distress–from the financial sector.

We’ve written about China’s stock markets before, explaining how they tend to draw out the gambling instincts of regular Chinese once a bull market is underway. Price-to-equity ratios and fundamentals are rarely brought up.

Tom Orlik, chief Asia economist at Bloomberg, assembled a great chart that explains the herd mentality. He shows how China’s bull market is being increasingly driven by less educated folks with smaller assets piling into stocks before they miss their chance. Orlik pulls the data from the China Household Finance Survey which surveyed 4,000 households in late 2014 and found a majority of the new investors in China’s market don’t have a high school education (6% are illiterate) and have far fewer assets than those who already own stocks.

This isn’t to say regular mom and pop investors can’t outperform more seasoned traders. But the lower education levels do offer evidence of stock mania sweeping through China. When taxi drivers are trading stock tips, markets tend to move into unsustainable territory.

Summary: China's raging bull market is increasingly being driven by people who didn't graduate beyond junior high school.


Nina Beier's work is as unstable as a keg of dynamite, if a whole lot quieter. The Danish artist's sparse, pared-down offerings have included fading photographs, a wall painting that was redone daily and a sculpture recreated via a game of Chinese whispers. Her Dust Painting is literally a pile of dust-coloured pigment, which gets traipsed all over the gallery on the soles of people's shoes. As unassuming as it first appears, her art is an elusive, restless thing, with scant regard for the beautiful picture frames that often attempt to contain it.

Until recently, Beier was best known for the work she made with fellow Dane Marie Lund. The duo's quirky interactive projects rewrote the unspoken rules of museum behaviour, from subtle changes such as getting a guard to grow his beard long to raucous disruptions where gallery-goers break the silence and vigorously applaud. In the past few years, however, she's increasingly put objects centre-stage – albeit ones that have a habit of disappearing.

Always changing, eroding or being remade, Beier's creations give the lie to the stamp of permanence bestowed on artworks by frames, glass cases and gallery walls. Her works' origins can be equally hard to pin down. For her 2010 show within Art Basel Statements, the major art fair's special section for younger artists, Beier employed an actress to recreate a sculpture she'd destroyed, using nothing more than a verbal description of the lost work. Far from a straightforward bit of outsourcing, with the actress effectively playing the artist, it set off a tail-chasing game exploring artistic intent, originality and reproduction.

This is more than art about art, however: Beier's playful approach snares big, timeless themes, including loss, ageing and death. Shirts vs Skins, her current London show, stages a face-off between frail, mortal humanity and the objects we design to outlive us. It's a tragicomedy Beier delivers with the lightest of touches, as with her glass cabinet boasting a spare display of her retired father's recent golfing trophies. The Blues, a series of outmoded shots of hair models taken from a Copenhagen hairdresser, is particularly droll, full of tousled highlights and razor-cut slanting fringes. But these photographs are hardly frozen in time: long-term display in the salon window has drained the pictures' colour spectrums to washy blues. They're like a reverse Dorian Grey: portraits that age with their subjects.

Why we like her: For her series Fatigues, which looks like stain paintings in rolling blues and mauves. In fact they're sections of hardwearing, stain-resistant carpet, with the kind of eye-popping patterns familiar from tube seats and the foyers of public buildings, which the artist has submitted to strenuous chemical dyes.

Catch him if you can: One of Beier's hair models is none other than a teenage Leonardo Dicaprio.

Where Can I See Her? At Laura Bartlett Gallery, London WC1, until 31 March.

Summary: Skye Sherwin: Always changing or eroding, Beier's works – fading photographs or constantly repainted walls – are realistic monuments to time


Tracy Warner earned $37,000 a year at the Galesburg, Ill., Maytag factory. Years after the factory closed in 2004, she makes $21,000 from two jobs.

GALESBURG, Ill. — Even in this city of abandoned factories, it is possible to see some of the benefits the United States reaps from increased foreign trade: at the rail yard, where boxcars of bargain-price Asian goods are routed to US consumers; at the nearby slaughterhouse, where pigs are packaged for the global market; and at Knox College, where almost 10 percent of the students now come from foreign countries.

It is also hard to miss the enduring costs. In 2004, Maytag shut down the refrigerator factory that for decades was Galesburg’s largest employer and moved much of the work to Mexico. Barack Obama, then running to represent Illinois in the Senate, described the Maytag workers as victims of globalization in his famous speech that year at the Democratic National Convention.

A decade later, many of those workers are still struggling. The city’s population is in decline, and the median household income fell 27 percent between 1999 and 2013, adjusting for inflation.

George Carney, who drove a forklift until the day the factory closed, and then found work as a bartender, is now receiving federal disability benefits. He said he is bitter that US policy makers smoothed Maytag’s road to Mexico by passing the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in the early 1990s.

“I don’t believe in laying someone off, in taking away someone’s livelihood just so other people can make more money,” Carney said. “Why would I want to destroy that person? Why would I want to destroy lives?”

It is one of the basic principles of economics that trade is good and more trade is better. But as Obama presses Congress for the authority to negotiate a new generation of trade deals, the struggles of Galesburg illustrate why some economists have come to doubt the relevance of that orthodoxy.

Globalization’s costs have been greater and more enduring than they expected, and government efforts to mitigate the effect on US workers have often proved insufficient.

“I think what we’ve learned is that US labor markets aren’t as flexible and self-correcting as I think we had presumed,” said Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California San Diego. “The uneasiness I have about the way we’ve handled globalization is not so much globalization itself. It’s that if you don’t have the right safety net, you’re going to impose an enormous amount of hardship.”

There is also mounting evidence the benefits of globalization have accrued disproportionately to upper-income households, while the costs have fallen heavily on the less affluent, contributing to the rise of economic inequality.

The Obama administration has presented the proposed agreements — one with nations that border the Pacific Ocean, the other with Europe — as, in part, a shield against globalization that would require other nations to move closer to US standards for environmental protection, worker rights, and intellectual property.

The administration and many outside economists say further trade, despite the negatives, is still clearly beneficial.

David Weinstein, a Columbia University economist, said the image of downtrodden Galesburg should be set alongside the prosperity of Silicon Valley, because the decline of manufacturing helped free resources to feed the high-tech boom.

“There was a sense that by losing the ability to produce computer chips, we were going to see the American electronics industry collapse, and it turns out that those cheap imported electronic components were just the thing that all of these companies needed,” he said. “What these critiques miss systematically is that the losers know who they are, but the winners don’t know who they are yet.”

A 2005 study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research group that is a strong proponent of trade deals, estimated that embracing trade had added 7.3 percent to America’s economic output — or about $10,000 in annual income for every household in the United States.

But the benefits are not distributed evenly. Trade increases overall prosperity by eliminating less-productive jobs.

In theory, the workers find new jobs. In practice, studies by Hanson and other economists show that in cities like Galesburg, global competition is increasing unemployment and reducing wages.

Josh Bivens, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, estimates that increased globalization, aided by a strong dollar that led to a persistent trade deficit, reduced the annual earnings of the roughly 70 percent of US workers without college degrees by about $1,800.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate, said the magnitude of these losses was large enough that increased trade may now be harming the US economy.

“The argument was always that the winners could compensate the losers,” Stiglitz said. “But the winners never do. And that becomes particularly relevant when we have a society with as much inequality as we have today.”

Richard Lindstrom, whose family has owned an appliance store on Galesburg’s Main Street for 89 years, said sales fell when Maytag left. But that was about the same time he started selling large numbers of imported high-definition televisions.

“We rode that crest, and it really offset the drop in appliance sales,” he said.

Some Maytag workers were able to find better jobs. Mark Semande is now a foreman on the BNSF railroad, which has prospered greatly from increased trade.

He made $14.50 an hour at the factory. Now he makes $28.93. With overtime, he estimates his pay has tripled.

But many of the 1,600 Maytag workers were not as fortunate, said Chad Broughton, a lecturer in public policy at the University of Chicago who chronicled Galesburg’s struggles in his recent book, “Boom, Bust, Exodus.”

Tracy Warner, who worked at the factory 15 years, has not come close to matching her former salary of about $37,000 a year. She works as a teacher’s assistant by day and a janitor by night and makes about $21,000.

Semande, whose father also worked at the factory, said he expected that his two daughters, 13 and 15, would move away when they grow up.

“Maybe they could find jobs and live in the community,” he said, “but not if they want to do as well as us.”

Trade also tends to reduce prices, and there is evidence that lower-income households may benefit disproportionately, because they spend a larger share of income than wealthier households on the goods with the largest price declines.

This Walmart effect may partially offset the distribution of income gains.

Walmart opened a supercenter in Galesburg in 2007, but Broughton said the store could hardly offset the loss of the factory.

“The decline in the quality of life for working-class families has not been nearly matched by the low, low prices,” he said. “Maybe those diffuse benefits have benefited America more generally. But it’s not the case in Galesburg.”

Summary: In 2004, Maytag shut down the refrigerator factory that for decades was largest employer in Galesburg, Ill., and moved much of the work to Mexico. A decade later, many of those workers are still struggling.


It’s not surprising that Paul Weller’s first 21st-century album for an American major label would find the former Jam frontman maxing out production flourishes; “Saturns Pattern” is his biggest-sounding album in ages. But it’s also sonically disjointed, when you’d expect Warner Bros. to hedge its investment by encouraging cohesion. With art-rock ideas tempered by pop instincts, “Pick It Up,” the psych-rock soul of “Phoenix,” and the title track’s clipped-piano drive find Weller in a surprisingly flattering Steve Winwood mode. But with the thunderous blues-rock of “White Sky” (where his voice takes on gospel fervor), the glam momentum of “Long Time,” and the watery vibe of “These City Streets,” he remains defiantly all over the map. “Going My Way” alternates clumsily between twinkly introspection and pounding bass-forward stomp, and “I’m Where I Should Be” limply spins its wheels. Still, it’s hard to argue with the latter’s title. Even under his new corporate bosses, Weller calls his own eclectic shots. (Out Tuesday)

Paul Weller performs at the Paradise Rock Club on June 13.

Summary: On his his 21st-century LP for an American major, former Jam frontman Paul Weller maxes out production flourishes for his biggest-sounding album in ages.


PARIS, Oct. 2— In the biggest purge it has conducted since World War II, the French Communist Party announced the ouster today of 30 prominent dissidents.

The 30, led by Henri Fiszbin, a former Central Committee member, have published since last spring a weekly newspaper, Communist Encounters, devoted to a critical analysis of the tactics and methods of the party leadership.

Today's announcement by the party secretariat was curiously worded. It did not formally expel Mr. Fiszbin and his associates, several of whom are party representatives on municipal councils in the Paris region. Instead, it announced that by creating ''a parallel organization,'' the dissidents had in effect expelled themselves. 'We Have Chosen to Remain'

In reply, the 30 issued a statement saying that the secretariat's action was illegal under party rules. ''We are members of the French Communist Party,'' they said, ''and we have chosen to remain in it. Nothing can change this situation against our will, short of an act of expulsion.''

Today's action was the most public and dramatic evidence of the strains and fissures that have been at work in the party since the elections that swept the Socialist Party to power and drastically cut the Communist Party's strength.

In the presidential campaign at the beginning of the year, the Communists, led by Georges Marchais, repudiated the line of earlier years, that of supporting a program of common action with the Socialists. In place of that, Mr. Marchais and his entourage attacked the Socialists almost as fiercely as the right.

That line, coupled as it was with a stern crackdown on internal dissent and a strong pro-Soviet policy, struck many party intellectuals as a throwback to a kind of neo-Stalinism. They saw it as a denial of their hopes for more flexibility and tolerance, along the lines of the Italian and Spanish parties. Many Quit the Party Several intellectuals, artists and journali sts quit the party, and a few, such as the writer Jean Ellenstein, we re expelled. Others were removed from positions on party newspape rs and journals.

Mr. Fiszbin, 51 years old, who at one point headed the party's Paris federation, refused to quit, although he resigned his Central Committee post. Known as a principal advocate of cooperation with the Socialists, he nevertheless avoided public disagreement as long as he could.

He said some months ago that he regarded himself as ''a totally convinced Communist,'' one who wanted to work within the party to change it. The comparison, he suggested, was with not with the Reformation that broke with the Roman Catholic Church, but with the Counter-Reformation, the reform movement in the church after the Protestant Reformation and in answer to it.

After the first round of the presidential elections, the drastic loss in Communist votes convinced him and his associates that it was time to begin publicly pressing for democratization and a united front with the Socialists. Mr. Fiszbin began putting out his weekly paper from a dingy office, five flights up a spiral staircase in a working-class area near the Place de la Republique. Party Changed Course

At the time that Mr. Fiszbin began to publish, the party leadership reversed itself and threw its second-round election support to the Socialists. After Francois Mitterrand won, and after the Socialists won absolute control of the Parliament, the Communist leadership managed to assert, rather shakily, that the victory was its own as well.

After some strenuous negotiations, the Communists obtained four Cabinet posts in the Government, and this enabled the party leaders to say that they had, in f act, won a victory.

But the abrupt turns in the party line, and the drastic loss in support for the party among the workers who in large numbers turned to the Socialists, have had a traumatic effect in the party. Mr. Marchais has never managed to speak with the same authority since then, and there are persistent rumors that he will either be ousted or have to share power after the party congress that is to take place in January.

If the current party line seemed to approach what Mr. Fiszbin and his associates had been advocating, it did not make things any more peaceful. Communist Encounters continued to criticize the party leaders and their refusal to allow a free and open discussion of the course that the party should adopt at the January congress.

The party's action today was seen here as evidence that the leadership is deeply worried that the discontent in the middle ranks could well break out at the congress. Each week, Communist Encounters has printed letters from grassroots officials around the country, supporting its demand that the party become more open.


Ellsworth Kelly has exhibitions all over New York at this moment. There are paintings at the Leo Castelli Gallery, 142 Greene Street. There are paintings and a sculpture at the Blum Helman Gallery, 20 West 57th Street. There are drawings of plants at Castelli Uptown, 4 East 77th Street. All three shows are wonderful, in their different ways, and as everything on view is dated either 1980 or 1981, we are left in no doubt that Mr. Kelly is in his very best form. The shows at Blum Helman and Castelli Uptown can be seen through May 2, the show at Castelli on Greene Street through May 9.

The new paintings are large - somewhere between 8 and 12 feet on their longest edge. They tell us all over again what we knew already, which is that Mr. Kelly long ago learned the lesson of one of Gauguin's more famous remarks. ''A pound of blue,'' Gauguin said, ''is bluer than an ounce of blue.'' Up to a certain point, that is to say, the larger the color area, the more intense the experience will be.

The role of the artist in this matter is to find the specific shape that best fits the optimum amount of the color in question. Color acts on us in its own self, but it acts all the more strongly if the artist leaves us wanting neither more nor less of it, but exactly what is put before us. It is a very difficult thing to do; but when shape and color are in equilibrium, we feel that the humdrum traffic of the world has been suspended and that we are treading the air way above our everyday selves. In that ideal state, we have trouble believing that anyone can still think that the descriptive function of art is of any importance.

Mr. Kelly has never been either set faced or methodical in his way with shape. He waits for a coded signal from the world outside the studio, and he smuggles that signal indoors and codes it all over again. When he makes a square that is not quite a square or a fivesided form that bulges just where we don't expect it, these aberrant shapes are likely to relate rather to emotional experience than to the study of Euclid. Feeling, not doctrine, governs these images.

Shapes that in themselves might seem inert turn out in his hands to be full of tug and thrust. Shapes that in reality are quite flat seem to bend space in ways not to be predicted. Where only one color is used, as is the case with most of the new paintings, it seems to us that the hue in question is reborn. Where two or more colors lie back to back and are carried by related but not always identical shapes, the painting can be read as a metaphor for serenity in human relations. Nor can anyone stop us if we read the five-sided form in the new paintings as a distillation of the human torso as it bends this way or that at the shoulders and tapers down toward an ideally trim waist.

It is clear from the plant drawings at Castelli Uptown that Mr. Kelly is as attentive to the specificities of nature as he is to the promptings of the heart. In fact, he comes before us in three shows as a complete artist and a complete man, and a person of untold value to us on both counts.

Other shows of interest this week: Red Grooms (Marlborough Gallery, 40 West 57th Street): More perhaps than any other living American artist, Red Grooms has a genuinely popular following. People love his work, and they laugh aloud when they see it. It must be art, because it is made welcome in museums, and yet its alliances are with the circus, the fairground and the toyshop, rather than with the holy hush of high art. It's a lot of fun, but it also brings reassurance. The image of our society that Mr. Grooms sets before us is tumultuous, brightly colored, aggressive and yet fundamentally benign. It's a mess, but not a threatening mess. Carnival, not Judgment Day, is Mr. Grooms's subject matter. Bad characters are picturesque, no one means anyone any harm, and even the garbage in the streets comes in candy colors.

It doesn't do to underestimate him, though. Often he comes on like art's answer to Anna Russell, masquerading as a communicative redneck and rampaging around on the far side of conventional bad taste. New York in particular brings out in him a streak of euphoric platitude. But put him down in a strange country, and he operates as a superior parodist, as alert as any social historian to the vibrations of the past and their distortion by commercial interests.

For proof of this, see the pieces in his current show that were prompted by a sojourn in Brittany. ''Old House in Quimper'' is a brilliant impersonation - authentic even down to the carved and painted ''peasant'' frame - of what the tourist trade has done to a town that lives by keeping time at bay. ''Cows on a Road in Brittany'' - part painting, part relief - is another example of a mimetic ability that can give us both the thing seen and the commercialized view of it in one and the same image. (Through May 5.)

Barbara Novak (Berry-Hill Gallery, 743 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street): In her watercolor portraits of familiar flowers, Barbara Novak overturns a centuries-old convention. Her flowers are not ''arranged,'' that is to say. They do not come in pitchers or vases. Nor do they stand up as straight as grenadiers, like the flowers in high-class books on botany. Miss Novak paints them as they lie, once cut and brought into the studio, with stalks awry and blooms bruised or pulled out of shape by their own weight. A sweet confusion replaces the traditional modalities of flower painting, and the individual blooms present themselves rather as chromatic essences than as scientific specimens.

At first sight, that is. We soon realize that the iris, the anemone and their colleagues are characterized in ways that are nonetheless telling for being quite unemphatic. Miss Novak never bullies them, any more than she bullies the watercolor medium. Civilization is all, in these whispered likenesses. (Through April 25.)

Martha Diamond (Brooke Alexander Gallery, 20 West 57th Street): The big city by night is Martha Diamond's subject matter. We don't get to see the people, but the buildings do duty for them. In ''Villa I,'' for instance, the houses portrayed looked like young women all dressed up with somewhere to go. Miss Diamond also knows that after nightfall the big cities of today come in all kinds of unexpected colors. Rhubarb, watermelon, bitter chocolate - all come to mind as she faithfully transposes the effect of street lighting, passing traffic and strip lighting indoors. The buildings come cropped and fragmented in ways that surprise us, too. (Through April 25.)


By JAMES F. CLARITY STOCKHOLM The talk of the New York Rangers' Scandanavian tour, even more discussed than the Swedish crystal the players bought and the cloudberr y ice cream they ate, was Reijo Ruotsalainen, the small, blond, Finnish defenseman who speaks little English, but is eloquent in body language.

Many of the Rangers say they have seen no one in the National Hockey League, since Bobby Orr retired, who skates as fast and deceptively as Ruotsalainen. The other night, watching a game from the stands, two of the teams' most gifted defensemen, Ron Greschner and Barry Beck, shook their heads slowly in awe as the 21-year-old Finn made a quick 360-degree turn and actually skated backwards carrying the puck past an embarassed Washington Capitals defenseman.

''If I twisted my legs like that,'' said Greschner, one of the Rangers' skilled puck-movers, ''I'd be dead.'' Beck, one of the more wry Rangers, kept a straight face as he said, ''A little work on his skating and he might make it.'' Other Rangers spoke of Ruotasalainen in other superlatives; Bobby Hull's was ''fantastic.''

Ruotsalainen is only in the dawn of bilingualism, and the Rangers are thinking of hiring someone to teach him English. But coach Herb Brooks, noting that Ruotsalainen has some learning to do in defensive play, feels that the young man needs no instruction in how to vex the opposition while earning the admiration of his teammates.

On Wednesday night, as they clinched a Swedish tournament by winning four straight games, the Rangers won a silver cup and about $900-per man. Ruotsalainen was awarded three of the five individual trophies, small golden owls, at the end of the game. He quickly pointed to goalie Steve Weeks and told his teammates, ''He was better,'' then gave one of the owls to his partner on defense, Tom Laidlaw.

''That's class,'' said Brooks, who smiles broadly whenever the subject is Ruotsalainen. ''He's got class and the players appreciate that. He's a world-class skater, maybe the fastest defenseman in the league. He will be a sensation in the National Hockey League.''

A month ago few of the Ra ngers had ever hea rd of Ruotsalainen. After playing with them for a week, making tw o goals and four assistsin five exhibition games, he is considered ce rtain to make the team, while other rookies and some veterans are not sure they will be in Madison Square Garden when the Rangers open t he regular season against the Detroit Red Wings a week from Tue sday.

Yet, none of the other defensemen resent him. Ed Hospodar, fighting to hold the job he apparently won late last season, was the first Ranger to shake hands with Ruotsalainen when he took the ice for the first time at a practice in Helsinki. Dave Maloney has befriended him. The players have already given him the seal of acceptance which is a nickname: ''Rexi.'' Carol Vadnais, starting his 17th season in the League, said, ''I haven't seen anyone in the league who can change speeds and accelerate like he can since Orr. Against a guy like this, all you can do is skate backwards and hope.''

Routsalainen was discovered, for the Rangers, by Lars-Erik Sjoberg, one of their scouts in Scandanavia. Last season with Karpat, the Finnish national championship team, he had 55 points, including 30 goals, in 36 games. In the 1980 entry draft, Ruotsalainen was the Rangers sixth round choice. He was not chosen earlier, apparently, because of his size.

By N.H.L. standards, he is an elf: 5-feet,7-inches tall, 165 pounds. But in an interview with Mikko Leinonen, the Rangers' other Finnish rookie, translating, Ruotsalainen said, '' I don't care that I am small. I have learned to use my ability on smaller rinks. '' Whether his skating style will be cramped by the N.H.L. rinks, which are 15 feet narrower than those in Europe, is one of the questions the Rangers have about how effective Ruotsalainen will be once the season starts. Another question is whether larger opponents will try to intimidate him ''gooning,'' the players' term for brutal, illegal checking. ''They have to catch him, first,'' said Brooks. ''He'll have plenty of heavy artillery behind him,'' said one Ranger.

Watching Ruotsalainen in the first five exhibition games, it is easy to get the impression, from time to time, that he is a figureskater who happens to have taken up hockey. When he takes the puck and bends low, with his head up, and starts to move up the ice, spectators murmur ''oooooh'' and ''aaaaah'' in crescendos. Confronted by a defender, he makes no body feints, but swerves to one side, then accelerates. Then, perhap, once or twice a game, he might make a complete turn, so the defender sees him going by backwards.

His wrist shot is quick and accurate; his slap shot is hard and low. Sometimes, if the pass to him is flat on the ice, he does not stap the puck before shooting it, but swats it in one motion as it arrives near his feet. Partly because of his lack of English, he has not much to say after a game. ''Not bad,'' is the highest compliment he has paid himself.

As he sat in the Stockholm airport waiting for the team flight to New York on Thursday, he was asked if he felt nervous. When he didn't understand, an Englanti-Suomi dictionary was consulted for the Finnish word, hermostunut. ''Nervous, here, no.'' the rookie said. ''America, yes.''

Illustrations: Photo of Reijo Ruotsalainen


By The Associated Press Gov. John D. Rockefeller 4th said yesterday that the nationwide strike by 160,000 United Mine Workers members was beginning to have ''devastating'' effects in West Virginia, with the state losing $500,000 a day in tax revenue.

Governor Rockefeller has asked the West Virginia Legislature for an emergency appropriation of $8.8 million to keep schools open for the rest of the school year despite a 10 percent cutback in state spending.

Lawmakers are to meet next Monday in special session.

In Virginia, a top aide to Gov. John Dalton said the strike's ''direct economic effect'' on the state totaled about $48 million a month. And the Illinois Coal Association said that state and local governments in the state had lost $7.5 million in coal tax revenues in the last month.

Picketing continued at scattered nonunion mines across the coalfields. Negotiators for the union and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association have not met since April 17.