06/28/2015 AT 05:05 PM EDT

is responding to critics after she announced that she was expecting her second child earlier this week.

Palin, 24, said in a

that news of the pregnancy "has been, and will be, a huge disappointment" to her family, friends and fans, she doesn't want people to think that the child wasn't planned.

"None of us areÂ perfect," Palin wrote.Â "I made a mistake, but itâs not the mistake all these giddy a$$holes have loved to assume. This pregnancy was actually planned.

"Everyone knows I wanted more kids, to have a bigger family. Â Believing I was heading that way, I got ahead of myself. Things didnât go as planned, but life keeps going. Life moves on," she continued.

"But I do not regret this baby. This baby is not a disappointment, and I cannot wait to be a mom times two. Tripp is going to make the best big brother!!"

Tripp is Palin's 6-year-old son with ex-fiancé Levi Johnston.

Palin also shot down claims that she was "paid as an 'abstinence spokesperson'," clarifying that she was employed by the Candie's Foundation, which

as a non-profit that "works to shape the way the youth in America think about the devastating consequences of teen pregnancy and parenthood."

Palin does say that she is strongly against abortion and that she "never even thought of aborting this child, NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCE."

"I am pregnant," she continued. "This is not the ideal situation, but life is important even if it's not in the most absolute ideal circumstance. This is more confirmation on what I've always stood for. I've always been pro-life and I am standing for life now.

Palin broke the news of her pregnancy

after canceling her wedding to Dakota Meyer, a former U.S. Marine. Neither Palin nor Meyer have commented on who the father of the unborn child is, but

on social media this week, criticizing the media for overshadowing stories of terrorism and putting on a "dog and pony show."

In addition to her blog post on Sunday, Palin hit a lighter note when she shared pictures of her son Tripp with food smeared on his face.

Summary: The 24-year-old shot back at critics in a new blog post


NEW YORK — Subway wants to give new meaning to its ‘‘eat fresh’’ slogan by joining the list of food companies to say it’s dropping artificial ingredients.

The sandwich chain known for its marketing itself as a healthier alternative to hamburger chains said it will remove artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives from its menu in North America by 2017. Whether that can help Subway keep up with changing attitudes about what qualifies as healthy remains to be seen.

Elizabeth Stewart, Subway’s director of corporate social responsibility, said in an interview that ingredient improvement has been an ongoing process over the years. More recently, she said the chain has been working on removing caramel color from cold cuts like roast beef and ham. For its turkey, Subway says it plans to replace a preservative called proprionic acid with vinegar by the end of this year.

Among its toppings, Stewart said Subway is switching to banana peppers colored with turmeric instead of the artificial dye Yellow No. 5. Without providing details, she said the chain is also working on its sauces and cookies.

The purging of artificial ingredients is quickly becoming the norm among major food companies, which are facing pressure from smaller players that tout their offerings as more wholesome. That has prompted so-called ‘‘Big Food’’ makers including Taco Bell, McDonald's, Kraft and Nestle to announce in recent months they’re expelling artificial ingredients from one or more products.

Subway’s announcement comes at a challenging time for the chain, which grew to be the world’s largest restaurant brand by number of locations with the help of weight loss pitchman Jared Fogle.

The company is privately held and doesn’t disclose sales figures. But last year, sales for Subway stores in the US averaged $475,000 each, a 3 percent decline from the previous year, according to industry tracker Technomic.

Subway is facing evolving definitions for what qualifies as healthy, said Darren Tristano, an analyst for Technomic. While older generations looked at nutritional stats like fat and calories, he said younger generations are more concerned about qualities like ‘‘local,’’ ‘'organic,’’ and ‘‘natural.’’

‘‘Change has come so fast and rapidly, consumers are just expecting more and more,’’ Tristano said.

And although Subway markets itself as a fresher option, he noted that people don’t necessarily see it as the healthiest or best product around.

Last year, Subway’s image took a hit when food activist Vani Hari, known as the Food Babe, launched a petition calling on it to remove azodicarbonamide from its bread, noting the ingredient was used in yoga mats. Subway has said that it was in the process of removing the ingredient, which is widely used as a dough condition and whitening agent, before the issue became a controversy.

Tony Pace, Subway’s chief marketing officer, noted the chain is already seen as a place for low-fat options, but that it needs to keep up with changing customer attitudes.

‘‘As their expectations go up, we have to meet those expectations,’’ he said.

Pace said the use of simple ingredients is becoming a ‘‘necessary condition’’ to satisfy customers, but that it won’t be enough on its own to drive up sales.

Summary: Subway has joined the list of food companies dropping artificial ingredients.


Noted short seller Bill Fleckenstein, who correctly predicted the financial crisis in 2007, says he is one step closer to opening up a short-focused fund for the first time since 2009. In the meantime, Fleckenstein says the entire market could be heading for calamity in the coming months.

"The market is uniquely crash-prone," Fleckenstein told CNBC's "Fast Money" this week. "I think the market is very brittle because of high-frequency trading, ETFs, a lot of momentum investors. I don't think there's going to be any painless back door."

Read More All in: Investors' cash levels hit record low

Fleckenstein, the president of Fleckenstein Capital, said he was targeting Oct. 1 to open up his fund, and said there is one overarching reason why conditions are perfect right now to be short the market.

"The reason why I closed my short fund in March of '09 is the very same reason that I'm going to launch it again. And that's because the Fed," he said.

Fleckenstein said he was surprised the market has been able to hang on as long as it has after the Federal Reserve stopped buying bonds. He added that markets have continued to trade on the "fumes" of the Fed's quantitative easing program, which was "unlike anything" the world has seen before.

Once those fumes run out, he said, Wall Street is in for another shock.

"The critical thing is from a short-selling standpoint and managing risk, the Fed is out of the equation. They may hike, they may not be able to hike, but they can't ease," he said. "So the market's kind of on its own, and it's sort of tenuous under the surface. It's a lot weaker than the averages look like."

According to Fleckenstein, Wall Street has "become complacent," and expectations for the remainder of the year are too high.

Read More Why investors expect 'August Angst' to come

"The Fed's out of the way, stocks are reacting to bad news, expectations are very high, and I don't think they can be met," he said.

Fleckenstein said one segment of the market looks particularly attractive from the short side.

"I'm short semiconductor stocks because there is an inventory correction at a minimum, and there might be saturation," he said.

Intel is one name that Fleckenstein signaled out in the sector as a great short play.

"Intel's got some unique problems. I don't think they guided properly on either of the last two quarters, I think expectations are still way too high," he said. "So I have a stock that can't really go against me that maybe I can make 30 percent on the downside."

Additionally, Fleckenstein said that Apple suppliers could be setting up for pain ahead.

"The companies in the Apple food chain, whether it's NXP or SkyWorks or Cirrus, they all had good quarters and they guided higher," he said. "But Apple didn't hit its units, and it's got a lot higher units to hit in the third and fourth quarters."

Meanwhile, bullish investor Laszlo Birinyi of Birinyi Associates said the S&P 500 still has an upside of more than 50 percent from current levels.

"What we're really trying to tell people is stay with it. Don't let the bad news shake you out," he said Tuesday on CNBC's "Fast Money: Halftime Report."

Read MoreBirinyi: S&P 500 can hit 3,200 by 2017

Summary: Bill Fleckenstein of Fleckenstein Capital says the market looks uniquely "crash prone" at current levels.


08/10/2015 AT 11:20 AM EDT

made an impassioned plea on Saturday to the

of fans who came out for the first week of previews of

at London's Barbican Theatre, asking attendees to stop recording the production.

"Can I ask you all a huge favor. Can I first of all say a huge thank you for those of you that are here tonight," he said outside the theater's stage door. "Its been a hell of a week, it's been one damned thing after another."

Cumberbatch, 39, plays the titular character in the classic Shakespeare play. He spoke to fans about the distracting "red lights" of phone cameras in the audience and why filming of the production needs to stop.

"I can see cameras, I can see red lights in the auditorium, and it may not be any of you here that did that, but it's blindingly obvious," he said. "I could see a red light in about the third row on the right and it's mortifying. There's nothing that's less enjoyable or supportive as an actor on stage experiencing that."

The Oscar nominee asked fans to "Tweet, blog and hashtag the s---" out of his plea.

"I can't give you what I want to give you, which is a live performance that you'll remember, hopefully, in your minds and brains whether it's good, bad or indifferent, rather than on your phones," he said.

Cumberbatch has received mixed reviews for his turn as the prince of Denmark in the Lyndsey Turner-directed show, from

The star's wife, Sophie Turner, was on hand to

Summary: Benedict Cumberbatch appealed to fans on Saturday outside London's Barbican Theatre, where he headlines a new production of Hamlet


Think of: On an exponentially larger stage, Nina Arianda making her professional debut in the tense two-hander “Venus in Fur” and proceeding to knock it out of the park.

What caught our eye: An actress and senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Griffin earned an impressive breakout moment this summer in her professional stage debut, going toe to toe with television and stage veteran Debra Joe Rupp (“That ’70s Show,” “Becoming Dr. Ruth”) in the intense mother-daughter drama “Memory House” at Chester Theatre Company.

Light bulb moment: At age 9, after trying dance, gymnastics, and other things she was “horribly coordinated at,” she says, she signed up for the three-week summer program at Stageloft Repertory Theater in Sturbridge. Her first role was as a mouse in the story of Hercules. “I remember the very first performance we did, and right before I made my entrance I remember feeling very jittery. And then I just shouted out my lines. From that point on, I was hooked. I lived and breathed it through middle school and high school. When I got to college I was thinking, What else would I study? This is what I need to do. There’s nothing else I could do.”

Biggest thrill: “The thing that always gets me every time is how nervous I feel, or the anxiety and the adrenaline I have, right before I go onstage or walk into an audition room. And then as soon as I get onto the stage all of that panic kind of evaporates, almost instantaneously, and it turns into this energy that just propels me to stay really present with whatever I’m doing.”

Biggest surprise: “Being reminded how hard and then how easy it can be, when you’re performing or when you’re rehearsing. Sometimes one of your biggest obstacles is to step outside of yourself and really listen to your scene partner. And something so simple as listening can be forgotten in the hustle and bustle of costumes and remembering all your lines, and everything else. I guess it can be a balancing act with everything you have to think and feel.”

Inspired by: “I have been really lucky to be surrounded by an abundance of really beautiful, creative people. A lot of my friends are writers or musicians or directors who really want to do something creative and make something that’s never been made before. Even for friends and family whose passions lie outside an artsy kind of realm, seeing people close to me push themselves to put another step forward to making their own dreams come true is probably what inspires me most. I want to be right there with them, making things happen.”

Aspires to: Griffin plans to head straight from undergrad to graduate school to study creative writing, and hopes to weave a career out of freelance writing and acting.

For good luck: “Before an audition or a play, I always have energy-inducing music playing. Fleetwood Mac has been a favorite. Anything to put me in a good mood.”

What people should know: “If you see me onstage and something doesn’t feel real to you, it probably doesn’t feel real to me either.”

Coming soon: She’s following up her star turn by heading back to class, applying to graduate schools and — what else? — auditioning for the fall production at school.

Summary: A student at UMass-Amherst, Griffin went toe to toe this summer with television and stage veteran Debra Joe Rupp in “Memory House” at Chester Theatre Company.


She also said the Fed has shaken markets' confidence—calling the Federal Open Market Committee the "Federal Open Mouth Committee."

Still, the U.S. economy is "doing pretty well," Rick Rieder, BlackRock's chief investment officer of fixed income told CNBC. Compared to the crisis of 2008 "you have an unbelievably different dynamic," he said, as the consumer and the financial system are comparatively delevered.

But "there's a lot more to come" from Beijing, he warned, explaining that commodity indicators show the Chinese economy is decelerating.

In fact, those commodities may signal that the global financial system is ready to rebound when they stabilize, Rieder said.

U.S. index futures swung during Wednesday evening trading, but pointed to a positive Thursday open just before 8 p.m. ET.

During Wednesday's regular trading hours, U.S. stocks shot higher, breaking a six-day losing streak that drove major averages into correction territory.

In addition to an oversold bounce, some analysts attributed the gains to comments from the Fed's William Dudley that a September rate hike looks "less compelling" and a strong durable-goods report.

See what the futures are doing now.

The major averages closed about 4 percent higher for their best day since 2011, with the S&P 500 rising out of correction territory. The index had fallen into correction during Monday's massive selloff.

The Nasdaq Composite closed on the edge of correction, up 4.2 percent on the day. The Dow Jones industrial average remains in correction territory.

—CNBC's Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.

Summary: In a CNBC special report Wednesday night, Cramer said "the psychology had changed" as equities markets snapped a six-day losing streak.


Vikki Heywood, executive director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, thinks we've reached the tipping point: on this, she's absolutely confident. "In 10 years' time," she says, "you and I won't be having this conversation." The conversation we're having is about women leaders in the arts: the relatively recent influx of women to artistic director positions in theatre, and the regularity with which women are directing main-stage plays for the National and RSC, persuades Heywood that women can finally claim equality with men.

She's not alone in her thinking. In her 20 years working at Tate, Frances Morris, now head of international collections, says she has witnessed "a steady takeover bid by women", particularly in curatorial departments. In fact, says design critic Alice Rawsthorn, the visual arts industry is now "predominantly female". At the Royal Opera House, Elaine Padmore, head of the Royal Opera, and Monica Mason, director of the Royal Ballet, argue that management positions are split between women and men. Since she became director of the British Film Institute in 2003, Amanda Nevill has been "surrounding myself with brilliant women. As an executive, we say we need more men to balance us."

And yet, in April, culture minister Margaret Hodge slammed the arts industries for a lack of diversity, particularly of women, in executive and non-executive positions. Shortly afterwards, the Sunday Telegraph published a list of the 100 most powerful people in British culture: just 18 were women, and only three appeared in the top 20 (Vivien Duffield, JK Rowling and Julia Peyton-Jones). Talking to women working in the arts - I talked to 23 for the purposes of writing this article - several stories of inequality emerge. "I can't tell you the number of times that I go into meetings where I'm the only woman," says Nevill. At last year's Society of London Theatre Christmas lunch, theatre producer Sonia Friedman estimates that she was one of five women among 80 men. "I remember sitting down at a table full of men saying, 'This is pathetic representation.'"

Nadia Stern, chief executive of Rambert Dance Company, says, "Margaret Hodge is right, and it's a bit depressing that this is still newsworthy. Dance is still very male-dominated: most of the choreographers are male; most of the designers are male; when I meet my counterparts in venues around the country, they are almost always male. Given the talent that is out there, something is going on if most of the people in those positions are men."

So what is the real situation for women in the arts? There are almost as many answers as there are women. Personal experience counts for much: women working in the "feminised" visual arts have a different attitude from those in, say, the music industry, which Jeanette Lee, co-owner of Rough Trade Records, says is "run in quite a male way, like a team sport". As Virginia Tandy, director of Manchester City Galleries and co-founder of the Women Leaders in Museums Network, says: "If you're the female director of an independent arts organisation with a substantial number of women on your management team and, hopefully, a substantial number of women on your board, what's the problem? But if, as I have, you've sat on the board of a national organisation and there have been three women and 14 men, you think: this isn't right."

Boards are definitely an issue: a paper published in March by Demos and London's City University found that women are not only under-represented among trustees, but may account for as few as 28% of board chairs. There is some correlation between this fact and another: that, while it's possible to reel off lists of names of women who work in the Arts Council England, as the heads of medium-scale institutions or arts companies, or in middle-management, once you look at what theatre producer Emma Stenning calls the "headline jobs", they are chiefly occupied by men.

Women are breaking into these upper echelons, notably Jude Kelly as artistic director of the Southbank Centre, and Diane Lees, who takes over as director-general of the Imperial War Museum in October. But Stern sounds a cautionary note: "You can't judge the norm by the exceptional people. It would be like saying America's not racist because there's Condoleezza Rice."

Talk to enough successful women, and you start thinking that women are on an equal footing with men. And yet it's difficult to reconcile that with the fact that fewer than 25% of British theatres have female artistic directors, that Kathryn McDowell is the only managing director of a British orchestra (the London Symphony), or that four of the 14 senior staff at Tate are women. No woman would want to be given a job simply to push these numbers up. "What we want is not x percentage of women in senior jobs," says Lees. "What we want is a sustainable sector that has the best talents leading it at whatever level." Theatre director Thea Sharrock puts it more bluntly: "If a women isn't the right person for the job, don't fucking give it to her. I'd much rather have a rash of good men running buildings than the wrong women."

There is a widespread belief that the "who you know" networking of old is at least being balanced, if not entirely replaced, by meritocracy, and that reaching the top is now, in McDowell's evaluation, "a matter of choice". Lees points out that there is "a difference between a forced block and a choice block", and what women primarily face is the latter. If that is the case, why might women choose to stop in the middle of the ladder?

There are a few key reasons, not all of them exclusive either to women or to the arts. One is the conflict between success and creativity. Vicky Featherstone, artistic director and chief executive of the National Theatre of Scotland, says she has had to take a year off from directing shows herself to concentrate on running the company. In a sense, theatre is a special case: an artistic director, Heywood says, is "supposed to be Picasso and build your own art gallery".

By contrast, Morris says she has benefited from the expansion of the arts industry, which has meant that heads of collections are no longer expected to manage budgets. But she also recognises that "there is a danger in more senior positions at Tate that the creative involvement suffers". Lees concurs: "I've done one exhibition in eight years. That's the interesting thing about leadership: you have to make a decision about which direction you're going to take. There's a lot to be said for the people who decide not to become the big museum director, but to lead their field from a subject-specialist point of view."

Then there's the fact that success consumes entire lives. "Big jobs are demanding jobs," says Andrea Nixon, executive director of Tate Liverpool. "There may be a point where people say, 'There are only so many hours in the day, including my weekends, I wish to commit to work.'" No one would claim that long hours are unique to the arts: running an institution may be "unbelievably self-sacrificing", says Susanna Eastburn, director of music strategy for Arts Council England, but we shouldn't forget that "presenteeism culture is endemic".

However, the industry can make peculiar claims on people. Alison Donald, managing director of A&R at Chrysalis Music Publishing, suggests few women maintain a career in the music industry because "the hours are not conducive to a normal social life: I'm in the office all day, and then I'm either out seeing bands, or having dinner with a manager". And, unlike other professions, those who work in the arts rarely find that their long hours are recognised in their payslips. "Very, very, very few people make a comfortable living in the arts," says Stern.

Long hours and low pay are particularly problematic for women who have children. It's not impossible to be a mother and hold down a high-powered job: Featherstone has two children, aged eight and six, and says the balance is "mind-breakingly challenging".

But many women don't even attempt it: of the 23 I talk to, 11 don't have children. "I do not know how I would do what I do and have a family to look after," says Friedman. "Producing is a 24-hour job. It's not even a job, it's a way of life. And there are probably far more men doing it than women, because men aren't the ones at home bringing up the children."

Asked why the long hours don't seem to affect men in the music industry, Donald snorts, "Because they've got wives!" Featherstone bristles when asked about her work-life balance because, she says, "I never hear men asked that question. There is an assumption that there will be a structure behind men, and that structure is women." But Sharrock, who recently gave birth to her second child, feels that one can't compare men's and women's experiences when it comes to children, for "a very obvious primeval reason: it's just not their body. It mustn't be a handicap for women, but it has to be acknowledged." Lees, who doesn't have children, agrees. "Until men have babies and that balance shifts, women are going to be self-limiting by the choice to have children."

Polly Teale, who co-runs the theatre company Shared Experience, says that when her husband Ian Rickson was artistic director of the Royal Court, the pair felt that "we both needed a wife, in the old-fashioned sense". Joking aside, she wonders whether leadership positions need to be restructured to allow women to maintain those jobs alongside a family life. Most women find themselves working in what the choreographer Siobhan Davies describes evocatively as "man-made architectures". If more women reached positions of power, could that architecture be rebuilt? The notion makes Stern laugh: "Look what happened under Thatcher!"

To a degree, long hours, low pay and the work-life imbalance are not gender-specific problems. Depressingly, the problem that seems to be unique to women is their own self-doubt. This sounds perilously like a stereotype-ridden generalisation, but Rawsthorn, who regularly sits on arts appointments panels, offers worrying evidence of its truth. All candidates, she says, are psychometrically tested, and "you can always guess whether a candidate is male or female. The characteristics that are flagged up again and again for the women are: self-doubt, questioning their ability to lead, and reluctance to step forward for promotion. It all adds up to a weaker sense of female entitlement for those very senior jobs."

Lees, another co-founder of the Women Leaders in Museums Network, says it was partly to counter this sort of thinking that the network was set up. She is interested in the idea of self-limitation because "a lot of my experience has been about ruling myself out of an opportunity. There have been a couple of jobs in the past five years that I would now say I was mad not to go for."

It's fascinating how many women hold themselves back in this way. When Eastburn, a former artistic director of the Huddersfield contemporary music festival, saw that job advertised, she assumed she couldn't do it, and applied only because friends persuaded her otherwise. Kathleen Soriano, now director of Compton Verney, spent 17 years working as the exhibitions manager at the National Portrait Gallery, convinced she could never run an institution herself. It wasn't until she became a fellow of the Clore Leadership Programme, set up in 2004 to expand the pool of potential arts leaders, that she stopped seeing such leaders as "godlike" and discovered the confidence to take a step up.

Of course, ambition and confidence are as much about personality as gender. It's instructive to look at the different paths taken by Morris and Iwona Blazwick, who were appointed together as the first programme curators at Tate Modern. While Morris has quietly continued her career at Tate, Blazwick is the high-profile director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London. "Iwona is a leader," says Morris, "and I would say I'm a team leader. And maybe I'm a team leader because I've spent the past 17 years helping to lead a family team." Morris also feels that the education of girls is no longer as gendered as it was 20 years ago. "I look at my daughter, who's 17, who's studying art but also economics, and I think: you could run the world!" Nevill has a similar feeling about her own daughters, now in their early 20s. "They don't create barriers for themselves, because they've never seen barriers there in the first place."

It took several decades of feminist discourse for women to infiltrate the workplace. Men still have the weight of history on their side: ask Padmore why there are so few women composers and she points out that "it is still almost within our lifetimes that it is normal for composers to be female". We're already at the stage where Featherstone, who turned 41 last month, can say that opportunities for women "have been a long time coming in the history of the world, but in the history of my life it's been open doors all the way". The future, thinks Lees, could even see male leaders in a minority. "Because we've got this massive middle-management tier of women in museums now, the pool that's available for the big jobs could be only women."

Some women think there are now other, more pressing diversity issues to be addressed. Heywood highlights the frustration felt by black and ethnic minority theatre directors, whose opportunities to work in the mainstream are few. Rawsthorn suggests that low pay is enforcing a class divide in the arts. Kate Horton, executive director of the Royal Court, agrees: "Class is the big issue.

I'm prouder of being a Brummie running the Royal Court than I am of being a woman."

When such inequalities are rife, does it matter if women reach the very top - the "headline jobs"? Of course it does. Some of the reasons are quite thorny, threatening to drift into essentialist generalisation again: there is the possibility that women will champion the work of other women, and are more likely to engage with challenging feminist work. There is the possibility of a difference in women's management style, which could be said to be more empathetic and team-oriented than men's. It's also important to enforce the idea that there are no barriers for younger women by providing role models.

Perhaps, though, it matters simply because women should have full equality for the sake of it. Emma Dexter, director of exhibitions at Timothy Taylor Gallery, puts it best: "It matters in the same way that it matters whether there is a black or woman president in the United States. Once we've had parity for 20 or 30 years, then you can say it's irrelevant. But that hasn't happened yet".

Thea Sharrock, has already run Southwark Playhouse and the Gate in London, and she has shown a sure commercial touch with the West End revival of Equus (starring a naked Daniel Radcliff e). Given her poise, assurance and talent, it is only a matter of time before she takes over one of the theatrical citadels. Earlier this year, Josie Rourke ran a brilliant political campaign when the Bush in London, where she is artistic director, was threatened with a damaging grant cut. And, even if her initial play choices have proved erratic, she looks like a multi-skilled all-rounder. She learned her craft under Michael Grandage at the Donmar and has something of her mentor's versatility. Under the charm there is also a hint of steel, as her battle for the Bush proved, which should take her to the top. Michael Billington

Tipping Iwona Blazwick OBE, as the next director of Tate is what you might call a no-brainer. Currently running the Whitechapel, a job that Nicholas Serota held before taking over Tate, she has made a great success of it, with striking exhibitions of artists ranging from Robert Crumb to Paul McCarthy. If Blazwick should miss the top job, one of her rivals would be the excellent Frances Morris, whose credits include the collection displays at Tate Modern and many exhibitions there, not least its recent Louise Bourgeois retrospective. Jonathan Jones

At 33, Tamara Rojo, is still far from ready to give up the stage, but she has made it clear she sees her future as an artistic director. The likelihood is that she will return home to Spain, but if the 12 years that she has spent in the UK encourage her to stay, this articulate, intellectually curious ballerina would be a stellar successor to Wayne Eagling at English National Ballet. If ever Mark Baldwin should want to move on as artistic director of Rambert Dance Company, Assis Carreiro would make an interesting replacement. She is an extraordinary dynamo and has turned Dance East from a small regional agency into a powerhouse of innovation and activity. Judith Mackrell

Mary Miller, has been away from these shores since her time with the English National Opera Studio (she is responsible for Stavanger's current stint as this year's European Capital of Culture alongside Liverpool), and it's about time we had her back. The Edinburgh International festival would make the most of her experience across all the art forms. One for the future: Susanna Eastburn, director of music strategy at Arts Council England, brings her experience as artistic director of the Huddersfi eld Contemporary Music festival and a high-powered job with the London International Festival of Theatre. After what will no doubt be a long stint from Roger Wright, she would be perfectly placed to take over as director of the BBC Proms. Tom Service

Summary: If women are excelling in the arts, why - as culture minister Margaret Hodge claims - are so few taking the top jobs? Maddy Costa reports. Plus our critics give their tips on the women to promote


Media giant Sony have acquired the online video startup Grouper, according to a press release. The current management will stay on at Grouper, working with a team at Sony Pictures Entertainment. Sony have paid the hefty sum of $65 million in cash - far more than any of the so-called "Web 2.0" acquisitions to date - reinforcing that video is the hot space right now. Even so, it seems like an extremely high price by anyone's standards.

Grouper has three fairly strong offerings in the video space - a P2P network, a video editor and, more recently, a web-based video-sharing service at Grouper.com. The site provides instant posting of videos to MySpace, Friendster, Blogger and Wordpress, as well as downloads for your desktop, iPod and Sony PSP. The company is the second largest independent video sharing community, behind YouTube by a long way. It's also worth noting that Grouper's content is fairly edgy, and it lists even more copyrighted content than its rival - the top rated videos are currently full episodes of South Park, The Simpsons and Family Guy. They've taken around $5.25 million in funding from T-Ventures (T-Online’s investment arm) and Duff, Ackerman, Goodrich.

Where are the synergies? Grouper and Sony claim that the pairing of connected devices with Grouper's web and desktop sharing will be a big win, and Grouper's P2P platform could also be used for movie distribution. What's pretty clear is that this is a technology buy, since Grouper hadn't even made a dent in web-based services like MySpace Video, YouTube and Yahoo Video.

Summary: Media giant Sony have acquired the online video startup Grouper, according to a press release. The current management will stay on at Grouper, working with a team at Sony Pictur...


Or how about the aggressive credit card company Capital One? The banks have been huge leaders for this earnings period, as they are the main beneficiaries to the Fed raising rates. But they never do better in a rising credit risk environment when more people default on loans.

Cramer thought the nightmare of loan defaults was in the past of the Great Recession—until he read the results of Capital One. In an attempt to expand quickly, it had to increase its loan loss provision by 21 percent.

"Talk about a piece of data that took your breath away. You think the most important group in the market can rally when one of its members reports something that hideous? No way," the "Mad Money" host said.

Then there was health care, which has saved the day for investors on many occasions. But then things all changed when Anthem announced it was buying Cigna, and somehow both stocks went down. That was not the pattern Cramer expected to see from a health care consolidation.

Granted, there are some high-growth leaders in the market right now that are obvious. Such as the stunning number from Amazon that sent the stock soaring 11 percent on Friday. Amazon is part of Cramer's high-growth stock combination that he has been watching called FANG—Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

Cramer also saw there was pressure exerted by China on the natural resource plays. Essentially it comes down to those companies that sell oil, and China uses oil, then the company will get killed. If you move coal, and China uses coal, then forget it. If you sell elevators, turbines, truck engines or even consumer packaged goods into China, then your stock is suspect.

---------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: My unbelievable reaction to Amazon Cramer: Smartest stocks of the S&P riptide Starbucks tells Cramer: Best quarter in history ----------------------------------------------------------

The good news is that if oil prices continue to go down, then domestic stocks could begin to flourish once again. Looking back, those were the stocks that rallied hard when oil fell and then peaked when oil bottomed.

However, all of that doesn't matter to Cramer. Right now, he doesn't see enough leadership in the market to mount any kind of a comeback.

"But we can't afford too complacently negative because whenever we have done that in 2015, it always comes back to bite us. I bet this time will be no different," Cramer added.

Summary: Jim Cramer thinks leadership is lacking, which prompted the market to get crushed Friday.


Bob Kempf , vice president and general manager of digital services for National Public Radio, has been named vice president for digital services at the WGBH Foundation and will start in October, the organization said Wednesday. Kempf will oversee the digital efforts of WGBH-FM radio, WGBH-TV, and the organization’s websites.

“With his inside understanding of media organizations, his expertise in digital technology and strategy, and his focus on serving audiences, [Kempf] is ideally suited to move WGBH ahead in all aspects of our digital services,” Ben Godley, WGBH chief operating officer, said in a press release.

Kempf has been at NPR since 2010, helping to expand the digital capabilities of the network and its affiliates across the country. Prior to NPR, Kempf served as vice president of product and technology at Boston Globe Media for four years, where he helped develop the Boston.com brand.

In 2010, Kempf was named a fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Punch Sulzberger Program .

Kempf, who lives in Plymouth, also has held positions at Gatehouse Media, Dow Jones Community Newspapers, and the Cape Cod Times. He is a graduate of Boston College.

Summary: Bob Kempf has been named vice president for digital services at WGBH and will start in October, the radio station announced on Wednesday.


About a year ago, Apple announced it would make your home a lot smarter with its Siri-controlled HomeKit.

Now, it seems that promise is coming true in just a few weeks, according to The Wall Street Journal. Third-party devices enabled with HomeKit are slated to come to market in June, an Apple spokesman told the newspaper.

The HomeKit app works off of iOS and a remote control for operating home gadgets such as thermostats, garage doors, lights and cameras.

The comments from the Apple spokesman contrast with a report in Fortune on Thursday that stated HomeKit would be delayed until September.

Read MoreJobs mystery: Krugman blames Apple (kind of)

Summary: Third-party devices enabled with HomeKit are slated to come to market in June, an Apple spokesman told The Wall Street Journal.


Emerging economies were most at risk, the report found, with India, Vietnam, Indonesia and China among those set to feel the economic impact of climate change.

However, several developed world cities were also judged as vulnerable, including Osaka and Tokyo in Japan and Sydney in Australia.

(Read more: Australian wildfires put heat on climate change skeptics)

The report also warned that water, energy and food supplies will come under pressure, which in turn will affect people and ecosystems. "Growth markets seeking energy security are increasingly faced with water security challenges, with businesses and governments alike looking to achieve more sustainable water and energy use," said Maplecroft.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the mean world temperature will rise between 0.3 Celsius and 0.7 Celsius from 2016 to 2035, with the increase likely to be larger in the Tropics and Subtropics.

(Read more: Forget the lottery, invest in climate change solutions)

Summary: Around one-third of the world's economy by 2025 will be based in countries at high risk from the impact of climate change, said a risk consultancy.


One would think that a Herculean task like this can only be taken up if government service is the only job the candidate wants to do. Unfortunately, the career is usually not the goal; the exam is.

"You can say more than 90 percent of the aspirants know nothing about the services," said Sahil Grover, an MPhil student at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. This year's preliminary exam was his fourth attempt. "The only idea is, this is a prestigious exam, once you make it through everyone would start respecting you."

And respect there is in plenty. Candidates dream of joining the administrative services, of social recognition and a secured government job in a "Yes Minister" culture. "They know it comes with a lot of power, authority, and position. Most of them don't know the nature of the job they have to perform," said Ravindran.

Read More Here's how to pick opportunities in India's sell-off

There is a lapse on the part of exam administrators as well. No effort is made to explain what the services entail, points out Kalrav Mishra, a successful candidate. "If a company is hiring for a position, it will have a job profile, it is easy to find out what the job entails. In the civil services there is no such thing."

Apart from the highly desired services like foreign, administrative and police, the examination sorts successful candidates into a range of less-desired, arguably less glamorous services such as revenue, taxation and customs. Those assigned to the states must work at the grassroots as representatives of the government to the people, implementing essential schemes and maintaining law and order.

Each of these services require diverse skill sets and knowledge, some of which is developed during a one- to two-year training for successful candidates. There is, however, no aptitude testing, and no attention is paid to your existing academic specialization or work experience.

"It is presumed that your [final test] rank signifies your aptitude for a specific service," said Mishra. He gave the example of a person who may not be fluent in English, but can be assigned to the foreign services. This would entail learning English as well as another foreign language in a limited time. "That is something which is a flaw."

According to Mishra, a domain-specific test or mandatory qualifications would be a useful update to an examination which is a colonial relic from the 1800s, similar only to testing systems found in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Read MoreHow to get your student loans forgiven

Though recommended formulas, study hours and books abound, there is no one perfect method to approach this test. In the end, it is about beating out half a million people who want exactly the same thing as you — to ace a test that is seen as a symbol of status — even if that has little to do with the actual job to be performed.

"The real reason this exam is considered so difficult and so respected in society is not because you need to be particularly smart, but because it is so competitive," said Mishra. "You might be very intelligent and very hard working, but that is not a guarantee of success. You might be neither, but that is not a guarantee of failure."

Summary: A test referred to as the "mother of all written exams in India" has a pass rate of just 0.002 percent, GlobalPost reports.


NEW YORK — Pfizer Inc. and Allergan PLC, the maker of Botox, are considering a merger, The Wall Street Journal reported, setting the stage for what could be one of the largest deals in the drug industry’s history.

Pfizer recently approached Allergan and the process is at an early stage, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Though details of the talks were unclear, the companies could face obstacles such as agreeing on a price, layoffs, and the closing of facilities, the Journal said.

Late Wednesday, Joan Campion, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, said the company does not comment on speculation, while Mark Marmur at Allergan declined to comment.

A transaction between the two drug makers, which have a combined market value exceeding $330 billion, could cap a busy year for deals in the pharmaceutical industry, with more than $200 billion in transactions announced.

That includes Pfizer’s $17 billion deal for Hospira Inc., a maker of injectable drugs.

An acquisition of Allergan, which has its legal domicile in Dublin, may also let Pfizer relocate outside of the United States for tax purposes. That was one of the reasons Pfizer sought to acquire AstraZeneca last year before eventually withdrawing its proposal. Pfizer also looked at Actavis as a potential acquisition, people familiar with the matter said last year.

The largest deal ever in the drug industry was Pfizer’s $116 billion acquisition of Warner-Lambert Co. in 2000, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Pfizer has sought deals in recent years as patents have expired for key drugs, including the cholesterol-lowering medicine Lipitor.

Allergan has been active on both sides of the deal table and has accounted for about $131 billion in deals over the past two years.

Allergan, itself the result of an acquisition earlier this year, is also slimming down, selling its generic-drug unit to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. for $40.5 billion. Sales at Allergan, which has a market capitalization of about $113 billion, have benefited from sales of specialty drugs including the cosmetic drug Botox and Namenda for Alzheimer’s disease.

Pfizer’s shares have risen 14 percent this year, and Allergan’s have gained 12 percent, both outperforming the Standard & Poor’s 1.5 percent advance.

Summary: Pfizer Inc. and Botox-maker Allergan Plc are considering a merger, the Wall Street Journal reported, setting the stage for what could be one of the largest deals in the drug industry’s history.


FRANKFURT, Aug 11 (Reuters) - European exporters glimpsed the possible progressive erosion of lucrative benefits from the weak euro on Tuesday, as China's surprise devaluation made foreign goods more expensive for its consumers and corporate customers.

Shares fell in makers of cars, luxury goods and consumer products, wiping 140 billion euros ($155 billion) off the value of the FTSEurofirst 300 index, as the spectre loomed of a new round of currency wars.

European companies from L'Oreal to Siemens have benefited from the euro's weakness making their products cheaper abroad and lifting the value of sales in other currencies, while Chinese growth has masked weakness elsewhere.

China is the second-biggest buyer of EU goods after the United States, accounting for 14 percent of exports from the trade bloc last year, according to Eurostat.

The Chinese central bank's 2 percent cut in its official dollar-to-yuan guidance rate sparked fears of more such moves to come and gave support to concerns the world's second-biggest economy would miss its 7 percent growth target for this year.

"The biggest impact is what this says about Chinese growth," said Liberum consumer goods analyst Robert Waldschmidt. "When you look at the actual companies, clearly anyone that's exporting to China is going to have a harder time."

Sectors with the highest exposure are basic resources, personal and household goods, technology, chemicals and autos.

The European basic resources index, already down 16 percent in the past three months, fell a further 4.1 percent; the autos index fell 4.1 percent and the personal and household goods index slid 2.4 percent.

The exporter-heavy German blue-chip DAX fell 2.7 percent, with automakers Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen leading the way as China's car industry association reported the biggest monthly drop in vehicle sales in 2-1/2 years, even before any devaluation impact.

"The rotation out of exporters to more domestically focused stocks and sectors, in Italy or Spain for example, has more to go," said Dennis Rose, a strategist at Barclays in London.

Evercore autos analyst Arndt Ellinghorst said the 2 percent devaluation would not be material for German carmakers, with zero impact this year thanks to hedging and an operating profit impact of around 1 percent next year.

But Juergen Hackenberg, head of European equities at German asset manager Union Investment, said: "A continual weakening would have clear effects on companies strong in exports."

Perhaps more significant than currency translation effects is the signal sent by China of its determination to support its export-dependent industrial sector, where it is building national champions to challenge Western rivals, analysts say.

"The timing certainly aligns with current efforts to further prop up growth in non-financial sectors," wrote IHS Global Insight China economist Brian Jackson.

China has already produced global telecoms equipment maker Huawei and has created the world's biggest rail conglomerate, CRRC, by merging two trainmakers.

Analyst David Vos of Barclays said cheaper export prices would not always benefit Chinese companies as often they did not yet have comparable technology to that of Western rivals.

But he saw large infrastructure, power transmission and coal power generation and makers of low-end mining equipment, such as crushers and grinders, as sectors where China was competitive.

"Move up a little bit further and you can start thinking about medical equipment, where we have been very cautious about the Chinese domestic landscape for Philips and Siemens, but this increases the attractiveness for domestic players to start to export," he said.

State-sponsored Huawei is already neck and neck with Sweden's Ericsson in telecoms equipment and analyst Sylvain Fabre at Gartner said the devaluation could further strengthen its hand and that of peer ZTE.

But he noted Huawei had long ago abandoned the cut-throat pricing strategy it used to conquer world markets and that in any case international tenders were made in dollars.

"Huawei has been disciplined on price in recent years, and even ZTE is not in total price-war mode. There are lots of things that come into play, not just currency," he said.

"What is true is that the Chinese vendors will have the ability to cut price a bit more if they so choose." ($1 = 0.9056 euros)

(Additional reporting by Lionel Laurent, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Alistair Smout and Martinne Geller in London and Leila Abboud in Paris)

Summary: FRANKFURT, Aug 11- European exporters glimpsed the possible progressive erosion of lucrative benefits from the weak euro on Tuesday, as China's surprise devaluation made foreign goods more expensive for its consumers and corporate customers. China is the second-biggest buyer of EU goods after the United States, accounting for 14 percent of exports from the...


Andrea James with Dougherty & Co. issued a note Thursday morning looking at the potential impact of the Model S fire. "Tesla does not intend to halt orders, so we see no near-term downside. Model S consumers tend to be well-informed, which mitigates the risk of canceled orders," James wrote.

(Read more: Three things that could slow down Tesla)

While investors focus on the fire, and video of it posted on websites, Tesla has taken possession of the 2012 Model S in question.

The company says the fire started in one of the battery cells after the car drove over a large metallic object, which penetrated the carriage of the car.

(Read more: One college student rides the Tesla stock wave)

In an official statement, Tesla described the incident: "The fire was caused by the direct impact of a large metallic object to one of the 16 modules within the Model S battery pack. Because each module within the battery pack is, by design, isolated by fire barriers to limit any potential damage, the fire in the battery pack was contained to a small section in the front of the vehicle."

Firefighters at the scene had to put the fire out several times since it would reignite after they appeared to have extinguished it, according to a spokesperson from the Kent, Wash., fire department. In all, the fire crews were on the scene more than two hours. It's unclear how much of that time actually involved firefighting.

—By CNBC's Phil LeBeau. Follow him on Twitter @LeBeauCarNews. Questions? Comments? BehindTheWheel@cnbc.com.

Summary: After a fire of a Model S Tesla, shares in the car company are seeing the biggest decline since July.


11/24/2015 AT 04:20 PM EST

in Tyler Shields' new star-studded, Marie Antoinette-era photo series

, and PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at the

actress rocking a powdered wig and period costume.

"I wanted to give my version of an inside look into what I imagine it would be like if you were able to take a photograph of the Court of the Palace of Versailles and Tuileries Palace, an intimate look inside one of the most fascinating times in history," says Shields, 33, who shot the project using a 50-year-old camera.

Jaime King in Tyler Shields' Decadence

Roden, 29, also posed for her pal Shields'

opens at the Maddox Gallery in London on Feb. 4, 2016.

Summary: Decadence opens at the Maddox Gallery in London on Feb. 4, 2016.


A hostage is carried away from the Bataclan concert hall

By Peter Mikelbank and Philip Boucher

12/18/2015 AT 10:15 AM EST

French investigators are in possession a two-hour-long recording of the

in Paris on Nov. 13.

, the house recording system was activated before the attack began by a

technician who was making a personal tape of the

performance on the night that three terrorists broke into the concert hall. All together, 90 people died inside the Bataclan – and the recording system remained on and active throughout the entire massacre.

Describing the soundtrack as "a chilling document", TF1 reports that the two-hour-long recording helped investigators to identify the individual voices and actions of the three terrorists in real time, providing a moment-by-moment replay.

The recording clearly documents "the entry of three suicide bombers into the Bataclan at 9:40 p.m.," the network says, "until members of the BRI (Brigade Rapid Intervention) end of the assault near 12:30 a.m."

The Eagles of Metal Death were already on stage when the three terrorists burst into the sold-out concert hall. In the recording, shouts from the terrorists can be heard, as well as cries for help and bursts of gunfire.

Between two sustained rounds of gunfire, the three terrorists call each other by name while also declaring their loyalties to ISIS. They then reload their weapons and begin to shoot again.

According to reports, the soundtrack enabled investigators to pinpoint Samy Amimour as the terrorist killed in an explosion when the first police officers arrived at the scene – a moment the officers later called an

The tape also confirmed investigators' beliefs that Ismail Mostefai and Fouad Mohamed-Aggad hid in an upstairs area of the concert hall when other officers began arriving as backup.

Summary: The concert hall's house sound system recorded the terrorist attack


FORTUNE — A 3:43-minute round-up of the reasons behind Apple AAPL CEO Tim Cook’s letter of apology to his Chinese customers, recorded Monday afternoon before China’s response. Not much here that regular readers haven’t heard before.

To view full screen, start the video and click the box in the lower right corner.

Summary: Yours truly did an interview with Richard Quest on CNN International Monday


01/19/2016 AT 08:05 PM EST

reeling from the news of

is longtime friend and fellow musician

"I knew him for 50 years," an emotional Seger told

. "He was a great kid. I always kind of thought of him as my baby brother, a little bit. He was f---ing brilliant. He was a joy to be around. I always looked forward to seeing him. It was always memorable. He had an amazing sense of humor and was just smart, whip-smart."

The two Detroit natives met during the 1960s when they were both working the local music scene.

"He had a drive, an imagination and a talent that was just titanic," said Seger. "He loved music. He loved soul music. He loved Marvin Gaye. He loved Al Green. He loved Otis Redding. I remember listening to the Jimi Hendrix Experience up in his bedroom in his mom's house, and we looked at each other and I said, 'Glenn, we're out of a job! This guy is so f---in' good!' and we laughed our asses off about it."

Seger, who co-wrote the Eagles' 1979 smash "Heartache Tonight," also credited Frey with being the true leader of the iconic band.

"Those chords you hear on 'The Last Resort' and on 'Desperado,' that's him. He wrote those chords," Seger said of the Eagles' guitarist's skills on the piano – adding that he was classically trained from a young age.

"And make no mistake about it: He was the leader of the Eagles. He was the band leader. Never doubt that for a minute, and they'll all tell you that it's true. He used to tell me that, 'Every single track's gotta be good. Every single track. We don't release an album 'til it's good.'"

Seger added, "Ask Henley, ask any of them: Glenn was the leader of the Eagles," he

. "Throughout the Eagles' career, they had a nickname for him. He was the Lone Arranger."

The longtime friends last saw each other when the Eagles played a show in Detroit on July 24. In November, Henley told Seger that Frey had been hospitalized in New York.

"He was in a coma, and he'd come out, but then he couldn't breathe. Theyâd put him back into the coma," Seger said.

"They were trying like hell to keep him alive. [Eagles manager] Irving [Azoff] pulled every ace out of the hole – he had the eight best specialists working on Glenn. About a month ago, they had to throw up their hands."

Seger says one thing remained a constant with Frey – his love for his fans.

"Every time I saw him in the last 10, 11 years, he was so grateful to the fans," he told

. "The first thing he'd say to me – normally he'd start with a joke or something – but then he'd say to me, 'Isn't it amazing, Bob, we're still doing this at our age? I am so grateful that these fans keep coming out.' And he meant it, every word. He was definitely sincere."

, "He loved the band. He loved the fact he could keep doing this. And he kept doing this until six months before he died."

Summary: "He had a drive, an imagination and a talent that was just titanic," Seger tells Billboard


From bookmakers to "Super Bowl Squares", gambling on the outcome of the Super Bowl is big business.Here's a look at some of the more unusual proposition bets (wagers on a very specific outcome) that are being taken on the "big game" by one of the premier online gambling sites, Bodog.com this year for the Indianapolis Colts vs. New Orleans Saints matchup in Miami, FL on Sunday, February 7th.By Brian Beers, Senior Producer for CNBC.com

Summary: Here's a look at some of the more unusual proposition bets that are being taken on the "big game" by one of the premier online gambling sites, Bodog.com this year.


A Massachusetts-based startup is aiming to launch a ride-hailing service where all the drivers — and customers — are women.

Chariot for Women, the brainchild of a former Uber driver in the Boston area, aims to launch its women-based driving service nationwide on April 19.

“Chariot was born to ensure safety, comfort and pleasure as well as giving back to female-focused charities and foundations through our transportation services,” the company’s website states, adding that a percentage of profits will be given back to women’s foundations.

Founder Michael Pelletz came up with the idea after picking up a passenger who made him feel unsafe.

“One thought kept coming up in his head: ‘What if I was a woman?’” the company’s website states. “Just one bad apple behind the wheel, and those women would not be safe at all. 3 a.m. in Boston is a candy store for predators.”

In an e-mail to the Globe, Pelletz said Chariot for Women fares would be comparable to competitors like Uber and Lyft, but without the surge pricing.

He said he was hoping to employ 1,000 drivers by launch, but after an “overwhelming response,” that number has climbed to 4,000.

Based in Charlton, Mass., Pelletz said he plans for Chariot for Women to “have offices very soon in every major city across the country.”

The service’s launch comes as services like Uber and Lyft are under scrutiny for a myriad of reasons, including safety.

Boston police were investigating two separate assaults this past weekend that they say involved assailants masquerading as ride-sharing drivers.

In February, a former Uber driver was convicted in Boston of assaulting a 21-year-old woman while she was a passenger in his vehicle.

Summary: A Massachusetts-based startup is aiming to launch a ride-share service where all the drivers — and customers — are women.


03/29/2016 AT 03:50 PM EDT

made her public debut as a woman on the

last June – but when did she meet

's estranged husband didn't meet Jenner, 66, until months after she transitioned, something Kardashian reveals on this week's episode of

Khloé Kardashian and Lamar Odom (inset: Caitlyn Jenner)

Jamie McCarthy / Getty; Inset: Axelle / Bauer-Griffin / FilmMagic

In a sneak peek at Wednesday's episode, Kardashian opens up to her guests

, Jillian Rose Reed and comedian

about when Odom met Jenner for the first time.

"When [Odom] had his accident and was in the hospital, Caitlyn was like, 'I want to come and see Lamar,' " Kardashian, 31, says, referencing Odom's Oct. 13

after being found unconscious in a Nevada brothel.

But as Kardashian explains it, Odom wasn't even aware that Jenner had transitioned at the time of his hospitalization because he "was not in the best state" in the months leading up to his accident, during which time Jenner was coming into her new, public identity as a woman.

"I know the state he was in and it wasn't healthy," Kardashian says of the former NBA star, who has struggled with substance abuse. So, when he was hospitalized, "Lamar did not know about Caitlyn at that time," Kardashian says, "and Lamar was in the hospital for four months, and I kept Lamar very sheltered."

Ultimately, Kardashian doesn't actually reveal when the two met for the first time, though the introduction definitely took place after he was hospitalized.

"When Caitlyn wanted to come and visit Lamar for the first time, it was in the hospital," Kardashian explains, saying that she wanted to "respect Caitlyn being Caitlyn," but also wasn't sure how to handle breaking the news of Jenner's transition to Odom, who was already in a fragile state.

In the months since, Odom has

with the Kardashian-Jenner family, and even made his

's fashion show with the famous family in February, which Jenner also attended.

airs Wednesdays (10 p.m ET) on FYI.

Summary: Kardashian's estranged husband didn't meet Caitlyn Jenner until months after she transitioned


At this weekend’s annual Big Ears Festival, traditional genre-driven programming was once again discarded. Instead, the lineup comprised musicians who are happy to wander far from perceived convention, resist commercial trends, and demonstrate a mastery of craft and an affinity for self-expression.

Among the performers at Big Ears 2016: the cellist Maya Beiser; drone-metal’s Big Brave and Sunn O))); composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton; krautrock pioneers Faust; composer and pianist Philip Glass; the jazz duo of pianist Vijay Iyer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; the Necks, a minimalist acoustic trio from Australia; hip-hop experimentalists Shabazz Palaces; and the folk chamber sextet Eighth Blackbird. John Luther Adams was the composer-in-residence and, at Thursday night’s opening event, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra performed his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Become Ocean,” as well as works by the National’s Bryce Dessner and Mr. Glass. Jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington and band played music from his aptly named 2015 album, “The Epic. ”

With its silo-destroying philosophy, Big Ears ’16 was uplifting, challenging, dazzling; frustrating too, if only because, as so often is the case today in music, there was too much to take in. To enjoy separate concerts by the Sun Ra Arkestra and Mamiffer, with its metal-influenced soundscapes from its new album, “The World Unseen,” required attendees to bypass the KSO event at which Ms. Beiser was featured soloist on Mr. Glass’s Cello Concerto No. 1. Eighth Blackbird’s Friday night concert, with guest Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, began late, and to stay to its end meant missing the beginning of Messrs. Iyer and Smith’s performance of pieces from their poignant new album, “A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke.” Meanwhile, Eighth Blackbird moved on to another venue, where Mr. Glass and Nico Muhly were waiting to play with them—but to catch that set required missing most of Andrew Bird’s performance featuring music from “Are You Serious,” his disc released that day.

But Big Ears, which also presented a concurrent film festival and series of art installations, is held within downtown Knoxville, every venue a short walk from the next, so grousing was a sorry substitute for careful planning. A sense of formality was provided by the majestic 1,600-seat Tennessee Theatre and the nearby Bijou Theatre, which is said to hold 700 but was swollen to bursting for Mr. Braxton’s dizzying Friday afternoon set with his 11-piece ensemble. At the Bijou, Irish-American group the Gloaming’s traditional folk tunes profited from the colors and gentleness added by fiddler Martin Hayes and pianist Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, and when singer Iarla Ó Lionáird shifted to falsetto, the music rose toward magical. Mr. Glass and Laurie Anderson performed a touching program featuring the recorded voices of Allen Ginsberg and Lou Reed for a sold-out crowd at the Tennessee, balancing Mr. Glass’s etudes and Ms. Anderson’s spoken-word pieces.

Intimate shows in smaller settings gave the impression that brilliance was everywhere. In a converted church, Marc Ribot performed delicate selections by John Cage and Frantz Casséus on a steel-stringed guitar before switching to electric to discharge John Zorn compositions that required blizzards of notes, noisy squalls and the stomping of balloons set at his feet. On Saturday, guitarist Mary Halvorson, who played with Mr. Braxton a day earlier, gave a thrilling solo recital at the small, boxy Square Room, performing songs by Carla Bley, Ornette Coleman, Oliver Nelson and others that appear on her new album, “Meltframe.”

A sense of community emerged here as musicians popped up to contribute to one another’s sets. Yo La Tengo invited Mr. Dessner, saxophonist Danny Ray Thompson of the Sun Ra Arkestra, harpist Mary Lattimore and the Necks’ keyboardist, Chris Abrahams, to sit in for a long modal piece at its Thursday night show at the Mine & Mill, a new concert space. Tony Buck, the Necks’ drummer, performed with Zeena Parkins, who issued torrents of squeals from a custom-made harp. Mr. Ribot accompanied Joe Henry during his set in which the singer-composer offered stripped-down versions of his songs, most of which were informed by the blues. Mr. Henry’s son, Levon, joined on saxophone. The impish Mr. Bartlett hosted one of his musical salons, and folk singers Olivia Chaney and Sam Amidon participated, as did Messrs. Dessner, Muhly and Ribot and yMusic’s violist Nadia Sirota. A member of the audience volunteered to play drums.

The gifted, intellectually curious artists at Big Ears ’16 are likely to consider the music of Can, the Chicago Art Ensemble, Charles Ives, Kronos Quartet, Steve Reich, Arthur Russell, Sonic Youth, Cecil Taylor and the Velvet Underground as part of a unified theory in which a pursuit of the avant garde is a natural instinct. Here, the like-minded came together, often gloriously so, to challenge themselves, each other and a grateful, satisfied audience with artistry that may fit no easy category but is essential to grasping the richness of contemporary music.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com and follow him on Twitter @wsjrock.

Summary: Classical, jazz, krautrock and more were on the bill at Big Ears.


Dan Kerr, now an assistant professor at American University, lived as a squatter 20 years ago in Manhattan's Lower East Side and says the lifestyle was a way to challenge the notion that "the one-family home with a 9-to-5 job" was "the only way to provide meaning to our lives."

That New York neighborhood is still a hotspot for street kids, or "gutter punks." A 23-year-old who identified himself as "Banjo" (then admitted that wasn't his name) came to the city for Occupy Wall Street and now hangs out on the eastern tip of 14th street. He explained his choice as more relevant than ever: "We saw how mortgage companies screwed people," he said. "The economy is a joke. We travel all over, and people help us out."

At Sycamore House, an intentional community in Harrisburg, Pa., young people volunteer with nonprofits in exchange for food, rent, and a $400 monthly stipend.

Emmy Corey, the program's director, said that a third of residents signed up after struggling to find work after college. "Doing this has offered more security than the job market," she said.

More from NBC News:360-degree panorama of a $75 'hobbit hole' house Slideshow:What choosing poverty looks likeBaby boomers fueling wave of entrepreneurship

Of course, no matter how bad the job market is, there are clear distinctions between those who have the privilege to opt for poverty and those who are poor through no choice of their own. If things get rough, Price has a career to fall back on. Banjo can return to his childhood bedroom, where he stayed before hitting the road. Corey's young charges aren't stuck in high-crime neighborhoods with subpar schools and services like most of America's poor. And people who choose poverty are often free to make exceptions; despite his otherwise modest lifestyle, Price pays $53 a month for a cell phone and owns both an iPad and a MacBook Air.

The demographics of these two groups are also starkly different: The pockets of people who choose poverty are nearly all white, experts say, while around half of the impoverished in the U.S. are black and Hispanic.

For people involuntarily living on four figures a year, upward mobility would be a gift, not a trap. "Those people know that if they gave everything up, it wouldn't be so easy to get it back," said Kerr. Many have trouble understanding why privileged people would turn their nose up at creature comforts, "especially if you grew up yearning for these things," said Halnon.

Still, some among the intentional poor believe their lifestyle can serve as a model for anyone who narrowly defines success as being wealthy. "People are so incredibly spoiled," said Price. He prioritizes self-reliance and feels strongly about never using food stamps or welfare. "My job is simply to live as pure and authentic as I can and make an example for people."

Sometimes, though, intentional poverty isn't a rejection of mainstream success so much as a deliberate means to it.

Summary: Some Americans have decided to keep out of the rat race, at least for now. Find out why. NBC News reports.


Our topic this morning is how much CEOs are worth, which is in the news and will be more so as proxy season progresses. Most noted was Friday’s SEC filing by Yahoo yhoo reporting that CEO Marissa Mayer would get a $55 million package if she is ousted as a result of Yahoo’s operating businesses being bought in the coming year. That golden parachute, combined with her reported pay packages of $14 million last year and $42 million the year before, struck many people as a bit much considering that she was brought in to turn Yahoo around and hasn’t done it.

We have to dig deeper to find an entirely different example. Weekend box office data show that Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book was the No. 1 movie in America for a third consecutive week; total worldwide box office is a staggering $685 million so far. That means Disney dis has two mammoth hits this year, and it’s only May 3; the other is Zootopia, released two months ago, with $933 million worldwide so far. We know Jungle Book won’t dominate again next weekend because it and all other movies in North America will be overwhelmed by Captain America: Civil War, which many analysts think may be the top movie of 2016. And who made that one? Disney again.

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If you don’t recall howls of outrage when Disney reported that CEO Bob Iger’s 2015 pay package was worth $43.5 million, you can understand why. The board has signed him to a contract until 2018, when he’ll be 67, and some Wall Street analysts think the board may ask him to stay longer. He’s getting paid a ton, but it isn’t a lot if he’s worth it.

Which brings us to another high-profile pay package of the moment, that of Expedia expe CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. At a valuation of $94.6 million, it makes him the highest paid CEO in the S&P 500 among companies that have reported. Except – is that what he really got paid? The headlines all say so. But it isn’t true. To see why, do something that hardly anyone does, which is read the SEC filing that reports his compensation. We find that $90.8 million of that huge reported figure is in the form of stock options that he hasn’t actually received yet and may never receive. Even if he does receive them, he may not make a dime from them. Some of the options cannot be given to him before September 2020, and even then he would get them only if Expedia stock had risen by 81%. In that case those options would be worth $82.5 million to him on the day he got them – a lot of money, but shareholders would have gained $14 billion. If they gained only, say, $13 billion, he won’t get those options at all. Now maybe the board could have driven a harder bargain with Khosrowshahi, but this doesn’t seem like a bad deal for the shareholders.

Iger’s pay package also consisted mostly of stock-based awards that may pay a lot, or a little, or nothing at all over a period of years. This is almost always the case when you see huge pay numbers reported. What you rarely see reported are the details that make all the difference. It’s the time of year for wailing and gnashing of teeth over excessive CEO pay, and sometimes it is definitely justified. But before you launch into a rage over the latest editorial, you might consider visiting sec.gov, reading the actual numbers, and deciding for yourself.

Summary: It’s the time of year for wailing over excessive CEO pay, and sometimes it is entirely justified.


Retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores wmt and U.S. drug distributor McKesson mck said on Monday they would expand an alliance for jointly procuring generic medicines in an attempt to lower costs.

Walmart, which has been sourcing generics with McKesson for several years, has been looking to strengthen its health-related business as well as cut costs in its pharmacy operations, which emerged as a significant drag on earnings last year.

The deal is aimed at “using our combined size and scale to drive efficiencies,” George Riedl, senior vice president and president of the health and wellness division at Walmart in the U.S., said in a statement.

No details on the scale of the deal, which includes an expansion of a long-term distribution agreement, were disclosed.

Walmart said in August that margins in its pharmacy business were being pinched by reduced reimbursement rates from drug plan administers as well as fewer people paying in cash, significant because cash transactions fetch higher margins.

Walmart does not disclose the size of its pharmacy business, but the retailer ranks as one of the largest drugstores in the U.S., with some $19 billion in annual revenue, according to an estimate last year by Evercore ISI.

Summary: It's one of the nation's biggest drugstore chains.


Taylor Swift’s recent decision to yank her music off of Spotify, the online music streaming service used by more than 50 million people, has become the latest episode in the battle over the music industry’s diminishing profits.

One central mystery in the drama: just how much do artists make when their songs are played on the service? We used Spotify’s stated payout range – $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream – to calculate how much the top 50 songs streamed globally earned artists in 2014. See the bar charts below for each song. The payout range represents the top and bottom figures for each song as described by Spotify’s latest publicly available formula.

Spotify provided its “per stream” range in 2013 in an attempt to satisfy curiosity about the company’s royalties formula, which factors in total revenue made by Spotify and total streams across the site, both unavailable to the public. Regardless of the exact per stream payout each month, Swift’s chart-topping single “Shake It Off” earned more than any other song in October. But having spent only 7 weeks on Spotify, Swift’s single can’t compete with the top 20 best-paying songs from the first 10 months of 2014, like Calvin Harris’s “Summer,” which could have netted the Scottish singer $1.7 million.

Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek has said that since the company was founded in 2008 it has paid out $2 billion to record labels and publishers, half of that total in the last year alone. In a recent blog post, he said that an artist of Swift’s size could earn $6 million by streaming her music on Spotify in the past year.

When contacted by TIME last week, a Spotify spokesperson said Swift had earned $2 million off global streaming of her music in the past year. Swift’s record label, Nashville-based Big Machine, said last week that it had received exactly $496,044 for domestic streaming of Swift’s music over the past 12 months.

While few are going to fear that Swift is about to go begging, the fact that the country’s best-selling artist believes Spotify devalues her work could have a major influence on whether other artists stick with the service.

“I’m always up for trying something,” Swift told TIME about joining Spotify. “And I tried it and I didn’t like the way it felt. I think there should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify. Everybody’s complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things.”

Read Taylor Swift’s interview with TIME.

Read more about Taylor Swift’s Spotify paycheck mystery.

Read next: Sony Rethinks Spotify Collaboration, Taking a Cue from Taylor Swift

Summary: Taylor Swift had October's top earning single


Fewer than 6% of all decision-makers at U.S. venture capital firms are women, according to data compiled by Fortune. It is a pathetic figure, but also a slight improvement over the last time we examined the data.

Our analysis began by using PitchBook to compile a list of all U.S.-based venture capital firms that had raised at least one fund of $100 million or more since the beginning of 2011. That worked out to 282 firms that had raised over $130 billion.

We then researched each firm go determine how many investment decision-makers were women. This proved a bit tricky since not all firms use the same terminology, so we generally looked for the most senior “layer” of investment professionals. Sometimes that was “general partners,” sometimes “managing directors,” etc. We excluded anyone who serves primarily in CFO or other administrative positions, unless they also represent the firm on portfolio company boards. Finally, we only used current staffing, as opposed to who may have been with the firm at the time funds were raised. In short, science buttressed by a bit of art.

What we determined was that there were 906 decision-makers that fit our criteria, of which only 52 were women. This works out to 5.7%.

When we first tabulated this data in early 2014, we only used firms that had raised funds of at least $200 million, and the figure came out to 4.2%. When we did a follow-up last year, we learned that the figure was almost exactly the same, but then did a search of firms that had raised between $100 million and $199 million and learned that this cohort was 5.6% female. In other words, it suggested that smaller firms were (very) slightly more likely to have female decision-makers.

We saw the same discrepancy this time around, but only ever so slightly. Among firms that had raised funds of $200 million or more, the percentage of female decision-makers was 5.67%. For firms that had only raised funds of between $100 million and $199 million ― a much smaller group ― it was 5.97%.

It is worth noting that the actual sample of firms changes each year, because we only look back on firms that have raised funds in the past five years. Some legacy firms fall off, some new firms are introduced.

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One year ago, Ellen Pao lost her landmark gender discrimination suit against VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Many believed that the case, while not successful for Pao, would spark a wave of women being hired at venture capital firms. According to the data, however, it’s been more like a small ripple.

To be sure, senior partnership positions don’t turn over too often, so even a percentage point or two increase is welcome news. But given the massive disparity, it’s not nearly good enough.

Summary: One year after Ellen Pao, venture capital remains a boys' club.


Manager, Strategic Maintenance and Material Planning, JetBlue Airways

Tim Russo had never really known anyone with autism before. But in September 2013, when he was volunteering at JetBlue’s Blue Horizon for Autism event, which lets families with autistic kids experience the airport in a controlled setting, he found himself getting along effortlessly with his fellow volunteer, an autistic teenager named Jason Harris. “We started talking about aircraft routing and pairing,” Tim says. “Just by looking at the tail number of a plane, he knew the name of the plane. That’s what I do for a living—I remember thinking, this is fun!” Russo, who manages strategic initiatives within Technical Operations for JetBlue (No. 454), gave Harris his contact information.

Russo has been in touch with Harris every day since, answering his constant questions about aviation over text and email. “I know it sounds unbelievable,” Deb Harris, Jason’s mom, says. “But they talk every single day about flight patterns and JetBlue.” Now, Harris is taking flying lessons so that he can realize his dream of becoming a commercial pilot. But Russo has made sure to introduce his mentee to the whole aviation world: In April, Russo took Harris and his family on a multi-day tour of the JetBlue headquarters and JFK airport, introducing him to all of the teams that work behind the scenes to keep the company running. “That was a magical day for me,” Jason Harris says. Russo – and many other employees at JetBlue who have gotten to know Jason, now 16, over the years – is working with the Harris family to discuss Jason’s career path, and his promising future in aviation. “This experience has been so uplifting for Jason since he’s at the stage in his life where he’s trying to figure out what he’s going to do as an adult,” Deb Harris says. “Tim has given us strong direction and a lot of support.”

Summary:
Location: Queens, N.Y.

Tim Russo had never really known anyone with autism before. But in September 2013, when he was volunteering at JetBlue’s Blue Horizon for Autism event, which lets fa...


Contemporary designer Rebecca Minkoff, herself a millennial, uses her age to tap into what young shoppers want. That goes not only for her apparel and accessories designs but also for the incorporation of technology into the brand's identity.

At her fall show, for example, Minkoff used a set of GoPro cameras to livestream the runway and backstage chaos to fans. And after opening a high-tech store in Manhattan late last year, the label is also working on new stores in Chicago and LA.

Minkoff said the label's ready-to-wear sales at its futuristic store—which includes smart dressing rooms that suggest complementary pieces—are outpacing those at other locations.

Read MoreWhat not to wear: The most out-of-style fashion stocks

"I'm, I guess, the eldest of the millennials, so I feel like I grew up in that time and I know what she's thinking and I am thinking," Minkoff said. "It's the girl that's going to grow with me but it's also me going, what was I like when I was 20? What did I aspire to own but I couldn't afford?"

Lubov Azria, leader designer at BCBG Max Azria, doesn't have the benefit of tapping into her age to reach younger consumers. She does, however, have five daughters, three of whom are millennials.

"The most important [thing] is to understand that you're not designing for yourself," she said. "You're designing for the customer and understanding their needs."

Summary: Younger shoppers, new technology and the desire to spend on high-end experiences are reshaping modern luxury.


Bernie Sanders said Tuesday that his primary bid against Hillary Clinton was far from over, pointing to his victory in Indiana and strength in upcoming races as a sign of his durability in the presidential campaign.

“I know that the Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over. They’re wrong,” Sanders said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from New Albany, Indiana. “Maybe it’s over for the insiders and the party establishment but the voters today in Indiana had a different idea.”

Sanders spoke to the AP after he defeated Clinton in Indiana’s primary, predicting that he would achieve “more victories in the weeks to come” in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon and California. The Vermont senator acknowledged that he faced an “uphill climb” to the Democratic nomination but said he was “in this campaign to win and we are going to fight until the last vote is cast.”

Sanders’ win in Indiana likely won’t make much of a dent in Clinton’s lead of more than 300 pledged delegates. Clinton is still more than 90% of the way to clinching the Democratic nomination when the count includes superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders who are free to support the candidate of their choice.

Sanders said in the interview that he would be the best-positioned Democrat to take on Republican Donald Trump, who is now the likely Republican nominee after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dropped out of the race. “There is nothing more I would like than to take on and defeat Donald Trump, someone who must never become president of this country.”

Sanders said he had no intention to drop out of the race and rejected the notion that his criticism of Clinton’s record on issues like trade, campaign finance and the Iraq war would help Trump.

“There is nothing that I have said about Secretary Clinton that the Republicans are not more than aware of. They must have dozens and dozens of opposition researchers,” Sanders said. “They will go into areas that I have chosen not to go into. They will be talking about emails. They will be talking about the Clinton foundation.”

Sanders said he wants to debate Clinton in California later this month, noting that both campaigns had reached an agreement in principle to hold the forum in the nation’s largest state.

Summary: Hillary Clinton is more than 90% of the way to clinching the Democratic nomination.


The producers behind the hit show “Hamilton” have found a way to outsmart ticket scalpers that might even impress the nation’s first Treasury secretary.

They’re pushing the price of the most primo premium seats to a record $849. The previous highest price was $477 for the best seats at “The Book of Mormon.”

“Hamilton” will easily shatter that mark in an attempt to cut scalpers out of the resale business.

But lead producer Jeffrey Sellers has also opened access for people unable to spend the extra Hamiltons by increasing the number of last-minute $10 digital lottery seats from 21 to 46 people.

SEE IT: Lin-Manuel Miranda joins James Corden for carpool karaoke

“It’s not a token amount,” Sellers said Thursday. “Forty-six tickets a night is a lot of tickets.

“On an annual basis, 19,000 people will receive an opportunity to see ‘Hamilton’ in the first two rows for $10.”

The rollicking hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton, the “10-dollar founding father without a father” and America’s first Treasury secretary, has become the hottest ticket on the Great White Way, making close to $2 million a week.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator, composer and star of the historical masterpiece, announced earlier this month he would be leaving the show after its July 9 performance to work on numerous other projects.

Lin-Manuel Miranda expected to leave 'Hamilton' on July 9

“Hamilton,” which is sold out through January, has been nominated for 16 Tony awards.

It has been praised by politicians and rap stars alike, President Obama has seen it twice, and it has influenced the debate over the nation’s currency and become a cultural phenomenon since opening on Broadway last August.

The show has also sparked a a surge in scalping that has upped prices on the secondary market to undemocratic heights.

“We know that scalpers have been buying our tickets — often in illegal ways — and reselling them for four or five or six times their face value,” Sellers said. “And we know that all of those dollars are going to those usurious brokers, and they’re not going to the very people that create the play, perform the play or work on the play every single day.”

Sellers said his team settled on $849 to “take the air out of those very brokers who are using our tickets to make a killing.”

In addition to the daily lottery, which currently represents $4 million in lost revenue, the show offers $10 tickets for 20,000 schoolchildren a year, meaning almost 40,000 people are seeing the show every year for $10.

“Accessibility is deeply important to me. It’s deeply important to Lin and to our entire team. It always has been. I know what it’s like to not be able to afford a full-price theater ticket,” said Sellers, who created a $20 ticket for “Rent” in 1996.

Summary: The producers of “Hamilton” have found a way to outsmart scalpers that might impress the nation’s first Treasury secretary.


Private equity firms take confidentiality very seriously. Unless it gets in their way.

That was the takeaway from a workshop presentation earlier this week by Marte Castanos, senior counsel with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), a $300 billion public pension fund with nearly $29 billion in private equity assets.

For the uninitiated: CalPERS and other “limited partners” in private equity funds are required to sign confidentiality agreements that restrict them from publicly disclosing certain types of fund-related information. Among covered documents are the actual limited partnership agreements (LPAs), which detail all sorts of fee and profit-sharing structures. The official reason for these blanket restrictions is “trade secret,” with private equity firms claiming that rival firms could gain a competitive advantage – or perhaps level the playing field – by viewing (and then possibly adopting) such structures. Sure it’s silly – plenty of these LPAs have leaked without subsequent harm – but limited partners have held up their end of the confidentiality bargain.

What Castanos said during the workshop, however, was that private equity firms themselves have not shown similar discretion. He claimed that, while negotiating a fund agreement with CalPERS, certain private equity attorneys will agitate for more favorable terms by citing past agreements CalPERS has reached with other private equity funds (some of which are represented by the very same fund formation attorneys). So much for the sanctity of trade secret.

“What happens with these negotiations are, ‘Hey you agreed to this before.’ So we bring up terms. ‘Hey, you agreed to this last time.’ And we get that not only in regard to, ‘Hey you agreed to it last time in this fund with this general partner.’ But it’s a small industry, the big GPs have overlap in counsel who represents them. They know what we’ve agreed to. So it’s very common that we ask for a term and they throw it back at us and say ‘Well you agreed to this before in this fund or this fund.’ So it’s an uphill battle.”

When asked about this scenario by CalPERS board member J.J. Jelincic, Castanos added:

“In those situations where I’ve been on the phone and someone has said ‘Hey you agreed to this,’ I don’t know what it’s worth but we’ve taken them to task about the confidential nature of that and elevated the issue. But I do think it would be naive of us to think that the GPs don’t have a database of what CalPERs has agreed to . . . It’s one of the dynamics of negotiating these agreements.”

What’s particularly troubling here not only is the double-standard, but how it’s used against all prospective limited partners. Private equity firms keep their simultaneous negotiations private, which lets them tell a group like CalPERS that no one else is asking for a particular term, even if everyone is indeed asking for it. And if CalPERS tries to compare notes with its peers, it could become subject to an anti-trust lawsuit.

“We’re out on an island negotiating on our own,” Castanos explained. “We know there are hundreds of other islands, or dozens at least . . . but we’re unaware of the details of those negotiations and the GPs like to keep it that way.”

Perhaps, as Jelincic would later suggest, it may be time for investors like CalPERS to test the applicability of those anti-trust statutes. Or just treat confidentiality with a similar level of care. If they choose the latter, I look forward to reading through all of those fund documents…

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Summary: Not all confidentiality is created equal.


The U.S. military used Apache helicopter gunships for the first time in the war against ISIS Monday in northern Iraq when one of the U.S. Army helicopters fired a hellfire missile ...

Defense Secretary Ash Carter says that at least one U.S. Apache helicopter has been used for the first time in combat in Iraq.

A federal appeals court on Monday threw out $1.8 million in damages awarded to former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who said he was defamed by the late author Chris Kyle in the bes...

Corey Clagett was a 21-year-old U.S. Army private and cavalry scout on a mission deep inside Al Qaeda-controlled territory in Iraq when he followed an order that would change his l...

A New Jersey soldier killed in a training exercise at a Texas military base has been laid to rest.

Demonstrators have formed a human chain near a U.S. air base in western Germany to protest against lethal drone strikes.

Reviving production of the U.S. military’s pricey F-22 Raptor jet may not be so far-fetched after all, Bloomberg News reports.

A decorated Army Reserve officer left bacon at a mosque and brandished a handgun while threatening to kill Muslims and bury them there, North Carolina authorities said Friday.

The gun safety group founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona has recruited an unlikely ally: a group of former high-level military officials.

Summary: Military news articles and videos from foxnews.com's US section


If comedian Eddie Griffin didn't know the N-word was banned and buried, he found out when the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine pulled the plug on his raunchy standup routine.

Griffin, who headlined a soldout show at Black Enterprise's 14th annual Golf and Tennis Challenge in Miami on Friday, was about 10 minutes into his N-word-laced act when publisher Earl Graves turned off the mike.

Minutes later, Graves appeared onstage with a cord and plug in one hand and a working microphone in the other. He told the audience at the posh Doral Golf Resort that Griffin's microphone had been turned off because he repeatedly used the N-word.

Graves, a prominent businessman whose Labor Day weekend event attracts corporate sponsors like Aetna, Pepsi and FedEx, got a standing ovation. He said Griffin, 39, would be paid.

Attendees said Griffin - who has appeared in "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo," "Undercover Brother" and "Scary Movie 3" - sauntered onto the stage smoking a cigarette. He yelled "F--- y'all!" before walking off, they said.

"We at Black Enterprise will not allow our culture to go backward," Graves said. "Black Enterprise stands for decency, black culture and dignity."

The NAACP held a public "burial" for the racial slur during its annual convention in Detroit in July.

Griffin's publicist, Jeff Abraham, declined comment.