Penthouse magazine’s print edition lives!

That’s the word from Chief Executive Kelly Holland, whose Penthouse Global Media recently purchased the title from FriendFinder Networks.

“Absolutely, we’re staying in print,” Holland told Media Ink on Thursday.

FriendFinder last month had fired the entire New York publishing staff — including longtime Editor Barbara Rice — fueling speculation that the title, newly relocated to Los Angeles, was going all digital.

“We have a long-term commitment to this magazine,” she said. “We can make it profitable.”

Holland said that as soon as the deal closed on Feb. 19, she shipped the April issue to the printer.

Raphie Aronowitz, who had worked for the fashion designer Ecko and at Complex magazine, according to Holland, is Penthouse’s new editor.

“Most of the production work is being outsourced to our Australian partner, who can do the work at 20 percent of the cost of doing it in the United States,” Holland said.

Layout, design and copy editing will all be done Down Under by Filthy Gorgeous Media, headed by Damien Costos, she said.

Holland is pushing hard to develop Penthouse digital — which she said languished under the old ownership.

In addition, Holland is working on deals for 10 Penthouse cable channels to supplement the 13 licensed clubs, including one in New York.

While staying in print, Penthouse will drop its production schedule to 10 times a year from 11.

Penthouse Letters, which publishes adult-themed fiction with erotic pictures, will chop three issues and publish just 10 times annually.

While Playboy recently abandoned full frontal nudity, Penthouse has no plans to go that route, Holland said.

“The bunny took a big nosedive off a cliff,” she said. “I think it will go down as the biggest brand debacle of the decade.”

Summary: Penthouse magazine’s print edition lives! That’s the word from Chief Executive Kelly Holland, whose Penthouse Global Media recently purchased the title from FriendFinder Networks. “Absolutely, we’r…


Dan Thomas is an avid gamer. He was a nationally ranked “Pokemon” competitor and plays the Nintendo game “Smash Bros.” at a semi-professional level. By day, Thomas is an instructor at Einstein’s Workshop in Lexington, which uses technology to teach mathematics and science skills to children. Thomas uses fun tools such as Lego and “Minecraft,” which help kids with problem-solving skills and critical thinking.

“Minecraft” for kids has been both dissed and praised. What are your thoughts, as a “Minecraft” instructor?

“Minecraft” is an open-ended game where players can roam freely or complete missions, depending on their choice. Many parents are skeptical of “Minecraft” and trying to understand it, but it’s not a vicious or violent game. At the core, it’s all about building and exploring a massively digital world.

If a novice wants to start playing video games, on an iPhone or a computer, how would you suggest they start?

First, familiarize yourself with the different types of games out there: strategy, shooters, MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arena), and puzzles are just a few of the popular ones. If you can identify what sort of game you like, it opens up the door to that entire genre. My girlfriend isn’t exceptionally dexterous or interested in games, for example, but I know she likes solving puzzles and thinking through riddles. I’ve tried to get her to explore slower-paced puzzle games that she can take her time with.

Is it easy to create your own video game?

Making your first game isn’t actually too hard these days. There are plenty of tools out there that don’t require programming knowledge. Construct 2 is probably one of my favorite beginner’s tools. There’s a ton you can do with the free version — yet still have depth. I’d absolutely recommend Unity, as well.It’s being used by more and more larger game studios, and it’s probably the fan favorite for hobbyists. The documentation on it is phenomenal, and video tutorials are everywhere for it. I’ve used it for about five years now, and it’s still my favorite. For people who are looking for more-advanced tools, Unreal Engine 4 is also great. It’s wildly powerful and has a ton of stuff out of the box to work with.

Summary: An avid gamer, Dan Thomas is also an instructor at Einstein’s Workshop in Lexington, which uses technology to teach kids math and science skills.


Bethenny Frankel’s new man is “outraged” that the media is interested in him — and Confidenti@l has found out why.

Michael Cerussi III was accused of rape while a student at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., but to be clear, the alleged victim never filed a police report and no charges were ever filed outside of the victim’s complaint to the school.

Cerussi filed a lawsuit in 2001 against Union College and the alleged victim, following his expulsion from the school in 2000 after a female student he partied with accused him and a fellow fraternity brother of having sex with her against her will. The case dragged out for two years, before a settlement was reached and the case was voluntarily dismissed.

According to one of Cerussi’s former lawyers, the school agreed to reverse the expulsion and reinstate him as part of the settlement, though Cerussi never returned to UC. Confidenti@l is withholding the name of the alleged victim out of respect for her privacy.

IN SPITE OF LOW RATINGS, BETHENNY FRANKEL'S 'BETHENNY' SET TO RETURN

According to court papers, the alleged victim accused Cerussi and another fraternity brother of raping her at a fraternity house. While Cerussi admitted to engaging in consensual sexual relations with her, he denied that he raped her. Another court document summarizes Cerussi’s version of what happened as he alleged in his lawsuit:

“Plaintiff (Cerussi) and (another fraternity brother) met (victim) at a bar near UC late Friday night, November 11, 2000. (Victim) accompanied them back to their fraternity house and had sexual intercourse with both men. Plaintiff and (victim) talked afterwards, he drove her home, and she kissed him good-night. (Victim) then joked with her roommate about having sex with both men, and did not state that she had been raped.

“At brunch the next morning, (victim) told a girlfriend that she had sex with two men, but did not claim that she had been raped. But shortly thereafter, when some of plaintiff’s fraternity brothers laughed as they passed her table, (victim) assumed they had been told that she had sex with plaintiff and (a fraternity brother). That evening, (victim) received a phone call from another of plaintiff’s fraternity brothers, and inferred from the conversation that (he) knew she had sex with plaintiff and (another fraternity brother). Sometime later, (victim) concluded that she had been raped, went to Ellis Hospital and reported the same. On the following day, November 13, 2000, (victim) reported to (the then associate Dean of Students) that she had been raped.”

Cerussi, 34, who works in finance, is nine years younger than Frankel. He lived at home with his parents in Riverside, Conn., while the hearings went on.

After pictures of Frankel and Cerussi emerged after New Year’s Eve, Frankel got her hired guns on the case, with her publicist making the rounds of calls on Cerussi’s behalf, a source tells us. The duo knew press were sniffing around about the lawsuit, in which Cerussi insisted the girl’s claims were false and that the school had no right to expel him.

PHOTOS: KATE WINSLET'S EVOLUTIONARY ROAD TO THE OSCARS

Kate Winslet wants everyone to stop judging her for having three children from three different fathers. The Oscar winner, who welcomed baby Bear Winslet with husband Ned Rocknroll last month, blasted her critics in UK Glamour. “No one has a right to comment on anyone’s life or the choices I do or don’t make,” she said. “It’s very easy to be judgmental until you know someone’s truth.” The 38-year-old actress has a 13-year-old daughter, Mia, with her ex-husband Jim Threapleton; and a 10-year-old son, Joe, with her second husband Sam Mendes.

Katy Perry’s wiping every trace of ex-husband Russell Brand from her life. The “Roar” singer has finally dumped the Hollywood Hills manse she purchased with Brand in 2011 for $6.5 million. Perry lost $1 million on the sale, after originally putting it on the market for $8 million last year. Perry had won the property as part of the settlement when she and Brand divorced in 2012.

TAKING EVE OF HER SENSES

Amy Poehler kicked off her new year with a night out with her boyfriend, comedian Nick Kroll. The funnywoman and upcoming Golden Globes host was spotted counting down the seconds to 2014 at the spectacular King’s Masquerade Party at the McKittrick Hotel, also the home of “Sleep No More.” “There were two happy couples, Amy and Nick and Amber Tamblyn and hubby David Cross,” one spywitness tells us. Poehler split from ex-hubby Will Arnett in September 2012.

Just call her Butt-hati Prinsloo! Victoria’s Secret beauty Behati Prinsloo was vacationing in Los Cabos, Mexico, with her Maroon 5 frontman fiance Adam Levine. The super-thin pinup was spotted after taking a dip with her tatted-up love.

Mitt Romney’s not half bad. The 66-year-old former GOP presidential candidate was spotted shirtless — and in great shape — in Hawaii this week with his wife, Ann. The duo spent the day on the beach watching their grandchildren play in the water.

Makeup-free supermodel Petra Nemcova traveled with the regular folk as she took the train from Prague, where she spent Christmas in her native Ostrava. Nemcova, 34, stopped over in the third-largest city in the Czech Republic to hang with her family.

HEADING INTO A SUN SPOT

Reese Witherspoon certainly doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere near the New York blizzard as she arrives at LAX in flowery pants, sandals and shades.

After Confidenti@l reported that Jay Mohr had “fat shamed” Alyssa Milano after a Nascar event in early December, the comic took to his blog to clear up the matter. “Knowing that Alyssa, as well as her family, friends, fans, and especially her husband, heard things that were hurtful from my mouth crushed me. She has always been one of the kindest, most caring and beautiful people this town has ever seen. I will not make excuses for what I said,” Mohr wrote. “Sometimes comedians go too far. I went too far. I cannot change what I said, but I can assure you that my heart is broken that I hurt her. I am very sorry. With the utmost sincerity, Jay Mohr.” Milano, always a class act, posted it to her Facebook page, writing, “apology accepted.”


Tyga's smoking hot rebound chick, Demi Rose, says she's fallen victim to prostitute identity theft -- since her face and bod are all over high-priced escort websites.

Demi's got quite the Instagram portfolio and ever since she was seen with Tyga in Cannes ... pics from her page have been popping up on sites hawking companionship all over the globe -- from the U.S. to Dubai.

She tells TMZ ... don't believe the hype, since she's never done any sort of escorting and doesn't want her name associated with it.

Demi, who's a model by trade, says she's seen this happen to lots of girls in her biz ... and she's considering legal action.

Summary: Tyga's smoking hot rebound chick, Demi Rose, says she's fallen victim to prostitute identity theft -- since her face and bod are all over high-priced…


Wanna REALLY know about somebody? Talk to their roommate ...

Which is why we spoke with the guy who lived with Carson Wentz -- the QB's ex-college teammate Jedre Cyr ... who says Carson is so squeaky clean, he'd let him date his sister!

Wentz roomed up with Cyr (fullback) during their time on the football team at North Dakota State -- and was raving about how Wentz might be the biggest choir boy he's ever met.

"As in the words of our offensive coordinator, he's not the kind of guy you're going to see out at the bar having a drink and slapping a girl's ass ... he's not Johnny Manziel."

Summary: Wanna REALLY know about somebody? Talk to their roommate ...  Which is why we spoke with the guy who lived with Carson Wentz -- the QB's ex-college…


BUTOH IS NOT FOR THE FRAIL. THE AVANT-garde dance form that today is Japan's most startling cultural export does not aim to charm. Instead, it sets out to assault the senses. The hallmarks of this theater of protest include full body paint (white or dark or gold), near or complete nudity, shaved heads, grotesque costumes, clawed hands, rolled-up eyes and mouths opened in silent screams.

There are about 30 soloists and dance companies, most of them based in Tokyo, that share the Butoh esthetic. To take audiences on a backward journey to primordial states of being, for example, the five-man troupe known as Sankai Juku (resembling anonymous, alien beings, with their heads shaved and their bodies painted a uniform white) used to be lowered by ropes from high above the stage, their fetus-like bodies gradually unfolding.

In an even darker vein, in Min Tanaka's ''Homage to Kandinsky'' two men and two women shuffle across a darkened stage, clutching one another's sleeves, their mouths open, their red-rimmed eyes rolling. Min Tanaka emerges, and he is set upon by the two women, now clad only in oversized men's shoes.

If the Butoh message is sometimes bewil-dering, the visual impact is raw and direct - as the photographer Ethan Hoffman discovered when he attended his first Butoh performance in 1984. Hoffman, who divides his time between Tokyo and New York, went on to photograph many of the major figures in Butoh, and early this year he assembled his images to form not a documentary but a kind of photographic theater.

This work, titled ''Butoh: Dance of the Dark Soul,'' will be seen at New York's Burden Gallery, beginning Thursday and ending Dec. 5. Min Tanaka, three of whose dance pieces are in the exhibition, will perform at the opening. A book of the photographs will be published by Aperture next month. Neither the exhibition nor the book will contain explanatory captions, only the titles of the dance pieces. ''I would like people to look at the exhibition and the book as one performance,'' says Hoffman.

WHEN ETHAN Hoffman first went with a friend to a cramped underground Tokyo club called Plan B for a performance of Min Tanaka's ''Homage to Kandinsky,'' he became very nervous.

''It was frightening and exhilarating at the same time,'' he recalls. ''You sat on the floor. You couldn't move because there were people almost on top of you. The dancers were 10 feet away and there were only two spotlights. I didn't react on an intellectual level. Most things I react to intellectually, but I just felt emotionally overwhelmed by what I saw. I felt as though I'd taken some hallucinogenic drug.''

Shortly thereafter, Hoffman began a three-year journey of discovery into this distinctly Japanese dance theater, one that bears little resemblance to such traditional theatrical forms as Noh or Kabuki. He telephoned the grand old man of Butoh, Kazuo Ohno, to set up a photographic session. The dancer, then 78 years old, invited the photographer to his studio. ''He danced for four hours,'' remembers Hoffman. ''Then he cooked dinner for me.''

In the late 1950's, Ohno and a young avant-garde dancer from the rural north, Tatsumi Hijikata, had pioneered a dance theater that became known as Butoh. (Hijikata called his performance style Ankoku Butoh, or ''dance of darkness and gloom.'' Two Japanese characters make up the word ''butoh'': ''bu'' for dance, ''toh'' for step.) Hijikata briefly collaborated with Ohno, whose work reflects the influences of German Expressionism and Christianity. But the younger dancer developed a radically different style during the late 1960's and the first half of the 70's. Hijikata, who died of cancer early last year at the age of 57, in many ways eclipsed Ohno in the effect his highly provocative medium of protest has had on dancers. A lean and agile man who wore his long hair loosely rolled up in a bun, Hijikata was influenced early in his career by Dadaism and Surrealism and inspired by the dictum of Antonin Artaud, the French experimental-theater director, to make theater that was crude. After this initial phase, however, the rural culture of his youth became the dominant influence.

Hijikata and Ohno shared the unmistakable Butoh characteristic: subversiveness. Both had seen their country devastated by war. In a culture distinguished for its visual harmony, the two dancers highlighted ugliness, replacing the conventional Japanese social mask of reticence and understatement with one of anguish and even terror. Ohno, who is now 81, in one of his signature performances is dressed in a thrift-shop gown and hat, his face painted white, his teeth blackened, mascara smeared around his eyes. Every movement of his face and body exquisitely improvised, he looks like a woman caught between memory and madness.

HIJIKATA'S BUTOH has been taken up by a second generation of dancers, who include Uno Man. Ethan Hoffman opens his photographic performance with a dance work by Uno titled ''21,000 Leagues'' (shown on page 40). To Hoffman, the work symbolizes birth - a recurring Butoh theme.

Summary: LEAD: BUTOH IS NOT FOR THE FRAIL. THE AVANT-garde dance form that today is Japan's most startling cultural export does not aim to charm. Instead, it sets out to assault the senses. The hallmarks of this theater of protest include full body paint (white or dark or gold), near or complete nudity, shaved heads, grotesque costumes, clawed hands, rolled-up eyes and mouths opened in silent screams.


Johnny Weir's defaced orange Birkin is looking as good as new after finally getting its court-mandated spot treatment.

Weir's ex Victor had tagged a giant "F--- YOU" across the Hermes bag in black marker during their nasty split.

In their divorce settlement, Victor got the Faberge egg and the Birkin ... with one string attached. He was required to remove the "F--- YOU" ... presumably so it could not be associated with Johnny.

The court docs laid out specific instructions for the hand-off and restoration, including a stipulation that Victor cannot use Johnny's name if he resells the bag.

Birkins go for anywhere between $12,000 to $223,000 and a recent study says they're a better investment than gold or stocks, so Vic's going to be just fine.

Summary: Johnny Weir's defaced orange Birkin is looking as good as new after finally getting its court-mandated spot treatment.  Weir's ex Victor had tagged a…


Robots might be getting better at performing tasks like carrying heavy equipment and tracking store inventory, but that doesn’t mean they will be replacing humans at work anytime soon.

In some cases, robots can help save jobs.

That’s the opinion of Melonee Wise, the CEO of Fetch Robotics, a company that builds robots that follow warehouse workers around facilities and act as autonomously moving storage containers. Wise spoke on Tuesday along with a panel of robotics experts at a Bloomberg technology conference in San Francisco.

Wise admitted that “people are concerned” the rise of robots could mean less jobs for humans, but she thinks that belief is a “misnomer.” In the case of her company’s warehouse robots, those devices “enable people to keep jobs longer,” she posited.

Warehouse workers with bad backs and knees don’t have to walk around huge facilities as much with robot helpers following them and carrying more supplies than what the workers can handle themselves. Because the robots carry warehouse inventory, the workers don’t need to zig-zag back and forth the warehouse as often as they would without them.

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She said that the robots cut down on the wear and tear of the human body, which typically occurs for these blue-collar warehouse workers and thus prolongs their careers. Additionally, facilities that use robots tend to be more efficient and are less likely to get shut down because of their increased productivity. Even if one worker loses a job because of a robot, that’s better than 40 workers losing their jobs if a warehouse gets closed, she explained.

Of course, Wise runs a robot company, so it’s likely she disagrees with the notion that more robots mean less jobs. But her opinion is noteworthy given the perception that robots have become so advanced in recent years that they stand to outperform humans in many tasks and dramatically alter the workforce.

Cheaper hardware and emerging technologies have enabled manufacturers and companies to develop robots faster than ever. Tessa Lau, co-founder of robotics company Savioke, said 3D printing has allowed her company to develop prototypes in days as opposed to months. Still, robots are far from commonplace.

Wise said there are probably only around 1.5 millions robots that have been deployed and are active in the world. Many robotic companies are developing robots in “structured environments,” like warehouses in which the environments are more mapped out and easier for a robot to orient itself in, she said. Within “unstructured environments,” like city streets for example, it’s much harder for a robot to learn the surroundings amidst many different variables and operate efficiently.

However, the work that companies like Google goog are doing on self-driving cars has the possibility to create a spill-over effect to robotic companies, and it could create a wave of “smarter” robots that can function better in environments and conditions that are less predictable, she explained.

For more about robots, watch:

Popular movies and television shows like The Jetsons portray human-like robots that look “deceptively easy” to create, suggested Lau. The reality is that “it is really, really hard” to make robots, much less the ones dreamed up by Hollywood executives. We are in the beginnings of a robotics revolution, Lau said, but it will be “slow and incremental.”

Summary: In some cases, robots can help prolong the careers of warehouse workers.


Heathrow bosses have been handed a new bonus scheme that is partially reliant on their persuading the Government to back the airport’s controversial plans for a £17.6bn third runway.

The scheme for directors, which was set up last year, also includes targets for profits and passenger services that must be met first, before the new runway element is eligible for consideration.

The plan was disclosed in the 2015 annual report of the airport’s parent company, but until now has gone unnoticed. It appears to be at odds with what Heathrow has said about remuneration in the past.

In February, the hub was reported as saying it did not have an executive incentive plan linked to runway expansion, in response to news that Gatwick bosses would receive payouts if their airport was sold.


It’s not your imagination: Economy class seats on airplanes are shrinking.

The average seat pitch, a rough measure of legroom, has dropped from 35 inches before airline deregulation in the 1970s to about 31 inches today. The average width of an airline seat has shriveled from 18 inches to about 16 ½.

Meanwhile, the airline industry is enjoying record profits—some would argue as a result of cramming more seats on their planes.

But now consumer advocates want the shrinkage to stop. Passenger representatives on a key advisory committee are pushing the U.S. government to take strong regulatory action on the issue. And FlyersRights, an airline passenger advocacy group, just asked federal regulators to mandate a minimum seat width and pitch for commercial airlines. The group also delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures asking the government to take action.

Paul Hudson, FlyersRights’ president, says seat size decreases have raised concerns not just about comfort, but for the safety and health of passengers as well.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires airlines to test their emergency evacuation plans, and they must be realistic scenarios, including baggage thrown throughout the cabin and infant dummies that need to be carried. “These tests have not been run in aircraft with seat pitches under 31 inches, even though aircraft are operating with seat pitches as low as 28 inches,” Hudson says.

Even on an incident-free flight, a lack of space can affect a passenger’s health. Flying can cause potentially life-threatening blood clots from lack of movement and cramped spaces. The condition is called deep vein thrombosis, otherwise known as “economy-class syndrome,” according to Hudson.

“Reducing the seat space even more would only expand the issue and cause greater health, safety, and comfort concerns,” he says. But without minimum passenger seat and space regulations, Hudson believes that even airlines that wish to “do the right thing” will keep reducing seat sizes in order to remain competitive and profitable.

Airlines disagree. The government’s role in seat sizing for all forms of transportation— including car, bus, rail and air—is to determine what is safe, says Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for Airlines For America (A4A), an airline trade group. “The Federal Aviation Administration has made that determination. As the safest mode of transportation, safety is always our highest priority.”

Carriers believe market forces should determine what kind of seats are offered on a plane, according to Medina. “Those offerings are one component of what drives competition and product differentiation among airlines,” she says. “And as with any commercial product or service, customers vote every day with their wallets.”

Panel fails to recommend minimums

Medina notes that the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) own Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protection recently declined to make a recommendation on seat sizes. But Charles Leocha, chairman of Travelers United, the consumer representative on the panel, says it wasn’t due to any accord.

“Basically, when FlyersRights sent in their petition for a rulemaking regarding minimum seat sizes and personal space, our recommendation to look at seat sizes was [already] moot,” he says. “We were not going to reach consensus in any case.”

An airline representative on the panel, A4A attorney Dave Berg, objected to the notion that the government should establish a minimum amount of space per passenger. According to a report by the Associated Press, Berg said the difference between seat sizes “goes to the heart and soul” of airline competition, and it would be inappropriate for the government to interfere in such competition by a deregulated industry.

Leocha says the matter is far from dead, however. While it’s true that the airlines with the smallest seats are growing the fastest—”The old consumers-want-more-passengers-packed-into-planes argument,” he says—the issue will be considered in an upcoming regulatory rulemaking by the DOT or the FAA, he predicts.

“I was very disappointed that we didn’t come up with a committee recommendation on personal space on aircraft,” Leocha adds. “We will work together with FlyersRights.org on the rulemaking petition.”

Do consumers really “want” smaller seats?

Seat standards prompt a bigger discussion about what passengers actually want. True, consumers do vote with their wallets, rewarding budget carriers like Allegiant ALGT and Spirit SAVE with their business. Those carriers have some of the smallest seats, and lowest base fares, in the industry. Airlines interpret that as market demand for smaller seats, so they don’t want the government interfering in a lucrative business.

But this overlooks a few important facts. In most commoditized businesses, consumers favor the providers with the lowest prices. So reducing seat size until it’s minimally safe to fly—a determination that is historically made by the FAA—is the best business move for an airline. And fighting any such regulation makes sense, too.

But is cutting space the right move? Every coach flier knows it’s impossible to be objective about this issue. As someone who stands almost 6′ 2” and still remembers the bruised knees from his last flight, I’d prefer to have a minimum amount of space on an aircraft. But in an industry that’s constantly adding fees and cutting flights, it’s pretty clear that conditions in the back of the plane are not going to improve anytime soon.

Summary: Consumer groups are fighting to get airlines to stop shrinking seats, but federal regulators still won't act.


$6,599 for 23 days/$7,699 for 28 days

This tour covers just about everything you would want to see in Australia. On Fraser Island, teens explore the rain forest, snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef, visit Uluru–the largest monolith in the world–and spend a day with Aborigines to learn about their culture, before arriving in Sydney and seeing the famed opera house. Campers stay in hotels and resorts.

For more information, visit www.westcoastconnection.com

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Summary: Popsicle stick projects and games of Kick The Can are passe. Instead, teen campers today are ponying up big bucks to journey through Switzerland and swim with dolphins in Belize.


02/11/2011 AT 08:00 AM EST

Live from New York, it's

for the first time on March 5, PEOPLE has confirmed.

The singer-actress, who recently wrapped the movie

, will show off her comedic chops but not her vocal skills: A separate musical guest will join Cyrus that night.

And the big question remains: Will Cyrus appear on

castmate Vanessa Bayer parodies the young star? That would be, like, pretty cool!

Summary: The singer-actress will make her debut on the NBC comedy show March 5


ROME, Nov. 15— In Europe's new order, they are the spies who never quite came in from the cold, foot soldiers in an underground guerrilla network with one stated mission: To fight an enemy that most Europeans believe no longer exists.

Theirs is a tale of secret arms caches and exotic code names, of military stratagems and political intrigues.

At best, their tale is no more than a curious footnote to the cold war. The question is if, at worst, it could be the key to unsolved terrorism dating back two decades. Nowhere do the darker suspicions burn more intensely than in this capital whose appetite for conspiracy theories is insatiable and whose Parliament today began an investigation into where reality may lie.

The focus of the inquiry is a clandestine operation code-named Gladio, created decades ago to arm and train resistance fighters in case the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded. All this week, there have been disclosures of similar organizations in virtually all Western European countries, including those that do not belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. An Italian Creation

As disclosed in recent days by the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, Gladio, named after after the short, wide, double-edged sword used by gladiators in ancient Rome, came into being during the most gelid days of the cold war.

It was originally an Italian creation, said Mr. Andreotti, who is scheduled to testify on Friday before a parliamentary commission studying bombings and massacres that claimed scores of lives in a terrorism wave that inundated Italy from 1969 to the early 1980's.

The Prime Minister said last week that Gladio later evolved into a branch of an extensive network, operated within NATO and abetted by a 1956 agreement between the United States and Italian secret services. Over the years, he says, 622 Italians belonged to the operation -- civilians who were trained by intelligence operatives and who had fought in World War II or served in the peacetime forces. Preparing the Guerrillas

Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Luxembourg have all acknowledged that they maintained Gladio-style networks to prepare guerrilla fighters to leap into action in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion. Many worked under the code name Stay Behind. Greece called its operation Red Sheepskin.

News reports in recent days assert that similar programs have also existed in Britain, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Turkey and Denmark, and even in neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden. The British newspaper The Guardian today quoted a former Commander in Chief of NATO forces in northern Europe as saying that the purpose was to have a secret organization in place for guerrilla warfare if Britain were overrun by Communist troops.

"The original plan was to establish a network to arm guerrillas from the civil populace while conventional forces were occupied elsewhere," said the former commander, Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley.

Diplomats in Rome and other European capitals say the network was inspired by anti-Nazi resistance movements in World War II, but that it was hoped these new clandestine units would be better organized. "You have to remember," a highly placed Western European official said, "that at the time everyone was praising the French resistance, the Italian resistance, and everyone had to be prepared." Secret Arms Deposits

These would-be fighters had stockpiles of weapons and explosives, officials say. Henk Vredeling, the Netherlands' Defense Minister in the 1970's, said he had known of weapons caches that were to be used for behind-the-lines sabotage. The German newspaper Die Welt reported that among secret stores of weapons in what used to be West Germany were grenade launchers, pistols and explosives.

In Rome, Mr. Andreotti disclosed that secret arms deposits were dismantled as far back as 1972 but that the secret services could not find 12 of them. Their disappearance has fueled speculation here that the weapons ended up in terrorist hands. Contributing to this conjecture are press reports that some of the underground "gladiators," as they have been dubbed, had close links to neo-Fascist groups and to intelligence organizations.

But the chief of Italian military intelligence, Adm. Fulvio Martini, insisted today that Operation Gladio had no ties to right-wing groups and that its only purpose was to resist invasion.

"Not one of the 622 was ever involved in any conspiracies or plots," Admiral Martini said in testimony before the parliamentary commission. Varied From Country to Country

It appears that Gladio operations varied from country to country. Many worked within a NATO framework, but some -- the Netherlands, for example -- say their resistance fighters were organized purely as a national force.

In some countries, the networks were shut down years ago. Greece's Socialists say that they discovered theirs when they took power in 1981, finally abolishing it and rounding up weapons in 1985. In France, President Francois Mitterrand said this week that it was he who eliminated the French branch, but he did not say when.

Even in countries like Italy where Gladio remains in force, its members seem to have little fighting spirit left. 'Gladiators' Still Recruited

New "gladiators" are still recruited, and two members of Parliament say they visited a military base on the island of Sardinia where guerrilla training exercises were held last spring. But Admiral Martini told the investigating commission that nearly three-fourths of the 622 members were over the age of 50, or were dead.

Nevertheless, the network continues, and several officials reported that a supervisory committee of European secret services met in Brussels only a month ago.

Nourishing conspiracy theories are assertions from key European leaders that they knew nothing about the operation until recently. Joseph Luns, who was NATO secretary general from 1971 to 1984, said he had never heard of it. Belgium's Defense Minister, Guy Coeme, told a radio station today that "things were hidden from me"

Admiral Martini told the lawmakers that some Italian Prime Ministers were also kept in the dark. Indeed, as the Gladio story began to unfold, Italy's only two postwar Prime Ministers not to come from the conservative Christian Democratic Party -- Bettino Craxi, a Socialist, and Giovanni Spadolini, a Republican -- insisted that the disclosures came as news to them. Agreement With U.S. Agencies

There were other disturbing developments for Italian politicians and journalists, who as a group demonstrate a cultivated taste for intrigue and a slender faith in coincidence.

There was Mr. Andreotti's mention of the 1956 agreement with United States agencies, whose aim for decades was to make sure that the Italian Communist Party, the largest in the West, never got a foothold in the Government. And there were long-reported links between Italian secret services and neo-Fascists.

And there is the fact that the major unsolved acts of terrorism that rocked Italy in the 1970's are all presumed to be the work of people on the far right. Left-wing terrorists like the moribund Red Brigades somehow were caught and imprisoned.

Swept up in the dispute is President Francesco Cossiga, who declared recently that it had been his "privilege" to help organize Gladio when he was in the Defense Ministry in the 1960's. Some Independent Left members of Parliament have since demanded his impeachment, but Mr. Cossiga remains unflappable.

Fact is, he said, "I admire the fact that we have kept the secret for 45 years."

Photo: Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti of Italy, who is to testify today about a secret anti-Communist organization formed during the cold war years. (Camera Press)


WHEN ESPN SPORTSCENTER anchor Keith Olbermann was growing up in New York's suburban Westchester County, he gabbed so much about baseball that his parents had to put a lid on it. "It got so bad, I was only allowed to talk about baseball on even-numbered days," he says. Even that didn't stop Olbermann from practicing his future calling. On the odd-numbered days, he recalls, "I just went into my room and started talking to myself."

He's still talking, but now sports fans in some 860,000 homes are listening. Every weeknight at 11 EST, Olbermann, 38, along with his straight man Dan Patrick, 40, anchors a one-hour sports wrap-up peppered with brash humor and trenchant commentary. When he's not doing an impression of Sinatra or Schwarzenegger, Olbermann is making a reference to Alfred Hitchcock or Oscar Wilde. "He is everything they tell you a sports-caster is not supposed to beâintelligent, sardonic, well-read," says Brett Farber, a fellow ESPN anchor.

Armchair jocks love it when Olbermann announces a halftime score as "Patriotsâ21, Pittsburghâjust watching." Or when he chided the Chicago Cubsâafter they picked up their first win of the season on April 20 after 14 lossesâby proclaiming, "Our long national nightmare is over."

Olbermann can be tough on the objects of his ire. He once compiled a list of nearly 300 boo-boos in Ken Burns's ballyhooed PBS documentary Baseball and claimed the filmmaker was "in great shape to break John Gochnaur's record of 98 errors at shortstop for the Cleveland Blues of 1903."

The sportscaster may be quick with a quip, but he also does his homework. Olbermann works 50 hours a week, during which he writes some 15,000 words of commentary. He considers Magic Johnson's 1991 announcement that he was HIV positive the most significant story he has covered. That night, he says, "I collapsed onto the couch and fell asleep fully clothed. The sound I woke up to was me crying."

The sound Olbermann often fell asleep to as a boy was that of a baseball game on the radio. His father, Theodore, an architect, and his mother, Marie, a preschool teacher, were both ardent Yankee fans. When Olbermann watched games on TV, he would "shut the sound off and do his own commentary," remembers his mother, who says he not only kept score but recorded the number of pitches thrown per batter and the weather at game time. Says Marie: "We were concerned it was becoming obsessive."

It was. But when Olbermann entered the Hackley School in Tarry-town, N.Y., in the eighth grade, he caught the eye of Chris Berman, then student sports director for the school's radio station and now ESPN's studio anchor for its pro football and baseball coverage. Berman put him to work announcing school hockey games. "He was so gung ho," says Berman. "He knew every stat, every player, every sport." At Cornell, where he majored in communication arts, Olbermann spent most of his time at the radio station. "I never went to class," he says. Somehow he managed to graduate in 1979. Weeks later he landed a job as a reporter for UPI Radio Network before becoming a sports anchor-reporter for CNN in 1981. He left three years later and put in time at one TV station in Boston and two in L.A. before jumping to ESPN in 1992.

Olbermann hated the reduced focus on sports at local stations. "One night [KCBS]...said, 'Do you really think it's necessary to run the scores?' " Olbermann runs the scores and then some at ESPN, which doesn't leave time for much else. That's just as well for the never-married sportscaster, who lives alone near ESPN's headquarters in rural Bristol, Conn., and who says "there's no possibility of distraction" when he gets home. "No distraction, just exhaustion."

Still, Olbermann sees himself as a man with a mission. "I try to emphasize the goodness and human meaning of sports, or else I try to poke a hole in some of the pretentiousness," he says. "I'm not trying to set myself up as America's sports conscience, but somebody's got to be pointing out that the emperor has no clothes."

Summary: Espn's Erudite Anchorman Keith Olbermann Milks Laughs from the Sacred Cows of Sports


Consolidation in the global pharmaceutical market has snared another Chicago-area company.

Schaumburg-based Sagent Pharmaceuticals has agreed to be acquired by Nichi-Iko Pharmaceutical of Tokyo for about $736 million.

The deal unites two companies in the generic drug business, a huge global market that has high volumes but low profit margins. Foreign companies are on a shopping binge to win a bigger share of the U.S. market for generic drugs, which is the largest in the world. Generic drugs account for about 80 percent of prescriptions dispensed in the U.S.

"The U.S. market is a top priority for Nichi-Iko, and we believe Sagent is an ideal partner to accelerate our international growth strategy," Yuichi Tamura, Nichi-Iko's president and CEO, said in a news release Monday. "We are looking forward to working with Sagent's talented management team and learning from what is clearly a highly skilled and productive workforce."

The U.S. generics market, which had $43.5 billion in sales in 2013, is forecast to grow at an average of 11 percent annually, according to consulting firm RNCOS. An aging population, demand for cheaper medications and expiring patents on blockbuster drugs are some of the factors driving growth.

With 2014 sales of $1.2 billion, Nichi-Iko is the 20th largest generics company in the world, according to EvaluatePharma. It has products in development known as biosimilars that are copycat versions of biologic drugs.

The acquisition of Sagent, with sales of $318.3 million last year, will lessen Nichi-Iko's reliance on Japan and advance the company's goal of becoming a top 10 global player in generics, according to the news release.

Sagent, founded in 2006, is at least the third Chicago-area drugmaker to be swallowed up in the past year. Last month, Irish drugmaker Shire completed a $32 billion takeover of Baxalta, based in Bannockburn. In September, Pfizer purchased Lake Forest-based Hospira for $15 billion.

Sagent focuses on injectable drugs that are sold to hospitals. Its portfolio includes blood thinners and medicines to treat infections and cancer.

Sales grew steadily from 2011, when it went public, to 2015, but the company's stock price fell by more than 60 percent between October 2014 and May 2016. In March 2015, founder Jeffrey Yordon abruptly resigned as chairman and CEO. Nine months later Sagent started exploring a sale of the business, according to published reports.

Sagent stockholders will receive $21.75 per share, a 40 percent premium to the company's Friday closing price of $15.50. Vivo Capital, a California venture capital firm that is Sagent's largest stockholder, has agreed to tender its shares, according to the news release.

"After thoroughly evaluating our strategic options, our board of directors has unanimously decided that this all-cash transaction is in the best interest of our stockholders," Sagent CEO Allan Oberman said in the news release. "We are confident that Nichi-Iko is the ideal partner to help us push forward into our next stage of growth and solidify our position as a leading provider of affordable pharmaceuticals to the hospital and clinic market."

Sagent will become a subsidiary of Nichi-Iko when the deal closes, which is expected to happen by September. No changes to Sagent's current operations are currently anticipated, according to the news release, and Nichi-Iko expects that Sagent's current management team will continue to lead the business from its Schaumburg headquarters.

At the end of 2015, Sagent had 440 full-time employees, of which 114 were in the U.S.


Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was Donald Trump's chief rival during the tumultuous Republican presidential primary, said today that Trump has asked him to speak at the Republican convention and that he would be "happy" to do so.

After Cruz emerged from a one-on-one meeting with Trump in Washington, D.C., his office issued a statement saying, "Sen. Cruz and Donald Trump had a good meeting this morning. There was no discussion of any endorsement. Mr. Trump asked Sen. Cruz to speak at the Republican convention, and Sen. Cruz said he would be happy to do so."

A spokesman for Cruz on Wednesday denied that negotiations were underway for Cruz to speak.

Summary: Cruz: 'Happy' to Speak at GOP Convention


"For translation to be an art, you have to make the uncomfortable but necessary transgressions an artist makes." The words are spoken to the translator-protagonist of Idra Novey's debut novel, though after our recent conversation, they also feel like an imperative from the author herself.

Novey — poet, translator, and now novelist — has created something special with the brisk, beautiful "Ways to Disappear" (Little, Brown: 258 pp, $25), a book that blooms in the spaces between languages, between continents, between selves past and present. A kind of South American noir, the story concerns Beatriz Yogada, a famously eccentric Brazilian novelist whose disappearance (and staggering gambling debts) leaves her English translator and her two children entangled with the criminal underworld, the ravenous media and each other. In brief, lyrical chapters, arch dictionary excerpts, desperate emails and Radio Globo news bulletins, Novey explores the ways in which the act of translation exceeds the boundaries of text to become a necessary interpretive tool for the messiness of modern life.

Novey teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University. She has written two books of poetry and the translator of four books from Spanish and Portuguese, most recently Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector's "The Passion of G.H." Novey spoke to me by phone.

You already have two books of poetry and multiple translations to your name. What has the experience of publishing a debut novel been like?

I've been thrilled by the reception the novel has had, but it's certainly a new kind of experience. I'm used to operating on the margins. Translators, unless they're translating religious texts and get killed for heresy, tend to disappear from the public record. And most poets, unless they have a tragic death or kill themselves, tend to disappear from the record too — especially women. But there's also a freedom that comes from knowing nobody is paying attention to you. It's easier to dismiss the rules, to dismiss the idea of genre and any other conventions that don't fit with the kind of work you are most moved to create.

Your novel is sensitive to the revelations and evasions of being multilingual, what you call "the vapor between languages." How did your work as a translator inform this approach to the novel?

Much of my life takes place in that vapor between languages. I speak Spanish at home with my family and write in English and translate from Portuguese. Constantly moving between languages keeps a person mentally adventurous. I think it made me a more adventurous writer and not just at the sentence level but also in the sort of high-stakes story I ended up creating in the novel.

Translators are regularly marginalized in the literary world. Do you see your book, in which the protagonist is a translator, as a kind of rectification or inversion of this situation?

I set out to invert many things in this novel, but yes, the way we depict translators was certainly one of them. I wrote the novel I couldn't find. I'd come across several works of fiction about translators but the portrayals didn't quite ring true. The risk-taking, the reckless joys of translation, the generous spirit that drives many people to become translators, something was always missing. Once I came up with the online poker part, I thought why not? Why not write the novel I was longing to read?

While this novel celebrates language, it also seems to assert the unreliability of words, their ambiguities, their inadequacies. Is your relationship to language contentious?

I would say my relationship to language is more rapturous than contentious. I live for the rapture of focusing so intently on the words in a scene that I forget what country I'm in. Although maybe the deepest pleasure working with language is figuring out what to leave unsaid. In the alley scene in the novel, one of the characters brings a gun. I went back and forth about whether to have the presence of the gun discussed or have the fact revealed some other way, without words. After a gun goes off in a scene, what was left unsaid — beforehand — creates its own kind of rapture.

Elements of magical realism are present, particularly the descriptions of Beatriz Yagoda's novels offered by your characters. What is your relationship to the genre? Was engaging with that tradition important to you?

I'm resistant to aligning myself with that term because it refers to a very specific time in Latin American literature. I see myself writing more in the American tradition of writers like Denis Johnson or George Saunders or Karen Russell who experiment with a kind of slippery realism. In Johnson's "Jesus' Son," one story begins in a hospital that feels familiar enough until a character yanks a large object out of a patient's eye and it works out. The patient lives. Johnson moves in and out of realism in such a slippery, unpredictable way in that book. It's exhilarating to read.

Is there any work in translation you've read recently that deserves mention here?

The French writer Marie NDiaye's "Self Portrait in Green" is phenomenal. Talk about a master of slippery realism. I'm really looking forward to her new novel coming out this spring.

Do you have another novel in the works or will you return to poetry? Translation?

I hope to continue moving between genres and languages for the rest of my life. I recently published a story about a headless chicken that first occurred to me 15 years ago when I was living in Chile. I go back to Chile every year with my family and something about that headless chicken, the menace of it, would not leave me until I finally wrote it down. The woman climbing into the almond tree at the beginning of "Ways to Disappear" was like that. Once I saw her with her suitcase and her cigar, climbing onto the lowest branch, vanishing as so many women writers before her have, I knew I had to find out why.

Illingworth is the managing editor of The Scofield magazine and a staff writer for LitHub. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.


Phil Mickelson was so close -- fractions of an inch -- and yet so, so far away. As he took aim on an 18-foot putt on the 18th hole at the British Open, history was in sight.

With a birdie putt, he'd finish off a first-round 62 -- the lowest score in the history of PGA Tour major championships. So imagine his pain when the putt lipped out of the hole, forcing him to settle for a 63, and a mere 11-way tie of the best score in history.

Phil's pain was palpable. He knew what was at stake, and when the putt misses, he's unable to contain his disappointment. "I feel like crying," he said after his round.

It was even worse for Mickelson's caddie, who collapsed to the ground in disbelief after watching the near-miss.

It was just too much for Phil's caddie. #TheOpen pic.twitter.com/tmeO76iS1Y

— The Open (@TheOpen) July 14, 2016

Given the low, low odds of ever approaching that score again, it's tough to offer any consolation. All he can do now is forget his brush with history, and use this early lead to try and win another major.

More Golf: -- 7 Most Unlikely British Open Champions -- Rory McIlroy Bashes Golf's Drug Testing, Presence At Olympics -- Danny Willett Wears Green Jacket To Wimbledon

British Open, Golf, PGA Tour, Phil Mickelson

Summary: Phil Mickelson's caddie collapses to the ground after the golfer just missed the all-time record for best score in major championship history.


Photo: Jason O. Watson, Getty Images

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Sean Manaea #55 of the Oakland Athletics pitches against the Seattle Mariners during the third inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Sean Manaea #55 of the Oakland Athletics pitches against the Seattle Mariners during the third inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O.

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Norichika Aoki #8 of the Seattle Mariners at bat against the Oakland Athletics during the third inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Norichika Aoki #8 of the Seattle Mariners at bat against the Oakland Athletics during the third inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O.

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Norichika Aoki #8 of the Seattle Mariners at bat against the Oakland Athletics during the third inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Norichika Aoki #8 of the Seattle Mariners at bat against the Oakland Athletics during the third inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O.

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Norichika Aoki #8 of the Seattle Mariners at bat against the Oakland Athletics during the first inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Norichika Aoki #8 of the Seattle Mariners at bat against the Oakland Athletics during the first inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O.

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Norichika Aoki #8 of the Seattle Mariners catches a fly ball hit off the bat of Khris Davis (not pictured) of the Oakland Athletics during the first inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May 4, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)

OAKLAND, CA - MAY 04: Norichika Aoki #8 of the Seattle Mariners catches a fly ball hit off the bat of Khris Davis (not pictured) of the Oakland Athletics during the first inning at the Oakland Coliseum on May

Seattle Mariners' Nelson Cruz, right, celebrates with Kyle Seager (15) after hitting a two run home run off Oakland Athletics' Sean Manaea in the fifth inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners' Nelson Cruz, right, celebrates with Kyle Seager (15) after hitting a two run home run off Oakland Athletics' Sean Manaea in the fifth inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in

Oakland Athletics' Jed Lowrie swings for an RBI single in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Oakland Athletics' Jed Lowrie swings for an RBI single in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners' Felix Hernandez can't handle a ball hit by Oakland Athletics' Josh Reddick, allowing a run to score in the inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners' Felix Hernandez can't handle a ball hit by Oakland Athletics' Josh Reddick, allowing a run to score in the inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben

Oakland Athletics' Khris Davis connects on a pitch from Seattle Mariners' Felix Hernandez in the fifth inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. Davis reached first base on an error, scoring two runs. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Oakland Athletics' Khris Davis connects on a pitch from Seattle Mariners' Felix Hernandez in the fifth inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. Davis reached first base on an error,

Seattle Mariners' Felix Hernandez reacts after two runs score on an error in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners' Felix Hernandez reacts after two runs score on an error in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez, third from left, waits to be removed by manager Scott Servais (9) in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez, third from left, waits to be removed by manager Scott Servais (9) in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in

Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez walks off the field after being removed in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez walks off the field after being removed in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben

Oakland Athletics' Billy Butler swings for an RBI single in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Oakland Athletics' Billy Butler swings for an RBI single in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Oakland Athletics' Marcus Semien, left, scores behind Seattle Mariners catcher Chris Iannetta in the fifth inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. Semien scored on a fielding error by Mariners' Felix Hernandez. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Oakland Athletics' Marcus Semien, left, scores behind Seattle Mariners catcher Chris Iannetta in the fifth inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. Semien scored on a fielding error

Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez walks back to the mound in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez walks back to the mound in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Oakland Athletics' Chris Coghlan swings for an RBI single in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Oakland Athletics' Chris Coghlan swings for an RBI single in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners' Dae-Ho Lee, center, is congratulated by Leonys Martin (12) and Kyle Seager, right, after hitting a two run home run off Oakland Athletics' John Axford in the seventh inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners' Dae-Ho Lee, center, is congratulated by Leonys Martin (12) and Kyle Seager, right, after hitting a two run home run off Oakland Athletics' John Axford in the seventh inning of a baseball game

Seattle Mariners' Dae-Ho Lee, right, is congratulated by third base coach Manny Acta (14) after hitting a two run home run off Oakland Athletics' John Axford in the seventh inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 4, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Seattle Mariners' Dae-Ho Lee, right, is congratulated by third base coach Manny Acta (14) after hitting a two run home run off Oakland Athletics' John Axford in the seventh inning of a baseball game Wednesday,

A’s outburst against Felix Hernandez wasted; Seattle sweeps

Sean Manaea was terrific through much of his second big-league outing, and Oakland knocked out longtime nemesis Felix Hernandez before he had retired a batter in the fifth inning Wednesday.

Such pleasant developments for the A’s, though, weren’t enough to prevent a Seattle sweep, because the bullpen, a strength through the first five weeks, couldn’t hold the lead in a 9-8 loss.

“That’s the most damage we’ve done off Felix since I’ve been here, maybe ever,” Oakland catcher Stephen Vogt said. “It was huge to chase him from the game and unfortunately, we didn’t take advantage. It’s beyond frustrating.”

The A’s bullpen had given up only one run over its previous 181/3 innings and had allowed no more than one run in 22 of the team’s first 28 games. Ryan Dull then gave up two runs, Sean Doolittle another two and John Axford one as the A’s lost their fourth in a row and for the ninth time in 12 games.

Axford had allowed only one run in his first 11 outings. Doolittle hadn’t given up a run in his past eight appearances.

“It’s just unfortunate it all happened to all of us on the same day,” Axford said.

With two outs in the fifth, the Mariners finally got to Manaea, starting with a little infield single by Nori Aoki that eluded Jed Lowrie. That was the first of five consecutive hits off Manaea, including a gargantuan two-run homer by Nelson Cruz over the suites in center field.

“After that single with two outs, they gained a lot of momentum. I should have done a better job of calming things down and taking my time,” Manaea said.

By the end of the inning, the Mariners led 4-2, but in the bottom of the inning, Oakland sent 11 men to the plate and scored six times. Hernandez lasted just four-plus innings, matching his shortest start ever against the A’s, in no small part because of some dreadful defense, including his own. He misplayed a tapper by Josh Reddick, allowing one run to score, and Kyle Seager couldn’t come up with a hard grounder down the third-base line by Khris Davis on which two runners scored.

Dull took the mound in the sixth. The Mariners struck almost immediately: Dae-Ho Lee smacked a one-out homer and Leonys Martin had a bunt single, stole second, took third on Vogt’s throwing error and scored on a sacrifice fly by Aoki.

In the seventh, Doolittle walked Robinson Cano and wild pitched him to second; he scored on a base hit by Seager. In came Axford, who, with two outs, gave up another Lee homer.

Hernandez, who allowed a season-high eight runs (four earned), entered the day 22-8 with a 2.58 career ERA against Oakland. Marcus Semien belted a one-out homer off Hernandez in the third, Semien’s team-high seventh.

“We finally get some hits, some good swings, make him work, get some runs off him and kind of let him off the hook,” manager Bob Melvin said of Hernandez. “So disappointing.”

The first-place Mariners have won their past seven at the Coliseum. “It was a crazy win for us,” Hernandez said. “It was unbelievable.”

Chronicle staff writer Maddie Lee contributed to this report.

Susan Slusser is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sslusser@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susanslusser

Summary: Sean Manaea was terrific through much of his second big-league outing, and Oakland knocked out longtime nemesis Felix Hernandez before he had retired a batter in the fifth inning Wednesday.  [...] pleasant developments for the A’s, though, weren’t enough to prevent a Seattle sweep, because the bullpen, a strength through the first five weeks, couldn’t hold the lead in a 9-8 loss.  With two outs in the fifth, the Mariners finally got to Manaea, starting with a little infield single by Nori Aoki that eluded Jed Lowrie.  By the end of the inning, the Mariners led 4-2, but in the bottom of the inning, Oakland sent 11 men to the plate and scored six times.  Hernandez lasted just four-plus innings, matching his shortest start ever against the A’s, in no small part because of some dreadful defense, including his own.  Dae-Ho Lee smacked a one-out homer and Leonys Martin had a bunt single, stole second, took third on Vogt’s throwing error and scored on a sacrifice fly by Aoki.  In the seventh, Doolittle walked Robinson Cano and wild pitched him to second; he scored on a base hit by Seager.  Hernandez, who allowed a season-high eight runs (four earned), entered the day 22-8 with a 2.58 career ERA against Oakland.


The list of those who have partaken of Gipsy House's charms reads like a random dip into Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies. Johnny Depp and Tim Burton spent time there during preparations for last year's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Danny deVito was a regular a decade ago, when he was directing Matilda; director Wes Anderson, who wants to adapt Fantastic Mr Fox in stop-frame animation, was given house room; John Cleese, who has written a script of Dahl's The Twits, drops by.

For some, visiting Gipsy House is like a pilgrimage. Burton, who devoured Dahl's books as an unhappy child, reportedly burst into tears on the lawn. Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican director who is set to re-make the film of Dahl's The Witches, exclaimed: "For me, that's like going to Mecca and meeting Mohammed."

Gipsy House feels faintly enchanted; wine flows freely, and its kitchen has a resident chef. Elegant, astute, with a dry wit, Liccy Dahl is a terrific hostess. But she also chairs Dahl & Dahl, the company that manages Roald's literary estate; no one adapts his work to film without her say-so.

There's no question that the estate needs a gatekeeper. Without the quality control Dahl and her colleague Amanda Conquy impose, there would be an awful lot of Dahl films on the market. Tellingly, the National Film Theatre is currently presenting a three-week season of Dahl's work as presented on film and TV.

Yet Liccy Dahl is more pragmatic than her late husband. Over lunch at Gipsy House, she explains: "Roald liked films to be faithful to his books. His favourite of all the films was Danny the Champion of the World, probably because it was the most faithful. But I don't think you can be faithful to the book. The problem they have is a confusion between author, screenwriter and director. You have to change [things] for a film."

With this in mind, she looks for adaptors whose films will at least stay true to Dahl's mischievous spirit. "Danny deVito understood Dahl," she says firmly. "His Matilda got him." She feels Roald would have liked Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Depp as Willy Wonka. "But he disliked Gene Wilder as Wonka [in the 1971 film]. When they were casting, Roald suggested Spike Milligan. He said only Spike would do. Spike arrived at the audition in a beard and was told to go home and shave it off. He did, but didn't get the role anyway."

The worst film experience for Roald Dahl came with Nicolas Roeg's adaptation of The Witches (1990). He persuaded Roeg to cut an opening scene of a funeral, with a coffin being lowered into the ground. "Roald was horrified," Liccy recalls. "He liked death in his books to be short, quick and humorous – not something to be lingered over."

But Roeg shot two endings, one faithful to Dahl's book, the other stripped of the darker elements that made the book so effective. "Nic Roeg showed us the first ending, and Roald had tears running down his cheeks, he was so pleased," says Liccy. "But then he showed us the other one, and Roald said: 'Take my name off this thing. You've missed the whole point of the book.' I'd never seen him so upset."

Dahl went public with his grievances against The Witches. I recall discussing them at the time with the film's producer, Allan Scott, who ventured the opinion that if writers received payments for their books to be adapted, they shouldn't grumble. "I rather agree," Liccy Dahl sighs.

Still, more Dahl films seem likely: apart from Anderson and Cleese, Robert Altman (an old friend for whom Dahl wrote an unproduced script in the 1960s, Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting-A-Ling-A-Ling?) is interested in updating his TV series Tales of the Unexpected. Meanwhile, Paramount has long held the rights to Dahl's The BFG. "But we're still stuck on a script, and a star," Liccy says. "We feel it needs an English screenwriter."

In Great Missenden's high street, the welcoming Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre boasts an intriguing archive, some files of which relate to Dahl's long, often tetchy relationship with the movie world.

They go back to 1941-42, when Walt Disney courted Dahl (whom he nicknamed Stalky, maybe because of his tall, lanky frame) about filming his book The Gremlins, which dealt with the hazards of being an RAF pilot. (Intriguingly, Dahl was then an assistant air attaché at the British Embassy in Washington, working with BSC, a secret propaganda unit bent on persuading America to join Britain in the war against Nazi Germany.) The studio published a cartoon book of The Gremlins, but Walt Disney told Dahl it would never be filmed: "…the public has become tired of so many war films."

These files are full of fascinating items: objections by America's NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because they resembled black slaves. There's a reference to Peter Sellers asking Dahl if he could play Wonka; and a Dahl letter with the words "I cannot say I am mad about Gene Wilder's performance."

And there is his original script for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, written in pencil on lined yellow paper. One version bears the words "first draft", and another "very first draft". Very Dahl. Yet there is still some dispute about the degree of his contribution to the finished film, and to the Bond film You Only Live Twice.

It may be that Roald Dahl was not cut out for a career in films. He was an uneasy collaborator with other writers (though he enjoyed a long, fruitful partnership with Quentin Blake, who illustrated his children's books). And he seemed to regard changes to his work as an affront. Yet to dozens of filmmakers enthralled by his storytelling powers, what a long shadow he cast.

The Daily Telegraph is media partner for Roald Dahl Day on Sept 13. Look out for our exclusive Roald Dahl puzzle in tomorrow's Weekend section and other features, events and exclusive promotions in the coming weeks. For further details, see www.roalddahlday.info. The Roald Dahl season at the National Film Theatre, London SE1 (020 7928 3232) continues until Sept 23. Tomorrow at 3pm, Felicity Dahl will introduce 'James and the Giant Peach'.

Dahl fanatic Danny deVito captures the author's spirit perfectly in this wickedly funny, macabre children's story.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

Tim Burton's extravagant rendering of the story is as bold as Johnny Depp's Michael Jackson-inflected take on the Willy Wonka, but it all works. Dahl was unimpressed with Gene Wilder in the 1971 version.

James and the Giant Peach (1996)

Dahl reportedly resisted attempts to adapt this story, but its lovely animation compensates for the few liberties taken with the book.

Danny the Champion of the World (1989)

Dahl's personal favourite film, a quieter story than most, but moving in its modest way. Starred Jeremy Irons.

Dahl himself hated Nicolas Roeg's film, which starred Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch, but critics and audiences disagreed.

Summary: Filmmakers are still queuing up to adapt Roald Dahl's stories – but first they have to talk to his widow, Felicity. David Gritten meets her.


Netflix Inc’s shares fell as much as 14 percent on Tuesday after the video streaming company signed up far fewer subscribers than expected in the latest quarter and offered up little hope that things would improve soon.

However, analysts said the maker of “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black” is likely to start growing strongly again next year as potential subscribers become more comfortable with its plans to raise prices.

Netflix nflx has been phasing in price rises for existing customers by $1.00 or $2.00 per month for the past few months, a process it calls “un-grandfathering.”

“Management highlighted that the ‘un-grandfathering’ process is roughly halfway done and should extend into November, although we believe the largest impact will be felt in (the current quarter),” Jefferies analysts wrote in a client note.

Netflix, which has 78 million subscribers in more than 190 countries, said it expected to add 300,000 subscribers in the United States in the current quarter.

That’s less than half the 774,000 additions expected, on average, by analysts surveyed by FactSet StreetAccount.

The company’s estimate that it would sign up 2 million new subscribers in markets outside the United States in the quarter was also well below the average forecast of 2.85 million.

Netflix signed up 1.7 million new customers in the three months ended in June 30, far fewer than the 2.5 million it had forecast.

The company said media publicity about proposed price increases had hurt its business.

Analysts agreed with the company that the Rio Olympics in August could also contribute to a slowdown in sign-ups.

J.P. Morgan analysts said they expected Netflix to work through its pricing changes in the second half of the year and emerge as bigger and more profitable company into 2017, helped by the price increases.

At least 20 brokerages cut their price targets on the company’s stock, by as much as $30. BMO Capital Markets cut the most, lowering its target to $85 from $115.

Netflix’s shares trade at about 143 times forward earnings, compared with Facebook Inc’s 28 times and Google-parent Alphabet Inc’s 20 times, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine.

Only one brokerage, UBS, lowered its recommendation on Netflix’s shares, to “neutral” from “buy.”

Of 43 analysts covering the company, 24 have a “buy” or higher rating, 14 have a “hold” and five have “sell” or “strong sell.”

“Weakness in the stock represents a good long-term buying opportunity given that the full benefits from Netflix’s international launch and content investments have yet to be realized,” Canaccord Genuity analysts wrote in a client note.

Cannacord trimmed its price target to $115 from $120, but maintained a “buy” rating.

Netflix shares were down 13.6 percent at $85.25 in late morning trading on Tuesday. Up to Monday’s close $98.81, Netflix’s shares had fallen 26 percent since touching a record high of $133.27 in December.

Summary: Customers need to get used to the new prices.


It’s been a little more than a month since Parks and Recreation bowed out, and Aubrey Plaza — almost in April Ludgate fashion — doesn’t know what her future looks like. In fact, after seven seasons of playing the slacker intern-turned-bureaucrat, she prefers it that way. “Right now I’m just really excited about the idea of having my entire year open,” the actress tells TIME. “There are so many things in the past couple of years that I haven’t been able to do because I’ve been booked for half the year.”

If her recent, prolific filmography is any indication — she’s been in five films since August, if you count Lifetime’s Grumpy Cat special — expect to see plenty more of her. “I really like working, and there’s no reason for me not to go crazy right now,” Plaza says. Two of her newest films are already on video-on-demand: in Hal Hartley’s Ned Rifle, available on Vimeo, she plays Susan, a mysterious poetry grad student who seems obsessed with the title character’s Nobel-laureate uncle; she also plays performance artist Mallory in Playing It Cool, a rom-com about a reluctant rom-com writer (meta!) that stars Chris Evans and Michelle Monaghan and is available on iTunes.

TIME caught up with the actress to chat about her recent SXSW excursion, the challenges of being typecast and the perks of playing Natasha Lyonne’s love interest.

TIME: You had two films at SXSW. Did you get to see other movies and bands and eat breakfast tacos, or was it all business?

Aubrey Plaza: It was fun. It was, you know, like a film festival — it was fine. [Laughs] It was a lot of business, but I did get to see Busta Rhymes, which was pretty awesome.

Are you a big Busta fan?

I mean, who isn’t? And I definitely ate some late-night Austin food — I went crazy on the food trucks at one point.

You were a big fan of Hal Hartley’s work in the ’90s before you starred in Ned Rifle. Can you write a creepy, extensive dissertation on his work like your character Susan does in the film?

Oh yeah, I can do that, and I can stalk him! [Laughs] I love him, I really do. I think he’s so special and important. There’s just not a lot filmmakers around that are like him. I was so, so excited to work with him.

Your character walks the line between joking around and being serious. There were a lot of parts in this movie where I wasn’t sure if I should be laughing, which was unsettling at first, but then I think that’s what made the movie so thought-provoking and delightfully weird.

At SXSW, Hal and I were doing interviews, and someone brought up the word deadpan, which for me is a word that I’m like, “Ugh, please, God, I don’t want to hear that word anymore.” It has a weird, negative [connotation] for me. But Hal embraced it and pointed that what you’re saying when things are deadpan, or a character is deadpan, is that they’re saying things without an obvious subtext. You’re not sure if it’s supposed to be funny or if it’s serious, and it leaves the audience to decide, which I thought was kind of cool.

It is more interesting that way—you’re not really sure how to interpret a line of dialogue, or why someone is saying something. There’s a lot of that in his script. As an actor, I don’t think about what’s funny or what’s not funny. For me, it’s just all coming from a very sincere place of trying to express her, and myself, I guess. It never felt funny to me. I know it’s a dark comedy, but I never approached it like a comedy or anything like that. But there were moments on set when Hal would stop shooting and come over and say, “Don’t forget this is a comedy!” [Laughs] It’s hard to know! But that’s one of the reasons why I love his writing.

You’ve talked before about not wanting to be typecast, but looking at the different roles you’ve played, do you think there is some through-line or something they have in common that you’re drawn to?

I’m just like everyone else reading scripts and trying to get parts. There’s definitely the struggle that I have, always trying to convince people that I can play parts that are really different on paper from things I’ve done in the past. I like it — it’s a really fun challenge to audition for parts that people wouldn’t normally believe that I could pull off. But I don’t have perspective on myself in that way where I can look at all the characters. I mean, it’s me — I bring all I have to every character with my own experiences and my own approach to life, so of course there’s a through-line there. I’m sure that’s true with every actor.

How actively do you seek out roles that are different to challenge those perceptions?

All the time, but the opportunities do not present themselves to me as much as I would like. I’m shooting a movie right now called Dirty Grandpa with Robert DeNiro and Zac Efron. It’s a comedy, and there are two main girl parts: one is Zac’s love interest, who is funny and sarcastic [and whom] initially I was going to audition for. The other is this super slutty party girl who just wants to party. People would be thinking that I would want to seek out the sarcastic girl, but I didn’t. I actually wanted to audition for the other part. So I did, and they cast me in that part, and it was very exciting that the director believed I could pull this thing off.

But, you know, there’s a limited control that you have as an actor, and there are a lot of things that are offered to you [that are] unfortunately a lot of the same. Once someone sees you do one thing, they just want to see you do it over and over again. It’s tricky to navigate that, but I do my best. Mainly I just want to work with good filmmakers that I respect and pick parts that I really connect with.

You’ve been in so many movies since last August, when did you have time for them all? You were still shooting Parks last year!

I don’t know, I’ve just gone insane. I don’t know if I will continue to cram in 20 movies a year now that Parks is over, but I really like working, and there’s no reason for me not to go crazy right now. Right now I’m just really excited about the idea of having my entire year open. There are so many things in the past couple of years that I haven’t been able to do because I’ve been booked for half the year. I have hobbies and I’ll get there, but I’m just kind of really excited about working. I’ll probably just work all the time.

Are you open to going back to TV, or are you sticking with movies for now?

I’m open to it for sure, but it would have to be the right thing. I don’t have any prejudice against television or anything like that. The quality of television programming is so good right now that it would be silly not to not to do another TV show. But there’s something about movies that I find so satisfying, just that it has a very clear beginning and end. I really like going through those experiences.

Another movie of yours is Playing It Cool, which, like Ned Rifle, is on video-on-demand now and will have a limited run in theaters. That movie seems like a pretty self-aware rom-com, which is refreshing.

I did that movie because I really liked the idea of playing a performance artist, and in the script, there’s a scene where you see my character do her performance art. The director told me that I could write that show, and I could do whatever I wanted, so that’s why I did that movie. Of course I liked all the other elements too, but I selfishly really wanted to play this performance artist and do something crazy.

I don’t even know what they ended up using because I haven’t seen it. It’s bizarre. I believe I’m in my underwear, and I’m fake giving birth to different baby doll parts and pulling them out of my vagina.

That is bizarre. And then you’ve got Fresno, in which you play Natasha Lyonne’s love interest.

Yeah, I play a lesbian krav maga instructor, which is a really different part for me — the reason why I did that movie. I thought it’d be fun to play a really physical part and to play a gay character, which I haven’t done before. Natasha and I are friends in real life, so I thought it would be really fun to play opposite her. And it was not hard to be attracted to her, because I am.

I was recently talking with Lucy Lawless, who’s on the new season of Salem, about why witches are having a pop-culture moment. As someone with the Twitter handle @evilhag, do you have any insight?

I had no idea! That’s so exciting. Witches go in and out as being popular. I remember when I was in high school and The Craft came out, that was a huge thing for me. I loved that movie so much. They’re fascinating. I would love to play one.

So you’re game for a role in the fantasy and sci-fi realm?

I would do anything if it was good. Really! It would be so fun to do something in the fantasy world. That’s the reason I wanted to be an actor — so I could do things that don’t happen in reality. I would love to do that some day. Any kind of magical powers, that’s very appealing to me.

Summary: The actress talks to TIME about all her new movies


Whether flooded or not, it’s a safe bet your garden is basically sodden, and as far as your plants are concerned, the effect is much the same. A typical soil is about 50 per cent empty space, and most of the time, most of that space is filled with air. The space in soil may fill up briefly after rain, but the water quickly drains away, at least from the larger pores and channels.

Plants that normally live in wet soils, or even in water, have evolved a variety of ways around a shortage of oxygen. Biochemical adaptations can make respiration more efficient and reduce the amount of toxic by-products of anaerobic respiration, such as ethanol and acetaldehyde. But mostly what they do is make sure enough oxygen gets to the roots, via porous tissues or air-filled channels in their stems and roots. Some plants can also grow new adventitious roots at the surface of the soil, although obviously this doesn’t help if you’re actually underwater.

As long as the water, or at least most of it, drains away before active growth resumes in the spring, it’s likely that not too much damage will be done. Even so, there may well be fatalities among plants from dry climates or of borderline hardiness, both of which are often particularly intolerant of sitting with their feet in water.

What can you do to help? In the longer term, the best thing you can do is try to improve your soil structure, and the easiest way of doing that is to add lots of organic matter, such as garden compost, chipped bark or shredded prunings. No need to dig it in, just add to the surface and let the worms do the rest. Not only will organic matter improve soil drainage in its own right (and also, paradoxically, improve water retention in summer if you have a sandy soil), but it will also give earthworms plenty to eat, and many of the larger drainage pores and channels in soil are created by earthworms.

In the current crisis, there’s not much you can do – indeed the less you do, the better. A good soil structure takes time to create but can be destroyed very quickly, especially by you walking on it, so keep off. In fact, don’t be tempted to do anything to your soil, such as planting bare root trees and shrubs, until the water has drained away. If you dig a hole and it fills up with water, leave well alone.

*Ken Thompson is a plant biologist with an interest in the science of gardening. His next book (out in March) is Where do Camels Belong? The Story and Science of Invasive Species.

Read more: Top 10 plants for a rainy day

Read more: Plants for gardening in a rainier Britain

Summary: Don’t panic about the wet weather: sodden plants are generally best left to   their own devices


As the economy pushes more corporate workers out into freelance work, technology is making it easier and cheaper for them to thrive.

Over the past 12 months, a couple of related developments have made it much easier for solo entrepreneurs to keep up on work while on the go, as well as manage relationships with distant clients and partners. For one thing, connections to speedy 3G wireless networks have become widespread among lightweight netbooks and smart phones, making it much easier to get online whenever necessary and tap into powerful applications over the Web.

At the same time, software developers have started offering up more of those Web-based programs—saving solo entrepreneurs from the difficulties of running complex software on their own computers and often allowing free access for small users.

Here's a closer look at these technologies and how freelancers are using them.

Perhaps the biggest development for solo entrepreneurs is the spread of 3G access. As more lightweight netbooks get 3G connectivity, owners don't have to pay to use a Wi-Fi hot spot or find a coffee shop when they want to get online from the road. They have constant access to the Internet, letting them catch up on work from their cars or in the waiting room of an office building.

Carriers like AT&T Inc. T -0.05 % and Verizon Wireless—owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc—offer netbooks from Gateway Inc. or Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ 1.78 % for as little as $99 after rebates, plus a two-year data plan at $40 or $60 a month, depending on usage. (The netbooks can also get online with Wi-Fi if they happen to be in a hot spot.)

Andy Castonguay of Yankee Group, a Boston-based market-research firm, says that for freelancers "working between home and other people's offices, being able to access network speeds without worrying about a log-in is huge."

Another recent innovation lets users tap into 3G networks by creating their own hot spots. For instance, Mr. Castonguay says that he's a fan of Novatel Wireless Inc.'s MiFi. The credit-card-size device has a 3G connection and can share it, through Wi-Fi, with up to five devices within 20 feet. So, for instance, two entrepreneurs sharing an office or meeting space could use a MiFi to get both of their laptops online at the same time. The big advantage is cost. Users can buy one data plan for a MiFi—which runs $40 to $60 monthly—and not invest in separate plans for their laptops, smart phones and other gadgets.

That means big potential savings: Buying plans for five different devices would cost about $300 a month for heavy users or $200 for light use.

In some cases, smart phones, like Palm Inc.'s Palm Pre, can be turned into hot spots, as well. Mario Peshev, a software developer in Sofia, Bulgaria, writes in an email that "I for one, always have my cellphone with me—turning it into a hot spot will allow me and my spouse to use the same connection at the same time while we are out at kids' sporting events waiting for the next game to start."

At the same time, 3G permits smart-phone apps to connect to Web-based scheduling and project-management software, something that was painfully slow with first-generation devices. These types of tools are particularly useful for freelancers; one irony of being an independent contractor is that it usually means having to collaborate with others, often in distant locations.

Alan Lucas, a Brookline, Mass., medical-device entrepreneur, says that Doodle, a service from Switzerland's Doodle AG that has been expanding rapidly in the U.S., is "a fantastic site" for arranging meetings. Recently he set up a meeting of 10 executives by putting a calendar on Doodle with five alternative meeting times, then sending the URL to everyone he wanted to attend. After they responded, Doodle figured out which date worked for everyone.

Douglas Levin, a Boston open-source-software consultant, says he collaborates using an online storage service called Dropbox. The service synchronizes files among desktop, laptop and phone, and makes it easy to share them with clients or other contractors.

What's more, Dropbox has apps for the iPhone—and is working on them for Android phones—to make sure that documents are easy to read on small screens. "When you add in Basecamp and Huddle," two well-established project-management tools that can now be used with smart phones, "you can sit in multiple Starbucks and assign tasks to people," Mr. Levin says. He adds that he has used the tools to coordinate a multinational consulting project, among others.

Not all of the apps out there focus on collaborative tools. For instance, Google Inc.'s free Google Voice service lets users route all their different phone numbers to one phone. Fawn Fitter, a freelance writer in San Francisco, says, "It's truly one of the most useful tools I've managed to get my mitts on," by making sure she doesn't miss calls when she's away from her home office.

Users can also route all of their electronic chatting through one machine. Mr. Levin says he particularly likes handling text messages through Google Voice because he can use his computer keyboard to write long messages rather than using his thumbs on his BlackBerry.

Another big area of innovation for software services: social media. For any freelancer, getting noticed and reminding clients you're available is a key issue. Freelancers are among the most avid users of social-networking services like LinkedIn and Facebook.

The problem is there are so many social networks that it's tough to stay on top of them all. Some freelancers have discovered Postling, a recent application from Waffl Inc.'s Postling.com, a New York-based website, that lets users easily monitor and post to their accounts on many popular social media. When you use the application, you can write a blog or upload a photo to multiple sites with a single click; another click publishes a Twitter feed and a Facebook link. Postling is free to individual users, but it charges $30 per month per employee for larger firms.

For more-formal announcements, some entrepreneurs have started using a new online service called PressLift, from Drop.io Inc., of New York, to automate the process of creating a website for press releases and media kits. The service, costing $299 an announcement, lets an entrepreneur produce a press release, embed a video and provide links to related Web resources.

Mr. Bulkeley is a writer in Boston. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

Summary: These devices and software offerings make it easier than ever for freelancers to work on their own