The American Society of Human Genetics met last week in Boston, and it didn’t generate anywhere close to the same buzz as South by Southwest. Or even a more modest confab like a TechCrunch Disrupt. But it would have felt quite familiar to the geek squad.

There was lots of discussion about data and about how open platforms will spawn a new genetics application industry.

In fact, the amount of data coming out of genetic research dwarfs anything in traditional data centers. And there’s huge application opportunity associated with it. Yet when is the last time you heard it discussed with the same frequency or passion as Twitter TWTR or the latest mobile shopping app?

Dan Primack wrote last May, when Yahoo agreed to acquire Tumblr, that while there would be tons of coverage of the $1.1 billion deal, less likely to generate coverage was the day’s bigger M&A news: Actavis was buying Warner Chilcott for $8.5 billion:

“So why are us media folks so obsessed with the acquisition of a low-revenue blogging platform and so dismissive of an $11 billion combined revenue company that tries to cure disease and improve health? For one, it’s easier for most of us to understand what Tumblr makes than what Actavis or Chilcott make. Second, it’s a tech story and there are far more tech-focused media sites than healthcare-focused media sites.”

I’ve always appreciated Dan’s candid takes on the venture and startup world, but this column left a lasting impression. This leads me back to Boston and the ASHG conference, and the stories that didn’t get broader business coverage.

If there had been many tech media walking the halls tapping into the genomics and genetics panels and poster sessions they would be reporting this week on advancements in PCR and the latest sequencing applications.

PCR is one of those acronyms that mean nothing to the average lay person, but within the science community it gets the Sheldon Coopers of the world lathered up and is a standard underpinning of the healthcare system. PCR is short for Polymerase Chain Reaction, which has a storied history. It starts with its colorful inventor Dr. Kary Banks Mullis, whose autobiography topics included astrology, LSD use and an encounter with an extraterrestrial. He also went on to win a Nobel Prize for The Polymerase Chain Reaction in 1993.

Why should the average Jane or Joe care about PCR? In 1983 it changed the rules in molecular biology by creating a technique used to amplify or reproduce the number of copies of a specific region of DNA. Why is this important? Because you need enough DNA to adequately test and create new applications for disease discovery and monitoring. For the first 25 years of its existence, PCR became an essential technique used in medical and biological research labs, but it didn’t change all that much. In the past five years, however, a few pioneering companies have not just refined and advanced the lab technique, they’ve added new technologies around it. There’s now qPCR and dPCR (q for quantitative and d for digital).

And the new growth is just beginning. Frost and Sullivan research shows the worldwide PCR Market generates in excess of $1.2 billion for research, plus another $4 billion for PCR-based diagnostics.

A handful of companies continue to move PCR from analog to digital in a big way, following a path similar to the tech industry. As a long time IT investor, I see many other similarities to well-known tech interoperability breakthroughs. One of the novel digital PCR technologies comes from RainDance Technologies (where I am a board member). RainDance calls their system the “RainDrop” due to its ability to digitize biological molecules and disease markers.

The RainDrop system acts as the “Bluetooth of the Lab,” distilling complex specimens into actionable information. For new genetic application developers, the appeal of the RainDrop is that its open system sits on top of billions of dollars of chemistry investments already made in the PCR market.

Not surprisingly, the company is working with teams at leading world research centers on new disease discovery and monitoring applications. What was once a labor-intensive, manual process requiring people in lab coats today sits in a computationally sophisticated box that could easily be mistaken for a small desktop computer. The RainDrop system processes DNA, RNA or microRNA data with accuracy, sensitivity and speed that would make any geek proud.

For instance, consider taking your standard one-liter bottle of water and dividing it into 200 billion containers, enough for every person on the planet to take 20 sips. That’s the size of the droplets the RainDrop dPCR system is dealing with. The droplets are so small, you can’t see them, yet the company has devised a way to move them around using chips based on SONY’s Blu-ray disc technology, which has grooves small enough to manipulate up to 10,000,000 droplets per sample. By isolating genetic material into these picodroplets, RainDance is able to find and count “single disease needles” from the biological haystack.

Researchers are using this technology for highly sensitive and early detection of cancer mutations, viral infections, bacterial pathogen infections, as well as inherited disease screening in ways Dr. Kary Mullis and the Nobel Prize selection team could only dream of 30 years ago. What RainDrop produces is not just discernable data, but actionable data, and it is showing great promise in making liquid biopsies the emerging standard of care, further reducing healthcare costs by identifying inherited diseases and cancer earlier and less invasively, potentially making tissue biopsies a thing of the past.

Digital PCR is just one example of the digitization of medicine. Applying smart data to solve big problems – what the tech world does best.

Bill Ericson is a general partner with VC firm Mohr Davidow Ventures.

Summary: Data is being used for much more than analyzing social media audiences or selling shoes. It's being used to save lives.


11/07/2014 AT 11:45 AM EST

Lionsgate, which took Suzanne Collins's best-selling trilogy of books and made them into blockbuster films, is now developing a live stage production "using innovative and immersive staging techniques," the company announced Friday.

Lionsgate is partnering with live production company Imagine Nation (co-founded by award-winning Broadway producer Robin de Levita) and Triangular Entertainment to create the stage show, which will launch in the summer of 2016.

A special theater is being built especially for the show next to Wembley Stadium in London, and there is expected to be some kind of traveling version of the show, too.

"Robin de Levita and the entire production team are the perfect partners for extending

franchise into a live theatrical experience," Lionsgate chief marketing officer Tim Palen said in a statement. "Their creative genius, combined with world-class production values and state-of-the-art technology, will provide a uniquely immersive experience for fans around the world."

Lionsgate is following in the footsteps of Disney, which has brought franchises including

to the stage. It is also working on a

Summary: Lionsgate gets to work on a live theatrical production, which will open in the summer of 2016


St. Valerius in Weyarn, Germany

11/15/2014 AT 06:50 PM EST

Most people know about Egypt's pharaohs – great rulers buried in intricate tombs surrounded by their worldly possessions and other riches – but those late leaders weren't the only ones to greet death in style.

Art historian Dr. Paul Koudounaris hunted down hidden jewel-encrusted skeletons, once proudly put on display in churches, for his book

documents the journey of these morbid masterpieces, which were first unearthed from Roman catacombs as bare bones in 1578. Excavated by the Catholics, the remains were assumed to be those of Christian martyrs.

St. Benedictus originally received by the church of St. Michael in Munich, Germany

To demonstrate the glory and glitz that awaited good Christians in the afterlife, the skeletons were reassembled and decked out in gold, jewels and other treasures. These glittering specimens were then sent to shrines across Europe to be admired by churchgoers.

St. Friedrich at the Benedictine abbey in Melk, Austria

The skeletons were celebrated and respected at first, but by the 19th century many began to question whether the saint status of these martyrs was legitimate. As a result, most of the relics were hidden away or destroyed.

St. Albertus's remains from the Roman Catacombs

Koudounaris is one of the first people to photograph the strangely stunning skeletons that have been rediscovered over the years. And while he can't speak to their authenticity as saints, he does believe that they are extraordinary works of art that deserve to be seen.

"I wanted to pursue this project to provide a new context for them," Koudounaris told CNN. "And to look at them not as failed devotional items, but instead as fine objects of art."

Summary: These skeletons prove that diamonds really are forever


Updated NOV 10, 2014 3:12p ET

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Arizona State learned a painful lesson six weeks ago when it opted to let UCLA quarterback Brett Hundley have the time he needed to throw. Sixty-two points later, the Sun Devils adjusted. Passive does not suit this group.

Bigger and blitzier, the Sun Devils since worked their way back into the ever-thinning national championship picture, one of 10 remaining FBS teams with one or no losses in the first year of the College Football Playoff format.

The No. 9 Sun Devils' 55-31 victory over No. 10 Notre Dame on Saturday was built on a four-minute, five-second stretch of the late first and early second quarters when their aggressive defense forced Fighting Irish quarterback Everett Golson into three turnovers in a nine-play sequence.

ASU turned all three takeaways into touchdowns, enough of a cushion to weather a late Notre Dame comeback when the Fighting Irish found a temporary antidote to the Sun Devils' disguised blitzes and bump-and-run coverage.

"We knew that we had to get a lot of pressure on him because he's very, very mobile," safety Damarious Randall said. "Getting pressure on a mobile quarterback is kind of like their kryptonite, because they just want to sit back in the pocket and run whenever stuff is not open. So just pressure them a lot. We just forced him to play for us."

Randall's 59-yard interception return for a touchdown ended the game-changing sequence in which the score went from 3-3 to 24-3.

Freshman defensive end Tashon Smallwood sacked and stripped Golson, then recovered a fumble; defensive tackle Demetrius Cherry tipped Golson's next pass straight up and Marcus Hardison intercepted it; Hardison tipped a pass on the Irish's next possession that Randall turned into a touchdown.

Some turnovers are forced, some only are said to be. Those three were all the defense's doing.

"We knew in their last five games that they turned the ball over twelve times. We just went and took advantage of that," Randall said.

ASU cornerback Lloyd Carrington returned an interception 58 yards with 3:41 left for a 48-31 lead that ended all doubt.

Notre Dame had 487 yards and Golson had 446 passing, but many of them came after the Sun Devils played it closer to the vest offensively after taking their 34-3 lead.

ASU made its big defensive adjustments after its Hail Mary, 38-34 victory at USC on Oct. 4. Graham moved another big body onto the front line against Stanford, linebackers and safeties were given more freedom to blitz, and the corners were placed into more one-on-one coverage. ASU stifled Stanford's normally potent ground game before beating Washington and Utah, limiting all three opponents to four touchdowns combined.

"We stopped making critical errors," Graham said of the improvement. "I really don't think it was our players, it was us (coaches) figuring it out. Our No. 1 pressure that we ran with Carl (Bradford) and Will (Sutton) is our worst pressure this year. For some reason, I wouldn't quit calling it.

"We adapted to them. We're big. We were quick last year, and smaller. We've adapted our techniques to fit them a little bit better, and that's been beneficial. And we've played a lot more people."

Golson was the best two-way quarterback the Sun Devils had played this season, so the plan Saturday was to force him to move up in the pocket to limit his scrambling while being alert to the low trajectory of his passes. ASU mixed up its blitzers to make it harder for Notre Dame to check its protection.

"People look at what we do and think it is a hodgepodge," Graham said. "It is not. It is very strategic, trying for minimal risk."

It has yielded maximum reward.

Follow Jack Magruder on Twitter

Summary: ASUs' defense: Big, blitzy and beatiful in win over Notre Dame.


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

Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks SBUX , is well known for taking a stand on political issues, from veterans rights to overcoming political gridlock (remember those Come Together cups during the debt ceiling debacle and government shutdown?). Over the last few days, he’s stepped into the tricky terrain of racial issues and police brutality, with an impromptu Open Forum at the Starbucks Support center in Seattle, in which he offered Starbucks employees a chance to sound off about their own experiences with racism and racial issues.

On Tuesday, he released the highly emotional video from that meeting to all 135,000 Starbucks employees in the U.S., along with a letter (below) provided exclusively to TIME in which he outlined his concern about the economic and political effects of racism and increasing social polarization in America.

“I’ve watched with a heavy heart as tragic events and unrest have unfolded across America, from Ferguson, Missouri to New York City to Oakland, California,” wrote Schultz. “I’m deeply saddened by what I have seen, and all too aware of the ripple effect.”

Indeed, it’s an issue I’ve spoken about in depth with Schultz. As I wrote several days ago, Starbucks is a perfect retail proxy for the American economy, which is increasingly bifurcated, a nation of latte buyers and those who sell the coffee. The minute-by-minute data that Starbucks gets on consumer spending is perhaps the most sensitive indicator of U.S. consumer confidence around, so it was startling to hear from Schultz that coffee sales took a hit during the riots in Ferguson, which is something that concerns him not only from the point of view of the economy and U.S. consumers — whom he calls “fragile” — but from a political stability point of view as well.

“I don’t want to go into specifics,” Schultz told me the day after riots in New York City, following the announcement that a grand jury would not indict a police officer in the chokehold-related death of Eric Garner, “but I can tell you that the volatile situation in Ferguson and the situation in New York had an immediate negative effect on consumer behavior across the country.” What’s more, Schultz says he believes there’s a growing despondency amongst the public that government officials simply aren’t up to the task of dealing with these issues, something that will have an effect on business and the economy, even in the midst of a so-called “recovery.”

“I talk to other people who are running national retail companies,” says Schultz. “We’re at the heart of the holiday season, and there are protests going on throughout the country, but aside from that, the American people have a fractured level of trust and confidence in government today. That’s a fact. Over the last year, if you track the bar graph of where that [trust] was a year ago and where it is today, it has continued to go down,” he adds. “So I think every consumer business, no matter who you are or what you do, is fighting against the cloud that is hanging over the American people, about how they’re feeling about the country, how they’re feeling about their future — and all of that is directly linked to their lack of faith and confidence and trust in the leadership in Washington.”

Those sentiments mirror some of the political statements Schultz made during his investor conference in Seattle a few days ago, leading to speculation that he may be considering a push into politics, or even contemplating a run as a third-party candidate (Schultz has stopped giving personal political donations out of disgust with both parties). While sources close to him say he’s considered politics in the past, Schultz tells me he feels he can “do more to effect change where I am right now” and isn’t considering a run at the moment.

That said, he won’t shy away from political discussion, and from sounding off on his own experiences. (Schultz, now a billionaire, grew up in the projects in Brooklyn.) He’s planning more Open Forum meetings in the coming weeks to discuss race issues, and beyond that he also has big plans to do more around veterans hiring, youth employment and student debt issues in the coming months.

“If I feel like I can sincerely attack a problem and make a difference, I’m going to jump in and try and do it. There are clearly such significant and substantive problems that need to be addressed, and this long tail, which has been going on for years, is getting to the point where it’s going to have a systemic effect on — forget the national economy, on the country [as a whole]. The conscience of the country. The ability of the country to continue to succeed at the level it once did,” Schultz says. “I came from a family that lived on the other side of the tracks and the American promise and the American dream was available to me; what I think about and what I’m concerned about is, is that going to be possible for those kinds of young people who grew up on the other side of the road today?” It’s a question that even in the midst of an economic recovery is becoming more and more pressing, for citizens, business people and politicians alike.

The full text of Schultz’s letter is below:

To: Starbucks partners; managing directors for company-operated and joint venture markets

Re: Message from Howard: It Starts with Conversation

Like many of you these past weeks, I have watched with a heavy heart as tragic events and unrest have unfolded across America, from Ferguson, Missouri to New York City to Oakland, California. Personally, I am deeply saddened by what I have seen, and all too aware of the ripple effect.

I have asked myself what it means not to be a bystander, as a citizen and as a Starbucks partner. What are our individual and collective responsibilities to our country, as well as to our own company?

Last week, one thing became clear: we cannot continue to come to work every day aware of the difficult and painful experiences facing our nation, and not acknowledge them, together, as a company. Indeed, despite the raw emotion around the events and their underlying racial issues, we at Starbucks should be willing to talk about them internally. Not to point fingers or to place blame, and not because we have answers, but because staying silent is not who we are.

On Wednesday, December 10, the morning after the protests in Berkeley, California, I called an impromptu Open Forum at our Starbucks Support Center in Seattle. The meeting was strictly internal, solely for Starbucks partners. There was no planning and I did not announce the meeting’s topic. All I knew was that we needed to come together, in a safe space, and have a conversation about what was happening in our nation.

For an hour a microphone was passed from partner to partner. People spoke with grace and emotion. Many shared personal experiences going as far back as childhood, and offered ideas about how to move the conversation, our company and our country forward. People spoke with such conviction and vulnerability. Everyone demonstrated compassion and personal courage. The Forum was at times uncomfortable, yet overall it was enlightening. It provided many of us, myself included, with a deeper understanding around issues of race and the realities facing our country.

What struck me most was how open our partners were to one another. Despite differences in life experiences, people showed civility and respect for the subject matter as well as for each other. I was not surprised, but I was incredibly proud. Wednesday’s Open Forum was the most powerful I’d ever attended in the 25 years that Starbucks has been holding them for our partners around the world. As you watch the video from that Open Forum, you too may agree.

The dialogue did not end once we returned to our work. In an unprecedented outpouring of emails, in our hallways, in my office, in our partner networks, many of you shared more thoughts. Most significantly, you expressed gratitude for having the opportunity to share, to listen and to learn. That sentiment alone made it clear to me that Starbucks could continue to do something we’ve always done: foster community and conversation.

That is why the Leadership Team and I have decided to expand opportunities for civil discourse within Starbucks, among our partner communities. We plan to host internal-only Open Forums around America and will begin in January in Oakland, St. Louis and New York City. Details about these events will be shared in the coming days.

I’ve always believed that core to our success has been our commitment to achieve the balance between our social conscience and responsible commerce. This is one of those times. Starbucks is far from perfect, and we do not claim to have solutions to our country’s complicated social issues. However, doing what is right for society and doing what is right for business cannot be mutually exclusive endeavors. While it is always safer to stand on the sidelines, that is not leadership. Today more than ever companies such as Starbucks must use their platforms and resources to create opportunities for their people, as well as for the communities they serve.

So today, we choose to act in a way that is authentic to us, by nurturing a sense of community and bringing people together through the lens of humanity. At this trying time, it is important for all of us to be open and to be present.

Summary: Schultz talks with employees after grand jury announcements in Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.


Dear Annie: I just came from my third year-end performance evaluation with this company, where I’m in my first “real job” since college. And once again, just like in the past two years, I’m appalled at the way I reacted. I know you’re not supposed to take criticism personally or get defensive, but somehow, when my boss starts telling me about areas I could develop or improve, my emotions take over and I sort of panic.

This year was the worst so far, even though the evaluation was about 85% positive. My boss brought up one thing he thinks I could get better at, and I started defending myself before he even finished talking. Can you suggest any ways to stop letting criticism upset me so much? Last year I spent the holidays stewing over this, and I don’t want to do that again. — Too Thin-Skinned

Dear T.T.S.: Believe me, you’re far from the only one who’s ever left a performance appraisal with a bad case of what the French call l’esprit de l’escalier — that is, thinking of what you should have said (or not said) when it’s obviously too late.

If you really want another chance to let your boss finish what he meant to say, and to respond in a different way this time, why not ask for a do-over?

“You could even explain at the outset that, this time, you intend to listen and not speak,” notes Deb Bright, head of executive coaching firm Bright Enterprises, which counts Disney, GE, Morgan Stanley, and Marriott among its clients. Bright also wrote a book, The Truth Doesn’t Have to Hurt: How to Use Criticism to Strengthen Relationships, Improve Performance, and Promote Change, based on a seven-year study of how people respond to feedback, especially when they’re under stress. Asking for another meeting, she says, “would show him that you want to be receptive to what he wants to tell you.”

That’s important because, in Bright’s view, the first job of anyone on the receiving end of an evaluation is to make the person who is giving it feel comfortable. Surprised? “Think about it,” says Bright. “Most managers hate giving performance appraisals, because they dread how someone is going to react to anything negative. So they tend to rush through the discussion just to get it over with.”

The trouble, of course, is that the boss may be in such a hurry that he or she skips over information that could make or break your career. “What you can learn in a performance appraisal are things you may need, not just right now, but later on,” notes Bright. In her consulting work, she has often been called in to counsel talented managers whose careers had hit a brick wall because of shortcomings and bad habits that a string of bosses had tried to warn them about for years.

So how do you get a grip on your emotions while you’re listening? Focusing on making your boss feel at ease is a good start, since it automatically shifts your attention away from your emotions. Then, says Bright, “Remind yourself that you are the one in control here. How you respond will determine how the discussion goes, and how much or little you get out of it.” The sense of panic you mention could be diminished, or dispelled, if you recognize that even if you’re not saying a word, your role here isn’t a passive one.

Next, concentrate on finding out what specific actions you need to take (or stop taking). “Make sure you know the difference between a fact and an opinion,” Bright suggests. “’You were $30,000 over budget on the XYZ project’ is a fact. ‘You don’t communicate well enough with your peers’ is an opinion.” Since most bosses have had little, if any, training in giving effective feedback, the two types of feedback may very well be tangled up together, but you can usually tell an opinion by how vague it is.

“Trying to guess what your boss wants won’t work,” says Bright. “People end up guessing wrong, and then they get another vague, critical opinion in their next review, and conclude that they can never please this boss.”

Instead, ask for particular steps that would solve the perceived problem. “For example, you might suggest starting to ‘communicate better with your peers’ by updating them in person every week instead of through an occasional email,” says Bright. Approaching this like any other task you do at work, by coming up with a practical fix or two, should help take most of the emotion out of it.

Since you mention that this is your first “real job” after college, you probably have four or five decades of work ahead of you. So it might help to keep a sense of perspective. “People often get upset about a so-so performance review because they think it will damage their whole career,” says Bright. “But it’s just one review, in one year, and companies’ goals and strategies change from one year to the next anyway. I’ve never seen a situation where one or two ‘meets expectations’ evaluations — out of, say, 10 or 20 ‘exceeds expectations’ — made any real difference in the long run.”

Moreover, even presidents, popes, and CEOs get harpooned, sometimes on a daily basis. “No one goes through a whole career hearing only great feedback,” Bright observes. “In fact, if you haven’t heard any constructive criticism lately, it means you probably aren’t learning anything.”

Have a career question for Anne Fisher? Email askannie@fortune.com.

Summary: None of us likes hearing we're not perfect, but defensiveness is self-defeating. Here's how to respond to negative feedback.


Buying a home in Greater Boston is significantly cheaper than renting, according to a report from the real estate tracking firm Zillow.

The median mortgage payment on a home in the Boston metro area consumes 23 percent of a typical household’s income, compared to a median monthly rent of 34 percent. Nationally, the advantage for buyers was even larger, with the median mortgage payment amounting to 15 percent of the median household’s income and average rental costs around 30 percent.

“Despite rising home values, homeownership remains very accessible for buyers that can scrape together a down payment,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist, in a statement. But, he added, “it still remains so difficult for so many potential buyers to make those particular stars align, largely because renting is so unaffordable these days. It’s very difficult to come up with a down payment when so much of your monthly paycheck – especially on an entry-level salary – is going to your landlord instead of into your savings.”

Boston was the eighth priciest market for both renters and home buyers from July to September out of the 32 metro areas that Zillow analyzed. As a share of median income, buying was most expensive in California and tended to be cheapest in the midwest.

Summary: Buying a home in Greater Boston is significantly cheaper than renting, although the buyer’s premium is smaller than in other cities, according to a report from the real estate tracker Zillow.


updated 01/20/2015 AT 04:00 PM EST

•originally published 01/20/2015 AT 12:15 PM EST

is probably the most visible and beloved scientist working right now, but his audience doesn't usually skew this young.

And even though he probably gets asked some pretty heady questions, it's not every day someone just straight-up asks him what the meaning of life is, which is why we're so impressed with his answer.

Jackson, the kid in the clip, was attending a lecture

gave at Boston's Wilbur Theatre on Jan. 15. He proves himself to be a stickler for details early on, identifying his age as "six and three-quarters" after blurting out his question.

"You're going to be the deepest-thinking adult there ever was," Tyson responds before giving his answer.

"I think people ask that question on the assumption that meaning is something you can look for," Tyson begins. "And it doesn't consider the possibility that maybe meaning in life is something you create, you manufacture for yourself and others." That's just the beginning of his answer, which we really suggest you watch in its entirety, if only so you can imagine ever-so-slightly how Jackson's life was changed.

Summary: Tyson's heartfelt answer has gone viral


03/25/2015 AT 10:35 PM EDT

One of the pilots of Germanwings flight 4U9525 may have been locked outside the cockpit before the plane

, killing all 150 people onboard.

Quoting a senior investigator who asked to remain anonymous,

that the audio record of the flight indicates that one of the plane's two pilots left the cockpit and was unable to return. The pilot knocks on the cockpit door, then knocks harder, but there is never an answer from within the cockpit.

"You can hear he is trying to smash the door down," the investigator is quoted as saying.

Crash site in the French Alps

The evidence does not explain why the plane went down nor why the second pilot doesn't respond to knocks on the door. The plane descended from 38,000 feet over 10 minutes – gradually enough that it does not seem the plane was brought down by any grave mechanical malfunction. However, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Wednesday that terrorism did not seem to be a likely cause.

The plane crashed near the Barcelonnette area of France, and the wreckage was spread out over an area estimated at 4.5 square acres.

Among those killed were 16 high school students and two teachers from Düsseldorf, as well as

: Yvonne Selke of Nokesville, Virginia, and her 23-year-old daughter, Emily Selke.

Summary: The New York Times reports that one of the plane's pilots was locked out of the cockpit prior to the crash


Last October, the irrepressible former mayor of Belfast, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, brought his sixth annual Golden Bridges conference to Boston, an effort to improve business and cultural ties between the northwest of Ireland and the city some Irish refer to as the next parish over.

Working the rooms was someone as irrepressible as Ó Muilleoir, a filmmaker and producer named Kevin McCann. McCann was in mission mode, making contacts and looking for backers for a film that is more revolutionary than one might assume.

McCann is determined to make a movie about the Easter Rising of 1916, the pivotal moment in Ireland’s independence movement. And he is pursuing it with special urgency, determined to have the film in theaters by next year, the Rising’s centenary.

Other films have touched on the Rising, most notably Neil Jordan’s “Michael Collins” (1996) and Ken Loach’s “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” (2006). But both of those films focused on the aftermath of the Rising rather than the Rising itself.

The Irish people, in general, and Irish popular culture in particular, tend to pay more attention to the War of Independence and the ensuing civil war, which set the stage for political and cultural divisions that exist to this day.

The Rising, its quixotic nature, and the tendency of more recent incarnations of Irish rebels to portray themselves as the natural successors to the revolutionaries of 1916, makes it uncomfortable subject matter in many Irish minds.

McCann shakes his head at this.

“Can you imagine Americans not wanting to talk about 1776?” he asked. “I think it’s to do with our relations with our British neighbors. Maybe there’s a little embarrassment about celebrating the separation from the empire when relations are so good.”

But McCann believes that’s an argument exactly for doing what he wants to do.

“This is Irish history. It would be an act of cultural delinquency to let the centenary pass without telling this story in the cinema. If this was any other country, there would have already been a dozen or more films made about every aspect of the Rising. One of the reasons we don’t like to talk about the Rising is because we don’t know it. We think we do, but most Irish people are ignorant of the true story.”

Jordan built his film around Michael Collins, who ignited civil war with his 1921 decision to accept the British compromise that essentially endorsed the partition of Ireland and included an oath to the Crown. McCann’s main protagonist is Sean MacDiarmada.

“Before there was Michael Collins, there was Sean MacDiarmada,” he says.

MacDiarmada was the mastermind of the Rising. He was the last of the 16 rebels executed for their roles. Those executions turned out to be a colossal tactical mistake by the British. Before the executions, the rebels had been widely unpopular with the Irish, many of whose loved ones were on the continent, fighting for the British army in World War I. The executions led to a backlash, and inspired others to join the War of Independence that Collins led after his release from prison for his role in the Rising.

McCann met with the families of the seven signatories to the Proclamation of an Irish Republic, and it was they who persuaded him that MacDiarmada should be the protagonist of the film.

“His story is perfect for cinema,” McCann says. “A compelling, handsome fellow with an extraordinary intellect. To my shame, I had never heard of him. The reason why he is not remembered as much is, unlike Padraig Pearse or James Connolly, he wasn’t a writer. He didn’t leave a record of his thoughts and movements. But he was the plotter, the mastermind of the whole revolution.”

Beyond focusing on a patriot who never got his due, McCann wants to dispel the conventional wisdom surrounding the Rising.

“One of the great myths is that they didn’t know what they were doing, that this was a military failure,” McCann said. “They had a very clear military strategy, and it worked. They perfected urban guerrilla warfare.”

It took British forces five days to end the siege, and the Rising leaders’ main concern was to end the suffering of ordinary Dubliners who were becoming collateral damage, McCann says.

MacDiarmada was born in Leitrim, the small, remote county in the northwest of Ireland, which explains why Leitrim County Council has committed more than $11,000 to the film. A Kickstarter campaign has brought in upward of $50,000, from 35 countries. McCann is using social media to build buzz and gain attention. There are more than 14,000 Facebook fans and 5,000 Twitter followers.

McCann has lined up Sinead O’Connor, the singer, to be in the cast, though her role remains to be determined. Shane MacGowan, the former frontman of the Celtic punk band the Pogues, has agreed to write the song that will close the film.

But, just as the rebels who staged the Rising spent so much of their time lining up the finances that would pay for their act of rebellion, McCann has been necessarily preoccupied with finding financial backers for the $6 million he says he needs to make the film.

He was at the Berlin Film Festival a few weeks ago, looking for investors, and spent most of last year in North America doing the same.

As a producer, McCann’s previous films include 2013’s “Volkswagen Joe,” a short about a mechanic in a border town reluctantly dragged into the Northern Ireland conflict; and the 2009 documentary “The Boys of St. Columb’s,” based on Maurice Fitzpatrick’s book about the school that produced the first generation of Catholic students in Northern Ireland after the 1947 act of Parliament that granted free education. The film’s subjects included the writers Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane and the singer-songwriters Paul Brady and Phil Coulter.

His prior experience as a director has been in short films. But he’s undaunted. As Heaney once said about peace coming to Northern Ireland, McCann believes his odyssey to make this film is a time when hope and history will rhyme.

Summary: Kevin McCann has a mission: He’s determined to make a movie about the Easter Rising of 1916, the pivotal moment in Ireland’s independence movement.


Antoinette M. Hays spent decades as a nurse, teacher, and college administrator before becoming president of Regis College. But what could prove to be her most valuable credential isn’t on her resume; it’s in her genes.

Hays grew up in Waltham watching her parents launch and grow businesses — her mother, a dancing school and her father, a construction firm.

“I was encouraged to be open-minded and take risks,” she said. “ ‘Be a leader, not a follower,’ my mother would often say.”

Hays has used this entrepreneurial pedigree to help transform the Weston campus from a struggling all-women’s Catholic college into a coed university with a global footprint and aspirations to be a national leader in health care education. A little more than a decade ago, Regis appeared on the verge of closing after years of losing students and money; now, the school is in the first stages of a $75 million expansion and upgrade of its facilities.

As Regis holds its 85th commencement next week, it can celebrate a remarkable turnaround — the product of vision, innovation, agility, and smart financial management. Regis has launched new multidisciplinary programs at the undergraduate level; vastly expanded graduate and continuing education; forged relationships within the state’s burgeoning biotechnology, medical device, and health care industries; and partnered with universities in Greater Boston and around the world.

Regis College president Antoinette Hays (second from right) talked with students last month. From left: Julia Jones, Sam Jean-Gilles, and Chris Cortez, of Framingham.

The college also built on established nursing programs to refocus curriculum on so-called STEM — for sciences, technology, engineering, and math — skills sought by companies of all kinds. The result: Over the past decade, undergraduate enrollment has jumped more than 40 percent to about 1,100; graduate students have tripled to nearly 900; and annual revenues have quadrupled to $48 million.

“The things that we do are as big [as], if not bigger than, schools that have 60,000,” Hays said.

Jeff Denneen, head of the higher education practice at the Boston consultancy Bain & Co., said Regis has positioned itself to prosper by squeezing costs even as it has grown. In addition, Bain projects enrollment in STEM-related master’s programs, such as those offered by Regis, will increase at an annual rate of 7 percent, compared with 3 percent for all master’s programs.

“It seems they’ve really zeroed in on a very good spot in the market in Greater Boston,” Denneen said.

Regis was founded 88 years ago in Weston by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston, with the goal of educating women and training them for service to the community. The college’s decline began in the closing decades of the last century as students increasingly preferred coed schools to single-sex colleges. Many were drawn to major Catholic universities such as Boston College and Holy Cross, which started admitting women undergrads in the 1970s.

Workers prepared the “Great Walk,” curving along the Great Lawn that fronts the Regis campus, for the installation of lights that are part of the Weston expansion.

Regis operated in the red through most of the ’90s, hitting bottom in 2001 with a shortfall of $6.8 million, about a third of the school’s $20 million budget. That year, Regis hired Dr. Mary Jane England as president and Thomas G. Pistorino as vice president of finance and business. While outsiders questioned whether Regis, with an endowment of just $32 million, could survive, its trustees, alumni, and staff committed to keeping the doors open.

The college made hard choices, slashing payroll by 30 percent and eliminating several majors. But the leadership also recognized that “cutting our way out of the red ink would only get us so far,” Pistorino said. “The underlying theme has been to grow.”

Citing statistics that showed just a fraction of high school women preferring a single-sex college, England led Regis to accept men in 2007 (its graduate programs already were co-ed). Within three years, undergrad enrollment was up nearly 30 percent.

The school also tried to diversify its revenue base. Inspired by Lasell Village at Lasell College in Newton, Regis announced plans in 2005 to build a retirement community on its undeveloped East Campus. It seemed a natural choice, providing the college an income stream and nursing students with training opportunities. Neighbors, however, strenuously objected to the plan, which called for several high-rise buildings.

The legal battles continued through 2011, when Hays became Regis’s president and decided to abandon the project. Hays said the college has no immediate plans for the property, but selling to a developer “would be the least likely option.”

The biggest driver of growth at Regis has been graduate programs in health and related fields. Many graduate courses are offered at night, on weekends, and in the summer, which means Regis classrooms are rarely empty.

Caroline Duque, who earned her master’s degree in Regulatory & Clinical Research Management in December, said she was drawn to Regis because it offered both clinical training and courses in how to navigate the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies.

Today, the 27-year-old Marlborough resident coordinates clinical trials for Biogen in Cambridge. Businesses “want more and more specialized professionals,” said Duque, who estimated that half her Regis classmates were already working in the industry. “Having a degree in clinical research really helped me.”

To accommodate increased enrollment, Regis is building a four-story addition to a dormitory with suite-like accommodations for 70 students. The addition will be completed this fall along with a new entrance to the library.

Both will look onto a grassy quad that will replace a parking lot at the heart of the campus. The school also plans to build an addition to the science building, renovate the student union, and launch a capital campaign to pay for the improvements.

In recent years, Regis also has invested in technology. Students are provided with iPads. Teachers are experimenting with flipped classrooms, where lectures take place online and class time is devoted to discussion and real-world applications. A virtual campus, created through online courses, is in the college’s plans.

Just as it listened to industry in shaping graduate programs, Regis took cues from students in revamping undergraduate curriculum. The “aha moment,” Hays said, came as more students began pursuing minors and double majors to create their own interdisciplinary program. That led Regis to encourage collaboration among departments and develop curriculum that cuts across different fields of study.

An undergraduate program in biomedical engineering that debuts this fall is an example. It not only will require students to understand technology but also health and regulatory issues.

Graduate students sat in the lounge at College Hall.

“The millennial student is looking for an opportunity to tie the liberal arts with professional programs,” Hays said, “because they’re looking to be sure that there’s employment at the end.”

The Regis community, meanwhile, is fanning across the globe. Faculty and administrators are helping Haitians establish a master’s program in nursing. Also in the works is an exchange program with the Caritas Institute of Higher Education in Hong Kong.

The college already has numerous partnerships with local universities. For example, Regis students take health policy courses at Brandeis University in Waltham, which in turn sends students to Regis for epidemiology and biostatistics.

One thing has not changed at Regis: More than half the students are the first in their families to go to college. Decades ago, nearly all were daughters of Irish, French, Polish, or Italian Catholic immigrants; today, men and women are also Latinos, Asians, or African-Americans practicing many faiths. Some 30 percent of students come from minority backgrounds or abroad.

As this history shows, said M.J. Doherty, an alumna and special assistant to the president, Regis, through all its ups and downs, has remained true to the principles of its founding sisters.

“Their mantra is service to the dear neighbor without distinction,” Doherty said. “They also practice reading the signs of the times.”

Antoinette Hays, a Waltham native, took over as Regis College president in 2011.

Summary: A little more than a decade ago, Regis College appeared on the verge of closing; now the school has launched a $75 million campus upgrade.


Tesla is now looking to sell used versions of its electric cars online, the California company recently announced.

Elon Musk’s luxury auto maker is looking to make it easier for people to buy the used Model S sedans as leases come to an end for a big crop of the cars this summer, reports the Wall Street Journal. Tesla TSLA is now selling the used cars directly on its website.

A new Tesla Model S goes for between $75,000 and $105,000 before tax incentives and gas savings, depending on the battery. Used car prices range from $60,000 to more than $100,000 depending on the car’s mileage and its battery.

The first Model S units were sold in the middle of 2012, and leases are generally for three years.

Many people have also traded in their Model S for the new all-wheel drive edition, making a greater number of older Model S cars available for re-sale.

For more about Tesla, watch this Fortune video:

Summary: With a number of cars coming off lease, Tesla is looking to sell the used cars online.


Justice Irwin Delmore Davidson, whose career on the bench, in the New York State Assembly and in the House of Representatives spanned some 40 years, died yesterday of cancer in his home at Premium Point in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 75 years old.

Justice Davidson, who served in the Assembly from 1937 until 1948, introduced the first slum-clearance bill in New York and wrote rentcontrol, workmen's compensation and civil-rights legislation.

He was named to the Court of Special Sessions in 1948 and occupied that position until 1954, when he was elected United States Representative from Manhattan's West Side on the Democratic-Liberal ticket.

He vacated his House seat after serving one term and was elected judge of the Court of General Sessions in 1956. In that post, he presided over the trial in 1958 of seven teen-age gang members for the killing of Michael Farmer, a 15-year-old polio victim. When he sentenced four of the youths to prison terms ranging from five years to life, Judge Davidson said that he imposed the penalties with a heavy heart.

Wrote an Account of Trial

''The trial has solved nothing,'' he said at the time, ''but it has proven that we have permitted many of our young people to substitute the streets and association with hoodlums for the home life which has been denied to them.''

The judge wrote an account of the trial, ''The Jury Is Still Out,'' which was published in 1959. In 1957, Judge Davidson deferred sentencing an automobile thief so that an orthopedic surgeon could be found to operate on the young man's malformed hand, which had been burned by his mother. ''I will personally look for a doctor to perform the operation,'' he said. ''The boy is entitled to one break.''

His wife, Marion, said yesterday that the judge had anonymously maintained for many years a private fund, collected from his friends, which he used to help particularly needy defendants buy decent clothing for their appearances in court.

In 1962, the Court of General Sessions was merged into State Supreme Court. As a justice of that court, he presided over the trial in 1965 of Richard Robles for the so-called ''career girl'' murders. Mr. Robles was convicted in that trial of the 1963 slaying of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert in their East 88th Street apartment.

Justice Davidson retired from the Supreme Court in 1974, but remained active as a referee for the Appellate Division, serving without pay.

Born in New York City in 1906, Justice Davidson received a bachelor's degree from the College of Arts and Science at New York University. Nominated for M-G-M School

At the time, the dean nominated him to go to a school sponsored by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to study drama. Instead, he attended Law School at New York University, from which he received a degree in 1928. ''He worked his way through school,'' said Mrs. Davidson, ''by entertaining on the borscht circuit. He wrote, acted, produced and directed.''

''He chose politics instead of the stage, but he was the most sought-after dinner speaker in New York for many years,'' she continued. ''He was an extraordinary actor and raconteur.'' As a sideline to his early law practice, for example, he wrote scripts for Fred Allen's radio show.

Besides his wife, Justice Davidson is survived by two sons, James of New York City and Mark of Washington, D.C., from a previous marriage, and by his stepchildren, Dr. Joy D. Osofsky of Topeka, Kan., and William R. Doniger of Greenwich, Conn.

A memorial service is to be held this fall at the New York University Law School.

Illustrations: photo of Irwin Davidson


By Don Wycliff and Alvin Davis New York City's commuter rail system suffers from an abundance of ills, but regular crashes of trains into each other or into third objects is, happily, not among them. Last week, however, a Staten Island train loaded with morning rush-hour passengers overshot its platform and slammed against a brick wall.

Later the same day, a second train, carrying only crewmen, derailed at about the same spot, causing no injuries but creating two-hour delays for homebound commuters.

More than 80 passengers were injured in the accident at the St. George terminal, where the Staten Island Rapid Transit line connects with the Staten Island Ferry.

Eight persons were hospitalized, authorities said, the most seriously injured with a broken leg. An estimated 400 persons were aboard the four-car train and officials said many of them were standing, preparing to disembark, when the accident happened.

The train's motorman, Vincent Yorks of Staten Island, was suspended pending the outcome of two Federal investigations and one by the Staten Island Rapid Transit Operating Authority, a subsidiary of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. An official of the National Transportation Safety Board said a preliminary inquiry had turned up no evidence of equipment failure.

Transit officials said they were trying to determine whether Mr. Yorks had applied the train's air brakes and whether they might have failed.

Unlike trains in the subway system, the Staten Island trains do not have automatic brake-tripping devices to compensate for a failure by the motorman. Some passengers said the train seemed to be moving faster than normal as it entered the station and other witnesses said the tracks were wet from the fog that had blanketed the area the previous night.

Illustrations: photo of crashed train


Could the Central Intelligence Agency, the nation's vital eyes and ears abroad, once again turn back to spy on law-abiding Americans and gather their names in surveillance files?

Presidents Johnson and Nixon let that happen and Presidents Ford and Carter issued orders against it. Last spring the Reagan Administration, which had pledged to ''unshackle'' the spy service, raised the possibility of a return to domestic spying with the first draft of a new intelligence order. Now the President has signed a revised order that is not reassuring.

The true domestic powers of the C.I.A. are to be spelled out in another, secret set of directives. The secrecy isn't new; the Carter Administration also kept two sets of books. But as the C.I.A. was the first to complain, some of the secret Carter procedures were more restrictive than the published ones. The Reagan rules are likely to be too permissive unless Congress increases its vigilance in overseeing the procedures.

When Congress created the C.I.A. in 1947, it envisioned an agency relatively unfettered by law, operating almost exclusively abroad while the F.B.I. stood guard on the home front. But the line between foreign and domestic activities is often fine. Consider, for example, the agency's need to create a cover for a spy by setting him up in some innocent-looking American setting before he is sent abroad on assignment.

This sometimes necessary ability to operate in the United States was subject to abuse. An extreme example was Operation Chaos, inspired by President Johnson's conviction that opponents of the Vietnam War, even those who broke no law, had foreign sup-port. He ordered the C.I.A. to prove it, and the agency attempted to do so by compiling thousands of surveillance files that named hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The post-Watergate reforms required reasonable suspicion of a foreign connection before Americans could be catalogued or spied on. That also protected American businessmen from surveillance in their activities abroad. The Reagan order unshackles the agency in varying degress, by requiring less suspicion of foreign ties as a condition of domestic surveillance. Thus only Congressional oversight can make sure that the C.I.A. does not again abuse its powers.

Mr. Reagan did not, however, turn back the clock to the days when Presidents decreed no limits at all. Rather than discard the Ford-Carter orders, he substituted his own. And it specifically recognizes the right of the Senate and House intelligence committees to obtain confidential oversight information. The rule of law thus remains embedded in the strange soil of intelligence. More is needed, however, if civil liberties are to be truly protected. The Ford and Carter orders were, by design, only first steps toward the safeguard of a Congressional charter for the C.I.A. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act made another advance by requiring court warrants for wiretaps and bugs.

The Reagan Administration shows no enthusiasm for a C.I.A. charter. The work of Congress, however diligently it polices the executive order, won't be finished until it produces one.


The rapid introduction of new movies, rock shows and family feature films is creating a boom in video cassette sales and rentals. But within this market, dealers say, the adult X-rated tapes remain a major factor.

These tapes, which were the early mainstay of the market, may be losing some market share, but they are increasing their dollar volume. In addition, they are solidifying their hold in the cities and beginning to move into the suburbs, although many image-conscious retailers tend to play down their popularity.

Estimates of video pornography's market share range from 20 percent to 50 percent. As recently as 1978, such features accounted for up to 70 percent of rentals and sales in the video cassette business, which is expected to total about $1 billion this year, up from $600 million in 1981.

Art Morowitz, co-owner of Sound-Video Unlimited, a national distributor, and sole owner of Video Shack stores, a local chain, said that adult sex film sales today account for ''20 percent or less'' of all cassette sales, both in his stores and nationally as well.

At Video Shack, which was one of the first metropolitan area retailers, opening in 1978, Mr. Morowitz said that his inventory of adult features accounts for ''an important part of the business, but it's not the reason we're in business.''

While some analysts agreed with Mr. Morowitz's estimate, others said it was far too low. Video magazine, for example, in a story in the February issue, estimates that adult video cassettes account for about 40 percent of the market. ''I'll stand by that,'' said Bruce Apar, the magazine's editor and co-publisher. ''Twenty percent would definitely se em to me to be an underestimate.'' People 'Don't Brag'

Allan Raphael, an analyst with Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, said sex tapes account for at least 30 percent, and possibly as much as 50 percent, of the videotape market. ''People in this business don't brag about their X-rated cassette sales,'' he said. ''It's not in their interest to portray themselves as pornographers.''

According to Mr. Raphael the average video cassette retailer no longer operates in the seedy peep show districts like those around 42d Street in New York. Rather, he said, as the number of other titles available has expanded, and as family feature films became available, they have moved to the suburbs.

''They bill themselves as 'home entertainment centers,' '' he said, ''even though the whole back wall might be lined with the adult titles.''

Indeed, the exodus of videotape retailers from red-light district to suburban shopping center has paralleled the increase in the variety of tapes that such retailers have to sell. Moreover, many of the suburban stores that sell and rent videotapes do not specialize in them. 'Certain Standard' Sought

And not all of these stores stock X-rated films. Little Professor Books, for example, in Great Neck, L.I., carries feature film titles but nothing X-rated. Sal Cimilluca, the shop's owner, said he considered carrying them, ''But this is a conservative community. I could see that people expected a certain standard. I couldn't risk offending them.''

Richard Baldi, owner of Consumer Video, in Commack, L.I., said that adult tapes accounted for 35 to 40 percent of the sales in his tape shop, which started as a sideline in his vacuum cleaner store last year.

Another tape retailer, in Somerville, N.J., who asked not to be identified, said he kept X-rated adult titles in the back room of his appliance store. ''You have to specifically ask for them,'' he said. ''I can't risk an open display.''

Mr. Morowitz agreed that some retailers may play down the importance of the adult cassette sales, but maintained the accuracy of his figures. ''It doesn't do well to play up the adult business we're doing because it's not what the business is all about,'' he said.

Indeed, at Video Stop Inc., in New York, Jeff Padnick, a co-owner, said that sales and rentals of adult films accounted for only about a quarter of his business. ''The public has been misled to believe that home video is 'home porn,' '' he said. ''That's just not true.'' 'Still a Lot of Demand'

Robert J. Friedman, co-owner of the San Francisco-based Captain Video chain, also put adult film sales in the 20 percent range. ''Two years ago, when we started out, it was 30 percent of the business,'' he said. ''But there's still a lot of demand.''

Certainly, part of the problem in estimating a market share for adult videotapes may simply be a question of definition. For example, if sales rather than rentals are stressed, sources in the business say, then the figures may be misleading.

According to Mr. Apar of Video magazine, the trend in the retail cassette business is toward rentals rather than sales. Analysts said the ratio of rentals to sales is 12 to 1. Adult tapes, Mr. Apar added, are leading that trend.

''You have to look at total revenue,'' Mr. Apar said. ''A segment could lose sales in a current year and still maintain its market share.''

Another problem of definition concerns the classification of the tapes. According to retailers, distributors and analysts, X-rated films are becoming more sophisticated, and budgets are getting bigger as the market continues to expand.

Al Goldstein, publisher of Screw magazine, said that retailers may be underestimating their sales by focusing only on ''hard-core'' films. In the past, Mr. Goldstein said, X-rated films were seen and judged almost exclusively by men.

''The product is changing today because more couples are seeing it,'' he said. ''Now they're actually trying to introduce plots and characters with real problems - real films with sex.''

According to Mr. Morowitz of Video Shack, which said that ' 'Bad Girls'' was the most popular X-rated film in December, just about allthe current growth in the adult segment of vi deotapes can be attributed to the number of home video record ers being sold. ''Most adult buying is done by people who've just bo ught a machine and want to have a tape or two around,'' Mr. Morowitz said. Mr. Goldste in agreed, but took that point a step further. ''People want to look at the forbidden,'' he said. ''They're not buying these machines to l ook at 'Superman.' What's the point of that?''

Illustrations: photo of Art Morowitz in his store in Manhattan


Two questions left over from a recent chat got me thinking again about people’s fixation with the home mortgage deduction.

Understandably, around tax time people wonder if they are getting all of the deductions and credits they are entitled to take. One of the most coveted tax breaks is for mortgage interest.

So revered is this deduction that some folks who have the money to pay off their mortgages struggle to decide whether it even makes sense to be debt-free. Here’s some examples:

Q: I have enough money in savings to pay off my mortgage in full and still have a cushion for emergencies. The money in the savings account earns far less than the interest rate on the mortgage.

People are telling me that paying off the mortgage will negatively affect my taxes, since I will no longer have that deduction. But it seems to me that I only get a benefit of a portion of the money I pay out for the interest.

I can live within my means without the mortgage payment and I do not live large (no cable, no cellphone, etc.) but I can’t with it. It is important to me to max out my retirement savings/401(k), and that takes up a chunk of my paycheck. By the way, I’m single with no kids and in my 50s. What do you think?

A: I know I’ll get letters from people who will disagree with me, but I say go for being debt-free — with a caveat.

If you itemize deductions on your tax return, you can usually deduct the interest you pay on a mortgage for your main home. The home mortgage deduction is different from a tax credit, a distinction that is sometimes lost on people trumpeting the tax break as a key reason to get a home or keep a mortgage. A tax credit reduces dollar-for-dollar the taxes you owe. A deduction eliminates only a percentage of the tax.

If you don’t have a mortgage, you may pay more in taxes, but not as much as you would have to pay in annual interest on the home loan, especially in the beginning years. You are right on the money to appreciate how illogical it is to keep a mortgage just for the tax break.

Because of the mortgage interest deduction, many people are enticed into buying a home before they are ready. Yes, the deduction is a nice bonus. But it shouldn’t be the primary reason to get a home or to hold on to the loan if you can afford to pay it off early.

By the way, many people don’t even take the deduction. “Close to half of homeowners with mortgages — most of them middle- and lower-income families — receive no benefit from the deduction,” writes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Here’s my caveat about paying off your mortgage: Be careful about getting rid of your savings in the current economy. Really think about whether you are vulnerable to losing your job, because if it takes you a long time to find employment, or you can’t work because of health reasons, you could easily use up your emergency fund.

I don’t suggest that you clean out your savings or sell all of your investments to pay off your mortgage. You don’t want to be house-rich and cash-poor, meaning all your money is locked into the equity in your home — equity, I might add, that you can tap only by borrowing against your home or by selling it.

But since you have a good emergency fund and retirement savings, and you can still pay off your mortgage with money from outside of those two pots, I’d do it.

I often ask people this: If you had a paid-off home, would you take out a loan just so you could deduct the interest?

I hope you would say, “Absolutely not, that’s crazy.”

Q: My mother is turning 57 and is thinking about buying a house. She’s been renting for more than eight years, and from what I can tell the costs really add up. I think that it’s a good and financially savvy move tax-wise. I still think it’s a good investment and probably cheaper than continuing to rent for years down the road. What do you think?

A: The tax advantage of buying a home shouldn’t be front and center when considering if it’s prudent to buy a home, whether you’re 27 or 57.

Your mother should factor in when she wants to retire and whether her retirement income can handle a mortgage.

She might qualify for a mortgage with her current income, but she’s nearing the typical retirement years. She needs to ask herself a lot of other questions and make sure she can afford a mortgage, based not just on the monthly payment. There are a lot of other costs and issues associated with homeownership.

Summary: Michelle Singletary’s column addresses home mortgage deduction pros and cons. Two questions left over from a recent chat got me thinking again about people’s fixation with the home mortgage deduction. Understandably, around tax time people wonder if they are getting all of the deductions and credits they are entitled to take. One of the most coveted tax breaks is for mortgage interest. So revered is this deduction that some folks who have the money to pay off their mortgages struggle to decide whether it even makes sense to be debt-free. Here’s some examples:


A fancy coffee company making headlines in the business press? Only in San Francisco.

On Thursday, Blue Bottle Coffee revealed it has raised $70 million in a new funding round led by Fidelity, according the Financial Times. It’s seeking to raise an additional $5 million from individual investors.

Though the company has since expanded its presence to New York City, Los Angeles, and even Japan, Blue Bottle is one of the main faces of San Francisco’s popular “third-wave coffee” trend—fancy language for the movement of artisanal coffee shops that charge you $4 for cup of coffee you waited 10 minutes to receive. (You can guess how I feel about these shops.)

Blue Bottle, along with rivals Sightglass and Philz, have become darlings of the tech scene in San Francisco, raising money from investors you’d normally see doling out term sheets to startups building software, social networks, and so on.

Blue Bottle recently made headlines when it acquired Tartine, a San Francisco-based artisanal (see a trend here?) bakery, in a deal that was affectionately described as Silicon Valley’s version of the Starbucks-La Boulange marriage—just with longer lines and pour-over coffee.

Blue Bottle is set to open more retail locations, including for Tartine, and that’s likely what the new funding will mostly go towards. It previously raised $45.7 million in funding from True Ventures, Index Ventures, Morgan Stanley, and others.

Summary: One of Silicon Valley's darling coffee companies grabs more funding as it continues to expand its slow-roasted coffee shops.


Goddard House, a Jamaica Plain nursing home that closed in 2012, will be redeveloped as 169 residential units, according to the developers.

Real estate developers Eden Properties and Samuels & Associates said Friday that they plan to buy and redevelop the former nursing home, which closed in September 2012 because of financial pressures. The developers didn’t say whether the property would be condominiums or rental apartments, and a spokeswoman for the project wouldn’t reveal a price because the sale has yet to close.

The project will consist of 108 units in the former nursing home and 61 units in a new building to be put up on the site. It is a collaboration between the brothers Mike Samuels, who leads Eden Properties along with Noah Maslan, and Steven Samuels, whose firm Samuels & Associates has built several major projects in the Fenway.

Goddard House still operates a senior assisted-living facility in Brookline, but the closure of its Jamaica Plain facility led to criticism from some residents and neighbors.

“We were pleased to identify a developer who shared our commitment to preserving the historic Goddard building,” said Elizabeth Molodovsky, Chair of the Board of Goddard House, in a statement. “The combined Eden and Samuels team also understood the importance of engaging the community on this project.”

Few other details were contained in the project’s letter of intent, which all major projects must file with the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The developers said they planned to submit more details to city officials in August.

Summary: The former nursing home that went under in 2012 will be redeveloped as 169 residences, according to a letter filed with Boston zoning officials.


Christians perform to celebrate the Christmas eve at a Christian church on Christmas Eve in Chengdu in southwest China's Sichuan province. (AAP)

A Chinese city has banned schools from holding Christmas events, highlighting official suspicions about the increasingly popular festival because of its foreign origins.

China's Christian population, currently estimated at around 60 million, is rapidly growing and Christmas is increasingly marked in the country ruled by the officially atheist Communist Party.

But the government education bureau in Wenzhou, an eastern Chinese coastal city sometimes called "China's Jerusalem" because of its large Christian population, banned schools from holding "Christmas-related" events, the Global Times reported.

Local officials "hope schools can pay more attention to Chinese traditional festivals instead of Western traditions", said the tabloid, which has close ties to the Communist Party.

Interest in Christmas has grown in China as an occasion for shopping, with marketeers using everything from saxophones and Smurfs to steam trains to get consumers to open their wallets.

But authorities in Wenzhou this year launched a demolition campaign aimed at local churches, with more than 400 forced to remove visible crosses and some completely destroyed.

The ban came as a university in central China required students to watch a documentary about Chinese sage Confucius instead of celebrating Christmas.

"Be good sons and daughters of your country, stand against kitsch Western holidays," a banner on the campus of Northwest University in the ancient city of Xi'an said, according to photographs posted online.

"Resist the expansion of Western culture," read another.

College students wearing traditional Chinese clothing hold slogans in a campaign to boycott Christmas celebrations on a street in Changsha city, central China’s Hunan province. (AAP)

A university spokesman told the state-run Guangming Daily that the school appealed to the students to pay more attention to Chinese traditional culture, and not to "idolise foreign festivals".

The newspaper added: "Each year Christmas brings debate, with one side saying that the festival can bring a lot of new fun things, and another side saying that we should not fawn over foreign things and overlook Chinese traditional festivals."

China's Communist party periodically issues broadsides against "Western cultural infiltration" amid growing consumption of foreign movies, music and other goods.

The microblog of the ruling party mouthpiece, the People's daily, displayed pictures of around 10 university students in the central province of Hunan holding an anti-Christmas street protest.

"Resist Christmas," read banners held up by the students, who wore traditional Chinese outfits. "Chinese people should not celebrate foreign festivals."

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Summary: A Chinese city has banned schools from holding Christmas events, highlighting suspicions about the increasingly popular festival because of its foreign origins.


07/23/2015 AT 05:50 PM EDT

If you've ever eaten raw cookie dough straight out of the fridge, you have at least one thing in common with Justine Ezarik. And if you've done this more than once – but, really, who's counting? – maybe you, too, could make a career out of recording yourself doing things like eating raw cookie dough ice-cream sandwiches.

Ezarik, 31, known to her 2 million-plus YouTube fans as iJustine, has built herself an online empire over the past nine years creating clever, relatable content (much like

). In a time when stardom feels like a click away, the Internet is saturated with people taking cues from Ezarik. "I'm lucky that I still enjoy this," she tells PEOPLE of being among the first to stake a claim in the world of online videos (a world that's taking center stage

). "I love creating content and making people laugh."

She also loves ... wearing sweats? Yup – here's what else you need to know about the YouTube queen.

A 300-page phone bill wasn't a total loss for Ezarik,

documenting the decidedly expensive headache became one of her first big viral moments. (Her tech videos continue to be among her most popular to this day.)

Ezarik remembers the day her parents brought home their first computer when she was 7 years old. "I lost my mind," she says. "It was something that I was really into and could really focus on."

In 2007, she clocked out of her job at a chiropractor's office for the last time to dedicate herself to her online career. She recalls of the day she resigned, "[My boss] was like, 'You can't quit! You'll never find a job that pays as much as I pay you!'" (Yeah, about that ...)

Attention iJustine fans: Ezarik says she reads comments on the regular. "I'm on Twitter all day long," she adds.

Ezarik tries to shoot videos every day, which requires that thing called a hairbrush. "I hate putting on makeup," she says. "When I brush my hear, I'm ready to make some videos. That's the hardest part – putting on clothes that aren't sweats."

Summary: You have more in common with the vlogger than you think


The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged Kraft Foods Group and Mondelez Global with manipulating wheat futures and cash wheat prices, the agency announced Wednesday.

The regulator said it was seeking a permanent injunction from future violations by the two companies, as well as disgorgement and civil monetary penalties. Both companies' stocks were largely unchanged after the announcement.

The CFTC suit alleges that Kraft and Mondelez "developed, approved, and executed" in early December 2011 a strategy to buy a six-month supply of wheat for $90 million in futures.

The complaint charges that the companies "never intended to take delivery of this wheat and instead executed this strategy expecting that the market would react to their enormous long position by lowering cash wheat prices and strengthening the spread between December 2011 wheat and March 2012 wheat futures."

Read MoreCramer: Missed Kraft before the merger? Don't sweat it!

Those price changes did take place, according to the CFTC, and Kraft and Mondelez allegedly gained more than $5.4 million on the move.

"This case goes to the core of the CFTC's mission: protecting market participants and the public from manipulation and abusive practices that undermine the integrity of the derivatives markets," Aitan Goelman, the CFTC's director of enforcement, said in a press release.

"A market participant who is not happy with cash prices available to it may not resort to manipulative trading strategies in an attempt to artificially lower that price," he added.

Kraft said it did not expect the matter to have a financially material impact and that Mondelez International would predominantly bear the costs of the matter.

The complaint focused primarily on trading that occurred before Kraft spun off Mondelez, Kraft said.

Meanwhile, Mondelez said that any fine issued by a court, or the result of any settlement agreement, "will not be material to investors."

—Reuters contributed to this report.

Summary: The CFTC charged Kraft Foods Group and Mondelez Global with manipulating what futures and cash wheat prices, the agency announced Wednesday.


Applications for U.S. home mortgages rose in the latest week, an industry group said on Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, rose 4.7 percent to 404.1 in the week ended Jan. 17.

The index hit its lowest level since December 2000 at the end of last year, soon after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced it would start pulling back on its $85 billion per month bond-buying program as the economy grows strong enough to stand on its own.

The interest rate on fixed 30-year mortgages averaged 4.57 percent last week, the lowest level since November 2013 and down 9 basis points from the previous week.

The MBA's seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications rose 9.9 percent. The gauge of loan requests for home purchases, a leading indicator of home sales, slipped 3.6 percent.

The survey covers over 75 percent of U.S. retail residential mortgage applications, according to MBA.

Summary: The Mortgage Bankers Association said its index of mortgage application activity rose in the latest week.


"[The placement of HD-981 is] less about practically developing that specific block, and more about the Chinese sending a calculated and pretty aggressive warning to the Vietnamese that they aren't OK with the Vietnamese developing there," said Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But after years of planning to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea, CNOOC could hardly have placed the rig in a less promising location. The area has less than 1 million barrels of oil equivalent in proved and probable reserves, economist Alexander Metelitsa of the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in an email to CNBC.

Read MoreUS concerned about incident in South China Sea

The U.S. Geological Survey study "did not assess this part of the South China Sea to have any significant oil or gas containing basins," Metelitsa said.

State-owned CNOOC has aggressively moved forward with plans to get into the deepwater drilling business, said Kang Wu, vice chairman for Asia at international energy consultancy Facts Global Energy. That means stretching out into new territory.

"China has been [drilling] offshore for many years, and they've been producing OK … but that kind of oil is running out," said Wu. "If you want to expand your production base, you have to go out."

CNOOC did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.

Summary: China's expansion of its oil operations is only part of the reason behind its rising conflict with Vietnam.


Timepiece snobs, get ready to scoff.

A bullish report from JPMorgan projects that Apple will ship 26 million Apple Watches in 2015, just short of the 28.2 million watches exported from Switzerland globally last year.

The firm makes the comparison because it believes customers who bought Swiss watches priced below 500 francs ($538) are a good gauge of the demographics of the would-be Apple Watch user.

"We believe that sub-$500 watches are likely to be the main target category for Apple even though the company is likely to also offer luxury priced models in our opinion," wrote the analyst Rod Hall in a note Wednesday to clients. "Though we do not believe that Swiss makers represent all of the addressable market for Apple Watch we do believe they represent a significant proportion of the addressable market."

Summary: The Apple Watch will challenge the king of watchmaking, Switzerland, in just its first year of sales, according to a new report.


Read MoreHow traders cashed in big on the GE deal

But it appears the trader wasn't done yet, or else someone followed suit. A second trade was executed 15 minutes later with the same strike prices and on the same size. This time, though, the trader was able to collect $68,000. Thus, if the trade was put on my a single trader, that party took in a total $108,000 by simultaneously buying the December 30-strike calls and selling the 26-strike puts.

So what's the impetus behind the complex strategy?

"If the stock is between $26 and $30 on December expiration, they take the premium in and they have a lot of leverage to the upside," explained Dan Nathan, co-founder of RiskReversal.com.

The trade's risk is if the stock falls back below $26. If that happens, the trader would be forced to buy GE shares at that price even if the market values is less.

Shares of General Electric closed at $27.63 on Monday, 3 percent lower than its Friday close, but opened slightly higher on Tuesday.

Summary: One options trader is betting that General Electric will hold its recent gains for the next several months.


"There are no signs of peculiar movements," South Korean defense ministry deputy spokesman Na Seung-yong told a briefing. Na said a no-sail warning had not been sent to Seoul or the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

North Korea has reported to the IMO before previous long-range missile launches, which it has claimed were rockets to launch satellites. The North is under U.N. sanctions banning it from developing ballistic missile technologies.

Read MoreNorth Korea wants to become 'a country of mushrooms'

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is due to start a three-day visit to South Korea on Thursday.

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency quoted unidentified government officials as saying the no-sail warning has been in effect since April 1 and could indicate that a launch of a mid-range Rodong missile was "possible", according to an official quoted by Yonghap.

North Korea last test-fired its mid-range Rodong missile, which has a design range of 1,300 km (800 miles), in March 2014, while the leaders of South Korea, Japan and the United States were meeting to discuss the threat from the North.

Pyongyang did not issue a no-sail warning before that launch.

North Korea frequently test fires short-range missiles into the sea, often in what are seen as a response to the U.S.-South Korean drills, which it denounces as a preparation for war.

Last month, North Korea tested two short-range missiles off its eastern coast without designating a no-sail zone, drawing protest from Japan.

North Korea, which has threatened to carry out a fourth nuclear test, could be close to being able to put a nuclear warhead on a missile, some experts say, with the mid-range Rodong the most likely to be used.

Its leader, Kim Jong Un, visited one of its navy units, supervising torpedo attack drills, state media said on Saturday.

Summary: North Korea has declared a no-sail zone for its ships off its east coast, suggesting more missile launches are possible.


Chinese President Xi Jinping has lauded his country's position as a major world power, as Beijing marked the 70th anniversary of victory over Japan with a show of strength in Tiananmen Square.

Speaking on the Tiananmen Rostrum where Mao Zedong declared the formation of the People's Republic in 1949, Xi said "total victory" over Japan "restored China's status as a major country in the world".

Major world leaders stayed away from the military parade, with disquiet growing over China's increasing willingness to throw its weight around in territorial disputes.

The display of might comes as the Chinese navy pushes further away from domestic shores, challenging US dominance, with five of its vessels spotted in the Bering Sea for the first time

After a 70-gun salute, thousands of troops marched in formation through the square, with tanks and missiles following and a flypast by around 200 aircraft in blue skies overhead.

Xi said that Beijing will "not seek hegemony" and China's military - the largest in the world - would be reduced by 300,000 troops.

Authorities have previously made personnel cuts to the 2.3 million strong People's Liberation Army in a bid to make it a more efficient fighting force.

Beijing officially calls the conflict the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War, and regularly criticises Tokyo for what it says is insufficient contrition over wartime atrocities.

But it has repeatedly insisted the parade is not aimed at any particular country, including Japan.

"The unyielding Chinese people fought gallantly and finally won total victory against the Japanese militarist aggressors, thus preserving China's 5,000-year-old civilisation and upholding the cause of peace," Xi said.

He described the conflict as "a decisive battle between justice and evil, between light and darkness".

The equipment on show for the first time included DF-21D missiles, an anti-ship ballistic missile seen as a "carrier-killer" that could alter the balance of power with the US in the Pacific Ocean.

Under Xi, Beijing is moving farther away from former leader Deng Xiaoping's dictum to "hide one's capabilities, bide one's time".

Decades of double-digit budget increases have transformed the military, giving Beijing the confidence to push a program of artificial island building in the South China Sea, and vigorously proclaim its sovereignty over disputed outcrops controlled by Japan.

The sight of military muscle in Tiananmen Square, where Chinese troops crushed protests in 1989, is likely to have played a part in keeping some democratic-minded Western leaders away.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was the highest-profile foreign guest, given a prominent position next to Xi on the rostrum.

Also present were leaders of Kazakhstan and Venezuela, as well as Sudan's Omar al-Bashir - indicted by the International Criminal Court - and authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

More mainstream guests included South Korea's Park Geun-Hye, whose country was colonised by Japan, Jacob Zuma of South Africa, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Chinese authorities mobilised hundreds of thousands of Beijing citizens and closed roads all over the city, as well as shuttering the capital's airports.

The Communist Party uses nationalism as a key part of its claim to a right to rule, and China's official media have carried a litany of articles on past Japanese atrocities, while war dramas have been constant theme on television.

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Summary: China's "total victory" over Japan in WWII restored its status as a major country in the world, President Xi Jinping says.


Los Angeles may soon be implementing one of the highest minimum wages in the country, at least if the city's mayor has his way.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Mayor Eric Garcetti is expected to announce on Labor Day a three-year plan to implement a $13.25 minimum hourly wage. That dollar figure would receive annual inflation-based increases, the paper reported, citing businesses and local government officials briefed on the proposal.

Read MoreIMF calls on the US to hike its minimum wage rate

The plan has faced a "cool reception" from many major business groups worried about costs, according to the Times. Some union leaders, meanwhile, are reportedly unhappy because the plan does not start at a previously stated labor goal of $15 per hour.

A spokesman for the mayor would not confirm the plan, the L.A. Times reported, but acknowledged that Garcetti had met with leaders across the city to "discuss ways to help L.A. families and our economy thrive."

Read More Seattle approves highest US minimum wage

Read MoreHow feel-good companies navigate minimum-wage fray

Summary: The plan has faced a "cool reception" from many major business groups worried about costs, according to the L.A. Times.


Big-hearted billionaires could be one of the biggest limiting factors to the creation of a trillionaire. Buffett and Gates have been the most vocal with their Giving Pledge campaign to convince the world's richest to leave a majority of their fortune to philanthropic preferences.

"This Buffett/Gates approach has broad appeal," Kraus said. "Really wealthy people now are taking greater steps to distribute wealth in their own lifetime. ... To extent the extent that there is a limiting factor on someone becoming a trillionaire, this might be it," Kraus said.

Another way to think about Bill Gates' focus on nonprofit work is, simply put, boredom. "If you take an ambitious, talented person with a zero net worth, accumulating wealth would be reasonably high on their list of priorities," Lord said. "But as net worth goes up, most folks lose interest. I doubt Bill Gates thinks much about accumulating more wealth these days, and he certainly doesn't dedicate his time and energy in that direction. ... The same could happen to Elon Musk."

But philanthropy may not serve as a limiting factor for all, and in the end, this may just ensure that the greedier billionaires will take the lead from Buffett and Gates. "Some people, like Sam Walton and the Koch brothers, they never seem to lose focus," Lord said. So the boredom factor ultimately will not preclude a trillionaire—and not necessarily lead to a Giving Pledge commitment.

Read MoreWill Wall Street still be around in 25 years?

If the U.S. is going to be able to boast the 21st century's first trillionaire, tax policy will have to continue on its current path.

When Ronald Reagan took office as president of the United States, the top personal income tax rate in the U.S. was 70 percent (91 percent back when Eisenhower was in office). Tax policy in the U.S. in recent decades has figured prominently in wealth accumulation.

Kraus sees few signs of this trend reversing. "From a social standpoint, the rich are getting richer, yet the notion of social mobility is so central to the fabric of America, and people buy into that even if it's against their own best interest." Income inequality and redistribution of wealth have not been in the top set of considerations for voters. "I don't see a pressing desire by the electorate or D.C. to change," Kraus added.

Oxfam conducted an assessment of how much presidents talk about income inequality—or proxies for that term—in State of the Union addresses over a hundred years, and found a massive amount of variation, O'Brien said. "There were eras where if you didn't talk about it you had no chance of succeeding. In 1912, we had four progressives and a socialist running for president."

Read More For super-rich, investing to see dramatic changes

Since LBJ's war on poverty there has been a significant falling off in that conversation, and that trend exacerbated under Reagan.

"The money will have to come from somewhere to deal with debt and the deficit, so the 'tax the rich' philosophy will make some gains" but it won't reverse the trend and will only limit even greater concentration, Kraus said.

Summary: Income inequality is growing and the rich keep getting richer. In 25 years a serial entrepreneur with grand visions may cross the wealth threshold.


Airbnb's valuation is set to rise to $13 billion, up from $10 billion earlier this year, as it prepares an employee stock sale, according to people familiar with its plans.

The valuation would make the accommodation site second only to Uber in the rankings of Silicon Valley's most valuable private companies, at a time when some venture capitalists are becoming concerned about the rate at which start-ups are spending capital.

Airbnb, which overhauled the design of its site and apps this summer, is without a chief financial officer after the departure of Andrew Swain last month, which may make an initial public offering unlikely in the near term.

To allow employees to cash in on some of their stock in the meantime, Airbnb is talking to its existing investors about allowing them to buy back tens of millions of dollars worth of shares, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Read MoreSan Francisco moves closer to legalizing Airbnb

The funds would go to staff rather than raising new capital for the company, they said, and the terms are still being finalized. Airbnb declined to comment.

Momentum in private tech companies' valuations shows no sign of slowing despite recent gyrations on the public markets. Earlier this month, e-commerce company Square raised $150 million from investors at a valuation of $6 billion, which has doubled in two years.

Uber, whose offices are in the same building as Square in San Francisco, raised $1.2 billion in fresh capital at a $17 billion valuation this summer.

While few Silicon Valley investors will go as far as declaring that there is a another bubble in the tech world, some have begun to voice certain worries.

Summary: Airbnb's valuation is set to rise to $13 billion, up from $10 billion, as it prepares an employee stock sale, The Financial Times reports.


Deliciously Decadent Line Makes Better-for-You Desserts Easier Than Ever Before

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Miss Jones Baking Co., a modern American baking brand and maker of the first-ever organic ready-to-use frostings and complementary organic baking mixes, today announced its nationwide launch. The new frostings, cake mixes and brownie mixes are made with pure and simple ingredients, are Certified Organic and contain no hydrogenated oils, trans fats, or artificial colors and flavors. Available in the baking aisle of natural and mainstream grocers and online, Miss Jones Baking Co. frostings and baking mixes are crafted to give consumers delicious, indulgent and better-for-you baking options so everyone can bake with love.

“As a lifelong and passionate baker, I wanted to create a new kind of baking company that used only the highest quality ingredients and delivered the delicious homemade taste that I couldn’t find in other natural and conventional baking mixes and baked goods. I chose to launch the brand with a cornerstone line of products that are truly unique to the baking category and satiate consumer hunger for great-tasting organic ready-to-use frostings and baking mixes,” said Sarah Jones Garibaldi, founder and CEO of Miss Jones Baking Co. “Like so many people, I’ve searched for an easier way to create and enjoy the treats we love, without the ingredients we don’t. That’s why I became inspired to create Miss Jones Baking Co., because when you share dessert with the people you love, you should feel good about what you’re feeding them. My innovative line of baking mixes and frostings eliminate the worry of consuming unpronounceable ingredients while delivering mouthwatering flavors that taste homemade.”

Created to make baking easy, better-for-you, and delicious, the baking mixes require only the addition of eggs, oil and water, and the frostings are designed to be used straight from the jar. Miss Jones Baking Co. products will be available nationally at Sprouts and Amazon.com, and in select Whole Foods Markets, Safeway, Wegmans, Kroger and other natural grocers with a suggested retail price of $4.99-$6.99. Varieties include:

All Miss Jones Baking Co. products are Certified Organic, made with pure and simple ingredients, and do not contain hydrogenated oils, trans fats, or artificial flavors and colors. For more information about Miss Jones Baking Co. or to purchase products online, visit www.missjones.co.

About Miss Jones Baking Co.Miss Jones Baking Co., a modern American baking brand, features the first-ever organic ready-to-use frostings and a complementary line of organic cake and brownie mixes that taste like homemade. Available in natural and mainstream grocers nationwide and online, Miss Jones Baking Co. is a new kind of baking company, created to provide only the best-tasting products made with pure and simple organic ingredients. Miss Jones’ cornerstone line of products replace bland natural cake mixes and chemical-filled frostings with an innovative new line of delicious, organic and trans fat-free baking products that are sure to make you and your loved ones smile. All Miss Jones Baking Co. products are Certified Organic and contain no hydrogenated oils, trans fats, artificial flavors or colors. To learn more about Miss Jones Baking Co., ‘Like’ us on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram and Pinterest.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150902005402/en/

Rachel Kay Public RelationsMalena Whetro, 858-243-4761Malena@rkpr.net

Source: Miss Jones Baking Co.

Summary: SAN FRANCISCO---- Miss Jones Baking Co., a modern American baking brand and maker of the first-ever organic ready-to-use frostings and complementary organic baking mixes, today announced its nationwide launch. Available in the baking aisle of natural and mainstream grocers and online, Miss Jones Baking Co. frostings and baking mixes are crafted to give...