Frank Stella once remarked that no artist needs to live beyond the age of 40. He made the comment many years ago, and the implication was that he had no intention of sticking around to witness the diminution of his own talent. It is a truism to say that artists do their most innovative work when they are young. It is also patently false.

On May 8, an exhibition of Stella's new work will open at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, and it is likely to draw wide attention. Now 66, Stella offers the allure of a man who has spent nearly half a century passionately defending the marginalized, rich tradition of abstract art -- and who, moreover, has a big mouth. He is currently embroiled in a highly public and rancorous feud with the leadership of the Museum of Modern Art, whose director he has described as ''clueless.''

True, people criticize museums all the time, but Stella is not just your average ferociously cultured malcontent. For years he was an art prince, the quintessential modern artist at the quintessential modern-art museum. In 1959, when he was 23 and just out of Princeton, he exhibited his historic ''Black Paintings'' -- severe, ruler-perfect pictures contrived from wide black stripes -- at the Modern. He remains the only living painter besides Jasper Johns who has been honored with two major exhibitions at the museum. The first was held in 1970; the second, in 1987; and together they seemed to guarantee him an exalted and unshakable place in the story of modern art.

But in the years since, the Modern, along with the rest of the art world, has tilted away from abstract painting and toward broader, socially encompassing forms like figurative painting, video and particularly photography. Stella is not the first artist to lament the direction of contemporary art, but he is probably the first to attribute the downfall of Western civilization to what he terms ''good grooming.''

''Most artists today would not be seen with dirty fingernails or unconfined hair,'' he said recently. ''Dirty hair is not part of the contemporary artistic image, any more than are oily pigment, the odor of turpentine or smears of charcoal.'' This, he said, explains the ascendancy of photography, a conveniently muss-free medium: ''Mechanical

means have been substituted for manual ones because they do not soil the self or the soul.''

Soul? that may not sound like a word that figures prominently in Stella's famously theoretical lexicon. When he began his career, Abstract Expressionism was the movement du jour, and artists everywhere were splashing out pictures that were supposed to look free and spontaneous. Stella, by contrast, intellectualized his moves. His pictures were brainy affairs that raised questions about the nature of painting. And in case the answers eluded you, he himself supplied them -- the first volume of his collected writings has already been published.

His ''Black Paintings,'' which made him famous almost overnight, are like anti-van Goghs. Each consists of a big rectangle symmetrically subdivided into right-angled patterns of stripes, and nowhere in their mute surfaces will you find a reference to the human figure, bowls of fruit or sun-dappled harbors in France. The sculptor Carl Andre once wrote of him: ''Frank Stella is not interested in expression or sensitivity. He is interested in the necessities of painting.'' The comment was intended as a compliment.

Stella himself put it more succinctly. ''What you see is what you see,'' he stated of his work in 1966, words that became the unofficial slogan of the Minimalist movement.

In truth, Stella's confident-sounding pronouncements pale in interest beside the ways in which he has flipped and reversed them over the years. The basic drift of his career has been away from the blunt purity of his black pictures and toward all-out baroque dramatics. In the early 70's, he stopped working on a flat canvas and began making three-dimensional constructions that jutted out from the wall and contained ever more exuberant arrangements of curving forms and fluorescent color. His goal, he is fond of saying, is to claim for the remains of abstract painting the narrative drama of older art.

Although Stella received a critical drubbing in the 90's, perhaps because his two shows at the Modern had left him overexposed, he won new admirers in November 2001 when he made his debut in Chelsea, the heart of the New York gallery scene. The show, held in a drafty garage annexed by the Paul Kasmin Gallery, brought together a group of hulking constructions that were so laden with expressionist gesture, so plainly over-the-top, they seemed as extreme in their brashness as the ''Black Paintings'' had been in their restraint. They made you think of a man willing to do anything short of suicide to escape the burden of his intellectual clarity. As Walter Robinson, the painter and editor in chief at Artnet.com, says, ''I admire Stella because he is making the ugliest art it is possible to make today.''

As a personality, Stella comes across as an extension of his high-I.Q. art. Even with his gray hair, he is reminiscent of a graduate student, a restless, slightly awkward presence in large crooked glasses and paint-splattered shoes. He's the kind of guy who has prospered in worldly terms -- in 1989, one of his early ''Black Paintings'' sold at auction for $5 million -- but looks as if he does not own a comb. His studio occupies a two-story building in the East Village and is littered with, among other things, fishing gear, mounds of books and countless packets of Chinese duck sauce evoking a lifetime of indifferent meals consumed during late nights of work.


While TIME’s editors will choose the TIME 100 — our annual list of the most influential people in the world — we want readers to have a say too. Cast your vote here for the people who you think have changed the world this past year, for better or worse.

Ready to cast your vote? Comment on any TIME Facebook post that includes #TIME100, tweet your vote using #TIME100 or head over to Time.com’s TIME 100 voting hub, where Pinnion’s technology is recording, visualizing and analyzing results as they are received. Votes from Twitter, Facebook and Time.com’s voting hub are pooled together to create the totals displayed on the site.

Voting closes at 11:59 p.m. EST on April 10, and the winner of our reader poll will be announced April 13. This year’s official TIME 100 list will be announced April 16.

Summary: Tell us who you think has changed the world this past year, for better or worse


Before she married Monaco’s Prince Rainier in 1956 and became real-life royalty, Grace Kelly was living a different kind of fairy tale: that of a talented young movie star who was, for all intents and purposes, a Hollywood princess.

In the fall of 1953 — after charming Gary Cooper in High Noon, and just before appearing in two hugely entertaining Hitchcock classics, Dial M for Murder and Rear Window — the cool blonde actress sat for LIFE photographer Loomis Dean for a series of stunning portraits that, for reasons lost to time, never made it into print.

Dean caught up with Kelly again in February 1954. The year was shaping up to be a busy one for the young star: In the span of a few months, she would add five films to her short but impressive resume, including the previously mentioned Hitchcock films and the movie for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress, The Country Girl.

Kelly seemed destined for a long career as a movie star. But in April 1955, she met Prince Rainier at the Cannes Film Festival, and her life took a dramatically different path. Accepting his proposal of marriage, she became princess of the principality of Monaco in 1956, retiring from Hollywood at just 26 years old. (That’s not a misprint; she retired from the movies at the absolute height of her career and of her popularity as an actress and star.)

Before she hit it big in films, Kelly was a player on the small screen. “Her TV plays have ranged from Berkeley Square to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Rich Boy” LIFE noted in 1952. “In one hectic 13-day period she played three roles: a college girl on Tuesday, a rich girl on Sunday and, eight days later, a country schoolteacher. Usually cast as a wholesome ingénue, she was happily surprised a few weeks ago to find herself on [the mystery-thriller series] Lights Out playing a provocative music hall singer in short skirts and black mesh stockings.”

“The basis for her success,” LIFE instructed its readers, “is her combination of freshness, ladylike virtue and underlying sex appeal that has led two of her directors to compare her with the early Ingrid Bergman.”

High praise — and for once, amid the incessant grind of Hollywood’s star-making machinery, wholly deserved (if perhaps just the slightest bit patronizing). Here, on the 30th anniversary of Grace Kelly’s death at the far-too-young age of 52, LIFE.com presents a series of photos — none of which originally ran in LIFE magazine — from her sessions with Loomis Dean.

Her good friend and Rear Window co-star Jimmy Stewart eulogized Kelly as “just about the nicest lady I ever met. Grace brought into my life … a soft, warm light every time I saw her, and every time I saw her was a holiday of its own.” These revealing pictures from the mid-1950s capture that soft, warm light — as well as Kelly’s famed, singular beauty — as completely as any portraits ever made of the beloved, short-lived star.

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Summary: On the anniversary of Grace Kelly's death at the far-too-young age of 52, LIFE.com presents a series of pictures of the star — none of which ran in LIFE magazine — by photographer Loomis Dean.


Well, now we understand why

just HAD to take a pic with a fighter after a Muay Thai match this week ... the dude nearly decapitated a grown man with a ferocious spinning back elbow!!!

As we previously reported, Jay and

had date night at a Muay Thai fight in Phuket Thailand a few days ago ... and sat in the front row when a guy named

Check out the insane footage ... Tobasi busts a move straight outta "Street Fighter 2" ... and knocks the other dude into another dimension.

Jay was so impressed, he went to the ring and snapped a pic with the champ.

Ya gotta think ... with Jay running his own sports agency, is it possible he's thinking of expanding into the MMA world??? We'll see ...

Summary: Well, now we understand why Jay Z just HAD to take a pic with a fighter after a Muay Thai match this week ... the dude nearly decapitated a grown man with…


That’s the message FedEx fdx delivered to investors over speculation that Amazon could develop its own delivery network and become a significant threat.

In recent months, Amazon amzn has made moves to buy a French shipping company and struck a deal with Boeing to lease planes, fueling speculations that the e-commerce giant wants to take on the delivery industry.

FedEx said any fears are overblown.

“The reality is it will be a daunting task requiring tens of billions of dollars in capital and years to build sufficient scale and density to replicate existing networks like FedEx,” said Mike Glenn, CEO of Fedex Services during the delivery and shipment company’s strong third-quarter earnings call Wednesday. He added that Amazon seems to be developing facilities geared toward local deliveries, while FedEx works on a broad global network.

Glenn also moved to extinguish concerns that Amazon creation of a delivery network could also mean the loss of a major customer. He told analysts that no single client represented more than 3% of revenue.

And it seemed shareholders believed him. Amazon’s shares dropped 3% in trading Thursday, while FedEx shares soared 10%.

Glenn’s analysis was echoed by research analysts at RBC Capital.

“It would be extremely difficult if not impossible for Amazon to replicate the cost efficiency of FedEx, UPS, or the USPS delivery network,” RBC analysts led by John Barnes wrote.

Even if Amazon did create such a network, it “would likely take years to complete, so we believe FedEx and UPS would have time to react,” the analysts wrote in a separate note Tuesday.

RBC Capital raised the company’s price target form $153 to $157 Thursday.

But not everyone believes an Amazon threat is over and done with.

Nomura Securities lowered Fedex’s target price form $190 to $180 a share, saying that perceived competition from Amazon could still weigh on the stock.

“While any new entrant is unlikely to achieve similar network density and revenue per stop near that of Fedex and UPS for the foreseeable future, Amazon’s strategic moves likely remain a threat to sentiment over the near term, even absent any EPS risk,” wrote a team of analysts at Nomura Securities led by Matt Troy.

Shares of fellow parcel service UPS ups also rose.

Summary: Although Amazon might find the cost of trying to grow into the delivery industry "daunting."


Where’s the best place to live if you’re female? For years, the answer has remained: go north, young woman. The Nordic region consistently ranks highest on the global gender parity charts, which grades nations on bridging gender gaps in political and economic empowerment. Some experts attribute the region’s success to gender quotas, which are used to boost women’s leadership on corporate boards and in government. The basic theory: more female boardroom directors mean more female CEOs.

It’s not quite working out that way.

A recent Wall Street Journal article offers a gender quota reality check: only 3 percent of 145 Nordic large-cap companies have a female chief executive. In Norway, the first country to pass legislation on corporate gender quotas (women must comprise 40 percent of corporate boards there), none of its 32 large cap companies has a female CEO.

This means it may be time to find a new set of nations to put on our gender parity pedestal; some new models are emerging in places you wouldn’t expect.

How did Scandinavia become a women’s empowerment mecca, anyway? Gender parity became known as a Scandinavian novelty back in the 1970s, when the region implemented its first successful legislative gender quotas as a response to pressures from women’s groups and female politicians. The government never employed a law or constitutional mandate to recruit women into politics; instead, political parties incorporated voluntary quota targets to improve female recruitment. “The pressure to increase women’s representation was applied to all political parties in Scandinavia,” says Professor Drude Dahlerup of Stockholm University, creating the illusion of a uniform gender quota program. Today, Scandinavian legislatures boast roughly 40 percent female political participation, the highest in the world.

Success in bridging the political gender gap encouraged countries within the region to tackle the next area of female disempowerment – the corporate sector. Unlike legislative gender quotas, corporate gender quotas arrived via national legislation.

Beyond the boardroom, the law seems to be having little effect: Female leadership at the managerial level is low and virtually nonexistent at the executive level. Proponents of gender quotas contend that quotas are necessary to overcome the systemic discrimination that has prevented women from reaching the C-suite. By helping women gain access to opportunities once elusive to them, they can then proceed to climb the proverbial ladder of success. Yet, quotas have seemingly failed to promote women in this way; as one Swedish banker points out, “even with a 50/50 division of male and female employees, all my managers are male.”

If the use of corporate gender quotas in the region most adept to bridge the corporate gender gap produces only marginal results, quotas may not be the solution to the problem – or at least not in the corporate realm. The irony is that “highly-developed” countries that have also implemented corporate gender quotas perform similarly to the Nordic countries. Spain (22 percent), Germany (14 percent), and Switzerland (13 percent) have some of the lowest proportions of women in senior management roles in the world, despite their own domestic policies addressing this issue.

Things aren’t much better in the United States, where female executive growth has remained stagnant. Although women comprise nearly half of the workforce, according to Catalyst, only 14.3 percent hold top executive office positions at Fortune 500 Companies and only 20 percent are in senior management roles.

So where are women climbing the corporate ladder? In countries you would probably least expect. The highest proportions of women with senior roles are in the BRICS nations–Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. There, women comprise 30 percent of senior management positions, which is higher than the global average (24 percent). What is more surprising is that none of these countries have enacted compulsory quotas or legislation addressing this issue. Russia has the highest proportion of women in senior management globally (43 percent) without this type of gender programming. The same applies for the neighboring Baltic States—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, and Armenia– which boast 30 percent or more. Between 2012 and 2013, China doubled the number of senior management roles held by women from 25 per cent to 51 per cent.

Why are women in emerging markets becoming business leaders faster than those in the developed world? Increased investment in women’s education is a major catalyst. Women are graduating from universities and graduate programs at higher rates than men and are better positioned for senior management positions when they open up. For Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, this growth can also be traced back to the promotion of women within Communist regimes. In the former Soviet Union, Communist leaders promoted women within rapidly expanding services sectors, such as health, education, and accounting. Equal opportunity is deeply embedded in Chinese society, which has helped boost gender equality (Mao Zedong famously said that “women hold up half the sky”). This plus rapid urbanization and low childcare burdens from China’s one-child policy enables more women to work.

Child planning and work-life balance challenges continue to be the most common reasons why women turn down senior positions within companies. Even among the Nordic countries where social and economic policies are especially supportive of working mothers, women typically begin to drop off in the middle of management trajectories, coinciding with the time they begin to have families.

That illuminates a flaw of the corporate board quota system: too much emphasis is placed on boosting numbers of women on top, instead of the middle. The theory that more women at the top will inspire women to strive to the top is problematic if there are no women to promote. The mid-career space is where companies need to find solutions to keep female talent strong. According to Sofia Falk, founder of Swedish company Wiminvest, companies would be wiser to offer management incentives to women in the form of private child care, grocery shopping, shared management responsibility, or technical solutions to work from home instead of more money or a company car.

Despite these mixed results, support for corporate gender quotas continues to grow. According to the 2014 International Business Report the proportion of business leaders who support the idea of quotas rose from 37 per cent to 45 per cent in the past year; this support includes businesses in regions that have yet to implement corporate quota policies, like Southeast Asia (55 percent) and Eastern Europe (43 percent). Gender quotas are a start, but smart companies will recognize that it will take a lot more – mentoring programs for women, stronger family support policies, and equal pay structures – to finally shatter those glass ceilings.

Maria Saab, J.D., is a research fellow at the New America Foundation, and a contributor to New America’s Global Gender Parity Initiative. This piece originally appeared at The Weekly Wonk.

Summary: Why Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, and Armenia (among others) are doing a better job with executive gender equality.


06/13/2016 AT 08:05 PM EDT

Before You Exit, the band touring with murdered

, made an emotional return to the venue where the singer was

On Monday, the band's merchandise manager Anthony Najarian took to

, describing the band's return to pick up their gear from Orlando Plaza Live where they played on Friday. (Grimmie was opening for the band.)

"So hard going back to the venue today to get our gear," Najarian wrote, addressing Grimmie. "We left the lights on in your green room and prayed over the area of your death. I will love you for all eternity and can't wait to see you again and have an epic Smash battle."

Along with his message, Najarian also shared a photo of a dressing room with flowers and a heart-shaped sign that read, "radiate."

Najarian and the band have

about their grief following the 22-year-old's death with Before You Exit, sharing a heartfelt statement on their band's account.

"Christina was such a loving, caring, beautiful person with the biggest heart. She was an absolutely incredible musician and an even better friend," the statement said. "We are so saddened by her passing and are completely heartbroken."

The statement from the band – which includes Connor McDonough, Riley McDonough and Toby McDonough – continued, describing Grimmie as a "carefree spirit," who was "always a constant beam of light and energy."

Grimmie was shot at her Orlando concert late Friday and was confirmed dead hours later by city police. Her representative later confirmed the news in a statement to PEOPLE.

"It is with a heavy heart that we can confirm that Christina has passed and went home to be with the Lord. She was shot at her show in Orlando, and unfortunately didn't survive the gun shot wounds," her rep said. "We ask at this time that you respect the privacy of her family and friends in their time of mourning."

Summary: Before You Exit returned to the Orlando Plaza where their tour mate was fatally shot


Vince Vaughn and the cast of Unfinished Business are injecting some humor into the stilted, campy world of office-themed stock images.

In a partnership with Twentieth Century Fox, iStock by Getty Images has released a set of images that, if they didn’t feature the likes of Vaughn, Dave Franco and Tom Wilkinson, could easily be confused with those ever-inspiring pictures from office PowerPoint presentations.

“We hope these images bring a smile to people’s faces as they recognise classic business stock concepts with a twist,” said Craig Peters, General Manager of iStock by Getty Images in a press release.

Twelve images will be released during a three-week roll-out plan. Check out the first four, released Monday, and decide if your next meeting could use a Hollywood twist.

Unfinished Business, set for release on Friday, is a comedy following Vaughn and his new company as they try to land a big deal in Germany.

Summary: Sprinkle a soupçon of celebrity on your next PowerPoint.


will not go down without a fight, now claiming ex-hubby

is making a play for money that could send her and her kids to the poor house.

Sources connected with Eddie tell TMZ ... Brandi's lawyer,

, fired off a letter to Eddie in response to his claim that he overpaid her support money to the tune of $114,738 ... and he wants that deducted from her share of their financial settlement.

We're told the letter Eddie just got is blistering ... accusing him of trying to sandbag Brandi with a bill she simply can't afford to pay.

What's more ... Rale says in the letter Eddie was asleep at the wheel ... under the judge's order he can't just wait 4 years and nail her ... if he suspected he was overpaying he had to demand an audit within 6 months.

Summary: Brandi Glanville will not go down without a fight, now claiming ex-hubby Eddie Cibrian is making a play for money that could send her and her kids to the…


Of all the aspects of Monday’s bailout deal that Greeks found humiliating, nothing drilled into their sense of pride quite like their government’s promise to sell off “valuable Greek assets” to the tune of 50 billion euros. The seven-page agreement, which European leaders thrashed out over the weekend, made no mention of where Greece is supposed to find that much property to sell. But as they scrambled for options, officials in Athens saw no way around the blood-curdling prospect of auctioning off Greek islands, nature preserves or even ancient ruins.

“It’s an affront,” says Georgios Daremas, a strategist and adviser to the Greek Ministry of Labor, Social Security and Social Solidarity. “It’s basically saying sell the memory of your ancestors, sell your history just so we can get something commercial for it,” he tells TIME on Monday. “This is an idea to humiliate Greeks.”

The idea of locking up Greek assets in a special fund emerged on Saturday from Germany, the biggest and one of the least forgiving of the creditor-nations involved in the talks. In order to guarantee repayment on loans to Greece, the German Finance Ministry even suggested moving the titles to Greek assets to an “external fund” in Luxembourg so that Athens could not renege on their sale. On this point, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras managed to fight off the Germans on Sunday, though it was one of the very few concessions he managed to get during the marathon talks.

“The deal is difficult, but we averted the pursuit to move state assets abroad,” Tsipras said in trying to put a positive spin on the bailout, which would see Greece take more than 80 billion euros in additional loans in order to stave off bankruptcy over the next three years.

Greek payments on its two previous bailouts were also meant come in part from the sale of state assets. Under the terms of its first bailout in 2010, Greece agreed to privatize around 50 billion euros in property and infrastructure as a way of raising money for its creditors. But only 3.2 billion euros have come from these sales to date. So Germany and other creditors have good reason to doubt the Greek commitment to privatization.

Going forward, Greece will have to stash its assets in a specially created fund and prepare them for sale “under the supervision of the relevant European Institutions,” according to the text of the bailout agreement published on Monday. Asked what kinds of assets the fund would include, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, one of the key European negotiators in the bailout talks, said “experts” would be brought in to settle this question. “I won’t give you any examples, because it’s not my specialty,” he told reporters in Brussels on Monday.

Most of the examples would have to come from the government’s land and real estate holdings, says Daremas, the government official in Athens. “That may include buildings, possible areas of land, and even islands,” he says. To protect the natural, historical and archaeological value of such real estate, Greece would need to pass laws and empower oversight bodies to make sure that “the new owner does not abuse or damage the property,” says Daremas.

Since Greek islands and plots of land often house ruins from ancient civilizations, some of these may also have to be sold, he added. “Maybe some archeological sites that are not developed,” Daremas says. “But if you have this as a private investment you also have to assume responsibility for developing the site, of course being monitored by [Greek] authorities.”

There are, of course, limits to the privatization of ancient artifacts. The treasures of Greek antiquity, such as the Acropolis in Athens, would never be sold, Daremas says. “That’s impossible. Their value is immeasurable.”

The idea of selling the Acropolis came up early in Greece’s debt crisis. In 2010, two conservative German lawmakers caused a furor in Greece by suggesting that ancient ruins should not be off limits to privatization. “Those in insolvency have to sell everything they have to pay their creditors,” Josef Schlarmann, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political party, said at the time. Since publishing those remarks, the Bild newspaper, Germany’s most popular tabloid, has continued to irritate Greeks by asking why the Acropolis cannot be sold to repay debts to Germany.

“This is black humor,” says Natalia Kosmidou, a tour guide at the Acropolis in Athens. “The Germans must have had too much beer.” Although the last five years of economic turmoil have forced Greece to rely on private donors and foreign foundations to help pay for the maintenance and restoration of the Acropolis, Kosmidou says, “the Greek state will always own these monuments, even as the poorest pauper, even penniless.”

Greece has at least been willing to discuss the sale of its islands, however, as many of them are uninhabited and underdeveloped. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-prize winning economist who has spoken out in favor of debt relief for Greece, says the sale of islands could be an important part of the broader privatization campaign. “You could sell them,” he says. “But not a fire sale, because that would be like giving away your patrimony for nothing.”

That would mean waiting until the property market in Greece recovers. “Of course real estate prices are depressed right now,” says Daremas. “It’s very important to have time, and to wait for change in the economic climate to be able to sell them at a fair price.” The Greek promise to sell state assets came with no time limit in the text of the agreement published Monday. But in their hunger for guarantees on this latest package of loans to Greece, creditors in Germany will not be happy to wait much longer.

Read next: Greeks Prepare to Fight Bailout Deal In and Outside Parliament

Listen to the most important stories of the day

Summary: “It’s basically saying sell the memory of your ancestors, sell your history"


The Academy Awards is pledging to become more diverse — again.

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has issued a statement for the second time in two years promising to address the lack of diversity among the major Oscar nominees.

"I’d like to acknowledge the wonderful work of this year’s nominees. While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion,” she said in statement issued Monday evening.

SPIKE LEE, JADA PINKETT SMITH ANNOUNCE OSCAR BOYCOTTS

“This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes. The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond."

"As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years,” she continued. “But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly."

In her statement, Boone also noted that this push for diversity "isn’t unprecedented for the Academy.”

Spike Lee (left) and Jada Pinkett Smith (pictured with husband Will Smith) said they will boycott the Feb. 28 ceremony to protest the lack of diverse Oscar nominees.

COULD CHRIS ROCK DROP OUT AS OSCARS HOST?

"In the ‘60s and ‘70s it was about recruiting younger members to stay vital and relevant. In 2016, the mandate is inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

“We recognize the very real concerns of our community, and I so appreciate all of you who have reached out to me in our effort to move forward together."

Isaacs' statement comes just one year after she addressed the lack of diversity among the major nominees, with the lack of nods for "Selma" director Ava DuVernay and lead actor David Oyelowo despite the film's Best Picture nomination receiving particular ire.

In response to the firestorm, Isaacs said at the time that the Academy was "committed to seeking out diversity of voice and opinion" among its' nearly 7,000 members.

Yet the promised changes didn't come soon enough. Soon after the 2016 Academy Award nominations were announced Jan. 14, the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, which was created last year in response to the non-diverse nominations, trended again on social media.

The growing backlash has also led Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee to announce they are boycotting the Feb. 28 ceremony, with this year's host, Chris Rock, also facing pressure to bow out of emceeing the Oscars as part of the boycott.


Jul 5, 2016 10:25 PM EDT U.S.

Federal officials said Tuesday that they are expanding tests to speed up airport lines and improve security.

In a first in the U.S., the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday that it plans to begin using computed-tomography or CT scanners to inspect carry-on bags at one checkpoint in the Phoenix airport by the end of the year.

CT scanners are already used to screen checked baggage. The process is mostly automated -- the scanners generate 3-D images that are analyzed by computers. Security workers only check a bag if something is suspicious.

The use of CT technology at airport checkpoints would eliminate the need for screeners to examine X-ray images of every bag. It could also let travelers leave liquids and laptops in their carry-on bags.

TSA said it will work with American Airlines to make other changes to increase automation and speed up screening this fall in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Miami.

American will spend $5 million on the changes, said the airline's chief operating officer, Robert Isom, in a letter to employees. He said neither the increased automation nor CT scanners will solve TSA's problems, "but they are both huge steps in the right direction."

The changes at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Los Angeles International and Miami mirror a pilot program that TSA is running with Delta Air Lines in two lanes at the Atlanta airport.

There, suspicious bags can be sent to a separate area for more screening while other bags on the conveyor belt keep moving. Bins are automatically sent back to the head of the line, and they are given radio-frequency-identification tags for better tracking.

The agency said the scanners and other steps will cut the time travelers spend in line by about 30 percent. Security experts warn that the long lines create targets for terrorists that are outside security checkpoints.

Long checkpoint lines have become a huge headache for travelers. There are several factors at play: more crowded flights, cuts to the Transportation Security Administration's budget, subpar staffing plans for security personnel, nonsensical tax incentives that encourage airlines to charge baggage fees, and more.

In May, transit officials wrote to the TSA to complain that the "public has reached a breaking point" with airport security.

Scrambling for better options, some travelers are forking over extra cash for expedited check-in programs run by the TSA, like Global Entry and PreCheck, and run by private companies, like Clear.

Congress approved the hiring of nearly 800 new screeners and overtime pay for current ones, and TSA has reassigned some officers to the busiest airlines.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said TSA screened 10.7 million travelers over six days culminating with the July 4 holiday, with Thursday and Friday being the TSA's busiest days since 2007. Average wait time was less than 10 minutes and expedited PreCheck lines were under five minutes, he said.

Summary: Technology usually used in hospitals will scan carry-on bags in an effort to improve security and shorten lines, TSA says


Dave Stangle (L) and Mike Stangle

Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Twentieth Century FOX/AP

07/08/2016 AT 04:00 PM EDT

If you've seen the commercials for

where Audrey Plaza throws herself in front of a moving car to get

's attention – then you might be surprised to learn that the film is based on a true story. But what's even harder to believe is that the real events might be even crazier than the movie.

The film stars Levine and

as Mike and Dave Stangle, two real-life brothers whose party habits were so notorious that they were instructed to bring dates to their sister's wedding. (The theory was that they would be less likely to cause a scene – and flirt with the bride's friends – if they had dates to keep them occupied.)

Since both Stangles were single at the time, they did what anyone looking for a nice, respectable date would do and made an ad on Craigslist. The post's unique request, along with its hilarious execution (the real photo they used is below), caught the attention of local news stations, and before long the post went viral.

The Stangle Brother's Craiglist Ad

"You should be attractive or our aunts will judge you, but not

attractive or one of our uncles might grope you," read a portion of the post.

Hundreds of single ladies responded and the ensuing series of insane dates formed the basis of their memoir,

, which was later spun into a movie deal.

"If you ever get a chance to have a movie made about your life, I highly recommend you do it," Dave tells PEOPLE of working on his first film.

"I fully support Dave's first statement. It's quite nice," Mike agrees. "Especially when you have a bunch of people who are as into the 'true story' aspect as our producers."

As for how closely the onscreen shenanigans lineup with their real-life escapades, Dave says, "What you see is what you get. It's pretty close to true at least from a character standpoint. It gets a little bit over the top and away from reality as the movie winds on, but the general premise is true."

For instance, the real Mike and Dave didn't have a fancy destination wedding like Hawaii to lure prospective dates. The real wedding took place in Saratoga, New York back in 2013. Also, Dave notes, "Mike and I are not in

good of shape as [Efron and Levine], but we're about as close as you can find for two regular guys."

The other major difference is, as Dave explains, "In the movie, the dates we end up taking to the wedding, [Plaza and Anna Kendrick], end up getting completely out of control. That part of the story was not inspired by the dates we ended up taking to the wedding, but more on the dating experience as a whole."

In other words, while their onscreen alter-egos had to deal with Kendrick and Plaza (admittedly, a formidable duo), the real Mike and Dave faced off against countless crazy double dates during months of auditions.

"We had a lot of fun with the amount of ridiculous dates we went on with these crazy people from Craigslist who would respond to our ads," Mike explains.

Both brothers admit they did not have much formal dating experience beforehand, so they ended up making strategy adjustments as they went along.

"After a few weeks when it really started going viral, we had so many emails in our inbox that we were like, 'Why are we being such bro's about this and only picking the hottest chicks, let's go through and find women who seem genuinely unique and interesting,' " Dave says. "That quickly morphed into, 'Let's find women who are f------ crazy and go have these crazy experiences double dating' – and that just spiraled totally out of control."

Mike and Dave went on dates night after night for weeks, sometimes going on multiple double dates in one evening. "One time we had to ditch these two girls we went out with mid-date because they were acting like such lunatics, stealing stuff from the bar and throwing full drinks at other tables," Dave remembers. Mike adds, "This girl ran after Dave and lifted up his shirt, latched on to him like a spider monkey, and bit him right between the nipples."

On another date, they drunkenly hoisted a former cheerleader up the fire escape of a friend's building, in hopes that she would be able to sneak into his apartment through a window. Unfortunately, their friend happened to be out of town, and the girl ended up stranded on the landing. Another friend ended up in surgery after the cheerleader "leapfrogged" off the balcony and crashed into his unsuspecting arms.

"I donât even know how to go on a normal date anymore, it ruined it for me," Dave jokes.

Both guys are currently single, so if any ladies are interested in double dating with two hilarious brothers (who happen to know Zac Efron), feel free to check Craigslist.

Summary: "I donât even know how to go on a normal date anymore, it ruined it for me," Dave Stangle tells PEOPLE of his real-life escapades


How much does it cost to raise your own chickens? First, you'll need to ensure that you're in compliance with local regulations concerning chicken raising. If you're allowed to keep poultry, you may need to pay for a permit application to keep the birds. For example, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the application fee for a permit to keep chickens is $50, with an annual renewal fee of $10.

Once you've made sure you're paid up and legal, you'll need to get the chickens. You can buy sexed chicks for as little as $3 each. That's important because it's the only reliable way to make sure you're getting hens as opposed to roosters. There are mail-order chick businesses or, if possible, you can buy from a farmer in your area.

You'll have to keep your chicks safe, warm and fed until they're ready to lay, which can take 6 months or more. And their peak laying days don't last forever (generally 18 months to 2 years).

You'll likely get around six eggs per week over the course of each chicken's life, depending on the breed. Hens kept in commercial conditions can be induced to lay more, but that's much harder to do on a small scale. When the chickens are molting and when daylight hours are shorter in winter, egg laying rates will generally decline.

Let's say you have a normal suburban backyard and not a multi-acre farm. Six eggs per week multiplied by 10 chickens gets you five dozen eggs each week. Not bad! But once a chicken's best laying days are behind it you'll have to decide whether to keep feeding and housing it or slaughter it and use it for making broth. You can also get a rooster and let your chickens replace themselves, saving you the expense of buying new chicks to keep your egg business going.

How many chickens you decide to raise will depend on how much space you have and the scale of operation you're willing to commit to. You'll also need some sort of chicken coop or chicken house to keep the little ladies sheltered. These can range from $200 to $4,000.

The good news is that you can feed the chickens scraps and let them forage for their own food. But to make sure they're getting all the nutrition you need you'll likely have to supplement with feed. You'll also need heat lamps to keep the birds warm and nest boxes if the coop doesn't have built-in boxes. And if you want to use the chickens to fertilize your property you'll want a mobile chicken shelter that you can move to different areas to spread the love.

Here's a cost breakdown provided by one chicken-owner: The cost of the building materials for the writer's chicken coop and chicken run came in at $315. The cost of organic chicken feed and scratch between May 2011 and January 2013 came in at $1,400.

The writer sold $1,175 worth of eggs, for a loss of $540. However, not calculated as "profit" were the many dozens of eggs the chicken owners and their relatives enjoyed in that time period. And at a time when a dozen organic eggs can cost $5 or more, there's real value in those DIY eggs.

If you can let your chickens truly range free and forage for themselves, you'll save a lot of money on feed. Ditto if you can make your own chicken feed or use kitchen scraps. Not included in the cost-benefit breakdown above is the fertilizer factor.

If you're raising chickens and don't need fertilizer, you won't benefit. But if you're growing your own food, having chickens to fertilize your property saves you money that should be included in your personal breakdown of chicken economics. And you can use the chickens to make stock once their laying days have ended, though you'll have to pay for the privilege if you're not able (or willing) to slaughter your own birds.

Summary: You may be wondering whether it's possible to save money or even make money by raising chickens -- you wouldn't be alone


Antidoping officials from at least 10 nations and 20 athlete groups are preparing the extraordinary step of requesting that the entire Russian delegation be barred from the Summer Olympics over allegations of a state-sponsored doping program, according to email correspondence obtained by The New York Times.

The antidoping officials and athletes were expected to pressure Olympic leaders on the matter as soon as Monday — less than three weeks before the opening ceremony in Rio. They were waiting for the results of an investigation into claims published in The Times of a state-sponsored doping program conducted by Russian officials at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Grigory Rodchenkov, Russia’s former antidoping lab director, told The Times in May that he followed government orders to cover up the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs by dozens of Russian Olympians at the Sochi Games. At least 15 of them won medals, he said.

Russian officials have dismissed allegations of a state-run doping program as a Western conspiracy intended to smear Russia. The country’s track and field team has already been barred from the Rio Games for doping violations; calls for sanctions against Russian athletes in every sport would be unprecedented and would likely escalate the geopolitical debate.

At least 10 national antidoping organizations — including those in the United States, Germany, Spain, Japan, Switzerland and Canada — and more than 20 athlete groups representing Olympians from around the world have banded together as they anticipate validation of Dr. Rodchenkov’s claims.

The chief executive of the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations, a trade group to which dozens of nations’ antidoping agencies belong, urged all members to sign on to the request on Friday, according to an email reviewed by The Times.

“It seems very likely that the Report will confirm what will be one of the biggest doping scandals in history, implicating the Russian Government in a massive conspiracy against the clean athletes of the world,” wrote Joseph de Pencier, the chief executive of the national antidoping trade association. “This will be a ‘watershed moment’ for clean sport.”

In an interview on Saturday, Travis Tygart, head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said: “We’re not asking for the worst, and obviously we hope there’s no doping going on by states. But if we’re not preparing for all potential outcomes, then we’re not fulfilling our promise to clean athletes.”

Reuters first reported on Saturday that United States and Canadian antidoping officials were planning to call for a wider ban of Russian athletes at the Rio Games.

Mr. Tygart and other antidoping officials said they had not seen the report, which was commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and prepared by a Canadian lawyer, Richard McLaren. It is expected to be released on Monday morning in Toronto.

Mr. McLaren has indicated that his inquiry will prove true what Dr. Rodchenkov told The Times last spring.

Last month, Mr. McLaren delivered a preliminary report to global track and field officials as they were scrutinizing Russia; he called Dr. Rodchenkov’s detailed account of swapping out steroid-tainted urine at Sochi with the help of Russia’s intelligence service “credible and verifiable,” adding that he had evidence to confirm that “the ministry of sport was involved in instructing the laboratory to not report positive sample results.”

After that report, track and field’s governing body barred Russian athletes from the Games, leaving a “narrow crack in the door” for Russian athletes who had been subjected to rigorous drug-testing outside Russia to petition to compete in Rio, but under a neutral flag.

So far, two Russian athletes have been given dispensation. One of them, Yuliya Stepanova, fled Russia in 2014 after alleging widespread doping. President Vladimir V. Putin has called her a “Judas” for betraying the country.

“If McLaren produces clear, convincing, irrefutable evidence that there has been systemic state-sponsored doping in Russian sport,” said Paul Melia, Canada’s top antidoping official, “the appropriate sanction would be for the I.O.C. to ban the Russian Olympic Committee from taking a team to Rio.”

Anticipating confirmation of Dr. Rodchenkov’s account, the group of dozens of antidoping officials are considering addressing Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, and the organization’s executive board members. They are preparing to request that the ban applied to Russia’s track and field athletes be applied across sports, with opportunities for athletes to appeal and possibly be given permission to compete under a neutral flag.

Since Dr. Rodchenkov outlined an elaborate doping scheme at the Sochi Games, the I.O.C. has repeatedly called for “the right balance between collective responsibility and individual justice.” It is unclear if Mr. Bach would be persuaded by the antidoping organizations’ request to bar the entire Russian delegation.

In May Mr. Bach said he would apply a “zero-tolerance” policy and would not rule out bans against Russia across entire sports, like track and field. But last month he defended the Russian Olympic Committee, distancing the organization from the sports ministry. Dr. Rodchenkov, however, said he took direct orders from Russia’s deputy sports minister, Yuri Nagornykh, who is a member of Russia’s Olympic Committee.

United States lawmakers from the House of Representatives and Senate have expressed concern about Dr. Rodhchenkov’s allegations. Last month, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation said the scandal called into question the “strength and credibility” of the antidoping system.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce echoed that this month, urging Mr. Bach to seize “crucial and timely opportunities” to clean up global sports. “The failure to do so is simply irresponsible, and we will not remain silent,” the lawmakers wrote.

Both the Senate and House committees have United States government jurisdiction over international sports, and the United States has contributed tens of millions of dollars to the World Anti-Doping Agency since the early 2000s.

Russia’s sports ministry has admitted to doping problems in recent months but denied government involvement. In an interview with The Times in Moscow this month, Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s sports minister, diminished the power of Mr. McLaren’s commission and WADA, which have the ability to make recommendations such as the ones the antidoping officials and athletes are prepared to do. The I.O.C. and sports federations have ultimate authority over who competes at the Games.

“Recommendations?” Mr. Mutko said. “It’s about the decisions. With respect to the commission, they do not determine the fate of world sport.”

Summary: Antidoping officials from leading countries in global sports are awaiting the results of an investigation into allegations of a state-sponsored doping program in Russia.


When with one of my friends recently, I walked past a building covered in “for rent” signs from a property management group in Chicago, where we live. “Oh, hey, it’s the company that robs me blind every month,” my friend muttered as she saw the logo.

A lot of people feel that way when it comes to cutting a rent check (and Chicago isn’t even that bad, as far as housing costs in big cities go). A new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University says more than half of people who live in the highest-cost metro areas put more than 30% of their income toward rent (aka cost-burdened renters). Nationwide, nearly half of renters shell out more than 30% of their pay for housing, and roughly a quarter pay more than 50% of their income toward rent.

For a large number of people, that’s the reality of renting in the U.S.: It’s really expensive, and finding a way to make it work can be very difficult. But if you’re living in a place like San Francisco, where the average rent price increased 14.9% from 2014 to 2015, according to Zillow, how exactly are you supposed to find affordable housing at all? The first step is to figure out what “affordable” means for you. Everyone’s priorities and circumstances are different, but math can be a harsh, yet helpful, equalizer. I put the topic to members of the Financial Planning Association, and most of them insist on putting no more than 30% (or even less) of your annual income toward annual rent expenses.

Still, there’s a lot more to consider than the equation of (annual income) x .30 = maximum annual rent. Here are some things you need to do in order to figure out how much rent you can afford.

What are your major financial goals? Because for every dollar you put toward rent, that’s a dollar you’ll never get to put toward traveling, homeownership, retirement or anything else you need money to accomplish. Even things that aren’t as easy to quantify monetarily — how much you value living in a certain area, your ideal commute time, access to certain transportation methods — need to go on your priority list, too.

“It may not be that we can have everything we want right now,” said Eric Roberge, a certified financial planner in Boston. “It’s about prioritizing your goals and building up to living in the place of your dreams, especially when you’re graduating you have plenty of time to spend in the city — you don’t have to be there immediately.”

Roberge said that’s a frequent dilemma he sees among his clients (he works with 20- and 30-somethings in Boston): Young people want to live in high-rent areas before they can really afford to.

You have to look at more than just the advertised rent pricing on a living space, because you’ll have many more regular expenses associated with your house or apartment. FPA members recommended keeping the rent portion ideally at less than 25% of your income, to allow room for costs like insurance and utilities.

You may need to think of transportation as part of your rent costs, too, especially if you have to pay for a parking permit or parking space because of where you choose to live. The more of these add-on expenses you have (for example, are the utilities included in your rent payment?), the less you should try to spend on your base rent.

What About Your Other Expenses?

If you’re like many Americans, you have debt. This is especially prevalent among young college grads. That has to be a factor in deciding what you can afford in housing costs.

“The conventional statistic is that no more than 28% of gross salary be spent on housing and no more than 36% on consumer debt. However, that does not at all take into account other obligations in people’s budgets,” said Kristi C. Sullivan, a CFP in Denver, in an email. “Student loans are a large bill for many and if that’s the case, you can’t afford to spend 28% on housing because then you’ll have nothing left for food. Rent is not the fixed expense people think it is. You can lower this cost by living in a less desirable area of town, having roommates, or living in a smaller place.”

Roberge said a common mindset he sees is that people will find a place, decide to move in and figure they’ll make everything else work afterward. To improve your chances at financial success and stability, you need to plan more carefully. Be honest with yourself about where your priorities lie (not just those that give you instant gratification, like a sweet apartment), and you’re less likely to find yourself in trouble with debt or a savings shortage. Keep in mind that paying down your debt and making payments on time will help you build credit, which will come in handy later on when you’re looking for that dream apartment or home. You can track your progress by checking your credit scores regularly.

Read next: How to Be a Dream Tenant and Snag Any Rental You Choose

Summary: It all depends on your other expenses.


Sales in its process technologies arm and precious metal products division were stable, although both markets remain challenging, the company said. This is largely due to reduced demand from oil and gas businesses and the fall in the cost of platinum and palladium, which were down 11pc and 25pc respectively on the same period last year.

The low oil price continues to hit demand from customers for Johnson Matthey’s diagnostic services, it said, although demand for hydrogen catalysts remained strong.

At constant currency rates, which average out currency fluctuations across the year, the performance of the company for this financial year would be in line with previous expectations. But if the pound holds its current value against the dollar, the FTSE 100 company will benefit from a £40m increase in profits this year - £25m more than it initially forecast.

The company said the UK’s vote to leave the European Union would not have a “long-term material impact” on the business.

Johnson Matthey has previously said it plans to trim costs by £34m in this financial year.

Summary: Chemicals company Johnson Matthey grew its sales by 6pc to £


This morning Fortune releases a major examination of one of the most important trends in business, companies going public or staying private. It’s quite a phenomenon. How can it be, for example, that Uber is still not publicly traded, even though it’s a seemingly perfect IPO candidate and is valued by private investors at $62.5 billion as of its last funding round? It was big news last week when sources said Didi Chuxing, Uber’s Chinese rival, might go public as early as next year. But Apple’s $1-billion investment in Didi last week reportedly values the company at $26 billion. By all conventional measures, both it and Uber should have gone public long ago. So why didn’t they?

The answer to that question is another question: Why should they? Private sources of capital – venture capital firms, other investment firms, and many major companies such as Apple – are so flush with cash that they struggle to find good homes for it all. They’re supplying Uber, Didi, and other private companies with all the capital they need, without the hassles and distractions of being publicly traded. That’s why Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said last fall it would be at least “a few years” before Uber goes public.

We’re not the only ones taking notice. McKinsey has just published a report documenting the trend in the tech sector. It notes, for example, that “the average age of U.S. technology companies that went public in 1999 was four years,” while “the average age of technology companies going public in 2014 was 11 years.”

Our package of articles includes our first ranking of America’s 25 most important private companies. Most striking, at least to me, is how successful and dominant many of these businesses are. The National Football League (No. 11), for example, is America’s largest sports business by far. Vanguard is the largest mutual fund company, and Fidelity is close; they’re tied at No. 2. Cargill (No. 6) is the largest food processing and commodity firm. Ponder the list and you realize that being publicly traded isn’t necessary for a company to compete and win at the highest levels of business.

Public companies aren’t going away. There remain good reasons for them to exist – not just raising capital, but also showing customers, suppliers, employees, and others that they’re worth doing business with, enabling founders to cash out, and attracting and keeping talent with tradable stock. Nonetheless, the number of public companies has plunged from over 8,000 in 1996 to about 4,400 today. They’re getting fewer and bigger, while private companies are gaining size and importance.

Don’t miss one more part of our package: a typically insightful article by Shawn Tully about Bechtel (No. 7 on our ranking), the huge global construction company led by fifth-generation Bechtels. You’ll be fascinated.

You can share Power Sheet with friends and followers here.

Summary: Power Sheet - May 17, 2016


To win the Paris government’s support for the deal, GE had to agree to create a net 1,000 jobs in France and protect some of the country’s key industries, including nuclear technology.

The French government has the power to block sales of businesses it sees as strategically important and as the nation’s economy struggles, it has been increasingly active in doing so.

The tie-up between Renault and Nissan recently came under pressure as Paris tried to tighten its grip on the car business in which it owns a 40pc stake. In a bid to protect French jobs, there were concerns the government could try to nationalise Renault and return production home, putting up to 7,000 UK jobs at risk.

The job cuts - understood to include 765 in France and 1,700 in Germany - are the result of eliminating duplication in the combined businesses and the slowing demand for gas and steam turbines.

A spokesman for GE said: "This is the first of about $2bn of cost savings we have have flagged up that the deal will create. GE remains a major investor in the UK, having created about 1,000 jobs last year and this is part of the ebb and flow of business."

The restructuring is just the latest in a run of mass redundancies to the hit the energy and engineering sector. On Tuesday BP said it woudl cut 4,000 jobs as oil punged to lows not seen for over a decade.

Summary: GE's acquisition of Alstom's power businesses will result in 6,500 jobs cut   across Europe, with reports that up to 600 positions could go in Britain


Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: "It had previously taken Aldi and Lidl nine years to double their combined share from 2.5pc to 5pc.

"The discounters show no sign of stopping and with plans to open hundreds of stores between them, they’ll noticeably widen their reach to the British population.”

Lidl’s market share reached a new record high of 4.4pc, increasing by 0.7 percentage points on last year thanks to sales growth of 19pc. Aldi grew sales by 16.5pc, retaining its market share at 5.6pc for the fifth consecutive month.

The rise in sales come as fresh figures showed the German discounters are planing to open five times as many supermarkets as the Big Four.

On the other end of the market, Waitrose enjoyed a 2.7pc rise in sales, pushing its market share up slightly to 5.2pc from 5.1pc.

The overall supermarket sector, however, remains weak. Industry sales were only up by 0.5pc in the period, held back by falling prices.

Meanwhile, separate data from Nielsen also suggested the discounters are making major inroads into the UK supermarket sector.

Figures from the consumer research firm show the UK’s major supermarkets experienced their biggest year-on-year fall in the value of sales for over a year, down 1.2pc in the four weeks to November 7.

“Heavy price-cutting to combat the discounters, coupled with deflation, is great news for consumers but increasingly problematic for the supermarkets, who are seeing less money going through the tills,” said Mike Watkins, Nielsen’s UK head of retailer and business insight.

“The rise of the discounters seems to have hit Tesco, Asda and Morrisons the hardest. Their combined market share over the last year is down 2.1pc, the exact figure the discounters’ has risen."

He added that promotional activity among the supermarkets remained rife, which will come as good news to consumers as they prepare to stock up their larders for the festive season.

Like Kantar, Nielsen reported that Sainsbury's was the only of the so-called 'Big Four' supermarkets to see an increase in sales in the 12 weeks to November 8.

Summary: The discount grocers are taking the UK supermarket sector by storm


An Oklahoma-based packaged foods company recalled more than 372,000 pounds of hot dogs and corn dogs made earlier this week over possible listeria contamination.

Bar-S Foods in Altus, Okla. is recalling five chicken and pork products that might be contaminated with listeria, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday. The recalled food items include Bar-S classic corn dogs and Bar-S bun-length franks made with chicken and pork. Bar-S made the ready-to-eat products between July 10 and July 13.

Bar-S Foods has not yet received test results confirming listeria, but decided to remove the products due to “recurring Listeria species issues at the firm,” the USDA said in a statement.

No reports of illness have been linked to the products.

Summary: Over listeria fears


The Supreme Court’s decision Monday clearing the way for same-sex marriages in five states may benefit an unlikely group: Republican lawmakers who can’t wait to stop talking about gay marriage, an issue that is increasingly becoming a drag for the party.

Advisors to multiple likely 2016 candidates told TIME after the news broke that they are hopeful that swift action by the Supreme Court will provide them cover. “We don’t have to agree with the decision, but as long as we’re not against it we should be okay,” said one aide to a 2016 contender who declined to be named to speak candidly on the sensitive topic. “The base, meanwhile, will focus its anger on the Court, and not on us.”

The initial comments of politicians also hinted at a desire to turn the page. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker, a potential 2016 contender locked in a tough re-election fight this fall, told the Associated Press that the fight to prevent same-sex marriage would end. “It’s over in Wisconsin,” he said.

“The federal courts have ruled that this decision by this court of appeals decision is the law of the land and we will be upholding it,” Walker added, echoing the statement of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who called the issue “settled” in his state over the summer, despite his personal opposition to such unions. Christie declined to address the decision when asked about it Monday.

At a forum in Washington, D.C., Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is also considering a run for the White House, said the issue was moving out of the political sphere. “The law is certainly in the Court’s court,” Jindal said. Neither man said the court ruling had dented their own opposition to same sex marriage, but their statements indicated they hope to set the issue aside as they eye bids for the White House.

Wary of this possibility, evangelical leaders vowed election year fights. “For candidates running in 2014 and those who run for president in 2016, there will be no avoiding this issue,” said the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Ralph Reed in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling. Yet many in the party are preparing to do just that.

“The GOP is a culturally conservative party and should remain so,” said Alex Castellanos, one of the dozens of GOP political operatives to sign on to an amicus curiae brief against the Defense of Marriage Act last year. “Increasingly, there is less room in the GOP for ‘big-government’ social conservatives, i.e., social conservatives who believe in using the power of the state to tell people whom they can love or marry. Instead, there is growing agreement, in an ever younger and increasingly libertarian Republican party, that the role of the state in prohibiting relationships should be minimized.”

In the decision Monday, the high court declined to hear challenges to appellate court rulings that five state same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional, effectively approving the rulings and erecting a legal barrier to states seeking to prevent the practice from taking hold. The decision is the latest step in a whirlwind legal push in support of same-sex marriages that has the backing of the majority of the national electorate, but has polarized the GOP.

Fifty-five percent of all Americans believe that same-sex marriage should be legal, including 30% of self-identified Republicans and 31% of self-identified conservatives. But the issue is far more pronounced among younger voters, for whom it is more likely to be a threshold issue: 78% support same-sex marriage according to a Gallup poll conducted earlier this year.

Over the summer the Republican National Committee took control of the primary debate process with the expressed goal of reducing their focus on social issues, in hopes of keeping the eventual nominee from emerging from the primary process as unelectable to the national public.

Evangelical conservative leaders are likely to call upon Republican candidates to support a federal “marriage amendment” to prohibit same-sex coupling. Such an effort has the backing of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who is preparing to mount another campaign for the White House, and has been backed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. An aide to Jindal said Monday he remains supportive of efforts to pass a federal marriage amendment. But few, if any, of its proponents, believe it can be passed in practice, given Constitutional requirement that two-thirds of the House and Senate and three-fourths of the states’ legislatures.

Sen. Ted Cruz announced Monday he would introduce a Constitutional amendment preventing the Supreme Court from striking down marriage laws. “The Supreme Court’s decision to let rulings by lower court judges stand that redefine marriage is both tragic and indefensible,” he said in a statement, declaring the Court’s decision not to hear arguments on the gay marriage cases “judicial activism at its worst.”

Keith Appell, a Republican political consultant working with many social conservative groups, predicted that Republicans will turn the debate to focus on the judicial appointments likely to open up under the next president. “Filling those vacancies will shape the court for the next generation and it’ll be a huge issue in both the primaries and the general election,” he said. “Do we want activist judges who literally make the law up from the bench and impose it on the people, as is happening with these appellate rulings? Or do we want judges that fairly apply the law and leave the lawmaking to Congress, state and local legislatures?”

Summary: Some strategists hope the legal decision helps push the issue of gay marriage off the political agenda


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has rolled out a nightclub attraction for players to place on their second islands. The Musica Latino can be purchased for 48,000 Tiki Shells in the store, good news for all of us non-money spenders. This tiki disco can be upgraded four times (pictured here) and once it reaches its final stage it will start providing 5 drink charms.

So don't hold out on your paying guests, provide them with a little Latin nightlife with Tiki Resort's new nightclub.

Summary: Tiki Resort has rolled out a nightclub attraction for players to place on their second islands. The Musica Latino can be purcha


On the day of Planned Parenthood’s official endorsement of Hillary Clinton, the women’s health organization’s president Cecile Richards declined to comment in interview with TIME on the recent attacks by Donald Trump on Bill Clinton’s sexual history.

Instead, Richards said her organization’s endorsement was intended to focus on Hillary Clinton’s record on women’s issues.

“It’s really not the focus of this event today. It’s a political campaign, I’m sure there’s going to be all kinds of mud everywhere,” Richards told TIME. “But to me, reason we’re endorsing her today—the reason why hundreds of people across this country got together—is because Hillary Clinton is a longstanding champion of women’s health and women’s rights and not just planned parenthood: equal pay, access to birth control, access to safe and legal abortion.”

“That’s what’s going on and that’s what’s important,” Richards said.

Bill Clinton’s infidelity has come to the fore in recent days as Donald Trump and other Republicans have claimed that his history damages Hillary Clinton’s claim to be a candidate for women.

Richards’ comments to TIME came hours after Trump, who is leading the Republican presidential primary, told NBC’s Meet the Press, that Clinton is “married to an abuser. A woman claimed rape, and all sorts of things. I mean, horrible things.”

Bill Clinton has admitted to multiple extramarital affairs, but he has denied all accusations of sexual abuse. One woman, Juanita Broderick, has accused Bill Clinton of raping her in the late 1970s, and two women accused him of sexual assault during the 1990s.

Planned Parenthood’s endorsement comes as the organization has faced concerted efforts by Republicans in Congress to defund it. The organization provides cancer screenings, affordable birth control, and performs abortions. The abortions are not government-funded.

Hillary Clinton has lambasted Republican attempts to defund Planned Parenthood and made it a central talking point in her campaign. “I have stood with you throughout my life and throughout my career,” Clinton told an audience of mostly women. “And I promise you this: as your president, I will always have your back.”

Introducing Clinton, Richards warned of the consequences if Clinton is not chosen in a general election. “We know if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz have their way we’ll back in the stone age,” Richards said in her speech. “Hillary Clinton’s pledge, our pledge, my pledge will be that Planned Parenthood’s doors stay open.”

Summary: Cecile Richards stays on message


The £88,000 increase in his pension entitlement comes after Sir Philip saw his annual salary boosted from £746,000 in 2002 to £843,000 in 2003. Under the group's final salary pension scheme, his pension is also increased for every year he served.

Shell's failure to outperform rivals such as BP and ChevronTexaco meant Sir Philip also missed out on shares worth £1.7m under the group's long-term incentive plan.

The annual reports were due to be published earlier this year but were delayed in the wake of revelations that it had overbooked its oil and gas stocks.

Shell stunned the market in January by saying its reserves were 20pc lower than previously thought and made three further downgrades in the months that followed.

An independent report in April severely censured Sir Philip and head of exploration and production Walter van de Vijver for appearing to know reserves did not meet market rules as far back as 2001.

Mr van der Vijver was paid £842,000 but received no bonus for his work in 2003 prior to his departure in March.

Finance chief Judy Boynton, who became the third boardroom casualty, picked up her annual salary of £382,000.

The annual reports did not carry details of possible severance payments to the executives who quit as the reserves crisis unfolded. A company spokesman said talks with the individuals were continuing.

Shell also revealed that none of the current management team, including new chairman Jeroen van der Veer, will receive annual bonuses for 2003.

The company is set to review its remuneration policies in the coming year.

Summary: Former Shell chairman Sir Philip Watts will retire on an annual pension of £568,000 after seeing his salary increase by 13pc last year.


French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, center, looks at damaged paintings during a visit in Montargis, France, after more than a week of flooding in central and northern France. Dominique Faget/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images …

Parisians have been urged to stay away from the Seine River, which spilled over its banks in places. Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images …

A restorer works on paintings damaged by flooding in Montargis. Dominique Faget/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images …

Plastic boxes containing artworks are placed for safekeeping between sculptures in an exhibition hall at the Louvre, which is closed due to the unusually high water level of the Seine. Markus Schreiber/Associated Press …

Visitors read an information sheet about the Louvre’s closing. Markus Schreiber/Associated Press …

Museum officials at the Louvre placed several pieces of artwork into crates as the torrent of water from the Seine flowed toward the capital and officials prepared for the worst. John Schults/Reuters …

There were no waiting lines outside the Louvre Museum. John Schults/Reuters …

The view from a helicopter of the Seine, which has been overflowing its banks in Paris. Not since 1982 have the Seine’s waters run so high. Markus Schreiber/Associated Press …

Parisians were urged to avoid the banks of the Seine—shown outside the Eiffel Tower. Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images …

Tourists visited the Eiffel Tower on Friday even though the river’s waterline had become too high for boats to pass beneath the capital’s arching bridges, and underground railways and roads that snake along the river were closed. Nasser Berzane/Zuma Press …

People looking at the floods from the Alma bridge by the Zouave statue, which is used as a measuring instrument during floods in Paris. Jerome Delay/Associated Press …

A police officer hangs on a military vehicle on its way through a flooded Paris suburb. Christian Hartmann/Reuters …

A view of the flooded riverside of the River Seine in central Paris with houseboats and the Notre-Dame Cathedral in the background on Friday. Charles Platiau/Reuters …

The flooded banks of the River Seine in Paris. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images …

A man takes pictures of the River Seine and the Eiffel Tower following heavy rainfalls in Paris. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES …

A man rides a bike along a flooded road by the Seine in the French capital. MARKUS SCHREIBER/ASSOCIATED PRESS …

A man crosses a board to reach a boat on the Seine in Paris. MARKUS SCHREIBER/ASSOCIATED PRESS …

Photos: Paris Flooding Subsides, but Damage Will Be Costly

Summary: Rainfall over central France has eased, allowing the Seine River’s water level to decline. But the damage will cost hundreds of millions of euros, the prime minister said.


GALLERY: THE WORLD CUP DODGY HAIRCUT XI

More pressing, however, is the World Cup, otherwise known as the most comprehensive showcase of tattoos the universe has ever seen. We asked Stadil to combine his two great loves – ink and soccer – and compile a top ten of the greatest tattooed footballers in the world. Such a pity some of them won't be on show in Brazil.

Daniel Agger of Liverpool and Denmark (Action Images)

“Obviously I have to go with the hometown hero here. He is Danish, one of the top defenders in the world, and is covered in ink. Besides several emblematic Viking tattoos and Danish scriptures, he has a Latin scripture reading ‘Death is certain, its hour is not’ on his neck, and his most recent addition of YNWA (You’ll never walk alone – a Liverpool motto) on his knuckles shows his loyalty to the Liverpool fans. He’s my partner on tattoodo.com – we’re striving to create the world’s biggest site for tattoo design.”

David Beckham modelling for H&M (Rex Features)

“Football’s pretty boy! His tattoos celebrate his professional and personal achievements – championships, finding love, having children, all depicted in ink.”

Zlatan Ibrahimavic of Sweden and Paris Saint-Germain (Rex Features/Reuters)

“He’s Swedish but we have to give him a shout-out. He has it all going on – a red dragon on his back, a Japanese Koi fish (chosen because it swims against the grain, like Zlatan), a Native American feather on his back, ‘Only God Can Judge Me’ on his rib cage, an ace of hearts playing card on his belly…Apparently he’s addicted to tattoos. I get it. We all are.”

Neymar of Brazil and Barcelona (Rex Features)

“He’s a young gun and rising star but his collection of tattoos is impressive. A crown for his son, his sister’s name, and several Portuguese sayings to symbolise his youthful joy. Maybe he’ll add a World Champion tattoo this summer with his pal Dani Alves.”

Dani Alves of Brazil and Barcelona (Rex Features)

“Alves plays for Barcelona and Brazil, so he’s experienced a lot of success, but because he’s a man of few words, he lets the tattoos do the talking. His arms are adorned with Catholic images and dedications to his family, and the odd mess up: mainly his ink of his ex-wife Dina on his shoulder. They split in 2011. The real masterpiece, though, is his son’s name emblazoned in giant script across his chest.”

Sergio Ramos of Spain and Real Madrid (Instagram @sergioramos4oficiel)

“The midfielder’s set of tattoos compose a more humble image than the relentless wins with Spain and Real Madrid might suggest. Dedications to his parents and siblings are alongside an eagle, Japanese characters, the World Cup 2010 and a ghoul holding a football. But most significantly, he dedicated each of his biceps to those killed in the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001 and in Spain on 11 March 2004.”

Ezequiel Lavezzi of Argentina and Paris Saint-Germain (Rex Features)

“Lavezzi takes his work and his tattoos seriously, sporting a collection of portraits of Catholic symbols, including the Virgin Mary on his forearm and Jesus on his chest. The most prominent is a dedicated on his ribs to his fellow Argentinean and football idol, Diego Maradona, heading a ball, but a colourful ink of an evil clown on his shoulder is difficult to overlook. Then there’s the hand-cuffed pocket-watch he had inked on his back in December…”

Kevin-Prince Boateng of Ghana and Schalke 04 (Rex Features)

“I love it when footballers get tattoos in honour of their team! Prince has an AC Milan tattoo on one arm and a map of Africa with Ghana inscribed inside on the other. He also has an unusual tribute to his recurring knee injuries, a spider’s web inked on his left knee. He told a German newspaper it had a certain symbolism, because a spider web always comes back – and so it is with the knee.”

Aleksandar Kolarov of Manchester City and Serbia (Rex Features)

“Have to respect the observance of the traditional Japanese style on this man’s sleeve. The Koi fish tattoo is a symbol of luck and fortune – certainly he had some of that, with Manchester City winning the Premier League twice in the last three years.”

Nigel de Jong of AC Milan and the Netherlands (Instagram @ndjofficial)

“An underrated player who sports a serious set of tribal tattoos. These are amazingly intricate patterns – it’s great to see commitment to the traditional.”

Summary: This year's World Cup is set to be the most heavily inked of all time, but   which footballers boast the best tattoos? Christian Stadil, owner of Danish   sportswear brand Hummel and tattoo aficionado, rounds up the 10 best


HARRISBURG, Penn. — Donald Trump made a confusing and meandering argument for why he thinks Hillary Clinton isn’t qualified to be president Thursday night.

For the second night in a row, Trump went after the Democratic front-runner, this time saying he doesn’t think she is fit to be president — although just moments earlier he said she is “qualified, I guess.”

Citing Bernie Sanders, who first questioned Clinton’s qualifications, Trump noted that the Vermont senator has “been tough on her.” And Trump would like it to stay that way.

“He said a couple of little things, he said, ‘She suffers from bad judgment,’” Trump began. “And she said, ‘No.’”

Trump added, “I don’t know, I think she’s qualified, I guess. But that doesn’t mean she’s good.”

He continued, in his characteristic impromptu and rambling style:

“I mean I actually like, he said she is not qualified to be president. Now, what he meant is because her

The presidential campaign: Donald Trump

judgment is so bad, so Bernie Sanders — not me — said she’s not qualified. So now I’m gonna say she’s not qualified. OK.”

And for those predicting a more low-key, “presidential” Trump, don’t hold your breath.

The GOP front-runner told a half full Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex that despite a rigged delegate system “we’re winning a lot” and “we’re kicking ass!”

The classically Trump comments came as many, including Trump Convention Manager Paul Manafort, have been putting forth a new strategy that involves a more moderate, less brash, and more presidential version of Trump. While Trump acknowledges the push for a more presidential tone, he’s not sure he’s ready to make that shift just yet.

“My wife is constantly saying, ‘Darling, be more presidential.’ I just don’t know that I wanna do it quite yet!” Trump bellowed, sending the crowd into cheers.

His rational included having to do away with “two leftovers” — Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz — so he has to continue to “be tough for a little while.”

But once that shift is made, Trump’s prediction for what his rallies would look like sound like the exact opposite of what Trump rallies have become infamous for.

“At some point,” Trump said, “I’m gonna be so presidential that you people will be so bored.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.

Summary: Donald Trump invoked Bernie Sanders during a confusing and meandering argument for why he thinks Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to be president Thursday night.


Mr. Perelman met Mr. Nevo years ago on the Los Angeles social scene — either at Barry Diller’s or at the house of a Creative Artists Agency partner, Bryan Lourd, he said — and the pair’s relationship is purely social. “There’s no business element,” Mr. Perelman said. “It’s purely social, but it’s a deep social. He’s around my family, I’m around his fiancée. We take a lot of trips together.”

The glittery social world that Mr. Nevo inhabits is secondary — and the byproduct of — what is the core of his professional existence: a sizable stake in Time Warner he has maintained for years, apparently with impeccable, buy-and-sell timing. Mr. Nevo, through his firm NV Investments, has never owned 5 percent or more of the company, which would require public disclosure, but it is widely believed in the industry that he is the largest private shareholder; Mr. Nevo himself often says so.

A Time Warner spokesman said that Mr. Nevo is a shareholder but could not verify the size of his holding. But Mr. Nevo does have, and has had for years, the ear of management.

Mr. Nevo, whose workaday uniform is snug, black Christian Dior suits, has a particularly close relationship with Richard D. Parsons, Time Warner’s chairman, who stepped down in January as chief executive. Like many of his media mogul friendships, his relationship with Mr. Parsons started years ago in Sun Valley. “I first met Vivi at the duck pond in Sun Valley,” Mr. Parsons recalled in a phone interview. “In typical Vivi Nevo fashion, we shortly became best buds.”

The personal connections are part of how Mr. Nevo makes investment decisions. “He informs his instincts by being in the space,” Mr. Parsons said. “This is how he absorbs what’s going on, and decides where to place his bets.”

For a man who has become a ubiquitous figure in a very public industry, Mr. Nevo is, and has remained, largely a private, unknown quantity. “He’s not so much mysterious, as he just doesn’t want to be public,” said Mr. Parsons, who is an executor of a trust Mr. Nevo established for his daughter, Lilly, age 6, from a previous relationship. “The mysterious part is, you can’t Google this guy and get his whole story.”

Mr. Nevo has always refused requests for interviews, and he declined to comment for this article. In private conversations with some friends and associates, however, Mr. Nevo has provided glimpses into his background.

The silhouette of Mr. Nevo’s story goes like this: he was an only child who was born in Bucharest, Romania, and moved with his parents to Tel Aviv when he was a baby. His father was a chemical engineer and his mother was an anesthesiologist. As a boy, Mr. Nevo would vacation with his parents in Los Angeles, where he became enchanted with the glamour of Hollywood.

There was family money — his father ran a chemical company, according to several people, including Mr. Nevo’s friend and tennis partner Frank Biondi, the former head of Universal Studios and chief executive of Viacom. But the driving force of his life is the memory of his mother, who died of cancer in the late 1980s, leaving him an inheritance that allowed him to start investing.

“It’s all about the respect he had for his mother,” said Elizabeth Saltzman, international social editor of Vanity Fair, who met Mr. Nevo on the New York social scene in the 1980s (the second time she met him she shared a helicopter with him to the Hamptons). “His mother was everything. I think there’s a huge mama complex, of trying to make her proud.”

With the inheritance — which one business associate of Mr. Nevo’s, who spoke anonymously because his conversations with him were meant to be confidential, pegged at around $10 million — Mr. Nevo set about investing and networking. He opened trading accounts at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, as well as Allen & Company, which eventually won him an invitation to Sun Valley, the place that became the locus for so many of his relationships, including those with Mr. Parsons and Lachlan Murdoch. Through diligence and hard work, the right contacts and a lot of the right trades during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, he turned his inheritance into a sizable fortune.

Mr. Mack said: “He took the money his family left him and he really created this media, trading empire. At Credit Suisse we did a lot of trading business with him, either outright or with derivatives.”

How much money he made is really anyone’s guess. When Mr. Nevo began appearing a few years ago on certain lists, like Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list, Forbes tried to gauge Mr. Nevo’s wealth to see if he belonged on the magazine’s list of billionaires, but ultimately gave up trying. Mr. Nevo owns homes in Malibu, Calif.; the Los Angeles-area neighborhood of Brentwood; the TriBeCa neighborhood of New York; London; and two homes in Tel Aviv, including his modest childhood home outside the city, which sits empty. In addition, he and Ms. Zhang recently bought a home in Beijing.

“Vivi is a very hard worker, and we’d begin chatting about the markets in the early morning, and then we’d talk late in the afternoon,” said Bob Packer, who ran Goldman Sachs’s institutional equities unit in San Francisco and handled many of Mr. Nevo’s trades. “He loved working with the markets. He’s just a really affable, wonderful, loyal guy.”

In the case of Time Warner, his relationship with the company and its executives began in the early to mid-1990s, when he established a relationship with Gerald M. Levin, then chief executive.

“It was in a social context,” Mr. Levin said, trying to recall how he met Mr. Nevo. “I would go to every major fight that HBO had in Las Vegas. It was either at the fights in Las Vegas or at some movie premiere. No, I think it was in Vegas.”

“I spoke to him about Time Warner and what we were doing. Increasingly, he got interested. Unlike some other financial players, he has an interest not just in the financial aspect itself but also the personalities. The social nexus is part of his understanding and analysis.”

Joseph Ravitch, a prominent media investment banker at Goldman Sachs, said Mr. Nevo was “extraordinarily Zelig-like in the sense that he endears himself to a totally diverse group of people from C.E.O.’s to artists and rock stars.”

“But it’s not really Zelig,” he continued, “because he is always the same, open and straightforward Vivi.”

Several years ago, Joseph R. Perella, who led investment banking for Morgan Stanley and was the senior banker on the Time Warner account, received a phone call from Mr. Parsons. “Parsons said, I know a guy you’d like to meet,” Mr. Perella recalled. “Interesting guy. Knows a lot about the business.”

Mr. Perella said they hit it off almost immediately over lunch at San Pietro, a Manhattan restaurant favored by investment bankers. “He’s one of the least boring types I have ever met,” Mr. Perella said. “My sense is he’s a self-made guy who made it himself. He’s just a smart investor. As for the building blocks of his fortune, I have no idea.”

Of late, Mr. Nevo has been sprinkling money around in private companies, many of which are new media ventures. He has around 25 private investments, according to a business associate, including stakes in Demand Media, a social networking company; CityVoter, a social site that allows city dwellers to post about things like where to eat and where to shop; an online music site, Buzznet; Spot Runner, an online advertising company; and the Internet video company Joost. He also has an investment in the Weinstein Company, the film company run by the brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and had a small investment in Bette, a now-shuttered New York restaurant that was owned by Amy Sacco, a prominent nightlife entrepreneur.

Many of the investments are modest in size — about $1 million in the Weinsteins; six figures in Demand Media — but Mr. Nevo’s association with a company brings value beyond the size of the check he writes. “He’s sort of like a media Wizard of Oz,” said Tyler Goldman, the founder of Buzznet, who approached Mr. Nevo last year about investing. “He had some strategic advice, but mostly relationship advice. We were working on a number of deals with bigger media companies, and he had advice on how to approach those.”

Nick Grouf, the chief executive of Spot Runner, said that Mr. Nevo was instrumental in brokering relationships, including with Lachlan Murdoch, who also invested. “Vivi has been very helpful to us in making introductions to his friends,” Mr. Grouf said. “Lachlan is a great example. And with Time Warner, I met Dick Parsons through Vivi.”

In fact, Mr. Nevo’s value — beyond friendship — to many executives is his wealth of information and contacts. “Vivi is plugged in to everything,” Mr. Parsons said. “He hears everything.”

For others, Mr. Nevo is a great friend with a comfy house in Malibu in which to crash, as Lenny Kravitz did during the West Coast part of his 2004 world tour. “It was nice to just have a place to put your stuff,” Mr. Kravitz said in an interview. “If I had to say anything about Vivi Nevo, it’s that he’s all heart. He operates on trust, heart and feeling.”

And about Mr. Nevo’s business? “I don’t go there with him,” Mr. Kravitz said. “And that’s part of our understanding. I’m interested in Vivi Nevo the person.”

Summary: Aviv Nevo took a modest inheritance and parlayed it into a fortune by investing in media and Internet companies.


We see all sorts of men in our store, and I like to think that we’ve earned the trust of our clientele and they appreciate the kind of service we give them. We want to find the style that’s right for each guy. There’s so much more choice out there for men, and more information available, so guys are becoming more educated in developing their sense of style.

One of my biggest passions is travel and discovering new things, and the way I’ve shaped Trunk allows me to indulge that. A lot of people leave the corporate world to have control over their time and decide what they do each day, but it’s very easy to let the business take over your life. I’ve really tried to steer the business in a direction that suits my desires and needs; I’m fortunate enough to travel for business and pleasure at the same time.

The best advice I’ve ever been given is just to go for it. Don’t sit around waiting for things to fall into place. Don’t just think and talk about it, actually do it. It might be the Nike slogan but it rings true – if you’re reasonably smart, you’ll figure things out as you go along.

Trunk Clothiers, 8 Chiltern Street, W1U 7PU, trunkclothiers.com

Summary: Since making its debut on Chiltern Street in 2010, Trunk Clothiers has carved a niche for its carefully curated, tightly edited men’


is back in the ring as legendary boxing coach Ray Arcel, who famously helped train Roberto Durán to defeat Sugar Ray Leonard for the 1980 WBC welterweight title.

Durán and Arcel's fascinating relationship is the subject of Jonathan Jakubowicz's new film

. And if the Venezuelan writer-director didn't know that casting De Niro in a boxing flick could draw some comparisons to a certain other boxing movie from his past, the Oscar winner made sure to remind him.

"The first time I met with De Niro he told me, 'You do a serious boxing movie with me and it's going to be compared to

– and that's not a very good thing,' " Jakubowicz tells PEOPLE with a laugh.

– which earned De Niro a Best Actor Oscar as real-life fighter Jake LaMotta – was "obviously present in all our heads," he argues that Durán's story is almost the opposite of LaMotta's.

"In a way, Durán and Ray La Motta have something in common with their rage and self-destructiveness," he explains. "But there is a celebratory nature in Durán, a cheerfulness for life, that Jake La Motta doesnât have."

He adds, "I think in many ways Durán is the anti-

, he's the guy who defeated his demons, and I don't know if you can say the same thing about Jake in

Born in Panama during a time of political upheaval, Durán (played in the film by

) grew up in poverty and without access to education. "He came from truly some of the poorest streets in the world," says Jakubowicz. "He was illiterate, had no education, and no discipline. He was street fighter."

By the time Arcel took an interest in Durán, the old man was already a legendary trainer, having coached scores of champs since the 1920s. "Arcel is an intellectual of boxing," Jakubowicz explains. "He was the first to approach boxing as a mental sport and to create strategy for the fights. He really conveyed the idea to his boxers that boxing is fought just as much in their head as in the ring."

Arcel believed that his strategic influence, combined with Durán's raw power, could be unstoppable. "I felt these colliding worlds of the street savage and the intellectual came together and created a phenomenal dynamic that truly benefited both men."

That dynamic was a strong influence on the way Jakubowicz chose to film the movie. In the exclusive clip above, the director says he attempted to film the scene from Arcel's unique perspective.

"In the clip that you see here, I used Phantom cameras that shoot in 600 frames per second," he explains. "It's an ultra slow-mo effect that cuts back and forth between the action and Arcel's eyes, because I wanted to convey that the way Arcel sees a fight is different from the way you and I see a fight."

He adds, "It's a different thing to just watch two people boxing and to see them through the eyes of Ray Arcel. And that was, for that particular fight, the approach we took."

In addition to the camera work, Jakubowicz and his actors went above and beyond to recreate the feel of Durán's fights. Ramirez actually trained with Durán's real-life sons for the role, and when the real-life champ saw the first trailer for the film, he could not believe his eyes.

"The first time I showed the trailer to the actual Durán, he literally thought we used CGI on Edgar's face," Jakubowicz says, laughing. "He was like, 'You're not going to fool me, you did some s--- with computers.' "

Summary: See an exclusive first clip of Robert De Niro as boxing legend Ray Arcel in Hands of Stone