01/14/2016 AT 04:30 PM EST

isn't afraid to let fans see her under the influence.

"I want to show people what happens when you get f---ed-up," Handler says in a new trailer for her new Netflix documentary series

In a clip from the four-part series – which, in addition to drugs, will delve into the topics of technology,

and racism – Handler is seen chatting up

about marijuana and throwing up after ingesting ayahuasca, a brew developed by indigenous Peruvians as a traditional spiritual medicine used in ceremonies.

"I picked four subject matters that were interesting to me and would also put me in a fish-out-of-water situation," Handler tells PEOPLE of

. "I mean, drugs are just fun to do!"

premieres on Netflix on Jan 23.

Summary: "I want to show people what happens when you get f---ed-up," Handler says in Chelsea Does


A flare-up on the border with Israel started on Monday after violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli warplanes prompted anti-aircraft fire from forces of the Lebanese Shia group Hizb Allah.Â

Hizb AllahÂ fighters then destroyed an Israeli bulldozer that the United Nations later said had violated Lebanese territory.Â

The attack, which killed an Israeli soldier and wounded another, prompted Israeli air raids on Tuesday on targets deep in southern Lebanon, which brought stern UN condemnation.Â

Speaking after Thursday's weekly cabinet meeting, Lahud said "we do not want to carry out attacks, but we will not allow Israel to establish a new equation based on (the principle) of aggression without response.Â

"After the aggression, the adequate deterrence was carried out against what Israel did," Lahud was quoted as saying by Information Minister Michel Samaha.Â

Without naming them, Samaha criticised "great powers" for failing to acknowledge that Israel was responsible for the violations and the eruption of violence, putting both sides on equal footing.Â

Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace on Monday"We ask the great powers dealing with the south (of Lebanon) to see with both their eyes," he said. "Are some countries asking Lebanon not to respond when subject to aggression?Â

Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace on Monday

"The security forces are carrying out their duty in southern Lebanon and are providing security to the Lebanese," he said.Â

"If the government were not responsible for the security, the great powers and the United Nations would not have participated in financing reconstruction projects in the south," he said.Â

Samaha was apparently referring to the United States and France, which called on both sides to observe restraint and repeated demands for the deployment of the Lebanese army at the borders.Â

Summary: Lebanese President Emile Lahud has vowed that his country will react to any new Israeli violation of Lebanese sovereignty.


What’s right with the Grammys? The answers can be found way down the list of nominees in 83 categories, the ones where the winners won’t be celebrated at length, or at all, on the broadcast on CBS next Monday.

Category 67 acknowledges producers and engineers behind new packages of archival music. The nominated recordings for Best Historical Album are Bob Dylan and the Band’s “The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11,” Erroll Garner ’s “The Complete Concert by the Sea,” Fannie Lou Hamer ’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” and two multiartist compilations: “Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966-1985” and “Parchman Farm: Photographs and Field Recordings, 1947-1959.” To listen to these meticulously remastered albums is to time travel to the moment they were recorded and experience performances that jolt and haunt, none of which have their eye on history, but are nonetheless a commemoration of an America gone by.

The group of nominees for Best Regional Roots Music Album—Category 51 on the list—is a bit of mess, thanks to the 2012 consolidation of the individual awards for Cajun, Hawaiian, Native American, polka and zydeco music. But the nominated recordings by Jon Cleary, Natalie Ai Kamauu, Keali’i Reichel, the Revelers, and Windwalker and the MCW are special in their own way as they celebrate native traditions brushed now and then with popular musical forms. Albums with their roots in Louisiana won the award in the category at the past three ceremonies, which seems to favor Mr. Cleary and his rattling funk-blues or the Revelers, a supergroup in Cajun, zydeco and swamp-pop circles.

As for the jazz categories, the Grammys have tended to tilt away from avant-garde jazz or jazz that links to hip-hop, R&B and rock. But among the nominees in Category 33—Best Jazz Instrumental Album—are works by Terence Blanchard featuring the E-Collective and by the Robert Glasper Trio that stretch the definition of the form, if only a little bit.

Even some of the categories that are associated with highly commercial pop music reflect the satisfying level of quality in the contemporary scene. Category 26—Best Country Solo Performance—includes pleasing, well-crafted tracks by Cam, Chris Stapleton, Carrie Underwood and Lee Ann Womack, who is represented by the gorgeous “Chances Are,” an old-school country tear-jerker. (Written by Hayes Carll, “Chances Are” is also up for Best Country Song.) Even the fifth song in the category, Keith Urban ’s “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16,” with its glitchy percussion, is solid enough to rise above its groaner of a title.

Category 47—Best Americana Album—is fatted with nominees that win Nashville’s approval: discs by Brandi Carlile, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, Jason Isbell, the Mavericks and Punch Brothers. But while the Grammys define Americana too narrowly as close kin to country, all five nominated albums are exquisite in content and presentation. Meanwhile, in a bit of illogic that can define the Grammys, tracks performed by the Harris-Crowell duo, Mr. Isbell, the Mavericks and Punch Brothers also are among the nominees for Best American Roots Song, which seems to suggest Americana and American Roots are one and the same. Meanwhile, blues guitarist and singer Buddy Guy, a six-time Grammy winner, is among the nominees for Best American Roots Performance, though no blues artists are acknowledged in the Americana grouping. The 79-year-old Mr. Guy is also up for the Best Blues Album award, as are recordings by the Cedric Burnside Project, Shemekia Copeland, Bettye LaVette and the all-star tribute disc “Muddy Waters 100.”

The big categories reveal how much the Grammys prize popularity and sales. But the Album of the Year category—number two on the list—gives a better-than-fair sampling of what’s happening in rock and pop with nominated discs by Alabama Shakes, Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Stapleton, Taylor Swift and the Weeknd. And one might quarrel with some of the choices for Record of the Year, but Category 1—which includes D’Angelo ’s slinky, deeply funky “Really Love” alongside tracks by the Mark Ronson-Bruno Mars duo, Ed Sheeran, Ms. Swift and the Weeknd—deserves acknowledgment for its good taste and modest sense of adventure.

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

Summary: A look at some of the lesser-known nominees at this year’s award show.


WASHINGTON—In late 2014, an in-house judge for the government’s new consumer-finance watchdog ruled that a New Jersey lender took illegal “kickbacks” from mortgage insurers, boosting costs for borrowers. The company said the decision invoked a new, overly aggressive interpretation of an old law and appealed to the agency chief.

That gambit backfired in a big way and launched a legal battle over the man who has become one of the country’s most powerful financial regulators.

When Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, responded seven months later, he not only upheld the decision, he ordered lender PHH Corp. to cough up $109 million in allegedly ill-gotten gains. That was $103 million—or 17 times—more than the judge sought. Mr. Cordray has said that he applied the law more strictly than had been common since its 1974 enactment, a move he justified as part of his bureau’s postcrisis mission to toughen decades of lax consumer protection.

The argument has moved to a federal appeals court. Advocates from left and right have jumped into PHH Corporation. et al v. CFPB, scheduled to receive a District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals hearing on April 12. A “breathtaking assertion of raw administrative power,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a brief supporting the plaintiff. Underscoring the case’s broader implications for the industry’s long-standing practices, mortgage bankers, home builders and a dozen other groups also back PHH’s case, being argued by Theodore Olson, a leader of the Washington conservative legal community who was solicitor general under President George W. Bush.

The agency’s powers are justified “to protect consumers from widespread abuses in the financial services market place,” countered a brief by AARP Inc., the seniors advocacy group.

“The PHH lawsuit is the first serious test of the CFPB’s enforcement authority,” said Isaac Boltansky, an analyst for Compass Point Research & Trading, an investment firm specializing in financial services. “If the court rules against the bureau, the calls for a change to its leadership structure will intensify.”

The court case is just one sign that, four years after the agency’s creation, debate rages over its authority to police a vast swath of the sector, from credit cards and mobile-phone payments to college accreditation.

Opposition has grown as the agency ventures into businesses previously escaping federal scrutiny, like payday lending and credit-reporting agencies. The bureau has filed hard-to-prove charges of alleged racial discrimination in auto loans and drawn criticism with proposed mandatory arbitration curbs facilitating lawsuits against service providers from banks to nursing homes.

One conservative-leaning group aired a television ad depicting the CFPB as a Soviet-style bureaucracy. In an email to staff following its broadcast, Mr. Cordray—a veteran Ohio Democratic politician who served as state attorney general—quoted Winston Churchill: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Mr. Cordray declined an interview request. A CFPB spokesman declined to comment for this article.

The argument often turns on the CFPB’s “single-director” structure—an unusual system designed to empower its leader to make sweeping changes swiftly.

The director is appointed to a five-year term by the president, with wide discretion to implement and enforce rules, in contrast with committee-based agencies—like the five-member Securities and Exchange Commission— where commissioners from both parties vote on major decisions.

For CFPB opponents, the PHH case highlights problems with that structure, as the 56-year-old Mr. Cordray, whose term began in 2012, could single-handedly overrule a judge and impose a penalty based on a new legal interpretation, without advance notice. At the SEC, reversing such a ruling requires a unanimous commission vote.

Defenders of Mr. Cordray note the bureau has largely met timetables for primary rule making required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law, while the SEC has missed key deadlines. They say its concentrated power offers better protection than oversight previously fragmented among seven other agencies. The CFPB says since its creation it has handled more than 770,000 complaints and provided more than $11 billion in compensation for alleged damages to more than 25 million consumers.

Some congressional Republicans have tried to turn the CFPB into an SEC-like multimember commission but have been stymied by Democratic lawmakers and President Barack Obama. A GOP victory in November’s elections would likely prompt a CFPB overhaul.

Meantime, critics are working the courts, as they have against other Obama policies, from health to the environment.

Multiple lawsuits have challenged CFPB constitutionality. While most have been dismissed, one from a small Texas bank—handled by C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel under the first President Bush—is currently on the docket of the District of Columbia District Court. Briefs are due by March.

The PHH case revolves around the CFPB’s new hard-line interpretation of the four-decade-old Real Estate Settlement Procedure Act, designed to keep lenders and realtors from inflating home-sale transaction costs. Respa had been enforced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which opened the PHH probe. The CFPB picked up responsibility for Respa, and the PHH case, shortly after it began operating.

PHH, based in Mount Laurel, N.J., has roots dating to the 1950s, emerging in its current form in 2005 when spun off from Cendant Corp., a travel and housing company now called Avis Budget Group .

PHH is part of the rapidly growing sector of nonbank mortgage providers. It said it closed $36 billion in mortgage financing while servicing 1.1 million loans in 2014.

The company said it provides “end-to-end mortgage solutions”—and the practice triggering the investigation involved a reinsurance business the lender ran on the side.

The CFPB said PHH referred borrowers to mortgage-insurance companies and in return pressured those insurers to buy its affiliate’s reinsurance. The CFPB said that allowed PHH to collect up to 40% of the mortgage insurance premiums—“hundreds of millions of dollars” over a number of years—effectively raising consumer costs. In his ruling, Mr. Cordray called those payments “kickbacks.”

The two sides disagree little on the facts and largely agree Mr. Cordray interpreted Respa differently than HUD. They disagree on whether he had a more appropriate reading of the law or a “radical” reinterpretation, as PHH said in one filing.

PHH said Mr. Cordray departed “drastically from precedent” by declaring the company not only violated the law when it originated a reinsurance contract but committed a “continuing violation” with each monthly payment. That was the difference between the judge’s $6 million penalty and Mr. Cordray’s $109 million.

Mr. Cordray wrote that his reading of the law simply differed from HUD’s. In one passage, he wrote: “To the extent” HUD guidance had been “inconsistent with my textual and structural interpretation” of RESPA, “… I reject it.” In another, he said the in-house judge had “misunderstood” the case he used as a precedent.

“This brazen disregard for judicial authority, agency precedent and fair notice is a symptom of the larger constitutional problems,” PHH argued in one court filing. “The CFPB places legislative, executive and judicial power all ‘in the same hands’ of a single person—what James Madison called ‘the very definition of tyranny.’”

Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications: CFPB Director Richard Cordray ordered PHH Corp. to return $109 million in ill-gotten gains, 17 times more than initially ordered by a judge. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Mr. Cordray ordered the payment amount be increased by 18 times. (Jan. 27, 2016)

Summary: Four years after the CFPB’s creation, a court case could help settle a debate over the agency’s authority to police everything from credit cards and mobile-phone payments to college accreditation.


Retailers are often reluctant to report breaches out of concern it could hurt their businesses. Target only acknowledged its 2013 attack after security blogger Brian Krebs reported the breach, prompting inquiries from journalists and investors.

Neiman Marcus said an outside forensics firm discovered evidence on Jan. 1 that indicated the retailer had been the victim of a cyberattack. It disclosed the breach nine days later, after another inquiry from Krebs, who was following up on reports about a surge in fraudulent charges traced to the retailer.

Target and J.C. Penney waited more than two years to admit that they were victims in 2007 of notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez, who was accused of masterminding the theft and reselling of millions of credit cards and ATM numbers.

During his trial the companies were represented by lawyers who did not identify their clients as Target and J.C Penney.

Doug Johnson, vice president of risk management policy with the American Bankers Association, said banks and credit card firms like Visa are forbidden from naming merchants that have been breached, unless they disclose it themselves.

"It is really frustrating to the bank and also the customer," Johnson said. One of the sources who told Reuters about the recent rash of attacks said the memory parsing malware cited in the Visa reports was among the tools that the hackers had used, but said they used other techniques as well.

Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said the retailer is not commenting on the company's investigation of the breach.

"This continues to be an active and ongoing investigation. It would be inappropriate to discuss details at this point."

Avivah Litan, a security analyst for Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner information technology research firm, said she learned about a separate set of breaches, dating back no more than a few months before the Nov. 28 Thanksgiving Day start of the holiday shopping season, from a forensics investigator. She declined to provide his name.

"Target was not the only retailer who got hit, but they got hit the biggest," Litan said.

Investigators believe that the early series of attacks on retailers staged before late November were mostly used as trial attacks to help the hackers perfect new techniques they then used against Target, stealing payment cards at unprecedented speed, Litan said.

Chris Gray, director of Denver-based Accuvant information security firm's risk and compliance practice, said that sophisticated cybercrime groups do that because they only have once chance to get it right before victims catch on.

"You want to test it and make sure it works," Gray said. "Then you push it out at the appropriate time and do as much damage as you can."

Summary: Target and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks have been breached, sources familiar with attacks on other merchants say.


Revolutionary concepts sometimes go over people's heads. The legendary 20th Century Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck said in 1946 that television "won't be able to hold on to any market it captures." And Decca Records rejected the then-unknown Beatles in 1962, saying, "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

Though history vindicated those concepts, such examples are the exception rather than the rule. That's especially true with new car designs, where the line between "trailblazing innovation" and "hideous eyesore" is both exceedingly fine and frequently crossed.

With that in mind, CNBC.com presents 10 ugly, American-made cars whose designers would have been better off if they had they been shamed back to the drafting table. They were selected by Karl Brauer, CEO and editor-in-chief of TotalCarScore.com, an online review aggregator for autos currently on the market.

"Each one of these models made it through a design process, focus groups and executive review before seeing the light of dealer showrooms," Brauer said in an email, adding that the manufacturers often paid the ultimate price for producing them. "Not only did most of these models have a limited lifespan, but eight of the 10 brands that produced them are also dead and buried."

Read ahead to see the 10 ugliest cars of all time, as chosen by Brauer.

Daniel Bukszpan Posted 15 March 2013

Summary: There's a fine line between “innovation” and “eyesore” when it comes to cars. CNBC.com presents a list of 10 models whose designers should have been shamed back to the drafting table.


03/15/2016 AT 10:00 PM EDT

Keyboardist Keith Emerson died on March 10 due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Los Angeles coroner's official confirmed on Tuesday, according to the

L.A. coroner's spokesman Ed Winter ruled Emerson's death a suicide after an autopsy proved the late rock star shot himself in the head. Winter also stated Emerson had a heart condition.

He was found on March 11 in the early hours with one gunshot wound to the head. Santa Monica Police

Emerson was one third of the sixties rock group Emerson, Lake and Palmer, with singer Greg Lake and drummer Carl Palmer. The band confirmed Emerson's death on their

"We regret to announce that Keith Emerson died last night at his home in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, aged 71. We ask that the familyâs privacy and grief be respected," the post read.

Summary: An autopsy showed Emerson shot himself in the head.


03/23/2016 AT 02:45 PM EDT

's hometown of Paintsville, Kentucky are in for a treat.

, 37, will be performing a special concert for Johnson Central High School students and staff at their gymnasium.

And that's not all. The "Traveller" singer – who already

award for new male artist of the year – is also partnering with Ram Trucks and

(the charitable arm of the Academy of Country Music) to dedicate an outdoor performance space at the school constructed by JCHS carpentry students and Ram Nation volunteers.

Danny Clinch / Courtesy Ram Trucks

"While the story of Chris Stapleton may not be widely known, it's one of

, all values important to our Ram truck owners," says Marissa Hunter, director of brand advertising. "It's a great opportunity and honor for us to go back to Paintsville with Chris to document his return to the place that built his character and work-ethic."

Later in the evening, Stapleton

a sold-out 'Ram Trucks Hometown Concert' for his hometown in the new space.

Summary: The "Traveller" singer will also be dedicating a new outdoor performance space at Johnson Central High School


From left: Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis and Kathryn Hahn in Bad Moms

04/06/2016 AT 09:30 AM EDT

is stepping to the bad side in her new movie.

PEOPLE has your first look at

, which stars Kunis as Amy Mitchell, a stretched-too-thin mother whose man-child husband, high-maintenance children and incompetent boss are pushing her closer to her breaking point.

When she finally snaps, Amy teams up with two other overstressed moms, played by

, and they decide to regain some freedom by abandoning their responsibilities and having some wild fun – which includes letting loose at a bar, as seen in the exclusive image above.

However, their self-indulgent behavior brings them into conflict with three alpha moms at the school – played by

–who were the impetus for Amy's decision to break bad.

"It's a beautiful movie about women rediscovering themselves and recognizing that whatever type of mom we are, we are all on the same team. That rang true for me," Bell, who has two young daughters with husband Dax Shepard, tells PEOPLE. "Every single person in it is a mom, and we were all able to identify all the feelings discussed in the movie."

"It was just the epitome of a really fun movie to make," says Kunis.

Summary: Bad Moms hits theaters July 26


Two federal law enforcement officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said investigators never believed the brothers were unaware of the fraud and both were the focus of active investigations until the time of their deaths.

The officials acknowledged, however, that being able to substantiate their suspicions proved difficult, and as investigators unraveled the case's complex web of financial chicanery they had increasingly turned their attention to a case they felt they could prove: tax evasion.

Both officials told the AP it was likely Andrew Madoff would have faced tax evasion charges if he had not died. The ultimate goal, they said, was using federal charges as leverage to get him to return money to investors.

Read MoreMadoffson's death adds complication for victims

Attorney Martin Flumenbaum, the executor of Andrew Madoff's will, has maintained that the brothers never "knew of, or knowingly participated, in their father's criminal conduct." Flumenbaum did not respond to a request for comment Friday on the possibility of tax charges against Andrew Madoff.

During a 2011 "60 Minutes" interview, Andrew Madoff said that from the beginning he had "absolutely nothing to hide and I've been eager, almost desperate, to speak out publicly and tell people I am not involved."

Bernard Madoff, now 76, is serving a 150-year prison sentence in a North Carolina prison after admitting he fleeced thousands of investors in a scheme that went on for decades.

Five former high-level Madoff firm employees were convicted earlier this year of helping carry out the fraud by conspiring to defraud clients and falsifying records. It is unclear whether anyone else will be charged, though prosecutors describe the investigation as ongoing and have obtained in the last week delays in the sentencing of several cooperators.

Days after Andrew Madoff's death, his will was made public, detailing an estate worth $16 million. He left his wife Deborah West—who filed for divorce after the fraud was made public—about $5 million, divided his tangible personal property equally among his two college-age daughters and provided his fiancee, Catherine Hooper, with $50,000 a month until the money he left is gone.

Read MoreAndrewMadoff's $16M fortune enrages father's victims

Irving Picard, the trustee who has so far recovered more than half of the $20 billion invested in the Ponzi scheme, is seeking to recover money from the estates of both brothers and has the power to pursue money and assets wherever they are disbursed.

He charged in his recent lawsuit that the Madoff sons knew about the fraud and tried to cover it up by deleting emails during a Securities and Exchange Commission probe.

Summary: Bernard Madoff's son was under investigation for involvement in his father's Ponzi scheme until the day he died from cancer earlier this month.


With a high-energy roots-rock sound that mixed the exuberance of rockabilly with the power and speed of punk, the Blasters burst on the L.A. music scene in the early 1980s. Their hits included "Marie Marie," "American Music" and "Border Radio."

By the time the band blew up acrimoniously in 1986, it remained largely a West Coast phenomenon, but a memorable one, with three acclaimed major-label albums and near-constant touring.

The demise of the Blasters arose out of sibling rivalry. From the beginning, the band's explosive sound and success were driven by the conflicting, combustive personalities of its two mainstays, brothers Phil and Dave Alvin.

"We were fighting on stage," Dave recalls of a disastrous Blasters show in Montreal. "I walked off after and said, `That's it, I'm done. I quit.'" While Dave went on to a Grammy-winning solo career, Phil kept the Blasters going, but its fortunes faded. Two years ago, Phil almost died.

Now, almost 30 years since the breakup, the two have reunited to pay homage to a blues pioneer whose music inspired them as teenagers. "Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy, " due June 3 (YepRoc), is their first album together since 1985.

"Brothers will fight and squabble about just about everything," says Dave. "But one thing we don't squabble about is Big Bill Broonzy. He's our square one musically."

As children, the brothers clashed even as they bonded over the blues and R&B classics by Broonzy and others in Downey, a factory town southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

"My brother was born with this gift, this relatively pitch-perfect voice," says Dave. "I on the other hand, was blessed with not such a great voice. So we collected records together, went to shows together, but we never sang together."

"As the older brother, I'd been taught to make room for your little brother," says Phil. "But I was a pretty big personality and I did beat David up a few times."

Their father, an organizer for the steelworkers union, had been a musician. Their mother took 12-year old Phil to a show at a long-gone folk and blues club, the Ash Grove, by blues harmonica virtuoso Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee in the mid-1960s. Phil, who had brought a harmonica given to him by his father, happened to sit next to a blues great in the audience, Big Joe Williams.

"He took me backstage and introduced me to Sonny Terry," recalls Phil. "I still can't believe I did it, but I asked him could I have lessons—and he said yes!"

Phil was too young to drive, but soon his mother was ferrying him to club dates and he got to know Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker and Lee Allen —the former Little Richard and Fats Domino saxophonist would later join the Blasters. Phil formed a band made up of neighborhood friends and, at 15, was leading the backup band for Turner, the great Kansas City blues shouter.

Phil was a legend in Downey. One friend remembers him blaring blues and R&B 45s on a portable record player that he mounted on the floorboards of the Ford Bronco he drove for an after-school job.

Little brother Dave maintained a lower profile. "I was always intimidated by Phil and his friends," Dave says. To distance himself from his brother, he tried the saxophone, took up the flute and began playing jazz.

Unknown to Phil and his bandmates, who rehearsed in the Alvin family garage, Dave was secretly learning to strum. "As soon as they finished rehearsing, they'd go off to get hamburgers or something," recalls Dave. "I'd go in and pick up somebody's guitar and start making noise on it."

In 1979, when friends needed a band to play their wedding, Phil invited Dave to fill in for an absent guitarist.

"Phil was a very good, multifinger picking guitarist," says Dave. "What I could do that Phil couldn't was play Chuck Berry and a little Carl Perkins and Johnny Guitar Watson. So instead of being the usual blues or rock 'n' roll band, we were doing something that was a whole other thing. We thought, `Hey, this is pretty unique.'"

When the band gathered to cut their first album, 1980's "American Music," Phil discovered there was something else his brother could do that he couldn't. Told they needed original material to include along with their covers of blues and R&B classics, Dave wrote five songs on demand, including 'Marie Marie,

From the beginning the band members' relationships were fraught, says Dave. Bassist John Bazz and drummer Bill Bateman grew up with the Alvins. "We all fought like brothers. There would be different camps in Byzantine arrangements."

One thing that didn't help matters: As the band was beginning to enjoy wider success, Dave turned down an offer from director Walter Hill to hire the Blasters to write songs for the 1982 film "48 Hours."

"I never read a movie script in my life," says Dave. "I read it and I hated it. They were throwing Hollywood money at us. I didn't care. I said, 'It will ruin our reputation, blah blah blah.' The movie became a monster hit of course and my brother and everybody else in the band never forgave me."

But mostly it was the brothers' own dynamic that doomed the band. There were times, Dave says, "when your brother just pisses you off because he's your brother: `You're wearing a pair of brown shoes with black socks? C'mon, you're out of your mind, man.'"

As the brothers bickered, Dave continued to write almost all the Blasters songs. But he never got to sing them—on stage or in the studio.

"I'd bring songs into rehearsal and sing 'em," says Dave. "If they got the green light, I'd run through it about 20 times; my brother would get the gist of it and start singing it.

"At first it didn't bother me, because he's amazing. But when you're writing songs for somebody else to sing, you write about things that you share. At some point you run out of that. I got to the point where I wanted to make the songs more personal. I was going to have to start singing them myself."

Once Dave quit the Blasters, the Alvin brothers joined the ranks of other rock music acts that were undone by warring siblings: the Everly Brothers, the Kinks, Creedence Clearwater Revival and later, Oasis.

Dave played occasional reunion concerts with his brother's band and even toured with the Blasters in the 1990s when a later member died. But until they recorded "Common Ground," the two remained estranged.

The reconciliation was spurred by a near-fatal medical emergency that Phil, now 60, suffered during a 2012 Blasters tour in Spain. "I flatlined," says Phil. Rushed to a medical clinic by Mr. Bazz, he was later told that a female intern revived him after her superior thought him dead.

For Dave, his brother's scare was impetus to mend their differences. That and Broonzy's big-hearted songs. "We sing together on this one," he says.

Summary: Phil and Dave Alvin, estranged since they led the hard-rocking band the Blasters in the '80s, reconnect for a new album, 'Common Ground'


05/02/2016 AT 10:40 AM EDT

dating? Well, not to their knowledge at least.

Evans, 34, and Olsen, 27, stopped by

on Monday to discuss their upcoming film

– and finally address all those dating rumors.

"Well we've been dating for, like, secretly for the last three years," Olsen told DeGeneres. "We're actually engaged."

"I remember that," Evans responded, playing along with the joke. "I remember sending you a text saying, 'Hey guess what, apparently we're dating.' "

As the two burst into laughter, Olsen joked that being in a secret relationship can lead to a few communication problems. "We were about to move in with each other, but we're still trying to figure out if we're dating or not, because we don't talk instead." While they seemed to dispel the dating rumors once and for all, DeGeneres encouraged them not to rule out a possible relationship in the future. "I don't know, I'm just saying," said DeGeneres. "Think about it, don't just pooh-pooh it. I mean you're both single, and if they're saying it, maybe somebody sees something you don't." But while they may not be dating each other, both Olsen and Evans have been linked to other A-list stars. Olsen previously faced speculation she was dating Tom Hiddleston, while Evans has been linked to Minka Kelly, Jessica Biel and Emmy Rossum. Captain America: Civil War hits theaters May 6.

Summary: "Well we've been dating for, like, secretly for the last three years," Elizabeth Olsen said


In fact, when minutes of the most recent meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting were released Wednesday afternoon, some observers were surprised by the number of members who appeared to believe rate increases should come relatively soon.

The issue of interest rates is tied inextricably to the job market. The Fed has what's known as a "dual mandate" from Congress. The central bank is charged with maintaining price stability, meaning an acceptably low level of inflation, and with attaining maximum employment.

The question of how quickly the economy is moving toward full employment is key to any decision about interest rates. If the job market tightens, wages should rise, which results in inflationary pressure on prices. Raising interest rates is a counter to inflationary pressure.

But right now, there is disagreement about how close the economy really is to full employment. With the current rate at 6.2 percent, nobody is arguing that we are anywhere near there yet. But while some economists believe the economy is approaching a point at which wage growth is inevitable, others, particularly Yellen, believe there is more "slack" in the labor market than the official unemployment rate measures.

Read MoreUS jobs rose since 08 crisis, but pay is 23% less: report

The theory—backed up by the Reuters-Ipsos finding— is that many workers who are not now considered part of the workforce, will continue filtering back into the ranks of those looking for work as the economy continues to improve. Because of the way we measure the unemployment rate, which doesn't count people who have given up looking for work, the return of people to the labor force can have the effect of keeping unemployment high even as the economy adds jobs.

Summary: A new poll found that 30 percent of retirees would "unretire" if a job became available, The Fiscal Times reports.


Irish-born software startup Intercom has extended its latest fund-raising round with another $50 million infusion, led by Index Ventures.

The round also included several high-profile software entrepreneurs, such as Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, the co-founders of digital payments upstart Stripe Patrick and John Collison, and Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of Basecamp, a fast-growing project management startup.

The new money brings Intercom’s total backing to $116 million. The startup’s co-founder and CEO, Eoghan McCabe, declined to discuss the valuation, but he noted the company won’t need more funds. The new money will be used for product development. Intercom already devotes 85% of its “tens of millions” of dollars in revenue to research and engineering.

It’s hard to pigeon-hole Intercom’s software into one software category. Broadly speaking, it handles “customer communications,” including help desk support interactions as well as marketing activities. As a result, it competes with a wide range of incumbent software companies ranging from customer support specialists, like Zendesk, as well as marketing automation players that have traditionally specialized in smaller companies, such as Marketo or Mailchimp.

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The company has added more than 3,000 paying customers since the first part of this funding round in August 2015, bringing the total count to 10,000, McCabe cited.

“Unlike conventional software companies, the strength of our technology has generated incredible organic revenue growth, meaning we don’t have to pump a lot of capital into sales and marketing,” says McCabe.

Aside from Index and the individual investors already mentioned, Intercom’s latest infusion included previous investors ICONIQ Capital Bessemer Venture Partners and the Social + Capital Partnership.

The five-year-old company’s headcount currently stands at about 250 employees, split between Dublin and San Francisco.

Summary: It handles both customer support and marketing processes.


It’s about to get easier to buy tickets to the Super Bowl.

The NFL has partnered with On Location Experiences to begin offering ticket packages to the Super Bowl, with sales beginning next month, ESPN reported. The 2017 Super Bowl, the first event to have ticket packages available through the new deal, will be held in Houston.

A meeting on Tuesday authorized the deal, which will see over 6,000 tickets to the Super Bowl available. ESPN reported that the deal cost $55 million and will continue for the next nine years.

Along with tickets, the company is expected to offer different types of Super Bowl experiences that haven’t been available to fans before, including on-field pregame visits and post game experiences.

“The Super Bowl has been a $100 million opportunity controlled by the brokers,” said John Collins, CEO of On Location Experiences, in an interview with ESPN. “We’re hoping, through this deal, to provide transparency and clarity to a marketplace that frankly has been difficult to navigate for the fan.”

“This deal allows us to offer a much better experience for fans,” Kevin LaForce, the NFL’s senior vice president of corporate development, said to ESPN. “For those fans who always had it on their bucket list to go to a Super Bowl, now you can go online in June, buy your tickets, hotel and airfare and be done with it.”

Also on Tuesday, the NFL announced that Super Bowl LIII would be held in Atlanta in 2019, Super Bowl LIV in South Florida in 2020, and Super Bowl LV in Los Angeles in 2021.

Summary: With sales starting next month


CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to add the clarification that the new series from Amazon and the NFL, All or Nothing, will be available to all Amazon customers, not just Amazon Prime subscribers.

Amazon is targeting fans of behind-the-scenes NFL action with its latest streaming video series.

The National Football League’s film division is teaming up with Amazon AMZN to offer a new documentary series that follows an NFL team for an entire season, including exclusive footage and interviews not broadcast anywhere else, the NFL announced on Monday. The new streaming series, called All or Nothing, premieres this summer on Amazon Video and will feature a behind-the-scenes look at the 2015 Arizona Cardinals—a team that won the NFC West division and made it to the NFC Championship Game before losing to quarterback Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers.

The first season of the docu-series consists of eight, hourlong episodes that follow the Cardinals’ players, coaches, and executives as the team prepares to face-off weekly against NFL rivals while carving a path toward the playoffs in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to bring the franchise its first-ever Super Bowl victory. Arizona Cardinals president Michael Bidwill said in a statement that the Amazon series offers “an unprecedented look into what it takes to compete in the National Football League.”

The series will be available to all Amazon customers through the Amazon Video app.

“All or Nothing will deliver the ultimate behind-the-scenes look at America’s most popular sports and entertainment media property–the NFL’s regular season – and we couldn’t have asked for a better franchise for our inaugural season than the Arizona Cardinals,” NFL Media’s chief content officer, Jordan Levin, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s vice president of digital video, Michael Paull, said the company is “very excited” to partner with the NFL on the docu-series, which represents the latest entry in a rapidly expanding portfolio of original streaming content for the e-commerce giant.

Competing with traditional media companies as well as streaming rivals like Netflix NFLX and Hulu—both of which are also stockpiling original content—Amazon has spent billions of dollars to acquire fresh series to stream online. Also, Amazon Studios head Roy Price told Fortune earlier this year that the company is ramping up its feature-length film production, with plans to eventually put out 16 movies per year.

Amazon will work on All or Nothing with NFL Films, the unit that has won 121 Sports Emmy Awards and also co-produces another popular reality sports docu-series, Hard Knocks. Co-produced with Time Warner’s TWX HBO over ten seasons, Hard Knocks follows a different NFL team each year during the team’s pre-season training camp.

Summary: The first season features the 2015 Arizona Cardinals.


“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” So said the fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. Armed with his finely honed skills of backwards reasoning, his trademark ability to solve unsolvable crimes often hinged on his revealing evidence too small to be noticed.

Holmes was an inspiration for the very founders of modern day forensic science. As the decades passed and the tools in their armoury grew, so too did the sheen of invincibility that surrounded their discipline. But there was a crucial chink in their methods that had been overlooked: subjectivity.

While the likes of Holmes’s successors in detective fiction may lead us to believe that forensic evidence is based on precise deduction, all too often it relies on a scientist’s personal opinion, rather than hard fact.

Consider the following case. In December 2009, Donald Gates walked out of his Arizona prison with $75 and a bus ticket to Ohio. After serving 28 years for a rape and murder he didn’t commit, he was a free man. Now the spotlight began to shift to the forensic technique that put him there: microscopic hair analysis.

Human hair is one of the most common types of evidence found at crime scenes. During the 80s and 90s, forensic analysts in the US and elsewhere often looked to the physical differences between hairs to determine whether those found at a crime scene matched hairs from a suspect – like Donald Gates.

When he stood trial in 1982, an FBI analyst called Michael Malone testified that hairs found on the body of the murder victim – a Georgetown University student called Catherine Schilling – were consistent with Donald Gates’ hairs. He added that the probability they came from anyone else was one in 10,000.

“That’s very compelling evidence, particularly when it comes from a witness wearing a white laboratory coat,” says Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a New York-based non-profit organisation that uses DNA evidence to overturn wrongful convictions.

However, hair analysis is not purely objective; I might think two hairs look identical, but you might disagree. Even if we agree that two hairs match, no-one has ever figured out how many other hairs might be similarly indistinguishable from one another. “When a person says that the probability is one-in-10,000, that’s simply a made-up number,” says Neufeld. “There’s no data to support it.”

Donald Gates was finally exonerated when DNA testing revealed that the hairs didn’t belong to him after all. Two similar exonerations followed soon afterwards. As a result of these cases, the FBI is now reviewing several thousand cases in which its scientists may have offered similarly misleading testimony. Last month, it announced that of the 268 cases it has reviewed so far that went to trial, 96% them involved scientifically invalid testimony or other errors by FBI agents. Among those convicted, 33 received death sentences, and nine have already been executed.

The FBI’s review won’t necessarily overturn the convictions, but it does mean that they need to be reconsidered carefully. Lawyers scrutinising these cases must work out what other evidence was presented in court; if they hinged on flawed hair testimony, retrials and exonerations may follow. In cases where the original physical evidence still exists, that DNA testing may shed new light on the truth.

Even trusted lines of evidence, such as fingerprint analysis, are not water-tight. Research has shown that the same fingerprint expert can reach a different conclusion about the same fingerprints depending on the context they’re given about a case.

Based in part on these findings, in 2009 the National Academy of Sciences in the US published a report on the state of forensic science. Commissioned in response to a string of laboratory scandals and miscarriages of justice, its conclusions were damning. “Testimony based on faulty forensic science analyses may have contributed to the wrongful conviction of innocent people,” it said. “In a number of disciplines, forensic science professionals have yet to establish either the validity of their approach or the accuracy of their conclusions.”

The report was a wake-up call, not just for forensic scientists in the US, but around the world. “What it exposed were significant scientific deficiencies across many of the different methods that we use, both to examine and interpret different types of evidence,” says Nic Daeid, a professor of forensic science at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

Of all lines of forensic evidence, DNA analysis was considered to be the most objective. Resting on complex chemical analysis, it seems stringently scientific – a gold-standard for how forensic science should be done. Yet perhaps juries should not be too quick to trust the DNA analyses they see in court.

In 2010, while working as a reporter for New Scientist magazine, I teamed up with Itiel Dror from University College London, and Greg Hampikian from Boise State University in Idaho, to put this idea of DNA’s objectivity to the test.

We took DNA evidence from a real-life case – a gang-rape in Georgia, US – and presented it to 17 experienced analysts working in the same accredited government lab in the US.

In the original case, two analysts from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation concluded that the man who was ultimately convicted of the crime, Kerry Robinson, "could not be excluded" from the crime scene sample, based on his DNA profile. But when the evidence was shown to our 17 analysts, they reached very different conclusions; just one analyst agreed that Robinson "cannot be excluded". Four analysts said the evidence was inconclusive and 12 said he could be excluded.

Yet just because forensic science is subjective, this doesn’t mean it should be disregarded; it can still yield vital clues that can help to catch and convict murderers, rapists, and other criminals. “Subjectivity isn’t a bad word,” says Dror. “It doesn’t mean that the evidence isn’t reliable, but it is open to bias and contextual influences.”

Blind judgement What’s needed are additional safeguards to shield forensic examiners against irrelevant information that might skew their judgement. A first step is to ensure they aren’t given irrelevant information, such as knowing that witnesses have placed the suspect at the crime scene, or that he has previous convictions for similar crimes. Another safeguard is to reveal the relevant information sequentially – and only when it is needed. “We need to give them the information that they need to do their job when they need it, but not extra information that’s irrelevant to what they’re doing and which could influence their perception and judgement,” says Dror.

In the US at least, this is starting to happen: a national commission on forensic science has been established, with the goal of strengthening the field – and this includes looking at human factors like cognitive bias. But similar strategies are needed elsewhere if forensic science is to rebuild its tattered reputation.

When it comes to deduction and proof, there is still much we can learn from Arthur Conan Doyle’s hero. As Sherlock Holmes also once said: "Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

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To hear Linda Geddes’ BBC Radio 4 programmes on the crisis in forensic science, please listen to the following clip:

Summary: DNA, fingerprint and hair analyses may seem invincible – but they can be swayed by a scientist’s preconceptions. Linda Geddes reports on a crisis in criminology


Looking back, it seems crazy to think that there was a time when football and hockey players weren’t required to wear helmets. And in the wake of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, some fans are beginning to wonder whether we’ll someday view the lack of protective head gear on modern soccer fields with the same sense of dismay.

While the brutal collision between Team USA’s Morgan Brian’s and Germany’s Alexandra Popp during the Cup semi-final certainly brought home just how poorly players are protected, it’s worth remembering that not all head injuries are so readily apparent.

Indeed, there are important distinctions between the two main types of head injuries. First, the obvious one: Concussions, which show themselves almost immediately through symptoms like headaches, nausea and blurred vision. Because the signs are so apparent, measures are generally taken to identify and treat concussions sustained during play. Sub-concussive brain injuries, on the other hand, are caused by minor but continuous blows to the head. They leave the brain susceptible to more serious injury, have long-term effects and, worst of all, are asymptomatic, which often results in parents and coaches putting players back into the game in a weakened state.

Rob Vito, president of Unequal Technologies, explains sub-concussive brain injuries this way: “Imagine you took a hammer and you’re hitting a granite counter top. It doesn’t crack at first, but around the seventh or eighth hit you start to see the spider cracks in the granite counter top, and then finally you start to see pieces of rock coming out.”

With the market for products designed to protect people from concussions beginning to boom, firms like Vito’s are attempting to carve out a niche for gear made specially for the soccer field. Unequal Technologies makes the Halo protective headband, which got some attention when U.S. soccer veteran Ali Krieger wore the device during the 2015 Women’s World Cup. Like other protective headbands on the market, the Unequal Halo, which starts at $30, is designed to absorb and disperse much of the impact soccer players sustain to their head during play. While such products do not claim to prevent concussions entirely, studies have found that players are 2.65 times more likely to suffer a concussion without one.

“Every time you’re hitting the ball with your head, that ball is coming in between 60 and 80 mph,” said Vito. “That energy might not be enough to cause a concussion at that point, but if it continues to go on, it weakens your resistance” and may ultimately result in a concussion.

A 2012 study found that 92,505 high school student suffered concussions while playing soccer that year, and a 2002 study suggests that 62.7% of all college-level soccer players showed concussion symptoms over the course of a single year.

Vito and other makers of protective gear say that, when first introduced, the products met with resistance from league officials at all levels.

“Thirteen years ago they were arguing that they did not want soccer to be exposed as a contact sport because it was marketed as a non-contact sport,” said Jeff Skeen, the founder of Full90. Skeen’s company offers a line of protective headbands and helmets for soccer players starting at $35; he says Full90 products have been sold to roughly 200,000 players. “A referee, following the orders of U.S. soccer, took this protective headgear off of my daughter’s head, saying it was illegal equipment, and my daughter suffered her third concussion—one that she has still not fully recovered from.”

Ultimately, league officials identified soccer as a contact sport, and in 2004, FIFA revised the official rules to allow headbands, provided that they are soft on the outside and don’t affect the trajectory of the ball.

But even with governing bodies like FIFA and US Soccer sanctioning the gear, the soccer-playing community has been slow to accept and implement the equipment on a wide scale.

“Safety is the hardest concept to sell,” said Dr. C. J. Abraham, who says he has been testing and developing protective sports equipment, including his own $15 ForceField Protective Headgear, for more than four decades. “In ‘macho’ sports, even with women playing, they don’t like to look like they’re wearing a helmet or protective headgear.”

Abraham, like others in the industry, hope that protective headwear will soon become as common as a soccer field sight as cleats and shin guards.

Summary: A range of companies are now offering protective gear that they say will help prevent head injuries—assuming they can get players to wear it.


Dressed in his navy blue uniform with a perfectly aligned tie and shiny black shoes, just days before the birthdate of America’s independence, Terrico Cadogan pledged his honor to the United States in hopes of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

On July 2 he became the first person in his family to take the Oath of Allegiance and receive U.S. citizenship, a process that was expedited because he has served as an Airman First Class in the Air Force Reserves.

About 7,800 candidates will become citizens at more than 100 ceremonies around the country and world by Friday of this holiday week, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Shortly after his 11th birthday, Cadogan left Barbados and came to the United States with his father and younger sister on his mother’s visa.

“Words can’t explain…I can’t believe I have been here for 10 years,” Cadogan said after the naturalization ceremony earlier this week. “Part of me does wish my family was here with me. I’m proud that I am one of my family members to take the Oath.”

Last year more than 763,000 immigrants were naturalized nationwide; around 8,600 of those individuals served in the military, Michael Borgen, deputy district director for the N.Y. District of USCIS, told msnbc.

One of the main reasons Cadogan’s mother came to America was to help give him the opportunity to pursue his dream of becoming a pilot. She accepted a teaching job in Queens, and in 2003 he started middle school in Brooklyn, where he lived with his family.

His mother encouraged him to join the JROTC during his first year at Aviation High School in Long Island City, N.Y., where he learned aviation mechanics. His participation in the program later allowed him to gain a First Class ranking in the Reserves.

He attended Farmingdale State College in New York with a major in aeronautical science, and simultaneously participated in training for the Air Force Reserves. After completing one year of classes, he left school in 2012 to dedicate his time to training.

Last year while at basic training in Texas, Cadogan discovered that his naturalization application could be expedited since he served in the Reserves.

Immigrants can apply for naturalization during training and receive the status upon graduating. Cadogan began the application process when he completed training in March.

“I didn’t sign up with the intent of becoming a citizen,” Cadogan said. “[But] I wouldn’t be able to become a pilot in the Air Force if I wasn’t a citizen.”

Legal permanent residents who are at least 18 and have lived in the United States for five years (three years for spouses of U.S. citizens), can apply to become citizens. They must complete an application and interview with an Immigration Services officer, take a verbal civic test, and pass a finger-printing appointment before being cleared. Then they hand in their green cards and ultimately attend a naturalization ceremony, said Ramon Melocarela, an Immigration Services officer in New York.

USCIS processes applications for immigrants serving in the military without a fee. The time to process a non-military application for a green-card holder can take about five months.

“Our goal is to make sure they are citizens before they leave basic training,” Borgen said. “We still have many who are serving now as permanent residents and who will apply.”

Naturalization for immigrants who serve in the military grants them status as citizens and makes them loyal to the country, and also reduces legal problems for the government and immigrants, said Margaret Stock, an attorney with Cascadia Cross Border Law in Anchorage, Alaska.

“They enhance our security because they have language and cultural skills that the rest of the people don’t have, so they’re extremely valuable,” Stock, who is also a Ret. Lt. Col. in the Army Reserve, told msnbc.

Currently, only green-card holders and Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNIs) can enlist voluntarily. Undocumented immigrants cannot enlist voluntarily, but they can be drafted during wartime, Stock said. Cadogan received his green card in 2011.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” he said about the expedited process for service members. “Just the fact that I was serving the country was important to me.”

The naturalization of immigrants in the military is highest during times of war because longstanding federal law allows presidents to authorize their expedited citizenship, Stock said. In 2002, then-President George W. Bush issued an executive order–still in effect today–that allowed the naturalization of anyone serving honorably in the military after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“You don’t take a military commitment lightly, but to not even be a citizen to make that, to me that’s really incredible,” said Borgen, who served in the Navy. “It’s a commitment that they’re making, so everyone who serves in the military does it for a particular reason.”

The country’s military services have enlisted immigrants for more than 200 years, dating back to the Revolutionary War. As of June 2009, there were 114,601 foreign-born individuals serving in the armed forces, representing almost 8% of the 1.4 million military personnel active on duty, according to a 2009 Immigration Policy Center Special Report, “Essential to the Fight: Immigrants in the Military Eight Years After 9/11.”

“The reason I decided to serve was because it was part of me getting involved in the new country, getting involved in the society, being part of it,” Melocarela, who is originally from the Dominican Republic and was naturalized in 2007 while serving in Iraq, told msnbc. “I decided I was going to be an American, so to me that was part of being an American.”

Cadogan, along with more than 450 other immigrants who were naturalized in New York City just two days before the Fourth of July, can now apply for passports, register to vote, and serve on a jury–to name just a few privileges of U.S. citizens.

“I am happy that I can travel abroad with a U.S. passport and without even thinking about: ‘Oh I might have difficulties when I’m trying to get back in,’” Janet Lee, a veteran Navy medic who became a citizen on June 21, told msnbc.

During Cadogan’s ceremony on Tuesday, more than 50 countries were represented, including Albania, Australia, Bangladesh, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, France, Germany, Haiti, Ireland, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, and Vietnam.

His mother, father, and sister, who is now 11, also became legal residents in 2011 when they received their green cards. They hope to apply for citizenship in 2016 after fulfilling the 5-year wait period upon receiving their green cards.

Cadogan, who turned 21 on the day of his naturalization ceremony, will return to college this fall and join the ROTC during the remaining three years of his undergraduate career. ROTC applicants must be citizens or become citizens within six months of applying to the program.

“After graduating, then I would love to try to become an officer so that I can actually fly,” he said. “I would like to try to go to active duty.”

Cadogan said he will register to vote and apply for a passport once he finds time in his work schedule at Abercrombie & Fitch on Fifth Avenue in the city.

But for now, he will enjoy his visit to Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains with his family to celebrate his first July Fourth as a citizen of the United States.


Ride-hailing service Uber has placed a large order for cars with Germany’s Daimler, Manager Magazin reported on Friday.

Citing sources at both companies, the magazine said Uber had placed a long-term order for at least 100,000 Mercedes S-Class cars.

Uber is particularly interested in autonomous driving vehicles, the magazine reported, adding that such cars are expected to be available after 2020.

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Daimler ddaif declined to comment. Representatives for Uber in Germany were not immediately available to comment.

Summary: Uber has been interested in self-driving cars.


Is it better for an athlete to build balance or raw power?

According to Kansas sophomore Devonte Wilson, the answer is "Why not both?"

In this video posted to Wilson's Instagram account on Thursday, he bucks all previously established conventions of weightlifting, knocking out some squats with a 45-pound plate – while standing on nothing but stacks of dumbbells:

Unquestionably a ridiculous feat, but this is nothing new for Wilson, who has spent the last two years as an absolute workout warrior, as evidenced in this 2015 CollegeSpun feature.

Wilson is actually not a member of the Kansas football team. He attempted to walk on during the Jayhawks' 2015 spring practices but didn't make the cut.

Wilson is still interested in walking on to some college football program, as shown by this video feature posted to YouTube last week in which he promotes himself as the "Unrecruited Athlete."

And if one thing's clear from his ridiculous Instagram page, he has the work ethic to get it done.

More Training Day: -- These Synchronized Calisthenics Are Even Harder Than They Look -- Learn The 15-Minute Six-Pack Shimmy -- Exercise Sequence So Tough That We Cannot Recommend It To Everyone

Balance, Devonte Wilson, Dumbbells, Kansas, Squat, Workout

Summary: Kansas sophomore DeVonte Wilson is an absolute workout animal, somehow squatting while standing on top of barbells in his latest Instagram video.


F5 Networks, a U.S. computer networking company whose technology helps speed up data center traffic, has hired investment bank Goldman Sachs following takeover approaches, people familiar with the matter said.

The approaches come as F5 ffiv seeks to roll out products with new security features and revitalize its growth, as smaller rivals that take advantage of advances in cloud computing make the networking services market ever more competitive.

F5 is working with Goldman Sachs gs to field expressions of interest in an acquisition and decide on its next steps, the people said this week, without identifying the parties that approached the company.

F5 has attracted takeover interest in previous years, and there is no certainty that the latest approaches will lead to any deal, the people cautioned.

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The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. F5 and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. F5 shares ended trading on Tuesday in New York up 12.6% at $123.94 on the news, giving the company a market capitalization of $8.3 billion.

Based in Seattle, Washington, F5 develops products aimed at boosting the security, performance, and availability of data centers, applications, and servers.

F5 has been seeking to reassure investors over unexpected changes in its top management in recent months. At the end of last year, its newly appointed chief executive officer of six months, Manny Rivelo, resigned because of personal conduct matters.

Rivelo was replaced by John McAdam, a longtime F5 executive and former CEO, who came out of retirement to take over as president and CEO while the company underwent a formal search for a new chief executive.

That search is no longer underway and McAdam said at an investor conference in March that he was “back for good.”

Reuters reported in 2010 that F5 Networks had previously attracted interest from companies that included IBM ibm , Oracle orcl , and Juniper Networks jnpr .

On its second-quarter earnings call, F5 said it was experiencing a decline in bookings because of softness in the financial and telecommunications carrier markets, which represent a major source of business for the company.

Summary: But it's uncertain that the latest approaches will lead to any deal


Malcolm-Jamal Warner weirdly groused his greatest sorrow over the Bill Cosby sex scandal is the legacy of the show.

Warner said in an interview, "My biggest concern is when it comes to images of people of color on television and film, no matter what ... negative stereotypes of people of color, we've always had "The Cosby Show" to hold up against that. And the fact that we no longer have that, that's the thing that saddens me most because in a few generations the Huxtables will have been just a fairy tale."

He did say he felt sorry for the women whom Cosby allegedly victimized. But his overriding concern seems to be the show.

Summary: Malcom-Jamal Warner Talks about Bill Cosby Sex Scandal


In the years following the financial crisis, a cottage industry arose that tried to explain just what happened to the American economy and the financial system.

Early on in the process, journalists zeroed in on one set of villains: subprime lenders and the supposedly irresponsible borrowers who were their customers. We were regaled with stories of mortgage lenders like Countrywide handing out loans that borrowers couldn’t possibly repay, and then selling them on to investment banks, who packaged them into “toxic” bundles like Goldman Sachs’ infamous Abacus collateralized debt obligation.

When these subprime borrowers began to default, so the narrative goes, the dominoes began to fall, eventually helping to send the entire mortgage market, U.S. financial system, and global economy into crisis.

At the time, the press spent a lot of energy scrutinizing subprime borrowers and lenders, based on the fact that in the early days of the crisis, the rate and absolute number of subprime foreclosures were much higher than foreclosures in the prime market. It was around this time that CNBC’s Rick Santelli gave his famous rant against talk of bailing out underwater homeowners that helped launch the Tea Party movement, calling the folks who were at risk of foreclosure “losers.”

Furthermore, much of the reforms instituted since the financial crisis have centered around increasing scrutiny of mortgage lending, to make sure that these sorts of irresponsible loans aren’t made again.

But if journalism is the first-draft of history, then it’s about time for a second draft. In a new working paper by Wharton economists Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko, the authors argue that the idea that subprime lending triggered the crisis is misguided. The paper looks at foreclosure data from 1997 through 2012 and finds that while foreclosure activity started first in the subprime market, the foreclosure activity in the prime market quickly outnumbered the number of subprime foreclosures.

The following chart shows the total number of foreclosures and short sales per quarter in various classes of mortgages:

While subprime borrowers default at a higher rate than prime borrowers, Fierra said in an interview with Fortune that the data shown above suggest that the foreclosure crisis would have happened even in the absence of such risky lending. “People have this idea that subprime took over, but that’s far from the truth,” says Ferreira. The vast majority of mortgages in the U.S. were still given to prime borrowers, which means that the real estate bubble was a phenomenon fueled mostly by creditworthy borrowers buying and selling homes they simply thought wouldn’t ever decrease in value.

We can draw two conclusions from this data. One is that your chances of being foreclosed upon in the past decade was more a matter of timing than anything else. If you were a subprime borrower in, for instance 2002, who bought a bigger house than a more prudent and creditworthy borrower would have bought, chances are you would have been fine. But a prime borrower who did everything right—bought a house he could easily afford, with a large downpayment—but did so in 2006 would have had a higher chance of defaulting than the subprime borrower with better timing.

Since whether you were hurt by the crisis had more to do with luck than anything else, Ferreira argues we should rethink whether doing more to help underwater homeowners would have been a good idea.

The research also offers some sobering policy implications. Ferreira’s data show that even with strict limits on borrowing—say, requiring every borrower to put 20% down in all circumstances—wouldn’t have prevented the worst of the foreclosure crisis. “It’s really hard for certain regulations to stop the process [of a bubble forming],” Ferreira says. “I really wish my research had showed that it’s all about putting down 20% and all problems are solved, but the reality is more complicated than that.”

Furthermore, we still don’t have the tools to understand the cycles of real estate prices, or to recognize bubbles, in any asset class, before they form. So it would be a mistake to think that any regulatory reform will offer fool-proof protection against the next financial crisis.

The booms that capitalism confers on us, it seems, will inevitably be followed by busts.

Summary: New research challenges the conventional wisdom on the financial crisis.


Terry Crews thinks the war of words between Justin Bieber and Nate Diaz should be a WAR OF FISTS ... saying he firmly believes the best way for the men to settle their beef is to throw down!!!

Crews was out at Craig's when we asked how the guys in Hollywood's newest celebrity feud should settle their beef ... a beef that started when Bieber dissed Diaz's fighting style on social media.

Of course, Diaz fired back on the "TMZ Sports" TV show -- saying, "F**k that fool."

But Terry -- who stars in "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" -- says the time for talk is OVER and it's time for the guys to settle it like men ... IN THE OCTAGON!!!!

Hey Justin free advice ... don't even think about it.

Summary: Terry Crews thinks the war of words between Justin Bieber and Nate Diaz should be a WAR OF FISTS ... saying he firmly believes the best way for the…


At last year’s RSA Conference, the world’s biggest cybersecurity confab, Amit Yoran gave a bold keynote address—his first as president of RSA (the company, not the conference). Fortune caught up with the business leader recently to hear a preview of his talk when he takes the stage Tuesday.

“Last year we made a pretty shocking statement about the security industry—that it’s fundamentally broken at its core,” Yoran said, reprising the earlier speech. “Here we are a year later and it has quickly become conventional wisdom.”

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Yoran said he is unconvinced that fancy new tools will solve the pervasive data breach threats that organizations of all stripes face today. “There are no silver bullets in security,” he told Fortune, mentioning a few examples he considers promising, including artificial intelligence, behavioral science, and data analytics.

Still Yoran said he believes there is no cure-all—no one method or product that can definitively keep hackers at bay. “We can’t just apply some bling and hope that revolutionary technology will come save us,” he said.

For more on cybersecurity, watch:

“If you look at Google’s recent success in the game Go, this was a very large complex problem with a very specifically defined set of rules,” he said, referencing DeepMind, a London-based artificial intelligence firm owned by Alphabet’s Google goog , whose algorithmic creation recently triumphed over the reigning European Go champion. “In security, you’re playing against an aggressive adversary who is continually changing the rules.”

Yoran joined RSA, the EMC emc security division best known for its security fobs, when the company took over his network security startup NetWitness in 2011. Three years later he assumed the role of longtime RSA CEO Art Coviello.

Read more: At RSA Conference ‘Cyber’ Is Hot, ‘Crypto’ Is Not

At the helm of the firm, Yoran has been relentless about revamping the 34-year-old business, de-emphasizing product lines that aren’t perceived as growth areas (cryptography and data loss prevention, for example) while investing in others (such as network monitoring and defense), as Fortune has previously reported. On the recent call, he did not have anything substantial to add about Dell’s impending takeover of EMC.

At the conference’s close on Friday, Yoran is slated to participate in another keynote session featuring actor Sean Penn. (Penn recently dove headfirst into the world of cybersecurity in order to remain operationally secure while reporting a feature on the Mexican druglord Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán, widely known as “El Chapo,” for Rolling Stone magazine.)

For his opening keynote on Tuesday, however, Yoran will stick to his assessment of the industry: “No one preventative measure is going to save us,” he said.

Get to know Yoran through a quick Fortune Q&A:

How many RSA Conferences have you attended?

I have been to at least 15 RSA Conferences.

What is your favorite part of RSA Conference, and why?

The best part of RSA Conference is seeing colleagues and discussing the latest challenges that plague the industry. You have a chance to talk with some really brilliant people. The open bars aren’t bad either.

Which talk or event this year are you most excited for (not your own)?

Every year I’m actually most excited to walk the show floor to see who the next innovators are; who is charting the future of our industry.

Drink of choice at one of the many open bars?

I can usually be found late night at the W bar drinking a Greyhound (vodka and grapefruit juice).

Summary: Fancy new technology isn't the answer.


REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Nov. 2 - The lead defense lawyer in the Scott Peterson murder trial, Mark Geragos, urged jurors on Tuesday to put aside any hatred for his client's boorish ways.

He told them instead to ponder the still unexplained death of Mr. Peterson's wife, Laci, a killing for which he said there were no witnesses, no evidence of a fatal struggle, no murder weapon and no motive.

In his rapid-fire closing argument, Mr. Geragos summarized the case much the way he had begun, conceding that Mr. Peterson, charged with killing his wife and her fetus, could clearly be viewed as a "jerk" and a "liar."

"Do you all hate him?" Mr. Geragos asked. "If you hate him, then maybe what they're asking you to do is just convict him."

But disdain is no basis for convicting a man of murder, he said.

Throughout the morning session of his summation, Mr. Geragos offered a point-by-point response to the prosecution's emotional closing argument a day earlier, using evidence and testimony from the early phases of the trial to remind jurors that the police had received full cooperation from Mr. Peterson and yet failed to investigate a string of leads or pursue other potential suspects.

"If you presume this guy is guilty, you can put a sinister spin on anything," said Mr. Geragos, later reminding jurors, "You must not be influenced by sentiment, conjecture or passion."

The prosecution argued that Mr. Peterson killed his pregnant wife to escape the drudgery of married life and fatherhood, all in an effort to follow a fantasy to lead the life a wealthy jet-set bachelor, free to travel the world seeking adventure.

But in his closing, Mr. Geragos sprinted through a series of other explanations for all of Mr. Peterson's contradictory statements and erratic behavior after his wife disappeared on or around Dec. 23, 2002. For example, Mr. Geragos replayed the period around the time of Ms. Peterson's disappearance. He pointed to little-discussed facts like confiscated records on Internet activity the morning Ms. Peterson may have disappeared, showing that someone had been looking at a Gap advertisement and printing French toast recipes. Mr. Geragos argued that those facts proved that Ms. Peterson was home and alive on Dec. 24, when Mr. Peterson left for a brief fishing trip.

"The one rational explanation was that she was alive when Scott Peterson left that morning," Mr. Geragos said. He said that meant, "You have only one conclusion and that conclusion is that Scott Peterson is not guilty."

Mr. Geragos, offering an animated presentation punctuated by visual aids, had some jurors shaking their heads in agreement as he discussed some of the 41 points the prosecutors cited as evidence in its case, which posited that Mr. Peterson killed his wife at home, used hand-made cement anchors to weigh her body down and then dumped it in San Francisco Bay.

Mr. Geragos reminded jurors of court testimony indicating that Mr. Peterson was eager to have a child and that the couple had been trying for months. And he addressed Mr. Peterson's boating habits and affair with his mistress, Amber Frey, and the prosecution's theory that Mr. Peterson stood to inherit his wife's money.

"They called no less than four witnesses to suggest that there was a financial motive," Mr. Geragos said, adding that Mr. Peterson clearly stood to gain more if his wife remained alive. She was set to inherit nearly $1 million, but Mr. Peterson was not first in line to receive that money if she died.

"There was no motive for him to kill Laci and Conner whatsoever," Mr. Geragos said. "In fact, on the contrary."

The defense will finish closing arguments early on Wednesday, followed by a rebuttal by the prosecution. The jury will be sequestered during deliberations, which are to begin later this week.

Summary: Mark Geragos makes closing arguments for defense in Scott Peterson murder trial in Redwood City, Calif; urges jurors to put aside any hatred for his client's boorish ways and ponder still unexplained death of his wife, Laci Peterson, a murder for which he says there are no witnesses, no evidence of fatal struggle, no murder weapon and no motive (M)


The president is heading to Texas on Friday to kick off the annual South by Southwest interactive, film, and music conference in Austin.

But the trip, a first for a sitting U.S. president, means he won’t be in California for Nancy Reagan’s funeral.

And the news has some pretty upset:

It’s not really all that unusual for a sitting president to skip the funeral of a former first lady, as the New York Post points out. Bill Clinton didn’t go to Pat Nixon’s when he was president, and President Obama didn’t go to Betty Ford’s funeral back in 2011. (First Lady Michelle Obama will attend the Reagan service.)

In Austin, President Obama will deliver the keynote at SXSW interactive, a tech-focused conference known as “spring break for nerds.”

He’ll be talking civic engagement in a high-tech world.

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The keynote is Obama’s latest push for more tech. Earlier this year he touted the need for more diversity in tech with a “computer science for all” initiative. And this week the White House announced a new plan to extend visa stays for foreign students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs.

For more on STEM, watch:

The president is scheduled to speak Friday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. SXSW will live stream the event here. It won’t be the White House’s last trip to the conference either: Michelle Obama will give her own speech at the opening of the SXSW music festival on March 16.

Summary: It's not an unusual move


Manchester United’s game against Bournemouth has been canceled after a suspicious package was found at the Old Trafford stadium, the club said Sunday.

Police are investigating the “suspect package” found in the northwest quadrant of the ground,Manchester United announced on Twitter. The investigation had initially delayed kick-off of the final league game of the season, but authorities later advised the team to abandon the match.

Fans inside the Old Trafford stadium are being asked to remain seated as the forecourt is being cleared of people who were already evacuated from the stadium, Manchester United said. The club said it would disclose further details later.

Twitter Explodes Over Underdog English Soccer Champion

The Premiere League apologized to fans in a statement, saying it was the “last resort” to cancel the game. “When it comes to matters of security, it is obviously right that Manchester United and the Premiere League place the safety of supporters and employees foremost,” it said. “The Premiere League will seek to rearrange the fixture as soon as practically possible as will advise fans accordingly. It is always the last resort to abandon one of our fixtures and while we apologize for the inconvenience caused to fans, we are sure, in the circumstances, they will appreciate the need to do so.”

Summary: The discovery forced the teams to abandon the final league game of the season.


WASHINGTON— MOST of this year's presidential campaign has dealt with the candidates' positions on campaign financing, Social Security and helping the uninsured. Now, it's time to deal with what really matters -- whose wife bakes the best cookies. You know, family values. And the 2000 presidential cookie contest pits chocolate chips, pecans and coconut against ginger and molasses. The odds favor the ones with the chocolate chips.

For decades, presidential campaigns have been forced to offer family recipes. Postcards from the past, when wives stayed home and cooked, they're served up as a window on the family life of the candidates -- if somewhat artificially flavored. When Walter Mondale ran, his campaign provided an entire cookbook of family recipes.

But contests pitting the baking ability of potential first ladies against each other are relatively new. They began in 1992 when Hillary Rodham Clinton got everyone shaking and baking with her infamous cookie comment, discussing working as a lawyer while her husband was governor of Arkansas.

''I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas,'' she said. ''But what I decided to do was pursue my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.''

She may have been trying to say that in 1992, women had other options. Instead, her remark created a reactionary cookie contest, the brainchild of Family Circle magazine, which published her chocolate chip recipe and one from Barbara Bush. Readers were asked to vote; the results proved to be a forecast of what would happen in November.

Four years later, Elizabeth Dole's pecan roll sugar cookies didn't stand a chance against a reprise of Mrs. Clinton's chocolate chip recipe. And this electoral season, Tipper Gore's Ginger Snaps, plain-Jane ginger and molasses cookies, probably won't hold up against Laura Bush's flashy Texas Governor's Mansion Cowboy Cookies. The Bush cookies are expected to win because they contain that magic ingredient -- chocolate.

The surprise is how such rich cookies can be so boring. The sweetness of the Bush cookies overwhelms any other flavor except an occasional bite of chocolate. Mrs. Gore's ginger snap cookies look boring, but they are marginally better. They need more ginger, though.

Bland cookies seem appropriate for the current presidential campaign. And it seems fitting, too, that the magazine's recipe for the Bush cookies turns out tough cookies. The recipe Mrs. Bush's office submitted suggested that her cookies be baked for 10 to 12 minutes. Family Circle changed it to 17 to 20. A friend who baked the cookies following the magazine's directions turned out unattractive jawbreakers; the cookies should have soft centers. At 17 minutes in my oven the cowboy cookies were also overdone.

Even worse, anyone who followed the Bush recipe as it first appeared on the magazine's Web site may have found their cookies turn to ashes, possibly a small fire. The site's suggested baking time of 17 to 29 minutes has since been corrected.

An expert in the tastes of Middle America, Peggy Katalinich, the Family Circle food director, says, ''If you have chocolate chips in your cookies, you're ahead of the game.'' Who wins the cookie contest, she says, ''depends on whether you vote your politics or your taste buds.''

But if recipe contests are important in telling voters something to help them decide which candidate to choose, isn't it time for a cook-off between the vice president and the governor? Tennessee barbecue versus Texas barbecue. And that's something you can really sink your teeth into.

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

2 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, at room temperature

2 teaspoons white distilled vinegar.

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Mix flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon and cloves in large bowl.

3. In large bowl, beat butter with electric mixer at medium speed until smooth and creamy, 1 minute. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat at medium speed until combined, 2 minutes.

4. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each. Beat in molasses and vinegar until combined, 1 minute.

5. On low speed, beat in flour mixture.

6. For each cookie, roll 1 rounded tablespoon dough into ball. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet. With fork, flatten each, and make cross-hatch pattern.

7. Bake in oven 15 to 16 minutes, until slightly browned around edges. Remove cookies to rack to cool.

Yield: about 4 dozen cookies.

TEXAS GOVERNOR'S MANSION COWBOY COOKIES

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar

3 cups semisweet chocolate chips

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

2 cups sweetened flake coconut

2 cups chopped pecans (8 ounces).

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in bowl.

3. In a very large bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer at medium speed until smooth and creamy. Gradually beat in sugars, and combine thoroughly.

4. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each. Beat in vanilla.

5. Stir in flour mixture until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips, oats, coconut and pecans.

6. For each cookie, drop 1/4 cup dough onto ungreased baking sheets, spacing 3 inches apart.

7. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until edges are lightly browned; rotate sheets halfway through. Remove cookies from rack to cool.

Yield: 3 to 3 1/2 dozen cookies.

Photo: Tipper Gore's cookies, top, and Laura Bush's, bottom.


viciously attacked the one person in his deposition who didn't have a dog in the fight ... the soft-spoken court reporter, who he essentially called a f***ing moron.

Justin sat for the 4 1/2 hour depo in connection with a lawsuit filed by a photog ... who claims Bieber ordered his bodyguard to beat him up.

During the depo, Justin was asked if Usher was instrumental in jump-starting his career. He answered faintly, "Yeah." The court reporter was having trouble hearing, so she asked him to speak up.

Justin hurled the f bomb at her. You just gotta hear it.

Summary: Justin Bieber viciously attacked the one person in his deposition who didn't have a dog in the fight ... the soft-spoken court reporter, who he…


In Hot Rod, Andy Samberg plays Rod Kimble, an Evel Knievel-esque daredevil preparing for a major motorcycle stunt. "I can tell you, 100 percent, no one but me did the 'bang on the engine block' [stunt]," the funnyman boasts to PEOPLE. And not only did he come out unscathed, he showed his stunt prop who was boss. "Well, the hammer took a beating," Samberg jokes. "I mean, I was really, really putting my all into it."

Summary: Go behind the scenes with SNL funnyman Andy Samberg in his big-screen debut, opening Aug. 3. By Brian Orloff


Every other Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Matthew Owens leaves his Flatiron District office at 1 p.m. sharp and heads east to the Hamptons for a relaxing, sun-soaked sojourn.

But before the 27-year-old publicist for fashion brand Express arrives at work, he dutifully sends a screenshot of the Long Island Rail Road train schedule to his friends who work in banking.

“I remind them that I will be taking an early train out to the Hamptons,” he says. “And I send them a later schedule to remind them they will be taking a late train out. And that they can find me at a restaurant out east, where I will be enjoying a glass of rosé,” he adds with a sinister cackle.

Owens is one of the fortunate New Yorkers who have a coveted Summer Friday work schedule, which means beating the scrum of weekend warriors to the roads and rails. And while he relishes his early exit, he gets just as much of a thrill from ribbing his pals who toil away in traditional industries that require them to work a full day on Fridays.

After all, once the summer calendar is under way, the Big Apple becomes a tale of two cities — the people who have Summer Fridays and the rest of the working schlubs. The liberal policies vary from allowing employees to leave early to giving them the day off entirely. The lucky “haves” tend to work in creative industries like fashion, public relations and media.

And it’s all in addition to their allotted vacation time.

“It’s so much fun to mess with friends who don’t have them. It has become a pastime,” says Owens, who also posts poolside selfies on Instagram for the viewing pleasure of his desk-jockey pals.

His investment-banker friend John DeMeo isn’t as tickled by Owens’ leisurely updates — especially when the clock has barely hit 2 p.m. “I try to be upbeat about it, and hold back my anger against my friends who have Summer Fridays,” says the 27-year-old, who slaves away until 7 or 8 p.m. on Fridays, regardless of what month or day or season it is.

But with the explosion of social-media apps like Instagram, the Summer Friday has gone from a quiet personal privilege to a braggadocious hashtag with the accompanying boastful sun-soaked images.

DeMeo explains that fun-in-the-sun Instagram posts exacerbate his envy.

“[Instagram] posts are like an advertisement of what I am missing out on. It’s a reminder that it’s a beautiful day and you’re stuck in the office with the rest of the finance stiffs,” he says.

Catherine Scavelli, who works in advertising — and has a full five-day week — says her friends’ Instagram accounts on Friday afternoons look like a brochure for careless summer days.

“Drinks at the Frying Pan, picnics in Central Park, Citi Biking, the beach, you name it. About half of my friends have them, so these are the things I have missed out on,” says the 22-year-old.

“I will see an Instagram photo tagged to the Frying Pan and they are all texting me asking when I’ll arrive,” says Scavelli, who last week missed a whole day of a Connecticut beach weekend because her friends were able to leave on Thursday night, while she had to leave on Friday after work and battle traffic to head north. “I am not angry with them, I am just jealous,” she insists.

While some people without Summer Fridays see their work schedule as fun deprivation, boss-man Scott Gramling thinks they are a sign of weakness.

“I just don’t understand why they exist,” says Gramling, managing director of 10Ten Media and former editor-in-chief of FHM magazine.

While at the helm of the lad mag in 2003, Gramling recalls a colleague asking about Summer Fridays because “when the weather is nice, you allow people to take advantage of it.”

“I said, ‘Then maybe we should have Winter Saturdays.’ If we are going to take time off when the weather is nice, then we should make up for the time when the weather is crappy and nobody wants to be outside, so they might as well be at work.”

No one has made the mistake of asking Gramling for a Friday pass again.

“This is not the New York that I grew up in,” says the 42-year-old. “This used to be a really hard-working city, and I think it is, in many respects, but there are little hints of softness slipping in, and Summer Fridays is one of them.”

@alihanner captioned her photo, “#SummerFridays thanks #RalphLauren.”

Human resources expert Steve Boese says perks like Summer Fridays are becoming more commonplace because of technological advances and a general desire for employers to give their workers more autonomy.

“We’re moving past foosball tables and soft couches in the office,” says Boese. “What people really want is more control over their schedules. And it used to be that you couldn’t always access files unless you were in the office. But now that everyone has Skype, tablets, smartphones and even Dropbox, you can leave on Friday at 1 p.m. and still be available.”

Alison Brod, who owns Alison Brod Public Relations, a beauty, fashion and lifestyle agency, says Summer Fridays don’t amount to slacking off.

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, her Friday office hours are 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

“I defend my staff having Summer Fridays because we do events every night. They are out and can be checking media in at [events] at midnight. Their hours are different than office jobs where they are done by 5:30 p.m.,” says Brod, who six years ago rented a Hamptons home for her stable of manicured and well-coiffed publicists.

Brod even has a salon in her Park Avenue South office where all 66 of her employees can get a blowout and acupuncture before getting a jump on the weekend.

“I have always believed in vacation time, experiencing things and weaving them into your job,” she says.

As the use of smartphones proliferates, Brod feels like her employees could be doing the same job from the pool as they can do at their desk, so why keep everyone tied to a cubicle?

“They’re still on call. We have international clients and clients outside of New York. If someone from Chicago wants to have a conference call at 3 p.m., you can do it from the beach.”

And she notes that she often has to push her staffers — who last week partied their Friday afternoon away on a co-worker’s rooftop — to leave at 1:30 p.m.

“I will say, ‘I know you’re busy, but go sit by a pool or at a cafe and do work.’ ”

Owens agrees that his work doesn’t suffer, because he uses extra elbow grease during the week for the privilege of more play time.

“Especially in my industry, people tend to have Fridays off, so no one is even answering emails on the other end,” he says.

It’s an excuse that still doesn’t jibe with Gramling, who says he is going to start a “Winter Saturdays” hashtag.

“I will get about 17 followers,” he jokes before getting serious again. “We’re going to become Europe. Where does it end? Are we going to be sitting here in five years talking about Summer Thursdays?”

“Jealous,” was all one friend wrote on @dony01223’s #summerfridays photo.

These NYC companies offer Summer Fridays to their employees

DKNY Although they won’t discuss their policy, the brand’s p.r. honcho tweeted about taking conference calls from her couch during #SummerFridays.

Bloomingdale’s Employees in the corporate office work until 4 p.m. from Memorial Day through July 4. For the Fourth through Labor Day, Friday quitting time is 1 p.m.

Victoria’s Secret Employees are allowed six full Fridays off throughout the summer.

Estée Lauder The cosmetics giant, which owns Clinique, Bobbi Brown and Jo Malone, gives its employees five full Fridays or 10 half-days to take off at their discretion.

J.Crew Its corporate staff is allowed to work half-days on Fridays in the summer.

Condé Nast The magazine publisher (Vogue, GQ, Bon Appétit) says its summer hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., Monday through Thursday, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Deadlines permitting, closing time Fridays is at 1 p.m.

Shadow PR The lifestyle public relations firm bases its Summer Friday policy on seniority. If you’ve worked at the company for more than two years, you get every Friday off. Between one and two years, it’s every other Friday.

PMK-BNC The giant public relations firm allows its staff to leave at 2 p.m. Friday from Memorial Day though Labor Day, provided their work for the week is done. But staffers must be reachable by phone when needed, says CEO Cindi Berger, whether they’re on a ferryboat or a beach.

Summary: Every other Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Matthew Owens leaves his Flatiron District office at 1 p.m. sharp and heads east to the Hamptons for a relaxing, sun-soaked sojourn. But before th…