Falling sales of personal computers around the world are starting to impact component makers. Leading disk drive maker Seagate Technology warned on Wednesday night that its sales for the quarter ended April 1 fell short of its original forecast.

That hit Seagate stx shares, which were down 9% in premarket trading on Thursday, as well as rival Western Digital wdc , which dropped 4%. The losses come on top of prior weakness, as investors anticipated some of the slowdown. Before Thursday’s decline, Seagate shares had lost 39% over the past year and Western Digital 53%.

In a warning issued after the market closed last night, Seagate said it brought in $2.6 billion in sales and had an adjusted gross profit margin of approximately 23% for the quarter. The preliminary report of results fell short of what the company had previously said it expected—sales of $2.7 billion and an adjusted margin of 25.6%.

Seagate offered a potpourri of excuses, but the bottom line was that all kinds of PC sales are falling faster than expected. Specifically, Seagate blamed weaker than expected demand for drives used in computers for big companies and lower demand for ordinary desktop hard drives, particularly in China. Seagate said along with lower sales, it also reduced its inventory holdings and might shutter some factories.

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“There are many complex issues impacting the traditional go to market channels in our market, which are reducing our forecast visibility,” CEO Steve Luczo said in a statement.

“The Company is in the process of prioritizing our strategic positioning, manufacturing footprint and operating expense investments to achieve the appropriate level of normalized earnings. We anticipate that these actions will be implemented over the next several quarters,” he added.

Sales of personal computer declined 11.5% worldwide in the first quarter, according to market tracker IDC. The level of sales, at 64.8 million computers, was the lowest since 2007, according to Gartner, another research firm.

Seagate said it would report full results for the quarter on April 29.

Summary: Hard drive maker Seagate disappoints Wall Street


The lead singer of the punk band

was arrested for DUI in L.A. last night after he allegedly smashed his SUV into as many as 15 parked cars.

TMZ has learned ... 46-year-old

-- real name Karim Chmielinski -- was popped in Studio City, CA around 12:50 AM after cops say he ran a drunken demolition derby through a residential street.

Police say ... Chaos -- abandoned his car at the scene of the destruction ... but was quickly discovered at his nearby home, where he was arrested for DUI.

Sources tell us ... Casey's blood alcohol level was just above .08, the legal limit in California.

According to Wikipedia, Casey's band, Amen, was once voted "Best Band in the World" by the readers of Metal Hammer magazine.

Summary: The lead singer of the punk band Amen was arrested for DUI in L.A. last night after he allegedly smashed his SUV into as many as 15 parked cars. TMZ has…


Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump could be a spammer.

Politicians in both the U.K. and Australia say they have received e-mails from the Trump campaign and signed by both the nominee and his son Donald Trump Jr., asking that they donate cash to his campaign. At least one e-mail was published online by Natalie McGarry, MP for Glasgow East, who received it on June 22. In the email, signed by Trump’s son, he noted that the Trump Campaign raised millions of dollars to fight “Crooked Hillary,” the term Trump uses for his presumptive opponent Hillary Clinton.

“If you haven’t given yet, I’m asking you to donate right now to help you the campaign at this critical time,” the message reads with a link to a Trump donate page. “Crooked Hillary has corrupt, deep-pocketed donors backing her. That’s why your involvement and financial support is so important.”

McGarry surmised that Trump might have purchased a list and blasted them out to anyone. But she responded, declining the request and saying that “it seems quite extraordinary that [Trump] would be asking foreign nationals for money; especially people who view his dangerous divisiveness with horror.”

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But McGarry was far from the last foreign politician to sound off on the alleged Trump e-mails. As CNET, which earlier reported on the e-mails, noted, Sir Roger Gale MP brought up Trump and “spam” in the House of Commons chamber on Tuesday.

“Members of Parliament are being bombarded with electronic communications from Team Trump on behalf of somebody called Donald Trump,” he said, according to a Points of Order transcript published on the House of Commons Hansard website. “I am all in favor of free speech, but I do not see why colleagues on either side of the House should be subjected to intemperate spam. Efforts to have them deleted have failed. Would you be kind enough to intercede with the Parliamentary Digital Service to see if they might be blocked?”

Trump has found himself in a bit of a quandary over money. Recent reports have said that Clinton’s war chest is substantially larger than that of Trump’s, which does not bode well in a general election that will require nationwide (and costly) advertising spending. Trump, who has said he’s self-funding his campaign, has received some donations from supporters. But since the beginning of last year, he has raised about 20% of what the Clinton campaign has raised from donations and SuperPACs.

Meanwhile, Trump is falling further behind in the polls and key battleground states.

But there is another issue with the alleged e-mails Trump’s campaign could be sending: they might run afoul of federal election statues. Indeed, a U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) spokesperson pointed Fortune to a brochure about the Federal Election Campaign Act, which “prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating, or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them.”

For more on Donald Trump, watch:

The FEC spokesperson said that the office could not “comment on any specific candidate or situation for the potential for matters to come before the agency.”

That said, it’s unknown at this point whether the e-mails did indeed come from the Trump campaign—it’s not hard, after all, to spoof an e-mail address and run amok. The Trump campaign and Trump himself have also not sounded off on the issue. But at least some lawmakers have received e-mails from someone at least claiming to be from the Trump campaign.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Summary: If so, it might violate federal electoral rules.


McDonald’s posted its worst monthly sales decline in more than a decade in August, according to new figures the company released Tuesday, as same-store sales dropped precipitously in Asia and ebbed across the rest of the world.

Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa led the downturn, with a 14.5% drop in sales in August. The overall sales drop of 3.7% was the worst since February of 2003, the Wall Street Journal reports. Sales fell fastest in China and Japan, after news broke of a supplier in Shanghai attempting to pass off expired meat to its customers, most prominently, McDonald’s.

Sales across Europe slipped by 0.7%. A rare bright spot of growth in the United Kingdom was offset by store closures in Russia due to official allegations of “sanitary violations,” which the company has appealed and critics have said might be political retaliation for western sanctions against Russia.

Rounding out the global slump was a 2.8% drop in U.S. sales, which the company attributed to an increasingly competitive marketplace.

“During August, McDonald’s global business faced several headwinds that impacted sales performance,” McDonald’s president and CEO Don Thompson said in a statement. “We are diligently working to effectively navigate the current market conditions to regain momentum.”

Summary: Global sales tumbled in Asia following a meat supplier scandal in China


McDonald’s won a trademark dispute with a Singapore rival on Tuesday as Europe’s second highest court backed its claim to have exclusive rights to the use of ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ in trademark names for foodstuffs and beverages.

The case underscores the battle between brand names and so-called free-riders who might benefit from the marketing spent on brands without bearing the same costs.

The ruling by the Luxembourg-based General Court came after Singapore firm Future Enterprises challenged the European Union Intellectual Property Office’s rejection of its application to register ‘MACCOFFEE’ as an EU trade mark for foodstuffs and beverages.

The U.S. fastfood chain said the Singapore company’s claim should be blocked as the patent office had previously granted it exclusivity to the McDONALD’s name and 12 other trademarks which included the elements ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ as prefixes.

The General Court backed the patent office’s decision.

“The repute of McDonald’s trade marks makes it possible to prevent the registration, for foods or beverages, of trade marks combining the prefix ‘Mac’ or ‘Mc’ with the name of a foodstuff or beverage,” judges said.

“Indeed, it is highly probable that MACCOFFEE rides on the coat tails of McDonald’s in order to benefit from its power of attraction, its reputation and its prestige, and exploits, without paying any financial compensation, the marketing effort made by McDonald’s in order to create and maintain its image,” they said.

Summary: Over exclusive rights to 'Mc' or 'Mac'


Translated by Andrew Hurley. 565 pages. Viking. $40.

The story ''Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth,'' roughly in the middle of this marvelous new collection of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, is as good a place as any to start an appreciation of one of the most remarkable writers of our century. A king flees the ghost of his vizier, whom he has killed, taking refuge in a labyrinth he builds on the moors of Cornwall. But the ghost, or what seems to be a ghost, catches up with him, and the king is murdered within his own hiding place.

It is not one of Borges's greatest stories, but many of the familiar elements of his work are here: arcane knowledge, characters that emerge from some combination of mythology and scholarship, images of labyrinths, a lightly satirical Homeric tone, blood and vengeance, the blending of murder and metaphysics, and an interplay of appearances and apparitions in which reality and illusion are almost indistinguishable.

Only Borges created literature out of that mixture, though one can guess at some of his diverse sources of inspiration: Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Miguel de Cervantes, with a liberal dusting of Omar Khayyam, the cabala and Islamic theology, and a great deal of esoteric reading. In the introduction to an earlier collections that is wrapped into this one, Borges writes about ''the madness'' of ''setting out in 500 pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes.'' He spent his career (which ended with his death in 1986) writing ''notes on imaginary books.'' This new collection of the complete imaginings of the Argentine writer, freshly translated from the Spanish by Andrew Hurley, is an event, and cause for celebration.

Reading Borges's work chronologically, as this collection is arranged, is to be reminded of the strangeness of his art (strangeness being, in the opinion of the literary critic Harold Bloom, the main criterion for membership in the canon of great writers). Borges was attracted to fantasy writing, as in his story ''The Aleph,'' but a very recherche fantasy writing grounded in arcane lore.

''The Aleph'' begins, like so many Borges stories, with what seems an autobiographical digression, the death of Beatriz Viterbo, friend with whom the narrator had been unrequitedly in love. Beatriz had a cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, despised by Borges (who, as in many of his stories, identifies himself as the narrator) as a man whose ''oral expression was extravagant'' but whose ''metrical clumsiness prevented him, except on a very few occasions, from transmitting that extravagance to the poem.'' Inside Daneri's house, it turns out, is an aleph, a point in space that contains all points, which he invites Borges to see. The compressed personal and metaphysical themes of the story combine in a work of mystical enchantment.

The aleph that Borges sees is ''a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness'' in which ''all the places of the world, seen from every angle, coexist.'' Borges gazes upon infinity, which, of course, is undescribable, and sees, among many other things, a disturbing truth about Beatriz and Daneri, which is why the hated cousin wanted him to look upon the aleph in the first place. The story is really about love, deceit and, in the end, a desperate effort by Borges to escape the moral consequences of what he has seen.

''The Aleph'' is a luminous work, and far from the only one in this collection. This is not to say that all of Borges's stories reach that level. The book reveals, in fact, that Borges reached his peak in the 1940's with collections like ''The Garden of Forking Paths'' and ''Artifices'' as well as ''The Aleph.'' The work of later decades is tinged with a certain imitativeness of the earlier stories, but even a reduced Borges is fascinating. Almost everything he presents, from the heavily intellectual masterpieces like ''Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius'' to fragments like ''Toenails'' (a single-paragraph thought about mortality), is laden with mystery, double meanings, ambiguity.

In ''Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,'' perhaps the height of philosophical playfulness as literature, Borges invents an orderly alternative way of thinking and talking. He sets down the principles of a language in which there are no nouns, only ''impersonal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) functioning as adverbs.'' '' 'The moon rose above the river' is 'hlor u fang axaxaxas mlo,' or, as Xul Solar succinctly translates: Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned.'' Marvelous.

There is a a deeper meaning here, about the inherent tyranny of totally ordered societies. (Borges is writing in response to the rise of Nazism in Germany, with its Argentine echoes.) ''Contact with Tlon, the habit of Tlon, has disintegrated this world.''

How different from this learned exercise in political parable are ''Death and the Compass'' and ''Emma Zunz,'' in which Borges indulges one of his favorite pastimes, inventing perfect acts of vengeance. Though linked by the high-impact elegance of Borges's prose, these stories are a far cry from his other utopias, like ''The Lottery in Babylon,'' in which a state lottery presents an organizing principle for all of life: that chance alone determines individual fate.

Then there are marvels like ''Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,'' a mind-bending parody of a literary dispute, about a writer whose greatest achievement was to recompose two chapters of ''Don Quixote.''

''There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless,'' Borges writes, a statement produced in full knowledge that he is fashioning an intellectual exercise about an intellectual exercise. It is a typically enigmatic touch from a writer who endlessly teases himself and his readers.

Photo: Jorge Luis Borges (Jesse Fernandez/Viking)

Summary: COLLECTED FICTIONS  By Jorge Luis Borges  Translated by Andrew Hurley. 565 pages. Viking. $40.     The story ''Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth,'' roughly in the middle of this marvelous new collection of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, is as good a place as any to start an appreciation of one of the most remarkable writers of our century. A king flees the ghost of his vizier, whom he has killed, taking refuge in a labyrinth he builds on the moors of Cornwall. But the ghost, or what seems to be a ghost, catches up with him, and the king is murdered within his own hiding place.     It is not one of Borges's greatest stories, but many of the familiar elements of his work are here: arcane knowledge, characters that emerge from some combination of mythology and scholarship, images of labyrinths, a lightly satirical Homeric tone, blood and vengeance, the blending of murder and metaphysics, and an interplay of appearances and apparitions in which reality and illusion are almost indistinguishable.


New York’s crackdown on illegal Airbnb rentals is starting to hit home for the controversial Web site, a new analysis shows.

Airbnb’s growth had been surging in the Big Apple — but that was before this year when the city put more muscle into purging bad actor landlords that violate short-term rental laws.

There were 15,485 illegal listings in New York — out of more than 27,000 — as of May 1, down 3 percent from January, according to insideairbnb.com, an independent Web site that tracks the San Francisco-based company’s listings.

The decline is significant because Airbnb’s growth has seemed unstoppable since it launched here in 2009. Thanks to its rapid rise, the privately held company boasts a $20 billion valuation and is considered a candidate to go public.

“Increased attention to and growing outrage over Airbnb has compelled the city to increase its enforcement against illegal hotel activity,” said Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, D-Manhattan.

“It’s clear that this has had a chilling effect on the industry.”

The crackdown could slow Airbnb’s growth in New York — and potentially other big cities that see the online room-rental company as a threat to affordable housing and the hotel industry.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, which is tasked with investigating illegal hotel complaints, ramped up its activities over the same period in which the decline occurred.

According to data obtained by The Post, from January to April 2015 OSE conducted 598 inspections of illegal hotels in the city compared with 430 over the same period a year earlier and issued 564 violations this year compared with 310 last year.

The city is poised to keep up this pace as OSE is getting an extra $2 million in the city’s fiscal 2016 budget.

By law, a “permanent resident” must be present to sublet an apartment for fewer than 30 days.

Airbnb, the dominant player in the growing home- sharing business, is popular in the Big Apple and is even expanding into the corporate business segment.

But public sentiment appears to be shifting with city officials focusing on the number of affordable housing units lost to the industry, along with residents who are irritated by neighbors renting out their apartments to noisy tourists.

In January, the City Council held its first-ever oversight hearing on illegal hotels, in which Airbnb became a punching bag for officials’ ire.

Airbnb declined to comment on the insideairbnb.com data.

“We don’t comment on public scrapes of our information, because, like here, they use inaccurate information to make misleading assumptions about our community,” the company said.

Summary: New York’s crackdown on illegal Airbnb rentals is starting to hit home for the controversial Web site, a new analysis shows. Airbnb’s growth had been surging in the Big Apple — but that was before …


Halloween week kicked off with big scary news from the World Health Organization: Processed meat is now in the same category of carcinogens as cigarettes . . . . . . and sunshine.

The new WHO study (actually from a subsidiary, the International Agency of Research on Cancer) is a classic example of how the media and other ax-grinders either misinterpret or misuse statistics to sow confusion and panic. This seems to happen especially often when the numbers appear to confirm a pre-existing cognitive bias on the part of the media.

I’ve just run my eating habits through the IARC model and, factoring into their analysis the quantity of bacon and hot dogs I’ve consumed, I calculate that I’ve been dead for 17 years.

The IARC says it is now classifying processed meat as a Class One carcinogen (known to cause cancer) and all red meat as Class Two carcinogens (likely to cause cancer). Wait, don’t place that bulk order of lentils just yet. “Causes cancer” is not the same as “will give you cancer.”

Traveling in automobiles, and for that matter having a television, are known to be deadly. (Approximately 30 Americans a year get crushed to death by TVs, furniture and appliances.)

The question to ask yourself when one of these studies comes out is not whether something ever causes cancer, but how likely it is do so.

Yet the media have shown little interest in the absolute risk of consuming red and processed meat, instead preferring ludicrously misleading summaries and downright falsehoods.

PBS, for instance, tweeted on Monday, “Bacon, hot dogs and processed meats cause cancer/are as dangerous as smoking, says @WHO.” PBS still hadn’t retracted this false statement as of Thursday afternoon, though it issued several “corrections” and “updates” that, if you clicked through to the small print, showed that the earlier tweet was simply wrong.

A similarly baco-phobic headline was this one in The Guardian: “Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes — W.H.O. U.N. health body says bacon, sausages and ham among most carcinogenic substances along with cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos and arsenic.”

That’s like saying a bicycle ranks alongside an American Airlines ticket to LAX as things that could get you to California. Smoking increases your cancer risk by 20 times. The risk from meat is much, much less. Oscar Mayer is not Marlboro.

The IARC stomped all over The Guardian and PBS by noting, “Processed meat has been classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking and asbestos but this does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous.”

What about the IARC statement that “each 50-gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%”? Fifty grams is not a lot — it’s about two slices of bacon. Moreover, IARC ominously pointed out, there is no known safe level of processed-meat consumption.

Cancer Research UK, which, like every other cancer watcher, noted the link between cancer and processed meats years ago, put the degree of risk into perspective with a less alarmed blog post this week.

Out of every 1,000 Britons, said the group, you’d expect 66 to develop bowel cancer at some point in their lives — 10 more than the group who eat the least-processed meat.

Dr. Elizabeth Lund, a widely quoted expert in nutrition (she is a former research leader at the Institute of Food Research), says the actual risk is even smaller than that — three more people out of every 100,000 will get cancer due to their consumption of red meat.

Moreover, Lund points out in interviews that the benefits of eating meat went unmentioned by the IARC press release. Meat, for instance, is an excellent source of iron, and iron-deficiency anemia is the most common nutritional shortfall, with 9% to 20% of US women affected.

But let’s say the scarier numbers mentioned by Cancer Research UK are correct, and eating meat causes 10 additional people in a thousand to get bowel cancer. Ten in a thousand equals one in a hundred. That’s all you get for the expense, difficulty, preparation time and perpetual buzzkill of being a vegan?

One in a hundred for being the guy who brings the sad quinoa patty to every tailgate and insists, “But this is the FIRM kind of tofu” at every barbecue?

One in a hundred for being the dietary pain in the ass your friends mocked behind your back at the epic Five Napkin Burger outing to which you weren’t invited?

One in a hundred for being a lifelong prosciutto-prohibitionist, pepperoni-punter and pâté-pooper?

Homer Simpson is laughing so hard he is choking on his baloney, liverwurst and olive-loaf sandwich.

Summary: Halloween week kicked off with big scary news from the World Health Organization: Processed meat is now in the same category of carcinogens as cigarettes . . . . . . and sunshine. The new WHO study…


In 2008, the last time the S&P 500 plunged, losing 37% of its value, people bailed out of stocks. The result: Many of these market evacuees weren’t invested come March 2009, when stocks began a long rally that erased those losses and went on to hit record levels. Recently, the market has been gyrating again, beginning 2016 with the worst start of a year ever, only to rebound, regaining nearly all of this year’s losses in the past few weeks.

The question is whether investors were any better at keeping their cool this time around, or were they worse. Either way, the answer might have something to do with the type of adviser more and more people are hiring to manage their money these days—robots. Indeed, the frustration with their experience in the market—poor performance on the way down and poor advice on the way up—has led more people to ditch their financial advisers for low-cost robo-advisers services, which are not actual robots but firms that say they can better manage your investment portfolio using computers.

But the question is whether these computer-driven firms will be better at keeping investors away from trouble spots and in the market when it rebounds than actual human financial advisers were. Investors’ relationships with the automated services tend to be impersonal. After all, it’s done on a screen. While some robos do provide 800 numbers with a few actual certified financial planners on the other end, the lines will be jammed during a market rout.

Nonetheless, Robo-advisers are all the rage. The current narrative suggests that they will decimate entrenched financial advisers. Riding a torrent of favorable publicity, they come across as noble rebels fighting for individuals against the predations of greedy and arrogant Wall Street advisory establishment. The first of these digital advisors appeared about 10 years ago. The financial crisis, when so many stock-picking advisors lost big money for clients, boosted the robos’ standing. Led by rapidly growing companies like Wealthfront, Betterment, and FutureAdviser, they today manage some $53 billion in assets, according to Aite Group researchers. And new research suggests that these firms are nabbing not just Millennials, but increasingly older, and high-net-worth individuals. Consulting firm A.T. Kearney predicts the newer services will surge, managing as much as $2.2 trillion by 2020.

The robos do have some powerful advantages. They beat flesh-and-blood advisors on price, often charging as little as 0.25% yearly to run your money. That’s a bargain compared to a legacy asset manager, who charges 1% of assets. They don’t peddle dreck investments, which generate fat commissions for an old-school brokerage. And you can access them from the comfort of your home, without having to trek to some office.

You need only fill out an online questionnaire, asking you about things like your age and risk tolerance. Then an algorithm chews on the information, produces a list of investments and shows how much money will be plugged into each. Usually, the investments are in low-cost exchange-traded funds that track market indexes, such as the Standard & Poor’s 500.

Trouble is, there are also some seldom-recognized downsides to robo-advisers:

The advice tends to be cookie-cutter. The investment palette you receive may make sense in terms of your stomach for risk and your age group. (For instance, a Millennial’s portfolio should be more loaded with stocks, which statistically do better at creating wealth over time, than a baby boomer’s, who has fewer years to recover from a bear market.) But that’s not enough. Too seldom, the robos rely on what your situation is now, not what your long-term goals are. How will you pay for your kid’s college? Will you be able to buy that vacation home? When should you retire?

Plus, the robos’ focus on index ETFs. That’s not a bad strategy for most of your money. The odds of anyone outpacing the S&P 500 or any other market benchmark are small. It happens about a third of the time for actively managed mutual funds. But there are a few money managers who have done it more than others, and some people have grown increasingly worried that index funds, after years of inflows, could be creating their own bubble. You won’t hear that from a robo-adviser.

The robos don’t cover needs beyond investing. Good luck trying to find out how much insurance you should have. Or the smartest method to minimize taxes. Or the best way to set up your estate. Or how to re-arrange your life once you retire. While you may rack up solid investment returns with a robo-adviser, if you hit someone in a car accident, you may end up depleting your nest egg to pay for the victim’s injuries and lost income.

Personal insights go missing in the robo experience. It’s impossible for an algorithm to know your every need. Ditto for someone on the other end of a toll-free number, who changes every time you call and lacks a personal relationship with you.

Let’s say you and your spouse are on the brink of divorce. A real-life financial adviser can walk you both through the financial realities a split would bring. That’s because the adviser knows your entire background: your child’s learning disability, your aging parents’ care needs, and your underwater mortgage.

But the larger question is whether robos will render traditional advisers obsolete. In the near term, that would be a tall order. Of the $19 trillion in assets under advisers’ management, a mere 0.2% belongs to the robos, according to Aite Group.

Further out, though, prospects for automated investing seem to be bright. Baby boomers heavily populate the ranks of legacy advisors and their clients. But Millennials, who now outnumber boomers, grew up on technology. The robos’ approach resonates with them, and they are, after all, the future.

That’s the argument of Adam Nash, 40, chief executive of Wealthfront, which has amassed $3 billion in assets in just four years of existence. His organization’s computers watch over client investments around the clock. They automatically perform such tasks as tax-loss harvesting, where Wealthfront sells declining investments at a loss, and uses them to offset taxable gains elsewhere in a portfolio. But that’s something that traditional advisers and actively managed mutual funds have long done.

Thanks to inexorable demographics, a sea change likely is coming, one that will eradicate a lot of advisers, and not just the entrenched players. So says Ric Edelman, 57, who founded his Edelman Financial Services in 1988. Catering to fellow baby boomers, he built it into a 42-branch powerhouse with $14.5 billion in managed assets. “In 10 years, half of the nation’s financial advisers will be gone,” he predicts. But he also predicts the next bear market will wipe out the current crop of robos, too, when frightened customers flee and their venture capital funding dries up. Investors often get excited about the newest investment fad in up markets, only to be disappointed when it inevitably leads to losses when the market drops.

What’s more, it’s logical that as Millennials age they will want face-to-face advice. As their financial lives grow more complex and their responsibilities multiply, they will “graduate to more traditional financial planners,” predicts Michael Kitces, a noted advice industry guru.

In the meantime, the appeal of automated investing is strong enough that long-established companies—Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard—have started their own online efforts. They have the heft to give the robo start-ups some trouble.

Summary: It's not just Millennials who are doing it.


When it comes to equal pay for equal work, the U.S. still has a long way to go.

Yet even though women workers were paid 78 cents for every $1 earned by men in 2013, there are some fields where women are making inroads, according to a new study from employment site CareerCast. Many of the jobs are in so-called STEM fields, or jobs that are in professions focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Decades ago, the only employment opportunities available for many women were in what CareerCast publisher Tony Lee calls "the velvet ghetto," such as fields including nursing and teaching. While those occupations continue to be dominated by women, CareerCast found that women are moving into management roles within some of those fields, providing greater earnings and professional mobility than in previous generations.

"These are jobs that appear to be the best for women based on hiring activity, compensation and the percentage of women in the field and whether that's growing or not," Lee said. "We looked to make sure we weren't finding fields where women were gaining but salaries were not."

Students may want to consider these jobs for potential career directions, Lee added. "These are the ones that will continue to be good for a while," he said. "These are ones that women are making inroads in, and that should tell you that barriers that may have existed are disappearing."

Although CareerCast calls its ranking the "best" jobs for women, we're choosing to describe the list as good jobs since the former depends so much on personal preference and other subjective judgments.

Read on to learn about 11 good jobs for women in 2015.

Summary: Although women workers still suffer from a gender pay gap, there are some fields with big opportunities


Can it really be 10 years since Yauatcha launched? I remember writing what a big deal it was when a Kill Bill-era Uma Thurman was spotted here, which goes to show that hot London restaurants have longer shelf lives than Hollywood hot properties. But 10 years old it is, as mid-Noughties an artefact as one of those scenes from Sex and the City when Carrie and co gather around a table laden with cocktails and exotic nibbles – a scene that could easily have been filmed here, such is the slinky NYLon vibe.

I love dim sum; it’s my go-to hangover food or restorative mid-afternoon pick-me-up, and I can think of no nicer way to spend a solitary hour than grazing my way through half a dozen plates of dumplings while leafing through the papers. For me, Yauatcha is at its best off-peak, when the ground-floor tea room is mindfully serene and when, as food pedants will tell you, dim sum should be eaten.

Which might be the point of dim sum – traditionally an afternoon snack washed down with tea – but entirely misses the point of Yauatcha. At lunch and dinner it’s a frenetically sociable throb of dumpling guzzling and boozy imbibing and the basement is the place people want to be. Candles flicker in alcoves on the walls, a constellation of spotlights twinkles overhead, a fish tank runs the length of the bar and sprays of cherry blossom are pressed into blue glass panels that obscure the ballet of the kitchen.

Dim sum means "touch the heart" but "ravish the eye" would be a better description for these platefuls, primped and primed as if for a photo shoot. The casing of the har gau is gathered in pleats around tightly packed, sweetly steamed prawns. Char sui buns are as fluffy as balls of cotton wool. Both are classics that you’ll find in any dim sum joint but refined beyond recognition.

What’s more, Yauatcha has created its own classics: venison puffs that are buttery pasties of rich, savoury meat, or the prawn and bean curd cheung fun that transforms the usually slithery sheets of rice pasta into crunchy and compact easy-to-eat mouthfuls.

Larger dishes such as a distinctly average stir-fried beef in black bean sauce for £19.50 don’t merit their price tags, but with much of the dim sum clocking in at a fiver, why order anything else?

Like its sibling Hakkasan, Yauatcha is no longer cumin’ atcha courtesy of its founder Alan Yau, who sold the business in 2008 – though what a clever move it was to insert himself into the restaurant’s name so that he still exerts a sort of intellectual copyright over the place.

And while dim sum may no longer be the unknown quantity that it was 10 years ago, Yau’s masterstroke of turning a niche dining activity into the Chinese equivalent of tapas remains compellingly glamorous. If you want to eat dim sum in London, you still can’t do any better.

Who to take: someone who’s happy to share.

What to order: stick to the dim sum and mix and match classics with in-house creations.

Summary: Celebrating its 10th birthday this September, Yauatcha remains the benchmark for dim sum in the capital


Turkey's military has launchedÂ air strikes on Wednesday against members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, killing 20 fighters, according to Turkey's state-run news agency.

Turkey carries out frequent attacks against PKK targets in theÂ Kurdish regions near the Turkish border, where the PKK leadership has camps.

Some of the worst violence in the three decades of the Kurdish rebellion was triggered after aÂ ceasefire between the autonomy-seeking PKK and Turkey ended last year.Â

This recent cross-borderÂ attack comes as Turkey's military deals with the aftermath of an attempted coup, carried out by a faction within its armed forces.

READ MORE: Turkey says Kurdish fighters killed in raids

Wednesday's air strikes appear to be an attempt to show that forces are on top of security matters despite the failed takeover.Â

Turkish authorities have arrested close to 9,000 people for their alleged involvement in the coup.

Officials say that the death toll from the attempted takeover has risen to 240 government supporters as of Wednesday.

At least 24 coup plotters were also killed.

The Turkish government blames US-based exiled opposition leader Fethullah Gulen's movement and his supporters for planning and carrying out the failed coup, and has demanded the extradition of the cleric.Â

Turkey faces multiple security threats, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and the PKK.Â

Turkey steps up its offensive against ISIL and PKK

Summary: First air strikes since failed coup kill at least 20 PKK fighters in northern Iraq, Turkish media reports.


"It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear.

"It didn’t mention Mohammed at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it."

A Comedy Central spokesman said: "I can't go into the thinking behind it, but I can confirm it was Comedy Central that inserted the bleeps and not South Park."

Last week, the character was believed to be disguised in a bear costume. When that same costume was removed this week, Father Christmas appeared.

The bear costume had angered the New York-based group Revolution Muslim, which posted a message on its website saying that producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone had insulted their prophet.

The message included a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a movie about a woman who rejected Muhammad's teachings. The message said the "South Park" producers would "probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh" for airing the show.

The posting included Comedy Central's New York address, as well as the address for Parker and Stone's California production studio.

Parker and Stone are known for waiting until the last minute before turning in fresh episodes. This week's episode contained no direct reference to the warning.

Summary: Comedy Central, the television network, has censored the latest episode of   South Park, following threats by a radical Muslim group that its producers   could be killed.


MSNBC Live, 3/11/16, 11:03 PM ET Kasich on having Rubio supporters to vote for him in Ohio Gov. John Kasich tells Willie Geist how he feels about a Rubio spokesperson suggesting Rubio supporters vote for Kasich in Ohio to stop Donald Trump. On the day that Donald Trump lodged his toughest attack yet on rival John Kasich, the Ohio governor defended himself in an MSNBC town hall, saying that “wallowing in the mud with Donald is not what I think is a successful strategy.”

MSNBC Live, 3/11/16, 11:03 PM ET

Gov. John Kasich tells Willie Geist how he feels about a Rubio spokesperson suggesting Rubio supporters vote for Kasich in Ohio to stop Donald Trump.

Trump’s campaign is airing an advertisement on Ohio television accusing Kasich of being an “absentee governor” and hitting him for his time as a managing director at Lehman Brothers.

“I will say one thing about Lehman Brothers,” Kasich shot back. “I ran a two-man office in Columbus, Ohio. And if I bankrupted Lehman Brothers from a two-man office, I should have been selected pope, not run for president.” The crowd chuckled. “That’s like blaming a car dealer in Lima for the collapse of GM,” Kasich continued.

“Look, it’s all … it’s negative and it’s desperation. But the people of this state, they know me and so I’m not – I’m not concerned about it.”

Kasich was speaking at a wide-ranging MSNBC town hall with Willie Geist and a crowd of constituents at Lima Pallet Company in his home state, where he addressed questions from social security to ISIS to higher education to guns.

Kasich laughed off a statement from Geist that Trump has previously suggested Kasich would be a good vice president.

“He’d better not say that in front of my wife,” Kasich quipped, adding “I’m serious.”

Kasich gave his standard answer to the vice president question, stating: “First of all, I believe I’ll be the nominee. I have the second best job in America. Number one is president. Number two is governor of Ohio. And I love being governor of Ohio.”

When pressed on whether he would accept Trump’s vice presidential nomination if offered, Kasich avoided a direct answer, saying, “I’m going to be the Republican nominee after we win Ohio and finish the rest of the country.”

Earlier Friday, news broke that the Rubio campaign would be okay with“releasing” their supporters in Ohio to vote for Kasich, since Kasich has a better chance at beating Trump in the winner-take-all state on Tuesday, therefore preventing Trump from gathering more delegates to get closer to clinching the nomination. But Kasich did not reciprocate the offering for his supporters in Florida.

“Should I tell my voters to not vote for me?” Kasich asked. “I should tell my voters, don’t vote for me, go vote for somebody else?”

“Well that’s what the Rubio campaign suggested,” Geist responded.

MSNBC Live, 3/11/16, 11:52 PM ET Kasich on whether he splits the GOP vote Gov. John Kasich responds to accusations that his candidacy splits the vote between himself, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz – and hurts efforts to stop Donald Trump. “That’s kind of nuts,” said Kasich. “That’s something that a politician would do. I’m not going to tell my voters, go vote for somebody else. You know what else? I don’t think that I have to tell them anything. Let them figure it out. But I mean, would that be the most bizarre thing? ‘You like me but please don’t vote for me. Go vote for somebody else.’ Let’s just let it all run its way.”

MSNBC Live, 3/11/16, 11:52 PM ET

Gov. John Kasich responds to accusations that his candidacy splits the vote between himself, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz – and hurts efforts to stop Donald Trump.

Kasich has repeatedly acknowledged that a victory for him in Ohio could lead to a contested Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer, often adding how such a scenario could result in an educational opportunity for students. But at the MSNBC town hall, he maintained that he could “absolutely win enough and go into the convention with the greatest number of delegates. That absolutely can happen.”

“I think it’s very hard for anybody to get there with the right number of delegates to clinch the nomination,” Kasich added. “But you know, you get there and you have the delegates there and they take a look at who’s running and who’s in the arena and then they make a pick. But I could go in there stronger than anybody else. That’s not inconceivable.”

Kasich returns to Ohio touting his strong record on job creation in the state, but he was asked about a few steel plants that are scheduled to close in Lorain, Ohio at the end of the month.

“First of all, you have to rush in there and find out what you can train them for,” Kasich responded. “But we’re up in Ohio 63,000 manufacturing jobs since I’ve come into office.” Kasich blamed part of the situation on a violation of trade agreements - “If I’m president we’re not going to put up with that nonsense anymore. We’re going to have an expedited process. When we see a violation of these trade agreements, we’re going to act on them immediately,” he said.

MSNBC Live, 3/11/16, 11:26 PM ET

Gov. John Kasich talks about where he stands on gun rights and how everyone can change their community.

“I just don’t believe that passing laws to restrict guns is going to have any impact,” he continued. “I think it is fundamentally a problem with the people who engage in this kind of violence.”

Ohio’s primary is on March 15, and Kasich has said that if he does not win, he will exit the presidential race.

This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.

Summary: On the day when Donald Trump lodged his toughest attack yet on John Kasich, the Ohio governor defended himself in an MSNBC town hall.


08/02/2016 AT 04:40 PM EDT

was a funky enigma to most of the world, he was simply a pen pal and friend to

, one of his final protégées.

The icon – who was 57 when

in April – discovered the rising star online in 2014 and reached out to her in a direct message on Twitter after seeing her soulful cover of Sam Smith's hit "Stay with Me."

"He kept saying, 'All your dreams are going to come true,'" Springs, 27, recalls of their early correspondence.

Sure enough, shortly after they got in touch, Prince invited Springs to close his show commemorating the 30th anniversary of his iconic

Earl Gibson / BET / Getty Images for BET; Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Not long after, their online connection translated to a special friendship and mentorship.

"We'd email at least three times a week. We were pretty close and would send each other jokes," says Springs.

When they got to spend time together, The Purple One helped Springs find her sound, the stripped-down, soulful jazz of her debut

. And while Prince died before the album's official release in June, Springs got to play the record for her friend in January.

"It's sad that he's not here anymore; I get emotional. We were two really good friends," says Springs. "He was a big star and all – I mean, he obviously is, like, the s---. But what I'll remember the most about him is his sense of humor."

Indeed, when Prince and his protégée weren't cracking each other up, they would enjoy charmingly down-to-earth activities together.

"We went bike riding –

Of course, other pastimes included perks that come with rolling with a rock star.

"He would rent out a movie theater that was local, kick everybody else out and we'd go see a movie," adds Springs. "Sometimes it'd be you and him, or the band would be there."

As the rising star's career continues to heat up as she's

, it's bittersweet for Springs, who wishes she could share it with her mentor.

"I hate that he's gone now," she says.

Summary: The music icon discovered Springs online in 2014


A man has been charged with stabbing another man in the chest in Adelaide.

The 56-year-old victim was attacked in Kilburn, in the inner-north and underwent emergency surgery on Saturday, police say.

The accused, 59, who knew his victim, is expected to appear in Adelaide Magistrates Court on Monday charged with aggravated assault causing serious harm.

Summary: A 56-year-old man has serious chest injuries after a stabbing in Adelaide and a 59-year-old man has been charged with assault.


Yet he refused to accept he would never dance again. After six days in hospital, he could move his feet and thumbs.

Four weeks on, he was capable of turning over in bed. And last week, in a recovery that has amazed his doctors, Mr Widdowson performed his first jump since being injured – and was invited to perform with the English National Ballet.

He will dance in public again in May, in a short performance. Then in June, just seven months after sustaining his injuries, he will take a leading role in a contemporary dance production.

Already back to doing 120 press-ups a night, he will rejoin Bern: Ballett in August.

He said: “There was just something in me saying 'I am going to dance again.’

“I really, really want to get back to it. To me, dancing is indescribable. You do it because you love it.”

At his family’s converted farmhouse outside Bath, Mr Widdowson winces at suggestions he is a 'real-life Billy Elliot’.

Similarities are, however, hard to avoid. As a boy doing gymnastics in Bath, he ventured upstairs to where his sister Chloe, now a 23-year old nurse, was having dance lessons, and became involved.

Before his first ballet exam, aged seven, he angrily refused to wear a leotard, performing instead in shorts.

“He got a distinction,” remembered Celia Widdowson, 53, his mother, a teacher of child patients at Bath’s Royal United Hospital. “The dance teacher said: 'Forget whatever you thought he was going to be. That boy’s going to be a dancer.’”

As a well-built teenager, he played prop forward for his school rugby team – his father Julian, 52, a doctor, is head of sports medicine at Bath Rugby club – until deciding to concentrate on dancing.

He auditioned for Bern: Ballett, attracted by its emphasis on contemporary dance, but thinking he had no chance of being accepted by such a prestigious company.

“I said: 'I’ll go for it, but I definitely won’t get it.’”

Out of 500 hopefuls, he was one of only two given an apprenticeship.

Starting in Switzerland last August, he was allotted a minor role in the premier of 'Ein Winternachtstraum’ – a reworking of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – and understudied other roles. Five weeks before first night, a leading dancer broke his wrist. Mr Widdowson was propelled into the role of Demetrius.

On Thursday November 3, he performed in Bern’s Stadttheater. His mother could not attend because of work commitments, but his father was watching.

“He sent me texts,” said Mrs Widdowson, “’Waiting for the curtain to go up,’ 'Jack’s on,’ 'I can’t believe that’s our son.’”

Dr Widdowson added: “I was so proud. It was a phenomenal performance, a fantastic evening.”

Father and son flew back together on Friday. Mr Widdowson went to Cardiff for a night out with his brothers George, 17, and Mark, 21, who is studying biomedical sciences at Cardiff University.

At the family home, Dr and Mrs Widdowson drank Champagne.

Mrs Widdowson said: “Julian said 'Maybe we don’t need a plan B for if the dancing doesn’t work. I think he’s going to be all right.’”

At 5.30am, there was a knock at the door.

Two policemen told them that there had been an incident, and that their son was in University Hospital of Wales with serious neck injuries.

From their celebrations on Friday, Dr and Mrs Widdowson went to spending Saturday night by their son’s intensive care bed, wondering what permanent damage had been inflicted on his spinal cord.

Mrs Widdowson said: “We were saying things like 'Perhaps we can adapt his computer; perhaps he can use it to plan choreography for others.’”

From the moment he woke on the Sunday, however, Mr Widdowson amazed them all.

He said: “Somehow I didn’t ever think: 'That’s it, I am never going to walk again.’

“I did initially wonder if I could return to Switzerland for the next week’s performance.”

After four days, Dr Widdowson accidentally brushed his son’s arm while he was half asleep.

“His eyes opened. I asked if he had felt something. He blinked once for yes. Jack had sensation in his limbs. He might walk again. I collapsed in a chair sobbing with relief.”

Helped by hospital physiotherapists, drawing on their own medical friends for advice, the family worked tirelessly on exercising Mr Widdowson’s limbs, doing everything they could to maintain his dancer’s flexibility.

His fitness helped, as did his attitude.

Mr Widdowson said: “With ballet, I got satisfaction from making small improvements every day. In hospital, it was similar: small improvements.

“Before, I was practising barrel jumps. Now I spent much of the day trying to move my wrist.

“But I told myself: 'You managed to get into the ballet company: you can get out of hospital.’”

In four weeks he was taking his first steps. In just under six weeks, he left hospital.

“The doctors were amazed by his range of movement,” said Mrs Widdowson.

To help other injured dancers back to performing again, the family is creating the charity Dance Again.

Mr Widdowson is already training with professionals at the Mark Bruce Ballet Company in Bristol.

He said: “On Wednesday, for the first time, I did a proper jumping exercise. The landing and technique were pretty much there.”

On the same day, he was phoned by Holly Noble of the A.D. Dance Company and the English National Ballet, who had worked with him before and wanted him to perform again.

Mr Widdowson will soon appear in two productions: a short piece for the English National Ballet in May, and then, in June, a newly-written 40-minute work for the A.D. Dance Company, where Miss Noble is artistic director. It will open in London on June 29.

Miss Noble, 32, said: “Five months ago he couldn’t stand. At the end of this month, he will start rehearsals. His recovery is phenomenal.”

Paul Rhys Davies, the consultant spinal surgeon who operated on Mr Widdowson, said: “It’s a fantastic recovery. With those kind of injuries, more than 70 per cent will be paralysed or have some major functional deficit. He’s a lovely lad and all the team wanted him to get back on stage. We are thrilled.”

Of his forthcoming performances, Mr Widdowson admitted: “I don’t know exactly how it’s going to pan out, but I think I will be able to do it. I’m nervous, but really, really excited.”

A broad grin spread over his face when reminded who A.D Dance will be working with in the June production.

“It’s a collaboration,” he said, “With the Beyond Repair Dance Company.”

* A 26-year-old man is awaiting trial in connection with the alleged attack.

The Dance Again Foundation is a charity that helps dancers return to the stage after injury.

Summary: A teenage ballet star who was left paralysed after being attacked in the   street has returned to the stage after making an amazing recovery against   the odds.


One woman told him she was paid hundreds to attend and would earn much more by sleeping with one, or more, of the visitors. "She said she would get £2,000 for spending the night with a prince," he says. "The Saudis had their favourites and liked to think they were their girlfriends in London. They don't like to admit they are paying for sex."

Days later, back in their home city of Riyadh, the Saudi princes are on best behaviour. No alcohol, no drugs, no girls. Perhaps the occasional drink, but discreetly, in private, with close friends. They know a flogging awaits those who are caught with as much as a glass of Johnnie Walker by the mutaween, the dreaded religious police, who torture suspects with impunity. This is the country where Sharia law reigns, the Koran is the constitution, women are not allowed to drive and religious zealots hold sway over law and order in a delicate pact with the ruling House of Saud, the extended royal family that fills every government post and has 5,000 princes on its books.

In the capital's notorious Chop Chop Square, in front of sand-coloured buildings and a line of palm trees, the executioner brandishes his sword before swiftly cutting off a thief's right hand. If he offends again, the left hand will follow. On other days the executioner will behead a cuffed and blindfolded drug-dealer, rapist or murderer, watched by a rapt and approving crowd, who laugh and cry "Allah Akbar!" when the blood shoots into the air and cascades down on to their clothes. "Some Saudis think that beheading is too soft a punishment," said one veteran Saudi observer.

This authoritarian country, with its princes who are pious Muslims at home and libertines away, is also the one with which Britain signed its biggest export deal in 1985: the al Yamamah agreement to sell 72 Tornado and 30 Hawk warplanes for £43 billion, mostly paid in oil shipments, over 20 years. The deal, signed by the Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan and Britain's then defence secretary, Michael Heseltine, has been mired in controversy and corruption allegations for years.

The furore has erupted again. This time the claim is that BAE Systems, Britain's biggest arms manufacturer, paid more than £1 billion into two Washington accounts controlled by the former Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi defence minister's son, over more than a decade. The payments, made on a quarterly basis, were allegedly written into "secret annexes" of the al Yamamah contract for the provision of "support services'', with the full knowledge and approval of the Ministry of Defence.

MPs have demanded an inquiry into whether government ministers were involved in corruption. A criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office - which is understood to have discovered the payments but not whether they were illegal - was controversially dropped "in the interests of national security" last year, after Tony Blair warned that the Saudis, vital allies in the war on terror and a stabilising force in the Middle East, would stop sharing anti-terrorist intelligence if the inquiry continued.

Many who have lived and worked in Saudi Arabia or done business with the Gulf state say the claims, to be broadcast by BBC's Panorama tomorrow, show a failure to understand Saudi culture. "It's totally different from ours," says Jonathan Aitken, the former defence minister who took part in key negotiations over the al Yamamah contract in the early 1990s. "The Saudi monarchy is similar to a Tudor monarchy in that servants of the Crown are rewarded for doing their public service faithfully and well. They believe people are entitled to a slice of the action when they help with something like a big contract."

No British minister was told anything about the alleged payments, he says. "But living in the real world there were always going to be some parts of the contract - training, spares and construction, for example - for which agents would receive commission. Sales commission is what makes the world of commerce go round. The big picture is that Saudi Arabia is a crucial ally for intelligence and is a stabilising influence in a volatile region."

Mr Heseltine agrees. "If this is the way the Saudis want arrangements for their procurement programme, an international company would have had no choice but to go along with that. It's massively important to us and the stability of the Middle East that we have those defence interests in Saudi."

Doing business with the Saudis is not like doing business in the West. Deals take longer, typically 18 months to two years, to finalise. "The Saudis like to get to know and trust you," says David Lloyd, a senior consultant for the Middle East Association, who makes regular trips to Saudi Arabia with trade missions. "They like to see your face, look you in the eye and expect to meet the same people each time. They treat you as a guest in their country and set great store by personal relationships with all countries, not just the UK."

The Saudi royals also like to entertain and expect to be entertained in turn. In their home country that will consist of lavish dinners, with the finest food, in elegant surroundings. Abroad they will expect at least the same, but often much more, especially in Western Europe. Mr Aitken, though, says that senior members of the Saudi royal family did not ask for prostitutes or drugs during his time in office. "We took them to see shows like Chicago and then we would get a table at Annabel's," he said. "They were dignified and, on the whole, they did not get up to those squalid antics."

The "whisky and women" were usually demanded by less senior members of the ruling family, says one former diplomat in Riyadh. "There are about 5,000 Saudi princes and a lot of the younger ones, especially, like to do things that many men of their age do. They are very restricted in their country so it's understandable that some go a bit wild when they are over here." Even in Saudi Arabia, he said, there was much discreet drinking, not just among expatriates but also the locals. "Saudi is the only country where I've seen a jeroboam of Chivas Regal. The owner was a Saudi," he said.

Despite its vast oil wealth (it holds 25 per cent of the world's oil reserves), Saudi Arabia is a backward country run by a curious coalition of the large, nepotistic House of Saud and the fundamentalist Wahhabi religious leaders. The Saud family has ruled the desert kingdom since 1932, when King Abdul Aziz Al Saud united warring tribes under Sharia law. It has a historic connection with the Wahhabis, a branch of Islam to which many of the al-Qaeda members involved in the 9/11 attacks belonged, but there have been growing tensions since the accession of King Abdullah, two years ago. The clerics are resisting the king's attempts to liberalise education and give women more freedom.

One of Abdullah's first appointments was to make his nephew Prince Bandar, the Western-friendly "Mr Fixit" and the central figure in the al Yamamah row, his national security adviser. The cigar-smoking prince has been friendly with British prime ministers and US presidents since the days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and is particularly close to George Bush Snr and his son, hence his nickname "Bandar Bush".

Described as charismatic and charming, he glides easily between the West and the Gulf. He trained as a fighter pilot in the US and at RAF Cranwell, but friends say there is no doubt where his true loyalties lie. "The home team is Saudi Arabia," says William Simpson, his biographer and former RAF classmate. The prince has certainly enjoyed the fruits of his al Yamamah labours: he has a personal Airbus, painted in the silver and blue colours of his favourite American football team, the Dallas Cowboys, and landing rights at RAF Brize Norton, close to his 2,000-acre Oxfordshire estate at Glympton.

It was Mrs Thatcher who approached Prince Bandar in December 1984 to ask for his help in winning BAE a new weapons contract. He cleared the deal with the Reagan administration - unable to sell to Riyadh because of pro-Israeli opposition in Congress - then flew to London to meet Charles Powell, Mrs Thatcher's private secretary, and other key officials. In the summer of 1985, he flew to Salzburg, where Mrs Thatcher was on holiday, with a letter from the Saudi king, Fahd, to seal the deal, according to Simpson's book, written with the Prince's co-operation. "I told her specific numbers, shook hands, and the deal was done," he is quoted as saying. The contract, the first instalment of a 20-year deal, was the fourth with BAE since 1967 in which commissions of up to 15 per cent had been passed to Saudi royals with Downing Street's backing, according to British archives.

Two other figures said to have played smaller roles in the deal are Wafic Said, the Syrian-born billionaire, and Mark Thatcher, the Prime Minister's son. Both are said to have acted as advisers. Mr Thatcher has denied that he received up to £12 million as part of the agreement.

The mystery over what was paid to whom and why in the deal has deepened because the Government, BAE and the Serious Fraud Office have declined to comment for "national security" and economic reasons. Mr Blair said the completion of the investigation would have led to the "wreckage of a vital interest to our country" and the loss of "thousands of British jobs".

Prince Bandar insists there were no secret commissions or "backhanders". The payments were in the contract and any money paid from the accounts was "exclusively for purposes approved by the Saudi Arabian ministry of defence and aviation", he says. On another occasion, when asked about payments, he responded more robustly. "So what?" he said. The Saudis had created a successful country from very little and that was a great achievement, he added.

So far, the new allegations have changed nothing, but pressure on the Government is growing. There is concern that BAE will suffer from the termination of the investigation: South Africa is under investigation over a BAE deal and although President Mbeki is co-operating with the SFO, he is furious over the different treatment of his country and is expected to put Britain under pressure to drop the inquiry.

Washington, too, remains suspicious. For years, US defence companies have refused to buy from BAE, because it might fall foul of America's Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act. They are unlikely to feel better about it now.

Meanwhile, the Saudi princes continue to party, albeit more discreetly "They are a bit less flash nowadays," the British businessman said. "But they still like to live it up in London." And still the stories come.

Two months ago, it was claimed that, in 2001, two British actresses were paid tens of thousands of pounds from a slush fund, set up by BAE, to entertain another Saudi prince involved in the al Yamamah deal. And in October, last year, the 24-year-old model girlfriend of a Chelsea footballer was exposed as a former £1,000-an-hour prostitute, paid to take part in orgies and sex shows for rich Arabs.

"They love the capital's nightlife and they love London's women," says one former diplomat. "They are really off the leash when they come over here."

With oil prices high and the Saudi economy booming, it seems the hedonistic London parties are far from over for the desert kingdom's elite.

Summary: To Western eyes, Saudi Arabia's super-rich royal princes appear a confusing mix of pious Muslims and decadent playboys. But it is their distinctive approach to doing business that is now giving Britain a headache. David Harrison reports.


The IPC's decision to ban all Russian athletes from competing at this summer's Rio Paralympic games "should be applauded" , the CEO of the British Paralympic association has said.

In the wake of a report which found state-sponsored doping in Russia, the International Paralympic Committee confirmed on Sunday that none of the country's athletes will be feature at this summer's games. It follows the IOC's controversial decision to leave it up to the individual sports' governing body to decide who can compete.

And Tim Hollingsworth has backed the IPC's decision.

"It’s a bold decision and it sends a clear message [about how we deal with doping]," he told the BBC.

But Hollingsworth did admit that it is of "great sadness” that clean Russian will not be able to compete, saying "it is not a good place, it’s a very sad outcome".

Summary: <a href=


By 2014, the cancer had spread so far that he was in constant pain, unable to even move his neck.

The cancer had spread to his bones and liver, and 26 tumours were detected in his abdomen alone.

“It was spreading fast,” he said. “I was limping. I couldn’t turn my neck. I was in a lot of pain.”

After repeated rounds of gruelling chemotherapy, Mr Chettle, from Virginia, exhausted all treatment options and was considering end of life care, when his oncologist suggested he take part in a radical trial at John Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Centre in Baltimore, Maryland using the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab.

Within just eight weeks his symptoms subsided, doctors at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference revealed.

And within a matter of months, the husband and father was well enough to be able to walk his daughter down the aisle.

Two years on, he has seen a complete response to the treatment - almost all of his tumours have now disappeared.

His doctors hope that soon they will be able to stop all treatment, and just keep him under surveillance, with regular scans.

“I feel like I’ve been blessed to have good doctors who led me to where I am, to be in that trial,” Mr Chettle said.

The trial, led by Dr Luis Diaz, from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, Maryland, studies a genetic abnormality called mismatch repair (MMR) deficiency to see if those with it are more likely to respond to the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab.

“I probably wouldn’t be alive if he hadn’t sent me there,” Mr Chettle said. Scientists believe thousands more patients with terminal cancer could go into remission if immunotherapy drugs are used in new combinations.

Summary: A cancer sufferer who was on the brink of death and riddled with 26 tumours has been “effectively cured” by radical therapy which triggers the body to heal itself.


Trumponomics would obviously make America great again.

But how? And what is it exactly?

Every president and presidential candidate has had their own slightly different version of how they would run the economy. That’s true for Trump as well, even if his version seems more different than most.

In a big economic speech in early August, Donald Trump outlined the economic policies he would push as president. Many didn’t mesh with what we think of as a traditional Republican candidate, or Democratic candidate one for that matter. For instance, Trump has said he would spend nearly have a trillion dollars on infrastructure, something right out of the New Deal, but that he also plans to cut taxes in a way that would have made Reagan proud.

So is Trump really an economic maverick with no guiding philosophy? To better grasp where Trump stands, Fortune charted his positions on fourteen major issues on a political matrix. They’re all placed according to their standing on two scales: Nationalist vs Globalist and Liberal vs Conservative.

This map reveals the two main features of Trumponomics. First, he does hold several positions that are far more liberal than most mainstream Republicans. He favors tax breaks for families with children, promises no cuts to Medicare and Social Security, and his proposal to raise expenditures for defense and veterans would swell the federal budget. He’s also defying Wall Street by seeking higher levies on “carried interest” income for hedge fund and private equity managers, and his infrastructure expansion plan is bigger than Hillary Clinton’s. And on trade, Trump is a pure, America-first populist, rating at the extreme end of the Nationalist axis, echoing views of the Democratic-leaning unions advocating protectionism.

Second, the Matrix shows that he’s actually a lot more consistent with traditional Republicans than you might think from listening to scattershot policies unfurled from the podium. No fewer than six of the fourteen positions are solidly conservative, including his proposed moratorium on new regulations, support of school choice, and promised push for higher oil and gas production.

On the tax front, Trump falls solidly in the Republican camp, advocating more than halving the top corporate rate to keep manufacturers from fleeing the U.S. Another boon to big business is his pledge of allowing repatriation of earnings parked abroad at low rates. The estate tax would vanish, and income taxes would be simplified to three brackets, with a top rate of 33%, far below the current limit of 39.5%. In fact, Trump reworked his previous proposal to match that of the House Republicans.

Donald Trump does plenty to freak out Republicans, practically on a daily basis. But on economics, his reputation as a rebel is somewhat exaggerated. His platform is dominated by evergreen proposals that have been pillars of the GOP for years. Trumponomics, if not Trump himself, should provide some comfort to loyal Republicans, and anyone who thinks the GOP’s candidate is just too unpredictable to be president.

Summary: Donald Trump's economic policy to make America great.


Mantel rightly depicts Tudor dining as a considered affair, where what is eaten reflects not just taste but rank. When the king’s servants observed a Church fast day, for example, they ate austere meals of brown bread and salted fish.

For Henry, on the other hand, even a fast day was a feast, as Susanne Groom explains in her excellent book At the King’s Table: Royal Dining Through the Ages (Merrell Publishers, £24.95). In 1526, a fast meal served to Henry VIII and Kathatine of Aragon included 'soup, herring, cod, lampreys, pike, salmon, whiting, haddock, plaice, bream, porpoise, seal, carp, trout, crabs, lobsters, custard, tart, fritters and fruit’. And this was just the first course!

The Tudors got their five-a-day…

The Tudors loved fruit, both fresh and preserved. Unlike us, they ate it not for the sake of their health but as a sweet treat. In the first episode of Wolf Hall, we see Wolsey offering Cromwell a taste from a magnificent basket of cherries. Both Anne Boleyn and Henry were great lovers of fruit, particularly strawberries, pears, plums and damsons. Henry is known to have liked quince marmalade and orange pies. In 1534 his household bought an orange strainer, a sign of how often zingy citrus – then a luxury – made its way into his diet.

…with fruit and veg on demand

Damsons and grapes were brought from the gardens at Richmond Palace to Hampton Court. It was Henry who introduced apricots to Britain, planting espaliered trees at the garden of Nonsuch in Surrey. He loved artichokes, too, and employed a Flemish gardener to grow salad vegetables for his table.

But what of Henry’s paunch…

There’s no getting away from the fact that vast quantities of meat were delivered to Henry’s kitchens. The annual provision of meat for the Tudor court included 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer and 53 wild boar, not to mention countless little birds (teal, cygnet, gull and shoveler, as well as quail, pheasant and chicken). But this was not, needless to say, all for the king’s personal consumption. At Hampton Court 600 courtiers were entitled to eat twice daily in the Great Hall. As for the king, he dined in the relative quiet of the Privy Chamber, where – after the master cook had first checked them for poison – he enjoyed such dishes as baked lampreys or cream of almonds.

…and his unruly table manners?

Far from rudely gobbling haunches, the king observed complex etiquette. True, there was at least one occasion when Henry threw sugar-plums at his guests, and, given the gallons of sweetened wine consumed, meals must sometimes have got out of hand. Yet the general rules of table were politer than our own. If Henry overindulged (and surely he did, his waist thickening to 54in after a jousting accident in 1536), he did so with aplomb. Hands were washed before, during and after every meal. Henry had a special fingerbowl – heated in a chafing dish – and a designated napkin to protect his fine 'manchet’ bread roll. When he had eaten enough, he stood and washed his hands while an usher brushed crumbs from his royal person.

We could do with such a service in my house, where we often rise from dinner in a shockingly crumb-bespattered state and I struggle to get everyone to wash their hands before the meal, never mind during and after. When it comes to table manners, we have no grounds to feel superior to Henry VIII.

Summary: As Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall hits our television screens, we look at the myths   surrounding Tudor food and Henry VIII's legendary appetite


Victoria's forestry business is set to give evidence at a public hearing into the state's fire preparedness.

VicForests, the state-owned business responsible for the harvest and sale of wood from public forests, will give evidence at the parliamentary inquiry into fire season preparedness on Wednesday.

Last week the inquiry heard from former CFA chief executive Lucinda Nolan, who told the committee she either had to back a controversial pay deal that would destroy the CFA, or quit.

Ms Nolan quit in June, following former emergency services minister Jane Garrett who resigned shortly before Premier Daniel Andrews rammed the deal through cabinet.

The fallout from the protracted situation has led to speculation of instability within the government.

Former prime minister John Howard told a Victorian Coalition party room meeting on Tuesday it was in a strong position for the 2018 state election as a result.

"It seems to me there's a lot of internal poison inside this government in Victoria," he said.

Mr Howard remarked that modern first-term governments were "remarkably vulnerable".

"John Howard had a lot of poison in his government, as I understand it, (and) he was very successful as prime minister," Special Minister of State Gavin Jennings told reporters on Tuesday.

Summary: The state's forestry business will give evidence at a public hearing into Victoria's fire preparedness.


Replacing an eyesore with an eyeful is the idea behind a city plan to tear down a long-abandoned Bronx building and replace it with a 12-screen movie theater. The city has sold 2 acres of property blighted by the Transit Authority's former West Farms Bus Depot to be developed into a $2.

5 million entertainment-retail complex by CBC Associates, according to the city's Economic Development Corp. Plans include a 36,000-square-foot retail complex and movie theater on the site of the dilapidated bus depot between Boston Road and Southern Blvd. at E. 175th St. across from Crotona Park, and 15,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space across E. 175th St. The entire complex is expected to bring 75 jobs to the community, officials said. "This project will add to the economic revitalization that this area is currently experiencing," said EDC President Andrew Alper, adding that a nearby project already is underway. "Only a block away, another shopping center, to be anchored by an approximately 40,000-square-foot Pathmark and major retailers, is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year," Alper said. "The project will also put the property back on the tax rolls to generate city revenue.

" Cineplexes around the country have been facing rough economic going in recent times, but the prospect of one coming to the area was met with enthusiasm by a number of local people. "I always thought somebody could make a lot of money putting a movie theater there," said Lawrence Brown, a barber who has worked in the area for five years. "It's going to be great for the neighborhood.

" There are few entertainment options at the moment - the nearest theater is about 2 miles away - and both parents and children seemed excited about having 12 screens to choose from right in their neighborhood. "I took my son to 'Spider-Man' last week, and we went all the way to Rockland County," said Elizabeth Ramos, a 35-year-old dialysis technician. "It would be great if he could go by himself to a theater around here.

" "It's dead around here right now," said Tawanna Foster, 15. "It'll be good to have something to do.

" Fred Rubin of CBC Associates said that with the recent surge in new housing and housing rehabilitation in the area, his company saw the need and opportunity for matching community and entertainment facilities. "I grew up in this neighborhood, and as a child, I could walk to a dozen moviehouses, all of which are now closed," he said.

Summary:
Replacing an eyesore with an eyeful is the idea behind a city plan to tear down a long-abandoned Bronx building and replace it with a 12-screen movie theater.
   The city has sold 2 acres of property blighted by the Transit Authority's former West Farms Bus Depot to be developed into a $2.5 million entertainment-retail complex by CBC Associates, according to the city's Economic Development Corp.


Shark sightings, floods, fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and water safety warnings will be sent to users of a new Victorian emergency app to be released in time for summer.

VicEmergency will replace the FireReady app beginning in November, which will link to the website and provide timely information to users across the state.

"The app will provide the community with warnings and incident notifications that are tailored to individual locations and watch zones," Emergency Commissioner Craig Lapsley said in a statement.

The FireReady app, released six years ago, helped with the evacuation of residents during the Wye River Christmas Day fire that destroyed at least 116 houses.

Summary: A new app warning people about natural disasters and shark sightings across Victoria will be available from November.


Photo: Ted S. Warren, Associated Press

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick runs onto the field for warmups before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick runs onto the field for warmups before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Quarterback Blaine Gabbert #2 of the San Francisco 49ers passes the ball during the third quarter of the game at CenturyLink Field on September 25, 2016 in Seattle,Washington. The Seahawks won the game 37-18. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images)

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Quarterback Blaine Gabbert #2 of the San Francisco 49ers passes the ball during the third quarter of the game at CenturyLink Field on September 25, 2016 in Seattle,Washington. The

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Quarterback Blaine Gabbert #2 of the San Francisco 49ers looks downfield to pass against the Seattle Seahawks at CenturyLink Field on September 25, 2016 in Seattle, Washington. The Seahawks defeated the 49ers 37-18.b (Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Quarterback Blaine Gabbert #2 of the San Francisco 49ers looks downfield to pass against the Seattle Seahawks at CenturyLink Field on September 25, 2016 in Seattle, Washington. The

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Blaine Gabbert in action against the Seattle Seahawks in the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Blaine Gabbert in action against the Seattle Seahawks in the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Quarterback Blaine Gabbert #2 of the San Francisco 49ers passes the ball during the second quarter of the game against the Seattle Seahawks at CenturyLink Field on September 25, 2016 in Seattle,Washington. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images)

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Quarterback Blaine Gabbert #2 of the San Francisco 49ers passes the ball during the second quarter of the game against the Seattle Seahawks at CenturyLink Field on September 25,

San Francisco 49ers Blaine Gabbert, right, stands as Eli Harold (58), Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

San Francisco 49ers Blaine Gabbert, right, stands as Eli Harold (58), Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Sunday,

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Quarterback Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers speaks with defensive end Michael Bennett #72 of the Seattle Seahawks after the game at CenturyLink Field on September 25, 2016 in Seattle,Washington. The Seahawks won the game 37-18. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images)

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Quarterback Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers speaks with defensive end Michael Bennett #72 of the Seattle Seahawks after the game at CenturyLink Field on September 25,

San Francisco 49ers Blaine Gabbert, right, stands as Eli Harold (58), Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

San Francisco 49ers Blaine Gabbert, right, stands as Eli Harold (58), Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Sunday,

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman (25) signals no-good after San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (4) missed a field goal attempt in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman (25) signals no-good after San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (4) missed a field goal attempt in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016,

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman (25) signals "no good" after San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (4) missed a field goal-attempt in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman (25) signals "no good" after San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (4) missed a field goal-attempt in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016,

Kelly sticking with Gabbert as 49ers’ QB, says Kaepernick still not ready

With Colin Kaepernick working out in the distance, 49ers head coach Chip Kelly on Monday was in no mood to make a quarterback change despite the inefficiencies of Blaine Gabbert.

“Kap is our No. 2 right now,” Kelly told reporters at the 49ers’ training facility.

The No. 1 threw for 119 yards, one interception and no touchdowns in Sunday’s 37-18 beatdown in Seattle in which the 49ers scored all but three of their points in the final quarter.

The 49ers host the Cowboys on Sunday, and Kelly is determined to stick with Gabbert, whose season quarterback ratings (68.6) rank 30th among 32 qualifying QBs.

His completion percentage (55.2) is 31st, his yards per attempt (5.5) 32nd.

In the wake of the Seattle thrashing, Kelly categorized Gabbert’s performance as “OK.” A day later, after reviewing films, the coach noticed nothing about the performance that would prompt further praise.

“I thought it was OK,” Kelly said. “Just like we were offensively. Again, the biggest thing for us offensively is we’ve got to convert on third downs, and we’re not doing that.”

Would Kaepernick get a shot?

“Well, we’ll just see how we go offensively,” Kelly said. “I mean, if we score 65 touchdowns next week, then I don’t see him getting a shot.”

Is that a yes? Not exactly. Kelly still maintains Kaepernick isn’t 100 percent - having spent the offseason recuperating from knee, thumb and shoulder injuries -- and isn’t at his playing weight.

If Kaepernick isn’t 100 percent, Kelly was asked, why is he listed as the No. 2 quarterback?

“Because he’s capable to be the backup,” Kelly said. “I don’t think he’s ready to go full time. He’s continuing to work on it. He’s over there right now. Kap will be the first tell you … I think his playing weight has been around 225. He’s not at that right now. So he’s going out there continuing to work, continuing to get better.”

Kelly and Kaepernick aren’t on the same page. Kaepernick said Sunday he is indeed physically ready to play.

“I think I showed that in the last preseason game,” Kaepernick said. “I’m out at practice every day working, making sure I’m ready for when that time does come.”

John Shea is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jshea@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnSheaHey

Summary: Kelly sticking with Gabbert as 49ers’ QB, says Kaepernick still not ready  With Colin Kaepernick working out in the distance, 49ers head coach Chip Kelly on Monday was in no mood to make a quarterback change despite the inefficiencies of Blaine Gabbert.  “Kap is our No. 2 right now,” Kelly told reporters at the 49ers’ training facility.  The No. 1 threw for 119 yards, one interception and no touchdowns in Sunday’s 37-18 beatdown in Seattle in which the 49ers scored all but three of their points in the final quarter.  The 49ers host the Cowboys on Sunday, and Kelly is determined to stick with Gabbert, whose season quarterback ratings (68.6) rank 30th among 32 qualifying QBs.  A day later, after reviewing films, the coach noticed nothing about the performance that would prompt further praise.  Kelly still maintains Kaepernick isn’t 100 percent - having spent the offseason recuperating from knee, thumb and shoulder injuries -- and isn’t at his playing weight.  If Kaepernick isn’t 100 percent, Kelly was asked, why is he listed as the No. 2 quarterback?


A Queensland policeman has been remanded in custody after facing court on a string of "historical" child sex allegations.

The 46-year-old constable, from the southern region, appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday charged with one count of rape and 11 counts of indecent treatment of a child.

After prosecutors unsuccessfully moved for the court to be closed, it was heard the allegations levelled against the man dated back four to six years.

His lawyer David Jones, in applying for bail, characterised the crown case as involving "some grooming" of two complainants when he was in a relationship, which has since ended, with their mother.

He also said the prosecution relied strongly on evidence drawn from a "largely untested" technology in their case against the policeman but didn't specify exactly what it was.

"There are serious allegations made against him," Magistrate Elizabeth Hall noted.

Police prosecutor Josh Kelly objected to bail on the basis that he may interfere with witnesses and given the seriousness of the charges.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been suspended from the police service while the allegations against him are dealt with.

The bail hearing will return to court on October 12.

Summary: A police officer facing a dozen child sex charges is expected to front the Brisbane Magistrates Court.


A key piece of evidence has been sent to the United States in a bid to find missing Melbourne mother Karen Ristevski.

Ms Ristevski, 47, has not been seen since June 29 when she left her Avondale Heights home after an argument with her husband Borce.

She has not used her bank accounts or phone since.

The Herald Sun reports Victoria Police have sent a potentially important piece of evidence to the US and is re-examining hundreds of hours of CCTV footage in an effort to find out what happened to her.

The newspaper also says investigators have again spoken to Mr Ristevski and his estranged son, Anthony Rickard.

Police remained tight-lipped on the case on Monday.

"The investigation remains active and ongoing. We will not be providing a running commentary on the case," Victoria Police spokesman Luke Zammit told AAP.

Water police have conducted numerous searches in the Maribyrnong River and the Murray River at Barmah in search of the missing mum.

In August, police asked residents on rural areas northwest of Melbourne to check for any suspicious changes on their land.

Investigators also took the unusual step to call on anyone who had information, including family members or people that knew the Ristevski family, to have the "courage" to come forward.

Summary: Police have sent a piece of evidence to the US in an effort to make a breakthrough in the investigation into the disappearance of Karen Ristevski.


Mr Al-Sada initially appeared to say the Opec curbs were subject to non-Opec action, but later declined to clarify whether the non-Opec cuts were binding, saying they were “achievable”.

Russian energy minister Alexander Novak said the country was ready to cut its output “gradually” by to 300,000bpd over the first half of 2017, but did not say from what level.

Spencer Welch, director of IHS Energy, questioned the deal, saying while it would provide a short term boost “disagreements persist among OPEC members on how to measure production, so the deal will be hard to police.”

But Bob Minter, investment strategist at Aberdeen Asset Management, said the agreement “appears to have teeth”, pointing to the creation of a new Opec committee to monitor production.

“People were seriously starting to question OPEC’s ability to react to what has been going on in the oil market and this reaffirms their ability to act as a group,” he said.

Neil Wilson, of ETX Capital, said despite the doubts over the detail of the agreement “on the whole OPEC should be pleased with a job well done at long last”. “This is likely to keep crude closer to $50 than $40 for now,” he said.

On that note, it's time to close up for this evening. Thanks for following our coverage today. I'll be back again tomorrow from 8.30am.

Summary: Here's our full report by our energy editor Emily Gosden on the Opec deal reached earlier today:


The Turnbull government sees its planned company tax cuts as the be all and end all of lifting the economy and putting more money in Australians' pockets.

But a new survey ranks business tax cuts fifth behind other various options the government could take to lift wage growth from its record low pace.

Four out of five respondents in the latest Essential Research poll back an increase in the minimum wage, while just under three quarters support cutting personal income taxes.

Reducing the number of foreign workers on 457 visas (70 per cent), stronger regulation of labour hire companies (69 per cent) and cutting company taxes so that business invest and give workers pay risies (61 per cent) were also high on the list.

Giving more power to unions to negotiate pay rises scored a comparatively lowly 43 per cent.

However, separate government figures show pay rises under enterprise bargaining agreements are growing at almost three times the rate of inflation, unlike individual pay increases that are just keeping ahead of prices.

Average annualised wage increases through bargaining agreements grew by 3.4 per cent in the September quarter, compared with three per cent in the June quarter, the Department of Employment says.

Awards in private sector agreements increased by 0.5 percentage points over the quarter, while in the public sector they were flat.

The earlier reported wage price index for the same quarter - the Reserve Bank's preferred measure of wage inflation - showed record low annual growth of 1.9 per cent.

This compared with the consumer price index at 1.3 per cent.

Summary: A new survey has found Australians wanting a more direct route to a pay rise rather than relying on business tax cuts to trickle down to the workplace.