Troubled supermarket chain Tesco is exploring the possible sale of a stake in its banking arm, as it works to raise billions of pounds in additional capital, The Telegraph on Sunday reported. Shares traded by up to 1.0 percent higher on Monday.

U.S. stocks wavered on Monday, after October gains left the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 at records. The benchmarks ended at all-time highs on Friday after the Bank of Japan unexpectedly expanded monetary stimulus.

Asian markets were mixed on the first trading day of November as investors digested a raft of Chinese data. Overall, the mood was quiet, with Japanese markets closed for a holiday.

Follow us on Twitter: @CNBCWorld

Summary: All major European indexes closed lower on Monday after data revealed euro zone manufacturing activity expanded less than expected in October.


WHEN: TODAY, WEDNESDAY, September 9, 2015

Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Jim Chanos, Kynikos Associates President, on CNBC's "Squawk Box" today. Following are links to video of the interview: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000418821, http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000418817 and http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000418795.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

CHANOS ON THE CHINESE ECONOMY

THE CHINESE ECONOMY SINCE I WAS ON "SQUAWK" IN FEBRUARY OF 2010 WAS GROWING AT 15% NOMINAL. ITS NOW GROWING AT 5% NOMINAL. ITS 7% REAL, 2% DEFLATION. IT HAS BEEN GOING DOWN IN TERMS OF THE ECONOMY ABOUT 2% A YEAR. I THINK THATS GOING TO CONTINUE. THE MODEL IS BROKEN.

INVESTMENT IS STILL ALMOST 50% OF THE ECONOMY. AND THEYRE RUNNING OUT OF ROOM TO BORROW. THATS THE REAL PROBLEM. THE BANKING SYSTEM IS LOANED UP. THEY HAD TO RESORT TO SHADOW BANKING AND NOW CAPITAL IS LEAVING. THATS THE REAL SORT OF NEW STORY.

CHANOS ON CHINA NOT BEING OPEN FOR BUSINESS

THE OTHER BIG STORY IS THE RISE OF. HE IS A DIFFERENT ANIMAL THAN THE PREVIOUS TWO REGIMES WHERE THERE WAS A SIGN THAT CHINA WAS OPEN FOR BUSINESS. CHINAS NOT SO OPEN FOR BUSINESS ANYMORE IF YOURE A WESTERN COMPANY. I THINK THAT IS A BIG BIG CHANGE CHINA IS FAR MORE NATIONALIST ITS MORE MUSCULAR AND ITS A DIFFERENT PLACE THAN IT WAS UNDER PREVIOUS REGIMES. IN CHINA THE POLITICS ARE AS IMPORTANT AS THE ECONOMICS.

CHANOS ON THE SYSTEM UNRAVELING

THE SYSTEM IS STILL IN THE PROCESS OF UNRAVELING IN SLOW MOTION...THE CREDIT EVENT IS STILL TO COME. STOCK MARKET BOOM AND BUST. THE PROPERTY MARKET IS STILL SPUTTERING ALONG. BUT THE KEY IS THAT THE DEBT IS STILL GROWING TWO TO THREE X TIMES THE ECONOMY EVERY YEAR.

MARKETS SHOCKINGLY EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE DO GO DOWN FOR A FEW MONTHS. THAT HAPPENS. I KNOW THAT PEOPLE THINK ITS THE END OF THE WORLD, BUT IT REALLY ISNT. YOU KNOW, MARKETS FLUCTUATE. WEVE GOTTEN SO USED TO SINCE 2009 THIS CONSTANT SORT OF MOVE TO THE UPPER RIGHT WITHOUT ANY VOLATILITY. THAT WHEN YOU ACTUALLY HAD A CORRECTION, YOU USED TO HAVE ONE EVERY YEAR. PEOPLE JUST THINK METEORS ARE FALLING FROM THE SKY.

CHANOS ON LOW GROWTH IN CHINA

YOU COULD HAVE A LONG, LONG PERIOD OF VERY LOW OR LITTLE GROWTH, LIKE JAPAN, YOU GET THE ZOMBIEFICATION OF THE ECONOMY WHERE NO ONE RECOGNIZES A BAD DEBT. THE STATE STANDS BEHIND EVERYTHING. BUT CONSEQUENTLY NOBODY REALLY MAKES ECONOMIC RETURNS BECAUSE THERES SO MUCH OVER-CAPACITY. SO THERES NO GUARANTEE THAT YOURE GOING TO FINANCIALLY PROSPER FROM THIS PARTICULARLY IF YOURE OUTSIDE OF CHINA.

CHANOS ON BEING NEGATIVE ON LNG

WE'VE BEEN PRETTY NEGATIVE FOR THE PAST SIX MONTHS ON THIS LNG SPACE. WE THINK ITS A LOOMING DISASTER. THE PROBLEM IS THAT EVERYBODY FIGURED THIS OUT MUCH LIKE IRON ORE FIVE YEARS AGO AT THE SAME TIME. AND SO, EVERYBODY IS CONVINCED BUILDING THESE HUGE LNG PLANTS THAT ARE IMMENSELY EXPENSIVE THAT COSTS TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EACH, MANY OF THEM IN AUSTRALIA AND IN THE PACIFIC RIM, THE PROBLEM IS THAT LNG DEMAND ISN'T GROWING ANYMORE.

CHANOS ON LNG BEING UNIQUE

LNG HAS BEEN SEEN AS A UNIQUE ANIMAL BECAUSE ITS GOING TO BE U.S. BASED. THEY'RE OPENING THEIR SABINE PASS LATER THIS YEAR AND IT WAS A WAY IN WHICH CHEAPER GAS, U.S. GAS COULD BE USED AS A FEED STOCK. AND LNG WENT OUT AND GOT LONG-TERM CONTRACTS, 20-YEAR CONTRACTS FROM A NUMBER OF BUYERS. AND SO IT WAS SEEN AS A VERY SAFE PLAY, THIS LNG BOOM. THE PROBLEM IS IT ONLY COVERS ABOUT 80% OF THEIR OUTPUT ULTIMATELY.

CHANOS ON LNG BEING OUT OF WHACK

THE GOVERNMENT OF QATAR, WHICH IS THE LARGEST PLAYER IN THE LNG MARKET HAS BEGUN TO PROACTIVELY, FROM A SUPPLIER POINT OF VIEW, IS WILLING TO RENEGOTIATE LONG-TERM TAKE OR PAY CONTRACTS WITH ITS CUSTOMERS. SO THE WHOLE IDEA THAT TAKE OR PAY IS SACROSANCT IN A DECLINING COMMODITY ENVIRONMENT I THINK IS GOING TO BE UNDER A LOT OF PRESSURE. HAVING SAID ALL THAT, WITH THE STOCK AT 30 TIMES 2020 EARNINGS WITH THE UPSIDE COMING FROM A GLUTTED MARKET, WE THINK THE RISK REWARD ON THIS GIVEN WHERE OTHER LNG PLAYS ARE IN AUSTRALIA AND ELSEWHERE IS JUST COMPLETELY OUT OF WHACK.

THE SOLAR CITY CEO GOT QUITE UPSET THAT I CALLED HIS COMPANY IN EFFECT A SUBPRIME COMPANY. AND HE CAME BACK OUT LATER THAT DAY ON CNBC AND SAID NO OUR FICO SCORES ARE THIS AND THAT. SOME OF THEIR SECURITIZATIONS DO HAVE SUBPRIME CREDITS, BUT MY POINT WAS THAT HE'S A FINANCING COMPANY AND HE ADMITTED THAT. AND PEOPLE THINK OF SOLAR CITY AS A HIGH-TECH COMPANY. NO, IT'S AKIN TO PEOPLE GOING DOOR TO DOOR SELLING YOU ALUMINUM SIDING.

IT'S A HIGHLY OWNED STOCK. IT'S A SO-CALLED HEDGE FUND HOTEL. I GUESS I'VE CHECKED INTO THE HOTEL, TOO. BUT LIKE ANYTHING, EXPECTATIONS LIKE WITH ANY STOCK CAN GET AHEAD OF THINGS AND PEOPLE SOLD OFF. THEY'RE ALSO PROBABLY USING A SOURCE OF LIQUIDITY AS THEY'VE BROUGHT THEIR BALANCE SHEETS DOWN.

CHANOS: HEWLETT-PACKARD IS BASICALLY A BACKWARDS LOOKING COMPANY.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: EVEN WITH THE BREAKOFFS?

CHANOS: THE BREAKOFF IS FINANCIAL ENGINEERING. ITS MORE OF THE SAME. IT IS MORE OF THE SAME NONSENSE. YOU KNOW, TELL ME NEW PRODUCTS THAT HEWLETT'S GOT THAT PEOPLE ARE EXCITED ABOUT. CYBER SECURITY? NO. 3D PRINTING THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO DO? NO. I MEAN, ALL THESE THINGS THAT KEEP GETTING LAUNCHED UP IN SILICON VALLEY, HEWLETT-PACKARD MISSES.

With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, CNBC World and CNBC HD , CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to approximately 371 million homes worldwide, including more than 100 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.

CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms. These include CNBC.com, the online destination for global business; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides real-time global market data and live access to CNBC global programming; and a suite of CNBC Mobile products including the CNBC Real-Time iPhone and iPad Apps.

Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBC Universal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/mediavillage/networks/cnbc/.

Summary: CNBC Excerpts: Jim Chanos, Kynikos Associates President, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Today


WHEN: Today, Wednesday, January 21st

Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of CNBC interviews on CNBC's "Squawk Box" this morning live from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. For a roundup of all the interviews on CNBC's "Squawk Box" today, go to squawkbox.cnbc.com.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone Chairman & CEO

I think society has gotten a bit more used to being divided. I happen to think this is a very, very bad idea. And you run a company what you want is to unify your people and move them in a direction. Almost every organization works that way. I think we have a lot of work to do, this is in the United States and some other countries, to bring our people together. And that's the way you get the most out of a society.

I think there's a consistency in terms of what the administration has been trying to do on a tax policy basis. I've been told by political people that there's no chance of this happening.

The consensus is that the ECB will be doing some kind of stimulus and that should weaken the euro a little more. And as to the Swiss franc, there's nothing but blood on the street and on the walls.

I don't worry particularly about the safety and soundness issue with large banks. Large banks actually perform quite an important function, whether it's for funds transferred globally, for advancing significant credit. Large banks exist everywhere in the world and there's a reason for that.

The housing market is coming back as you can see. It has been – it was depressed down roughly 40%. It's coming back. There's been more multifamily than there has by historic standards in terms of new builds. That should change over time. We're expecting another year of significant increase, probably around 8% in value.

I think the issues that are meant to be addressed are very important. The middle class has to increase its wealth. And we have to get better jobs. And it's going to have to be done, among other ways, through education.

We're going to have to provide the intellectual capital for the people, not just in the United States, because this is a global issue, to enter the knowledge economy. If we don't do that then we're going to have long term problems.

There were too many private equity firms, of a variety of different performance, and so what institutions are doing sensibly is to go for the ones that provide the best performance, give them much more money. Also it helps them have fewer staff to lower their cost. So it makes complete sense and it's a major trend, it will continue. Firms like Blackstone should be the major beneficiaries of this type of trend.

Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman & CEO

The president has said he'd like to go to a title two utility type regulation of our industry to protect net neutrality. And so a couple of the Congressman have said well why don't we put in place those provisions that the President is aspiring towards and give the FCC the authority to enforce those provisions. But there still seems to be an interest in just going down the path of full regulation of the internet by the FCC. So it's going to be interesting over the next few weeks to see what plays out.

It's what we've been working towards is finding a way of giving the FCC the authority to impose the no blocking, no priority access and so forth. But there does seem to be a desire to give the FCC broad ability to regulate the internet.

Net neutrality is all about broadband so buying DirecTV doesn't change the broadband market in any way shape or form. We're buying a company that is purely a stand-alone TV business. If the FCC were to rule on net neutrality in the next couple of weeks, what it probably does is takes it off the table for Comcast-Time Warner would be my guess. It's been dealt with there, right? So it doesn't have to be dealt with in the context of a transaction.

We're trying today to obsolete our old technology, our old fix-line technology. We want to take it out of service and replace it with either wireless or internet protocol technology. We're working with the FCC to do that. We think we might be able to get that done by the year 2020.

If you look at our customer base today the young demographic tends not to have a landline. They've grown up with just mobile only. I still use a landline at the house for security reasons. Alright. And I also – the landline is the basis for home monitoring. 30 or 40% still take a landline telephone so just different people have different uses for it.

Larry Fink, BlackRock Chairman & CEO

I'm quite surprised how the narrative is turning everything into negative. So the mood is really bad as Joe suggested. But even our interpretations are now moving more to the negative. I think this is just the cycles we go through. We go through really big bouts of negativity. And then you get some stability going. All of the actions I see will lead to a higher equity market by year end.

In Europe we're going to have negative interest rates, whether it's in Switzerland or we have even negative rates now in Germany, and with the ECB probably buying hundreds of billions of dollars of bonds it's going to lead to probably more negative rates in Europe.

I think what we are miscalculating is how technology is changing our world more rapidly than we understand. And that's the deflationary pressure we're seeing. We spent way too much timing talking about what the 2007-8 financial crisis has done. And we've been using that as a means for all these issues for the last five years. Could it be a trend that's even more overwhelming, called technology and how it's transforming.

We are shocked about what technology has done to the oil sector, which is obviously deflationary, and I would call that good deflation. But there are other things that we are going to be seeing maybe it's in automobiles, maybe it's something else, where we are seeing technology transforming how we live, transforming how we have to allocate our savings and our capital. And so we are living in this right now, watching it, and right now it feels really deflationary or disinflationary at the very least.

If the Swiss economy is not that disrupted by this increase, which in my view it's going to be disrupted, but if it's not and I'm wrong, then Germany can look at itself and say I want out.

I believe the narrative should be, we should change it to capital gains tax to beginning a policy in which long-term begins on the 3rd or maybe in the 5th anniversary. And everything else is ordinary income.

FINK ON NEXT U.S. PRESIDENT

I actually believe the candidate who will become the next President of the United States is going to be the one who is most centrist.

Lower energy prices is probably the largest redistribution of wealth that we've seen in our lifetimes. And it's hard to interpret this. So unquestionably those who had huge investments in companies that were fracking and watching their stock down 30, 40 percent, so you're seeing some huge erosion in capital with wealthy people. But it's hard to document that person who drives 50 miles a day to work in Los Angeles, and they're going to be saving 20 to 30 dollars a week on oil. And that's going to translate into a 1200 dollar savings.

Mark Bertolini, Aetna Chairman & CEO

Becky Quick: You made huge news last week when you decided that you were going to raise the wages of your lowest paid workers to $16 an hour. This is happening at a time when everyone is talking about the minimum wage and what goes on. You weren't told to do this so why are you doing it?

Bertolini: As a company, we're looking at how we upgraded our workforce and invested in our workforce as we move to a consumer world and so we call it an infrastructure investment in the quality of our employees, in their healthy lifestyle, which is something that we should be about as a company.

We've sort of destroyed business after business in this country by looking at spreadsheets with numbers we call truth. Instead, let's look at all the potential benefits we can derive, hard and soft, as a result of this investment, put some numbers on them and stand back and say is this a risk we as an enlightened employer are willing to take?

Larry Summers, Former Treasury Secretary

I don't think the euro has lived up to the hopes, come close to living up to the hopes to those who inaugurated it. I think they failed to heed the economic advice that monetary union needed to be associated with much greater cooperation with fiscal policy, much greater cooperation in financial regulation, much greater cooperation in standing behind banks, much greater efforts to promote mobility. That was what they were told. And they let the politics trump the economics. And they're paying the price for that right now.

Nobody's talking about some massive increase in transfer payments or entitlements. We do have to work at putting people to work, infrastructure is one good way to do that. Removing barriers to private investments is another, that's why I thought that freeing up the ban on oil exports is so important.

It doesn't work to have workers be a disposable commodity pitted against each other. That goes to a range of employment practices, and it goes to basic benefits. Why should the United States, still the world's richest company, be the only one where you can't get time off to take care of a very sick relative? Or you can't get time off to take care of a new child?

It's not enough to drive growth, we've also got to make sure that the way we have that growth is equally distributed.

Europe's problems are heavily macroeconomic. Europe is haunted by the spectre of deflation. Europe has not yet found a way to make the monetary union work. Europe has an extraordinarily brittle economic and financial structure. And until that's addressed in some quite fundamental ways, of which the quantitative easing we'll see tomorrow is just one element, until that's addressed Europe's going to have a very hard problem.

Tony Fernandes, AirAsia Group CEO

It's very difficult because they've lost loved ones. We obviously lost some of our family members, our crew, but it's not blood relatives. But I think all I could do was provide comfort, provide assurance that we'd be there throughout, we'll never forget them. And I gave them all my mobile phone number so whatever they needed, we were there for them. But it's a small thing in relation to what happened.

FERNANDES ON BEING THE BOSS

Fernandes: I think transparency. I think people want to know and they've got to hear it from the man in charge.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: Does anybody tell you that you've got to stop this, we don't want you doing this?

Fernandes: Well I think it would be very difficult to control me so no one did. But I just think, I'm the boss and I've got to lead from the front and people got to know what's happening and I got to set an example to my staff.

I think safety is a marathon. It goes on every day. Any airline that says they're safe, that's when complacency comes in. For us, we followed the best. We followed the approved training methods of Airbus and for 13 years we carried 250 million people, we grew to 180 aircraft, we never had an incident.

When Malaysia Airlines happened, I'd gone out in the public and said in this day and age there should be a system where the information is sent live to the cloud. It seems amazing that doesn't happen. I think that's going to happen soon and unfortunately tragedies, such as what happened last year, pushed this thing along.

I think we've had tremendous support from the world. But really support from your pocket, that shows you what the real support is and our passengers have come out very strongly. Our bookings are up actually yesterday which is quite remarkable for the amount of coverage we've been getting in the negative form. So that's a good sign.

With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, CNBC World and CNBC HD , CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to approximately 371 million homes worldwide, including more than 100 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.

CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms. These include CNBC.com, the online destination for global business; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides real-time global market data and live access to CNBC global programming; and a suite of CNBC Mobile products including the CNBC Real-Time iPhone and iPad Apps.

Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBC Universal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/mediavillage/networks/cnbc/.

Summary: CNBC Excerpts: CNBC's "Squawk Box" Broadcasts Live from the World Economic Forum in Davos Today, Wednesday, January 21


Doing some extrapolation, Deutsche Bank figures that XOOM sales are around 100,000 so far.

The math isn’t hard. Look at Android Dev’s latest numbers for Android sales (April 1st)…

Duetsche Bank figures that .2% of Android devices that accessed the Android Market translates to 100,000 units. This means that they estimate 50 million Android devices accessed the Android Market over the last two weeks. Considering Android’s run rate is about 10 million devices/month after a steep climb, that seems reasonable (though Google GOOG doesn’t publish such numbers).

There one device shipping that runs Android 3.0 (though developers have ported to a few other machines) is the Motorola MMI XOOM.

The XOOM came without Adobe’s ADBE Flash, without the ability to use its own SD card slot, and only a few apps that took advantage of its larger display. It also runs a very new, largely untested version of Google’s Android Honeycomb.

Considering this, 100,000 units isn’t horrible – that is, unless you look across the isle at Apple’s AAPL iPad 2 which also doesn’t have any official numbers attached to it, but probably sold 100,000 units before lunch on day one of sales. Many experts think that millions if not tens of millions of iPad 2 have been sold already.

It is important to remember that the first Android phone, the G1, wasn’t a critical success for the first year of its existence. Google kept iterating however and wound up with significant success with the Droid about a year later. With about 50 new tablets coming down the pipe running Honeycomb, it is still way too early to count Google out.

As for the XOOM, it didn’t even beat the older Samsung Galaxy Tab in PC World tests.

It will be interesting to see how the landscape changes over the next year.

Summary: Doing some extrapolation, Deutsche Bank figures that XOOM sales are around 100,000 so far. The math isn't hard.  Look at Android Dev's latest numbers for Android sales (April 1st)... Duetsche Bank figures that .2% of Android devices that accessed the Android Market translates to 100,000 units.  This means that they estimate 50 million Android devices accessed…


As the preparations for the global climate change conference in Paris in December heat up in parallel with the planet, negotiators in the United Nations climate talks recently released a proposed skeleton agreement. The draft includes the key pieces of a legal agreement that are meant to be finalized by nearly 200 countries in Paris.

The text is very much an early draft, littered with alternative wordings and unsettled provisions, but it provides the clearest illustration to date of what kind of agreement countries are heading toward.

The documents also bring to light the many politically sensitive issues negotiators will need to grapple with in Paris.

Typically, global environmental treaties, including earlier ones on climate change from 1992 and 1997, set out comprehensive legal commitments – a cornerstone of international law. But the ill-fated Copenhagen meeting in 2009 showed in spectacular fashion that this approach is no longer possible on climate change. There, the United States, China, India and other leading countries outside the European Union sharply rejected the idea that each country in the United Nations process should take on negotiated, legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead, the hastily scrambled together Copenhagen Accord ended up a political document, merely encouraging countries to submit voluntary, and widely varying, greenhouse gas targets for 2020. Since then, the leaders of China, the United States and other countries have voiced support for more concerted action, but many still prefer to keep any national targets voluntary. In typically awkward U.N.-speak, these are called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

Consequently, countries in Paris will seek to develop a new hybrid approach. The intent is to establish a universal legal agreement that lays out basic provisions, but each countries’ INDCs are submitted separately, and implementation issues are intended to be addressed in political decisions adopted separately at the Paris meeting.

Defenders of international law often prefer treaties because binding commitments are legally strong. Countries sometimes violate legal obligations, but most countries follow most international law most of the time. Countries also often think twice before violating their legal obligations, because international law creates stability and predictability. And countries that renege on legal commitments risk losing one of the most priced commodities in international relations – other countries’ trust that may be needed in future cooperation.

But not all analysts believe that legal obligations are always superior to more political approaches. Because countries tend to respect international law, they may simply elect to not sign up to rules they cannot (or do not want to) abide to. In that case, the choice is between a legal treaty with only a few members, and a legally weaker agreement with more members. With the top 10 emitting countries responsible for two-thirds of global emissions, leaving any of these countries standing on the sidelines would be highly problematic to any multinational climate agreement.

Since Copenhagen, the international political scales on climate change have tipped away from the traditional treaty system to one that embraces a higher degree of voluntarism. This has paid some dividends in the form of greater participation. Among those that have already submitted their INDCs for 2030 are China, the United States, the European Union and Japan.

How solid is U.S. commitment?

But despite this political buy-in from leading emitters, there are several potential pitfalls ahead.

International legal agreements depend on countries’ willingness to incorporate them into national law and to implement and enforce their obligations through domestic institutions. Once international commitments are enshrined in domestic law, there is a significant hurdle for political leaders to backtrack, which would have both national and international implications.

Yet in some instances, countries may more actively follow through on voluntary promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions by, for example, expanding renewable energy generation and improving energy efficiency. This is in large part because what countries set out to do in their INDC is often already national policy and/or measures they are confident will be adopted later. In other words, countries are prone to only submit INDCs that are clearly within reach.

But all of this is dependent on one critical aspect: that future national political leaders honor political promises made by today’s leaders in Paris. This is true for all countries, but uncertainties about the future path of the United States, in particular, stand out.

The Obama administration favors voluntary INDCs partly because the US contribution was formulated within the executive branch and so does not require congressional approval. The Obama administration this month released the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Power Plan that sets limits on carbon emissions from power plants. That mandate along with fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and other measures are the primary methods for meeting the US emissions reductions pledge.

However, this means that the next White House occupant is free to decide U.S. international climate change policy. Here, the very large differences between presidential candidates on climate change can have substantial national and foreign policy ramifications, as countries and trading partners will expect the U.S. to fulfill earlier promises.

Follow the money (or lack thereof)

Another central issue that the skeleton agreement draws attention to is financial support for developing countries to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

These are, in many instances, both among the first ones to feel the negative impact of, for example, temperature increases and changes in precipitation and weather patterns, and those that struggle the most to deal with growing adaptation needs. They have also contributed very little to the problem, having historically low emissions.

The U.N.-organized Green Climate Fund is intended to generate $100 billion a year from public and private sources by 2020, but we have so far seen little of that. Connected to a much larger and longstanding debate about funding for sustainable development, developing countries insist that financial contributions from donor countries should be mandatory, but industrialized countries prefer voluntary mechanisms.

These fundamental financial disagreements also tie in with related debates around how to best to prepare developing countries and transfer technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

These discussions are further complicated by the lack of consensus on how to design the basic mechanisms for monitoring, reporting and verifying countries’ measures for emissions reductions.

At the same time, developing countries are increasingly forced to quickly figure out how to best limit negative consequences of climate change and how to design working strategies to reduce vulnerabilities and enhance resilience. Here, the rich can start learning from the poor, who are the ones doing much of the on-the-ground experimentation and innovation.

Two degree Celsius target slipping away

Critically, we will likely not be able to keep average global temperature increases under two degrees Celsius, an important benchmark climate scientists have recommended to avoid more dramatic disruptions.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculated that total, cumulative anthropogenic carbon emissions need to stay below 1,000 gigatons of carbon in order to not exceed the two-degree threshold. By 2011, countries had already emitted over half of this budget, and if current emission trends continue, we will exceed the budget before 2050.

The Paris pledges and other mitigation efforts so far are not ambitious enough to keep us below the 2 degrees Celsius target, according to independent research initiative Climate Tracker. And even after emissions are drastically reduced, the climate changes that occur will be with us for the next thousand years. Thus, the Paris negotiations and our actions in the next three decades will determine the future of the climate for the next millennium.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation

Summary: How we got here and what to watch for


01/20/2016 AT 03:15 PM EST

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

for president at a rally in Iowa Tuesday night, the GOP front-runner said he would "certainly" give her a role in his administration if she wanted one – but the possibility of a Trump-Palin ticket hasn't come up.

"That question is always asked: 'Who do you have in mind?' I don't even think about VP right now. I just want to win," Trump said on the

show Wednesday morning. "I've always been a closer. I get the deal done and I have to win before I start thinking about that. There are a lot of good people in the Republican Party."

Trump added that Palin has not asked him to consider her as a running mate but he doubts she would be interested in the first place. "She's been through that," he said of her 2008 bid for vice president alongside Sen.

Sarah Palin and Donald Trump

Trump went on to praise Palin for giving him a no-strings-attached endorsement.

"She never said, 'Gee, I'd like to do this, I'd like to do that.' She never made a deal, like so many people want to try to make deals," he said. "She just said, 'I really like what's going on. It's an amazing thing. I've never seen anything like it in politics.' And it's such an honor because as you know â¦ so many people – ahem, [Ted] Cruz – are so disappointed that she didn't support them."

Deal or no deal, Palin could very well still play a role in Trump's potential administration.

"Certainly there'd be a role somewhere in the administration if she wanted – and I'm not sure that she does want that – but there would certainly be a role," Trump said.

For now, Palin seems content to prop Trump up as a "new and independent voice" in the Republican Party.

"He's going rogue left and right! That's why he's doing so well," she said at the rally in Ames, Iowa, Tuesday night. And as for the veteran GOP leaders who aren't on board with Trump's brand of politics, Palin said, "With their failed agenda, it can't be salvaged, it must be savaged and Donald Trump is the right one to do that."

"We're gonna give 'em hell," Trump said, after kissing Palin on the cheek. "From Day One, I said if I ever do this I have to get her support. ... She understands it better than anybody."

Summary: "I don't even think about VP right now. I just want to win," Donald Trump says


FORTUNE — In an unusual move, the U.S. Federal Reserve last week signaled it would put its focus on jobs ahead of inflation next year by buying up billions of dollars worth of bonds until the unemployment rate falls to at least 6.5%. The central bank’s announcement was a relief for the jobless, as the employment picture has failed to improve much since the Great Recession formally ended more than three years ago.

But while the Fed moves on with its bond bonanza assuming rapidly rising prices won’t be a problem, or at least not any time soon, it will be hard to convince shoppers at the grocery aisle.

Next year, officials plan to purchase $85 billion of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury securities each month, part of a continuing drive to push down long-term interest rates to boost borrowing, spending and investing. What’s unexpected is that, for the first time, the Fed disclosed an unemployment rate it wants to reach before letting short-term interest rates rise again.

What this means is that the Fed’s other job — controlling inflation — will take a backseat. The central bank generally likes to keep inflation below 2%, but last Wednesday policymakers indicated consumers might have to briefly live with prices rising a tad higher. If unemployment stays too high, officials said they were willing to tolerate inflation of up to 2.5% for a short period as long as it remains close to 2% in the long run.

MORE: El-Erian: How risky is the Fed’s major move?

It’s true overall inflation has been mild thanks in part to lower prices across gas stations nationwide. The seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index dropped 0.3% in November from October, the Labor Department reported Friday. This comes as gas prices saw the biggest drop in nearly four years, falling 7.4%, during the same period.

Food prices are telling a different story, however.

On average, Americans spend 8.6% of their income on groceries and an additional 5.7% on food at restaurants, delis and the like, according to an NPR survey released in April based on 2011 data. That share could surely rise higher if incomes stay flat, since the nation’s worst drought since the 1950s is starting to result in higher food prices. The producer price index, which tracks how much wholsesalers pay for goods, fell 0.8% in November. However, the price for food rose 1.3% — the biggest increase since February 2011, according to a report released Thursday by the Labor Department.

Producer food prices are up 2.6% from a year earlier, compared with an annual gain of just 1.5% for all goods. In particular, chicken prices have surged 14.3% during the last year and wholesale beef and veal prices rose 8.2% in November, the biggest monthly gain since 2008.

MORE: Why quantitative easing isn’t working

For months, the US Department of Agriculture has warned about higher food prices. Next year, U.S. consumers may pay 3% to 4% more for food, the agency forecasts. The price of beef may rise as much as 5% amid tighter supplies of corn, which is used to feed cattle. Since June, the price of grain, the country’s biggest crop, rose by more than 50%.

All this could make it harder for the central bank to assure consumers that inflation isn’t a problem. When the Fed looks at signs for rapidly rising prices, it turns to a variety of measures — most commonly core inflation, which excludes the costs of fuel and food. This is for good reason, since officials make decisions based on what they think will happen in the long run. Fuel and food prices tend to rise and fall pretty dramatically.

In the end, consumers may have to endure the pain, if only briefly, of paying more next year at the grocery store. Let’s hope the jobless rate improves at the same time.

Summary: The Federal Reserve wants to prioritize jobs over inflation. How will Americans feel about that when they're paying more for groceries next year?


What: One hundred yards of pink ribbon and more than twice that amount in fabric for the six costumes featured in “The Hunchback of Seville,” a hilariously twisted take on Spanish history.

Where: At the Trinity Repertory Company’s Dowling Theater, Providence, through March 6. Tickets: 401-351-4242, www.trinityrep.com

When Trinity Repertory Company costume designer Olivera Gajic was designing the 16th-century period costumes for “The Hunchback of Seville,” she looked to Velasquez’s famous painting of the Infanta Margarita Teresa in her prodigious gown.

“That dress was worn 100 years after our play takes place,” says Gajic, “but I was fascinated with its shape and gave myself the freedom to exaggerate a bit to make these costumes fit the eccentric characters in the play.”

Eccentric, indeed. Charise Castro Smith’s play includes the title character, adopted as a baby by the royal family but kept in a tower surrounded by books, maps, and cats; an aging and ailing Queen Isabella; Infanta Juana, the wacky heir to the throne who is oblivious to everyone’s needs but her own; some smart-alecky servants; and of course, Christopher Columbus himself.

On the cusp of the Spanish Inquisition (think Monty Python’s version) and just after Columbus’s triumphant return, a dying Isabella suggests the brainy, sarcastic Maxima Terrible Segunda (the hunchback) serve as witless Juana’s adviser, but of course, there’s a catch.

“These characters are complicated, and the director, set designer, and I worked together to decide that the costumes needed to move forward to help the actors play with the comedy,” says Gajic. “While the script is full of sight gags, the actors add a lot, just by the way they move in these gowns.”

Castro Smith’s script, in addition to its farcical tone, also plays fast and loose with the period, adding contemporary references and some historically inaccurate language. Almost overwhelmed by the yards and yards of fabric they wear, the actresses, in particular Nicole Villamil as the Infanta Juana, makes great use of their gowns.

“The Infanta’s dress is almost wider than the doorway, and all of these dresses are bulky and hard to move in,” says Gajic. “But I know all of the actresses are enjoying them. Nicole makes the most out of every comic moment. When she kneels in the dress, she looks like a little girl; when she sits, she gets stuck in the chair. The fabric becomes a prop as much as a costume.”

Summary: The gowns worn in Trinity Repertory Company’s “The Hunchback of Seville” are almost too wide for a doorway.


“Vinyl” is hot again. The name of the material used to make phonograph records—and a catchall term for the records themselves—is finding renewed popularity as record collecting gains hipster cachet.

Now HBO is cashing in on the word’s retro appeal with its new dramatic series set in the record industry in the 1970s, appropriately titled “Vinyl.”

The show, which made its debut last Sunday, stars Bobby Cannavale as the savvy but...

“Vinyl” is hot again. The name of the material used to make phonograph records—and a catchall term for the records themselves—is finding renewed popularity as record collecting gains hipster cachet.

Now HBO is cashing in on the word’s retro appeal with its new dramatic series set in the record industry in the 1970s, appropriately titled “Vinyl.”

The show, which made its debut last Sunday, stars Bobby Cannavale as the savvy but troubled head of the fictional record label American Century. While the title is a good fit for a nostalgic look back to the days when vinyl records were king, it took a while for the creators to settle on the name. In 2010, when news emerged that Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger and showrunner Terence Winter were producing a series for HBO, the working title had been “The Long Play,” Mr. Winter said. Then when the show went into development, it was known in-house as “Untitled Rock ’N’ Roll Project.”

Meanwhile, Showtime was considering its own series about the 1970s music scene, based on a script by Jason Smilovic and Todd Katzberg and titled—you guessed it—“Vinyl.” Showtime didn’t move forward with the 2011 project, and last year HBO announced that it would be using the title instead.

According to Jeff Cusson, HBO’s senior vice president for corporate affairs, the selection of “Vinyl” as the series title had nothing to do with the similar Showtime project. The choice was simply based on “titles being tossed around for consideration,” Mr. Cusson told me by email.

The fact that two cable networks hit upon “Vinyl” as a title goes to show how well the word has survived, despite the onslaught of digital and streaming music. It serves as a kind of emblem of musical authenticity from a bygone era.

The word “vinyl” got its start back in the 1850s, when the German chemist Hermann Kolbe combined the Latin “vinum” meaning “wine” with the chemical suffix “-yl” to name a group of atoms derived from ethyl alcohol, found in wine. In 1872, another German chemist, Eugen Baumann, accidentally created a polymer known as “polyvinyl chloride,” which often got shortened to “vinyl” when it became a popular plastic material in the 20th century.

In the record industry, vinyl took off after World War II with the advent of 33 1/3 rotations-per-minute LPs and 45 rpm singles and EPs. By the ’60s and ’70s, “vinyl” could refer to the record itself, following a semantic path established by words like “wax,” “shellac” and “acetate.”

In the current vinyl revival, there are disputes about how to use the word. Many assert that if you use “vinyl” to refer to a record, the plural form should also be “vinyl.” There is even a website called “The Plural of Vinyl is Vinyl,” and a recent petition on Change.org called “Please stop saying ‘vinyls’” has garnered more than 1,000 supporters. University of Pennsylvania linguist Mark Liberman has called this “an invented ‘rule’...without either tradition or logic on its side,” but that hasn’t stopped some vinyl enthusiasts from insisting on it.

Summary: The name of the material used to make records—and a catchall term for the records themselves—is finding renewed popularity in an HBO series, says Ben Zimmer


WASHINGTON, Jan. 19—The Federal Communications Commission is considering acting on its own to regulate cigarette advertising on radio and television.

The commission will probably await the outcome of a proceeding started by its sister regulatory agency, the Federal Trade Commission. The Trade Commission yesterday proposed stern measures to warn the public of tobacco's danger to health.

The Communications Commission has written to the chairman of the Trade Commission, Paul Rand Dixon, asking to be kept advised. It has appointed staff members to maintain liaison with the Trade Commission.

Spokesmen said the Communications Commission would also keep in close touch with the Surgeon General's office. It was an advisory committee to the Surgeon General that warned on Jan. 11 of cigarettes' part in causing cancer and other diseases.

There is little likelihood that the Communications Commission will start its own rule‐making proceedings at once. For one thing, it is not clear what there will be left for it to regulate if the Trade Commission adopts its proposed rules.

The Trade Commission's plan would require every cigarette advertisement, on the air as well as in printed form, to carry a warning of health hazards. For brief television commercials the commission proposed this language:

“Caution — cigarette smoking is dangerous to health. It may cause death from cancer and other diseases.”

Thus the general field of television advertising would already be covered. However, the Communications Commission might still adopt more specific regulations, for example a ban on tobacco advertising at times when youngsters are watching.

The appeal of cigarette ads to the young has been a special concern to some Government officials. But one official observed today that if each commercial had to carry the warning proposed by the Trade Commission, “it might be better for teenagers to see it than not.”

The Trade Commission's action was denounced today by Representative Harold D. Cooley, Democrat of North Carolina, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. North Carolina is the leading tobaccoproducing state.

Mr. Cooley said the Trade Commission's proposed rules were absurd. He questioned the agency's legal authority to adopt such regulations.

“The F.T.C. is supposed to protect people from false advertising,” Mr. Cooley said. “I've never noticed any false advertising on cigarettes.”

I Mr. Cooley said the logic of the Trade Commission's proposal would just as easily support requirements for warning labels on eggs and milk because they produce cholesterol, which some think is related to heart disease. Or warnings could be required on whisky, he said.

“I think someone in the F.T.C. must be emotionally distUrbed,” Mr. Cooley declared.

He disclosed that he hoped to hold hearings starting next month on proposed legislation to set up a broad new research program on tobacco and health. Presumably such research would delay Government action on the problem.

This article can be viewed in its original form. Please send questions and feedback to archive_feedback@nytimes.com

Summary: FCC weighs controls over ad on radio and TV; Repr Cooley calls FTC proposals absurd


04/07/2016 AT 12:45 AM EDT

, celebrities are paying tribute to the country legend.

revealed that he began his album listening party on Wednesday with a song by Haggard as a way to honor the musician.

"I did an album listening party today and I started with a Merle Haggard song because he was a big part of my youth growing up. Growing up, my dad had several Merle Haggard records and I got to see him play many times," Urban, 48, told reporters. "We have an event every year, All for the Hall, that I do with Vince Gill [benefiting the Country Music Hall of Fame], and Merle came in one time and participated in that, so I got to play with him and he comes from that line of just unfiltered truth-tellers."

Sadly, we've lost another outlaw. Rest in peace. #MerleHaggard pic.twitter.com/CGGPyb8otK

"He just wrote some of the most iconic country songs of all time," he continued. "He's really going to be missed."

Haggard's death, which occurred on his 79th birthday, also prompted other stars in the music industry to pay their respects.

RIP Merle Haggard. I was woken up most mornings when I was a kid to Okie From Muskogee being played down the hall n my house. #randombuttrue

"RIP Merle Haggard. I was woken up most mornings when I was a kid to 'Okie From Muskogee' being played down the hall n my house #randombuttrue,"

It looks like it's raining in Nashville today but really it's Tennessee tears for Merle Haggard. You'll always be the best. #longlivetheHag

Iâm so sad to hear weâve lost @merlehaggard. His music was a staple in our home, growing up.

also took to social media and shared a lengthy tribute to the singer on Instagram, referring to him as "one of the greatest singer-songwriters of our time."

"Merle haggard was an outlaw and a poet and a storytelling genius," she continued. "Of the few songs he ever recorded that he didn't write was one of my mom's songs, 'Old Flames Can't Hold A Candle to You.' That's the first time I heard about him, from my mom. He will be missed."

Summary: The country legend died on Wednesday


TOKYO (Reuters) -- A U.S. serviceman stationed in Japan's southern island of Okinawa has been arrested on suspicion of raping a woman, Japanese police said on Monday, likely adding to complications for a controversial plan to relocate a U.S. base on the island.

The man arrested by Okinawa police was a 24-year-old sailor stationed at the U.S. military's Camp Schwab on the island. He is accused of raping a woman in her 40s at a hotel in Naha in the south of Okinawa.

SEE ALSO: Staten Island woman charged with murder after dead newborn found in trash bag

"We promptly told the U.S. side this is extremely regrettable and demanded firmly stricter discipline and prevention of recurrence," Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference.

The Pentagon did not respond for a request for comment, but U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States took such reports "very, very seriously."

Kirby said he could not comment on specifics of the case, as it was under investigation by Japanese authorities and the U.S. Navy. However, he added: "If there is a need to hold someone accountable, they will do that."

"We take our relationship with the people of Okinawa as with everybody in Japan very, very seriously," Kirby added. "It's a strong alliance, it's a deep and abiding friendship and we have great respect for the Japanese people."

An official at Okinawa prefecture government quoted Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga as saying that the incident was unforgivable and that he felt strong indignation.

Okinawa, the site of a bloody World War Two land battle, hosts the bulk of U.S. military forces in Japan, and many residents resent what they see as an unfair burden. U.S. installations take up about 18 percent of Okinawa's land.

The government in Tokyo and authorities in Okinawa have long been at loggerheads over the relocation of the U.S. Marines' Futenma airbase, which is in an urban area of the southern island.

This month, the Japanese government accepted a court-mediated settlement plan to halt construction work related to the relocation and resume talks with Okinawa authorities, who want the base off the island altogether.

The United States and Japan agreed in 1996 to close Futenma and move its facilities elsewhere on Okinawa, but the plan stalled due to opposition from residents worried about noise, pollution and crime.

In 1995, a 12-year-old Japanese schoolgirl was raped by three U.S. servicemen on Okinawa, sparking huge protests.

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Summary: A 24-year-old sailor stationed at the U.S. military's Camp Schwab is accused of raping a woman in her 40s at a hotel in Naha in the south of Okinawa.


On the issue of banking, Weill said regulators should help strengthen the financial industry and get banks to follow the rules rather than be adversaries of the companies they oversee.

Case in point, the latest stress test results embarrassed Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat, who was blindsided by news the bank failed the test while he was out of the country, Weill said.

Regarding Dimon's handling of JPMorgan during this litigious environment, Weill said: "I think he's being shot at by everybody. He was too successful."

But Weill didn't fault Dimon for the bank's $13 billion settlement with federal and state authorities to resolve allegations of sales of shoddy mortgage securities by Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, which JPMorgan purchased during the 2008 financial crisis at the behest of the government and the Federal Reserve.

"You can't fight the government," Weill said. "I think Jamie did a great job managing JPMorgan through the [2008 financial] crisis. He bought two companies that helped the country."

In a 2012 interview on CNBC, the man who invented the financial supermarket called for the breakup of big banks. But a year later, he told CNBC that big institutions don't have to be split if the "right regulation" is in place.

On Wednesday, Weill said: "The model of having a broad-based institution is still a good one," provided the government doesn't keep second-guessing the way banks do business and how much they pay their leaders.

Summary: The former Citigroup chairman and CEO also tells CNBC that banking regulators should not be adversaries of the companies they oversee.


By Alan AmlingÂ | UPS

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is a 30-year-old technology, but it remains an enigma to many manufacturers who wonder if itâs a fad or if it has applications beyond product design and prototyping.

I can tell you that 3D printing is the real deal. And itâs fast becoming an integral part of industrial manufacturing and supply chains. Companies waiting for further proof risk missing out on what could be an amazing business opportunity. Worse, they risk seeing their businesses torpedoed by one of the biggest technological disrupters of the last century.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), in association with UPS, recently conducted in-depth interviews with eight U.S. companies âÂ including some in the high-tech, consumer electronics, and automotive industries âÂ that are early or recent adopters of 3D printing. This report, which also features published research from thought leaders and analysts, shows 3D printing has finally hit its stride. Consider the mounting evidence:

Despite 3D printingâs staggering growth, itâs also true that 3D-printed manufactured goods represent less than 1 percent of all manufactured products in the United States. But letâs put that in the context of another game-changing phenomenon: e-commerceâs disruption of the retail industry.

Instead of pondering 3D printingâs future, the better question is which industries are most likely to benefit.

E-commerce makes up only 5 to 10 percent of total retail sales. But does anyone really think consumers are going to abandon the convenience of online shopping? Look at it this way: Capturing just 5 percent of global manufacturing capacity would make 3D printing a $640 billion enterprise. Thatâs according to Wohlers Associates.

So instead of pondering 3D printingâs future, the better question isÂ which industries are most likely to benefit. High-tech and healthcare spring to mind.

Smartphone manufacturers already use 3D printing to build upgradeable hardware and internal parts. Some medical devices companies also have embraced 3D printing. For example, there are more than 10 million 3D-printed hearing aids in circulation worldwide today.

A 2014 Gartner survey found prototyping and product development are the main uses for 3D printing among companies with 100 or more employees. But the same survey also revealed that organizations are moving beyond design and prototyping to embrace 3D printing as a way to create short-run production quantities of finished products.

In fact, parts manufacturing is now the fastest-growing 3D printing application. A 2015 Wohlers Report showed 3D printing for parts production grew from virtually zero in 2003 to 42.6 percent of global 3D-printed product and service revenue in 2014.

Gartner Research Director Pete Basiliere predicts that by 2018 âalmost 50 percent of consumer, heavy industry, and life sciences manufacturers will use 3D printing to produce parts for the items they consume, sell, or service.â

Like any emerging technology, there are barriers to adopting 3D printing. We call those the Three Sâs: Speed, Size, and Supplies.

Slow equipment speed is the top barrier to wider adoption of 3D printing. And larger items require bigger bed sizes for production. Supplies also are limited, with polymers and plastics getting the most use. For 3D adoption to grow, new materials will need to emerge.

And, of course, some would-be adopters still think 3D printing is too expensive.

But some industries manage challenges better than others. The CTA research uncovered the following perspectives:

The survey expanded on the advantages 3D printing brings to manufacturers.

As the 3D printing industry continues to innovate to meet challenges, there is no shortage of users and ambassadors like me who sing its praises. While some skeptics may continue to debate its future, the reality is that 3D printing is destined for important applications across the supply chain.

The CTA report titled The Future of 3D Printing in Manufacturing, Prototyping and Global Supply Chain Management is available on the CTA website members at no charge. Non-members may purchase the report.

To learn more about the latest trends shaping tomorrow, visit UPSâs blog Longitudes and click here to subscribe to a daily or weekly email.

The Wall Street Journal news organization was not involved in the creation of this content.

Summary: 3D printing may be an enigma to many, but research shows it's no fad.


The former CEO of ad agency J. Walter Thompson stepped down last month after the company’s chief communications officer Erin Johnson sued him for discrimination and accused him of making sexist, anti-Semitic, and racial slurs against company employees.

On Thursday, a video of Martinez making a rape joke during a company meeting surfaced online. It was released by the law firm of Vladeck, Raskin & Clark—which represents Johnson—after a federal district judge ruled that it could be entered into evidence, according to Adweek.

In the video, Martinez is seen making a joke about being raped in the elevator of a hotel in which he and his colleagues were staying, “and not in a nice way,” he says. You can watch the video here.

In Johnson’s suit, she also claims Martinez said multiple times that certain women should “shut up [their] mouths” and that a female executive needed to be “hogtied” and “raped into submission.” The lawsuit also claims that Martinez called African Americans “monkeys” and that he complained about this hometown of Westchester because there were “too many Jews.”

In response to the claims, Martinez has said “there is absolutely no truth to these outlandish allegations.” Davis & Gilbert, LLP, the law firm representing Martinez, JWT, and JWT’s parent company WPP, declined Fortune‘s request for comment.

Summary: He stepped down last month.


In all his years as a National Geographic photographer, Vincent Musi learned one simple thing: “You can’t tell an animal to do what you want it to do.”

“You have all these great plans for constructing a photograph and, in the end, you’re at the whim of something that you may or may not be able to communicate with in any way,” he tells TIME, ahead of the LOOK3 photo festival in Charlottesville, Va., where his work will be on show starting June 10. “In most cases, they are not at all happy with what you’re doing.”

For a long time, Musi photographed people and how they interact. He took to Route 66, documenting a monument of American history and how it’s experienced by its many aficionados, tourists and locals alike. He photographed the way of life in the Texas Hill Country, and the impact of hurricanes on people and landscapes in the United States. About a decade ago, he turned to animals, and that work is where he made his reputation—even though he still struggles every single time he’s faced with one of his subjects.

“It was very hard for me to learn how to do this, and I’m still learning,” he says. “Every time I do one of these, it’s radically different. You go in with very little confidence. And maybe the animals sense that.”

To connect with his subjects, Musi learned to talk to them. “I tell them what I’m doing,” he says. “I tell them who I am. And the people who own these animals often think I’m insane for talking to them like this, but I do. It’s a very collaborative relationship, in the end. You’re on their time schedule. It’s taught me a lot about communication.”

Musi’s collaboration with his subjects has also taught him humility. In its 127 years of existence, National Geographic magazine has built its reputation on photographs of animals, so there was a lot for him to live up to. “They have had the best of the best for all these years,” Musi says. “It’s intimidating. You have this animal that doesn’t necessarily want to cooperate or doesn’t understand what you’re doing, so you have to slow it down to get what you want to make these photographs.”

Slowing it down is also Musi’s approach when it comes to his second job in photography. For almost a decade, the photographer has been known as the voice of LOOK3. Each year, he’ll take to the stage of the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville’s historic city center to introduce the festival’s keynote speakers. His distinctive voice and sense of humor have become synonymous with the festival’s motto—Peace, Love and Photography—and laid-back approach to an industry that can move too quickly at times.

“It always comes from the perspective of the artist first,” says Musi, “which I think is lost in this sea of information in photography and technology. We’ve lost the point that photographers make these pictures.” So, when photographers such as Larry Fink or Michael “Nick” Nichols stroll on stage in front of hundreds of people, “they know they’re going to do something that they may have never done anywhere else and be treated like they’ve never been treated in any other place,” he says.

That purity is important, and that’s hard to sustain financially, Musi admits. “If we can’t do it our way, which is this laid-back, non-competitive thing, then there’s not really a point to doing it. So it’s very hard financially to keep it non-commercial,” he tells TIME. “We’re not selling anything. The sponsors are not telling us who to put on that stage and how to do it. They’re there because of what we do in the end. But it’s hard to keep that going. Every year I feel it’s that story of the little engine that could. I never know if we’re going to get there. We all want to get there, but you never know.”

So far, the festival has not failed to deliver. “We’re always amazed to how it turns out,” says Musi, “because the best planning cannot account for some of the wonderful serendipitous moments that happen.” This year, some of these moments will, without little doubt, come from Musi. When he walks on stage this Friday, it will be, for the first time, as a keynote speaker.

Vincent Musi‘s photographs will be on show in Charlottesville, Va. until June 28. The photographer will give a talk on June 12 during the LOOK3 photo festival, which runs from June 10 to 13.

Olivier Laurent is the editor of TIME LightBox. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @olivierclaurent

Summary: Vincent Musi has made portraits of animals his speciality


Last year, Dr. Allen Steere, one of the world's most renowned medical researchers and rheumatologists, began to fear patients. It was not so much the ones he had treated, though he occasionally had to worry about them too, but the ones who had started to call his office, threatening him, claiming he was responsible for their suffering. They insisted that he was denying them treatment for an acute form of chronic Lyme disease, a strand of the ordinarily more modest infection that they believed slipped into the bloodstream undetected and remained there for years, causing joint pain, chronic fatigue, suicidal depression, paralysis and even death. Affirming their diagnoses were a growing number of patient advocacy groups, practitioners and psychiatrists who argued that the disease had become a full-scale epidemic, a modern-day plague crippling thousands of Americans.

As the world's foremost expert on the illness, however, Steere did not believe many of them had Lyme disease at all, but something else -- chronic fatigue or mental illness or fibromyalgia -- and he had refused to treat them with antibiotics. Many doctors and insurance companies had followed his lead, and in turn, hordes of patients had started to stalk him. They showed up at his public engagements, holding signs that read "How many more will you kill?" and "Steer Clear of Steere!" They depicted him in the media as a demon, worse than the spirochetes, the tick-borne bacteria that they claimed inhabited their bodies and that, because of his restrictive diagnosis, they could not eliminate.

Early on, he tried to explain why, based on the science, he didn't believe many of them had Lyme disease and, even if they did, why long-term antibiotics might not help. But none of it seemed to matter. On the Web, in virtual worlds Steere did not know or understand, patients who believed they had the paralyzing illness vilified him. Egged on by advocacy groups, they infected his sterile world, trying to destroy his reputation and career.

The New England Medical Center, where Steere has been chief of rheumatology and immunology for 14 years, had to hire security guards for his public appearances; a woman in the basement of the hospital who once protected local scientists from the Unabomber, investigating potential risks and screening unidentified packages with a bomb squad, spent hours each week monitoring the threats against him. Now, as Steere sat at his desk, he read a computer message posted by someone named Frank that said "Steere Has Been Scheduled For Termination."

The scientific world, of course, has always been consumed by feuds. In the 19th century, the Hungarian physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was eviscerated by the medical community for his seemingly obvious recommendation that physicians sterilize their hands before treating patients. The simple gesture, which would have saved thousands of lives, implied that doctors had already caused the death of untold numbers by infecting them with their germs -- an indictment that was too great for the establishment to accept. Distraught and devastated by the fight with his colleagues, Semmelweis, according to medical folklore, had a nervous breakdown and died soon afterward.

n the past, most medical feuds have pitted doctor against doctor, scientist against scientist, hypothesis against hypothesis. The new struggle, which has become one of the fiercest in memory, not only pits physician against physician but also patient advocates -- and in tow, thousands of citizens and a coterie of powerful politicians -- against much of the medical establishment. The rise of the Lyme disease movement -- a populist torrent fueled by mass communication on the Internet as well as by cost-cutting insurance companies and bureaucratic H.M.O.'s -- has become a prototype of the modern medical lobby. The disease, which once consumed patients, has now consumed doctors. There have been lawsuits, investigations, medical suspensions, demonstrations, even death threats. And perhaps no man has been more ravaged than Allen C. Steere, the scientist who first identified the disease in the United States 25 years ago.

he "journey," as Steere likes to call his odyssey, began on Nov. 20, 1975, when he was still a rheumatology fellow at Yale University and a patient named Polly Murray entered his office. A middle-aged artist, she had complained for years of a mysterious affliction -- a combination of listlessness, pounding headaches and swollen joints that were so bad at times she had trouble sitting up. Her doctors at first thought she had lupus or acute rheumatoid arthritis, but all her tests came back negative. Finally, after years of recurring complaints and fruitless exams, most of them had reached the same clinical diagnosis: she was nuts. "You know, Mrs. Murray," one doctor told her, "sometimes people subconsciously want to be sick."

But Steere seemed unlike her other physicians. A virtuoso violinist who had played alongside Itzhak Perlman and had given up a music career partly because he injured a tendon playing basketball, Steere had a gentle, almost artistic temperament. "He started to ask me a lot of questions," Murray later recalled, "and I could tell that he . . . was someone who would listen."

Summary: Twenty-five years ago he uncovered Lyme disease. Now he says that it is not the epidemic that many claim, and he's being threatened by people who insist that Lyme -- and Steere -- have ruined their lives


Sam Frons isn’t shy about discussing her recovery from alcoholism.

“Hi, I’m Sam, and I’m an addict” is a fairly standard opener for her during presentations at work.

Frons is CEO of a new app set to debut this month for addicts. Unconvinced about Alcoholics Anonymous, she built the app she wanted for her own recovery.

Frons was three years into her own recovery before she stepped foot in her first A.A. meeting. Frons says she was “really adamant” about not going. She longed for the peer support of meetings, but didn’t like the rigidity of the 12-steps and the faith in a “higher power” the group espoused.

Frons is not the only skeptic of the 80-year-old program. Experts disagree about its effectiveness, with some of them saying the failure rate is as high as 90%. Most agree the 12-step program is not one-size-fits-all.

A spokesman for Alcoholics Anonymous’ U.S. and Canada office says the group did look into developing its own app. But for now, it doesn’t have one.

Frons decided treatment needed a new tool, something that would help her get to those meetings and find peers, without the mold of A.A. founders Dr. Bob and Bill W. It’s called Addicaid, a kind of Fitbit-meets-Facebook for about 20 different kinds of addicts including alcoholics, gamblers, overeaters, codependents, and sex addicts. It started out as a simple tool for finding meetings, but it has grown into a service that includes chat rooms and daily self check-ins.

Out in beta mode now, the free app is set to debut fully on Dec. 20. The app has about 7,000 daily users, with a 31% retention rate, Frons says.

Similar smartphone apps for addiction have performed well. Andrew Isham, who helped develop A-CHESS at the University of Wisconsin, said the app reduced risky drinking days by half in clinical trials. Today, about 15,000 patients across the country use the service, which is paid for by insurance. (A standalone version is expected to be available in app stores sometime in 2016.) But Isham says consumers looking for their own apps might have a hard time picking one that works and that includes proven techniques in anti-addiction therapies.

“You pretty much have to be an academic,” Isham says. “I don’t envy someone who’s looking for something out there.”

Next year, Frons plans to introduce a premium version of Addicaid that will bring addiction counselors and coaches into the app. It will also include more Cognitive Behavioral Therapies, which are exercises to help people think about the consequences of continuing to use.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance abuse reports that one in seven Americans struggle with substance abuse. Frons hopes to make more treatments stick by digitally exporting the one part of the 12-step program that helped her—supportive peers—to a smartphone.

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Summary: Can This App Boost Sagging Recovery Rates?


Jeff McCurry/Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden via The Cincinatti Enquirer/ AP

05/31/2016 AT 11:15 PM EDT

Cincinnati police have opened an investigation into the family of the boy who

at the Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend, according to a tweeted press release from the department.

The statement made clear that the office is not looking into "the operation or safety of the Cincinnati Zoo," and will only be "reviewing the facts and circumstances that led" to the incident.

A rep for the family tells PEOPLE that the family has not been charged at this time.

CPD statement on Cincinnati Zoo incident: We are closely reviewing the facts of the case. Updates will be provided. pic.twitter.com/8FkPKYliYC

In a later tweet, the Cincinnati Police Department clarified that the boy was actually 3-years-old, despite various reports that he was four.

On Saturday, the toddler fell into the moat at the Gorilla World exhibit and was, according to bystanders, dragged around by the 450-pound gorilla Harambe. The incident lasted about 10 minutes before zoo officials

Age of child verified... The child involved in this incident is three years old.

The controversial event quickly put the parents of the boy in the center of a media storm, with many

for not having tight enough safety gates that would have prevented the boy from falling in.

"After the review, we will determine if charges need to be brought forward," police spokeswoman Tiffaney Hardy told

. "If it is determined charges need to be brought forward, we would then discuss it with the Hamilton County prosecutor's office."

On Tuesday, a Cincinnati parent, whose child attends the daycare where Michelle Gregg works,

– whose son is at the center of the incident – saying that what happened was an accident and that she feels confident leaving her children under Gregg's supervision.

"I really feel bad for her and what happened," the mother – named Airy – told PEOPLE. "All the negativity I see online – that's not her. She's not a neglectful woman. She's caring. It's not about her not paying attention or not caring. Things happen."

Summary: The Cincinnati Police Department is deciding if any charges need to be filed.


I worked 100-hour plus weeks as a hospital doctor in the early 1990s. Those dangerous rotas left me low and unable to string a sentence together, let alone give sick people what they needed. Doctors’ crazy hours were reduced, but it seems they may be returning with the new junior doctors’ contract.

Meanwhile, David Cameron will head to Brussels for EU negotiations, planning to insist that UK workers should continue to be able to opt out of the 48-hour maximum working week. Long working hours are on the agenda.

But what about tackling the issue at its roots? What if everyone had a shorter working week? We would be healthier and happier, and society would be less unequal and more sustainable.

It has probably never entered the heads of most economists that hours could be shortened and output maintained

A top public health doctor recently said that long working hours was a big cause of mental ill health, and a big 2015 study linked long working hours with an increased risk of stroke and heart disease.

Less time at work would mean more time to care for children and family, be a school governor, look in on elderly neighbours, or organise a game of football. It would mean more time to create the community spiderweb of connections and favours and reciprocation that keeps the world going round.

More than 6 million of us in Britain work more than 45 hours a week, while 1.85 million of us are unemployed. While it would need to happen gradually, alongside some reskilling and training, a shorter working week for all would mean fairer distribution of available work. It would reduce the number of people working far too many hours, and also the number with no work at all.

For people on lower incomes, it would have to go hand-in-hand with a living wage – something that Britain now agrees on, across the political spectrum. For higher earners, it would fulfil pent-up demand – in London, for example, only 3% of jobs with average or higher salary levels are advertised as part-time, according to Timewise Foundation.

It would help with gender equality too, as men would have more time to look after the kids and the house. About 85% of in-work British men work more than 30 hours a week, but only 57% of in-work women.

Shorter hours could also help mitigate climate change. According to a report from the US Center for Economic and Policy Research, reduced greenhouse gas emissions go hand-in-hand with shorter working hours for a variety of factors including lower levels of consumption.

With all these benefits, cutting the working week should be at the top of every politician’s agenda. But it bumps up against some big prejudices. Would the economy fall apart? How would our open-all-hours society function? And wouldn’t we turn into a nation of couch potatoes?

Related: A hard day's night: the hidden health risks of working the night shift

The quick answer to all this is to look at other countries. People in the Netherlands work five hours a week less than in Britain, according to the OECD, and in Germany six hours less. The Dutch and German economies are doing fine, and the Dutch people are better known for their love of cycling, than their inability to part from their sofas.

Productivity – output per working hour – improves with shorter hours. Across the world’s richest countries, higher productivity correlates with lower working hours (see also OECD data). Ford’s original workers were found less productive working more than 40 hours a week, a situation likely to be even more the case for people who work with knowledge rather manually – who ever had their best ideas when they were exhausted?

All this means that we may well be able to work a shorter week and get just as much done. The 20th-century British economist John Hicks said:“It has probably never entered the heads of most economists … that hours could be shortened and output maintained.”

It is true that some workplaces, such as restaurants and hospitals for example, would not be able to run nine to five, Monday to Thursday. Tackling this is simply a management issue, and the result would be a better sharing of available work.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle is cultural, rooted in the Lutheran work ethic and our self-valuation according to how hard we strive. It is challenging to tackle such deep-rooted social and personal norms. But given how exhausted many of us are by the end of the week, and how welcome the idea of more time caring for our loved ones, our communities and ourselves (the side of life that cannot be made more “productive”) – it seems like a challenge worth taking on.

A shorter working week is being tried in Sweden, where some care homes and hospitals are experimenting with a six-hour day, and in companies such as Serps Invaders, an Edinburgh digital marketing company where all staff work four days a week (and can also work remotely, and take a day’s leave without notice).

It’s not a new idea – John Maynard Keynes predicted in the 1930s that by about now, we would all be working a mere 15 hours a week. It’s about time we got on with it.

Summary: A shorter working week could improve our mental and physical health and even mitigate climate change, research shows


The death of Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight champion known as much for his political activism as his boxing brilliance, triggered a worldwide outpouring of affection and admiration for one of the best-known figures of the 20th century.

Ali, who had long suffered from Parkinson's syndrome which impaired his speech and made the once-graceful athlete almost a prisoner in his own body, died on Friday aged 74.

The cause of death was septic shock due to unspecified natural causes, a family spokesman said on Saturday.

Ali was admitted to a Phoenix-area hospital, HonorHealth, with a respiratory ailment on Monday.

"He'll be remembered as a man of the world who spoke his mind and wasn't afraid to take a chance and went out of his way to be a kind, benevolent individual that really changed the world," family spokesman, Bob Gunnell, said at a news conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Despite Ali's failing health, his youthful proclamation that he was "the greatest" rang true until the end for millions of people around the world who respected him for his courage both inside and outside the ring.

Along with a fearsome reputation as a fighter, Ali spoke out against racism, war and religious intolerance, while projecting an unshakeable confidence that became a model for African-Americans at the height of the civil rights era and beyond.

Stripped of his world boxing crown for refusing to join the US Army and fight in Vietnam, Ali returned in triumph by recapturing the title and starring in some of the sport's most unforgettable bouts.

"I think when you talk about Muhammad Ali, as great an athlete, as great a boxer as he was, he was the greatest boxer of all time, he means so much more to the United States and the world," said Ali's long-time friend, boxing promoter Bob Arum.

"He was a transformative figure in our society."

Bursting onto the boxing scene in the 1960s with a brashness that threatened many whites, Ali would come to be embraced by Americans of all races for his grace, integrity and disarming sense of humour.

"In the end, he went from being reviled to being revered," civil rights leader the Rev Jesse Jackson told CNN on Saturday.

President Barack Obama, the first African-American to reach the White House, said Ali was "a man who fought for us" and placed him in the pantheon of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.

"His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail," Obama said in a statement.

"But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognise today."

Ali's daughter Maryum said on Saturday: "I am happy my father no longer struggles. He is in a better place. God is the greatest."

In New York's Harlem district, fans gathered outside the famous Apollo Theater, where a marquee paying tribute to Ali read: "The greatest of all time. 1942-2016."

Nearby, hundreds more gazed at projections of phrases and images most associated with Ali, such as "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee."

Few could argue with his athletic prowess at his peak in the 1960s, with his dancing feet and quick fists.

But Ali became much more than a sportsman.

He spoke boldly against racism in the '60s as well as against the Vietnam War.

Ali met scores of world leaders, during and after his championship reign, and for a time he was considered the most recognisable person on earth, known even in remote villages in countries far from the United States.

Ali's diagnosis of Parkinson's came about three years after he retired from boxing in 1981.

Despite his failing health, he appeared at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, stilling the tremors in his hands long enough to light the Olympic cauldron.

From Africa to East Asia to the US South, news of Ali's death brought tributes across the world of sport, entertainment and politics.

In Kinshasa, the city where he battled George Foreman in the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" - a city that was then part of Zaire and is now the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo - the fight is remembered as much for its political symbolism as for Ali's tactical brilliance in beating his hulking opponent.

Foreman said Ali was one of the greatest human beings he had met.

"No doubt he was one of the best people to have lived in this day and age. To put him as a boxer is an injustice."

Flags were flown at half staff in Louisville, Kentucky, where Ali's modest childhood home on Grand Avenue has been turned into a museum. A funeral will be held in his hometown on Friday.

In the brutal world of prize fighting, Ali set himself apart with his wit and fondness for playful verse.

"The Louisville Lip," as he was called early in his career, loved to talk - especially about himself.

"Humble people, I've found, don't get very far," he once told a reporter.

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, Ali said: "As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him ... who stood up for his beliefs ... who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love.

"And if all that's too much, then I guess I'd settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people. And I wouldn't even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was."

Ali was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 17, 1942, as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, a name shared with a 19th century slavery abolitionist.

He changed his name after his conversion to Islam.

Ali is survived by his wife, the former Lonnie Williams, who knew him when she was a child in Louisville, along with his nine children.

Summary: Tributes have poured in for three-time world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali who has died at the age of 74 after one of boxing's most celebrated careers.


There’s a new class of service coming to an aircraft near you: “basic” economy — also dubbed by consumer advocates, “economy minus” or “last class.”

Already offered by discount carriers and one major, Delta Air Lines dal , the product category is likely to intensify what critics call the industry’s race to the bottom, as airlines cut amenities and services in order to satisfy bargain-hungry passengers and boost profits. America’s other legacy carriers, American Airlines aal and United Airlines ual , say they’re on the verge of introducing their own version of a “basic” economy fare.

Until now, economy-class passengers flying one of the major airlines could expect a minimum level of service and amenities, including seats with at least 30 inches of “pitch” between them, a rough measure of legroom; the ability to change a reservation after paying a fee; the option to upgrade to a better seat; free snacks; and one free carry-on.

With the new basic economy class, some, if not all, of these niceties may be lost.

What would economy “minus” look like?

Based on the disclosures from the industry thus far, passengers in basic economy will face one or more of the following:

Of the majors, Delta was the first to introduce “basic” economy system-wide. The carrier quietly started a remodeling of its economy class, testing options as early as 2012.

Among the amenities lost to Delta basic-economy passengers: the ability to alter the departure date or time, even if you pay a penalty; the option to upgrade to a better seat; and the choice of an advance seat assignment. The old economy class got renamed as “Main Cabin,” and kept many of the once-standard comforts of what used to be called economy.

Delta says it was just giving price-conscious customers what they wanted–a no frills, low-cost alternative. “It’s popular in that it gives customers who are price sensitive, but not concerned with seat choice, exactly what they are looking for,” said Anthony Black, a Delta spokesman. “Customers enjoy knowing with Delta Basic Economy they’re getting a competitive price, free sodas and coffee, snacks, movies, SkyMiles and Delta’s excellent operational service.”

United, American are following suit

American says it plans to launch its basic economy product sometime in the first half of the year, but has declined so far to give any details of what it will look like. Scott Kirby, the president of the world’s largest carrier, told an earnings call last October American’s new product would be “competitive on price with ultra-low-cost carriers.” The product would have “less frills” and a “really cheap price,” Kirby said.

United Airlines, meanwhile, has indicated it has similar plans, but hasn’t unveiled the timing for the rollout of its version of economy-minus.

“Over time, we’d like to give customers greater ability to choose fares that offer a varied set of amenities, whether they be fares that include multiple options or deeply discounted fares that would simply include the ticket,” United spokesman Jonathan Guerin said. “This would better permit our customers to choose their own mix of fares and frills and better enable us to compete with carriers that offer no-frills service.”

In his comments to investors, Kirby suggested that more than half of American’s passengers would be willing to book a “basic” ticket because they aren’t frequent travelers or interested in a premium product. They don’t want to pay extra just because they’re on a legacy carrier and are not necessarily interested in a “better” experience, he indicated.

Major airlines, meanwhile, have already moved the seats closer together in economy, while installing more luxurious, lie-flat seats in the front.

Summary: Smaller seats, and even fewer perks than economy.


''It's a really fine, thorough piece of work, with the sort of methodology and lucky data sets that you can only get from doing long-term field research,'' said Dr. Duane Quiatt, a primatologist at the University of Colorado at Denver and a co-author with Vernon Reynolds of the 1993 book ''Primate Behaviour: Information, Social Knowledge and the Evolution of Culture.''

The new work vividly demonstrates that, Putumayo records notwithstanding, humans hold no patent on multiculturalism. As a growing body of research indicates, many social animals learn from one another and cultivate regional variants in skills, conventions and fashions. Some chimpanzees crack open their nuts with a stone hammer on a stone anvil; others prefer wood hammers on wood anvils. The chimpanzees of the Tai forest rain-dance; those of the Gombe tickle themselves. Dr. Jane Goodall reported a fad in one chimpanzee group: a young female started wiggling her hands, and before long, every teen chimp was doing likewise.

But in the baboon study, the culture being conveyed is less a specific behavior or skill than a global code of conduct. ''You can more accurately describe it as the social ethos of group,'' said Dr. Andrew Whiten, a professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied chimpanzee culture. ''It's an attitude that's being transmitted.''

The report also offers real-world proof of a principle first demonstrated in captive populations of monkeys: that with the right upbringing, diplomacy is infectious. Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, has shown that if the normally pugilistic rhesus monkeys are reared with the more conciliatory stumptailed monkeys, the rhesus monkeys learn the value of tolerance, peacemaking and mutual hip-hugging.

Dr. de Waal, who wrote an essay to accompany the new baboon study, said in a telephone interview, ''The good news for humans is that it looks like peaceful conditions, once established, can be maintained,'' he said.

''And if baboons can do it,'' he said, ''why not us? The bad news is that you might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there.''

Jerkiness or worse certainly seems to be a job description for ordinary male baboons. The average young male, after wheedling his way into a new troop at around age 7, spends his prime years seeking to fang his way up the hierarchy; and once he's gained some status, he devotes many a leisure hour to whimsical displays of power at scant personal cost. He harasses and attacks females, which weigh half his hundred pounds and lack his thumb-thick canines, or he terrorizes the low-ranking males he knows cannot retaliate.

Dr. Barbara Smuts, a primatologist at the University of Michigan who wrote the 1985 book ''Sex and Friendship in Baboons,'' said that the females in the troop she studied received a serious bite from a male annually, maybe losing a strip of flesh or part of an ear in the process. As they age and lose their strength, however, males may calm down and adopt a new approach to group living, affiliating with females so devotedly that they keep their reproductive opportunities going even as their ranking in the male hierarchy plunges.

For their part, female baboons, which live up to 25 years -- compared with the male's 18 -- inherit their rank in the gynocracy from their mothers and so spend less time fighting for dominance. They do, however, readily battle females from outside the fold, for they, not the males, are the keepers of turf and dynasty.

The new-fashioned Forest Troop is no United Nations, or even the average frat house. Its citizens remain highly aggressive and argumentative, and the males still obsess over hierarchy. ''We're talking about baboons here,'' said Dr. Sapolsky.

What most distinguishes this congregation from others is that the males resist taking out their bad moods on females and underlings. When a dominant male wants to pick a fight, he finds someone his own size and rank. As a result, a greater percentage of male-male conflicts in the Forest Troop occur between closely ranked individuals than is seen in the control populations, where the bullies seek easier pickings. Moreover, Forest Troop males of all ranks spend more time grooming and being groomed, and just generally huddling close to troop mates, than do their counterpart males in the study.

Interestingly, the male faces in the Forest Troop may have changed over time, but the relative numbers have not. Ever since the tuberculosis epidemic killed half the adult males, the ratio has remained skewed, with twice as many females as males. Yet the researchers have demonstrated that the troop's sexual complexion alone cannot explain its character. Examining other troops with a similar preponderance of females, the Stanford scientists saw no evidence of the Forest Troop's relative amity.

Dr. Sapolsky has no idea how long the good times will last. ''I confess I'm rooting for the troop to stay like this forever, but I worry about how vulnerable they may be,'' he said. ''All it would take is two or three jerky adolescent males entering at the same time to tilt the balance and destroy the culture.''

Summary: Troop of Kenyan baboons experiences temperament shift after all dominant adult males die in accident; Dr Robert M Sapolsky, Stanford University biology and neurology professor, and wife Dr Lisa J Share co-author research report on group known as Forest Troop; report is published in journal PloS Biology; holds that swing toward pacifism and affection between tribe members has carried over to new males entering group; contend that other examples of animal multiculturalism exist, but are more task specific than global code of behavior witnessed within Forest Troop; photos (M)


Relypsa rlyp , a U.S. developer of treatments for high blood potassium, is exploring a sale following overtures from a number of potential buyers, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Relypsa shares jumped over 70% on the news in after-hours trading Thursday, giving it a market capitalization of close to $1 billion. The stock was up 50% at $21.78 percent at mid-afternoon.

Relypsa is working with investment bank Centerview Partners Holdings to review offers, the people said this week. The discussions are in their early stages and may not lead to a sale, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

Relypsa declined to comment. Centerview did not respond to a request for comment.

Relypsa and its primary competitor, ZS Pharma, are racing to develop treatments for hyperkalemia, or excessive potassium in the blood. Some analysts estimate the market to be worth about $6 billion.

Interest in Relypsa has picked up in recent months after the $2.7 billion sale of ZS Pharma to AstraZeneca azncf , the people said. Several companies that unsuccessfully bid for ZS Pharma have reached out to Relypsa, the sources said.

Relypsa, based in Redwood City, California, received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in October for the sale of its primary hyperkalemia drug Veltessa. ZS Pharma’s rival drug, ZS-9, is awaiting FDA approval.

The sources said they expect ZS-9 to outperform Veltessa over time.

Relypsa’s stock has been caught in the recent biotech sell-off, dropping from more than $30 in August to around $14 early Thursday.

Merck & Co mrk , Pfizer pfe and Biogen have all expressed interest in acquiring undervalued biotechnology companies.

Unlike some of its biotech peers, Relypsa has strong finances, with nearly $300 million of cash and near-term investments as of September.

About 17 percent of Relypsa’s stock is owned by its largest investor, investment firm OrbiMed Advisors.

Summary: It's a battle of blood potassium treatments.


Either does “1776,” a singing slice of Americana about the Declaration of Independence.

Back in an Encores! concert staging through Sunday, the 1969 best musical Tony winner by Peter Stone (book) and Sherman Edwards (music and lyrics) packs wit, spirit and some good songs.

“For God’s Sake, John, Sit Down” establishes a snarky, non-reverential tone from the get-go. “He Plays the Violin” lends romance. “Momma, Look Sharp,” stings and pulls heart-strings.

But long-winded scenes without music — or so much as a drumbeat or toot on a fife — are as enjoyable as taxation without representation. Stretches of the almost three-hour show are a slog.

Still, Stone’s witty jokes about a do-nothing Congress never fail to hit the mark. Polarizing founding father John Adams (a charismatic Santino Fontana) does gags that could work for a Jimmy Fallon monologue.

Director Garry Hynes’ production, which uses color-blind casting, features modern clothes for Benjamin Franklin (a droll John Larroquette) and Thomas Jefferson (an appealing John Behlmann) and the other statesmen and a couple of wives.

These 18th-century figures are deciding whether or not to declare independence and fight for freedom from England, but they could be going to a board meeting tomorrow.

Set over three tempestuous and bloody months running up to July, 4, 1776, the show’s return is perfectly timed for current, high-stakes politics.

Summary: Freedom doesn’t come easy-breezy. Either does “1776,” a singing slice of Americana about the Declaration of Independence.