had it all: breakups, makeups, new couples, old fights – and of course, enough of

's tears to fill a swimming pool. Let's begin.

This love triangle is officially going in circles. Picking up where we left off

was back with more sugar-coated cattiness aimed at Ashley than we could have ever dreamed of.

I'm sorry that you guys are longtime friends and that he like, loves you like a sister. You and I don't have to talk for the rest of the time here, if that's what you want!

came over to try to make Ashley feel better, which of course only made her cry. And by cry we mean full-on ugly sob with no attempt to restrain herself whatsoever. Ashley cried about Jared, then she cried about the fact that she was crying about Jared and then she cried about her dead dog Lucy because once Ashley starts, she can't stop.

R.I.P. Lucy and also our sanity from watching this woman cry about a slightly weasel-y looking restaurant manager from Rhode Island on national television every week.

The buildup to Wells' arrival was truly majestic. If you don't know who Wells is, he's adorable and also the most "real" guy to ever grace our

screens. He's down-to-earth, funny, not particularly tall or fit, doesn't style his hair in a ridiculous swoop and for all of that

Ashley was immediately attracted to him and the rest of the group quickly seized this opportunity, making it their mission to convince Wells to ask Ashley on his date.

Ashley and Wells got to talking and complimenting each other's

(nothing screams 2016 romance more), and finally,

he asked her out. Unclear who was more excited: Ashley herself, or Jared to finally be rid of her.

Even though Ashley bemoaned the fact that she's "really bad at flirting," the date went really well. They went out for dinner, made a lot of puns about tacos, talked about music and made out. Considering

By the next morning, all the focus quickly turned to

puts it, these two crazy kids definitely complement each other, but they're also always one fight away from total self-destruction.

This time it started because Lace sidled up to Carl, one of the new guys, and started blatantly flirting with him in front of Grant. Then she turned to Grant and said, "Good luck getting a rose tomorrow," because Lace is just savage like that.

Grant, understandably, was pissed off, but when he confronted Lace about it she refused to accept any of the blame whatsoever.

You started hitting on Carl in front of me just to piss me off and then you said: 'Good luck getting a rose tomorrow.'

Yeah. So why are you bugging me?

Because I was done with your attitude.

Great. If you're done, then I'm done.

K. Get out of my face. Have fun finding love with someone else.

Like we said â¦ savage.

Then Lace went to her room and started crying, probably because she realized she was being a drunk idiot, but it didn't end there.

I think it's just time I go home.

Do you actually mean that or are you saying that because you're being emotional right now?

I've had enough of that word! Stop.

, this is so dramatic.

You can't make this stuff up.

This fight went on for way too long and was way too ridiculous to even bother describing in detail. Basically, Grant ended up apologizing to Lace for "overreacting" even though Lace was clearly the one being insane, and then they kissed and made up.

So do we, Lace. So do we.

That same night, there was more tension brewing in the house – but this time between Nick and

told Jen and Nick they could sleep in the private bedroom that night since she planned on sleeping in her own room instead of with Josh because she was tired and wanted to go to bed early.

Amanda then went off to bed without informing Josh of this news, and when Josh saw Nick and Jen heading upstairs he immediately tried to stop them, telling them he would be sleeping in there with Amanda. They advised him Amanda had already gone to bed, and Josh wasn't pleased with this at all.

Nothing more really came of it, but it was clearly setting the stage for the real Nick v. Josh showdown later.

By the time the cocktail party rolled around,

, Carl and Ryan were on the chopping block.

Can we talk about the fact that Izzy is suddenly like, a couple with this lamp guy Brett and making out with him? She broke up with Vinny like five seconds ago.

to get a rose. He made fugly bracelets for all the girls and even arranged to get a whole platter of fries, chicken nuggets and onion rings for Haley, which quite frankly might be the most romantic gesture this show has ever seen.

told each other they're "falling in love" with each other. I call bulls---. She threw up after kissing him like a week ago.

told each other they were falling in love with each other. More believable, but please don't subject us to any more face-sucking.

, clearly bored because neither of them were into Ryan or Carl, decided to pull Nick aside to stir up more of

we've been hearing since the beginning of the season.

Then it was time for the rose ceremony and the twins decided it wouldn't be right to hand out their roses since they didn't actually like any of the available guys. They sent themselves home, as well as Daniel, Carl and Ryan – but not without pulling Amanda aside first.

Crying, they told Amanda that a "trusted source" had informed them of all these allegations against Josh that have already been made countless times but that for some reason are supposed to appear dramatic again now.

(Seriously, they said all of this in unison and it was creepy.)

Then the twins peaced out, leaving Nick to deal with the s---storm they left behind.

Amanda started crying, telling Josh that she was worried because the twins are her best friends so why would they lie to her?! Josh became immediately enraged and demanded the entire group come down to the beach so that the "source" would reveal itself.

â¦ Cue giant screaming match between Josh and Nick. Nick could barely get a word in edgewise because Josh just kept interrupting him, but he did own up to what he told the twins and maintained he didn't trust Josh. Josh, for his part,

looked like he was about to snap at any moment.

Eventually the argument dissipated and Josh went upstairs to pack his stuff – but obviously he wasn't really leaving because Amanda decided she trusted him and wasn't going to listen to what anyone else had to say because she's a big girl now.

The next morning everyone slept in late â¦ except for Wells, so when new girl Jamie arrived, the two got to spend lots of alone time together – without Ashley's watchful/skilled stalker-y eye.

Jamie ended up asking Wells on her date before meeting any of the other guys, and he accepted. They left the house shortly before Ashley woke up, and Jared immediately descended into panic mode.

Much to his surprise, Ashley was weirdly chill when she found out Wells had gone on the date. Almost â¦ unsettlingly chill. Why? Because she wasn't "worried," and was pretty certain their date would "probably suck."

Ashley was sadly, horrifically mistaken. Jamie is a *cool* girl. She likes comics and has a Batman tattoo on her finger. Wells basically went from six to midnight, and in the time it probably takes Ashley to clip on her extensions these two were making out underneath a waterfall.

Meanwhile, back at the house Ashley inexplicably decided to have another one-on-one sit-down with Caila, despite the fact that they apparently had agreed to stay away from each other.

My jealousy has unbelievably been released from my body in the past 48 hours!

This whole conversation was hilarious, mostly because you could tell Caila wanted to rip Ashley's eyes out but was still trying so hard not to be a b---- because that's not her brand or whatever.

I guess it is hard to get to know somebody with someone else who loves them here.

I would feel guilty about it too.

LOL Ashley that's not what she meant.

Caila started tearing up, saying she didn't need to be there anymore because she "didn't need the attention" and didn't feel comfortable pursuing her relationship with Jared in the same house as Ashley, which honestly you can't really blame her for.

Then Caila went over to Jared and told him she was leaving and that her mind was made up.

... Run for your life, Ashley.

continues Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Summary: Wells distracts Ashley from Jared – but how long will that last?


The Melbourne teenager's proposed design for the Steve Irwin banknote. (Supplied)

A group of Melbourne teenagers are petitioning the Australian government to allow the face of the late Steve Irwin to feature on Australian currency, a decade after the Crocodile Hunter’s sudden death.

Brothers Jake and Kyle Ryan, along with their mates Luke, Daniel and Riley, set up the change.org petition last week after thinking up the idea while on a bus together.

“It's about time we paid our respects to the all-time greatest Australian bloke, Steve Irwin. Let's make a change for something in the history of our country,” the school friends’ petition read.

“With a list a mile long of all the good Steve had accomplished in our world let's show our appreciation to a great true blue Australian by putting Stephen 'Steve' Irwin on our country's currency.”

Support for the teenagers’ idea has rocketed from just 150 supporters in its first few hours to almost 10000 supporters at time of publishing.

File photo of Steve Irwin with his daughter Bindi and a tiger cub.

“Me and all the boys, we don’t really know what to say,” Jake Ryan, 16, told nine.com.au about the overwhelming reaction to the petition.

“We’re just a couple of teenagers. We’re just speechless. We’re all ecstatic.”

The carpentry student and wild-life fan from Narre Warren said the legacy the wildlife expert and TV personality left was, in his mind, something that needed to be publicly recognised at a greater level.

“We all grew up with him…. we all grew up watching him…he’s a legend,” he said.

“We were all genuine about it, but we never expected it to get this big.”

The Royal Australian Mint has urged Australians to lodge a written proposal to have Irwin’s face featured on a commemorative coin, a suggestion Jake is open to.

“We’d love to have him on the $100 note,” he said, adding that he was aware a smaller note might work better as it would be seen more widely among more Australians.

“Maybe put him on the $10 … but then he’d have to compete with Banjo Patterson.” The Royal Mint has previously honoured Irwin, featuring him in their 2009 Inspirational Australians one dollar coin series.

Irwin also featured on the $100 note in a series created by Melbourne artist Aaron Tyler's last year called "Straya Cash", which reimagined Australia's banknotes with icons including the Wiggles, Dame Edna and TODAY co-host Karl Stefanovic.

Artist Aaron Tyler created a series of imagined banknotes last year. (AAP)

The Melbourne teenagers plan to host an event in Melbourne to allow the public to vote on their bank note idea.

Steve Irwin died in September 2006 after being stabbed in the heart by a stingray while on location in Queensland.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016


WA Premier Colin Barnett expects to continue talks with Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton about replacing a per-tonne iron ore charge with an up-front lump sum but the miners have now twice rejected the proposal.

Mr Barnett is opposed to the WA Nationals' idea to increase the 25 cent charge by 20-fold to help fix the state's ailing finances and has instead suggested the up-front fee, which the miners flatly rejected in statements to the media on Tuesday.

But the Liberal leader still expects negotiations will go on.

"I don't know they have rejected it to be honest. I expect discussions to continue and the discussions that I've held have been with the global heads of those two companies, not the local management," Mr Barnett told the ABC.

But Rio Tinto told AAP on Friday it had formally advised the WA government that it would not be taking up the payout offer.

"Rio Tinto is already making a significant contribution to the WA government," the company said, reiterating it had paid $13 billion in royalties since 2006.

BHP Billiton also said its position had not changed.

"We have not accepted the offer and have no plans to agree to it," a spokeswoman said.

Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA chief executive Deidre Willmott said the state was the number one global mining destination but all the tax talk could change that.

"Anything we do to damage our reputation, to raise the question of 'are we a stable place to invest', even if those things don't happen, it takes a long time for that to be taken off the table as a concern around the world," Ms Willmott told reporters.

"To some extent, the damage has been done but we can stop this conversation now and move to re-establish our reputation."

WA Labor leader Mark McGowan said the Nationals' "magical solution" to the state's financial woes was even worse than Wayne Swan's mining tax because it ripped up state agreements, which were not only contracts but ratified by an act of parliament.

"They're meant to be doubly secure," Mr McGowan told a business forum.

"Ripping up a state agreement act sends the entirely wrong message to investors in WA."

Mr McGowan said the premier was "saying and doing anything" to save face as the three Nationals members of his cabinet proposed a "wildly strange" policy.

"And he has no control over it.

"Whatever he's saying at the moment, I don't think has much validity."

Summary: WA's two "mining tax" proposals might never eventuate but are damaging the state's international reputation as an investment destination, the CCIWA says.


A state-of-the-art stadium in Sydney's western suburb of Parramatta is set to take the crown off Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium as the best rectangular sporting and entertainment facility in Australia.

Plans for the 30,000-seater Western Sydney Stadium have been unveiled on Thursday by the state government, with the $1.6 billion project set to open to fans in 2019.

Lendlease has won the contract to build the future home of the Parramatta Eels and Western Sydney Wanderers, Premier Mike Baird and Sports Minister Stuart Ayres announced in a statement.

"This design boasts Australia's steepest stands to ensure fans will be closer to the action than they are at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium, or any other in the country," said Mr Baird.

Pirtek Stadium will be demolished early next year so work can begin on the new facility.

The state government says the project will create up to 1200 jobs during construction phase and at least 900 jobs with the permanent venue.

Boasting the steepest stands to ensure fans will be closer to the action, along with wifi and a Gold energy and environment design rating, Western Sydney Stadium will set a new standard for sporting experience, Mr Ayres said.

Summary: A new $1.6 billion 30,000-seater stadium in Parramatta replacing Pirtek Stadium will be ready for fans in 2019.


A swimmer's body has been discovered in a southern NSW river three days after he disappeared.

The body has not yet been formally identified but police believe it is a 42-year-old man who disappeared in the Murrumbidgee River at Wagga Wagga on Wednesday.

The grim discovery comes as emergency services work to revive an elderly man pulled from the water suffering from a medical episode in Sydney's south.

The incident comes on the same day a body, believed to be that of a 14-year-old boy missing since Tuesday, was found at Maroubra beach and a 27-year-old Pakistani National died after being pulled from a waterhole in Sydney's south.

A 46-year-old man also died in a suspected drowning while swimming in a reserve on the north coast of NSW.

Summary: The search for a man who was caught in a fast-moving current near Wagga Wagga is entering its third day.


Saturday, July 5th 2003, 9:57AM

The third annual Terra Lycos survey of which radio hosts get the most search requests on the Internet has Howard Stern No. 1 again, with Tom Joyner moving from fifth place to second and Rush Limbaugh third.

George Noory, whose "Coast to Coast" has replaced Art Bell's show, is fourth, with Bill O'Reilly sixth and Laura Schlessinger 10th.

Opie and Anthony slipped from second to ninth, which isn't bad considering they aren't even on the radio at the moment.

KEY INDICATORS: Radio fan Derek Tague suggests that you can tell you're listening to too much AM radio when you know the second verse of Foxwoods Casino's "Wonder of It All" jingle.

AROUND THE DIAL: Joe Franklin will salute his pal the late Buddy Hackett, tonight at midnight on WOR (710 AM). Dan Romanello salutes Jesse Belvin and plays R&B vocal-group music from across America tonight at midnight on WFUV (90.7 FM). Talent from the WRKS Wake-Up Club plays tonight and tomorrow at Carolines Comedy Club. The Irish show "A Thousand Welcomes" on WFUV, 9 a.m.-noon today, plays U.S.-born Irish-music artists. WFUV morning host Claudia Marshall sits in for Vin Scelsa tonight, 8-midnight. They Might Be Giants are guests today with Kurt Andersen on "Studio 360," 10 a.m. today on WNYC-FM (93.9) and 7 p.m. tomorrow on WNYC-AM (820).

Summary: The third annual Terra Lycos survey of which radio hosts get the most search requests on the Internet has Howard Stern No. 1 again, with Tom Joyner moving from fifth place to second and Rush Limbaugh third. George Noory, whose "Coast to Coast"has replaced Art Bell's show, is fourth, with Bill O'Reilly sixth and Laura Schlessinger 10th. Opie and Anthony slipped from second to ninth, which


(An earlier version of this piece erroneously attributed the proposal to exempt small business from the Wage Theft Act to Kathy Wylde of the Partnership for New York City. She reported the proposal at the Oct. 25 meeting, but did not advocate for it or endorse it.)

Jaritza Geigel, a young woman from Bushwick, Brooklyn, has been spending a lot of time in Zucotti Park this fall. She, like so many others, has been inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement’s call to action about growing income inequality. She shares the frustration of the working New Yorkers and small business owners who are among the “99%” and who are struggling to pay their bills.

Working Americans and small businesses are paying the price for our country’s economic collapse, while many of the root causes of that collapse, like the rollback of common sense government regulation to make room for “the 1%” to reap unprecedented profits, go unaddressed.

Earlier this month, the 1% struck back with an unconscionable effort to roll back the Wage Theft Prevention Act of 2010, which implemented - for the first time in New York history - meaningful penalties to stop employers from stealing already-earned wages out of working peoples’ paychecks.

At an Oct. 25 meeting of the New York City Regional Economic Development Council, a proposal was made to exempt small businesses from the Wage Theft Prevention Act (WTPA). The WTPA, which took effect in April, 2011, increases penalties for violating - and improves enforcement of - pre-existing wage and hour laws, and adds teeth to the laws that guarantee workers the most basic rights.

What basic rights? The right to actually be paid for the work you do. The right to minimum wage, overtime pay after 40 hours a week and the right to speak up when those rights are violated, without facing threats, illegal firing, and other retaliation as a result.

The Regional Economic Development Council is charged with developing a plan for economic development to help guide the use of taxpayer subsidies and cultivate job growth. The proposal at its Oct. 25 meeting was in effectthat our state’s approach to economic development should be to subsidize - through non-enforcement of the most basic right to be paid - businesses that get a leg up on the competition by stealing from their workers.

Make the Road New York led the coalition effort to pass the WTPA, and we did so because in New York City alone unscrupulous employers steal $1 billion every single year from their workers in the form of wage theft. New York enacted the Wage Theft Prevention Act because due to wage theft, a full 15% of the average low-wage worker’s paycheck never makes it home to the working families and the neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by the economic collapse. And New York enacted the Wage Theft Prevention Act because small businesses were clamoring for the help that it provides. Yes, a major purpose of the WTPA was to create a level playing field for responsible business owners; to give them, for the first time in New York State history, the ability to compete without being undercut by competitors who gain an unfair advantage by stealing workers’ wages.

Until the passage of the WTPA, New York State was far behind dozens of other states in protecting responsible businesses and workers from the scourge of wage theft. Even Arizona had wage theft penalties that were far tougher than what New York had in place. Before the WTPA, a law-breaking employer who was finally caught for wage theft was - at maximum - required to reimburse workers for six years of stolen wages (even if the wage theft had been going on for 10 or 20 years), plus a mere 25% in liquidated damages to compensate the workers and penalize the wage theft. And the protections for workers who came forward to blow the whistle on wage theft were so full of holes that an entire workforce could easily be terrified into silence with a single threat to fire workers or call immigration authorities, often making enforcement impossible altogether.

This situation — the state of New York law before the WTPA — created a perverse incentive in favor of wage theft as a business practice: the chance of being caught for wage theft was so low, especially given worker fear of retaliation; and the penalties so minimal, that it made better business sense to steal workers’ wages and build the small risk of getting caught into the cost of doing business. This dynamic amounted to a subsidy paid to businesses stealing from their workers. Since businesses engaged in wage theft are also highly likely to be stealing from the Workers’ Compensation and Unemployment systems, the state of New York law before the Wage Theft Prevention Act was that we were subsidizing theft from our workers and theft from our tax base.

You don’t have to be an Occupy Wall Street protester to be disgusted at advocacy for wage thieves, or to believe that subsidizing theft from our working families and our tax base is not the right kind of economic development policy for New York State.

Deborah Axt is deputy director of Make the Road New York, a non-profit community based organizationt in Bushwick, Brooklyn. that promotes economic justice, equity and opportunity for all New Yorkers


Watching the new video for “Annie Mulz,” in which Moe Pope and his bandmate Rain terrorize a Boston pub as vampires, you get the sense that Pope grew up loving the art of music videos. It’s the first single from the local indie hip-hop artist’s forthcoming album with Rain, “Let the Right Ones In,” due in January. Pope, who is nominated for a Boston Music Award for hip-hop artist of the year, recently told us about five of his favorite videos. It was a tough call. “Because I’m such a music freak, I thought, ‘Do I go with the grunge era …

This is an article preview. The full story is available to BostonGlobe.com subscribers.

Summary: Watching the new video for “Annie Mulz,” in which Moe Pope and his bandmate Rain terrorize a Boston pub as vampires, you get the sense that Pope grew up loving the art of music videos. It’s the first single from the local indie hip-hop artist’s forthcoming album with Rain, “Let the Right Ones In,” due in January. Pope, who’s nominated for a Boston Music Award for hip-hop artist of the year, recently told us about five of his favorite videos.


MARSTONS MILLS — Framed and faded magazine clips hang at the entrance of Lenny Holtzman’s salon here, a tribute to his role in Massachusetts history styling both Caroline Kennedy’s and Maria Shriver’s hair on their wedding days.

But Holtzman, the self-described “hairstylist to the Kennedys,” said the beauty school industry has a problem. Too many young hairstylists applying at his salon have too few skills and are not qualified for a job — despite spending thousands of dollars at beauty schools.

Holtzman’s situation illustrates a broader problem in the career training industry, one dominated by for-profit schools. Although students pay steep tuitions to attend programs in cosmetology, cooking, or computer repair, some schools mislead students with promises that they will graduate with sought-after skills and well-paying jobs.

Holtzman, 70, said many beauty school graduates borrow more than $10,000 to pay for less than a year of beauty school, enabling them to pass the state’s certification test, but nearly all of them need years of additional training to work as a stylist at Roots, his Cape Cod salon.

“I can’t find help,” Holtzman said. “We need skilled workers, not test takers.”

If the situation puts some employers in a bind, it is even worse for students who attend a variety of for-profit schools thinking they will improve their lives, but end up burdened with debt, and in the worst cases, defaulting on their loans.

For-profit schools had higher dropout and student loan default rates than nonprofit colleges and universities, according to a report issued last year by the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Programs offered by for-profit schools can cost at least four times as much as comparable programs at community colleges, according to the report.

In many cases, the Senate report found, for-profits spend more on marketing and recruiting than on instruction and career counseling.

The average chief executive’s salary at a for-profit training and education company was $7.3 million in 2009, seven times the average salary of presidents at large public universities.

Thirty-two states, including Massachusetts, have joined a group led by Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway investigating the industry. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is examining a dozen schools, including Apollo Group, the parent corporation of the University of Phoenix, and the Everest Institute campuses in Brighton and Chelsea, owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc.

Spokesmen for Apollo and Corinthian said they had been asked by Coakley’s office to provide information and were complying with those requests.

Coakley’s office brought a lawsuit against Brockton-based Sullivan & Cogliano Training Centers Inc. last month, alleging its promises to train students for well-paying careers as medical assistants were misleading and the school’s graduate employment rate included graduates working at fast-food chains. Sullivan & Cogliano declined to comment.

“Whether people graduate from these programs and get jobs is at the heart of the debate,” said Deanne Loonin, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston. “It’s a problem that comes up over and over.”

Iyoki Ortiz, a single mother in Dorchester, is still trying to find a job since graduating from the medical assistant program at American Career Institute in Cambridge more than a year ago. A supermarket cashier, she took the 13-month course after seeing a television advertisement promising the training would lead to a good-paying job and better life.

She borrowed $13,000 at a 6.9 percent interest rate to pay for the program, but remains unemployed.

At job interviews, employers say, “ ‘Oh, you went to ACI, that’s not a good enough school,’ ” Ortiz said. “God willing, I’ll get a job. But if I don’t, it’s just a waste of paper.”

American Career Institute ceased operations and closed its campuses in Braintree, Cambridge, Framingham, Springfield, and Woburn in January, according to the state Office of Consumer Affairs. Company officials could not be reached.

Steve Gunderson, chief executive of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, a trade group. said policy makers use a double standard with for-profit schools, which have similar graduation rates to many nonprofit and public institutions while serving nontraditional students, an often over-looked demographic. He questioned why investigators do not examine job placement rates for nonprofit colleges and universities,

“Fifty percent of recent grads from law school do not have jobs as lawyers,” Gunderson said.

Angela Watson, a spokeswoman for Empire Education Group, which describes itself as the nation’s leading provider of cosmetology education and operates five Empire Beauty Schools in Massachusetts, said the Pennsylvania-based company has helped thousands of hairstylists pass state licensing exams and get placed in jobs.

“We give them a basic education so they can go out and find employment,” she said. “You’re going to learn enough to go into an entry-level job.”

In the cosmetology industry, graduation from beauty school often does not automatically lead to a job as a stylist. Several Massachusetts salon owners said they often hire beauty school graduates certified as stylists in lower-paying jobs as assistants or shampooers because they need additional training.

“They definitely need more work on their skills,” said Jamie Gizanis, director of education at Dellaria Salons, which operates 26 salons in New England.

Holtzman, the Cape Cod hairstylist, is concerned about students who take out loans to enroll in programs that can cost $14,000 for less than year of training.

He said they are often young, single mothers with little understanding of how the education system works and who end up burdened with debt, working for low pay or not at all.

Half of all hairdressers in Massachusetts earned less than $12.86 an hour in 2010, according to the US Department of Labor.

Holtzman, who on occasion styled Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s famed pageboy, said part of the problem is the system for licensing cosmetologists in Massachusetts. Unlike New Hampshire, where people can get training and certification through apprenticeships, Massachusetts requires aspiring hairstylists to attend a state-approved beauty school to get the certification they need to work.

“These are stock-market-run schools,” he said. “We need world-class schools.”

Summary: Framed and faded magazine clips hang at the entrance of Lenny Holtzman’s salon here, a tribute to his role in Massachusetts’ history styling both Caroline Kennedy’s and Maria Kennedy Shriver’s hair on their wedding days. But Holtzman, the self-described “hairstylist to the Kennedys” said the beauty school industry has a problem. Too many young hairstylists applying at his salon have too few skills and aren’t qualified for jobs — despite spending thousands of dollars at beauty schools. Holtzman’s situation illustrates a broader problem in the career training industry, one dominated by for-profit schools. Although students pay steep tuitions to attend programs in cosmetology, cooking, or computer repair, some schools mislead students with promises that they will graduate with sought-after skills and well-paying jobs.


David Walton stars as Will Freeman, who lives a charmed existence on NBC's comedy "About a Boy."

A Boston native, Walton started acting in high school but began his formal training at Brown University. He also studied at the Actor's Center as well as the British American Drama Academy.

Shortly after moving to New York, he was quickly cast in a Naked Angel's production of "One Day on Wall Street." His commendable performance caught the attention of an executive who cast him in the series "Cracking Up," starring alongside Jason Schwartzman, Molly Shannon and Christopher McDonald. Since then, he has starred in several television series, including "The Loop," "Heist," "Quarterlife," and the NBC comedies "100 Questions" and "Perfect Couples."

Walton received great reviews for his star-making turn opposite Amanda Peet in NBC's comedy "Bent," about a recovering gambling addict and womanizer (Walton) and his polar opposite (Peet). Publications from the New York Times to Daily Variety heralded his comedic timing and leading-man charisma.

On the film side, Walton has just wrapped "Think Like a Man Too," joining an all-star ensemble cast in the Sony Screen Gems sequel to the 2012 hit that will open next year. He is also set to star along with Jeremy Sisto in the indie comedy "Break Point." Walton may be best known for his role as the evil boyfriend Dr. Rick in the hit 2009 cult film "Fired Up."

Earlier this year, Walton starred in the ABC's Hallmark Hall of Fame film "The Makeover," opposite Julia Stiles. He also appeared in a multi-episode arc as Zooey Deschanel's love interest on "New Girl."

During his down time, Walton is a golf, tennis, hockey and backgammon addict, and he currently resides in the Los Angeles area with his wife, actress Majandra Delfino, and their two children, Cecilia Delphine and Louis Augustus.

Summary: Learn more about David Walton who plays Will Freeman in the NBC comedy About A Boy.


You’re deeply in debt to the Internal Revenue Service when you hear a radio ad promising to settle the bill for a fraction of what you owe. There will be a team of experts, some of whom used to work for the IRS, to help you negotiate with the agency, the ad claims. Call for a free consultation.

So you make the call and your heart is thumping with the anticipation that you will be rescued from most of your tax obligation. But the “rescue” could cost you thousands of dollars.

What the ad pitch doesn’t tell you is that the claim hinges on your being approved for the IRS’s Offer in Compromise program, or OIC, in which the agency agrees to accept less than your full tax payment under certain circumstances.

And you better believe the certain circumstances have to be dire. To qualify, you have to show that you can’t pay your full tax liability because it will create a financial hardship. And by hardship, the IRS means just that. It will look at your income and assets to determine your ability to pay.

The IRS says that absent special circumstances, an offer will not be accepted if it believes your debt can be paid in full as a lump sum or through a payment agreement. The IRS generally approves an OIC when the amount offered represents the most it can expect to collect in a reasonable time.

Last fiscal year, the IRS received 74,000 requests for OICs and accepted 31,000, or about 42 percent. The previous year, only 38 percent were accepted.

The fact is most taxpayers don’t get their tax debts settled for pennies on the dollar as promised in the ads, and in many cases the companies don’t even follow through and send the necessary paperwork to the IRS requesting participation in the OIC program, the Federal Trade Commission warns in a consumer alert.

The FTC notes that some taxpayers who have filed complaints said that after signing up with such a company and paying thousands of dollars in fees they were slammed with unauthorized charges to their credit cards or withdrawals from their bank accounts.

Moral of the story: Beware promises of instant tax relief.

Second moral: You can apply for relief yourself.

So, to pursue an OIC on your own, use the IRS’s prequalifier tool at irs.gov to find out whether you’re eligible. An OIC requires a nonrefundable $186 application fee, unless you meet the low-income qualification. You will find instructions and the forms for submitting an offer in IRS Form 656 Booklet: Offer in Compromise. It’s important to note that your Offer in Compromise won’t be accepted if you aren’t current with filing your returns. You also aren’t eligible if you have an open bankruptcy case, because any outstanding tax debts will generally be handled within that process.

You should also keep in mind that the IRS will try to see if you are qualified for other payment programs. In fact, you have to exhaust other options before an OIC is accepted.

The agency has expanded and improved its help for struggling taxpayers. If you owe $50,000 or less in combined tax, penalties, and interest, you can set up a payment agreement and pay off your debt within six years without having to submit a financial statement, and it can even be done online. You have to specify how much you can pay and the day of the month you will be able to make the payments. Don’t overpromise. This is one creditor you don’t want to play around with.

An installment agreement requires a one-time $120 setup fee. If you choose to pay through a direct debit from your bank account, the setup fee is reduced to $52. If you are a low-income taxpayer, you can apply for a setup fee of $43. Use IRS Form 13844 to request the reduced fee for an installment agreement.

With the online payment agreement, no paperwork is required and you don’t have to call or visit an IRS office. But if you find the online process intimidating or confusing, call the IRS at 800-829-1040 to discuss your situation.

Don’t let the April 15 deadline for filing returns make you panic if you owe the government and can’t pay. You have some options. But you probably won’t find them in radio or television ads.

Summary: You’re deeply in debt to the Internal Revenue Service when you hear a radio ad promising to settle the bill for a fraction of what you owe. There will be a team of tax experts, some of whom used to work for the IRS, to help you negotiate with the agency, the ad claims. Call for a free consultation. So you make the call and your heart is thumping with the anticipation that you’llyou will be rescued from most of your tax obligation. But the “rescue” could cost you thousands of dollars.


04/29/2014 at 11:35 AM EDT

George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin

Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic; Neil Rasmus/BFAnyc/Sipa USA

was living a pretty enviable life as a bachelor. He had a thriving career, a close circle of friends and the luxury of a low-key dating life. But when the star met British attorney

, 36, it became clear he was

"He has found someone who is as smart as he is and who is her own independent woman," a Clooney pal tells PEOPLE.

While the actor has had fulfilling relationships in the past – most recently with

– sources say Clooney, 52, has arrived at a more mature emotional place in his life. And, say those who know him, he was ready.

"Amal seems to be the best fit for him he's ever had [in a partner]," the pal says.

The couple, who were first photographed

in London in October, are compatible in many ways. "She's on his level," a source who worked with Clooney said earlier this year.

The actor's pal says he's met his match in Alamuddin, noting, "She is not going to change, or give up being a human rights lawyer, because she is with George Clooney."

Summary: In fiancée Amal Alamuddin, the actor found the "best fit," says pal


07/08/2014 at 06:15 PM EDT

Pamela Anderson and Rick Salomon

Six months after saying "I do" to Rick Salomon for the

Anderson cites "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for ending her marriage to Salomon, according to papers filed by her lawyer July 3.

"We ask the media to please respect Pamela and her family's privacy during this time," Anderson's rep says in a statement to PEOPLE.

she was seeing her ex-husband, 45, in October, and the two were wed by January.

at the time. "Our families are very happy and that's all that matters."

in 2007 and were together only a couple of months before having the union

Anderson has two sons with ex-husband

, and Salomon has two daughters from a previous marriage.

Summary: The former Baywatch actress filed for divorce on July 3, PEOPLE has confirmed


FORTUNE — On July 7, nearly 100,000 people forced their way down Reforma, one of Mexico City’s main avenues, gathering in front of the Angel of Independence, a 150-foot-tall monumentin a plaza in the city center. “People, Listen! This is your fight!” they chanted. “Governing a country is not [the same as] making a telenovela,” one of the protest posters announced. Mexico’s election is over, but in the weeks following the July 1 ballot count, demonstrators have takento the streets. They are angry about the victory of Enrique Peña Nieto, a polarizing but telegenic candidate who ran a campaign based on simple slogans such as “You’ll Earn More!”

As the demonstration passed by Museo de Bellas Artes, an iconic museum in downtown Mexico City, Carolina Reyes, a recent college graduate, explained “I think there was fraud in the promotion [of Peña Nieto] in the media.” She had painted the front of a model TV screen to show a modified version of the Televisa logo, re-done in the red, white, and green colors of Peña Nieto’s party, a political machine with a long and checkered history in Mexico. A plastic tyrannosaurus rex toy poked its head out through a rip in the center of the logo, a warning about the return of old, corrupt, political “dinosaurs” to power. “Fraud! Fraud! Fraud!” the crowd around Carolina chanted, as onlookers stopped to use their cell phones to snap photos as she held her TV prop over her head. The protesters, the majority of whom supported Andres Manuel Lopez Obredor (AMLO), a leftist candidate, are frustrated with the influence of Televisa TV , Mexico’s most important media company, in their country’s political discourse. They don’t want to see Televisa write the script for their country’s elections.

Many members of Mexico’s urban, educated, tech savvy youth, who watched and criticized the campaigns via Youtube and Twitter, think that Televisa, a TV conglomerate that produces many of the country’s most popular telenovelas, may be too big for the country’s good.Televisa controls 70% of the broadcast television market, and its broadcasts reach 95% of all homes in Mexico. Unlike cable TV or the Internet — platforms that offer a plethora of options — viewers frustrated with the perceived political slant of news coverage on Mexico’s broadcast TV networks have few alternatives. Especially in Mexico, a country with limited cable and Internet penetration, broadcast TV plays a central role. Right now the country has only two nationally broadcast TV channels. Javier Aparicio, a political economy professor at CIDE, a prestigious research institute in Mexico City, explained that his “main concern is the concentration of the media industry in Mexico.” He added, “Televisa has an important influence in campaigns in national elections.”

MORE: Mexico’s big oil problem

The question for the new generation of political protesters (as well as Televisa shareholders) is what Mexico’s next government will do about Televisa’s dominant position and influence. Public discontent with Televisa’s news broadcasts in the 2012 election cycle could push Mexico’s government to increase competition in TV news by granting another company a license to start a new network. Shannon O’Neil, a Mexico expert from the Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, explained that Peña Nieto and his advisors “talked at times on the campaign trail about opening up the concentrated economic sectors in the economy — televised media being one of the most prominent examples.” Peña Nieto has promised to boost competition in many sectors of the economy if the protests and public demonstrations continue. His government may also face pressure to break up Televisa’s hold on the broadcast TV market. If this happens, Televisa could lose a sizable chunk of its share of the $2.8 billion that companies in the country spend on broadcast advertising. Televisa gambled that in helping Peña Nieto win, it could discourage his administration from breaking its hold on the broadcast television sector. “They want to maintain their market share, they don’t want new TV stations approved,” Aparicio explained. Mexico is now waiting to see if Televisa’s bet will pay off.

In supporting Peña Nieto, Televisa has found itself pulled into a critical public debate in Mexico about Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and its longstanding ties to the country’s business oligopoly, an elite group it helped create. After all, Peña Nieto’s victory marks the return of the PRI, a political organization that earned a reputation for stifling dissent and helping to create monopolies and form Mexico’s modern economy during the second half of the twentieth century. During those years, Emilio Azcarraga, the father of the company’s current CEO never hesitated to explain his close relationship with the ruling party. He once called himself a “soldier of the PRI.”

The historic relationship between Televisa and the PRI has been less relevant since 2000, when after 71 years of running Mexico as a pseudo-autocracy, the PRI was finally voted out of office. By the 2006 election the party had been effectively driven out of the presidential race, and Mexico’s national debate focused on AMLO, the leftist candidate, and Felipe Calderon, the right-of-center politician who was eventually elected as the country’s president. Following the demise of the original PRI regime, Emilio Azcarraga-Jean, Televisa’s current CEO, told a group of senators “democracy is good business.” During the initial post-2000 period of transition, Televisa filmed videos and accepted payments to produce content for a variety of politicians.

But, six years after the PRI’s historic defeat, Televisa executives and PRI leaders rekindled the old relationship. In 2006, while Felipe Calderon settled into office and AMLO marched through the capital to protest the election results, in the hills of Mexico State, the populous region surrounding Mexico City, Peña Nieto, the PRI, and Televisa quietly set the stage for a comeback. Having just been elected as Mexico State’s governor, Peña Nieto, a politician with an actor’s good looks, carefully combed hair, and a flair for populist politics and media promotion, hired Televisa to help him promote his public works projects and paid additional sums to sit for on-air interviews.

Televisa’s coverage of the young governor played a big role in converting him into a viable national candidate. Years before he even declared his intention to run for president, Televisa’s news cameramen followed Peña Nieto recording footage as he built infrastructure and embarked in a highly publicized romance with a popular Televisa soap opera star, Angela Rivera. “In the first years [of his term as governor] you would see Peña Nieto in the nightly news shows [as well as] ads promoting his achievements,” Aparicio explained.

MORE: Wal-Mart leaves Mexico scandal in dust

Peña Nieto’s made-for-TV candidacy lost some momentum in 2008 when new laws prohibited candidates and politicians from buying promotional ads. However, a black market soon emerged for off-the-books deals for airtime. Televisa faced a minor public relations disaster in 2009 when a Spanish journalist published emails from Televisa executives he claimed were pushing him to provide favorable coverage of the candidate’s visit to Istanbul, Turkey. The journalist, Jose Silas, claimed that Televisa executives informed him that coverage of the candidate was a “priority” because the broadcaster “has an agreement with them [the PRI] for this type of coverage.”

In the early stages of the campaign, the accusations of a pact between Televisa and the PRI never seriously threatened Peña Nieto’s march towards the presidential office. Although AMLO, some former U.S. diplomats, and journalists from the British newspaper The Guardian all alleged the existence of a formal (and therefore illegal) promotional agreement between Televisa and Peña Nieto, no definitive evidence has been uncovered. “I think Televisa tended to be nice to [Peña Nieto], but was there a contract involved? I don’t know,” Aparicio explained.

By sheer spending power and clever self-promotion, Peña Nieto stayed in the news and in the lead in the presidential race. By some estimates, over the course of his term as governor, Peña Nieto spent US$90 million promoting his achievements in office. Televisa provided broad coverage, even hiring reporters to cover his routine visits to conferences in foreign countries. The network provided national coverage of Peña Nieto’s 2010 wedding, broadcasting footage of the newlywed politician waving to thousands of cheering supporters. The TV company’s producers “want to give the story a happy ending, a telenovela ending,” Rebecca Zavaleta, a 26-year-old anti-Televisa protester, explained.

Mid-way through the campaign, however, the relationship between Televisa and the PRI emerged as an important issue in the election after the station refused to provide a national broadcast of the first debate between the presidential hopefuls. The decision meant that people in some remote parts of the country did not get the chance to see how Peña Nieto fared in the open forum of the debate. Televisa decided not to interrupt its regularly scheduled national programing for the debate. TV Azteca, Mexico’s only other national broadcaster, chose to transmit a soccer game. The decision not to broadcast the debate became a rallying point for a young generation of voters who were already frustrated with an absence of real political discourse in the election. Televisa’s business, they said, was bad for democracy.

In the last two months of the campaign, young voters from a variety of backgrounds who were frustrated with the shortage of substantive debate coalesced into an anti-Peña Nieto/anti-Televisa coalition. On May 11, protesters at one of Mexico City’s elite private universities voiced their discontent, screaming “Get out! Get out! Get out!” after an appearance by the candidate. In the following weeks, the anti-Televisa/anti-Peña movement gathered momentum and even adopted its own Twitter hashtag, “#YoSoy132.”

MORE: Carlos Slim still the world’s richest

In the end, the controversy did not ruin Peña Nieto’s presidential bid, but it did cause problems for Televisa. The complaints about Televisa’s monopoly power in the television marketcame at a delicate time, just as Televisa was seeking approval to expand into the country’s telecom sector, an area of the economy that has been dominated by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim since the 1980s, when hewon control of the state-owned telecom monopoly during a PRI-led push for privatization. Televisa must now convince regulators that a joint venture between it and Iusacell, a company owned by Ricardo Salinas, another TV magnate, would not lead to market collusion. In May, however, both Televisa and TV Azteca, Salinas’s company, acted together in refusing to broadcast a presidential debate on their main channels. They also jointly declined to transmit advertisements for Carlos Slim’s cell phone service. Later that month, as the company waited for approval of its telecom plan and weathered criticism from protestors in Mexico City, Televisa’s New York listed ADR shares fell by almost 16%.

Facing the reputation-damaging protests, Televisa conceded. Reacting to the criticism from the #YoSoy132 movement, Azcarraga-Jean announced via Twitter that Televisa would transmit the second and final presidential debate on a national channel. He even started a hashtag of his own, “#TelevisaListens.” The network also called in young leaders from the #YoSoy132 movement to sit for interviews. Despite Televisa’s apparent change in attitude, the youth movement did not quiet down. At a June 11th anti-Peña Nieto protest in Mexico City, demonstrators plastered the base of the Angel of Independence statue with political posters, one of which said “Peña Nieto: This is the reality of Mexico- Not Televisa. THE PEOPLE HAVE WOKEN UP.”

By the late stage of the campaign, both Peña Nieto and Televisa had withstood the criticism from the #YoSoy132 movement. The week after Televisa’s national broadcast of the second debate Peña Nieto still enjoyed a significant lead in the polls, and Mexico’s antitrust regulator granted the company preliminary approval for Azcarraga-Jean to expand into the telecom sector.

Despite the controversy on the campaign trail, Peña Nieto was poised to win the election. On June 24 I watched the candidate close his campaign at Azteca Stadium, a venue owned by Televisa. “We know how to win elections, and we know how to govern,” Peña Nieto told the crowd, pausing periodically in his speech to hold up a thumbs up sign or raise both arms in gesture of victory. A week later on July 1, despite all the protests during his campaign, Peña Nieto won the election by a 6.6% margin, more than three million votes. On July 1, flanked by a massive banner announcing “Mexico Won,” I watched as Peña Nieto celebrated his victory alongside his wife at PRI’s headquarters. He is scheduled to take office in December.

MORE: Mapping the Internet: Emerging markets

The political opposition is not yet willing to accept defeat. Leftist candidate AMLO has refused to concede and is seeking to overturn the results of the election. On July 1, in his speech following the initial vote count, AMLO reminded his supporters “you all already know [about] the absence of equity in the media.”

More than a month after the election, AMLO and his supporters continue to accuse the PRI of fraud and condemn Televisa’s role in allegedly manipulating voters. The intense scrutiny of Televisa’s operations by AMLO’s supporters, market regulators, citizen watchdogs, and Carlos Slim’s lawyers is not likely to diminish any time soon. Catalina Reyes, the model -TV-carrying 25-year-old college graduate, whom I met at the July 7th protest of Peña Nieto’s victory, explained that the ongoing protest “is a way for people to show they’re not in agreement.”

Many of the young members of Mexico’s leftist political opposition have now centered on Televisa as their pet-project for political reform. At the protest on June 11, one young woman held up a sign that said “132: Televisa: the rules change — we’re observing you.” On July 2, in the Zocolo, the main public square in Mexico City, protesters unfurled a massive banner that asked “Who’s Watching The Watcher?” Later they posted a Youtube video and promoted it with the hashtag #WeAreWatching. In the wake of the election, the red, white, and green confetti at Peña Nieto’s victory party has been swept up and discarded. But, on July 27, protesters gathered in front of Televisa’s Mexico City offices to call for the creation of a third national broadcast channel. Duncan Wood, a professor from ITAM, a prestigious university in Mexico City, explained that as a result of the demonstrations, “In the future … the role of Televisa in politics is going to come under much closer scrutiny.”

The 2012 election is over, but the spotlight on Televisa has not been turned off. After all, right now in Mexico there are few other channels to watch.

A shorter version of this story originally appeared in the September 24, 2012 issue of Fortune.

Summary: Televisa helped elect the country’s new president. Now it hears cries for the breakup of its broadcast empire.


Bain Capital said Wednesday it has acquired a 50 percent stake in Toms Shoes Inc. , a Los Angeles footwear seller known for giving away a pair of shoes to a poor child for every pair that’s purchased.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a Reuters report said the transaction valued the company at $625 million.

Toms was founded in 2006 by a young entrepreneur, Blake Mycoskie, after he met kids in a village in Argentina who had no shoes. The company said it has given away 25 million pairs of new shoes since then.

Mycoskie will retain the other 50 percent ownership in the company, the firms said.

“Toms is synonymous with social responsibility and corporate impact and has demonstrated the power of being an authentic, mission-driven organization,” said Ryan Cotton, a principal at Boston-based Bain Capital.

Mycoskie said he plans to give away “at least half of his profits” from the transaction, and to set up a fund that identifies and supports social entrepreneurship and other causes. Bain said it committed to match Mycoskie’s investment in the social entrepreneurship effort.

Summary: Bain Capital said it has acquired a 50 percent stake in Toms Shoes Inc., a Los Angeles footwear maker known for giving away a pair of shoes to a poor child for every pair purchased.


An overeager member of jihadist group Islamic State may have accidentally leaked freelance journalist Steven Sotloff’s gruesome beheading video via social media, days before the organisation planned to publish it.

Now-suspended Twitter account @AlBttar8 initially published the video yesterday, according to online news website Vocativ, only to be chastised a short time later by another IS-affiliated account @Khattabyaz.

The social media exchange prompted a rambling apology in Arabic from the terror group on the Justpaste website.

“We tried to remove the video after we understood that this was published by mistake, and we are sorry to the followers of Islamic State," the post said, according to a translation by Vocativ.

“A clarification about the mistake was made by ‘Uyun al-Ummah’ account, that has published the video before the official time.

“The user saw a tweet with the video and thought it was published officially. We tried to remove the video after we understood that his was published by mistake, and we are sorry to the followers of the Islamic State.”

American journalist Steven Sotloff (Center with black helmet) talks to Libyan rebels in 2011. (Getty)

An online apology from IS suggests the execution may have been posted online prematurely.

The video, titled “A Second Message to America” includes Sotloff – dressed in an orange jumpsuit in the same manner as James Foley, who was murdered in a similar way last month – delivering a scripted anti-American message on his knees beside his masked executioner.

“I’m back, Obama,” the masked man then tells the camera in an English accent. “I’m back because of your arrogant policy towards the Islamic State.”

Intelligence sources believe the video, which shows the captured US journalist beheaded, is legitimate.

Islamic State are typically well disciplined when it comes to releasing propaganda videos.

He goes on to warn the US of further deaths.

The US intelligence community is understood to believe the video is legitimate and Sotloff's family have issued a statement, suggesting they also believe he has been killed.

In the video, a black-clad member of IS warns of further killings before beheading Sotloff.

Do you have any news photos or videos?


Much of the arts criticism you read in the press today is tediously predictable: if you don't like the play, the pictures or the book, accuse their creator of pandering to the populace, of attention-seeking, of only being interested in fame and money. Think of the boring debate about Britart or chick lit: you can write the polemics before you read them. Sex, money, pleasurable sensation - these are the enemies that debase real art and transform it into commercial entertainment. Members of the artistic purity league come from every political and artistic viewpoint - conservative and radical, academic and modernist - but are united in their fear of filthy lucre and vulgar populism. When the arts enter the marketplace or pander to their audience, out goes quality control and in comes "dumbing down". The jeremiahs turn up the volume. Paradoxically, it is at the times when the arts flourish - when there are more bums on seats; bigger, more successful exhibitions; stronger sales of fiction - that the cry of the arts in danger is most loudly heard. More quantity, it seems, is less quality.

But this is not just a story for the 21st century. It's the inevitable consequence of having the arts depend on the marketplace and on opinion. And this first happened in the 18th century. No longer exclusively dependent on the royal court, aristocratic patronage or the largesse of the church, the arts of the Georgian period were dominated by cultural entrepreneurs, relentlessly self-promoting artists and writers, snooty critics, and a growing paying public that wanted to enjoy itself as much as be edified.

Culture became a commodity: painters sold landscapes cut up by the foot for home decoration; booksellers offered books by the yard; publishers traded copyrights - a twenty-fourth of Richardson's novel Clarissa was auctioned for £25 in 1766; shops sold prints, plays, song sheets and souvenirs; cash bought a seat in theatre or concert hall, or entry to an exhibition or place of public entertainment.

The crowds flocked in. 12,000 paid to hear the first performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks in the grounds of Vauxhall's Pleasure Gardens, and the Royal Academy summer art show at Somerset House in 1780 attracted more than 61,000 visitors. When Haydn came to London at the end of the century, he was amazed at the size of audiences and the money to be made.

The key figure behind these developments was a new breed of cultural impresario. The most famous was Jonathan Tyers, who ran the multi-media pleasure gardens at Vauxhall, with their music, sculpture, paintings and displays. Tyers had more smarts than Lew Grade. Like the skilled controller of a television channel, he kept changing his offerings, mixing entertainment with high art - popular songs with Handel, fast food with Hogarth, and cheap visual effects with sculpture. His gardens, open to all who could pay one shilling, were the (much copied) model of a new commercialised culture. They may have had a risqué reputation - there was much cruising and many prostitutes in the darker parts of the gardens, which Casanova called "a rural brothel" - but they were one of the first places to display contemporary British art and to perform Handel's non-operatic works. Tyers looked to the bottom line, but he was an important innovator.

Bigger audiences fuelled the cult of celebrity. The actor, theatre-manager and playwright David Garrick - whose coffin was carried to its grave in Westminster Abbey in 1779 by a duke, a viscount, two earls, a baron and a baronet - was the first matinee idol. His media-management makes Damien Hirst look like an amateur in the business of self-promotion. No one was more image-conscious: you could buy his likeness in hundreds of engravings; he manipulated the press, becoming part-owner of a newspaper to promote his career and the fortunes of Drury Lane theatre; he was never out of the public eye, and rarely wanted to be. But he also worked tirelessly to make the theatre respectable, brought new technology to the stage and promoted the cult of Shakespeare to make him the exemplary English playright.

Inevitably popularity and celebrity worried the critics. They complained about theatre, musical and art show audiences that preferred gossip and flirtation to careful attention; they sneered at fashion; they railed about the obscenity of engravings in print shops and the smut in the theatre; they condemned novels for encouraging poor taste and moral levity; they hated the social mixing - "Dukes and Butchers" - that came with a paying public; they attacked publishing houses as "manufactories" of literature; and they condemned artists who pandered to "the mixed multitude".

But such complaints, rather like the accusations of "dumbing down" today, are misconceived. Of course commercialism and pandering to populism can produce pretty tawdry stuff, but it's not bad art because it's commercial or popular. And, as the careers of Tyers and Garrick show, the pursuit of profit and celebrity - the deliberate playing to an audience's desires - has also been one of the greatest sources of artistic energy and innovation. We like to pretend that great art is produced in a vacuum - it's part of the cult of lonely genius, which also has 18th-century origins - but in a liberal, capitalist society, like Britain in the 18th century or today, individual works of art are inescapably born into a culture shaped by the forces of opinion and the market. Of course, these forces change works or art, altering their presentation, interpretation, audience and venue. The change is sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse - but it is a mistake to see these transformations as a loss, a fall from grace, or a Faustian pact with fame or mammon.

The documentary Sense and Sensation, screened tonight on BBC4, is not only about these issues; the film itself became part of the debate. The script is based on a 700-page book I wrote called The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the 18th Century. (Like Garrick, I can't resist a bit of self-promotion.) Conscious of an author's scruples, the production company, Illuminations, and the director, Ian Leese, were always fretting about dumbing down and the simplifications in transforming so many words into 50 minutes of television. The task was not easy, but I never felt that what we were creating meant losing something of the original. But then I also never thought of my book as sacrosanct and unchangable, a fixed thing above or outside the social world it inhabited. I'd written the book in a style that used biographical vignettes to flesh out abstract ideas, and it had been published in a particular format (with lots of pictures) in order to reach that much sought-after but rarely seen creature, the general reader. I wanted to convey what I thought was exciting about 18th-century culture, and bring it to a larger public. In its own way it was as conscious of its medium and au dience as any TV documentary.

Sense and Sensation takes up ideas, themes and stories from The Pleasures; it's a reworking, if you like, of the book. But it is also a stand-alone artefact which should be judged by its merits as a programme on the arts. As Tim Parks revealed in the Guardian in recent weeks, helping to create a television programme is very different from writing a book. My own pleasure in doing so came from the debate, back and forth, between producer, director and writer (and let's not forget the cameraman), about what could and could not be rendered into images. The results were often surprising and illuminating to me. Only when we filmed in Somerset House did I realise just how packed the Royal Academy shows had been.

I was wary of the historical reconstructions, but the Vauxhall Gardens sequence (filmed in the grounds of Chiswick house) captured Tyers's project perfectly. Authors like to see themselves as autocrats who dictate the text and view everyone else involved - editors and publishers - as subordinates to their will. (Of course in real life it often doesn't work like that.) But film-making is much more obviously a collaborative enterprise. Writers can't dictate; they have to negotiate, and they tend to see this as a loss of control, which, indeed, it often is. But then ceasing to be an autocrat is no big deal or any bad thing, especially when it creates something like Sense and Sensation which is beyond the powers of the individual writer.

· Sense and Sensation, tonight, 9pm, BBC4

Summary: TV bosses are fending off accusations of dumbing down like never before. But, says John Brewer,  popular culture's impresarios have been accused of pandering to the masses for centuries.


Art critics and curators don't often volunteer to have their faces slapped, least of all by an artist. But for the Turner prize-nominated Phil Collins, they have been queuing up to do just that. Collins's project You'll Never Work in This Town Again features more than 100 photographs of prominent artsworld figures shortly after Collins has slapped them. "I always tell the person that I will count to three before I slap them, but I always do it on two to catch them out," says Collins, who is showing five of the portraits in a group exhibition, Double Agent, at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts in March. "Everybody's reaction is different: some laugh hysterically and one guy even fell off his chair - I only got a photograph of his shoulder. For one sitting, I slapped 28 people in an evening. I felt haunted afterwards: it gives you terrible karma."

Summary: Francesca Martin: Turner prize-nominated Phil Collins's project You'll Never Work in This Town Again features more than 100 photographs of prominent artsworld figures shortly after Collins has slapped them


Smooth successions and no surprises are what employees and shareholders want—but that’s not what the board at French pharma company Sanofi has delivered.

Early on Wednesday, the board issued a statement saying, “The Board of Directors held a meeting Wednesday, October 29 at 8am and decided unanimously to remove Christopher A. Viehbacher as Chief Executive Officer of Sanofi,” after six years of service.

That stood in contrast to the board’s statement on Monday, which said the board had “no agenda item regarding the succession of Chris Vienhbacher.”

A spokesperson for Sanofi could not provide any information on what might have changed over the course of those two days (beyond the statements the board provided).

According to Sanofi’s most recent 20-F filing with the SEC, the person responsible for board communications is Serge Weinberg, its chair. That chair has now become CEO as well.

On a conference call mid-day on October 29, Weinberg said that “leaks organized in the press” on Sunday had “forced” the board to make its decision Wednesday morning more quickly than it might have, to avoid “uncertainty” among shareholders and employees.

But who initiated the leaks to the media? And, given those leaks, why did Weinberg say what he said on Monday? Perhaps he wished to put off communicating with Viehbacher, but how can that help his credibility with shareholders or employees going forward?

Mid-day Wednesday, Weinberg disputed aspects of the media’s account of the CEO’s ouster but confirmed that the board had complaints about Viehbacher’s lack of communication with the board and deficits in execution and management style.

Lack of communication with a board is a terrific fault for any CEO, and one that boards should not tolerate. Boards naturally don’t want to be surprised, and they want a full flow of information from management and others in order to do their jobs. Weinberg said Project Phoenix, a Sanofi initiative related to the sale of mature drugs in Europe, was “an illustration” of the communication lapses. The board found out about the project in the press, Weinberg said, and would have nixed it had they known.

Clearly, CEOs have responsibilities to communicate to the board. Boards and independent chairs, however, also owe the CEO candid and timely communication in return.

Many boards today want the executives they work with to be forthcoming but have not clearly specified to the CEO what they want to know, when they want to know it, and in what form. They’ll complain after the fact that they’d like to have heard more about some topic, but they never made clear in advance what they wanted or needed.

Of course, great CEOs anticipate their board’s needs. But boards need to help out. Many boards could be far more useful if they did what boards are supposed to do: look beyond the day-to-day and anticipate the trends that will shape the company’s future.

In the Sanofi board’s case, it’s all too clear that there were lapses in communications and oversight. During Wednesday’s conference call, Weinberg said the board had discussed concerns about Viehbacher in mid-summer. But according to several news sources (including Les Echos, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and Reuters) it was just last month that Viehbacher got a whiff of the board’s discontent and wrote a letter to them on September 4 making the case that he should stay on as CEO.

Boards often have a hard time confronting CEOs each step of the way and saying no when they should. Between CEOs and boards, things often snowball from there.

Viehbacher moved from France to Boston in June, which caused some communications difficulties, Weinberg admitted. But regarding where the CEO lived, Weinberg showed how little the board was in charge and his own ambivalence about the board’s level of oversight. He said Viehbacher moved to Boston without any disagreement from the board. In fact, Weinberg described it as a personal decision.

Unless the company is run entirely outside an office, where a CEO chooses to live will affect their managerial effectiveness. It’s not a personal decision. CEOs should not be off-campus and boards have to weigh in and say no to requests that could hurt the company or its stakeholders.

According to Sanofi’s 20-F filing, the chair “shall ensure that Directors have access on a timely basis to clear and appropriate information required for the performance of their duties.” If Viehbacher was in Boston, maybe Weinberg should have moved there too.

Now the board is looking for successors mainly from the outside, Weinberg said. A well-thought out succession plan was apparently not a top board priority.

As it sets about finding a new CEO, it would behoove Weinberg to consider his own role in this mess and the board’s efficacy. For example, Sanofi’s board reviews its performance only once every three years, according to the 20-F. Also, these days, effective boards meet in executive session at each board meeting and give the CEO solid feedback straightaway; something that Sanofi was not doing. Independent chairs should be providing guidance and constructive criticism week-to-week and even day-to-day, if need be.

Other practices at Sanofi also fly in the face of good governance. One example? Directors “may choose to be represented by another Director at meetings of the Board of Directors.”

In-person attendance at board meetings fosters far better communication and deliberations between board members, but it looks like Sanofi directors appear to attend these meetings by call or video so regularly that the company has set up a separate pay scale based on their location. “The attendance fee payable to a Director who participates by conference call or by videoconference is equivalent to half of the attendance fee received by a French Director who attends in person,” the 20-F filing states.

I’m not sure why a director’s country of origin has any effect on director pay, but certainly the policy does nothing to foster the image Weinberg tried to convey on Wednesday: that Sanofi is an international company, not a French one.

Abrupt CEO ousters reflect poorly on a company’s governance. But on the call, Weinberg said he believed governance worked well at Sanofi. The role of governance is “not to solve problems when they are obvious to everyone. It’s to assert the risk factors that could increase and generate further problems at a certain stage. It’s the duty of a board to evaluate this,” he said.

How true. And too bad then that he and the board waited so long to address CEO succession, until the problems hit the press and the board was caught with no plan.

Listening to Weinberg you get a sense of his own imperiousness. On the call, he chided the press for “spin,” and, given his explanations, said there are “no other issues than the ones we have described, so there is no reason to have any sort-of speculations.” He told one analyst that the call was not the place for him to provide a CEO job description.

Given this backdrop, what CEO will jump at the chance to work with Weinberg? That’s the million-dollar question. Sanofi and Weinberg are clearly grasping at straws.

Eleanor Bloxham is CEO of The Value Alliance and Corporate Governance Alliance (http://www.thevaluealliance.com), an independent board education and advisory firm she founded in 1999. She has been a regular contributor to Fortune since April 2010 and is the author of two books on corporate governance and valuation.

Summary: As the French drug company sets about finding a new CEO, it would behoove board chair and interim CEO Serge Weinberg to consider his own role in this mess and the board’s health in general.


As oil prices plunge to five-year lows, investors have been fleeing energy stocks. While the S&P 500 index had gained 8% in 2014 through mid-December and was hovering near all-time highs, the S&P 500 Energy index had fallen by almost 20%. And the carnage has been even worse for smaller energy companies: The S&P SmallCap 600 Energy index dropped 45%. But many experts say that the bloodbath has been overdone and that now is an opportune time for investors with a high risk tolerance to start nibbling on small-cap energy stocks.

Crude prices have collapsed thanks to a glut of supply and slowing demand in China and Europe. In late November the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries made matters worse by leaving its oil output unchanged. That has caused analysts to ratchet down their oil price predictions. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Longson recently forecast that average prices for Brent crude, a gauge of global prices, will stay below $70 a barrel until the third quarter of 2015.

While it’s impossible to know how far oil prices will fall before bottoming out, Sam Stovall, chief U.S. equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, says history indicates that when small-cap energy stocks have been beaten down to today’s extent, the ensuing rebound has typically been dramatic. Stovall notes that on the six occasions since 1995 when the relative strength of the S&P SmallCap 600 Energy index has dropped to current levels, the subsequent returns for the index have outpaced the broader small-cap stock universe by an average of 24.2 percentage points over the next 12 months and a whopping 81 percentage points over two years.

Analysts recommend that investors focus on companies with below-average costs and solid balance sheets. One that fits that description is Precision Drilling PDS , Canada’s largest oil and gas drilling contractor and a big operator in the U.S.; it plans to cut its capital spending next year by 44%. CIBC analyst Jon Morrison notes that the company has a high-quality drilling fleet and is “one of the most efficient operators in North America.”

A pair of U.S. producers are similarly attractive. PDC Energy PDCE of Denver recently announced that it would be both cutting costs and improving production in 2015 by more than analysts had expected. Credit Suisse analyst Mark Lear, who has an outperform rating on the stock, notes that on a price/earnings basis, the stock is trading at a discount to its peers. And Houston-based Sanchez Energy SN has reduced its planned capital spending by 25%. SunTrust analyst Neal Dingmann says the company’s South Texas Eagle Ford shale operations have “some of the best economics in the U.S.”

Investors can gain broader exposure to small-cap energy through the PowerShares S&P SmallCap Energy Portfolio, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P SmallCap 600 Capped Energy index and carries a 0.29% expense ratio. For patient investors, buying small energy stocks now could potentially produce gushing returns over time.

This story is from the January 2015 issue of Fortune.

Summary: If you believe that crude will rise again, the best strategy is to reach for small-cap energy stocks.


, the private shuttle service, launched a new mobile application on Monday.

The Cambridge company describes the application as the “first step” toward offering dynamic routes without specific pick-up and drop off locations.

Now riders in select neighborhoods can provide their location and the application will direct them to a nearby stop. For $3 per one-way trip, the shuttle delivers riders to an address near their preferred destination. Bridj pledges that riders in the current service area will not have to walk more than 12 minutes to reach a pick-up location or their individual destination.

Since last spring the company has been talking about plans to offer an on-demand shuttle service that adjusts routes to its riders’ locations in real-time, but still has not introduced the dynamic service.

For the last few months, Bridj offered a service along set routes. The new application expands on that and directs riders from their individual locations to a nearby stop, which is also on a pre-determined route. The service area is limited to pockets of Brookline, Boston, and Cambridge and only travels inbound in the morning and outbound at night.

Ryan Kelly, a spokesman for Bridj, said the new application allows the company to analyze traffic data and manually change routes as more riders use the service. He said Bridj is still developing technology to automatically adjust routes on the fly.

The app is currently available for download on iOS and Android. Morning service runs from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. The shuttle is available in the evenings from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Summary: Bridj, the private shuttle service, launched a new mobile application on Monday.


On Monday, December 8, the newly-christened CSCL Globe left port in Shanghai en route to Europe on its maiden voyage. Capable of carrying 19,100 twenty-foot shipping containers—19,100 TEU, as they say in the industry—the Globe, constructed by Hyundai Heavy Industries and owned by the state-run China Shipping Company, is now the world’s largest container ship by volume. It is also among the largest ships in operation by raw size, at 400 meters long and 59 meters wide. If you cut the antenna tower off the Empire State Building, it would be 20 meters shorter than the Globe is long.

But the CSCL Globe is more than just a really, really big ship. Its massive size reflects equally massive changes that have reshaped the ocean shipping industry over the past decade as carriers build ever-bigger ships to capture economies of scale in fuel and crew costs. The capital-intensive strategy is squeezing out smaller players and triggering consolidation across an industry that has long resisted it, while putting new demands on global shipping infrastructure.

So-called megaships have come to dominate container shipping with astonishing rapidity over the past decade. The industry was bowled over in 2003 by the arrival of the then-massive OOCL Shenzhen—but its 8,063 TEU capacity is unremarkable by today’s standards.

The shift to larger ships was pushed along by the global financial crisis and rising fuel costs. After rates for container shipping hit record highs in the 1990s and early 2000s, prices collapsed along with global trade in 2008 and 2009. Orders to shipbuilders around the world were cancelled in droves.

When orders picked up again, they were almost all for megaships. Hyundai Heavy Industries, for instance, reports that since 2010 it has built 82 ships of more than 10,000 TEU but has received orders for only five ships in the 5,000 TEU range.

These capital-intensive larger ships have, predictably, concentrated in the hands of the largest carriers. “To play with the big boys now, you have to be putting a huge amount of money out,” says Sam Chambers, editorial director of the trade journal SinoShip. According to a Drewry Maritime Research report from July 2014, MSC operates 696 ships above 10,000 TEU, Maersk operates 433, and CMA CGM Group has 363.

The efficiencies of the larger ships are a boon for individual shippers, and for the global environment. They consume as little as 50% of the fuel per container moved as older ships, while also more than halving insurance and staffing costs. A megaship requires the same 20-odd crew as a smaller ship but can carry three times the cargo.

The effect on the industry as a whole is less sanguine. “In terms of supply and demand, the industry is blighted by what we describe as structural overcapacity,” says Simon Heaney, Drewry’s senior manager of supply chain research. Large carriers have mitigated that oversupply to a degree through a practice known as “slow-steaming”—intentionally operating ships at as little as half their normal speed, which both reins in capacity and offers further fuel savings.

With less access to efficiencies of scale or speed, smaller carriers are losing ground fast. Carriers outside of the global top 10 operate only dozens or, in some cases, zero megaships. Some have been forced into mergers, such as the acquisition of CSAV by Hapag-Lloyd in April. Further consolidation has taken the form of cargo-sharing agreements. By early 2015, the Asia-Europe container trade will be entirely controlled by just four major alliances.

Infrastructure limitations have kept the largest of the megaships confined to those Asia-Europe routes. Ships the size of the CSCL Globe are too large to fit through the Panama Canal, and neither East nor West Coast U.S. ports are equipped to handle them anyway. The expansion of the Panama Canal to accommodate megaships is underway, and the Hong Kong-based investment group HKND is currently exploring the construction of a large canal across Nicaragua. But the megaships are having ripple effects around the world by pushing older, smaller ships out of service on Asia-Europe routes, inflating capacity and pushing down prices everywhere.

Industry watchers say the CSCL Globe is unlikely to retain its world’s-biggest title for long. Sam Chambers of SinoShip expects to see a 20,000 TEU ship ordered by early 2015, and ships of up to 24,000 TEU would be viable with current Asia-Europe infrastructure. That would mean continued chronic overcapacity, and even more pressure on smaller shippers worldwide.

Summary: Behind the world's biggest container ship are bigger changes in the shipping industry.


03/17/2015 AT 06:45 AM EDT

New mom Tiffany Hoag says she was forced to leave a YMCA locker room after a staff member saw her nursing her baby.

"I went to the women's locker room and changed him, then he started to get a little bit fussy, so I started to nurse him," Hoag

about the incident, which occurred at an Oklahoma City Y.

Another woman was also breastfeeding in the locker room before a staff member came in and asked them both to leave.

"The next thing you know, she's escorting this lady out of the locker room, and then she comes back for me and says, 'You can't be in here, I'm going to have to ask you to leave,' " recalled Hoag, whose baby is only 8 weeks old. "I was really embarrassed and upset because people were looking, and he was crying because he was still hungry."

Hoag was then brought to a family locker room, which she described as dirty, with "towels on the floor" and containing only a toilet, shower, seat and sink.

"I'm honestly humiliated," she said. "I don't want to go back to that Y ever again. It's really discouraging."

The YMCA released a statement regarding the incident, apologizing for what they believe was a staff member's misunderstanding of locker room rules.

"The Y is a place for families, and we support breastfeeding moms in our facilities," reads the statement obtained by KFOR. "We believe this was likely an unfortunate mistake with our staff member misinterpreting our locker room policy, which states that children are not allowed in adult locker rooms.

"We are looking into this particular incident further with the staff members involved in an effort to ensure that no other moms have this happen in the future. We are very sorry that this new mom had a negative experience and will continue to train our staff to understand that moms can breastfeed anywhere they would like to do so in our facilities."

Summary: Tiffany Hoag says she was asked to leave a locker room where she was nursing her newborn


Updated MAR 15, 2015 2:26a ET

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Max Schuman homered and drove in three runs for the Utah, which held off the Arizona baseball team, 7-4, to snap the Wildcats' seven-game winning streak and even the three-game series Saturday night at Hi Corbett Field. Schuman was 3-for-4 with two runs scored, highlighted by a two-run blast in the fifth inning that punctuated a three-run frame and extended Utah's lead to 6-1.

That proved to plenty of breathing room for the Utes, who struck first with a pair of runs in the second inning and added another in the third against Arizona starter Robby Medel.

Medel (1-2) pitched into the fifth inning, but suffered the loss as he gave up four runs -- three earned -- on seven hits and a walk. He turned the game over to Nathan Bannister with one on and no outs in the fifth.

With the Wildcats trailing 3-1, Bannister was unable to turn away the Utes' rally. Dallas Carroll drove in Kody Davis with a single to left and, one out later, Wyler Smith tripled down the right field line in front of Schuman, who hit his homer over the wall in right. Utah starter Dalton Carroll (W, 3-2) needed no further run support with the five-run advantage. The righty earned the win with six solid innings in which he scattered six hits and four walks, while yielding just two runs. Arizona (16-5, 1-1 Pac-12) put plenty of runners on base, but struggled mightily to capitalize. The Wildcats were 4-for-23 with runners on base, and mustered only one hit in 13 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

The lone run-scoring hit came from Riley Moore, whose third-inning single to left knocked home Scott Kingery, cutting into an early 2-0 deficit. However, the Wildcats left two on base that inning and two more in the fourth before falling into the big hole in the fifth inning. Bobby Dalbec provided a brief spark in the home half of the fifth, as he hit a towering solo home run to left field. Utah (5-12, 1-1 Pac-12) tacked on an insurance run against reliever Bannister in the seventh, before the Wildcats chipped away with lone runs in the seventh and eighth. Utah closer Hunter Rodriguez faced the tying run in the bottom of the ninth, but he struck out Justin Benhnke with two on base to preserve his second save of the year. The two clubs will settle the three-game conference series on Sunday. First pitch is scheduled for noon with a live radio broadcast on 1290 AM. GAME NOTES: Arizona saw its seven-game win streak snapped. The streak was the longest since winning 14-straight games over the 2012-13 seasons ... Bobby Dalbec's fifth-inning home run was his fourth of the season and sixth of the his career. The Wildcats have hit 11 home runs on the season ... Dalbec has reached base safely in all 21 games ... Zach Gibbons went 2-for-4 to extend his hitting streak to nine games ... Kevin Newman's first-inning single extended his hitting streak to eight games ... The Wildcats fell to 1-5 when being out-hit by their opponent ... Arizona has collected 11 or more hits in eight-consecutive games ... The 3:46 length of game was the second-longest of the season (3:47 on March 1 against Samford).

Summary: Robby Medel took the loss as the Arizona baseball team fell to Utah on Saturday.


Kylie (left) and Kris Jenner on Keeping Up with the Kardashians

04/12/2015 AT 11:15 PM EDT

is immune to the sulking, moody reality of trying to interact with one's 17-year-old daughter.

On this week's episode of

, a mother-daughter bonding trip saw

revealing that she plans to move out "as soon" as she turns 18. While the bomb was dropped without malice – just as a quiet fact – Kris was totally floored.

Prior to their trip, Kylie and Kris had not had a meaningful conversation in weeks, so Kris decided to take her youngest daughter to San Diego to visit her mother. Kylie basically had to be dragged kicking and screaming, and she was unbelievably sullen through the two-hour drive.

As Kylie revealed in an interview: "My mom is always on my case about this or that. ... If we're gonna take a trip together, I just want to talk about things other than work."

She had a point. Kris was talking Kylie's ear off about a possible opportunity on

and about uploading video diaries about her personal style for her fashion-obsessed fans.

Though Kris was intent on a proper bonding session by the time they reached the hotel, Kylie demanded her own room.

During a family shopping trip the next day, Kylie basically started filling out change-of-address forms. Kris's mother, M.J., didn't help when she told Kylie that she had moved out when she was just 16.

Later, M.J. was able to talk Kris down by reminding her how

was at 17. She also made Kylie realize that she'll miss Kris when she leaves the nest. "I've been a little tough on my mom," Kylie acknowledged before agreeing to spend time with her mother at an amusement park.

Despite her slight change of heart, Kylie gave no indication that she wasn't still counting down the days until the moment she becomes a legal adult. (

airs Sundays (9 p.m. ET) on E!.

Summary: Following a mother-daughter bonding trip gone awry, Kylie reveals that she wants to move out as soon as she's legal


Whenever the next latest and greatest iPhone or Android comes out, a lot of people find themselves with old phones (that aren’t really all that old) that might have some value.

But one problem consumers have in selling them involves websites that give big price quotes but then the payouts are but a fraction of the initial offer. Sleazy? Sure. Does it happen? All the time.

Consider finding a local store or ask whether the retailer selling you the new phone participates in a buy-back program. Some big retailers do. It won’t be the best possible price, but it’s a lot safer than sending off your phone and losing control of the transaction with a shady website.

But if you’re still intent on selling your device online in an attempt to get the best price, tread very carefully. Remember that some quotes are not realistic and the market is very fluid.

Do some homework. To get started, just pop the name of a site you’re considering into a search engine with the word “complaints.” What comes back can be very telling.

Check the Better Business Bureau database. It will give you an idea of how many complaints a business generates and how it responds to those complaints. Keep in mind that bigger companies are likely to have more complaints; how they resolve them is more valuable information.

Check out well established sites like Gazelle.com and NextWorth.com. They have solid track records and they’re both Massachusetts-based, which gives you more recourse if there’s a problem.

So, don’t just jump at the first big number you’re offered. Think before you sell, and you could end up with fair offer and a few extra bucks.

Summary: One problem involves websites that give big price quotes, but pay only a fraction of the initial offer.


Yahoo has filed a lawsuit against a former employee the company says leaked confidential information to the author of a new book about the company.

The Sunnyvale, Calif. company YHOO claims former senior director Cecile Lal broke confidentiality agreements by sharing information with reporter Nicholas Carlson for his book Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!

Lal is alleged to have shared information that she learned during “FYI” meetings with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. She’s also alleged to have retrieved archived documents and supplied Carlson with her credentials for an internal website, according the the lawsuit filed on Wednesday in state court in San Jose, Calif. and first spotted by Bloomberg.

More broadly, Yahoo claims that Carlson’s book caused “unnecessary distraction within Yahoo’s workforce” and “damaged the integrity of the FYI and Q&A processes” at the company and blames Lal for her role in helping with the book. It also says that Lal’s breach of confidentiality has damaged “the trust on which Yahoo relies in providing its employees with the greatest level of information Yahoo has ever shared with its workforce.”

Lal’s breach of trust and confidentiality also destabilized the trust on which Yahoo relies in providing its employees with the greatest level of information Yahoo has ever shared with its workforce. Among the most aggrieved by these breaches are Yahoo’s employees themselves, a highly motivated and energized workforce which has expressed great appreciation for Yahoo’s transparency and has bemoaned the breaches of trust.

At some point, Lal apparently provided Carlson with her username and password to access a password-protected site where Yahoo information was stored. As he explained on June 23, 2014, “I purposefully didn’t write down your user and password, so we’ll have to catch up again on the phone if you’d rather not email the u/pw to me.” Two days later (on June 25, 2014), Carlson confirmed that he had apparently accessed the aforementioned password-protected site by telling Lal that it “looks like I am still logged[]in. So I will check there every once in awhile. Just finished going through and taking notes on the material provided so far. Such a huge help.”

In response to Fortune inquiry, a Yahoo spokesperson said: “We can’t comment on active litigation.”

Summary: The company is countering the publication of an unauthorized book by suing a former employee who helped its author.