Nuit de Noël, 1963 Photograph: Courtesy the artist, Andre Magnin and Hackelbury Fine Art

It's a Christmas party; quite late, you'd imagine. The picture shows a young black couple. She's barefoot in her best sixties frock, he's in loafers and a snappy white suit. They're jiving together – not quite touching, yet, but with their heads dipped in close, both faces lit up with shy, almost disbelieving smiles. It's an astonishing photograph, full of intimacy and energy, joy and anticipation, taken in 1963 by the Malian photographer, Malick Sidibé, known as The Eye Of Bamako.

Like all Sidibé's work, it captures the pride and exuberance of a generation of young Africans during two decades of momentous – and euphoric – social and cultural change.

The arrival of the twist, the cha cha cha and rock'n'roll in Mali in the late 1950s, and independence from France in 1960, proved a heady cocktail. Bamako's nights got hot. The boys formed clubs to impress the girls: the Sputniks, the Wild Cats, the Black Socks. "We were entering a new era, and people wanted to dance," Sidibé says. "Music freed us. Suddenly, young men could get close to young women, hold them in their hands. Before, it was not allowed. And everyone wanted to be photographed dancing up close. They had to see it!"

When we speak, the telephone line from Bamako is not good and the room is clearly crowded, but there's no mistaking Sidibé's giggle of glee. Even from 2,500 miles away, the man's joie de vivre is palpable. It played an important part in his success, too.

Born in what was then French Sudan in 1935 (or 1936; he's not too sure which), Sidibé was busy herding his family's sheep at the age of five and could not be spared for "the white school" until he was 10. Once there, he drew animals and trees, and won prizes that included a book of Delacroix paintings. Soon he was being commissioned – for France's July 14 Bastille Day celebrations, for example. Girls got him to draw on hankies they would embroider for their boyfriends. In 1952, on the orders of the colonial governor, he went to the prestigious École des Artisans Soudanais, now the Institut National des Arts, in the capital. Four years later, he had his first Brownie camera and was working with Bamako's leading society photographer, Gérard Guillat, aka Gégé la pellicule (Gégé The Film).

"I was behind the till, delivering prints, that kind of thing," Sidibé says. "He didn't teach me how to take photographs, but I watched and I understood. Soon he was doing the big colonial events, the balls and official dinners, and I was doing the Africans. I did weddings and christenings and then, because I was young and I had a small camera – not a heavy plate one – I got invited to the dances."

On weekends Sidibé would cycle round to three, four, five parties a night, heading back to the studio to develop and enlarge perhaps as many as 400 photos, working until 6am. He was popular and constantly in demand, and eventually people started asking if he did portraits. In 1962 he left Gégé and opened Studio Malick.

"The studio was like no other," he says. "It was... relaxed. I did formal family shots, too, but often it was like a party. People would drop by, stay, eat. I slept in the developing room. They'd pose on their Vespas, show off their new hats and trousers and jewels and sunglasses. Looking beautiful was everything. Everyone had to have the latest Paris style. We had never really worn socks, and suddenly people were so proud of theirs, straight from Saint Germain des Près!" It was, Sidibé says, "a fantastic period. Unique."

These days Sidibé presides over a collection of tens of thousands of negatives, taken 30, 40, even 50 years ago; images that immortalise the grace, pride and exuberance of a generation of newly independent Africans. He still takes pictures, if he feels like it; last year he did a fashion shoot in his studio for the New York Times. There's less demand for portraits, of course; families have their own cameras. And he's never been tempted by colour (it fades in the heat) or digital.

"I stick with black and white, and film," he says. "It's what I know. And I can do my own developing and printing. A good photographer should always do that."

To be a good photographer, Sidibé says, you need to have "a talent to observe, and to know what you want. You have to choose the shapes and the movements that please you, that look beautiful." Equally, you need "to be friendly, sympathique. It's very important to be able to put people at their ease. It's a world, someone's face. When I capture it, I see the future of the world. I believe with my heart and soul in the power of the image, but you also have to be sociable. I'm lucky. It's in my nature."

• A selection of Malick Sidibe's previously unseen work opens at Lichfield Studios, London W10 from 11 March-16 April; info@tristanhoare.com for further details.

Summary: Malick Sidibé's photographs capture Mali shaking free of its colonial past – and embracing rock'n'roll and the latest Paris fashions


Ralph Brown in his studio. His best known work is Meat Porters, commissioned in 1959 for the new town of Harlow, in Essex. Photograph: Steve Russell

For more than 60 years, the artist Ralph Brown, who has died aged 84, explored the human body through drawing and sculpture. Some of his most important work was made in the 1950s and 60s: a notable series of Brown's figurative sculptures, which included Mother and Child (1954) and Clochard (1955-56), was critically acclaimed by John Berger, then the art critic for the New Statesman. At the time, Berger associated Brown's work with a range of other British art which he identified as "social realist", not for any overt political imagery, but primarily for its poignant and humanist qualities.

Brown's most significant and well-known sculptural work is his Meat Porters, commissioned in 1959 by Harlow Art Trust, the organisation acquiring works of art for Harlow New Town in Essex, as the centrepiece for the town's new market square. This magnificent visceral bronze was based on studies of bummarees (porters) hauling meat carcasses at Smithfield market in London. Expressively Rodinesque, the muscular surfaces of the sculpture also reflected the fissures and clefts of the rock-faces and limestone pavements in Brown's native Yorkshire, where he had spent many weekends rock-climbing as a youth. A paean to physical labour, Meat Porters evoked the brutality of the abattoir. At the same time, with its gaping vertical split, it had a blatantly erotic element. Characteristically, here, as in much of his later work, Brown combined a keen social engagement with a sometimes dark, disturbing sensuality.

Born in Leeds, where his father was a school caretaker, Brown was the youngest of three brothers. On leaving Leeds grammar school, he spent two years in the RAF, going on to Leeds College of Art in 1948. In 1951, he made the first of two trips to Paris, which proved to be formative experiences. Berger arranged for him to stay in the Left Bank apartment of the British artist Raymond Mason. Brown's extensive sketchbooks from the period document the everyday life of street urchins and working-class Parisians but he also made lengthy visits to the Musée Rodin and had brief meetings with the artists Germaine Richier and Alberto Giacometti.

Invigorated by his experiences, on his return to London Brown studied under Leon Underwood at Hammersmith School of Art. From 1952 until 1956, he studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art under the tutelage of Frank Dobson and John Skeaping. Later, he taught at various art schools including Bournemouth, Bristol and the Royal College of Art, where he met and fell in love with his student, Caroline Clifton-Trigg, whom he married in 1964.

In the 1950s, he was a contemporary of the group of sculptors that Herbert Read famously allied with a kind of cold war angst which he dubbed the "geometry of fear". However, Brown certainly did not share their penchant for crustaceans and spiky attenuated forms. While Brown did identify with his Yorkshire roots – sharing a sculptural heritage with Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Kenneth Armitage – he had much more in common with the figurative work of European sculptors such as the Italians Emilio Greco, Giacomo Manzu and, in particular, Marino Marini, for whom he had the greatest admiration. Indeed, although a sculptor, Brown frequently described himself as an "image-maker" who drew primarily on a Mediterranean humanist tradition.

Through the next two decades, a Mediterranean sensuality continued to inform Brown's work, as in his sculptural reliefs of the 1960s, in which swimmers metamorphosed into entwined lovers. Other tumultuous sculptural heads and voluptuous forms had erotic, phallic or sometimes androgynous allusions. Later works, such as his "confluences" of folding, pouring forms were based on bulbous body parts.

For a few years in the 1970s, Brown moved his family nearer to the Mediterranean, living for a while in a rambling derelict farmhouse in the Cévennes region of southern France. Despite his critical success, selling work proved difficult and with financial problems and an increasing sense of isolation, the family moved back to the UK and Ralph established a studio base in Bath, eventually settling in various locations in the Cotswolds.

In 1993, after more than 40 years working in clay and plaster for casting in metal, Brown started to carve marble, and established a working relationship with Studio Sem in Pietrasanta, Italy. His later years, however, were marked by a series of returns, working through a series of motifs and revisiting earlier work.

A major achievement was the production, in 2009, of one of his largest sculptures, Queen, which became the focal point of a retrospective exhibition staged in Brown's 80th year. An earlier related work, Standing Queen (1962), had caused a major controversy when he first proposed exhibiting it at Digswell, the arts community in Hertfordshire where he was based at the time. The disturbing image, with its split visage and a note of vulgarity, was felt inappropriate by Digswell Trustees who were expecting a visit from a member of the royal family. The equation of royalty with sexual voraciousness was just too much. They insisted he changed the title of the work; Brown refused and was asked to leave Digswell.

For various reasons, and similar anxieties, the large Queen, originally commissioned by Peterborough Development Corporation for a public site in front of the cathedral, was never realised. Witnessing the artist, a lifelong socialist, putting the finishing touches to the first cast of this monstrously burlesque "royal" in his Cotswold studio in 2009 was a great privilege for me. PJ Kavanagh captured Brown's sensibility and humanity when, in 1972, he wrote of his work as "a hymn to the body which, because it is respectful, lets in the soul as well".

Brown is survived by Caroline and their son, Jasper; and by a daughter, Sara, from his first marriage, to Margaret, which ended in divorce. His eldest child, Matthew, died in 2011.

• Ralph Brown, sculptor, born 24 April 1928; died 3 April 2013

Summary: Sculptor whose creations had a dark, disturbing sensuality


Ghost ship … Roskilde 6, the biggest Viking vessel ever found, ends the British Museum's new exhibition. Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris for the Guardian

It cuts through the air like a sword through flesh, relentless. The prow is as sharp as a shark's tooth. A fragile heart of oak survives within the metal skeleton. This ghost ship is solid yet empty, there and not there.

Roskilde 6, the biggest Viking ship ever found, is the lifeblood of the British Museum's exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend. This colossal exhibit – it is 37 metres long in its reconstructed totality, though only about a fifth of the hull is original timber – is spectacular, beautiful, thought-provoking and profound. It embodies not just the nautical ingenuity and martial prowess of the Vikings but their art and beliefs, too.

Around its enigmatic presence are displays that amplify its meanings. A carved, eighth-century "picture stone" from the Swedish isle of Gotland shows such a longship ferrying a dead warrior to Valhalla, the hall of the god Odin, where Vikings who die bravely in battle will feast until they are called to fight in the last battle, Ragnarok.

A phantom Viking ready for that apocalyptic fight glares from a glass case near the warship. He's a surreal composite of metal and bone. His head is a helmet. Under this grins a jaw, with its teeth filed to create a horrific snarl intended to terrify monks. Tattoos would have added to the warrior's scary aspect as he jumped off Roskilde 6 into the surf, screaming and roaring as he rushed onshore to kill and steal and burn.

On 8 January 793, men like this in ships like this appeared on the horizon off Northumbria. Monks were illuminating manuscripts and chanting prayers in Lindisfarne monastery. Within hours, records the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "the heathen miserably destroyed God's church ..."

Britain was an easy target for the Viking raiders. A straight line westward from southern Norway leads directly to north-east Britain. The same instinct to forge westward led Vikings from Greenland to America, where they fought native Americans. Roskilde 6 reveals something else about their sailing skills: it is wide with a very shallow, flat underside. This design meant Viking ships could easily navigate rivers. They besieged Paris by sailing up the Seine. They created the kingdom of "Rus" – the origin of Russia – by sailing down its rivers until they reached the Black Sea, and even terrorised the eastern imperial city of Byzantium.

It's an incredible story. The Vikings burn in history, unforgettable antiheroes. I just wish this exhibition made a more engaging and humanising job of telling that story. The longship is sublime, the swords and skeletons that surround it are terrifying, but Vikings: Life and Legend is, until you reach these wonders, a pedantic exercise in pure archaeology that fails to shape its subject into a stimulating narrative.

I've started my account of it at the end because that's where it finally comes alive. The huge space where Roskilde 6 glides majestically among swords and skeletons is this show's conclusion, which you reach after a journey so badly staged it left me numb. Are the curators resting on their shields, confident that a real Viking ship is enough of a stunner to float everyone's boat, or do they have more obscure reasons for rendering the Viking world mute, impersonal and even – can this be – boring?

Vikings is the first exhibition in the British Museum's new state-of-the-art gallery. It takes advantage of this huge space to display that ship, no less. But when you enter the show there's no excitement at all. The new gallery is not as charismatic as the museum's old Reading Room, where great shows like The First Emperor (and his terracotta warriors) and Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum were staged. The circular shape of the Reading Room made for magical labyrinthine displays. This place feels, on first sight, more like a big grey box where display cases are laid out in dismal straight lines.

There's no stage-setting. No gory recreation of the Lindisfarne raid, say, to get us in the mood. Instead, cases of smallish, similar objects throw visitors straight into some thorny problems of archaeology. How do Viking artefacts compare with things being made at the same time by Baltic and Slav peoples? One of the first cases offers a chance to find that out.

I felt like crying. Where were the swords? And if I was ready to bawl, what does this exhibition offer its younger visitors? It can't claim not to be for them. You can't put on an exhibition called Vikings without expecting some kids. The only way this exhibition could sound more child-friendly would be if it was called Vikings and Dinosaurs. But the austerely beautiful cases of brooches and golden rings and amber offer very little to fans of Horrible Histories. This is mean, especially as the shop at the end is quite happy to push a lucrative array of Viking toys.

Even the soundtrack to the first displays, a reading of classic Viking literature, is in Old Norse. Instead of opening up this world, as a well-read translation might, it closes it off in melancholy Nordic words. This is perhaps a clue to what the curators think they are doing. They want to estrange our view of the Vikings. Forget those rehashed Norse myths in The Hobbit, forget the song in Horrible Histories where the Vikings are a heavy metal band who are "gonna paint the whole town red tonight – literally ..."

No wait - it's even madder than that. Don't just forget modern images of the Vikings: forget what was written about them in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and forget (or learn to appreciate in Norse) their own great works of literature, which were written down in the middle ages but draw on oral traditions going back to the age of the Viking raids.

These sagas of the Vikings are full of characters. Just to reel off some nicknames is to get a taste of their vivid humanity: Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, Ivar the Boneless, Eric the Red, Thorstein the Black, Olvir Hump. The Vikings left a legacy of stories in which legend and truth mingle. They'd have told this exhibition as a story.

Why not weave their tales and the histories written by their enemies into the mix of archaeological stuff to give it warmth and context? The refusal to do so cannot be an oversight. It looks like an archaeological dogma: only material objects painstakingly excavated are to be relied upon as evidence. The rest is romantic twaddle, apparently.

For instance, where are the gods? The picture stone showing a ship arriving at Valhalla is one of just a handful of images of mythology in this exhibition. There's more about bowls and bracelets than about Thor.

Maybe I am being too hard on the curators. Perhaps the Vikings are innately difficult to bring to life in an exhibition. Their art is full of atmospheric swirls and crafty detail, but it is not their greatest cultural achievement. They really were better with words. Egil's Saga is the first psychological novel, a portrait of a tortured genius who is at once a poet and a serial killer. Where does Viking visual art attain that complexity?

The art historian Kenneth Clark said the Vikings had a culture, not a civilisation. Their everyday life looks hard, cruel and repetitive in this exhibition. A beautiful ivory flask from Byzantium just seems in another league of sophistication and layered meaning. But when you reach the ship hall you will see that Clark was wrong. The Vikings created something that went beyond any civilisation of their age. The greatest work of art here is the longship. It is a great human image of endeavour and exploration: these were not just killers but intensely curious pathfinders who even colonised the icy wastes of Greenland. A clever Viking called it that, according to the sagas, to make it sound more attractive for settlers.

If you sail these troubled waters, take my advice. Head straight for the longship and the Viking armour. Gaze on Roskilde 6 and let its eerie magic work on you. There is elvish gold here, but to find it you must fight your way past some oddly joyless ogres.

Summary: The longship at the heart of the British Museum's new Viking exhibition is spectacular – but the rest of the show is a bloodless collection of bowls and brooches, says Jonathan Jones


If Deuteronomy is right in saying that we do not live by bread alone, then Nalaga’at Theater Ensemble has your ticket. This troupe from Tel Aviv comprises 11 deaf-blind performers, who in the course of “Not by Bread Alone” bake bread onstage and share it with the audience. They also put on a funny, poignant, nourishing show.

Swiss-born director Adina Tal cofounded Nalaga’at in 2002, and the organization now has a cultural center in Tel Aviv. Most of the actors have Usher syndrome: they’re born deaf and gradually lose their sight to retinitis pigmentosa. Some have traces of sight and hearing. What they all have is talent. Communicating by touch and touch-sign language, they move about on stage cued by the vibrations of a drum and guided by unobtrusive translators, who also sign for the audience. The actors express themselves in Hebrew and Russian; English supertitles are provided.

As the audience enters, 10 of the 11 troupe members are already onstage, standing behind three long wooden tables, in white aprons and bakers’ caps, their sleeves rolled to the elbow, kneading dough. Behind them are three large ovens, shelves stacked with loaves, kitchen utensils hanging from hooks, and a balcony on which, in time, the pope will appear. Downstage left, Itzik is seated at a Braille typewriter. A cheery khosidl plays on the sound system.

The drum thwacks and the lights go down briefly; when they come up, the tables have been brought forward and all 11 actors are seated behind them, wearing oval white masks. One by one the masks come off, and the actors tell us about themselves. Itzik was born blind and became deaf at 11 after contracting meningitis. If a beautiful blonde wafted by, he says, he’d have no idea. Shmuel would love to dance. Rafi loves soccer and dreams of becoming a singer. Genia, who speaks in Russian, asks Shoshana to remind her of the Hebrew word for “rhythm” and then confuses it with the word for “money.” Shoshana wants whomever she meets to shake her hand. Bat-Sheva welcomes everyone to “our lives, our bakery, our darkness, our silence.”

Darkness and silence are recurring themes in this intermissionless 90-minute show. But so are dreams and ambitions and the small pleasures of life. Mark and Igor, the troupe’s clowns, mime eating and drinking while Bat-Sheva sits on a swing and Shoshana dances in a faint spotlight. Zipora gets to go to the movies with a big — really big — bucket of popcorn. There’s thunder and lightning; Itzik tells a “rain story” of being alone in the darkness and silence until his friends arrive; then the four women are seen sitting around a table and Genia tells Shoshana that this rain is nothing compared to the rain in Russia.

One segment starts out as a tribute to their friend Michael, whose dream it was to perform in Italy. That cues the pizza aprons, the clotheslines, the Italian flag, the pope (Yuri) blessing us from the balcony, and Bat-Sheva passing herself off, quite credibly, as the Israeli Sophia Loren. But Bat-Sheva has her own dream: to have her hair done by the famous Yuriy, who’s so in demand that he’s making appointments, via receptionist Genia, for 2015 and 2016. Mark and Igor are already occupying the coveted two chairs, but Yuriy makes immediate room for Bat-Sheva.

It ends, of course, with a wedding, Genia and Yuri under the chuppah, with flowers on the tables, the bread brought hot from the oven, and everyone else playing the guests and posing for pictures as the lighting simulates flashbulbs. Then the audience comes onstage to congratulate the happy couple and partake of the bread. Food for the body, food for the soul.

Summary: If Deuteronomy is right in saying that we do not live by bread alone, then Nalaga’at Theater Ensemble has your ticket. This troupe from Tel Aviv comprises 11 deaf-blind performers, who in the course of “Not by Bread Alone” bake bread on stage and share it with the audience. They also put on a funny, poignant, nourishing show. Swiss-born director Adina Tal co-founded Nalaga’at in 2002, and the organization now has a cultural center in Tel Aviv. Most of the actors have Usher syndrome: they’re born deaf and gradually lose their sight to retinitis pigmentosa. Some have traces of sight and hearing. What they all have is talent. Communicating by touch and touch-sign language, they move about onstage cued by the vibrations of a drum and guided by unobtrusive translators, who also sign for the audience. The actors express themselves in Hebrew and Russian; English supertitles are provided.


A 75-year-old painter accused of forging works by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning for a $33m fraud scheme in New York appears well placed to avoid prosecution and up to 45 years in prison, as he has moved to China.

Pei-Shen Qian was on Monday indicted on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and lying to the FBI. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan allege that he produced dozens of worthless fakes that were eventually sold by prestigious galleries for tens of millions of dollars.

Accusing Qian and a pair of Spanish art dealers of being “modern masters of forgery and deceit”, US attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that the charges against the trio “paint a picture of perpetual lies and greed”.

The dealers – brothers Jose Carlos and Jesus Angel Bergantinos Diaz, 58 and 65 – are awaiting likely extradition proceedings, after being arrested and bailed in Spain last week. However, prosecutors could only say that Qian, who previously lived in Queens with his wife, was “believed to be located in China”, which has no extradition treaty with the US.

The Obama administration has little chance of extracting Qian, who has both Chinese and American citizenship, even if it were willing to devote diplomatic efforts to doing so, according to Professor Julian Ku, an expert on China and international law at Hofstra University.

“There is almost no chance that China would turn their own citizen over,” said Ku. “They generally don’t have a policy of co-operating, and don’t have any reason to turn anyone over, because the US won’t turn anyone over to China.”

An FBI spokesperson would only say on Tuesday: “We do hope to make an arrest, but he is in China, so …” before referring the Guardian to the US attorney’s office. A spokeswoman there said: “Unfortunately we wouldn’t have anything further to add.”

Interviewed in Shanghai by Bloomberg News in December last year, Qian said that he was the innocent victim of a “very big misunderstanding” and had never intended to pass off his paintings as the genuine works of modern masters. “I made a knife to cut fruit,” he said. “But if others use it to kill, blaming me is unfair.”

A 42-page indictment unsealed on Monday, however, alleges that he knowingly participated in a fraud plot with the Bergantinos Diaz brothers and Glafira Rosales, an art dealer who is also Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz’s former girlfriend. Rosales, 57, pleaded guilty last year to crimes related to selling 60 fraudulent artworks, and has been cooperating with authorities.

Qian, who once painted portraits of Chairman Mao for display in Chinese workplaces and schools, arrived in the US on a student visa in 1981. He is said to have been discovered by Jose Carlos later that decade as he was painting at an easel on a lower Manhattan street corner. According to the indictment, he began copying works by artists such as Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, and forging the artists’ signatures; then, despite knowing “they were essentially worthless imitations,” Jose Carlos would sell the copies to galleries.

By the early 1990s, prosecutors say, Qian was churning out signed fakes from his home studio in Queens under instructions from the Bergantinos Diaz brothers and Rosales. In pursuit of authentic-looking forgeries, Jose Carlos is said to have bought Qian old canvases at flea markets and auctions, and supplied him with old paint.

He also “stained newer canvases with tea bags to give them the false appearance of being older than they really were”, said the indictment, which also claimed that some works were subjected to the heat of a blow dryer, while others were left outside and exposed to the elements.

Works by other modern artists such as Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Sam Francis and Franz Kline were also ripped off by Qian, according to prosecutors, who said he was found to own books and auction catalogues about the artists he copied.

They allege that throughout the 1990s, Qian was sometimes paid as little as “several hundred” dollars for each forgery, but that after spotting one of his creations priced far higher in a Manhattan art show, he “demanded more money” – and got it. By February 2008, Jose Carlos was allegedly writing Qian cheques for up to $7,000 per painting.

Far bigger sums of money, however, were involved when the trio of dealers allegedly sold the forgeries on to respected New York galleries. The prestigious Knoedler & Co, referred to as “Gallery 1” in the indictment, is alleged to have paid $20.7m for Qian’s forgeries – and then made $43m in profit by selling them to wealthy collectors. A second gallery is said to have made $4.5m selling Qian fakes that it bought for $12.5m.

Knoedler, which closed in 2011, is being sued for millions of dollars in lawsuits brought by disgruntled buyers. The gallery and its former executives have always denied committing any fraud and insisted that they made comprehensive efforts to authenticate Qian’s paintings.

The Bergantinos Diaz brothers and Rosales are accused of faking detailed backstories of the paintings and falsely claiming to represent clients in Europe. Rosales pleaded guilty to nine criminal charges in September last year and faces up to 99 years in prison when she is sentenced later this year. She was also ordered to forfeit $33.2m in property and wealth and may face further penalties.

The brothers are charged with conspiring to commit wire fraud and money-laundering. Jose Carlos, who lived in New York, is also accused of defrauding the IRS and filing false tax returns to hide more than $7m in income from the scheme. If he is convicted of all the charges against him, he could be sentenced to as much as 114 years in prison. His brother faces a sentence of up to 80 years.

An official from the Spanish interior ministry told the New York Times last week that, after he was arrested at a hotel in Seville last Friday, Jose Carlos suffered an anxiety attack and was hospitalised. His brother had been arrested in Spain four days earlier, according to US prosecutors. Neither could be reached for comment on Tuesday. The US is expected to request their extradition by Spanish authorities under a treaty agreed to by the two countries in 1970.

Qian, however, is likely to prove more elusive. He and his wife are believed to have left for China several months before he was named as “the painter” at the centre of the scandal in August last year. At some point before that, US prosecutors confirm, he was questioned by the FBI. However, he claimed not to know Rosales or the names of artists whose work and signatures he is accused of forging, and insisted he had not faked their style.

“The downside for him will be that he can’t travel to the States any more, or to other countries with which the US does have an extradition treaty – most of Europe, many countries in South America and Hong Kong,” said Ku. “But China is a good place to run if you are fearing prosecution in the US.”

Summary: Pei-Shen Qian, acccused, along with two Spanish brokers, of conning New York art collectors, will likely escape extradition


Jeremy Deller's studio is a revelation. I say studio it's actually a workroom in his flat near Brick Lane. On the door, an Evening Standard hoarding screams "Asteroid to hit earth". Inside is his CD collection, which includes The Downing Street Years read by Margaret Thatcher, as well as Acid Brass his own synthesis of dance culture and brass band music and posters for events such as Now It Is Allowable, the evening of video and poetry he is staging tonight at the Swedenborg Society in London. There's also an eye-catching photograph of Deller presenting a rotund man in a gold chain with a Supergrass album. "That was in France," he explains. "Wherever I go abroad I try to meet the mayor and give him a gift."

Deller is an artist who works with groups and subcultures, and with people rather than objects, collaborating with them, and also working on them, turning daily life into an artifact. It's a strange process, and you might ask where the art is in what he does. Isn't he just an anthropologist? Yet when it works no one can question it.

In 1997 he got in touch with one of Britain's leading brass bands through an advert in Brass Band World. He visited the Williams Fairey Band at the Nissen hut behind a Stockport engineering plant where they rehearse and persuaded them to abandon their usual repertoire for a concert of acid house anthems. The sound of a brass band playing Voodoo Ray caught everyone's imagination, and acid brass has become an underground institution, touring regularly.

In one of the highest-profile events, in 1997 Deller got together with art terrorists KLF for their 23-minute comeback as a pop group. The Barbican stage was filled with a mob of sacked Liverpool dockers shouting "Fuck the millennium", a brass band played their hearts out, and the KLF themselves, dressed as old men in wheelchairs, raced around with horns on their heads. Now acid brass is about to feature in a TV advert, much to Deller's delight.

Deller has just published The Uses Of Literacy, a book documenting a project he began two years ago with fans of the Manic Street Preachers. He wrote to a fanzine called Spectators Of Suicide, inviting fans to send works of art inspired by the band. They sent drawings, paintings, poems and even a collection of paperbacks including Nausea and The Bell Jar. For the published version, Deller has also commissioned a poem about The Manics by the current Eisteddfod bard (with an English translation).

Deller says he's going to north Wales this year for the Eisteddfod. For a moment I wonder if he's persuaded a male voice choir to perform the complete back catalogue of The Happy Mondays. After all, one of his, as yet unrealised, projects is for an exhibition at the Cornerhouse in Manchester called You're Rendering That Scaffolding Unsafe: The Lyrics Of Shaun William Ryder.

But no, he's going to Wales to develop connections and cultural exchanges the same instinct that makes him give Supergrass albums to French mayors. In October he's staging an exhibition in Cardiff of painting and photography referred to by Manic Street Preachers in their song titles and CD covers. "I'm getting real blue-chip modern paintings by Pollock and de Kooning, and a beautiful Warhol. The Manics have a song called Kevin Carter about the photographer who took the pictures of Afrikaaner extremists being shot by the police and later killed himself. I'm showing the photographs. We're having a weekend where we invite local groups to come and pitch stalls and local bands to play among these Pollock paintings."

As Deller talks, one project flows into another in a hypnotic web of fantasy. He's a party planner on a world-historical scale. None of his events has been stranger than his evening tonight at the Swedenborg Society, involving teapots imprinted with The New Jerusalem Is Born, a performance by Karl Holmqvist a Swedish poet who nearly couldn't come because one of his recent readings infringed Sweden's noise abatement laws and "dream drawings" by LA artist Jim Shaw.

All this will take place in Bloomsbury, in the meeting hall of the Swedenborg Society, an organisation that exists to promote the ideas of the 18th-century religious sect leader Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg was a respected Swedish scientist until, in his late 50s, he started to have conversations with angels. His most famous follower was the artist and visionary William Blake, who joined the Swedenborgian Church in 1789.

"People still want to think there's an afterlife, and Swedenborg's writings are very reassuring," Glennyce Eckersley, author of the bestselling book An Angel At My Shoulder, tells me. She recently appeared on Kilroy to defend Swedenborg's ideas against Church of England critics. "When you talk to people who have seen angels," she says, "so many recognise their dead father or relative."

Deller discovered Swedenborg's writings when he had a show in Stockholm. He put up posters around the city that juxtaposed Swedenborg quotations with images of pop stars. "One of them was an image of Keith Moon with 11 women and the quotation, 'When a man is tempted he is entirely alone.' We showed the posters to a Swedenborgian priest and he really loved them: he put some up in his church."

The Swedenborg Society is delighted with the event Deller is staging tonight: the premiere of a video of "the best and worst the town can give; spiritual highs but also sinister and not exactly evil, but I have some footage of bomb scares, and it's the desperateness as well." Over these images, Holmqvist will declaim a long poem about a Swedish teenager who dies and wakes up in a record shop on Charing Cross Road. The question, as with all Deller's work, is where's the art?

The video is great, and Holmqvist's poem a crazy vision of London, but Deller insists these are incidental: they are not the art. The point, he says, is to draw people in who would never think of going to the Swedenborg Society. It's a social experiment, like acid brass. If it works, it will function as an event that mingles radically distinct groups of people in this case the art world and members of the Swedenborg Society. The art lies in the event, which Deller is holding up like an object for scrutiny. While on one level he is totally empathetic with the Swedenborgians, a notice in his studio says, in French, "Death to irony", on another he is staging a play or, rather, revealing the theatre that already exists in everyday social encounters.

And this is where Jeremy Deller is a paradox: because to create his art he has to get very close to people, to win their trust. He genuinely respects the Swedenborg Society, and he's an enthusiastic person who admires every kind of small-scale social group in which he can see an alternative to consumer passivity.

But if Deller were really that nice, he would not be a very good artist. In reality, he is able to stand back a long way back from the events he orchestrates, even as he simultaneously immerses himself in the world of Swedenborgians, Manics fans or the elderly (last year he collaborated with pensioners in Bexhill-on-Sea to record their favourite '40s songs). Deller is doing something very similar to what Swedenborg did when he insisted that everything has a spiritual "correspondence". Deller's invitation to sample Swedenborg is a suggestion that we should look at social life as a giant allegorical work of art.

Deller, you might say, makes conceptual art. But, in the world we inhabit ideas must be embodied, and Deller's ideas are embodied by people. This makes his art at once seductive and, when you think about it, mysterious. "It's about trying to look for the transcendent in what is seen as the ordinary," he says of Swedenborg's philosophy. "Isn't that maybe what artists try and do?" And he starts talking about his next project.


05/13/2014 at 10:45 AM EDT

Location is everything in real estate.

Well, location and a great backstory.

, so named for its resemblance to the castle belonging to the titular character in Bram Stoker's

, is on the market.

"If someone comes in with a reasonable offer, we will look at who they are, what they are proposing, and will seriously entertain the idea," Mark Meyer – whose firm, Herzfeld & Rubin, is handling the sale – told the U.K.'s

Dating back to 1377, Bran Castle was never visited by Stoker, but he is believed to have read about it and based his character's main residence on the real thing. Stoker's Dracula is based on the legendary

, or "Vlad the Impaler," as he was known to intimates.

Potential buyers? From left: True Blood's Alexander Skarsgard, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, and The Twilight Saga's Robert Pattinson

Sadly, Dracul never lived at Bran Castle either, at least not in the traditional sense. Documents suggest he was captured and imprisoned there for two months.

The 57-room manor sits on 22 picturesque acres, and while Meyer did not disclose an actual price, at one point, investors were apparently hoping to get $135 million for it.

On the plus side, it welcomes some 560,000 tourists through its doors per year, all of whom are charged a fee, so it'll pay for itself eventually – which is a lot more than you can say for a one-bedroom in Manhattan.

Summary: There are 57 rooms, 22 acres and a great backstory – to say nothing of a wise investment – in this property


NEW YORK — The US drug maker Pfizer said Sunday that it has raised its offer for its British rival AstraZeneca by 15 percent over its last bid, making the stock-and-cash offer worth $118.8 billion.

If the deal comes off — and it’s no sure thing — it would be the richest acquisition ever among drug makers and the third-biggest deal in any industry, according to Dealogic.

Pfizer Inc., the world’s second-biggest drug maker by revenue, has been courting number eight AstraZeneca PLC since January, saying their businesses are complementary and would be stronger together.

This is the third time Pfizer has sweetened its offer, but it’s the New York company’s first formal proposal.

It also increased the ratio of cash AstraZeneca shareholders would receive, to 45 percent from 33 percent.

The latest offer would give them the equivalent of 55 pounds for each AstraZeneca share, split between 1.747 shares of the new company and 2.476 pence in cash.

AstraZeneca has repeatedly rejected Pfizer’s offers, insisting they significantly undervalue the company and its portfolio of experimental drugs. The company and British government officials also have raised concerns about the prospect of job cuts, facility closures, and erosion of the science base in the United Kingdom, where London-based AstraZeneca is the second-biggest drug maker, behind GlaxoSmithKline PLC.

Pfizer has made assurances that such cuts would be limited, promising to complete AstraZeneca’s research and development hub in Cambridge, England, and to establish the new company’s tax residence in England, which would significantly reduce its future tax rate.

But layoffs are inevitable in big mergers, and Pfizer has a track record of eliminating tens of thousands of jobs around the world as a result of megadeals.

Summary: The US drug maker Pfizer said Sunday that it has raised its offer for British rival AstraZeneca by 15 percent over its last bid, making the stock-and-cash offer worth $118.8 billion, or 70.73 billion pounds. If the deal comes off — and it’s no sure thing — it would be the richest acquisition ever among drugmakers and the third-biggest deal in any industry, according to figures from research firm Dealogic.


Being in a wonderful building is as consuming a sensory experience as listening to a beautiful piece of music, or eating incredible food. That's why I have chosen Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret's 1930 Villa Savoye in Poissy-sur-Seine as my architectural wonder. Everything about it, down to the tiniest detail, is irresistibly seductive.

The seduction starts at the entrance to the house on a dusty street in the Parisian suburb of Poissy. Beside the gate is a baby purist villa - Le Corbusier's teasing hint of what's to come - where the gardener or housekeeper once lived. The winding drive to the main house is lined with trees that obscure the view, until suddenly Villa Savoye is revealed in the middle of a daisy field. Le Corbusier described it as "a box in the air", and that's exactly what it looks like, perched on elegant white columns with a sunny terrace on the roof. Entering the house and walking through it is a delight because Le Corbusier believed that wherever you look in his buildings there "must always be something to entertain the eye".

The Lowry, in theory, had everything going for it. First, it has an amazing post-industrial location - perched on a promontory surrounded by Salford Docks, the historic source of Manchester's wealth. Then there was a very big budget including a generous dollop of Lottery cash. The Lowry had a real role to play as the sorely needed Pompidou Centre of the northwest.

Instead, it is like a Happy Eater on acid. The colours are cacophonous, the forms ungainly - and finding your way from the galleries to the theatres is not easy. As with the Montparnasse Tower in Paris, the best thing about being inside it is looking out.

· Alice Rawsthorn is director of the Design Museum, London.

Summary: Wonder: Villa Savoye   Blunder: The Lowry


Liberian police have had to protect Ebola volunteers and medical workers from protesting crowds. (Getty)

Ebola-infected patients are on the run in Liberia after a clinic was attacked by armed men who believe the epidemic is a lie.

The attackers, mostly young men armed with clubs, broke into the clinic in the capital city of Monrovia shouting "there is no Ebola".

There are still seventeen infected patients unaccounted for, who are believed to be on the run.

"They broke down the door and looted the place. The patients have all gone," said Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the attack out the outskirts of the Liberian capital.

Her report was confirmed by residents and the head of Health Workers Association of Liberia, George Williams.

Williams said the unit housed 29 patients who "had all tested positive for Ebola" and were receiving preliminary treatment before being taken to hospital.

"Of the 29 patients, 17 fled last night (after the assault). Nine died four days ago and three others were yesterday (Saturday) taken by force by their relatives" from the centre, he said.

Residents had opposed the creation of the centre, set up by health authorities in part of the city considered an epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in the Liberian capital.

"We told them not to (build) their camp here. They didn't listen to us," said a young resident, who declined to give his name.

"We don't believe in this Ebola outbreak."

The Ebola outbreak, the worst since the virus first appeared in 1976, has claimed 1145 lives in five months, according to the UN World Health Organization's latest figures, with the largest number of victims in Liberia.

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: Young men who believe the Ebola epidemic is a lie have attacked a clinic in Liberia, forcing infected patients to flee for their lives.


Samuel West directs the first major revival since 1980 of Howard Brenton play that caused ructions on its National debut. Less significant for its anal rape than for its parallels between Roman imperialism and the British in Ireland.

· Sheffield Crucible (0114-249 6000), from February 2.

Two major exhibitions in London and Leeds take us from the opening of the Sao Paolo Bienal in 1951 to the art of present-day Brazil. Espaca Aberto/ Espaca Fechado (Henry Moore Institute, Leeds [0113-246 7467], February 5- April 16) looks at modern Brazilian sculpture. Tropicalia (Barbican, London EC2 [0845 121 6826], February 16-May 21) focuses on the late 1960s - notably artists such as Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, whose importance is only now being fully recognised - as part of a three-month festival of Brazilian culture.

The Darkness seem to have fallen from favour, a fact underlined when singer Justin Hawkins was booed at the recent World Darts Championship. This tour could be the start of a fightback or a spirited last stand, but the shows sound entertaining either way: a giant hydraulic bra is apparently involved.

· Alexandra Palace, London N22 (0870 400 0688), February 7, then touring.

David Harrower's Edinburgh festival hit play, about the reunion of two former lovers, transfers to London. Roger Allam and Jodhi May star in Peter Stein's electrifying production. Albery, London WC2 (0870 950 0920), from February 7.

Britain's oldest dance company celebrates its 80th anniversary with a spring tour focusing on British-based choreographers, including Christopher Bruce, Mark Baldwin, Aletta Collins and Kim Brandstrup. Top of the bill is Merce Cunningham's lyrical nature study, Pond Way, accompanied by a soundscape from Brian Eno.

· His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen (01224 641122), February 7-9, then touring.

By combining a repertoire of catchy materials (haunting Nick Drake songs, lesser-known Lennon/McCartneys, Broadway standards) with a jazz improvising style of byzantine intricacy, American pianist Brad Mehldau has become an international star. Former Chick Corea drummer Jeff Ballard adds extra clout to what can occasionally be a cerebral group.

· Turner Sims Hall, University of Southampton (023-8059 5151), February 7, then touring.

Some claim Martin Kippenberger to be Germany's most important artist since Joseph Beuys. He was shambling, bullish, drunk, iconoclastic, immensely creative and self-destructive; this is the first retrospective to be held in Britain since his untimely death in 1997.

· Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888), February 8 -May 7.

Debutant British film director Josh Appignanesi gives us a disturbing psychological drama set in north London's Orthodox Jewish community. Ruth (Natalie Press) and David (Josh Chalfen) are brother and sister, whose feelings for each other go beyond accepted sibling emotions.

· Out on February 10.

Could this be the role that justifies Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar-winning A-list status? She plays the brilliant daughter of a mathematical genius, played by Anthony Hopkins, whose death leaves her with the difficult task of sorting through his papers and judging what his emotional legacy to her has been. Hope Davis plays her sister and Jake Gyllenhaal plays her father's former assistant who is deeply in love with her.

· Out on February 10.

A quarter of a century since the appearance of Ron Mael on Top of the Pops first provoked nationwide cries of "Mum! Dad! Hitler's playing piano on the telly!", Sparks remain a unique and cherishable entity, beloved of Franz Ferdinand and Morrissey, and still capable of confounding and amazing.

· Glasgow Carling Academy (0870 771 2000), February 12, then touring.

Robert Altman directs Arthur Miller's wild comic extravaganza about the crucifixion of a South American messiah and its capitalist exploitation. Matthew Modine and Neve Campbell head a stellar cast.

· Old Vic, London SE1 (0870 060 6628), from February 14.

Bolshie, overstaffed and fond of swapping instruments on stage, Brighton's Mercury-nominated indie-dance/DIY hip-hop collective are a fantastic live act: a funky, chaotic, head-spinning swirl of influences.

· Carling Academy Liverpool (0870 771 2000), February 15, then touring.

The unadulterated awfulness of hip-hop gigs is one of the most perplexing mysteries in modern music. But if anyone can surmount the genre's hopeless live reputation, perhaps it's the producer-cum-rapper behind last year's best album, the staggering, kaleidoscopic Late Registration.

· Manchester Arena (0870 190 8000), February 16, then touring.

Good Night and Good Luck

This beautifully photographed 1950s period piece confirms George Clooney as Hollywood's most intelligent leading man. He directs and co-stars in a drama-doc-style story of newsman Ed Murrow, who staked his career on a confrontation with Senator Joe McCarthy on live television. The film is a superb re-creation of old-style broadcasting, and a coded attack, it would appear, on America's current Fox News values.

· Out on February 17.

Veteran photographer Robert Adams's silver-gelatin prints charting the despoliation of the American landscape, Moroccan Yto Barrada's images about illegal immigration into Europe across the straits of Gibraltar, Phil Collins's photographs and videos, and Alec Soth's travelogues along the Mississippi are this year's shortlist. It will be a surprise if Adams doesn't win.

· Photographer's Gallery, London WC2 (020-7831 1772), February 17- April 23.

Bryn Terfel and Robert Hayward, Wotans in the recent Rings at Covent Garden and ENO respectively, consolidate their reputations as Wagner interpreters by sharing the role of the deathless mariner in David Pountney's new WNO production of the composer's early masterpiece.

· Millennium Centre, Cardiff (0870 040 2000), from February 17, then touring.

The Gannon and Stodart siblings' debut album won a Mercury nomination, but it was their live performances that built the band's reputation. A season-defying bout of gorgeous, good-humoured sunshine pop is guaranteed.

· Wolverhampton Civic Hall (01902 552121), February 19, then touring.

Ian McKellen plays an ordinary man with a guilty secret in Mark Ravenhill's no doubt disturbing new play. Michael Grandage, who rarely puts a foot wrong, directs.

· Donmar Warehouse, London WC2 (0870 060 6624), from February 23.

Philip Seymour Hoffman gets his teeth into the juiciest of biopic roles as Truman Capote, the frail, elfin author who in the 1960s pioneered a new reportage type of writing with his "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood, the study of a brutal slaying in Kansas. Capote conducts extensive interviews with the culprit Perry Smith, and becomes fascinated and then entranced by a thoughtful, complex man.

· Out on February 24.

Faust parts 1 and 2

The presentation of John Clifford's new version of Goethe's untidy masterpiece is a feather in the Lyceum's cap, as well as a symbol of Scottish theatre's resurgent energy.

· Lyceum, Edinburgh (0131-248 4848), from February 25.

Resembling some fantastic ultra-modern sailing boat, this joyful courtyard building is the third of a series of fine new European law courts by Richard Rogers Partnership; the others are in Strasbourg and Bordeaux.

Tate Triennial 2006: New British Art

Will the third in this wobbly series of shows will be less predictable than its predecessors? Will the Tate's minders allow German curator Beatrix Ruf to give us something new? The word British in the title doesn't help. But then again, it's at Tate Britain, the land that time forgot.

· Tate Britain, London SW1 (020-7887 8888), March 1-May 14.

Phoenix marks its quarter century with an exuberant, occasionally deviant programme of works. Alongside new pieces by Darshan Singh Bhuller and choreographic duo Ben Duke and Raquel Meseguer is Javier de Frutos's Nopalitos, which celebrates Mexico's Day of the Dead festival to a score of ranchero music, plus Arthur Pita's grisly take on fairytale, Snow White in Black.

· Sadler's Wells, London EC1 (0870 737 7737), March 2-4, then touring.

Hip-hop is booming this spring, with three different works on tour. Jonzi D's Tag celebrates the art of graffiti using dancers as moving paint (now touring). Renegade Theatre's Rumble puts a breakdance spin on Romeo and Juliet (Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 [0870-160-2125], March 2). And Impact aim to make the break into mainstream dance theatre with a double bill of new work.

· Peacock, London WC2 (0870 737 0337), from March 3.

Shostakovich's 15 string quartets rank among his most personal utterances and contain some of the most uncompromising music written in the 20th century. The Emerson Quartet's centenary tribute offers a rare opportunity to hear the whole sequence in a week.

· Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 (0870-160-2125), March 5-11.

Schoenberg's epoch-making work for speaker and ensemble is performed by an awesome line-up that includes pianist Mitsuko Uchida, the Brentano Quartet and the great German actress Barbara Sukova. As a bonus, you also get the Brentanos playing Berg's Lyric Suite and Uchida performing Schubert's D 899 Impromptus.

· LSO St Luke's, London EC1 (020-7638 8891), March 9-10.

Philippe Jordan conducts Steven Pimlott's new production of Tchaikovsky's heart-rending opera, an examination of broken lives and crossed destinies. Dmitri Hvorostovsky plays the glamorous, self-obsessed hero opposite Amanda Roocroft's Tatiana. The remarkable Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón sings the role of Lensky.

· Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020-7304 4000), from March 16.

Solo careers by guitarist sidemen seldom go swimmingly, but Graham Coxon, formerly of Blur, seems intent on bucking the trend. His albums have proved muscular and eclectic, and he cuts a surprisingly charismatic and commanding figure on stage.

· Newcastle University (0191-239 3926), March 20, then touring.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

The Trocks may do just the one thing - hairy men in pointe shoes and tights - but they do it blissfully well. No ballet fan should miss the return of Margeaux Mundane and Ida Nevasayneva in extracts from Paquita, Swan Lake and others.

· Peacock, London WC2 (0870 737 0337), March 21-April 8.

This repertory is safe - just three classics: Spartacus, Swan Lake and Giselle - and some of the company's biggest names are absent. However, this four-city tour takes the company to an audience much wider than its usual Covent Garden base can deliver.

· Birmingham Hippodrome (0870 730 1234), March 28-April 1, then touring.

The Royal Hunt of the Sun

The National's new Travelex season kicks off with Trevor Nunn's revival of Peter Shaffer's 1964 spectacular epic, about the Spanish conquest of Peru and the death of the Sun God.

· National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000), from March 30.

Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction

She's back, that fag-smoking, legs-uncrossing, no-pants-wearing minx! Will she do it slower this time? Such are the unedifying thoughts that inevitably greet this new sequel to Basic Instinct, the 1992 erotic thriller that made a star of Sharon Stone. She returns as novelist Catherine Tramell, this time tangling with the forces of law and order in London.

· Out on March 31.

Thirteen young artists, showing at London's ICA, with further offsite works at the Arnolfini in Bristol and the CCA in Glasgow, compete for a prize fund of £45,500 in the seventh year of this exhibition. Name a medium or an attitude, and it'll be there. Beck's Futures gets consistently better, more relevant and vital every time.

· ICA, London SW1 (020-7930 3647), March 31-May 14.

American trumpeter Dave Douglas a regular collaborator with John Zorn, is at the sharp end of that version of jazz-fusion that binds it to contemporary classical music. Straight-composing and free-improv have equal appeal for Douglas, and this tour premieres his composition Blue Latitudes, plus some Ligeti and Webern, and a free-blowing set for Douglas and his partners Mark Dresser (bass) and Susie Ibarra (percussion).

· CBSO Centre, Birmingham (0121-767 4050), April 2, then touring.

Laurent Pelly's famous Théatre du Châtelet production of Offenbach's satire about love, sex and the stupidity of war finally enters English National Opera's repertoire. Felicity Lott plays Helen of Troy, tenor heartthrob Toby Spence is Paris, and Emmanuel Joel conducts.

· Coliseum, London WC2 (0870 124 0200), from April 3.

Judi Dench returns to the West End as Judith Bliss in Noël Coward's comedy of bad manners about a games-playing theatrical family. Peter Hall directs an ace cast including Peter Bowles and Belinda Lang.

· Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1 (0870 901 3356), from April 6.

Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-39

Paintings by Mondrian and Léger, Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe's architecture, Alvar Aalto's furniture and much more besides in this major exploration of a movement that gave us utopian art and design, as well as the first ever fitted kitchen.

· V&A, London SW7 (020-7942 2000), April 6-July 23.

The Squid and the Whale

This tale of family dysfunction and recrimination has already proved to be quite a talking point on its US release, and promises to be the bleakest portrait of an American marriage since Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in The Wars of the Roses. Jeff Daniels is a pompous author whose marriage breakdown is accelerated when his wife (Laura Linney) discovers that she, too, has a writing talent.

· Out on April 7.

The RSC's year-long trawl through the Shakespeare canon gets under way with Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter playing the doomed, ageing lovers in Gregory Doran's production.

· The Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon (0870 609 1110), from April 12.

Renzo Piano's expansion and renovation of the Morgan Library in New York is a subtle yet major reworking of the Madison Avenue library, which has been housed, to date, in three historic buildings. A steel and glass central courtyard will give access to a new top-lit reading room, an auditorium and an underground extension of the library.

· Opens on April 27.

Sarah Wigglesworth Architects have transformed one of London's late-Victorian schools into sparkling, light-filled dance studios as a permanent base for Siobhan Davies's contemporary dance company, with a rehearsal studio large enough to show her work before it goes on tour.

· Opens at the end of April.

As part of Birmingham's mission to perform the entire oeuvre of Igor Stravinsky, BRB stages an all-Stravinksy triple bill. Alongside Fokine's Firebird and Balanchine's Apollo is a new version of Pulcinella by Kim Brandstrup.

· Birmingham Hippodrome (0870 730 1234), from May 3.

François Ozon, one of the most talented European directors, gives us a simple, heart-rending story of a young photographer who is diagnosed with inoperable cancer. He breaks up with his boyfriend, instigates rows with his family and finally finds that he can confide only in his grandmother (Jeanne Moreau) because they have something in common: they are both going to die soon.

· Out on May 5.

Set in provincial Russia in 1907, Gorky's little-known play shows a liberal intellectual caught up in a power struggle between workers and industrialists. David Hare - who better?- has adapted and burnished Gorky's original text.

· Almeida, London N1 (020-7359 4404), from May 5.

Forget surrealism as fun and games; this is the hardcore version, as seen through the baleful, fierce eye of Georges Bataille, editor of Documents magazine. Curated by Dawn Ades, this show promises to be tough and uncompromising, and as transgressive now as it was in 1930s Paris.

· Hayward Gallery, London SE1 (0870 169 1000), May 11-July 30.

Every couple of years, jazzers count the decades tenor sax titan Sonny Rollins has put behind him, snap up the tickets for his biennial London concert (this show is already returns only), and find that the old imperious magic still blasts off the stage. Rollins favours the same songs and the same band - but if the old 20-minute unbroken improvised sax harangues happen only once or twice a show now, they're still stunning displays, fizzing with links back to the early years of jazz.

· Barbican, London EC2 (020-7638 8891), May 13.

The Royal Ballet's recent controversial stagings of Sleeping Beauty cost the company dearly in terms of money and prestige. This spring, in celebration of its 75th anniversary, the Royal is mounting a revival based on its landmark 1946 production, complete with iconic Oliver Messel designs.

· Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020-7304 4000), from May 15.

Mozart's devastating analysis of the games people play in the name of love has always been Glyndebourne's calling card, so it was perhaps inevitable that a new production should open this year's festival. Ivan Fischer conducts, Nicholas Hytner directs and the youngish cast includes Topi Lehtipuu as Ferrando and Miah Persson as Fiordiligi.

· Glyndebourne (01273-813813) from May 19.

Not only is Dan Brown's conspiracy-chase-thriller all over the bookstores - now it's going to be all over the multiplex, too. Mr Brown cheekily wrote that his hero looked like Harrison Ford, but actually it's Tom Hanks in the leading role, hunting down occult revelations about Jesus's relationship with Mary Magdalene.

· Out on May 19.

Gianandrea Noseda, whose Beethoven cycle was one of last year's high points, now tackles Tchaikovsky's complete symphonies. The orchestral honours are shared between the BBC Philharmonic and the Kirov Orchestra, of which Noseda is also principal guest conductor. Expect something radical and very different.

· Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (0161-907 9000), May 19, 20 and 27 ·

· Previews by Michael Billington, Peter Bradshaw, Tim Ashley, Judith Mackrell, Alexis Petridis, Jonathan Glancey, Adrian Searle and John Fordham

Summary: From the V&A's blockbuster Modernism show to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-nominated Capote, our critics pick the highlights of the coming arts season.


In his funny, fierce poem "What the Chairman Told Tom" (1965), Basil Bunting has a dig at people who think poetry is merely "a hobby", and believe poets themselves are "Reds, addicts, / all delinquents": "Mr Hines says so, and he's a schoolteacher, / he ought to know. / Go and find work." The accusations are as old as the hills - though having said that, it's more common these days for visual artists to be stigmatised as outsiders. Why? Maybe because poets are so evidently the poor relations that the public can't even be bothered to typecast them any more. In any event, they are left comparatively well alone, compared to contemporary painters and artists, whose power to earn more money, and provoke a national bellyaching every time the Turner Prize comes round, makes them an irresistible target.

There's a long tradition of such abuse, as the National Gallery shows in its engrossing Rebels and Martyrs show. And, as it also proves, this owes a lot to the character and effects of Romanticism. Before the late 18th century, painters didn't make an especially big deal of themselves in their work. Sure, there are famous exceptions such as Dürer's self-portrait, in which the suffering of the artist is made Christ-like in its intensity. But, by and large, painters depended on commissions in which their own situations were allowed to play a small part, if any.

The change begins with Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy. In his Discourses he sought to raise the status of artists by invoking precedents that allowed them to seem driven by lofty ideals. That's why Reynolds' own self-portrait (1779) includes a bust of Michelangelo in the background and alludes so obviously to Rembrandt (the beret, which is actually a part of Reynolds' official garb as a doctor of law, seals the connection). He wanted to celebrate the exceptional skill of painters, and argue that it deserved a higher credit rating. He meant to bring artists inside the tent of society, not commend their otherness.

The show contains a number of images that catch things at the same transitional moment. Alexander Roslin's self-portrait (1790), for example, in which the painter appears in a splendidly embroidered costume, with the medal of the Swedish Royal Order of the Vasa round his neck, and an unfinished picture of his patron, King Gustav III, smiling at him from its easel. What we see is the artist as a successful courtier, decking himself in clothes that allow him to display his expertise. Much the same goes for the self-portrait by Elizabeth Louise Vigée le Brun (1782); she stands before us as a stylish beauty, holding her palette and brushes in one hand as though advertising her profession. But the picture is complicated, because she's advertising something else, too: the facts of her femaleness, and of her femininity. The plunging neckline of her dress, her graciously offered and empty right hand and her sweetly direct gaze all assert her technical competence, as well as seeming to say: "How else can I advance myself other than by looking like this, being a woman?" In other words, the picture simultaneously courts and criticises its male viewer.

It is a long time before women make any further appearances in the show. Their male counterparts, however radical they might have been in some respects, either closed ranks against them (claiming that genius was exclusively male, or able to absorb and manifest traits that were considered female), or relegated them to the role of models and/or handmaidens. Only at the very end of proceedings do we come to Paula Modersohn-Becker's Self-Portrait on Her Sixth Wedding Anniversary (1906), where the problems of female self-presentation seem to have changed very little - except, of course, that they are uttered in a female voice. Modersohn-Becker stands stripped to the waist, cradling her pregnant belly, eyeing the viewer with a look that is at once beguiling and accusatory. Everything about the picture confronts the maleness of the tradition of which it forms a part, including its reference to Dürer's half-naked self-portrait. It recognises what the catalogue calls "the gendering of notions of creativity", but challenges them. When she undertook the picture she was not, in fact, pregnant: her bump is - among other things - a sign of her independent inventiveness.

The invisibility of women painters haunts Rebels and Martyrs, forming a plangent counterpart to the show's more obvious treatment of various kinds of male exclusion. It wasn't so much that Reynolds' efforts to dignify painting came to nothing, rather that his initiatives were overwhelmed by the eruptions of Romanticism even before he had reached the end of his life. The rationalism of the Enlightenment, which late 18th- and early 19th-century artists judged to be excessive, and the rush to replace receding religious orthodoxies with different kinds of certainty, created a climate in which particular kinds of self-reliance became paramount. Autobiography, for instance, with its emphasis on inwardness and the importance of childhood as a time of especial clarity and sensuous connection with things-in-themselves. Trust in the power of nature to act as both spirit healer and vision enhancer.

As a way of buttressing these claims, painters worked to create a lineage that itself supported the kind of tradition Reynolds invoked. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, for instance, in The Death of Leonardo da Vinci (1818), shows the artist clasped and comforted on his deathbed by Henry V of France - it's an image that has the Establishment literally embracing an embodiment of "high" culture, and at the same time congratulates the French for recognising its value. (Ingres makes a similar sort of point in his The Apotheosis of Homer, where the blind bard is celebrated as "the fount of all artistic endeavour" and appears surrounded by a throng of great writers, composers and artists - among them Raphael, Dante, Shakespeare, Poussin, Racine, Molière and Gluck.)

Within this new and supportive frame of reference, the Romantics proper concentrated their attention where one would expect: on their own identities - and a clutch of marvellous pictures shows how suddenly and boldly they did so. Samuel Palmer's self-portrait (c1824) is a particularly good example: his intent gaze, which very movingly combines directness with dreaminess, is not just typical of the whole Romantic endeavour in its naturalness, but in its youth and simple seriousness. "Take me for what I am," it says. "What I am is enough." James Barry's self-portrait (which was, in fact, painted a generation earlier, in 1780) has a similar emphasis - but here the young face is more evidently troubled: his eyes have heavy bags under them, his hair is dishevelled, and the background is plain, heavy black. In other words, his picture spells out something that is only latent in Palmer's picture - a world of trouble that continually threatens to overwhelm the solitary creator, and might even actually derange him.

Fuseli's self-portrait (c1780-90) complements this. The virtuoso draftsmanship, which catches the face in a traditional pose of Melancholy, suggests not just inwardness but incipient horror: as the Romantic poets realised (and none more forcefully than Coleridge), a promotion of the self may help to create a sense of stability in an unstable world, but it also provokes a confrontation with inner demons as well as social disapproval. Fuseli's fists are clenched round his mouth in alarm, and the mouth itself is dragged wide and flat, as though he is at once suppressing and shaping a scream.

These distress signals remain central to everything that follows, but as the 19th century rolled forward they were often offset by other evidence of isolation. On the one hand, artists set themselves more and more ostentatiously apart, feeding off philosophical uncertainty, the need to preserve individual integrity in the face of new kinds of art-commerce (as the middle-class market expanded), and a tenacious but perilous faith in Romantic first principles. Delacroix, for instance, fills his self-explorations with images of despair, and his narratives - such as Ovid Among the Scythians (1859) - with evidence of neglect or actual punishment. On the other hand, artists also found ways of organising and dignifying their predicament. Many formed communities of like-minded spirits - the Barbus, for instance, which the catalogue reminds us were a "breakaway faction of David's Paris studio who adopted eccentric dress and, as their names suggests, beards". Or the Brotherhood of St Luke, who eventually changed their name to the Nazarenes, and whose beliefs are represented here by Friedrich Overbeck's portrait The Painter Franz Pforr (c1810), in which the sitter appears wearing an old German costume, surrounded by grapes, a cat, a skull, a lily and other symbolically charged emblems. Or the Shoreham Ancients, of whom Palmer was a presiding spirit. Or the pre-Raphaelites.

The bohemians formed a more diffuse but no less potent grouping. They took their name from Henry Murger's Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, a collection of stories set in mid-19th-century Paris, which centred on the lives of painters, musicians and writers who contested the values of bourgeois culture and relished life on the edge. Gustave Courbet spoke for them all when he said: "In our oh-so-civilised society it is necessary for me to lead the life of a savage . . . I must free myself even from governments. My sympathies are with the people, I must speak to them directly, take my science from them and they must provide me with a living." We can see what he means in his celebrated The Meeting ("Bonjour Monsieur Corbet") (1854), where we find him staff in hand, chatting on the open road to his patron Alfred Bruyas. There is no sense of obligation in Courbet's posture, only confidence: he has taken Murger's principles into the wide natural world.

The influence of the bohemians stretched in directions that seem opposite but are, in fact, closely linked. One led to dandyism, the ethos that Baudelaire defined in his essay "The Painter of Modern Life" as "a kind of cult of the self" that sheltered "the last spark of heroism and decadence". Manet, Tissot, Beardsley and - of course - Whistler are all here to prove the point, and in each case the mixture of aloofness and involvement is well integrated. It means, among other things, that they appear oddly reconciled to their situations - even the consumptive Beardsley, cowering in his huge tasselled bed, is part snuggled-down child, part invalid.

There's little such comfort in the show's closing images, where artists appear as willing or unwilling martyrs to their calling. Gauguin and Van Gogh's depressed appropriation of Christ-like sacrifice, Ensor's Christ Tormented by Demons, Schiele's anguished and buckled The Poet, all strip away the (sometimes very thin) comforts the bohemians and dandies had discovered, and connect powerfully with the painful self-imaging of Barry and Fuseli. So, to different effect, do the paintings that concentrate on creativity and sexuality. Munch's Vampire (1902) shows a man terrifyingly resigned to his fate at the hands (or teeth, rather) of his lover/ destroyer, and in Schiele's Self-Portrait as a Nude (1912) the poor forked artist is both pitiful and self-advertising, creating complex echoes of images by the first-generation Romantics.

But does this mean that, during the 130-odd years covered by the show, we see the focus of autobiography settle more or less where it began? Does the quality of isolation remain the same? No. When Munch and Schiele produced their work, they were fired by a tradition of introspection that their Romantic forbears lacked - and by the references of psychoanalysis, as well. It is a significant part of this show's achievement to map the gradual deepening, as well as the inexorable spread of self-scrutiny. What began as a form of rebellion, and became proof of isolation, may in some sense have become part of normal current practice. But its sincerity, as well as its value, must still be measured to a great extent by its power to surprise us. And, if necessary, to offend us - so that we can understand more deeply who we are by looking at those who set themselves apart in order to get a clearer view of humanity as a whole.

· Rebels and Martyrs: The Image of the Artist in the 19th Century is at the National Gallery, London WC2, June 28- August 28. Box office: 0870 906 3891 www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Summary: Contemporary art is often criticised for being all about the artist's inner demons. But it wasn't always thus. Andrew Motion on the rise of the tormented genius from the Romantic period to the birth of psychoanalysis.


Rebecca Adams with daughters Michelle and Jaracca; Brandon Jividen

courtesy of Kenai Police Department

10/28/2014 AT 10:25 AM EDT

of a family in Kenai, Alaska, local police returned to the dense spruce forest near their apartment and discovered "a piece of clothing" in the underbrush.

"It's a piece of outerwear," Kenai Police Chief Gus Sandahl tells PEOPLE. "We're still evaluating the significance of it, so I'm not going to be any more specific than that."

Last seen on May 25, Rebecca Adams, 23, her two daughters, Michelle Hundley, 6, and Jaracca Hundley, 3, and boyfriend Brandon Jividen, 37, made national headlines after police found all their belongings, including their wallets and keys to their cars, in the family's kitchen.

For weeks in June, they were the subject of intense – but fruitless – search efforts, involving local police, the FBI, scent dogs, helicopters, planes, and a dozen trained personnel and volunteers.

Last week's two-day search, with 20 law enforcement officials, wasn't the result of any new leads in the case, says Sandahl. Because of scheduling conflicts, it just happened to be the most convenient time to get all the various groups – including the FBI and neighboring police forces – together.

"There could be another small search undertaken later this week in the same area before it snows," he adds. "This case still remains a high priority for our department and we're continually asking, 'What more can we do?' "

With no evidence of a struggle or foul play, authorities remain stumped over the family's fate.

Kenai police aren't the only ones perplexed by the disappearance. Friends and family, who describe the couple as "happy and excited to be building a life together," have spent the past months searching for answers – in addition to blanketing the region with missing-person posters.

Rebecca's older sister, Lanell Adams, is still haunted by the last conversation she had with her, telling PEOPLE earlier this year Rebecca sounded uncharacteristically upset. "She said, 'Just know that I love you,' " Lanell recalls her sister saying before hanging up during that final call.

Summary: "We're still evaluating the significance of it," police say about clothing found during the search


It will soon cost you money to check a bag on JetBlue if you buy the cheapest level of tickets.

JetBlue Airways Corp. said Wednesday that it will create three ticket classes beginning in the first half of 2015, and only the top two include at least one free checked bag.

JetBlue executives declined to give a price for the bag fee, but they said pricing would fluctuate with demand. They said fewer than half of JetBlue passengers check a bag.

The airline will also add 15 seats to its Airbus A320 planes, increasing capacity to 165 from 150, and reduce average legroom to 33 inches between rows from more than 34 inches. The retrofit of cabins will start in late 2016, take two years and still leave more legroom than in the main cabins of bigger airlines, JetBlue executives said.

JetBlue expects that the new fare classes and bag fees will generate more than $200 million a year in operating income, and the extra seats will raise another $100 million a year.

JetBlue announced the changes as it met with investors in New York. JetBlue has been under pressure from investors to boost revenue.

In afternoon trading, shares of the New York-based airline were up 55 cents, or 4.3 percent, to $13.27. They hit a 52-week high of $13.48 earlier in the session.

Other big airlines have added fees on checked bags since 2008.

JetBlue’s move will leave Southwest as the only large US airline that allows all passengers to check at least one bag for free. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly has said the lack of bag fees has attracted enough additional passengers to more than offset money that would be raised by fees.

JetBlue also announced that it would delay 18 Airbus jets that were scheduled for delivery from 2016 to 2018 until 2022 and 2023 to cut capital spending by more than $900 million through 2017.

The news on fees and legroom comes just two months after JetBlue announced that CEO Dave Barger will step down in February and be replaced in February by the company’s president, Robin Hayes. S&P Capital IQ analyst Jim Corridore praised Hayes on Wednesday, saying that the incoming CEO was showing a focus on boosting revenue and being careful on spending.

The US airline industry is reaping huge profits due to full planes and modest increases in fares. Airlines have kept planes full and avoided profit-slashing fare wars by limiting their expansion plans.

Summary: JetBlue Airways Corp. said Wednesday that it will create three ticket classes, and only the top two include at least one free checked bag.  The company didn’t say what the bag fee would be for the cheapest flights.


NEWPORT, R.I., July 11 - It is considered one of the more restrained nesting places of the social birds, but Newport was just about as agog as it could get this week. From Bailey's Beach Club to the Reading Room and Tennis Hall of Fame to private lunch and dinner parties in the mansions that pass for cottages here, the name on everyone's lips was von Bulow.

''There's little talk about anything else,'' said Helen Winslow, whose husband, John, is president of the Newport Preservation Society.

''The place is buzzing, it's just wild, unreal,'' said Mary McLain Mead, a Texan who has been the center of a round of parties given to celebrate her marriage here today to Rudulph (Foxy) Carter, a former Foreign Service officer whose family has long been associated with this enclave of status and wealth.

But the most commonly used word for the developments that began on Tuesday and were still rocking the summer colony was tragedy. It was on Tuesday that a Rhode Island indictment charged Claus von Bulow, a New York financial consultant, with twice attempting to kill his wife with insulin injections -in December 1979 and December 1980. Mrs. von Bulow, the former Martha Sharp Crawford, suffers from low blood sugar and went into a coma from hypoglycemic shock last December. She has never regained consciousness and is now a patient at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. Suspicions of a Maid

The investigation that resulted in the indictment was begun early this year after Maria Schrallhammer, Mrs. von Bulow's maid, became suspicious about the illness that caused the repeated hospitalizations. The maid apparently reported her fears to Prince Alexander Auersperg and Princess Annie-Laurie Auersperg, Mrs. von Bulow's children from her first marriage, to Prince Alfred Auersperg of Austria. The children then engaged Richard H. Kuh, a lawyer and former Manhattan District Attorney, to look into the matter. The 54-year-old Mr. von Bulow is to be arraigned in Providence on Tuesday.

John F. Sheehan of Providence, who is sharing Mr. von Bulow's defense with Herald Price Fahringer, a Manhattan lawyer, denied reports that Mrs. von Bulow, shortly before her hospitalization, was considering divorce. The von Bulows - he is a Danish-born British citizen and a former official of the Getty Oil Company - were married in 1966.

He maintained, too, that hospital records showed that Mrs. von Bulow's hospitalization in 1979 was traceable to ''barbiturates and alcohol and hypoglycemia,'' not an insulin injection.

''Mr. von Bulow is so devastated by this that he can't comprehend it,'' Mr. Sheehan said. Brilliant and Austere

Although few people were willing to talk for attribution, several described Mr. von Bulow, who was a barrister of the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court in London and who also holds a master's degree from Trinity College of Cambridge University, as brilliant, knowledgeable, a fascinating conversationalist and a man no one really knew well.

''He's a tall, handsome, austere kind of man,'' said a woman who has known the couple for more than a decade. ''He doesn't cozy up to anybody.''

''He's one of the most controversial people here,'' said another. ''He always has been, and I don't know why. He's very European.'' ''He's not the most favored person in Newport,'' said a member of one of the summer colony's oldest and most prestigious families. Although there is little doubt that many of the couple's social contacts were based on a fondness for Mrs. von Bulow and her mother, Annie-Laurie Aitken, who also has a home here, Mr. von Bulow is highly regarded by others.

''He's a very good friend of ours,'' said one woman. ''I don't think we should talk about him.'' 'There's Been No Defense Yet'

''All the evidence has been presented by the prosecution, and there's been no defense yet,'' said Mr. Winslow of the Newport Preservation Society. ''He's a nice sort of man, and he's always been a great help to me in every way.'' Mr. von Bulow is a vice president of the society.

Mrs. von Bulow, whose father was George W. Crawford, former chairman of the board of the Columbia Gas and Electric Corporation of Pittsburgh, has holdings estimated at between $30 million and $35 million. She and Mr. von Bulow have a daughter, Cosima, who is now 14.

The von Bulow residence here, Clarendon Court, is a stone mansion styled after an 18th-century English manor house and protected by a vine-covered wall and wrought-iron gates. The mansion, on Bellevue Avenue, or ''Millionaires' Row,'' was the setting for the film ''High Society.''

Mr. von Bulow visited the house Wednesday with his lawyers. According to Mr. Sheehan, the von Auersperg children, who are living there, were ''cordial.'' Cosima, who has also been staying at Clarendon Court, will spend the rest of the summer at tennis camp.

Despite the lavish house with its museum-quality French furniture and spectacular arrangements of fresh flowers, the von Bulows were never among the colony's most active residents socially, and in the last few years their entertaining became even less frequent. Mrs. von Bulow, who is 49, was described as shy with people she did not know well, but with a disposition that earned her the nickname Sunny, a good sense of humor and a small circle of close friends with whom she felt at ease.

''We all knew of this investigation back in February,'' said one of them, ''but we never talked about it. It was the most amazing silence I've ever heard of in any community. It was a show of loyalty to her. We closed ranks.''

Summary: AGOG By ENID NEMY   NEWPORT, R.I., July 11 - It is considered one of the more restrained nesting places of the social birds, but Newport was just about as agog as it could get this week. From Bailey's Beach Club to the Reading Room and Tennis Hall of Fame to private lunch and dinner parties in the mansions that pass for cottages here, the name on everyone's lips was von Bulow.   ''There's little talk about anything else,'' said Helen Winslow, whose husband, John, is president of the Newport Preservation Society.   ''The place is buzzing, it's just wild, unreal,'' said Mary McLain Mead, a Texan who has been the center of a round of parties given to celebrate her marriage here today to Rudulph (Foxy) Carter, a former Foreign Service officer whose family has long been associated with this enclave of status and wealth.


Updated JAN 07, 2015 12:51a ET

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- Remi Barry had 16 points and DK Eldridge had 15 with nine assists as New Mexico State held off determined Division II New Mexico Highlands 75-67 on Tuesday night.

Pascal Siakam contributed 14 points for New Mexico State (8-9).

The Aggies, who have lost all seven road games, have also struggled at home this year, losing two for the first time since the 2011-12 season.

The Cowboys' Kendrick Nichols hit a 3-pointer for a 46-42 lead early in the second half. Then NMSU went on a 14-5 run, which included a Siakam jumper, 3-pointers by Eldridge and Ian Baker, a Siakam layup, and four straight points by Barry, to give the Aggies a 56-51 lead at the 11:08 mark. The Cowboys battled back but could never regain the lead.

Nichols had 24 points and Ricky Norris chipped in 17 for New Mexico Highlands.

Summary: Remi Barry had 16 points and DK Eldridge had 15 with nine assists in a 75-67 victory.


Hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have brought a pause to the Golden Globes with a joke about actor Bill Cosby, who is facing allegations of drugging and raping women throughout his long career.

The 72nd Golden Globes show opened with the traditional comedy routine, but turned sharp-edged when talk turned from fairy tales to the claims against Cosby.

The crowd reacts to the Bill Cosby joke. (Supplied)

“In Into the Woods, Cinderella runs from her prince, Rapunzel is thrown from a tower for her prince, and Sleeping Beauty just thought she was getting coffee with Bill Cosby,” Poehler said to just a smattering of applause from a shocked audience.

Red More: No one spared in Tina Fey and Amy Poehkler's Golden Globes opening roast

Bill Cosby remains under a cloud over rape and drugging allegations.

Fey replied: “I don’t know if you guys saw this on the news today but Bill Cosby has finally spoken out about the allegations against him. Cosby admitted to a reporter: ‘I put the pills in the people. The people did not want the pills in them’.”

“No Tina, that’s not right. It’s more like: ‘I got the pills in the bathrobe and I’m gonna put them in the people’,” Poehler said.

Fey and Poehler were hosting the show at the Beverley Hilton hotel, attended by Tinseltown's finest, for the third straight year.

Read More: Fey and Poehler's North Korea jokes mocked for being a bit racist

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Summary: Golden Globes hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have taken aim at actor Bill Cosby, who is facing allegations of drugging and raping women throughout his long career.


02/22/2015 AT 02:45 PM EST

For the first time in a decade, a Minnesota man was able to see his wife of 45 years thanks to a bionic eye implant.

The heartwarming moment was caught on video, as Allen Zderad, 68, excitedly talked himself through what he was seeing.

"It's a pulsing light," he said. "It's not like regular vision where it's, like, constant. It's a flash, and I've got to be able to interpret the changes in that shape."

Zderad had his wife, Carmen, walk past his line of vision and he could not have been more excited to perceive the motion, shaking the doctor's hand and hugging his wife. Everyone in the room was totally overcome with emotion.

"It's crude but it's significant," said Zderad. "It'll work!"

Zderad's genetic degenerative eye disease, called retinitis pigmentosa, became serious about 20 years ago, reports

in Minneapolis. The condition "progressively deteriorates the part of the retina that turns light into vision," ultimately rendering the carrier totally blind.

The device – called the "Second Sight Argus II" retinal prosthesis system – was implanted in him by Dr. Raymond Iezzi of the Mayo Clinic, says KARE 11. The device works by interacting with the eye; a camera in Zderad's glasses sends information to the 60 electrodes that were implanted by Dr. Iezzi.

As you can see in the video, what Zderad sees is a series of black-and-white pixels moving across a board.

The implant is not just practical; it represents hope for Zderad and his family. His grandson, Caleb, 13, has inherited retinas pigmentosa.

Meanwhile, Zderad will continue to test the implant for Dr. Iezzi as he and his team look for future uses for the device, such as to help those with glaucoma or soldiers who have lost their eyes in combat.

"I'm glad I have the energy and stamina to put in the time and effort," said Zderad. "I'm really excited. God has given me the strength at 68 years of age to still keep going, this is great."

Summary: Allen Zderad is the 15th person in the United States to receive a bionic eye implant


Managers at Atlantic Health System make $143,000 while engineers at Autodesk bring home salaries starting at $129,800. However, the perks at these companies go beyond pay. Law firm Perkins Coie provides full coverage of healthcare while Cisco offers to make up the difference between pay if an employee goes on military duty.

Summary: When asked what motivates them most, many employees will say one word: Money. These 10 employers are the top payers on the 2015 list of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For.


The private sector minimum wage parade keeps marching on.

Last week, Target announced that it would increase pay for all its workers to at least $9 per hour starting in April. That announcement comes on the heels of one made by Wal-Mart last month and after similar moves by TJX—parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and Home Goods—Gap Inc., and Ikea.

While retailers should be commended for paying workers more, the pile-on has brought attention to a key group of low-wage employers that have been noticeably absent from the discussion. Traditional fast-food restaurants haven’t made a peep.

That’s not to say fast-food employers have been free of pressure from their workers and the public to bump up wages. The so-called Fight for 15 campaign has repeatedly hounded fast-food chains—most notably, McDonald’s—for their low pay, erratic hours, and most recently poor workplace safety.

While worker advocates will tell you there’s no excuse for the fast-food giants’ wage policies, a few facts help explain why retailers have been able to move faster on the issue.

Hourly jobs in both the retail and food service sectors are certainly on the low end of the wage scale—retail sales workers make a median hourly pay of $10.29; food prep workers earn $9.28—but when you take into account how many individuals in each industry earn the federal minimum wage, food service workers have it worse. According to a report released in March 2014 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.3% of the hourly workers in the retail trade earned the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour or less (there are exceptions that allow employers to pay below the federal rate). Compare that to the leisure and hospitality sector, which includes employees who work in food and accommodation services. There, 19% of hourly workers are paid $7.25 an hour or less.

Put a different way, there are 477,000 workers in sales and related occupations whose pay is at or below the minimum wage, according to the BLS; in food preparation and serving-related occupations, there are 1,540,000 such people, even though the sales sector has 700,000 more hourly workers. When Wal-Mart made its wage hike announcement, this trend was put on display. The retail giant disclosed that 6,000—or less than 1%—of its 1.3 million domestic employees received the federal minimum wage.

In theory, retail stores also have an easier time raising wages because their labor costs—when compared to overall sales—are lower than at fast-food restaurants. In retail, labor costs represent 9% of total sales. In the more labor-intensive accommodation and food services sector, payroll costs account for 28% of sales.

“Generally speaking, if Target or Wal-Mart raises [wages] to $9 or $10, the labor cost increase that it entails is smaller than if McDonald’s or Burger King did the same,” says Arindrajit Dube, an associate professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Those labor costs figures also mean that retailers can more easily pass wage increases along to customers if they wish, since worker pay represents a smaller portion of all goods sold.

Despite these factors, Dube expects the retailers’ recent wage increases to put pressure on fast-food chains to follow suit, the same way Wal-Mart’s pay increase prompted Target to make a change (even after Target Chief Financial Officer John Mulligan said in February that rivals’ wage raises wouldn’t sway the company to make similar changes.) “They’re all competing for the same workers,” Dube says. “There’s lots of crossover between employees in the bottom end of retail and restaurants.”

Summary: A few facts help explain why retailers have been able to move faster on this issue than the major fast-food employers.