Going off key cost Remigio Pereira his job.

After taking the field alongside fellow members of the Canadian quartet The Tenors during the MLB All-Star Game on Tuesday night, Pereira turned Canada’s national anthem into a political statement with one tweak of the lyrics.

He sang, “We’re all brothers and sisters. All lives matter to the great,” instead of the original lyrics (“With glowing hearts we see thee rise. The True North strong and free”), while Pereira’s group mates looked on in disbelief.

Following the stunt, The Tenors posted a note on their Facebook page slamming the singer for his “extremely selfish” behavior.

“The Tenors are deeply sorry for the disrespectful and misguided lack of judgment by one member of the group acting as a ‘lone wolf’ today during the singing of the Canadian national anthem,” the statement read. “The other members of the group are shocked and embarrassed … The actions of one member of this group were extremely selfish and he will not be performing with The Tenors until further notice.”

On Wednesday, Pereira explained the recent string of tragedies sparked his ad lib.

I've been so moved lately by the tragic loss of life and I hoped for a positive statement that would bring us ALL together. ONE LOVE.

— Remigio of TheTenors (@RemigioPereira) July 13, 2016

Born in Boston, Pereira and his Portuguese parents moved to Ottawa before his first birthday. Instead of enrolling their son in music lessons, his folks focused on getting him on the ice.

“In Canada, it is hockey by day and hockey by night,” Pereira told the Metro West Daily News in 2013. “As a boy, all I did was play hockey. As a teenager, though, I sustained an injury that made me realize that my dreams of one day playing competitive hockey in the NHL were squashed.”

At 21, Pereira was studying classical guitar at the University of Ottawa. After being approached by fellow musicians, his pipes came into play.

“While I was at University, there were some singers who had heard something in my speaking voice and so they approached me and said, ‘Hey, do you sing?'” Pereira shared with Poll Star in January. “Sure enough, by the end of the year they convinced me to sing for them. I was too shy at the time, [so] I sang in the bathroom stall while they were listening outside. I came out and they were crying and they took me to the dean of music.

“From that moment on I started taking voice lessons,” he continued. “Music was always important in my house, not that it was studied or anything like that.”

Pereira joined The Tenors in 2006. He’s traveled the globe with Victor Micallef, Fraser Walters and Clifton Murray, and discussed the chemistry that held the group together.

“It’s not always easy spending so much time together. It sometimes feels like a marriage times four, but the work means a lot to all of us,” Pereira explained. “We all have very high standards and a common goal to always do what is best for the band.”

It’s evident Pereira didn’t consult his three work spouses before surprising an international audience with a bold stance. One that cost him his livelihood, at least for now.

Summary: Going off key cost Remigio Pereira his job. After taking the field alongside fellow members of the Canadian quartet The Tenors during the MLB All-Star Game on Tuesday night, Pereira turned Canada&#…


Remember that kid from high school with the purple mohawk and leather jacket? Well, he’s all grown up now, and Sir Richard Branson wants him to relive his youth with Sex Pistols credit cards, which were launched on June 7 and feature the cover the band’s 1977 album “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.”

Branson got his start with Virgin Records in 1973, and four years later, the seminal British punk band, the Sex Pistols, joined the label. After such successes as Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Mobile, Branson launched Virgin Money, a bank and financial services company originally called Virgin Direct and founded in 1995. Virgin Money is backing these new Sex Pistols cards, which come with a variable 18.9 percent APR.

Some may be tempted to cry “Sellout!” However, at least one Sex Pistol has been involved in a commercial venture before. Former frontman John Lydon – known back then as Johnny Rotten – appeared in a 2008 British television spot for Country Life butter. And apparently, it was good business – Country Life’s parent company, Dairy Crest, reported that Lydon’s advertisement had helped sales increase by 85 percent in just one quarter.

It also wasn’t the first time legendary punk rock artists had their music used to hawk a brand’s wares. Here’s a look at a few more.

Nike (Iggy and the Stooges – “Search and Destroy”) “Search and Destroy” is the lead track on the 1973 album “Raw Power” by Iggy and the Stooges. The band broke up before punk took hold, but they’re considered a primary influence and lead singer Iggy Pop has been called “The Godfather of Punk” countless times.

“Search and Destroy” was used to promote Nike Air sneakers during the 1996 Summer Olympics, just as the 1977 Iggy Pop heroin anthem “Lust for Life” was used in a Royal Caribbean Cruises TV spot. The latter commercial caused the satirical publication The Onion to run an article titled “Song About Heroin Used To Advertise Bank.”

Diet Pepsi (The Ramones’- “Blitzkrieg Bop”)

The Ramones have been called “the first punk rock band” by MTV and a great many others. Their two-minute, three-chord songs recall a hybrid of Black Sabbath and the Beach Boys, and though every single original member of the band is no longer with us, they continue to influence bands to this day.

Diet Pepsi used their 1976 song “Blitzkrieg Bop” in a 2005 commercial, but they weren’t the only ones to do so. It has also been used to advertise the Coppertone Sport Pro Series, the Cartoon Network and Taco Bell.

Watch the 2005 ad here:

AARP (The Buzzcocks – “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays”)

The Buzzcocks are less well-known than the Stooges and the Ramones, but no less significant. The British band shared stages with the Clash and the Sex Pistols during punk rock’s heyday, and even had the distinction of seeing their songs banned by BBC radio. In 2007, AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, used one of their songs in a commercial.

The song was “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” and the commercial depicted energetic people of various ages at a birthday party, with a tag line that read, “An organization for people who have birthdays.” Since it opened up its membership to anyone over 50, retired or not, the song may have been used as a gambit to disabuse people of the notion that it’s an organization for mildewed pensioners.

Dunlop Tyres (“Venus In Furs” – The Velvet Underground)

The repertoire of punk forerunners the Velvet Underground includes such tracks as “Sweet Jane,” an upbeat number ideal for promoting any product. But Dunlop Tyres, a British subsidiary of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, decided to use the S&M anthem “Venus in Furs” instead for a 1993 spot. According to the advertising publication Campaign, this was not an oversight.

“Tyres are invariably distress purchases, making branding difficult,” it said. “Dunlop attempted to change that with a visual tour de force aimed at fixing its name firmly in drivers’ minds… Set to the Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs, the ad had a nightmarish quality and was one of the most original and controversial creations of the 90s.”

Nissan (The Clash – “Pressure Drop”)

The Clash’s 1979 recording of “Pressure Drop” found its way into a commercial for the 2008 Nissan Rogue, presumably because it’s the most punk rock mid-size crossover SUV in automotive history. Prior to that, their song “London Calling” had appeared in commercials for the Jaguar X-Type, but writer Rob Walker said in The Boston Globe that anti-capitalist punk songs are as good as any other when it comes to advertising.

“Where you or I might hear a counterculture anthem, there is also a collection of sounds and lyrical bites ready to be stripped for parts,” he wrote. “From an ad-maker’s point of view, even the most edgy rock ‘n’ roll is just so much musical wallpaper.”

Daniel Bukszpan is a New York-based freelance writer.

Summary: A new Sex Pistols-branded credit card raised eyebrows. But marketers have a long history of using punk rockers in ads. Watch these.


Ellen Hopkins keeps a file of about 1,000 fan letters from young readers who say her poetry changed their lives. It's not just to boost her ego. She sends copies of select letters to schools and libraries that removed her books after parents or teachers complained about their content.

"Almost always when I send that package, the books get back on the shelf," she says.

The author's wildly popular young adult novels,...

Summary: The author of "Crank," "Burned" and "Smoke," Ellen Hopkins writes in verse about issues like teen pregnancy and drug abuse. Teen readers can't get enough.


BERLIN—A German court on Tuesday banned a comedian from repeating large sections of a satirical text about Recep Tayyip Erdogan, handing the Turkish President a partial victory in his efforts to silence mockery and criticism in Germany of his person and policies.

The regional Hamburg court ruling on a complaint by the Turkish president said the text by comedian Jan Böhmermann qualified as satire and that those parts of it targeted at...

Summary: A German court has banned a comedian from repeating large sections of a satirical text about Recep Tayyip Erdogan, handing the Turkish President a partial victory in his efforts to silence mockery and criticism of him in Germany.


07/26/2016 AT 01:00 AM EDT

has has signed off his show by saying, "Apologies to

, we ran out of time."

star has had enough with the long-standing bit.

Damon, 45, put together another therapy session to talk out his feud with Kimmel, 48, this time using art to release their emotions.

The pair, who had their

in September 2015, made much progress in their tense relationship.

The Oscar winner finally made it to the

stage in February when he was

during the late night host's annual Academy Award special.

"I feel Bat-trayed by Batman," Kimmel jokingly said about Damon's sneaky appearance.

And when it came time to sketch out how they view each other, the stars both had NSFW images in mind.

In the end, Damon and Kimmel couldn't keep their laughter to themselves as they broke character and had a bit of a bromance moment.

Summary: "Honk If You're Bourney"


This approach animates the “keep it in the ground” campaign led by groups like Mr. McKibben’s 350.org, which argues that many of today’s fuel reserves are “unburnable” if climate change is to be slowed, and so must be considered “stranded assets” — a notion that oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron reject.

On the other side is the camp that wants to engage with the companies, particularly through shareholder proxies, to push for action on climate change.

The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. We get it. This is your cheat sheet.

Groups like the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment, as well as New York State and City officials, recently presented at Exxon Mobil’s annual shareholder meeting proposals that would require the company to assess the business risks of meeting the Paris climate goals and to “acknowledge the moral imperative” to keep global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since the start of the industrial era; they also helped to pass a resolution giving shareholders greater say in corporate governance.

Shareholder action has improved corporate responsibility on many fronts, said Sister Patricia Daly, a Dominican sister of Caldwell, N.J., who is the executive director of the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment.

“Companies know the work we have put on their desk is beneficial,” she said in a recent interview, and cited the emergence of sustainability directors and efforts by many companies to reduce their emissions. “I’m confident we have really initiated that over the decades,” she said.

More fundamentally, a split is growing between the large, traditional environmental groups that try to work with companies and the scrappy campaigners who stand proudly outside.

Naomi Klein, an author on environmental and economic issues, has sharply criticized what she called “a very deep denialism in the environmental movement among the big green groups,” like the Environmental Defense Fund, which has worked with fossil-fuel companies to research methane leaks and to pursue market-based solutions to the climate crisis, like putting a price on carbon.

Ms. Klein argues that capitalism inherently worsens climate change. Working within the system as the institutional players do, she has said, is “more damaging than the right-wing denialism in terms of how much ground we’ve lost.”

Mr. McKibben said the kind of noisy activism that characterizes the work of organizations like 350.org helps correct what he sees as the institutional inertia of the established groups. He said the lack of mass-movement activism was a key reason behind the failure of legislation like the 2010 effort to develop a system to limit and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions.

“If we’re going to win the climate fight, it will come with a change in the zeitgeist,” he said. “And that — not particular pieces of legislation — is the ultimate point of building movements.”

Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, disagreed. Working with industry, he said, had helped deepen the understanding of such issues as methane leakage, which could produce remedies.

“More and more businesses want to be part of the solution,” Mr. Krupp said. Collaborative efforts helped lead to last month’s bipartisan passage of an overhaul of toxic substances legislation, he said, adding, “And we’re getting close to being able to do it with climate change.”

Given these fault lines on various issues, a question naturally arises: Are they hurting the overall environmental movement?

Even on that question, there are disagreements.

For Matthew Nisbet, an expert in environmental communications at Northeastern University, there is a risk that differences of opinion within the movement could lead to greater enmity over time, resulting in a lack of focus. Progress could be lost, he said, “if they start to see each other as rivals and opponents, and they lose sight of broader climate goals and their true opponents.”

But many in the various factions of the movement say that there is more agreement than it may seem from afar.

Mr. Krupp said that although tactics and technologies may differ, consensus has emerged on many points.

“We have to keep most of the fossil fuels in the ground,” he said. “We all agree with that. The math dictates that. We all agree that the conversion to clean energy should be as quick as possible.” Of natural gas, he said, “it’s an exit ramp, not a bridge.”

The movement to combat climate change is building an even bigger tent as more nations, businesses, religious groups and even conservatives have committed to dealing with the threat of rising seas and changing weather.

The number of Republicans speaking out in favor of climate action is growing, with the emergence of climate-oriented conservative groups like R Street and the efforts of Jay Faison, a philanthropist who has pledged millions of dollars to support candidates willing to buck the party’s orthodoxy on climate change.

Ellen Dorsey, the executive director of the Wallace Global Fund, which has promoted the divestment of fossil-fuel holdings and investment in cleaner technologies, has called disagreements within the green camp “noises around the margin.” She predicted that a combination of high-level collaboration and street-level activism would hold governments to their Paris climate pledges and push back against recalcitrant business interests.

Ultimately, Mr. Gore said in a recent telephone interview, economics may accomplish much of what governments have so far failed to do. Plunging costs of renewable energy make it more competitive than ever with fossil fuels. Similarly, the former vice president said, the biggest obstacle for nuclear power could be the expense of building new reactors.

“I don’t have a theological opposition to nuclear power,” he said. “It’s simply not cost competitive.”

Mr. Gore said that tensions among climate change activists follow the traditions of the civil rights movement, abolition, women’s suffrage and gay and lesbian rights. “In all such movements, there have been schisms, and minor splits as well,” he added. “It’s just a natural feature of the human condition.”

Summary: While activists can agree that something must be done, differences arise over exactly what and how, on issues like nuclear power and fracking.


A decade into the 21st century, no clear movement or style has emerged to mark contemporary art. No Impressionism, Modernism, Minimalism—no single description to encapsulate what has been going on. Veteran art dealer Michael Findlay, in "The Value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty," says that a name has been there all along: Commercialism.

In a book that dissects the past 40 years of the business, Mr. Findlay decries the rise of art as an asset class, the circus that auctions have become and the fact that, as the prices have climbed, we've stopped looking at the paintings themselves. "The greatest consequence of the commoditization of art is the loss of integrity of the object because it is with the integrity of the object that all lasting, true value lies," Mr. Findlay says. And: "One of the signs of a decaying culture is a reverence for form over content." When Edvard Munch's "The Scream" sold for $119.9 million on May 2, Mr. Findlay must have clapped his hands on his cheeks, aghast.

But wait a minute. Mr. Findlay is a well-known member of this commoditized art world: a downtown art dealer in New York during SoHo's 1960s and '70s heyday; the head of Impressionist and Modern art at Christie's beginning in the 1980s, when the 20th-century art boom really began to roar; currently a director of Acquavella Galleries, where the client list has included casino magnate Steve Wynn and billionaire hedge-fund manager Steve Cohen. Mr. Findlay and his own sales patter have been at the center of the modern art market for decades. From the first page, then, "The Value of Art" is something akin to an antiwar treatise by Napoleon: You grant the expertise but question the repentance.

Mr. Findlay divides the book into four sections, naming the first three for Zeus's daughters, the Three Graces, to show various components of art. Thalia, as the goddess of fruitfulness, he says, represents commerce. He uses this section for an introduction to the workings of the art market. Euphrosyne, the goddess of joy, stands in for society; in this "social" section, Mr. Findlay passes along his own, entertaining view of the art world's evolution over the past few decades. He describes a Christie's-sponsored tour of collectors' homes in 1995 when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened its new building. Mr. Findlay was one of the tour guides, he says, as a fleet of coaches "drove the visiting eminences from Rothkos and champagne to Warhols and caviar." When the coach he was riding in got stuck on a hairpin turn in Napa Valley, he says, "the driver was treated to gratuitous instructions shouted from the rear by a billionaire East Coast hedge-fund mogul whose soon-to-be ex-wife just as loudly contradicted him."

In the section called Aglaea, for the goddess of beauty, the author champions the essential, intrinsic value of art—a subject he addresses with passion. The final section is called "Marley's Ghost: Past, Present, Future" but concentrates on the present, tossing delightful barbs at the art scene under subheadings such as "Posh Lust." Collectors are frantically shopping for the artists today who will stand the test of time, he says, but what if virtually none of them do? Entire generations of artists have been filler between great movements in art history. Could we be in one of those dead zones now?

For all his tart views, Mr. Findlay generally does not name names. But archetypes do emerge. The cunning, sought-after artist who convinces collectors that each of them has had a personal moment with him. The hanger-on who waits until the gallery opening is finishing to overhear where the free dinner with be. The "greedy, dry-eyed children" who hawk art from their parents' estates. And the art collector himself, drinking single-malt scotch, wearing Lobb loafers, lounging on a Michel Frank sofa in his second home in Aspen.

Unforgiving of these dead-on types, Mr. Findlay is best when he confesses how he has fitted in with them. He slams auction catalogs that canonize sellers, for example, but admits: "I am guilty of more than my fair share . . . of eye-glazing flattery."

Although he is most acerbic about the contemporary-art scene, Mr. Findlay is also unhappy about the museum world. Something has gone wrong, he says, when the curators of museum exhibitions seem most interested in trying "to tell a story with the works of art as illustrations." He slaps the tribe of zombies who stagger through shows while listening to audio guides. (He recounts seeing a headphone-wearing woman shush a man who was talking in a museum gallery, though the man knew what he was talking about—he was the curator on the tape she was listening to.) Mr. Findlay also has little patience for opening-night museum guests who skip the show and race to the reception for "salmon on toast points and a chance to switch the place cards at your dinner table."

Throughout "The Value of Art," Mr. Findlay offers much sage advice. If you're thinking of becoming a collector and having a family, be prepared for your children to resent the art. He tells of one little girl who taught her cat to climb inside her parents' expensive sculptures. The book's wisest tip: Really look at art and buy it for its aesthetic pleasure, not as an investment. The market is too cyclical, with prices tethered to faddish taste. Art-investment funds offer little protection, he says, noting that the only fund that ever had a great success was organized in 1904 when a group of friends in Paris pooled their money to buy a spectacular Picasso, among other works. In 1914 the group sold the collection, quadrupling their money. Three months later, Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, and interest in buying art collapsed with the first shots of World War I. So were the collectors brilliant or just lucky? Mr. Findlay might say that they were lucky—to have had a decade to enjoy the Picasso.

Ms. Peers writes on art and culture in New York.

Summary: Alexandra Peers reviews "The Value of Art" by Michael Findlay.


When New York became the first U.S. state to require license plates, 115 years ago Monday, the plates weren’t the long alphanumeric combinations drivers would recognize from today.

On Apr. 25, 1901, New York Governor Benjamin Odell Jr. signed into law a bill requiring owners of motor vehicles to register with the state. It also mandated that the every automobile or motor cycle bear “the separate initials of the owner’s name placed upon the back thereof in a conspicuous place, the letters forming such initials to be at least three inches in height.” Owners were expected to provide their own identifying letters, and in those early days there were no restrictions on materials, style or color. Some used metal house letters on leather or wood, others painted the letters directly on their vehicles, according to license plate collector and historian Keith Marvin.

Though the new law put an extra burden on drivers, they were left “rejoicing” at news the bill was signed, wrote the New York Tribune. The reason was that, before the law passed, local regulations often differed—which meant that not only were the laws hard to follow, but also that drivers often found themselves losing out to people who got around the old-fashioned way. As the New York Times reported, “automobilists found that in many instances they were not accorded equal rights with the drivers of horses, and the confusion resulting from these various laws led to the need of a uniform standard.”

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

It wasn’t a wild idea in 1901 that automobiles were suffering from the lack of official acknowledgement: the New York Tribune later echoed that “one of the objects of the law was to put a stop to the harassing of the owners of automobiles with local regulations,” and the journal Turf, Field and Farm called cars an “unnatural vehicle” in their reporting on the bill. After the licensing and registration law passed, however, local authorities—even if they controlled a highway or street—could not ban cars from using it. The law also imposed a minimum speed limit (8 mph in cities and 15 mph in rural areas) below which local speed limits could not go.

On May 2, the Times reported that 17 people had already applied for licenses and a man named George F. Chamberlain would receive the first one. By September the Tribune reported 715 had applied, and licenses totaled 1,566 by the beginning of April the following year, according to Marvin.

But, as the number of cars and drivers increased, the painted-on-initials system began to fail, for a simple reason: There were just too many people with the same initials. Hence, the modern license-plate.

On May 15, 1903, the state legislature passed a new law requiring the New York Secretary of State to assign each registered owner a number that would be displayed on the back of the vehicle. And that same year—though New York drivers would have to provide their own plates until 1910—Massachusetts became the first to distribute state-issued plates.

Summary: On April 25, 1901—115 years ago—New York became the first state to require them


This is the second in a series of six posts on salary negotiation published in partnership with PayScale.com.

As with so many things in life—relationships, comedy, investing in the stock market—getting a raise can depend on good timing.

If you’ve done your salary research, know what you’re worth in the job market and have determined a pay increase is warranted, you’re far more likely to get it if you think strategically about when to have the raise conversation with your boss.

Here are just a few things to think about before you mark a date on your calendar:

Synching Up with Your Company’s Performance Review Schedule

If your company has a regular performance review schedule, try to have a conversation about your compensation a couple months in advance so that your boss has time to make a case and advocate for budget ahead of that process.

If you wait until the performance review process is underway, often the decisions about salary increases have already been made by the management team. It doesn’t mean that an exception won’t be made, but the easier you make it for your manager, the smoother the whole negotiation process will go.

Taking the Internal Temperature at Your Company

Even if the data shows that you’re making less than you should be, that might not be enough to convince your employer to increase your pay if the company at large isn’t faring well. The best time to ask for a raise is when revenue is on the rise, after a major financial win (especially one you helped with) or when the company is generally in a strong position.

If you’ve just had a round of layoffs, a raise conversation is unlikely to go in your favor. If you believe in the company, you may want to stick it out. But, if the death bell is tolling for your employer, looking elsewhere might be the best bet for improving your own financial wellbeing.

Staying on Top of Industry Trends

Taking a broader look at your industry and understanding the external forces that may be impacting it may help with timing your raise discussion, and will also help you make good, strategic decisions about your career overall.

When the Internet started becoming more of a content destination, those journalists who saw the writing on the wall and made the move from print to online early on are certainly patting themselves on the back. It pays to understand if you’re in a thriving or dying industry and whether the lean times are temporary (e.g. real estate) or lasting.

If you deserve a raise, you should ask for one, but good timing can mean the difference between a small bump and a significant jump.

Lydia Frank is the editorial and marketing director for PayScale.com.

More from this series on Money.com:

More on salary negotiation from PayScale.com:

Summary: The answer depends not just on how much you've accomplished in the past year, but on the budget calendar at your office and on the economic health of the company.


Hillary Clinton on Monday dismissed the notion that she needs to adopt some of Bernie Sanders’ positions to unite the party if she becomes the Democratic nominee, arguing during an MSNBC town hall that she has millions more votes and more specific proposals than her rival.

“I have a bigger lead in pledged delegates than Senator [Barack] Obama, when I ran against him in 2008, ever had over me. I am winning,” Clinton said during the town hall moderated by Rachel Maddow. “And I’m winning because of what I stand for and what I’ve done and what my ideas are.”

RELATED: Bernie Sanders admits he’s unlikely to flip superdelegates

In an appearance on “Meet The Press” on Sunday, Sanders acknowledged he has only a “narrow path” to the Democratic presidential nomination. But he said it will be Clinton’s responsibility to win over his supporters if she captures the nomination. He has also said he feels he is the stronger candidate to run against Donald Trump, or whoever the Republican nominee is, in the general election.

During the town hall, Clinton said her battle with the eventual nominee eight years ago was “so much closer” than her current race against Sanders.

“We got to the end in June and I did not put down conditions. I didn’t say, ‘You know what, if Sen. Obama does W, Y, and Z maybe I’ll support him,” Clinton told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “I said I am supporting Sen. Obama.”

MSNBC Live, 4/25/16, 10:27 AM ET

Kristina Schake of the Clinton campaign talks about Tuesday’s primaries and the “broad coalition” of voters Hillary Clinton reaches. She also discusses whether the Sanders campaign will take their fight all the way to the convention.

The former secretary of state argued she has more specific and robust policy proposals than Sanders, and made multiple references to the Vermont senator’s

where he struggled to provide details on his biggest campaign promises.

Clinton declined to call on Sanders to drop out if the primaries end and he is still trailing her in pledged delegates. However, Clinton said she spent “an enormous amount of time” convincing her supporters they should support Obama after she ended her first presidential campaign in June 2008.

“I hope that we will see the same this year,” she added.

And though Clinton declined to answer if Sanders could fit into a possible Clinton Cabinet, saying she would have to capture the nomination before deciding that, she did give hints to what a possible Clinton administration could look like.

“I am going to have a cabinet that looks like America, and 50 percent of America is women,” she said.

The presidential campaign: Hillary Clinton

Clinton arguably boasts experience in government unparalleled by anyone in the presidential field — but that has also made her a high-profile target for attack.

This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.

Summary: Hillary Clinton on Monday dismissed the notion that she needs to adopt some of Bernie Sanders’ positions to unite the party if she becomes the nominee.


I like jewellery but it has to become part of me or it gets left by the wayside. I sleep in it, shower in it, travel in it and kind of feel naked without it. The arm bangles I’m wearing I’ve had on since I was 18, so they’ve sort of become an extension of my body.

I’m very interested in artists; anybody who puts their heart and their soul into a piece that makes sense to no-one and everyone at the same time, I find that rather magical. I’m particularly fascinated by installation art because it’s an experience that invites a feeling, you’re forced to interact with it, you walk into its space, you feel its energy and that’s the point of it. I think that’s what I hope to recreate with shoes - in a sense they are an experience, you’re walking in them, you’re feeling them, they’re part of your balance, they’re part of your stride.

Summary: Mary Alice Malone established luxury footwear brand Malone Souliers with Roy Luwolt in London in 2014.


ATLANTA—On a recent Monday evening, 12 of the most powerful figures in this city's music industry gathered over Buffalo wings and Sprite in a cramped recording studio, making decisions that could propel a handful of aspiring musicians to prominence in some of the most important venues in town: strip clubs.

Atlanta's strip clubs are a proving ground for rap and hip-hop songs aiming for mainstream recognition. The DJs who provide the...

Summary: Atlanta's strip clubs are a proving ground for rap and hip-hop songs aiming for mainstream recognition. The DJs who provide the soundtrack at these venues have formed an alliance that helps potential hits break out—for a fee.


Libya’s state-controlled National Oil Co. said it was taking steps to restart exports from three blocked oil ports after the government reached a deal with local guards that had blocked the facilities during a pay dispute.

The deal could help revive Libya’s sagging oil exports, which have been curtailed as various factions fight for control of this North African nation.

In a statement Sunday, the National Oil Co. said it...

Libya’s state-controlled National Oil Co. said it was taking steps to restart exports from three blocked oil ports after the government reached a deal with local guards that had blocked the facilities during a pay dispute.

The deal could help revive Libya’s sagging oil exports, which have been curtailed as various factions fight for control of this North African nation.

In a statement Sunday, the National Oil Co. said it “unconditionally” welcomed a deal between Libya’s unity government and the Petroleum Facilities Guards to reopen three eastern ports. The guards, an autonomous force that operates like a militia, had blocked them for 18 months, claiming they weren't getting paid.

The state oil company said it “will now start working” to resume exports, including calling back staff to work and talking to international oil buyers. But it warned there were still security and political obstacles before the first ship can be loaded, without providing more details.

Higher production from Libya would add more oil to a global glut that has seen prices drop by more than half since mid-2014. After a recent oil-price rally, prices have again sagged due to resurgent production in Africa and the Middle East.

National Oil Co. chairman Mustafa Sanalla, who had opposed tying monetary payments to PFG leader Ibrahim Jathran in return for guards reopening the ports, said he received guarantees from the country’s presidential council that no improper payments would be made.

“I am pleased the presidential council agrees that we cannot reward individuals who hold Libya’s oil hostage,” Mr. Sanalla said in the statement Sunday.

A PFG spokesman confirmed a deal had been reached but didn’t return a request for comment on its content. A presidential council adviser on oil matters didn’t return a request for comment. A National Oil Co. spokesman declined to comment.

The three ports set to reopen—Zueitina, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf—have the capacity to export over 600,000 barrels a day. But they may not be able to load more than 100,000 barrels a day because of attacks by Islamic State and other armed groups, Mr. Sanalla said in a recent letter to the United Nations. The letter also complained about the risk of improper payments to Mr. Jathran.

A spokesman for Mr. Jathran declined to comment on Mr. Sanalla’s allegations but said a “key issue that was resolved was over two years of back salaries due to the PFG.”

Overall, the National Oil Co. said nationwide oil production could increase by 150,000 barrels a day, from about 400,000 barrels a day, within two weeks, thanks to fresh government funding. Provided talks with other groups that have blocked output in Southern oil fields bear fruit, nationwide production could more than double to 900,000 barrels a day, it said.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

Summary: Libya’s state-controlled National Oil Co. said it was taking steps to restart exports from three blocked oil ports after the government reached a deal with local guards who had blocked the facilities during a pay dispute.


When I arrived at Aunan Lodge, a neat clutch of wood cabins on the east bank of the Orkla, I was on a sporting debut of my own. I had never been to a fishing lodge, let alone tried for salmon before, and I had been warned not to set my expectations too high. Salmon are awkward customers. From early spring, the fish slowly work their way up from the seawater fjord at Trondheim towards their autumn spawning grounds in the shallow gravel beds of headwaters far upstream. The progress they make upriver depends on many factors, including the water levels throughout the summer.

Read more: 19 landscapes that prove Norway is the most beautiful country in Europe

Catching them is even more of a mystery. The fish don’t eat once they re-enter the river in which they were born, and no one knows why they snap at the brightly coloured flies cast into eddies and pools by fishermen.

If you are new to a river, you don’t stand a chance of working out where the fish are without the advice of a local guide. A fish might see the lure only if it is cast within a few feet of it. So after he had shown me around my accommodation – in a turf-roofed cabin called Anfield, where each bedroom is hung with footballing memorabilia – Vegard introduced me to Kris, who was to be my guide to the river and its mysteries. He kitted me out with waders, a rod and a tin of flies, and we climbed into his four-wheel drive to head for our first beat – from the banks of the Pollen rapids, around the edge of the Gamsholen pool and along the fast, shallow, gravelly stretch called Strupen, where a big salmon had been landed the day before.

I am not an accomplished fisherman. I did have a purple patch on the rivers of Iceland a few years ago, so I know roughly how to cast a trout fly. But salmon rods require a different, double-handed technique to launch the long arc of line across the river. Experts can land the fly exactly where they want it with scarcely a ripple and let it drift downstream. Could I do the same?

Read more: Norway travel guide

After an hour or so, with Kris’s help, I had a workable technique. It was never exactly graceful, but it had rhythm, and that is what counts. Fishing is all about pace and rhythm. It’s about the flow of the water around your waders, the slow footsteps as you edge downstream after each cast, the quiet concentration, the pleasure of watching the line spool out towards the far bank.

My three-day stay soon settled into a longer rhythm, too, driving or walking down to our beat in the morning and afternoon, and heading back to the main lodge – a converted potato barn – for hearty lunches and dinners in the company of a handful of other fishermen. The talk was convivial and, at least until the video of Vegard’s best goals came out, focused on fish. The pick of those goals was his winning header for Rosenborg against AC Milan in the Champions League quarter-final of 1996, while Silvio Berlusconi looks on miserably. It’s one of the great moments of Norwegian football.

The river Orkla is about an hour from Trondheim (Photo: AP/Fotolia)

You may have guessed by now that something was missing. It was nothing to do with my casting, I’m sure. It was the weather. Our timing had been unlucky. While conditions on our first afternoon were good, a late August storm blew in from the North Sea, and deposited several inches of rain over the Norwegian mountains. I woke the next morning to see the river swelling over the banks and whole trees being swept downstream. We still managed to fish, but I could tell from Kris’s demeanour that the prospects were not good. Visibility in the churning water had dropped to nearly zero. We’d need to be casting right on top of a fish to stand any chance of it seeing the fly.

Though we didn’t hook him, we did at least catch a glimpse of our salmon. There was a surreal moment on the final morning, when Norwegian television had turned up to interview Vegard about his campaign to protect wild salmon. They wanted to film a few visiting fishermen, and as I stood in the river and talked to the interviewer, I sensed a swirl in the water a few feet away. In a glittering flash of silver, a salmon broke the surface, leapt three feet into the air, stuck out its tongue at the camera and shot off upstream. It was huge. Honest. And if you don’t believe me, you can see it below (video courtesy of Norwegian TV2)

So, I’ve learnt two things from my first stint on a salmon river. First, that trying to catch one is just as hard and uncertain as, well, scoring a Premier League goal. Second, salmon fishing is not all about catching salmon. It’s about just being there. About forgetting that the rest of the world exists, slowing your heart rate, and feeling at one with the river and its landscapes.

I’m not going to give up my quest, however. I’m hooked. And as we all know, the longer you wait, the more chance there is that three will come along at once.

Salmon fishing packages at Aunan Lodge (aunan.no), Grindal 7393 Rennebu, Norway, are available from June 1-August 31 this summer. They cost from £765 for three nights, or £1,785 for seven nights, including single-room accommodation, full board and guiding. Both group and single bookings are accepted.

Direct flights from Gatwick to Trondheim are available with Norwegian (0330 828 0854;norwegian.com).

More information: Visit Norway (visitnorway.com/uk).

Reader offer: Experience the beauty of Norway aboard a premium cruise ship with the Telegraph Travel Collection from £329 per person. Valid for departure between April and October 2015. Follow this link for more information

Summary: Nick Trend tries his hand at salmon fishing in a remote Norwegian valley with Vegard Heggem, the former Liverpool fullback, as his guide


There’s a professor at Harvard University who’d like to take all your cash, and not for tuition. In a witty new book, “The Curse of Cash,” economist Kenneth Rogoff argues the human race would be better off without paper money.

He’s onto something. The US is adopting digital payment systems so universal and — in theory — so secure there will be little need for cash. But America is taking its sweet time about it.

Those annoying new credit card readers are one disappointing example. They’re old news in the rest of the world; ours are painfully slow, not as secure as they could be and not even available in most places. The US led the way in pay-by-smartphone services like Apple Pay,Samsung Pay and Android Pay, but too few places accept them. Meanwhile in much of the world, you can buy small items by simply tapping a card against the terminal. No signature, no PIN, no nothing. Here in the US, we use a similar technology to ride the subway. But for buying most other things, forget about it.

As a fan of all things digital, and of privacy, I’ve got mixed feelings about all this. In a fully cash-free society, government agencies could maintain constant surveillance on every dime we spend. For now, things aren’t that bad because digital payment systems aren’t that good.

And yet, there’s no denying the efficiency and security of digital payments. I may insist on my right to stuff a mattress with paper money, but in everyday life, I hardly ever use the stuff. And I’m not alone. A recent Gallup survey found that 53 percent of Americans rarely or never use cash, up from 43 percent five years ago. And if the latest technologies live up to their promise, they could deliver the cashless society of Dr. Rogoff’s dreams.

Old-school credit cards with their insecure magnetic “swipe” strips are a poor substitute for cash, because they’re so easy to counterfeit. The new chip-based cards solve the problem with a digital code that’s almost impossible to fake. But reading the code can take twice as long as swiping. Card issuers Visa and MasterCard have begun using new processing software that’s supposed to work much faster.

America’s chip cards usually don’t require users to enter a PIN number, as we do at our debit cards. The “chip-and-PIN” approach is used in much of the world, and makes it almost impossible for thieves to use a lost or stolen card. Retailers Walmart and Home Depot are suing the card companies, to force them to adopt the chip-and-PIN standard. But for millions, it’s a moot point. A February survey from Boston Retail Partners found only 22 percent of US retailers were even taking chip cards. Upgrading all 13.9 million American payment terminals will take a while.

These upgrades will also let retailers accept smartphone payments from Apple Pay and Android Pay. Activated by the user’s fingerprint, these systems transmit encrypted financial data through a radio chip inside the phone. But of the nation’s 3.7 million retail stores, only a million or so now let you pay this way. Besides, fewer than half of Americans have an Apple or Android phone that’s payment-capable, according to the Auriemma Consulting Group. And even those with the right kind of phone make fewer than 20 percent of their purchases with it.

The simplest of all cash alternatives, the “tap-and-go” card, is popular in many nations but virtually unknown here. These are credit cards that work like Apple Pay. You just touch it to the terminal to make a payment. They only work for small transactions of around $50 or less.

Banks tried issuing tap-and-go cards in the US a decade ago, but virtually no retailers accepted them. The new smartphone-compatible terminals can handle them, so they may at last gain traction in America. That would eliminate our last rationale for carrying a few ones and fives.

Harvard’s Rogoff has been railing against cash for decades and it looks like financial technology is catching up with him. In a few years the bugs will be worked out and we’ll have payment systems that are secure, efficient, and devoid of privacy. And to judge by current trends, more of of us will happily use them. Even me.

Summary: The country and its retailers are taking their time adopting efficient and secure digital payment systems.


Former Secretary of State Colin Powell. (US National Archives)

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in newly leaked emails, has criticised both major presidential candidates, calling Donald Trump "a national disgrace" and lamenting Hillary Clinton's attempt to equate her email practices with his.

Powell, a respected retired general who served under Republican presidential administrations, told BuzzFeed - who first released the details today- that he does not deny the emails' authenticity.

In a subsequent statement to NBC News, Powell said "the hackers have a lot more'' of his emails.

In the emails, Powell said he stayed relatively quiet during the rise of Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

"To go on and call him an idiot just emboldens him," Powell said.

Though he did express his views on Trump’s public push to question President Barack Obama’s place of birth.

“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist,” The Washington Post quotes Powell as writing in an email to journalist and former aide Emily Miller on August 21. “That’s what the 99 percent believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.

The emails also include Powell’s thoughts on Trump’s effort to gain support from the African Americans, claiming the real estate mogul is “taking them for idiots”.

“He is at 1 percent black voters and will drop. He takes us for idiots,” Powell wrote.

“He can never overcome what he tried to do to Obama with his search for the birth certificate hoping to force Obama out of the Presidency.”

The emails also include Powell's views on Clinton's email woes.

He criticised Clinton aides for tying him into the controversy over the Democratic nominee's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

“I have told Hilleary’s (sic) minions repeatedly that they are making a mistake trying to drag me in, yet they still try,” The Post quotes an email he wrote in May to Democratic consultant Vernon Jordan as saying.

“The media isn’t fooled and she is getting crucified. The differences are profound and they know it.”

In another spot, he declared of Clinton that "Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.''

Among Powell's emails, however, are comments that reflect that he too sought to use private email as a way to avoid creating documents retained by the government.

Decrying "friggin record rules,'' Powell wrote that he "saw email more like a telephone than a cable machine,'' in one email cited by The Intercept.

"As long as the stuff is unclassified.''

Congressional Democrats have seized on the use of a private email addresses by Powell and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a foil for Republican attacks on Clinton.

By suggesting that he didn't view work conducted via private email as a permanent government record, Powell could offer those Democrats additional ammunition.

The emails were posted on the website DCLeaks.com, a website which has been alleged to be an outlet for hackers tied to the Russian intelligence groups.

The website - which says it intends to expose the misuse of political power - has previously released emails from other Washington political figures.

Summary: Leaked emails show former US Secretary of State Colin Powell criticising Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.


US gun rights activists have filed a $US12 million ($A16 million) defamation lawsuit against Katie Couric and other makers of a documentary over an edit they say misrepresented the activists' response to a question.

The segment in Under the Gun shows nearly 10 seconds of silence after Couric asks members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League how felons or terrorists could be prevented from purchasing a gun without background checks.

But activists can be heard on audio of the exchange responding to Couric's question almost immediately.

Couric was executive producer of the film. She said in a message on the film's website in May that she regrets that the edit was misleading and that she didn't raise her initial concerns about the segment "more vigorously".

Summary: US gun rights activists have filed a defamation lawsuit against a Katie Couric documentary they say misrepresented their response to a question.


A NSW family are heartbroken after three war medals were stolen from their Blue Mountains home.

Ann Summers said the medals belonged to her late father and were all her mother had left of him.

"We don't really understand how anyone could just take something like that, (it) means nothing to them, but clearly means something important to the family," Ms Summers told the Nine Network.

Three WWII medals, a laptop and an iPad were stolen from the Summers' Glenbrook home on the morning of October 18.

The medals included the Pacific Star, which recognises naval service in the Pacific during the Second World War, an Australian Service Medal and a War Medal.

Police are appealing for public assistance as they try to locate the medals.

Summary: Three World War II medals have been stolen from a house in the NSW Blue Mountains.


Navigating one stretch of urban congestion after another – especially on two wheels – is, to be sure, an inexact science. But it is one that Nico Deportago-Cabrera has managed to master the past nine years through periods of trial and error, and cause and effect.

Deportago-Cabrera accepted his first courier job more out of necessity than desire. Now he is hooked on this open-air office space being his world as he traverses the streets of downtown Chicago as one of the city's 300 bicycle messengers.

Like most members of the eclectic bike-messenger community, Deportago-Cabrera had to learn how each city has its own vibe. Its own energy. Its own pace. To truly become one with this bumper-to-bumper world, bike messengers must first understand their place in it to survive.

"It was literally being in traffic and the sensation I got when I was in between lanes in thick traffic," Deportago-Cabrera says of the job's appeal. "You kind of look and there's this canyon of cars and buildings. It's like that scene in Star Wars where they're flying down the corridor to the Death Star."

Given the uneven ratio of automobiles to delivery bikes, there is an inherent risk of working the daily messenger beat. But that is part of the attraction for riders like the 32-year-old Deportago-Cabrera. Motorists assume they are reckless daredevils willing to do whatever possible to stay ahead of the curve. But for Deportago-Cabrera and the myriad others who share a love for his line of work, this isn't just a job. It is living. Pure unadulterated living.

Turnover within the messenger community is high. But for those who figure out how to survive -- and thrive -- on a daily basis, reward is measured in ways those outside the community cannot imagine.

Especially when taken to the extreme.

Deportagago-Cabrera recently captured his second men's North American Cycle Courier Championship in Brooklyn, laying claim to a title usually accompanied by nothing more than bragging rights. Christina Peck of San Francisco was the women's and overall champion.

For nearly three hours on a rain-drenched Sunday afternoon in October, Deportago-Cabrera covered a 17-block course blocked off by police barricades against 71 other finalists charged with making as many pick-ups and deliveries as humanly possible.

The annual event, which started in 1998 in Montreal and is more commonly known among messenger racers as the NACCC, brings together hundreds of cyclists for a weekend that is as much about celebrating the community as it is about the racing itself.

The concept of the NAAAC is ironically silly: A collection of money-strapped messengers who often spend their nights on couches of strangers to avoid costly hotel charges act as if they are working while on their days off.

The faces are familiar, both among top-notch competitors and the also-rans alike. But for those who have managed to set themselves apart from the field – widely recognized riders like Austin Horse, Peck and now, Deportago-Cabrera – three days worth of warehouse parties, art crawls and non-sanctioned races through city streets, known as alley cats, culminates in three hours of proving their worth to their fellow bike messengers.

But within the community, there is honor in being the best.

"It's totally like street cred," says Deportago-Cabrera, who won his first NACCC in 2009 in Boston, only a year after he started working as a messenger. "When somebody rolls up and you know that they're the champ of that year, it's like instant respect. It's like the same with any of these races. You might win a messenger bag or a bike frame, but really, we really enjoy being able to say, 'I'm the fastest.'"

To claim a title, champions oft-times need to blend speed with strategy.

At the NACCC, winners are determined by the amount of "money" earned during the course of the three-hour event. Racers work based on rate sheets and delivery zones, both of which are handed to competitors on pieces of papers before the NACCC final begins. In addition to all-day delivery assignments that are valued on a fictional base rate, racers also have bonus opportunities called rushes and double rushes. These have time limits that add anywhere from $2 to $6 to the base rate, and they're on a manifold that includes 11 checkpoints.

When, if and how many of the delivery zones competitors hit throughout the afternoon is up to individual racers. Although traffic doesn't factor into strategy because of the closed course nature of the final, ultimate success often comes down to a mental game and a reliable Google Maps smartphone app – especially among top-tier competitors.

For Peck, 30, who has worked off and on in the field the past nine years both on the West Coast and Chicago, out-thinking the competition has served her well throughout her messenger racing career.

Peck won her sixth NACCC title this year, when she – for third time – posted the best overall finish and topped Deportago-Cabrera and the rest of the field by collecting $300 in NACCC dollars – $19 more than her Chicago-based counterpart.

Peck's victory in Brooklyn came a year after she captured her first courier cycling world championships in Australia in which her strategy of not worrying about how fast she was covering the course compared to the rest of the field again came in handy.

"You know there's definitely not a lot of room to make mistakes," says Peck, who holds a sponsorship with All-City Cycles and works on a daily basis for Godspeed Couriers. "What my upper hand is in that situation is the fact that I'm being really smart and that I'm on top of it. I'm still fast – I'm probably faster than a handful of the guys that are out there – but I'm not as fast as some of the top dudes.

"So to beat those guys, I have to be super on top of everything."

Peck makes sure she has even the smallest of details covered and thinks out her course based largely on what makes the most logistical sense. Fueled by the competitive nature that has always consumed her since he was playing soccer, competing in horse jumping shows and running while growing up in Southern California, Peck cut her teeth on alley-cat races. Then she moved up the scale, leading to multiple NACCC championships and the world title in 2015. Once she won her first NACCC in Boston in 2009, Peck was hooked for good.

"I don't think there's a lot of things I enjoy that I'm bad at," Peck says. "I think it's a lot easier to keep going back when you have a title to defend. It's like when I first won in Boston, I was like, 'Well, s----, I guess I'm pretty good at this – why would I not want to come back?' But it's fun to see if (a win) was a fluke or it was something I could repeat or when you're at the top and there's no place else to go, you want to keep maintaining that."

For top-level messenger racers, organization plays a critical role. The closed-course nature of the NACCC final puts competitors on as even of a playing field as possible. But because an unexpected hurdle can throw things off kilter, charting the right course often sets top competitors apart from the rest of the field.

The entire race requires constant thinking ahead and understanding that even what seems to be an insignificant decision can spell the difference between victory and merely a Top-5 finish. But for those who have won courier cycling titles at both the North American and world championship levels, grasping how fellow top competitors think and operate plays into individual strategy.

That's where Austin Horse enters the conversation. When asked for his racing resume, Horse can't recall how many NACCC championships he has captured.

Horse is widely known as one of the world's fastest and most organized messenger racers as evidenced by the world titles he won in 2013 and 2015. Like Deportago-Cabrera, Horse has earned a sponsorship with Red Bull. Horse, who had won the previous two NACCC North American titles before this year, often finds himself at the starting line of an event surveying the competition, which allows him to better chart his own course.

While he is known for speed, Horse ties much of his success to being a reliable messenger in his day-to-day life of working as one of the more than 5,000 couriers in New York.

New York is known among bike messengers for its long avenues and abundance of green lights once cyclists master the rhythm of hitting lights in the right sequence. As opposed to Chicago, where streets aren't nearly as densely populated by traffic as in New York, Horse has learned to understand the best way to maneuver around the city in an effective manner. Yet, like the rest of the messenger community, instincts factor into street survival, especially in a city as unpredictable as New York.

"What that comes down to is, I think with humans, there's this sort of normal threshold of risk that you can operate with," Horse says. "If you're below that threshold, then you're not satisfied – you're not maximizing your human potential.

"As a people, we push what can be achieved and so there's risk in that. The more time you spend with certain risks, the more familiar you become with that edge and for someone who is very experienced with traffic, they can do something that would be very alarming to the lay person. But I know I am fully aware of the risks. I make no moves when I'm counting on someone else to react. I never do something where my safety is depending on the actions of another person and I think that this experienced messengers learn."

Regardless of how many competitions he has won, Horse knows being a champion bike messenger racer doesn't carry much weight outside of his chosen community of cyclists. But he treats his daily work with the same level of dedication as he does any North American or world championship, knowing that's when his cycling abilities really matter.

Among his proudest moments: Racing against the clock to secure the dentures of a man who had passed away and delivering them to a New York City hospital so that the man's family could remember him the way they had always seen him before his death.

But in other lighter moments, Horse is happy to let his customers know of his racing success.

"When you're the world champion and you're delivering a package to someone, they'll be like, 'That was really fast' and then when someone says that, what do you do?" Horse said. "I'll be, 'Yeah, I'm the best in the world.'"

No matter the differences between the cities where messengers work, some rules still apply.

After nine years on a job he never expected to last more than more than a few weeks, Deportago-Cabrera has long relied on his street smarts to get him from one side of Chicago to the other while splitting time working between two courier companies.

Over the years, Deportago has blended well-known industry secrets with his instincts. He can predict when traffic is going to shift or when drivers are going to make a quick turn before they actually do, which allows Deportago-Cabrera to remain one step ahead and act accordingly.

After making a tactical error in this year's NACCCC final Deportago-Cabrera estimates put him 15 minutes behind the competition and seemingly out of contention for a win, a split-second decision to make one last pick-up and delivery worth $4 as the final minutes of the race ticked away proved to be a difference-maker.

Deportago-Cabrera, who also won the weekend's Out of Towner alley-cat race, ended up finishing $1 ahead of the second-place finisher and $2 ahead of third-place, giving him not only his second win of the weekend and the bragging rights that accompany a NACCC championship, but a title that will be linked to his name for the next year.

For someone who grew up skateboarding and roller blading, but never enjoying much athletic success, Deportago-Cabrera has started to enjoy the benefits of being one of courier cycling's top competitors. He travels more than he ever did. He has competed in international locales such as Paris and Tokyo and become a mainstay in what he refers to this "crazy world" that he never knew existed before stumbling upon it a decade ago.

And as much as he loves a day-to-day messenger lifestyle he assumed he would one day gave up in exchange for "a real job," Deportago-Cabrera relishes the thought of being the best at what he does – at least in North America and at least until someone comes along and takes his title. For Deportago-Cabrera, who also performs for Chicago-based punk rock bands Young Distractions and The Static Age, that is living.

"Dude, I wake up every day hyped because yeah, I'm f----- Nico and I'm the best bike messenger in North America," Deportago-Cabrera says, "It's awesome."

-- Email Jeff Arnold at jeff.arnold@thepostgame.com and follow him on Twitter @JeffArnold_.

Summary: An inside look into the world of competition among professional bicycle messengers.


Brisbane primary school students are trying to strike a chord by setting a world record for the largest marimba ensemble.

The marimba, an African instrument similar to a xylophone, is a mainstay of most school music ensembles.

While there's usually only one or two playing at the same time, Thursday morning's attempt will have more than 100 students at Oxley State School take part in the world record attempt.

The record for largest marimba ensemble is held by South Africa, where 98 students from a Cape Town school played for 15 minutes in February 2014.

The Oxley ensemble will have to play for at least five minutes continuously to break the record.

Summary: More than 100 students from a Brisbane primary school will try to set a record for the world's largest marimba ensemble.


Members of the media set up equipment before the start of the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Justin Lane / EPA

There is a record number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender delegates at this year's Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. And while they come from a variety of different states and backgrounds, most seem to have at least two things in common: their support for the Equality Act and their contempt for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

LGBT delegates make up 11.5 percent of all delegates at the DNC this year, and this record number is not a coincidence - it's by design. In order to increase the number of delegates from underrepresented communities, veteran LGBT delegates established an advisory board to recruit new and qualified LGBT delegates from across the U.S. The newly appointed delegates span the LGBT spectrum and bring a variety of experience and fresh perspectives to the delegation.

RELATED: Watch the 2016 Democratic National Convention Live

Merrick Moses, a transgender delegate from Maryland, told NBC OUT he's excited to be a part of making history at the DNC, but he emphasized there is much more work to be done.

"I'd like [Hillary Clinton] to ensure that wherever LGBT people are in this country, they cannot be fired because of their gender identity or sexual orientation," he said.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, more than one in four transgender people have lost a job due to bias, and more than three in four have experienced workplace discrimination.

RELATED: LGBTQ Takeaways From the RNC

Several delegates who spoke with NBC OUT, including DNC LGBT Caucus Chair Earl Fowlkes, said the best way to protect LGBT citizens is the passage of the Equality Act. This bill is currently in the House and Senate and would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include discrimination protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Fowlkes, who was instrumental in increasing the percentage of LGBT delegates from 7.8 percent in 2012 to 11.5 percent this year, said he sees passage of the Equality Act as essential to protecting the millions of LGBT Americans who "can get married today and get thrown out of their homes or fired from their job the next day." He called the bill the next "big picture" item on the list for LGBT equality and said it's necessary in order to "end discrimination in all forms against LGBT people."

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a speech at the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio. Alex Wong / Getty Images

In addition to their support of the Equality Act, LGBT delegates who spoke to NBC OUT were united in their contempt for Donald Trump. "Disaster" and "horrible" were just some of the words used to describe a potential Trump presidency.

"He is an erratic and dangerous man. His foreign policy would be unpredictable, and his domestic policy would certainly be a trainwreck," Chris Sgro, a DNC delegate and a member of the North Carolina General Assembly, said of the GOP presidential nominee.

Sgro said the Republican platform is a step backward for America in the same way HB2, North Carolina's so-called "bathroom bill," has been for his state. "If the GOP had its way, the whole country would look like North Carolina," Sgro added.

Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine attend a campaign rally in Miami, Florida on July 23, 2016. Gustavo Caballero / Getty Images

As might be expected, the LGBT DNC delegates who spoke with NBC OUT were supportive of their party's nominee, Hillary Clinton, and seemed confident she would continue the pro-LGBT policies of the Obama administration.

"I think Secretary Clinton is the one with the most experience," Merrick Moses said. "She has a 40-year track record of working with marginalized communities around the nation and the world."

Follow NBC OUT on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Summary: There's a record number of LGBT delegates at this year's DNC. While they come from a variety of different states and backgrounds, most have at least two things in common: support for the Equality Act and contempt for Donald Trump.


Originally posted Jul 2nd 2007 9:51 AM PDT by TMZ Staff

Paris Hilton is certainly enjoying her time in Maui -- and was spotted on a carefree shopping spree over the weekend. Cameras snapped the socialite strolling solo around Hawaii -- save for a bodyguard -- where she worked a crowd gathered near her car. Paris lost the ridiculous disguise she donned at the airport on Friday, once again sporting her blonde extend-a-locks and a somewhat more subtle sun hat. It's hot!The smiling heiress stopped to sign autographs and take pictures with the group, again soaking up the attention -- and natural sunlight -- that comes with life outside the pokey.

Tags: Paparazzi Video, Paris Hilton

Summary: Paris Hilton is certainly enjoying her time in Maui -- and was spotted on a carefree shopping spree over the weekend. insertBCSinglePlayer(1078573089);…


BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA MOLLOY

Wednesday, September 27th 1995, 4:33AM

Barbra Streisand once claimed, "I never learned about manipulating men." But our early peek at James Spada's new bio, "Streisand: Her Life" (Crown), suggests she was being much too modest. According to Spada:

Her "Yentl" co-star Mandy Patinkin had to sign a clause in his contract agreeing never to say anything bad about Streisand.

Ex-husband Elliott Gould once told her, "I don't know why I'm loyal to you. You're not nice to me. You don't like me. You're mean to me. You don't help me. You're rude to me."

Still, the diva wasn't always in control: Spada writes that Babs' boyfriend, haircutter-turned-producer Jon Peters, was "quick to lose his temper" and "quick to resort to fisticuffs."

"A Star Is Born" director Frank Pierson "soon realized that Barbra was in physical fear of Jon."

The writer adds: "As Pierson walked to his car at the end of filming one evening, he saw Barbra scurry out from behind a hedge, crouched low, and running along behind some cars. 'For God's sake, take me home!' she pleaded. In the car, she cowered in a corner, trembling. 'He gets so furious,' she said. 'I don't know what to do."'

Streisand's relationship with Don Johnson began to unravel after she heard he was seeing Penelope Ann Miller on the sly during a film shoot in Canada. Streisand quickly flew North and the two rekindled their romance. But after Johnson started dating 18-year-old Uma Thurman, Johnson reportedly suggested they "embark on a non-monagamous open marriage." Streisand didn't bite.

Spada, who's written biographies of Bette Davis and Grace Kelly, also claims that Streisand went on her recent tour because of cash-flow problems. Spada said Streisand called music producer Barry Dennen in 1993 for financial advice, saying, "all my money's tied up in investments and real estate."

If you're a gorgeous blond with a 40-inch bust who wants to get paid for just standing around, "Baywatch" may have a job for you.

Pamela Anderson Lee's long-time body double Melissa Park was fired Thursday after she told a national TV show that the only difference between her and the equally buxom star is that Lee used implants to achieve her camelback silhouette.

"The only real difference between me and Pam is they're real," Park vouched, pointing breastward.

This startling revelation was aired on "American Journal" last Wednesday.. The next morning, Park was fired. Park, who's been Lee's stand-in for three years and her double in the movie "Barb Wire," wrote Lee an apology in an attempt to get back her unique position.

"I thought we'd known each other long enough that we could joke about things and not take things so seriously," Park wrote. Alas, Park chose the two things Lee takes most seriously.

Charlie Sheen has only been married a few weeks to former model Donna Peele. But does his ex-girlfriend have a surprising wedding present? Ex-porn star Ginger Lynn Allen is telling friends that she's pregnant. She's also saying Sheen could be the father, a West Coast source claims.

Allen, the 32-year-old star of "Bound and Gagged," gave up blue movies 10 years ago, and has since starred in legit pix like "Young Guns," in which Sheen also starred.

The two began dating in 1991 and have kept in touch. In 1993, Sheen helped pay her back taxes.

Allen's agent, Charles Clay, told us late yesterday: "I don't know the answer and I have no comment." Sheen's flack Jeff Ballard did not return calls.

Black and Latino cops in L.A. have come to the defense of retired detective Mark Fuhrman.

A number of detectives who were partners with the N-word-spouting Fuhrman say in October's L.A. magazine that he never showed them a hint of racism or sexism.

Sgt. Roberto Alaniz says "he asked me to work with him." Carlton Brown, who's black, vouches, "He was courteous to everybody and treated me well."

Why then did Fuhrman spew such venom to screenwriter Laura McKinney? Brown guesses money made Fuhrman "sensationalize" his cop yarns.

L.A. magazine's editor reportedly has been told he should wash out his own mouth.

Word is Robert Sam Anson, the hard-driving New York journalist who took over the mag last May, has been hit with several internal complaints by female staffers claiming he's referred to them by their body parts.

Anson, who has cut out the mag's use of sexist expletives in its articles, says company policy forbids him from discussing staff complaints.

He admits he did once get into "an argument" with managing editor Helene Goldsen.

"I don't believe I screamed," says Anson. "I was not sexist."

Anson allows, "I can be short with people." But he vigorously denies trying to kick former articles editor Terry Mulgannon in the face, as Mulgannon alleged in a profile of Anson in last Sunday's L.A. Times.

Luciano Pavarotti's wife has reportedly flown from the couple's mansion in Italy. Word is she can no longer tolerate the tenor's open affection for his secretary . . .

Designer Tommy Hilfiger has a deal to rehab the wardrobe of Knicks coach Don Nelson. Unlike his Armani-clad predecessor Pat Riley, Nelson has repeatedly risked arrest by the fashion police. Hilfiger has also recruited Knicks Anthony Mason, Derek Harper and John Starks for the Saturday opening of his shop at Bloomingdale's.

Summary: Barbra Streisand once claimed, "I never learned about manipulating men."But our early peek at James Spada's new bio, "Streisand: Her Life"(Crown), suggests she was being much too modest. According to Spada: Her "Yentl"co-star Mandy Patinkin had to sign a clause in his contract agreeing never to say anything bad about Streisand. Ex-husband Elliott Gould once told her, "I don't know why I'm loyal to you. You're not nice to me. You


By BILL EGBERT and BILL HUTCHINSON DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Friday, April 27th 2001, 2:21AM

An overflow crowd filed past the coffins of five members of a Brooklyn family last night, three women and two men remembered for their exemplary lives and premature deaths in a car crash.

Sobs and prayers echoed through the Masonic Temple in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where more than 600 friends and relatives bid a somber farewell.

"They were a beautiful family," said a tearful Idalia Bisbal, 42, a Crown Heights neighbor of James and Auber Stewart. "They were so friendly, such very sweet people."

Five open metal coffins, each surrounded by a bounty of flowers, sat at the front of the sprawling assembly hall.

The first coffin held Zora Goins, 75, who sang in the choir at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Brooklyn. Next to her was her nephew Melvin Stewart, 52. His parents, Auber Stewart, 72, and James Stewart, 75, a former Marine who survived D-Day, were beside him.

Their daughter Lorraine, 49, ended the solemn row.

About 8 p.m., immediate family members, including James and Auber's sons, James Stewart Jr., the second-ranking member of the Jack Wilson Masonic Lodge, and Craig Stewart, an 18-year veteran of the NYPD, entered for the funeral service.

Lorraine Stewart, an administrator for District 32 in Brooklyn, was driving her family home from a wake a week ago tonight when their minivan slammed into a city bus on Brooklyn Ave. at St. Johns Place in Crown Heights.

Police believe Auber Stewart, who suffered from a heart condition, became ill and that Lorraine was racing to get her to Kings County Hospital when she ran a red light and hit the bus.

Mourner Joyce Johnson, 45, recalled singing with Auber just two Sundays ago. "She was such a beautiful person," she said.

Summary: An overflow crowd filed past the coffins of five members of a Brooklyn family last night, three women and two men remembered for their exemplary lives and premature deaths in a car crash. Sobs and prayers echoed through the Masonic Temple in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where more than 600 friends and relatives bid a somber farewell. "They were a beautiful family,"said a tearful Idalia Bisbal, 42, a


In a setback for efforts to end a tax dispute between the United States and Switzerland, a Swiss court said Wednesday that Credit Suisse could not turn over account data of its American clients to US tax authorities because doing so would violate the terms of a 1996 tax treaty between the two countries.

In its decision, dated April 5 and published Wednesday, the Federal Administrative Court in Bern upheld the appeal of a bank client who had objected to having his account data given to the Internal Revenue Service.

The United States is investigating Credit Suisse and 10 other Swiss banks on suspicions that they helped Americans evade taxes.

The court decided that the IRS cast too wide a net in a September request for confidential Credit Suisse client information.

The criteria, the court found, were not narrow enough to enable the bank to identify clients suspected of fraudulent conduct “with a high degree of probability.’’

Rather, it appeared that the IRS was pursuing people for “mere tax evasion, for which administrative assistance cannot be granted,’’ according to the 1996 treaty, “even if high amounts are at stake.’’ The court also said that “mere failure to declare a bank account may be qualified - at the utmost - as tax evasion, which is not subject to administrative assistance.’’

The law governing Swiss banking secrecy distinguishes between tax fraud, which is a crime in Switzerland, and tax evasion, which is not - a distinction that has never held sway in Washington.

The ruling hinders Credit Suisse’s efforts to reach a deal with the IRS and limits the Swiss government’s options for addressing the issue.

A court decision favorable to the transfer of the data might have created a precedent that would smooth a path for the other institutions that are being investigated to resolve their own problems and end the uncertainty created by the investigations.

In the meantime, Swiss and US officials are continuing to work toward a global settlement that would render such ad hoc requests irrelevant.

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the president of the Swiss Federal Council and finance minister, said last month that there had been “considerable progress’’ toward such an agreement.

Washington’s attack on Swiss banking secrecy began with its successful pursuit of UBS, the largest Swiss bank, which agreed in 2009 to pay a $780 million fine and hand over data on thousands of client accounts to avoid prosecution.

A spokesman for the Swiss government did not return calls seeking comment. Spokesmen for the IRS and for Credit Swiss declined to comment.

Summary: Talks to resolve a long-running spat between Switzerland and the United States over how to pursue suspected tax evaders suffered a blow Wednesday, when a Swiss court blocked the handover of one unnamed bank client’s data to U.S. authorities. The Federal Administrative Court said a 1996 treaty between Switzerland and the United States doesn’t allow the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to request the account details of potential tax cheats without clear evidence of fraudulent intent.


Carol Johnson and Jackie Jenkins-Scott are two women at the top of education, but they come from two very different perspectives. Johnson, 64, is the Boston superintendent of schools overseeing more than 56,000 students and 125 public schools. Jenkins-Scott, 62, is the president of Wheelock College, a private college with 856 undergraduates. Carol Johnson Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staffe Carol Johnson We asked Jenkins-Scott to lead a conversation with Johnson, who arrived in Boston in 2007 after serving as superintendent in Memphis and Minneapolis and whose contract was extended earlier this year. Here is an edited interview. …

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

Summary: What are Boston Public Schools biggest challenges and most promising new efforts? How can public schools better prepare students for the challenges of college? We invited Wheelock College president Jackie Jenkins-Scott to sit down with BPS superintendent Carol Johnson for a frank conversation about schools, students, and the state of public education.


Talent evaluating for major league scouts just got a whole lot weirder.

A new study headed by a pair of psychologists at Goldsmiths/University of London and published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, found that Japanese baseball players with short, broad faces are more likely to be skilled than their long-faced colleagues.

According to the Daily Mail, lead researchers Hikaru Tsujimura and Michael Banissy measured the facial width-to-height ratio of 104 baseball players in Japan’s professional league.

Tsujimura and Banissy tracked those players for two seasons, and came to the conclusions that the players who hit the most home runs also had the highest facial width-to-height ratio. The logic behind this correlation could be that a wider jaw is a sign of higher testosterone levels. And increased testosterone is generally associated with more physical strength and agression.

The researchers say this correlation may apply for people of all nationalities. In fact, a previous study on caucasian CEO's found that people with broader faces are more likely to run successful firms.

This isn't the first study in which the shapes of players' faces correlate with their success. Previous research indicates that NFL quarterbacks are much more likely than the average man to have symmetrical features.

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Summary:
Talent evaluating for major league scouts just got a whole lot weirder.
A new study headed by a pair of psychologists at Goldsmiths/University of Lond...


Jesus Benaventa (c.), 43, volunteers for Aid for AIDS International, doing accounting services for the group based at 515 Greenwich St.

In “The Internship,” opening Friday, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play a pair of laid-off, middle-aged salesmen who take unpaid positions at Google.

The dated duo soon learn that adapting to their tech-savvy new workplace is much trickier than crashing weddings. “It’s some sort of mental ‘Hunger Games’ against a bunch of genius kids for just like a handful of jobs,” gripes Wilson’s character.

New York’s 40- and 50-year-old interns are also competing with kids half their age to get their foot in the door with new employers. “You’ve got to put your ego away,” says Michael Gonzalez, 52, who’s just finishing an unpaid internship at an age when many workers are getting ready for retirement.

“You may have had a corner office before, but your new office will now be the conference room, and you’ll be sharing it with 23- and 24-year-olds,” he says.

More than two decades after earning a law degree, Gonzalez decided to go back into the field after 15 years in sales, and a stint running his family’s carpet business, which went under. He’s switching gears with the help of Pace Law School’s New Directions Program.

It landed him a position as an extern (“It’s code for ‘old intern,’” Gonzalez says) working 20 hours a week at KIND, a legal nonprofit defending children in lower Manhattan. “I’m testing the theory that it’s never too late,” he says.

Gonzalez isn’t alone. Forget the cliché of a twentysomething assistant fetching coffee: Many of today’s unpaid temps are aging baby boomers transitioning into a new profession or reentering the workforce after a long absence.

“An internship — or ‘returnship’ — is a really good investment in yourself and a way to get a foot back into the workplace,” says Mindy Berkower, 52, from Westchester. The former lawyer from Staten Island is now interning at iRelaunch, an organization helping adults return to work. She works from home close to 20 hours a week promoting their October conference.

“It’s resume-worthy experience, and at the very least you’re learning new skills, brushing up on old skills, and getting a good current reference,” says Berkower, who was on hiatus for 18 years to care for her kids.

Middle-aged wage earners are getting a second wind. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that workers age 55 and older have snapped up 4 million of the nearly 5 million new jobs created since the recession ended in 2009. One out of every four companies surveyed by CareerBuilder in 2009 say workers over 50 are applying for entry-level jobs.

Samar Kharouba, 45, was an assistant district attorney in Queens for eight years before resigning in 2002 to raise triplets. She also joined the New Directions program to get back into practice, and interns 20 hours a week at the Westchester Human Rights Commission researching and preparing court cases.

“I feel confident again,” she says. “It’s hard to convince an employer to hire you after you’ve been out of work for 11 years, and programs like this reinforce the fact that I do have some valuable experience to share.”

Some workers are just looking for an employer to give them a shot. Jesus Benaventa is one of 54,000 high-skilled NYC immigrants who are underemployed. The former corporate accountant from Venezuela came to the United States on political asylum in 2010. CAMBA’s iBridge program, which helps immigrant professionals rebuild their careers, found him an unpaid position at Aid for AIDS International.

“Starting over is frustrating,” says Benaventa, 43, who volunteers full time at the SoHo nonprofit. “It’s difficult to find a good job. I have good recommendations from my country ... but that doesn’t help me here.”

Working in Aid for AIDS’ accounting office not only refreshes his skills, it also helps him perfect his English. The language barrier has been his biggest challenge.

“The younger people all want to practice their Spanish with me, but I need to practice my English!” he laughs. “I can keep practicing my profession here, too, and looking on the Internet to see what courses I need, what computer system I need to use. I know I will get my dream job.”

While these internships are packed with promise, they’re also largely unpaid — which hurts at any age. “My friends are very well established, making tons of money, and it’s humbling when they’re talking about vacations and second homes,” says Gonzalez, whose wife is supporting him and his 6-year-old son.

“But I wanted to get back into law, I had no idea how to do that, and New Directions and this internship are a godsend,” he adds, “because who would actually hire someone who’s been out for so long otherwise?”


There are no private offices; even meeting rooms are enclosed by glass. Reporters, editors, market data specialists and executives all rub elbows at desks arranged like a trading floor. This design helps them share information and ideas — and fosters “healthy competition”. Productivity is a must.

From the ground, elevators funnel 1,000s of employees to the 6th floor, where they scatter to more than 30 other floors. On their journey, they pass tanks filled with colourful tropical fish, tables of free food and reams of news tickers.

Office Space is a video series that peeks inside some of the world's coolest offices to find out how design and form meet function, creativity and productivity.

Summary: Free food, glass-enclosed conference rooms and a nonstop flow of information at Bloomberg.