By Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn

Tonight, President Obama is scheduled to unveil the government’s latest plan to address the country’s labor crisis. Unemployment is at 9.1%. However, that number only scratches the surface of the magnitude of the problem. There are over 25 million Americans unemployed, underemployed or only marginally attached to the workforce. Factor in the average size of a U.S. household and that’s as many as 20% of Americans whose lives are being dramatically impacted by this stagnation.

Yet there’s another massive labor imbalance in the country that rarely gets attention. According to the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over three million job opportunities going unfilled in the U.S. right now, the highest level in three years.

How is that possible? Simply put, companies can find workers; they just can’t find the right workers. The CEO of Siemens’ SI U.S. subsidiary says that his company has at least 3,200 open jobs it’s trying to staff. Everyone from industry giants like Microsoft SI to small- and medium-sized businesses like Begal Enterprises, a disaster-cleanup company in Maryland, are struggling to find qualified employees for their open jobs.

Fixing this imbalance and matching job openings with willing talent will go a long way toward restarting a virtuous economic cycle: when companies expand, they pay more taxes, consume more services (enabling other companies to expand) and open up opportunities for others to be promoted or hired. So how do we do it? Here are three proposed solutions:

• Embrace the economic graph. The technology revolution has upended industries and career paths at an unprecedented pace. Economic transitions that once took centuries (think agrarian to industrial) or decades (think industrial to information), are now taking place over only a handful of years. Classic economic theory would suggest that when Amazon AMZN overturns Borders or Netflix NFLX sinks Blockbuster, productivity gains manifested by these next generation companies should enable the displaced employees to find work elsewhere and add incremental economic value to the system. That’s clearly not happening.

We need to make the pace of technological change work to fix the same problem that it helped create. This will come through the development of an economic graph.

Most of us are by now familiar with the value generated by the social graph concept popularized by Facebook, the professional graph developed by LinkedIn LNKD , and the interest graph implicitly manifested by Twitter. What if we were able to extend that thinking to the economy itself and developed an economic graph?

Imagine a world in which every job opportunity, full-time and temporary, was digitally searchable and linked to the appropriate company and skills required to obtain the position. Now imagine if the 153 million people in the U.S. workforce — or 3.3 billion people in the global workforce — had a digital profile, highlighting their experiences, skills and, most importantly, their ambitions. Each of those individuals would be empowered to develop their professional identities, networks and knowledge and subsequently not just find jobs, but also map and fulfill their ideal career paths. Qualified candidates could easily ask their connections about existing opportunities, apply for those jobs at the click of a button, and request introductions so they’d never go into a potential employer cold.

Graduating students could instantly find appropriate mentors. Employers could fill critical open jobs by searching across a rich set of highly relevant facets in order to find the ideal candidates. Economists could generate insights leading to improved predictive analysis of where future jobs will be, and in turn, today’s educators could leverage that information to prevent the creation of future skills imbalances.

• Free the H1-B. There are highly skilled individuals working outside the U.S. who are capable of filling today’s vacant, yet critical jobs — jobs that may be at risk of being shipped overseas. Yet these people can’t work in the U.S. because of limitations on the number of available H1-B visas.

Opening the doors to such professionals would not only increase the productivity of their new employers, but fuel job creation domestically as these same individuals earn wages that will be spent in the U.S. economy. Additionally, these talented engineers, scientists and other highly skilled workers are the same people capable of starting companies that generate exponentially more economic opportunities for others.

• Link education to opportunity. Today, we train students for the jobs of yesterday, not the jobs of today or, more importantly, the jobs of tomorrow. We need to harness the data available through digital platforms to create just-in-time professional training programs based on current and future job availabilities.

In addition to traditional vocational classrooms, that training can take place at universities, community colleges or within companies themselves. One powerful and often overlooked tool is the internship. At LinkedIn, we’ve established a partnership with Year Up, which seeks to close the opportunity divide by providing internships to young adults in low-income communities. We’ve also built a successful paid summer internship program for students, providing them with hands-on experience in key positions for the company. However, for smaller businesses that can’t afford to train uninitiated talent and pay them at the same time, these potential learning opportunities are squandered. We need to provide these companies the right incentives to create more flexible programs along these lines.

Investing in these initiatives will help fill the millions of open jobs in this country. It will also foster new growth and create new opportunities, helping to solve our broader unemployment crisis. But more is needed to make sure the skills gap doesn’t widen again.

Most importantly, we must completely overhaul our educational system. We can start by transforming our schools from places where antiquated rote learning techniques are taught into one where the building blocks for real-world job skills are prized. That means fostering capabilities such as critical reasoning, collaboration and creative problem solving.

To build this new system, we need to recruit and develop teachers — and we need to do that at massive scale. The California Department of Education, for one, estimates that 97,000 teachers — 32% of its teaching ranks — will retire over the next 10 years. Similar teacher shortages exist elsewhere. Building the next generation of educators starts now. Finally, we can speed the build-out of a cutting-edge, national mobile and broadband infrastructure, ensuring that every American has access to the right information and knowledge, and can ultimately pursue their ideal career path.

We have everything we need to bridge the gap between talent and opportunity. The solutions are within our grasp, but there is much work to be done. Our outdated analog approaches to preparing the workforce for the jobs of the 21st century led us into this crisis. New digital technology and creative approaches will lead us out of it. Now is the time.

Summary: LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner argues that unemployment is worse than the numbers would lead you to believe -- and makes bold proposals on how to resolve the crisis.


Boloco, the Boston-based burrito chain known for its offbeat menu and message of social responsibility, has closed both its restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area.

The company, which first entered the market in 2011 with a location in the suburb of Bethesda, Md., closed its Washington restaurant December 4th and the Bethesda location Thursday. It said in a statement that it was difficult to compete in Washington’s “oversaturated” fast-casual food market, and added that its workers will be given four weeks’ pay and help finding a new job.

“The DC market has been tough for us,” the company said in an email after closing the Washington restaurant. “We struggled to build awareness of who we are and what we do.

“We also struggled early on with operations and, though we were eventually able to improve our operations, we unfortunately never were able to win back many of the guests that we had initially disappointed.”

In shutting down the Bethesda location, the company, in an email to patrons, said, “In hindsight, to drive the awareness that we needed, we would have had to open many more locations in the area.”

The pullout, which was earlier reported by BostInno, marks the end of Boloco’s first venture outside of New England, where it still has 20 restaurants.

Summary: The Boston-based burrito chain had trouble getting a foothold after venturing out of New England.


Updated Jul 1, 2014 5:21 PM ET

Even after a dozen straight wins during nearly a half-decade of unrivaled perfection in the UFC octagon, Anderson Silva still came up with another spectacular way to finish a fight.

Silva stopped Vitor Belfort with a single kick to the face in the first round, defending his middleweight belt for a record eighth time at UFC 126 on Saturday night.

After little action in the opening minutes of their bout, Silva (28-4) flattened his fellow Brazilian brawler with one magnificently placed kick that caught Belfort squarely on the jaw, bringing a dramatic end to Silva's 13th consecutive UFC victory at 3:25 of the opening round.

"Thanks to my coach for teaching me that kick," Silva said. "Everybody should respect Vitor. Before I even started fighting, he was a champion, so he deserves your respect."

The lightning-quick strike landed before anybody in the sold-out Mandalay Bay Events Center even realized Silva had done it. Belfort's eyes rolled while his knees buckled as he fell limply on his back, and Silva landed two punches to the prone Belfort's head before the fight was stopped.

"I've only seen that in a video game," UFC president Dana White said.

Belfort (19-9) blamed himself for failing to block the straight-ahead kick from Silva, whose athleticism and well-rounded style have kept him perfect since 2006.

"It's no excuse. He caught me with a kick," Belfort said. "I just got caught up. He faked the body, and he kicked to the head. Anderson is a great fighter."

Jon "Bones" Jones earned a light heavyweight title shot with a second-round submission victory over fellow prospect Ryan Bader on the undercard in the UFC's hometown. Forrest Griffin also won an unanimous decision over fellow veteran Rich Franklin in a meeting of former champions.

Silva is the longest-reigning champion in UFC history, largely dominating all contenders since winning his belt in October 2006 with a first-round stoppage of Franklin. The fighter known as "Spider" is considered the world's greatest mixed martial artist by White and most experts.

Yet Silva's aura had lost much of its luster in the past 10 months. He was ripped by White for embarrassing the UFC in Abu Dhabi by barely engaging Demian Maia during a title defense last April, then Silva was largely dominated on the ground for four rounds by Chael Sonnen in Oakland last August before escaping with a fifth-round submission victory.

Belfort was the youngest fighter to win a UFC bout 14 years ago, but the 33-year-old still known as "Phenom" had to fight his way back to the UFC after losing his light heavyweight title in 2004 to Randy Couture, who was part of Belfort's corner team Saturday night. After stops with four MMA promotions and his boxing debut, Belfort returned to the UFC in September 2009 with a knockout of Franklin, but hadn't fought since.

Earlier, Jones (12-1) won the bout between elite MMA prospects with a guillotine choke, stopping the previously unbeaten Bader (12-1) - and earning a stunning title shot just six weeks later.

Moments after the bout ended, the UFC announced Jones will get the next shot at light heavyweight champion Mauricio "Shogun" Rua's title at UFC 128 in Newark, N.J. on March 19. Rua was scheduled to fight Rashad Evans, Jones' training partner, but Evans was diagnosed with a knee injury earlier Saturday.

White said he made the deal for Jones to face Rua while Jones was still in the octagon. The 23-year-old Jones didn't flinch from a daunting task.

"I feel like it's my time," Jones said. "My confidence is really high. I'm already in shape, and I've got six weeks to make myself even better."

Jones' bout with Bader matched arguably the top two prospects in the loaded light heavyweight division. Jones is among the UFC's most tantalizing up-and-comers for his athletic, unorthodox approach and dramatic stoppage wins, while Bader forged an unbeaten record with remarkable strength and superb wrestling skills.

Jones dominated the first round on the ground, nearly submitting Bader with an unusual hold. The fighters spent most of the second round on their feet, but Jones took down Bader and landed a difficult guillotine choke, forcing Bader to tap out for the first time in his career.

Griffin capitalized on a strong first round, hanging on for a victory over Franklin in a meeting of former UFC champions who rank among the sport's most popular fighters. After Griffin (18-6) controlled nearly the entire opening round, he traded punches and avoided takedowns to grind out a win over Franklin (28-6), the former middleweight champion who has lost three of his last five fights.

"Rusty, rusty," said Griffin, who hadn't fought since late 2009 while recovering from a shoulder injury. "It's great to be back. I was so nervous. Camp didn't go right, but I feel good now. It's hard to come back after a year when you haven't gone full speed. Fortunately I got him down in that first round and was able to grind on him a bit."

Summary: Anderson "The Spider" Silva retains belt with first-round KO.


By most standards, the Massachusetts economy is the envy of many states, a diverse mix of advanced industries driving the strongest growth in more than a decade. But when the impact on residents’ well-being is taken into account, the picture is not so rosy, according to a University of Vermont study to be released Thursday.

Using economic, social, and environmental indicators that capture the costs of factors such as income inequality and pollution, researchers found that the state’s economy peaked in 2006, sliding to its worst performance in 14 years in 2012, the last year studied. Even though the state’s economy has quadrupled in size over the past 50 years, the well-being of Massachusetts residents has not improved much since the 1960s, the study found.

Traditionally, the economy is measured by the value of goods and services it produces, known on the state level as gross state product. The measure used by University of Vermont researchers, called the genuine progress indicator, accounts for the costs and benefits of economic growth, including the gap between rich and poor, greenhouse gas emissions, and the value of volunteer work and higher education.

In the aftermath of the last recession, the worst in 70 years, some analysts have questioned whether traditional measures accurately capture economic conditions. The unemployment rate has fallen steadily after peaking at 10 percent in 2009, for example, but many economists note that the labor market is weaker than the official rate shows, since it does not include millions of discouraged Americans who gave up looking for jobs or millions more who were working part time because they can’t find full-time work.

The tool used by the University of Vermont — based in part on the work of a Nobel Prize recipient, economist James Tobin — provides a more holistic, balanced picture that shows whether economic growth is actually benefiting people, said Jon Erickson, a professor at the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and lead author of the study.

“We want a high-quality economy, not just a big bloated economy,” Erickson said. “By traditional metrics, the Massachusetts economy is growing. However, taking into account the unequal distribution, hidden environmental costs, and social trade-offs of this growth, the average citizen is not necessarily better off.”

Erickson and his colleagues dug through data from the US Census, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Environmental Protection Agency, and numerous other federal and state agencies, dating from 1960 to 2012, to analyze the health of the state’s economy.

To determine the impact of running the economy on fossil fuels, for instance, researchers calculated the amount of coal, oil, and other nonrenewable resources consumed each year, estimated what it would cost to replace them with renewable energy alternatives such as wind or solar power, and subtracted that amount from the value of the state’s economic output — treating it as a depreciation cost.

When all the additional costs and benefits were accounted for, the researchers found that the state’s economy was $206 billion in 2012 — roughly half the size of the gross state product estimated by the US Department of Commerce.

Compared to the rest of the country, Massachusetts is faring well. It has the best economic health among the Northeast states and ranks in the top five nationwide, according to preliminary estimates. Many factors account for that, according to the study, particularly the high educational attainment of Massachusetts residents. Nearly 40 percent of residents held a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2012, the highest rate in the nation.

But Massachusetts has still not recovered from the recent recession, according to the study’s criteria, even though employment is at an all-time high following the strongest year of job growth since 2000.

Three of the biggest issues holding the state back, according to the study, are fossil fuel dependence, underemployment, and income inequality.

The state has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor in the country, a divide that means fewer opportunities for the many who don’t make much money. The top 1 percent of wage earners in Massachusetts have an average income that is nearly 34 times higher than the remaining 99 percent — compared to a 30:1 ratio nationwide.

The University of Vermont team has done a preliminary estimate of economic health for all 50 states in 2011, but has not finalized its national data. The State of Vermont conducts a report using the genuine progress indicator every year, and Maryland and Oregon also use the tool.

Robert Nakosteen, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said he supports attempts to capture a broader picture of the economy. But he has a “great dose of skepticism” about the methods used in the University of Vermont study, in large part because it is difficult to quantify factors such as the costs of ozone depletion and lost leisure time.

“There absolutely is an arbitrariness to going outside these conventionally measured economic indicators,” he said, such as gross domestic product, unemployment, and the consumer price index. “Then, how do you weight them? How much should income distribution count? How much should environmental degradation count?”

But other analysts say incorporating the costs of growth is more sophisticated and forward-looking than simply tallying up goods and services.

“We have a knowledge-based economy [that] is in overdrive and doing well for the well-educated,” said Ira Jackson, dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “But if you look under the hood and place equivalent emphasis on the many who are unskilled and left further behind, our Massachusetts economy has the same inequality as Brazil.

“This is unacceptable on moral and economic grounds, and should be a wake-up call to us all.”

Summary: Using a set of economic, social, and environmental indicators, researchers found that the state’s economy peaked in 2006 and, in 2012, the last year studied, it was the worst it’s been in 14 years.


04/16/2015 AT 09:55 PM EDT

plays to win on Thursday's

First she called in the big guns by asking

But the 29-year-old really pulled out all the stops when she used

, against him in another round of competition on Thursday's show.

star took on One Direction's "Steal My Girl" in front of a monitor that flashed pictures of Blunt – prompting Krasinski and host LL Cool J to burst out laughing.

But she wasn't done. Kendrick then zipped open her jacket to reveal a T-shirt decorated with a heart-shaped picture of her and Blunt.

airs Thursdays (10 p.m. ET) on Spike.

Summary: The actress wore a T-shirt with Blunt's picture as she mouthed the words to One Direction's "Steal My Girl"


Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tim Allen and Tony Shalhoub in Galaxy Quest

04/22/2015 AT 08:40 AM EDT

The 1999 sci-fi cult comedy is coming to television,

is the tale of the cast of a

-style TV show who become the reluctant stars of a real-life space adventure when they're abducted by aliens who believe the show was real and want their assistance.

Paramount is bringing back key players from the film for the series. Writer Robert Gordon, director Dean Parisot and producer Mark Johnson (who also worked on

) are all attached, as is Johnson's production partner Melissa Bernstein.

. Fun fact: It was also Justin Long's big-screen debut! No casting decisions for the TV series have been announced.

Summary: Paramount is bringing the film's original writer, director and producer back for the proposed series


One big-box retailer’s disaster is another’s opportunity.

Wal-Mart Stores WMT said Friday it will buy 13 of the stores previously operated in Canada by Target TGT before it exited that market in April after a disastrous 26-month foray.

Last month, Target closed the last of its 133 stores in the Great White North — ending an ill-advised international expansion that cost the discount retailer $7 billion — so it could focus on revitalizing its U.S. business under new CEO Brian Cornell, as detailed in a recent Fortune cover story.

Target’s departure allows its bigger rival more breathing room in a highly competitive market, and the chance to expand.

In its most recent quarter, Wal-Mart reported comparable sales fell 1.7% in Canada, while the number of shoppers who came into its stores fell 2.7%. What’s more, Wal-Mart saw its gross margin profit fall as it lowered prices to face off stiff competition, including from Target as it made one last attempt to make it in Canada during the holiday season.

Wal-Mart is spending about $290 million to buy and renovate these stores as well as one distribution center in Canada, where the world’s largest retailer already operates 395 stores, making it one of its largest international markets.

“This agreement helps us accelerate our growth plans ensuring more Canadians have access to our low prices,” Dirk Van den Berghe, President and CEO of Walmart Canada, said in a statement.

All the price cuts last quarter appeared to pay off for Wal-Mart: its market share in Canada edged up about half a percentage point, according to Nielsen data the company cited, something in can build on with its nemesis now out of the country.

Wal-Mart in February announced a $415 million capital investment plan designed to increase store count and strengthen its e-commerce. For a list of former Target locations Wal-Mart is buying, click here.

Summary: The retailer is buying 13 former Target stores in Canada, giving the discount retailer the opportunity to expand in a top international market.


Geo magazine, the high-gloss, two-year-old magazine published here by a German company, has acknowledged that several photographs of giant pandas in its August issue were misrepr esented in headlines andcaptions.

The magazine said that it had discovered too late that in the photographs, supposedly of pandas in the wild in Sichuan province in China, the pandas were wild, but the habitat wasn't.

David Maxey, Geo's managing editor in the United States, said the magazine had depended on information provided by Timm Rautert, a contract photographer for the German publication. It was later found, he said, that the photographs were actually taken in a twoacre pen at the Wolong Nature Reserve in Wuyipeng.

The pandas are removed from their wild state and placed in the pen temporarily for study. Because of their scarcity and shyness, pandas are rarely seen in their natural habitat. 'No Substitute for Candor'

Geo plans to publish a correction in its October issue. ''Embarrassing though this message is, there's no substitute in journalism for candor,'' the correction says. The German edition, which published Mr. Rautert's photographs in July, has a correction this month. Mr. Maxey said Mr. Rautert had been dismissed.

Mr. Maxey said the magazine had heard complaints ''secondhand'' from Dr. George B. Schaller, director of the Animal Research and Conservation Center of the New York Zoological Society, about the misrepresentation. Dr. Schaller is working at the Wolong reserve on a study sponsored by the Chinese Government and the World Wildlife Fund.

The study is seeking ways to preserve the scarce giant panda, of which about 1,000 are still estimated to live in nature reserves in China and about 50 in zoos.

Mr. Maxey said that headlines such as ''China: Pandas in the Wild'' used in the August issue represented only a ''technical difference'' from what the photographs actually showed. However, he said, he felt a correction was necessary.


Joe L. Allbritton, former owner and publisher of The Washington Star, announced a tender offer yesterday of $67.50 each for common shares of the Riggs National Bank. He is seeking 600,000 shares, which would raise his holdings from 15.4 percent to a controlling 35 percent.

The board of Riggs, the largest and second-oldest bank in Washington, will meet in Washington this morning to decide how to respond to the offer.

Last month, the Riggs board passed a motion stating it was ''not in the best interests'' of the bank for anyone to own more than 15 percent of the outstanding shares of Riggs. Riggs officials would not comment yesterday on possible board reaction to Mr. Allbritton's plans.

Mr. Allbritton, chairman of the board of University Bancshares Inc., which owns the University State Bank in Houston, began purchasing Riggs shares in open market transactions in the fall of 1979. His holdings increased substantially with the purchase last December of 386,645 shares for $26.9 million from Jorge E. Carnicero, an Argentine businessman who had waged a bitter, but successful, battle in 1979 to gain board seats for himself and his daughter.

In a proposal being sent to Riggs shareholders, Mr. Allbritton said he planned to finance his purchases with $50 million in loans obtained at a half a percentage point above prime from two banks that he did not identify. Mr. Allbritton has set a March 10 deadline for his offer.

A spokesman for Mr. Allbritton said yesterday that, if successful, Mr. Allbritton would have acquired the ''power to control or to influence control over the bank.'' If fewer than 600,000 shares are tendered by Feb. 19, all subsequent shares tendered will be purchased in the order they are received by Mr. Allbritton. If more than 600,000 shares are tendered by the same date, purchases will be made on a proportional basis.

The Riggs bank, which was founded in 1836, has served as the bank for most of the Presidents and has a history that includes helping finance the Spanish-American War and the purchase of Alaska. It has recently benefited from the growth in the Washington area, where it lends to most of the larger businesses.

R. Michael Smith, a bank analyst and senior vice president of the Richmond-based Wheat, First Securities, said that, ''from a banking standpoint, Riggs is an excellent organization.'' He added: ''It's well run and very profitable. The bank has gone after the high end of the market, and that has served them well.''

In 1980, Riggs reported assets of $3.149 billion and earned $8.13 a share, an increase of 84 cents a share from the 1979 total of $7.29 a share. Riggs also reported a 14.8 percent return on equity and a 77-cent return for every $100 of assets, relatively high ratios for large banks.

In a statement being mailed today to Riggs shareholders, the Riggs chairman, Vincent C. Burke Jr., said the board would report to shareholders by Feb. 23 on its view of Mr. Allbritton's offer, and he requested that all shareholders ''defer making a determination'' until the board's decision. Mr. Burke was not available for comment yesterday.

Riggs shares, which are traded over-the-counter, closed, up 10 points, at 60 bid yesterday. Riggs shares last month stood at $48.50.


WASHINGTON THE latest decline in the money supply, a $2.2 billion drop in the basic measurement M1-B reported Friday, appears to be taking some heat off the Federal Reserve Board.

The immediate market reaction was a decline in both short-term and long-term interest rates - news that was enthusiastically received by the Treasury.

But Federal Reserve officials are still concerned that rates may not fall far enough to prevent severe economic strains. Housing, automobiles, thrift institutions and small business are among the problem sectors. ''Bankruptcies will doubtless rise,'' warns one member of the board, adding, ''You can already see some of the fissures.''

The Fed's chairman, Paul A. Volcker, told President Reagan at a well-publicized meeting last Monday that the Fed intended to bring short-term money growth back in line with its targets after the 14 percent annual rate of increase in April. But he cautioned that the economy would pay the cost.

One worry of the Fed is a forecast that the savings and loan industry could lose more than $6 billion this year, or roughly 15 percent of total capital. Should the earnings crisis precipitate withdrawals of deposits, a liquidity crisis could result.

Bank and thrift regulators - including the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation -are circulating another draft of their ''safety net'' bill on Capitol Hill.

But the thrift industry still thinks the measure does not go far enough in providing an emergency capital infusion. Another controversial provision would permit some interstate mergers.

At his meeting with the President, Mr. Volcker was promised that Beryl W. Sprinkel, Under Secretary of the Treasury, would stop his public denunciations of Fed policies. But Mr. Sprinkel's monetarist mentor, Milton Friedman, in town to support the National Tax Limitation Committee's efforts to get a constitutional amendment to limit Federal spending, spoke out against the Fed last week.

Mr. Friedman ticked off Fed procedures he would like changed. Among other things, he suggested that the Fed eliminate lagged reserve requirements, by which reserves are calculated as deposits in banks two weeks before the current statement week.

A Fed spokesman said the central bank had already considered moving to a ''contemporaneous'' basis. He added tartly, ''The world does not turn on contemporaneous reserve accounting.'' U.S. Productivity

From Houston the four-year-old American Productivity Center has just aimed this message at Washington: ''While there is political rhetoric to 'do something' (about lagging productivity growth), little is being done on a national basis besides efforts to stimulate investment. And while that is important, it is not sufficient.''

The nonprofit privately funded organization, which aims to improve productivity in business and government, said in its annual report that the problem is less a lack of knowledge about specific productivity techniques than a commitment by business, labor and government to make them work.

The American Productivity Center has a staff of 90 and an annual budget of $7.5 million. A similar organization in Japan has a staff of 600 and a budget of $25 million. West Germany has a productivity center known by the initials R.K.W. with a staff of 350 and a budget of $20 million.

''Remember,'' says C. Jackson Grayson Jr., chairman of the center in Houston, ''for many years we led the world in productivity growth, and we still lead the world in productivity levels. We can keep the lead. But we better get to it.'' Wealth and Infinity

In ''Democracy in America,'' published nearly a century and a half ago, Alexis de Toqueville, the perceptive French observer of American life, wrote that he knew of ''no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold upon the affections of men'' than the United States.

Now, with the latest financial disclosure statements from the Senate, something new has been added to the legends of American wealth. No longer are Americans mere millionaires or billionaires. Senator John H. Heinz 3d, with his soup and ketchup fortune, reports that he is in effect an ''infinitaire,'' since nine of his holdings are valued at anywhere from $250,000 to infinity.

The Pennsylvania Republican declined to elaborate, saying only that his statement ''should speak for itself.'' C.I.A.'s Crystal Ball

The Central Intelligence Agency has modified its estimate of Soviet oil production, concluding that the Russians will not become net importers of oil during this decade. The agency had earlier predicted that Soviet output would peak in the early 1980's between 11 million and 12 million barrels daily, implying that the Soviet Union would then have to decide whether to cut oil exports, reduce consumption or become a net importer of oil.

To Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, the earlier assessment may have had some unfortunate policy implications for Washington. He believes it was least partly responsible for America's policy shift in favor of the Arab oil states at the expense of its relationship with Israel.

Moreover, he finds that the desire to establish a military presence in the Middle East was reinforced by the idea that the Russians were running out of oil.

''Intelligence experts,'' he comments, ''are no better at crystal ball gazing about the Soviet economy than are economists about the U.S. economy.'' Briefcases

* The International Communication Agency, formerly the United States Information Agency, is again considering a name change. The reason: Its present initials, I.C.A., sound too much like C.I.A.

* The world's population, reports the Agency for International Development, grew from 2.7 billion in 1970 to 4.4 billion in 1980. That's equivalent to adding the population of Baltimore to humanity every five days.


AMERICAN DREAMS: Lost and Found, by Studs Terkel. (Ballantine, $3.50.) During 20 years of travel around the country, Studs Terkel tape-recorded conversations he had with 100 Americans - as diverse as a Miss U.S.A., a folk singer and an elegant escapee from suburbia - about their personal aspirations and disappointments. Our reviewer Robert Sherrill found the ''scrappiness and sheer gall'' they revealed in this deftly edited collection most heartening.

UNHOLY LOVES, by Joyce Carol Oates. (Fawcett, $2.95.) As the aging, distinguished British poet Albert St. Denis bungles through a term as a visiting professor at an upstate New York college, he unwittingly shakes up the lives of many faculty members, not the least of them the novelist Brigitte Stott, who has a passionate yet composing final fling with a colleague in the music department. As in most of Joyce Carol Oates's fiction, the craftsmanship of this ferocious comedy is far from polished, but there's an abundance of trenchant social and psychological observation.

COFFIN SCARCELY USED, by Colin Watson. (Dell, $2.25.) Six months after the death of Councillor Carobleat in the quiet town of Flaxborough, his next-door neighbor Marcus Gwill, irascible publisher of the local paper, is found electrocuted, his mouth stuffed with marshmallows. Suicide? Accident? Murderous revenge? Inspector Purbright solves it all in this 1958 British whodunit that Anthony Boucher called ''witty, puzzling, prankishly pleasing.''

THE AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT, by Leonard Silk and Mark Silk. (Avon, $3.95.) An inquiry into the nature and influence of what the authors perceive as the ''do-good Establishment'' that began with New England clergymen, flourished in the Progressive era and today finds itself centered in such institutions as Harvard, The New York Times, the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution and parts of the Eastern wing of the Republican Party. Some critics have said that the book is more successful in its historical account than in its analysis of the present.

A MAN, by Oriana Fallaci. (Pocket, $3.95.) In lightly fictionalized style, the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, internationally celebrated for her pugnacious liberalism, tells of her three-year affair with an equally celebrated Greek resistance leader, an intense romance that ended when he was murdered by political enemies. The account is interesting, but would probably have been more effective if it had been told in straightforward memoir style.

JOE LOUIS: My Life, by Joe Louis with Edna and Art Rust Jr. (Berkley, $2.95.) The colorful, dramatic career of Joseph Louis Barrow, a.k.a. Joe Louis (1914-81), son of an Alabama sharecropper, professional boxer for 17 years, undefeated world heavyweight champion for 11, who was ultimately done in by a combination of womanizing, drugs, advancing years, bad business investments and the I.R.S. This ''as-told-to'' memoir, written in 1978, is unpolished, but accurately reflects the warmth and frankness of its narrator.

BADENHEIM 1939, by Aharon Appelfeld. (Pocket/ Washington Square Press, $3.50.) During the summer of 1939, as in many summers past, comfortably well-off middle-class Jews come from Vienna to enjoy the special pleasures of a nearby resort town called Badenheim, almost deliberately oblivious to what is happening to their people elsewhere. Finally, they are herded into cattle cars that, they tell themselves, will ''take them home'' to Poland. Irving Howe called this novella by an Israeli writer ''a small masterpiece.''

THE COST OF GOOD INTENTIONS, by Charles R. Morris. (McGraw-Hill, $6.95.) An account of the ''great liberal experiment'' New York City began in 1960 - expensive antipoverty programs, generous support for welfare, an expanding university system and massive free health care - that carried the municipality close to financial disaster in 1975. Steven R. Weisman said it was ''a completely lucid and thoughtful'' work.

CATHERINE THE GREAT, by Henri Troyat. (Berkley, $3.50.) The life of the 18th-century German princess who married the eccentric Grand Duke Peter of Russia and long survived him, ruling as an autocratic czarina fond of philosophical liberalism and of young lovers. Our reviewer Nicholas V. Riasanovsky found this work of a distinguished French biographer weak in its treatment of Catherine's personality but, on the whole, a rich and immensely readable book.

Remembrance of things past. Like millions of Americans, Lester Glassner grew up during the 1940's, a World War-on-the-heels-of-a-Depression era when a visit to the local F.W. Woolworth Co. 5 & 10¦ Store was a great treat, and several hours spent at the Rialto Theater watching ''The Wizard of Oz'' or a Fred Astaire/Gene Kelly musical, followed by a visit to the corner drugstore's soda fountain, became an unforgettable experience. In the years since, unlike most of his contemporaries, Mr. Glassner has diligently collected thousands of mementos of that wonderful time - precious trash like bakelite and celluloid toys; Depression glassware; records by the Andrews Sisters; posters of Joan Crawford movies; fan magazines with covers showing Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart in uniform; a Carmen Miranda wax banana and boxes of Tintex Stocking Dye (''gives new, fashionable color-beauty to faded hosiery... quick!'').

With the help of photographer Brownie Harris, Lester Glassner is now offering other children of the 40's - and even those of the 30's and 20's - the chance to take a great nostalgia trip through his collection by means of a profusely illustrated and handsomely printed album, Dime-Store Days (Penguin, $12.95). Quentin Crisp and the late Anita Loos provide high-spirited forewords. Reproduced here are two pictures from Mr. Glassner's past: at the far left, a 1939 celluloid doll mimicking Mae West; in the center column, a 1942 soda fountain ad for Hires Root Beer.

Illustrations: photos from 'Dime Store Days'


Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar

07/22/2015 AT 07:00 AM EDT

When news broke that the Duggars' hit TLC show

, no one was more disappointed than the family, a source who has worked closely with them tells PEOPLE in this week's issue.

The cancellation came two months after a 2006

had been accused at age 14 of molesting five underage girls – including two of his sisters,

. (He apologized and said he had "acted inexcusably" after the report became public.)

The source says the evangelical Christian family, who often discussed their religious faith on their TLC show, is "heartbroken that they've now lost that platform."

"The Duggars want to return to TV because they truly believe it was part of God's plan for them to spread the word about their faith," the source says.

honestly did expect people to just move on from this," the source adds. "Their thinking is, they put this behind them ages ago, so why wouldn't the rest of the world?"

Now with their show off the air, the Duggars' future in television could possibly parallel that of

, whose show was also

in 2011 following her nasty split from ex-husband

. According to a source, TLC's occasional

specials on could be used as a potential model for future Duggar series.

Summary: The Duggar family believed the reality show was part of God's plan


FORTUNE — Egypt is navigating its third, largely unplanned government transition in just two and a half years. A fourth one is likely to be months away (and hopefully better-planned).

Almost by definition, and certainly by force of circumstances, this is an inherently tricky phase in the country’s proud and long history; and its consequences extend well beyond the 85 million Egyptians eager both to harvest the fruits of their inspiring revolution and to avoid a slide into civil conflict.

In the coming weeks, a lot of effort will be focused on — indeed, should urgently be devoted to — holding presidential and parliamentary elections, revising the constitution, and strengthening the country’s institutions. All this is all necessary for a durable and orderly transition away from military and back to democratic rule; but it is not sufficient.

To enhance the probability of success this time around, Egypt’s armed forces (now in charge of the country) and the politicians (again set to receive the governing handoff) may wish to consider the following nine insights. These are drawn from the country’s history, old and recent, as well as international experience.

MORE: What’s next for Egypt’s entrepreneurs?

On a standalone basis, each insight would offer Egypt potential benefits during yet another delicate and potentially precarious transition. Their would-be cumulative impact is even more important. Indeed, the collective gain could well be much larger than the sum of the individual parts. And today’s Egypt needs to secure every possible advantage to successfully navigate what is still a challenging, uncertain and potentially hazardous short-term outlook.

Governance credibility is no longer bestowed; it needs to be earned every single day.

In the old Egypt, the really hard part for governing elites was to gain power. Once achieved, the whole apparatus of state (and the vested interests and crony capitalism that flourished then) was essentially wired to maintain the status quo, and do so regardless of performance.

Not so in the new Egypt.

Today, the country’s rulers — whether civilian or military — need to earn and retain the trust of the majority of citizens on a high-frequency basis. They are now dealing with citizens who, having lived for far too long under repression and a culture of fear, are empowered and entitled to influence their country’s destiny. Indeed, the feeling of popular ownership has rarely been so visible and pronounced.

Consistently engaging the youth movements is not just desirable; it is absolutely critical.

For the second time in two and a half years, it is the committed youth of Egypt who brilliantly organized and led a countrywide popular uprising. Once again, they were the change agents facing enormous odds; and once again they delivered outcomes that far exceeded most “experts’” predictions, whether in scale, scope, or timing.

Egypt’s youth movements have again displayed admirable vision, coordination, and discipline. If they were to repeat the experience of the 2011 revolution that ousted President Mubarak, their inclination in the next few weeks would be to again step back and turn the governance keys to the country’s elders. After all, Egypt is a traditional, age-respecting society. (Growing up there in the 1960s, I frequently heard the popular saying: “The one older than you by a day knows more than you by a year.”)

MORE: How Brazil can win back investors

For their part, Egyptian ruling elites have continually failed to properly engage youth movements, let alone benefit from their energy and vision. Instead, they tend to stick with old and tired formulas and practices. In the process, they have repeatedly disenfranchised a very important segment of society, and thereby undermined the future and vibrancy of the country.

This time around it is critical that the youth movement remain actively involved in the governance process; and that the older generations be able and willing to materially incorporate them. Otherwise, the objective of the revolution — “bread, dignity, and social justice” — will continue to prove elusive.

Govern inclusively, collaboratively, and transparently.

Again, this does not come naturally to a country that for too many centuries was traditionally ruled by some type of “pharaoh,” whether domestic or foreign. It is also challenging in a transitional phase that is led by the military.

Today and tomorrow’s rulers need to realize that the country will continue to struggle if the majority of Egyptians do not quickly unite under a well-communicated national vision. Indeed, a rapid process of national political and social reconciliation is essential if the country is to have any chance of minimizing violence and rapidly completing the critical revolutionary pivot: from dismantling a repressive past to building a better future.

Avoid the temptation of overreach.

The three prior governments fell victim to the dangerous notion that they can rule by favoring a certain segment of the population while imposing dictates from above on the rest. Egypt’s current and future governments need to do a much better job at being balanced, embracing a spectrum of view in a national political and social revival effort.

Enable grass-root activities and civil society to flourish.

Vibrant and successful democracies are built and sustained from the bottom up, and not from the top down. This also provides a critical flow of information up to the ruling class; and it constitutes an additional set of checks and balances to underpin a successful and durable democratic transition.

Visit Egypt today, and you will be impressed by the number of new grass-root activities that have been initiated since the 2011 revolution. Be it education or health, they play an important role in improving — albeit still at the margin — the well-being of the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population.

MORE: The colors of revolution

Even after President Mubarak’s removal, these individual successes continue to battle a system that struggles with the delegation of civic responsibility. By converting an unnecessary headwind into an enabling tailwind, Egypt’s new ruling elites can provide for much greater on-the-ground progress and engagement.

Facilitate the involvement of the diaspora by creating better transmission mechanisms to domestic civil society.

Do not underestimate the diaspora’s willingness to devote time and financial resources to assist the fulfillment of the revolution’s objectives.

Remember, quite a few of them originate from families that emigrated out of Egypt to overcome repression and find opportunities. They greatly admire the brave Egyptians whose steadfast determination is now offering the country the possibility of pursuing the road to inclusive prosperity; and they wish to help.

Make rapid and steady progress in addressing the country’s deep economic challenges.

Awful economic conditions have been important contributors to the sense of national frustration and even despair in some quarters, and understandably so. Moreover, Egypt’s economy does not have the luxury of time.

Every day, it is being pulled further down by a self-feeding vicious cycle of insufficient investment, anemic growth, inflation, budget and balance of payments deficits, foreign exchange pressures and capital flight. The longer the situation is neglected, the greater the cost for both current and future generations.

MORE: China and Africa: What the U.S. doesn’t understand

No reasonable citizen expects overnight solutions to the long-standing and deeply entrenched problems of alarmingly high unemployment, insufficient purchasing power, overly stretched and porous social safety nets, and excessive income and wealth inequality. But the people are desperate for a well-communicated economic vision, accompanied by yearly targets for variables that are commonly understood and monitored.

For quite a while now, Egypt has lacked a credible medium-term economic framework. Rather than establish a clear destination, communicate a strategic direction, and deliver a credible policy package, recent governments have opted for ad hoc measures and exceptional funding from friendly countries. In the process, they have led themselves to believe that the responsibility of economic governance can somehow be outsourced to external organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. It cannot.

Egyptians are desperate for some basic deliverables that are now feasible and desirable from many perspectives.

The new rulers need to restore security in the streets, remove the garbage that has invaded many of them, deal with electricity outages, and address pockets of extreme deprivation and poverty in both urban and rural areas.

Most of this can be done by a focused and committed government that restores a functioning set of key public services. Some will need foreign financial resources and know-how to supplement domestic efforts.

Finally, never lose sight of Egypt’s highly admired traits of humility and its robust sense of humor.

Anybody who has spent time in Egypt will immediately know what I am referring to. Derived from the down-to-earth goodness of the traditional farmer (the “fellah”), most Egyptians are capable of tolerating a lot with admirable humbleness and humor.

In the old Egypt, the ruling elites saw this as a way to continuously repress and exploit the masses. In today’s Egypt, however, this can serve as a strong fuel for collective societal achievement, including emerging stronger from the inevitable potholes that lie on any revolutionary path.

Mohamed A. El-Erian is the CEO and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO.

Summary: Advice for Egypt's armed forces and politicians in the wake of President Mohamed Morsi's ouster.


The Galaxy S6 along with the S6 Edge, which has been hailed as the first smartphone with a curved display, have received positive reception, boosting hopes that the struggling mobile division may finally regain its footing after its share of the global smartphone market shrank to 24.7 percent in 2014 from 32.2 percent in 2013, according to data from Strategy Analytics.

"The launch of S6 reconfirmed Samsung's technology competitiveness, dispelling low expectations about the mobile division," Nomura analysts said.

"In addition to significant improvements in the design, we were impressed that Samsung's vertical integration lived up to its strong potential and will support its structural competitiveness in the smartphone space," Nomura added, referring to the use of in-house displays and chips in the new smartphone line-up.

Read MoreCan Samsung edge Apple with new smartphones?

Citi shares the optimistic outlook and estimates Samsung will sell 46 million smartphone units this year, a 21 percent rise from an initial forecast of 38 million, which will likely translate into an 11 percent rise in operating profit.

In 2014, the South Korean electronics giant suffered its first annual earnings decline in three years due to weakness in its smartphone business. Earnings from smartphones, tablets and other mobile gadgets fell 64 percent annually in the October-December period to 1.96 trillion won. In contrast, the semiconductor division stood at 2.7 trillion won, the highest in more than four years.

But, this is expected to change.

"We expect success of the S6 to have a positive chain impacts on market leadership and in-house component businesses," Citi's report stated. "Going forward, positive catalysts [for the stock] should include confirmation of mobile stabilization, solid semiconductor earnings, positive year-on-year growth in 2015 operating profit and friendlier shareholder return policy."

Read MoreGuess who crushed Samsung in India tablet sales?

These rosy factors have spurred analysts to bet on an ambitious price target of 1.8 million won – 21 percent above current levels.

One of them is Barclays, which reiterated a buy call and upgraded its 12-month price target from 1.7 million won last week.

Daewoo Securities, which shares the same target, has Samsung as its top pick in the South Korean semi-conductor space. "As the share price approaches its historical high, we believe there will be a lot of challenges in the market, in terms of valuation so Samsung will bounce around its previous high, but eventually break records this year," Jonathan Hwang, equity analyst for Technology and Semiconductor at KDB Daewoo Securities, told CNBC.

After hovering near record highs in the previous sessions, Samsung shares closed down 2.2 percent at 1.47 million won on Wednesday due to profit-taking. "Some investors are starting to take some profits as shares have had a nice run and are near all-time highs [but] the stock is still cheap and has further upside," said Mark C. Newman, senior research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

Summary: Many investors are betting that Samsung's Galaxy S6 devices will take the stock to record highs.


Nokia's CEO told CNBC Wednesday that he was confident a 15.6 billion-euro ($16.5 billion) takeover deal of smaller French rival Alcatel-Lucent will get the thumbs up from regulators.

"We expect closure of the deal to happen in the first half of 2016. There are a number of jurisdictions to get antitrust approvals from," Rajeev Suri, the CEO of Nokia, said.

Read MoreNokia confirms it will buy Alcatel-Lucent

"I am confident we will get through that process successfully because a lot of the customers, I believe, will support this deal because it makes a lot of sense to them as well."

Finland's Nokia plans to buy Alcatel-Lucent in an all-stock deal that will build up its telecom equipment business to compete with Sweden's Ericsson, which leads the market.

Regulatory approval is one hurdle the two companies will face. Others, analysts said, include an integration process that could take years.

Summary: Nokia's CEO told CNBC Wednesday he was confident a 15.6 billion-euro takeover deal of Alcatel-Lucent will get the thumbs up from regulators.


He added that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber in New York, who oversaw GM's bankruptcy, found the contract fair, reasonable and in retirees' best interests.

"Whether New GM has a moral obligation regarding the payment is another matter and not relevant," he wrote. "The UAW's efforts to turn the absence of language into language is reminiscent of the efforts to capture a 'will o' the wisp."'

Andrew Roth, a partner at Bredhoff & Kaiser in Washington, representing the UAW, did not immediately respond to requests on Wednesday for comment.

(Read more: Biggest companies run by women)

The UAW was also not immediately available for comment.

GM spokesman Dave Roman declined to comment.

Chapter 11 reorganizations can allow debtors to reject obligations that predate their bankruptcies.

(Read more: As Uncle Sam unloads GM, shares at an all-time high)

On Monday, the federal bailout of GM ended when the U.S. Department of the Treasury said it had sold the last of its shares of the Detroit-based automaker.

The case is United Auto Workers v. General Motors LLC, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, No. 10-11366.

Summary: A federal judge said General Motors does not need to pay $450 million to cover medical benefits for retirees.


Next week, thousands of rich car collectors from around the world will converge on a small patch of sand and grass in Northern California for a week of buying, selling, trading, gawking and driving. It's called the Concours d'Elegance—and while it began as a small auto awards show and driving tour, it has since become the car-a-palooza for the super rich, with more than $400 million worth of autos to auction off. There are also endless parties, races, displays and sponsor events.

Last year's auctions featured the most expensive car ever sold at auction— a $38 million Ferrari 250 GTO. This year will be a more modest affair, with the most expensive cars likely topping out around $20 million. But there are still likely to be some jaw-droppers—almost all of them Ferraris.

Here are the 10 cars that could be among the most expensive for the week. Estimates come from the auction companies or other car-valuation experts.

—By CNBC's Robert FrankPosted 5 August 2015

Summary: Check out some of the most expensive cars for sale at the Concours D’Elegance auction for the super rich.


GM documents, including emails and internal reports released by congressional investigators, show two former Barra lieutenants, Terry Woychowski and Jim Federico, worked with the GM field engineer who ran the internal probe from August 2011 to December 2013.

Documents reviewed by congressional investigators give no indication the two men informed Barra of the probe. But investigators are still struggling to understand GM's complex structure, who made decisions on the probe, and who was accountable for the work.

The congressional committees plan to hold hearings to question attorney Anthony Valukas, who is running a current company investigation into how it handled the switch, and former CEO Dan Akerson, who ran the company during the 2011-2013 probe.

Read MoreGM recalls thousands of Saturn Aura cars

Spokespeople for Akerson and Valukas said they declined to comment.

GM spokesman Jim Cain reiterated the company position that top executives did not learn of the defect until January 31 of this year, when the decision to recall was made.

"The whole purpose of the Valukas investigation is to understand the entire chronology of events and who knew what when, and what decisions were made or should have been made,'' he said.

Woychowski and Federico did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. Federico retired on Monday from GM and has accepted a job at Harley-Davidson. Cain said the move had no link to the switch issue.

So far, GM has submitted about 350,000 documents to committees studying the timing of decisions, but GM has yet to produce an organizational chart that would help pinpoint lines of authority, a congressional source said. GM's Cain said he was not aware of the automaker having submitted such a chart.

Read MoreGM tackles 300 wrongful death and injury claims

GM has said that senior executives including Barra were kept out of recall investigations to allow engineers to make the decisions without undue pressure. Congressional investigators, evaluating that claim found and released one document showing a briefing on a separate safety issue, indicating at least one exception.

Woychowski emailed Barra in October 2011 and attached a copy of a New York Times report on a power steering issue in cars including the Saturn Ion and the Chevrolet Cobalt. Woychowski told Barra why the Ion had not been included in a recall of the Cobalt on the steering issue. GM spokesman Cain said that the email was part of an exchange spurred by the article.

The ignition switch was a different investigation, and Barra in April told lawmakers that she "knew there was an issue with the Cobalt'' in December 2013, but she "did not know it was an ignition switch issue.''

Barra in early 2011 was named senior vice president for global development, a unit which included responsibility for safety investigations and recalls, GM's Cain said. As manager of more than 30,000 employees, she supervised the ``design, engineering, program management and quality of vehicles for the company's 11 brands around the world,'' said a GM press release.

The ignition switch problem had been a lingering issue, kicked around by GM engineers since 2001. The switch had been installed in more than 2.5 million vehicles across numerous product lines, including the Chevy Cobalt, the Saturn Ion, the Pontiac G5 and the Chevrolet HHR.

GM engineers knew the switch malfunctioned under the weight of heavy key rings. The company sent notices to dealers suggesting some drivers lighten key rings. It rejected changing the switch.

In mid-2011, for reasons that remain unclear, GM's legal and engineering departments consulted and decided to launch a formal internal investigation into airbag malfunctions that led them right back to the unfixed switch.

Documents show that on the ignition switch inquiry Barra's lieutenants served as "champions,'' an industry term to identify a senior executive who marshals internal resources.

Woychowski, a vice president who reported directly to Barra, was the first champion for the probe, run by field engineer Brian Stouffer. Stouffer did not respond to requests for comment.

Federico took over when Woychowski retired in June, 2012. At the time, Federico reported directly to Barra as vehicle line director for small cars.

Stouffer's investigation discovered that the problem was in the ignition switch that could suddenly move into the "accessory'' position and disable airbags.

In December 2013, Stouffer's findings were reviewed by two internal committees that decide on product recalls. After two more months of study, the committees approved a recall. GM did not respond to questions seeking the names of committee members.

Summary: Congressional investigators are examining whether CEO Mary Barra and other executives were more involved than formerly acknowledged.


He also watches oil because there is so much money flowing into it; it oddly went higher on Tuesday. As long as crude doesn't go above $65, Cramer is happy because the market takes it to mean the economy is strong.

But what is the most important thing to Cramer? The dollar.

"This thing, this currency, has become the source of the U.S. economy. It has made our companies pushovers versus the rest of the world. We are pathetically allowing virtually every other country to devalue their currency so they can club our companies and let theirs prevail," Cramer said.

As far as he is concerned, there has to be a sign that the dollar is peaking in order to have any sort of sustained rally right now. So, as soon as investors see this sign, they should jump up and down and applaud the greenback's decent.

Cramer used the example of PVH Corp, which finally had its first upside surprise in earnings since its acquisition. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were up 25 percent. And its once-struggling brand Calvin Klein business had a fantastic 10 percent increase in same-store sales.

But if it weren't for the superfreakin' dollar, PVH would have seen its earnings increase by a whopping 20 percent! In short, PVH is finally killing it, and it is clear that this stock was a real bargain before it shot up 7 percent on Tuesday.

---------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: You got a problem with Intel? Target CEO: How we created Black Friday in April Cramer: Is the market insanely overvalued? ----------------------------------------------------------

However, the action with PVH taught Cramer that the dollar has become so out of control that it makes fantastic earnings from an American company look mediocre. Additionally, when Cramer sees the move of the euro becoming stronger like it did on Tuesday, it gives him hope that maybe the strength of the superfreakin' dollar is finally over.

Why does Cramer think this? First of all, he saw inflation in Europe on Monday night, which means that the European Central Bank may be less inclined to debase its currency. Second, there are also reports that a resolution could finally be found in Greece. That would allow the euro to finally climb.

"Today we saw this market's true colors. A superfreakin' powerful dollar is, at this point, an abomination for stock prices…You get a cheaper dollar, and our stock market can ultimately follow in the footsteps of PVH and go higher. Otherwise, forget about it," Cramer said.

Summary: Jim Cramer talks money, money, money.  A strong dollar is bad news for the market, but what about a weak one?


Beyoncé and Topshop boss Philip Green have announced a 50/50 joint venture to produce a "global athletic street-wear brand", in the latest of the fashion chain's line of celebrity tie-ups.

The company, called Parkwood TopShop Athletic, will launch in Fall 2015 and feature clothing, footwear and accessories for dance, fitness and sports. The products will be sold through Topshop stores and its website.

Read MoreKate Moss will lead China charge: Topshop's Philip Green

"We have been looking at this category as fashion inspired fitness develops, and know that this is right in our customers' heartland," Philip Green, CEO of Arcadia Group, owners of the Topshop chain, said in a press release.

Topshop is known for its collaborations with big names, including a clothing range with supermodel Kate Moss. The British brand's London Fashion Week show is also one of the most highly anticipated during the event.

Read MoreLondon's fashionistas look to social media in tech drive

Earlier this year Topshop announced it was opening a store on New York's Fifth Avenue as it continues its expansion in the U.S.

"I could not think of a better partner as I continue to grow the Parkwood business. I have always loved TopShop for their fashion credentials and forward thinking," Beyoncé said in a statement announcing the range.

Summary: Beyoncé and Topshop boss Philip Green have announced a 50/50 joint venture to produce an athletic brand, in the latest celebrity tie-up.


China's weak property market is seen as one of the major risks for the economy. Economic growth slowed to a six-year low of 7 percent in the first quarter as demand at home and abroad faltered, and recent data showed weakness persisted into the second quarter, putting more pressure on the government to step up policy stimulus.

Real estate investment growth continued to slow in the first five months of 2015 to the lowest since May 2009, Reuters reported on Thursday, with inventory levels remaining high in lower-tier cities, despite the signs of overheating recurring in Shenzhen.

China's central bank has moved to stimulate the property market, cutting interest rates in May and attempting to boost lending by reducing the amount of cash banks have to keep in reserve.

Read MoreChina's loan-hungry developers move to the cloud

Wee Liat Lee, managing director, regional head of property research at BNP Paribas, told CNBC that he was pretty sure the Chinese property market had bottomed out, but that the recovery was dual-paced.

"What we see in the tier one and two cities is a recovery in volumes and prices are creeping up, but on the other hand, tier three and four cities, given the oversupply situation, are still at the bottom," he said.

"We are not seeing prices dropping but we are seeing a floor after the government's support to stimulate the market."

China said on Thursday that it would step up "effective investment" in key sectors, including shantytown renovation, rural power infrastructure and urban transport, to support economic growth.

Summary: The price of new homes in China fell 5.7 percent year-on-year in May, but reversed month-on-month declines for the first time in more than a year.


6. The future of the U.S. rebalance

Washington will face choices in 2014 that will test traditional U.S. roles in Asia in new ways. While the U.S. has long been the provider of security related and economic-related public goods in Asia, Washington's allies will be watching how it manages the impact of sequestration on its defense posture and whether it makes long-range investments in new capabilities.

(Read More: Five things that could go wrong in 2014)

7. A convergence of models

This year will see continued competition between regional trade agreements, such as the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the pan-Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Previously, China looked at the TPP warily, viewing it as part of a U.S. containment strategy, but it could start to take more interest this year, said Carnegie. However, the think tank reiterated that many conflicts between the TPP requirements and China's domestic arrangements still exist.

"But if the TPP is concluded in 2014, it will set a new competitive standard in Asia," said Carnegie.

8. China's economy: to market?

China ended 2013 having adopted a sweeping economic reform agenda at the Third Plenum in November but Carnegie pointed out that these reforms will not succeed unless the state sheds some of the functions that make it a pervasive force in the economy. However, despite the challenges, Carnegie expects the biggest change to come in this area of reform, with significant moves toward market-based prices and steps to liberalize deposit interest rates.

"The biggest struggles, meanwhile, will be over restrictions on internal migration and the subsidies provided to state-owned firms."

(Read More: China debt: The biggest 'known, unknown' in 2014?)

9. The push and pull over reforms

Carnegie expects antsy global investors and angry domestic voters to pull and push a number of Asian governments in competing directions. The body expects there to be little progress on Indian reforms as the pending election is unlikely to lead to bolder initiatives. However there will be increased pressure on India's states to enhance their role as local laborites for growth-conducive reforms. Among other examples, Carnegie said Japan will have to confront skepticism on the prime minister's economic agenda, while ongoing political conflict will test investor confidence in Thailand.

10. Central Asia in flux

Finally, Carnegie sees fresh economic and strategic pressures emerging in continental Asia in 2014. Landlocked Central Asian economies will be tested amid the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, new Chinese investment and infrastructure initiatives, Russia's efforts to extend its preferential customs union, and Iran's uncertain trajectory.

(Read More: Pimco's three big worries for Asia in 2014)

— By CNBC's Katie Holliday: Follow her on Twitter @hollidaykatie

Summary: Global think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace outlines the ten trends to shape the landscape for investors in Asia this year.


The Photographers' Gallery has inaugurated its new, bigger, brighter space on Ramillies Street in central London with two contrasting shows; one nostalgic, one utterly contemporary. The first is Soho Nights, part of an ongoing series of linked exhibitions taken from the gallery's archives. Curated by Val Williams and Bob Pullen, it is a celebration of Soho's subterranean nightlife from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Many of the images here were originally used to illustrate articles in Picture Post magazine and possess the innocent energy of social reportage from that era. Photographers such as the great Thurston Hopkins capture a Soho of thriving coffee bars and after-hours clubs, many of which have long since disappeared, even if the kinds of nefarious character that haunted them can still be glimpsed in various drinking dens in the early hours. You may also recognise some enduring establishments like the French House, which seems to have surrendered little of its bohemian charm in the interim.

The biggest surprise is a series of snatched intimate portraits of dancers in the Cat's Whisker coffee bar taken by then-fledgling filmmaker Ken Russell. He captures the frenetic atmosphere of a joint that is so packed that the teenage clientele only have room to do the hand jive, an elaborate series of gestures immortalised in song by Johnny Otis in his 1958 hit, Willie and the Hand Jive, which is nowhere near as rude as its title suggests. Blessedly, Ken's black and white photographs possess none of the baroque indulgence of his later films.

Upstairs in the main gallery, Katy Grannan's big colour portraits of a pair of middle-aged American transsexuals, Gail and Dale, seem to have been made on another planet. Grannan is one of a new breed of portraitists who take their cue from the transgressive work of the likes of Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin. There is something of William Eggleston too in her use of colour to suggest altered states of mind. Here she has captured the harsh, unsparing natural light of the American west, which illuminates her subjects' otherness even more. Gail and Dale possess what Grannan describes as "a very romantic notion of themselves", which is putting it mildly, and seem content to comply with her exaggerated rendering of the same. The result is both disturbing and oddly affecting, and calls to mind Warhol's images of the drag queens and so-called superstars who congregated in the Factory in the late 1960s as well as certain more traditional portraits of ageing film stars - Mae West springs to mind - marooned in a culture that no longer has a place for them. This is a very Californian show in more ways than one, then.

Grannan's other subject here is a woman called Nicole, who seems quite mad. In one or two portraits she poses like a typical Hollywood starlet from the 50s, in others she looks like a whacked-out junkie. Another image that again recalls Eggleston's work captures her lying on a grassy hill, seemingly trying to divest herself of her shroud-like dress, which is gathered around her thighs. In yet another shot she is a blur of motion on a bed, either having a self-induced orgasm or a fit of some kind. What does it all mean? Whatever, Nicole's wild and unsettling poses - part learnt (model) behaviour, part deranged posturing - are the polar opposite of Gail's and Dale's passive compliance with Grannan's lens. Both subjects offer exaggerated ideas of femininity and otherness, and seem implicitly linked to their setting, the mythical American West which offers limitless possibility for self-reinvention. Here, though, the various models of female stardom are mimicked and distorted.

Grannan's title, The Westerns, is also resonant, accidentally or otherwise, of Richard Avedon's extraordinary series of portraits of workers, published in his seminal book Into The American West. Whereas Avedon's stark ultra-realism spoke of grit and grim determination, Grannan's sun-bleached, artfully staged portraits depict a kind of heightened reality, one infused by dreams of self-reinvention that have nothing to do with toil and labour but are determined by desire and perhaps desperation. There is something irrevocably sad in these images that often stop just short of the grotesque. Here, the warm Californian sun is unforgiveable, the landscape a place of deferred promise.

Like Arbus, Grannan possesses an empathy with her sitters and, in an accompanying video, talks of her work as a kind of collaboration, expressing the hope that people do not view her subjects "in a judgmental way" simply as "the other". Which is all well and good except that their otherness is at the root of her interest in them, and cannot help but be amplified by the camera.

For all that, Grannan's work is never less than intriguing. At best, there is an otherworldliness here that sets her apart from her influences, and continues the theme that underpinned her first conceptual series, Model Photographs, a decade ago. Then, she highlighted the everyday strangeness of middle America in portraits of ordinary people in their local environments, and managed to suggest a collective repressed anxiety lurking beneath. Here, it is as if California, and all its undercurrents of desperation, has defined her subjects to the point where they exist entirely in a world of their own making. All they really needed was an image-maker to come along and make their fantasies real - or even more unreal.

In this, Katy Grannan has certainly succeeded.

Summary: The Photographers' Gallery, London Katy Grannan's California portraits show characters with 'a very romantic notion of themselves', while Ken Russell's vintage Soho offers vivid realism


TOKYO, July 31 (Reuters) - Asian imports of Iranian oil fell slightly from a year ago in July following a landmark agreement on Tehran's disputed nuclear programme that may pave the way for an increase in crude exports as early as next year. Imports by Iran's four biggest buyers - China, India, Japan and South Korea - totalled just over 1 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, down 1.3 percent from a year earlier, government and tanker-tracking data showed. Tehran is eager to recover market share lost under U.S. and European Union sanctions and boost growth after decades of diplomatic and economic isolation. The sanctions were designed to keep its exports at around 1 million bpd, down from 2.5 million bpd in 2011, and get Tehran to negotiate on the disputed programme, which Western powers say was a cover for building an atomic bomb. Iran has constantly denied it wants a nuclear weapon. Under the accord reached in Vienna on July 14, Iran will be subject to longer-term restrictions on its nuclear programme in return for the removal of U.S., U.N. and European sanctions. The target date is mid-December for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "to declare compliance and thus fire the starter's pistol for lifting of sanctions," Scott Lucas, professor of International Politics at the University of Birmingham, England, told the Reuters Global Oil Forum. Getting actual sanctions relief will depend on the speed with which Iran carries out the removal of centrifuges, he added. President Barack Obama on Sunday was a step closer to having sufficient backing to ensure the deal stands, with another Democrat senator supporting the agreement. Obama needs to muster 34 votes to ensure lawmakers cannot kill the deal and now has 31 supporters. Diplomatic ties have been restored between Britain and Iran and a steady stream of diplomats and business executives have made the pilgrimage to Tehran to prepare for post-sanctions business opportunities. For the first seven months of 2015, Asian buyers took in almost 1.1 million bpd, down about 8 percent from a year earlier. Japan's purchases rose more than 20 percent in July from a year earlier to 158,60 bpd, trade ministry data showed on Friday.

The following tables show Asia's Iran crude imports in bpd for June and the year to date.

Country July-15 July-14 yr/yr pct China 575,700 558,865 3.0 India 215,400 210,300 2.4 Japan 158,608 129,990 22.2 Korea 66,710 130,226 -48.8 Total 1,016,418 1,029,381 -1.3 Country Jan-July 2015 Jan-July 2014 yr/yr pct China 587,400 617,670 -4.9 India 216,400 270,600 -20.0 Japan 170,727 165,989 2.9 Korea 111,665 125,467 -11.0 Total 1,086,192 1,179,726 -7.9

(Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Summary: Imports by Iran's four biggest buyers- China, India, Japan and South Korea- totalled just over 1 million barrels per day last month, down 1.3 percent from a year earlier, government and tanker-tracking data showed. Under the accord reached in Vienna on July 14, Iran will be subject to longer-term restrictions on its nuclear programme in return for the removal of U.S.,...


Older women struggling to have children could turn their "bad" eggs good again after a breakthrough by a South Australian researcher.

University of Adelaide fertility researcher Dr Hannah Brown has found haemoglobin, known for making blood cells red, in healthy eggs but missing from damaged ones.

She took out the Women's and Children's Hospital Foundation's Young Investigator Award this week for adding haemoglobin back into "bad" mice eggs and undoing much of the damage.

"It was shocking because everyone just knew it as the thing that was in blood," Dr Brown told AAP on Thursday.

"We didn't actually believe the finding was real for a very long time because haemoglobin was never before found in an egg.

"We hope that technology like this will be able to give (less fertile) women an opportunity to mend their broken eggs."

Dr Brown said she expected human trials to begin overseas soon.

"The most important message in all of this for your eggs is that prevention is better than a cure and thinking about fertility really early, even before you want to start a family, is important," she said.

Summary: A University of Adelaide researcher has given older women struggling to conceive hope by unlocking a possible secret to fertility.


"Slapping a label on something isn't really delivering on the promise of low volatility," said Todd Shriber, Web editor at Irvine, California-based ETF Trends.

A recent Wall Street Journal article went beyond caution, saying that given the recent performance run, it's time to "flee" these low-volatility funds.

Recent performance, though, doesn't tell the full story that the long-term investor needs to know in weighing the low-volatility approach as a core holding, or complement to a core holding, rather than well-timed ETF trade. On the plus side, these ETFs have fairly low expense ratios, but they take vastly different approaches and have no track record during a serious downturn in the market—which is when you'd be most likely to want to minimize volatility.

The lack of a track record is a complaint that has also dogged so-called ETF strategist funds, professionally managed ETF funds of funds that seek to reduce volatility and have delivered in recent years, but have yet to be proved over longer market cycles.

Dan Draper, managing director of PowerShares, is used to the debate. He said recent history and SPLV's return history confirms academic findings that there is a low-volatility anomaly, and it allows the approach to not only reduce risk but also generate healthy returns. Since inception of SPLV in May 2011 through the end of March, SPLV has slightly outperformed the S&P 500 Index. Draper said this is coming with less volatility and includes the bull market of 2013.

Read MoreThe biggest wealth destroyer in the market, an ETF?

All of the low-volatility ETFs are equity funds, so far, and equities are an inherently volatile asset class, points out advisor Ed Gjertsen II, vice president of Glen View, Illinois-based Mack Investment Securities. The classic way to lower risk is not to stay 100 percent in equities but to diversify among asset classes: to add bonds or real estate, say, to leaven your exposure to stocks. So if you're interested in a low-volatility ETF in order to minimize your equity volatility, that's all well and good. If, on the other hand, you're under the assumption that you're taking a serious approach to lowering the risk of your overall investments by buying a low-volatility ETF ... well, you've probably been led astray.

"Don't be fooled by the minimum-volatility tag," said Gjertsen. "Look at what's under the hood."

"Bonds and real estate are risk assets like stocks," Draper said. He said SPLV outperformed a traditional stock/bond blend during the three worst drawdowns of the S&P 500 Index since May 2011. "Going deeper, bonds have duration risk. At current interest rate levels, an ensuing rise in interest rates may have a material negative impact on bond prices and generate volatility for a portfolio due to the duration effect," Draper said.

PowerShares also looked at a main real estate index, the FTSE NAREIT Composite Index, on a monthly return basis since 1990 and found it produced higher volatility than the S&P 500—18.5 percent to 14.7 percent.

Although SPLV has only traded since May 2011, it has existed through 3 of 4 market selloffs related to the eurozone financial crisis—spring/summer 2011, spring/summer 2012 and fall 2012. During these periods, the S&P 500 Low Volatility Total Return Index posted a smaller decline than the S&P 500 by an average of 6.57 percent, and the decline was an average of just 35.5 percent of the drop in the S&P 500 Total Return Index, Draper said.

The widows-and-orphans approach to investing Even the two largest ETFs have widely different approaches—and critics say there is no good evidence for how well these funds will perform over time.

You could call SPLV a shortcut to the kind of portfolio your grandmother might have been comfortable with: About one-fourth of it is in utility stocks, according to Shriber.

SPLV's strategy is pretty simple. It takes the S&P 500 and overweights the least volatile sectors. The benchmark it tracks, the S&P 500 Low Volatility Index, consists of the 100 stocks within the broader S&P 500 Index with the lowest volatility over the past 12 months, making it typically concentrated in the traditional defensive sectors: utilities, consumer staples, and industrials. But it's important to remember that the least volatile sectors are not always the least volatile. In 2002, Gjertsen pointed out, so-called "widows and orphans" stocks, like utilities, took a beating.

And as S&P Capital IQ noted in a report on the rise of low-volatility ETFs last year, even if they make sense for the long term, outflows can occur for these strategies, based on short-term changes in market sentiment. Last May, when the market became obsessed with the idea that the Federal Reserve would soon slow its bond-buying program, low-volatility funds experienced outflows.

Summary: In the past three years, the category of low-volatility ETFs has mushroomed, but whether they work or not remains an open question.


I recently asked a wealthy political donor why he was supporting Bill de Blasio and his attacks on the wealthy.

"Because inequality is a problem in New York," he said. "The rich have gotten their way for too long."

By "rich" of course, he meant people richer than he was—as in billionaires. Inequality in New York is all relative.

The tensions between the rich and super rich, and between Old Money and New Money, are as old as wealth itself. But in New York, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong and other concentrated wealth centers, the growing gap between the rich and super rich has rarely been wider.

In an entertaining piece in the New York Observer, Richard Kirshenbaum writes of a friend (whom he doesn't name) who no longer feels important in New York because he's only a millionaire. It's what Kirshenbaum calls the "millionaire malaise."

"I'm 1990s money—in a new age—with one less zero," the friend says.

(Read more: 'Don't hate me because I'm rich' student: a fake?)

Now, it takes at least $100 million to matter in New York. He says he feels like a "loser" because of his $10 million apartment. His wife's 8-carat diamond is out-blinged by a friend's 20-carat rock. He's proud of his floor seats; another guy buys the team.

"You think you're a player, flying your family first class, then so-and-so asks for your tail number, and they look at you like you're taking the bus because you're flying commercial," he says.

Of course, no one should feel the least bit of sympathy for the underloved millionaires or the emotional pain they suffer for being Lear-less. Ask any of the more than 11 million out of work what it means to feel economically powerless.

Summary: Inequality is all relative. It now takes at least $100 million to matter in New York, leaving many wealthy feeling disadvantaged.


Christopher D. Schroeder is accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting an Ohio teen

A 15-year-old Ohio girl has been rescued from a Missouri home where she was allegedly held captive and sexually assaulted for nearly a month.

The girl, from Brooklyn, Ohio, originally agreed to run away with 41-year-old Christopher D. Schroeder after connecting with him in a chat room online, according to a police

The teen was reported missing on November 8. She was found in "good condition" on Tuesday at Schroeder's house in a gated community outside St. Louis, Missouri – 600 miles from home, according to

A friend of the teen's family tells PEOPLE, "They're happy they found their daughter and she's coming home." The girl's mother was en route to Missouri to pick up her daughter on Thursday, the source says.

Immediately after the girl met with Schroeder, he became threatening, according to authorities.

"The suspect drove to Brooklyn, Ohio, on November 8, 2015 and picked her up near her residence," the Warren County, Missouri, Sheriff's Department said. "Upon getting her in his vehicle he took her cell phone away from her, removed the battery and destroyed the SIM card."

Shroeder is accused of holding the girl against her will until a team of detectives from multiple state and local law enforcement agencies and the FBI's Child Exploitation Task Force tracked her to Schroeder's home.

The teen was at her home when she disappeared last month. At the time, her parents said that she had taken the family's rescue dog outside and never returned.

The Warren County Sheriff's Department said that the initial investigation indicates that she met Schroder through an Internet chat forum. He offered to pick her up after learning she was unhappy at home, despite the fact that she disclosed she was underage, according to the Warren County authorities.

Authorities said that the suspect continually engaged in sexual intercourse with the girl and told her to change her identity and appearance.

"The victim stated she wanted to go home, but the suspect wouldn't allow it and that she was afraid to leave because he had numerous guns in his home," the sheriff's department said.

Items seized by authorities through a search warrant allegedly revealed the suspect taped himself sexually assaulting the teen.

Schroeder faces both state and federal charges. The federal charges include production of child pornography and the transportation of a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. He is also charged with statuary rape in Missouri. He is being held without bond.

At the time of the girl's disappearance, police in Ohio said that the teen had "clearly informed friends and extended family members of her intention, but did not offer any solid information as to her intended destination," according to

Michelle Knight, one of the three Cleveland women

for more than a decade, and Felix DeJesus, the father of Knight's fellow kidnapping victim, Gina DeJesus, rallied around and supported the girl's family following her disappearance. Even actor

, who was in the Northeast Ohio area to film a movie, posed for a photo with a missing poster for the teen in the weeks after she went missing, according to Fox 8.

The girl's stepmother wrote on a special Facebook group dedicated to the missing teen that the family's "prayers" were answered with her safe return.

"There are thousands of missing and endangered children in the United States right now, that need our help. Going through this , changed our whole lifes[sic]," she wrote. "We all need to do everything we can to help find these missing children and get them home to there[sic] families. And laws need to be changed, as do the way these children are looked at. It does not matter weather[sic] they run away or get taken away, they are missing and need to be got home with there[sic] loved ones."

Summary: The girl, from Brooklyn, Ohio, originally agreed with run away with 41-year-old Christopher D. Schroeder after connecting with him in an online chat room, police say


The country’s top daily fantasy sports companies attracted nearly $3 billion in player entry fees in 2015, more than triple from the previous year, even as pressure from regulators put the industry’s future in question.

The strong growth came in a wild year for the sector, which exploded in popularity after a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign. Investigations by state and federal officials followed, questioning whether the games violate gambling laws.

The new industry estimates, from the research firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming LLC , show that FanDuel Inc., a New York company, held on to its position as the largest in the fantasy sports industry, with nearly $1.8 billion in fees collected from players.

Boston-based DraftKings Inc. remained the second-largest, collecting nearly $1.2 billion.

The two account for nearly all of the US daily fantasy sports market.

Yet daily fantasy sports and sports betting are both dwarfed by government-run lotteries, which accounted for nearly $74 billion in sales in the United States in 2015, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.

“After just three years in business we had a very successful 2015, and expect continued progress in the coming year,’’ said DraftKings spokeswoman Sabrina Macias.

FanDuel said it “has consistently posted triple-digit growth” since its founding and that 2015 was its “best year yet, reaching more than 6 million registered users.”

In fantasy sports, players select fictional rosters of real-life athletes and amass points based on their performances in actual games. Daily fantasy sports, the kind offered by DraftKings and FanDuel, offer a large number of contests that last just one day or one week. Prizes in the biggest games can exceed $1 million.

The companies typically keep about 10 percent of entry fees as revenue, using the rest to bankroll cash prizes for players.

Eilers & Krejcik estimated that FanDuel reaped about $174 million in revenue last year, compared with about $106 million for DraftKings. While the two companies are private, they have reported entry fee and revenue figures in previous years, giving an idea of the industry’s growth.

FanDuel said it collected about $622 million in entry fees and more than $57 million in revenue during 2014, while DraftKings said it collected $304 million in fees and about $30 million in revenue.

Like many fast-growing consumer Internet companies, neither Draft-Kings nor FanDuel is profitable, relying heavily on money from investors to pay for their growth. Eilers & Krejcik estimated that DraftKings lost about $280 million in 2015, while FanDuel lost an estimated $137 million.

Fantasy sports face an uncertain future; the industry’s legality has been challenged by a handful of state officials. In New York, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sued to ban DraftKings and FanDuel.

The companies are fighting that lawsuit, arguing that they are permitted under New York gambling law because the skill required to win negates any random outcomes in the underlying sporting events.

A DraftKings lawyer recently said that losing that case could force the company out of business.

DraftKings investor 21st Century Fox Inc. recently disclosed it had marked down its $160 million stake in the company by about 60 percent, and a key payment processor recently said it was backing away from the industry. The industry has responded by seeking legal changes in state legislatures.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is finalizing consumer protection regulations that would restrict how the companies may advertise and ban players under 21.

Summary: DraftKings and FanDuel collected about $3 billion in entry fees last year, a wild period that ended with serious questions about the future viability of the previously obscure daily fantasy sports sector.


SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his company is filing a lawsuit against the federal government for the rights to open up competition in the bidding process of national security launches.

National security launches are Air Force launches of technical national security programs such as spy satellites.

Musk also confirmed that SpaceX Falcon 9 completed a reusable flight over the pacific.

"I'm happy to confirm we were able to do a soft landing in the Atlantic. All the data we received back indicates it did the soft landing and was in healthy condition after that," Musk said at a news conference Friday."It does look the like the stage was subsequently destroyed by wave action."

Summary: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his company is filing a lawsuit against U.S. Air Force's bulk purchase of United Launch Alliance flights.