[Politics] :
A court has ordered a fine of one-point-five million won, or around one-thousand-100 U.S. dollars, for the wife of main opposition Democratic Party(DP) leader Lee Jae-myung upon convicting her of violating the election law during the 2022 presidential primaries.
In its ruling on Thursday, the Suwon ...
[more...]
[Politics] :
The special counsel bill mandating an investigation for first lady Kim Keon-hee has passed in the National Assembly.
The main opposition Democratic Party introduced the bill, its third attempt following presidential vetoes for previous bills, and all 191 lawmakers present voted in its favor in a plenary ...
[more...]
[Inter-Korea] :
People who suffer damages as a result of North Korea’s trash balloon campaign will eventually be eligible for government compensation.
The National Assembly passed an amendment to the Framework Act on Civil Defense during a plenary session Thursday, allowing the government to provide compensation for ...
[more...]
Binary chalcogen halogen EX4 species represent intriguing systems in terms of chemical bonding theories, such as hypervalency and stereoactivity of lone electron pairs. Instead of a simple molecular EX4 structure, selenium tetrachloride forms an ionic pair, Cl3Se+Cl−, that assembles into a tetrameric (SeCl4)4 structure, namely, tetra-μ3-chlorido-dodecachloridotetraselenium. This article describes the charge–density analysis of the tetrameric molecule of β-SeCl4 based on the aspherical model obtained from Hirshfeld Atom Refinement of the tetrameric molecule and of an explicit cluster of 15 tetramers that simulates the crystal packing. Deformation density, electron localization function (ELF) and Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules (QTAIM) were used to evaluate the bonding situation, the electron-density distribution around the Se atom and the interaction energy of the tetramer.
The synthesis, crystal structure, and Hirshfeld surface analysis of N-(4-methoxyphenyl)picolinamide (MPPA), C13H12N2O2, are presented. MPPA crystallizes in the monoclinic space group P21/n, with a single molecule in the asymmetric unit. Structural analysis reveals that all non-hydrogen atoms are nearly coplanar, and the molecule exhibits two intramolecular hydrogen bonds that stabilize its conformation. Supramolecular features include significant intermolecular interactions, primarily C—H...π and various hydrogen bonds, contributing to the overall crystal cohesion, as confirmed by energy framework calculations yielding a total interaction energy of −138.3 kJ mol−1. Hirshfeld surface analysis indicates that H...H interactions dominate, followed by C...H and O...H interactions, highlighting the role of van der Waals forces and hydrogen bonding in crystal packing.
This New York-based company has made large strides in building out its nuclear reactor program, noted a Benchmark Co. report.
The organized freelancer will make sure the amount here is right.; Credit: Photo by Great Beyond via Flickr Creative Commons
Brian WattFor freelancers, consultants, actors and other self employed people, life gets complicated this time of year. Digging around for the paperwork to fill out tax forms practically qualifies as exercise.
"They have a nightmare trying to find receipts," said accountant Tristan Zier.
Zier founded Zen99 to help freelancers manage their finances, including filing their taxes. His most important advice to freelancers: keep track expenses and receipts year round rather than pursuing a paper chase as April 15 nears.
"When they can’t find receipts, they can’t write off their expenses," he said. "And they’re paying more money to the government instead of keeping it for themselves."
Zier and others have come up with a lists of common mistakes freelancers make at tax time.
Here are seven don't - or, deadly sins, for freelances at tax time:
Not tracking and writing off the right types of business expenses. Zier says many freelancers fail to realize they can write off part of their cell phone bill as a business expense. Expenses vary by the type of work. "A rideshare driver's biggest expense will be related to their car, while a web developer's biggest expense might be their home office," Zier says. "Figuring out what expenses are important to your type of work is important is maximizing your tax savings."
Writing off personal expenses. This goes back to that cell phone. If you use the same phone for personal and business purposes, don't be tempted to write the whole bill off. Estimate the amount you use it for your work. The same goes for your vehicle. Don't go trying to write off miles driven to the beach.
The Double No-No: counting expenses twice. Speaking of vehicles, Zier says most people use the Standard Mileage Rate ($0.56/mile for 2014), which factors in gas, repairs and maintenance and other costs like insurance and depreciation. But if you use this rate, you can't also expense your gas receipts and repair bills.
Employee AND employer. At lifeofthefreelancer.com, financial consultant Brendon Reimer reminds freelancers they play both roles. For regular employees, Federal, State, and payroll taxes are withheld from a paycheck, and distributed on the employee’s behalf. It's how Social Security and Medicare are funded. The IRS mandates that the employer must pay half of every employee’s payroll tax, and the employee is responsible for the other half. Independent contractors have to handle both halves. "The IRS does give you a small benefit by letting you deduct the half that you pay yourself as a business expense," Reimer writes. Zier said the freelancer's sin here is believing he or she pays more taxes than the regular working stiff.
Not keeping adequate records. The IRS requires you to keep proof of all business receipts, mileage, etc. If you can't show these, the IRS could refute the expense and force you to pay back taxes. Zier says the good news is there are other ways to prove expenses if you've lost the receipt. A bank or credit card statement with the date and location might do the trick. "The IRS is surprisingly accommodating if you are doing your best," Zier says. "If you're being a headache, they're going to be a headache as well."
In separate reports, Zen99 and the consumer finance web site nerdwallet ranked Los Angeles the best city for freelancers.
Each considered housing and health care costs, the percentage of freelancers in an area as factors. Zier said even before the sharing economy began to take off, the entertainment industry and growing tech scene were already strong sources of freelance gigs in L.A.
"Even back in 2012, L.A. had twelve percent of people report themselves as self-employed on the Census," Ziers said. "You know your Ubers and companies like that are really bringing a lot of attention to the contractor market, but it was a very robust community before."
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
The covers to the last issues of the current runs of "Avengers" and "New Avengers," leading into "Secret Wars."; Credit: Marvel
Mike RoeMarvel Comics held a press conference this week announcing details about "Secret Wars," a company-wide comic book crossover that they promise will change everything.
Promises of change in comics often don't amount to much, but here's why this one just might, with Marvel teasing that it will produce a whole new world for its characters.
"We see this as putting an endcap to decades of stories and starting a new era," said Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso. "And when you see the scope of the event, you see what we're doing, what we're willing to do, this is a place where we're going to be bringing new pieces onto the board and taking old pieces off. You guys will be yelling and screaming, you'll be loving, hating, and in equal measure."
Rival DC Comics has always been quick to have stories designed to streamline their history, with the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" being the most famous one — a story that destroyed the DC Comics universe of the time, birthing a new timeline that gave us the versions of DC's heroes we know today. Several minor and major reboots followed, with the biggest since then being 2011's New 52 (and a tease of another one with this April's "Convergence").
Meanwhile, Marvel still refers back to stories from their early days, beginning with the first issue of "Marvel Comics" in 1939, and more so since the launch of "Fantastic Four" and the interlinked Marvel Universe in the 1960s, led by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Marvel previously launched a line of comics meant to offer a fresh vision of the Marvel characters called Ultimate Comics, but now the worlds of those characters and the traditional Marvel universe are getting combined thanks to "Secret Wars."
"The Ultimate Universe, the Marvel Universe, they're going to smash together," said Alonso. "This is the Marvel Universe moving forward."
"We've never done anything like this, ever," said Marvel senior vice president and executive editor Tom Brevoort. "And what we're going to do to top it, I don't know. Hopefully that will be somebody else's problem."
The story that's been built up so far has to do with different universes colliding into each other — and in the first issue of "Secret Wars," the Marvel and Ultimate Earths collide, with the heroes of those worlds unable to stop it. What's left behind is what Marvel is calling "Battleworld," a patchwork planet with different parts of it inhabited by the characters from different famous Marvel crossovers of the past (you can see some of those past titles in the slideshow above).
Marvel released this video to help you visualize what exactly Battleworld is:
See a map of Battleworld here, showing the different worlds made up of old storylines to be explored in "Secret Wars" (and click to enlarge):
Brevoort described Battleworld as "The little melting pot in which the new Marvel Universe will be created" after the Marvel and Ultimate versions of Earth are destroyed. He said that Battleworld is what Marvel is going to be "during, through and after" the beginning of "Secret Wars."
"Once you hit 'Secret Wars' 1, there is no Marvel Universe. There is no Ultimate Universe. All there is is Battleworld, and a whole lot of empty void," Brevoort said.
"Every single piece of this world is a building block for the Marvel Universe moving forward," Alonso said. "None of these stories are Elseworlds, or What Ifs, or alternative reality stories. They aren't set in the past or the future. They're not set in an alternate reality. They're set in the reality of the Marvel Universe."
It's also a story that uses an old name — the original "Secret Wars" involved an alien taking heroes from Earth and forcing them into battle for the fate of the universe. It remains unclear if the villain from that crossover will play a role here.
Observers were quick to speculate on some of the behind-the-scenes reasons for the change. Combining the Ultimate Universe with the traditional Marvel Universe would let them incorporate the half-black, half-Latino Spider-Man from the Ultimate line that grabbed headlines a few years ago. It would let them do something different with characters like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, who have been a flashpoint for controversy due to Fox retaining rights in perpetuity to any films based on those characters.
It also opens the door to a longtime comic book trope: Bringing back to life the dead.
"If we were to want to resurrect Gwen Stacy, this would be the place to do it, wouldn't it?" Alonso said.
Speaking of the death of Gwen Stacy, the writer who pulled the trigger on killing her, Gerry Conway, tells Newsarama that he's on board.
"I think like with any idea, the execution will matter more than the idea itself. The idea of a reset is, by itself, not a bad idea," Conway said.
One who's less on board with it: longtime Spider-Man artist John Romita.
"My guess is new fans will be okay with it, and old fans will grumble," Romita told Newsarama. "I’m not a businessman, but I do know that comic companies, for almost 100 years now, do whatever they can for shock value. They grab attention. Personally, I hate all the goofy things they do. When I was there, I used to fight stuff like this. But you can’t stop them."
Current Marvel writers have been sworn to secrecy about what happens once "Secret Wars" is done:
The lack of certainty about what this all means has led fans to wildly speculate, as well as poke fun at what might happen:
It's a story that's been years in the making.
"Every single time we've done an event, we've always had to be mindful of 'Secret Wars,' and we've had to make decisions based on the fact that we knew that 'Secret Wars' was headed our way," Alonso said.
Brevoort said that Hickman proposed a version of "Secret Wars" years ago, but that vision has since become significantly larger.
"It sounds like typical Stan lee hyperbole — and there's nothing wrong with typical Stan Lee hyperbole — but it is difficult to imagine something that would be larger in scope, in scale, than what we are doing with 'Secret Wars,'" Brevoort said.
That father of the modern Marvel comics world, Stan Lee, tells Newsarama that the reboot is "probably good."
"Anything they do that’s unexpected and different usually captures the attention of the fans," Lee said. "It sounds intriguing to me."
Lee also tells Newsarama that if he were to do it all again, he'd do it basically the same, describing what he did as "the right way to go, and maybe sometimes, even the perfect way to go."
"I liked making the Fantastic Four superheroes without a secret identity. I liked the tragedy of Spider-Man’s origin, the ‘with great power, there must also come great responsibility.’ I thought it was the right way of doing things at the time. And I still like what I’ve done," Lee said. "I can’t think, off the top of my head, of anything I’d really want to change."
More details are promised in the weeks to come, with a free preview issue being released on Free Comic Book Day, May 2. While fans wait, they may want to heed the wait-and-see approach advocated by Conway and famed "Thor" artist Walt Simonson.
"Maybe this is coming back out of my old geology days, but I try not to have instant reactions to things and say, ‘Oh my God! That’s terrible!’" Simonson told Newsarama. "My basic reaction is usually ‘let’s see the evidence in the field.’ Let’s come back in a year and see what we’ve got. That will tell the story.”
And for those who say that Marvel is ruining their childhood by messing with the history of their favorite characters, Conway tells Newsarama:
"I would say to them, no, your childhood is still your childhood. There’s a point to be made, and it’s a universal one: We have to see that there’s a difference between what people do today, and what they did yesterday. Yesterday still exists, those stories still exist. Now someone else is getting a chance at a new childhood. And that’s nice."
Watch the full "Secret Wars" live press conference below:
Secret Wars press conference video
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
A large The Actor statue is placed on stage during 21st Annual SAG Awards Behind The Scenes At The Shrine Auditorium Jan. 23, 2015 in Los Angeles.; Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Mike RoeClick here for KPCC's Awards Tracker
This Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards aren't as high profile as the Academy Awards, or even the Golden Globes, but they serve as one of the best predictors of who's going to take home a gold statue come Oscar night. Here's why.
SAG Award nominees are chosen by a committee of about 2,100 of the guild's members, according to awards news site Gold Derby. Then, all of the 111,228 members of the Guild have the chance to vote for their picks.
Meanwhile, the acting nominees for the Academy Awards are chosen by the 1,100 members in the Academy's actors branch, before being voted on by the Academy's full 5,700 members. Those actors are all part of SAG, so you're likely to see a strong correlation most years between the awards, particularly in the acting category.
The SAG Awards have proven to be the best Oscar predictor in the acting category of any other major awards season prize since they began in 1995, both in nominations and winners. Of the 20 nominations and four winners from each shows, the overlap between the SAG Awards (aka "the Actors") and the Academy Awards in the last few years:
This year, 17 nominees crossed over between the awards shows, with the Oscars matching up on all five nominations for best supporting actor and four of the five nominations in the other three acting categories.
SAG voters have lined up with the Academy on Best Actor 16 out of 20 times. The last time they differed from the Oscars was 2003, when Johnny Depp won at the SAG Awards for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" before Sean Penn took the statue home at the Oscars for "Mystic River."
For Best Actress, SAG last split from Oscar in 2011, going with Viola Davis for "The Help" over eventual Oscar winner Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady." They've matched up 14 out of 20 years.
In the supporting categories, the SAG Awards haven't fared as well. They went 12 for 20 in Best Supporting Actor, and 13 for 20 in Best Supporting Actress. That one also has an asterisk — one of those was a tie, so if you don't count that one, they're also only 12 for 20.
The SAG Awards remain the ones to watch when it comes to the acting awards — though their Best Ensemble category, the SAG Awards version of Best Picture, doesn't have a particularly strong correlation to the Oscars Best Picture winner. (For that, you'll want to watch for the Producers Guild Awards.)
We're tracking awards season and what experts are predicting; see KPCC's Awards Tracker below or click here to see the full page. You can watch the Screen Actors Guild Awards this Sunday at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern on both TBS and TNT.
Disclosure: Mike Roe, along with other members of KPCC's staff, are members of the Screen Actors Guild as part of their employment with KPCC.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
An image from a teaser for Marvel Comics' 2015 "Civil War," part of crossover "Secret Wars." Could Spidey appear in the new Captain America: Civil War film now that Marvel and Sony have worked out a deal?; Credit: Marvel
Mike RoeSpider-Man is coming home to join the rest of the Marvel movie family (um, except for the Fantastic Four and the X-Men) in upcoming films under a new deal struck between Sony, the home for Spider-Man movies, and Disney's Marvel Studios, home of Iron Man and the Avengers
It's been a bumpy road for Spidey for almost a decade, but now he's set to be part of the largely critically and financially successful Marvel Cinematic Universe films. He's already made history, and he could make more history soon.
Here's a brief history of cinematic Spider-Man, looking ahead to his new adventures with Marvel's large and growing stable of movie superheroes.
Spider-Man was one of the catalysts for the current superhero movie boom. Superhero films were seen as potentially dead following the bomb of "Batman & Robin" with George Clooney, a critical failure and a mixed bag commercially.
Marvel dipped its toes in superhero movies with 1998's "Blade," which was a big hit, followed by 2000's "X-Men," but they both tried to distance themselves from their comic book source material (and the Joel Schumacher Batman movies) by putting their heroes in black leather and grounding them as much as possible in real-life aesthetics.
Sony's first "Spider-Man" movie came out in 2002 and showed that there was still room for an optimistic comic book take. The Sam Raimi-directed film also had a huge cultural impact as one of the first big summer movies following 9/11 — an early teaser that showed Spidey trapping bad guys between the two towers had to be pulled following the disaster.
The movie ended up pulling in almost $822 million at the box office, including almost $404 million domestically, helmed by genre director Raimi, who had previously been best known for the horror-comedy "Evil Dead" films.
Tobey Maguire surprised as the star, pulling off the nerdy, earnest Peter Parker while also being believable enough as an action star in the Spider-Man suit. Maguire starred alongside Kirsten Dunst as love interest Mary Jane and Willem Dafoe as the villainous Green Goblin, and the film included the not-yet-a-superstar James Franco as Harry Osborn and now-Oscar-nominated J.K. Simmons as Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson.
A sequel, 2004's "Spider-Man 2," continued the success of the first, with only a slight dip in overall box office while proving that the first film's success wasn't just a flash in the pan, that there was room for a relatively bright superhero in a dark time.
Maguire almost ducked out of filming during negotiations, complaining of back pains following injuries while filming "Seabiscuit," and Jake Gyllenhaal almost stepped into the role — but Maguire recovered and held onto his spot. The escapist entertainment of superhero movies was starting to take hold in a growing way, but the superhero train was about to come off the rails for a few years.
As "Spider-Man 2" was hitting theaters, 2004 also brought "The Punisher," "Blade: Trinity" and "Catwoman," none of which showed superheroes as particularly promising movie saviors.
Marvel turned out more superhero movies that weren't loved by critics, including "Elektra," "Fantastic Four" and "X-Men: The Last Stand," though the latter two still did well at the box office (all were released by 20th Century Fox). DC Comics made the critical and commercial hit "Batman Begins" in 2005, but stumbled in 2006 with the underperforming "Superman Returns."
In 2007, "Spider-Man 3" dropped, and while it did great at the box office — it was the series' most popular film worldwide, though it dipped domestically — it was slammed by fans and critics. They took that Spider-Man optimism and tried making him emo, while overstuffing the bad guys — going from one villain in the previous films and upping it to three — and turning the campy dialogue up to 11.
While Spidey stumbled, the next year Marvel released its first film from its own studio, the groundbreaking "Iron Man." It showed that you could make a franchise from a hero who was big in the comics but didn't have the same mainstream recognition.
It revitalized Robert Downey Jr.'s career and put Marvel Studios on the map, with a post-credits sequence laying the seeds for completely tying the films together in a way that hadn't been done on this scale ever before.
While Marvel started to crank up their self-produced film, Spider-Man lay dormant. Eventually, it was decided to reboot the character with Andrew Garfield taking over the role in 2012's "The Amazing Spider-Man." It scored the lowest domestic take of the series, while still excelling overseas.
Amazing Spider-Man 2 trailer 1
Sony quickly followed up with a sequel, while announcing their own plans to ape Marvel and try to create their own cinematic universe.
Amazing Spider-Man 2 villains trailer
The second "Amazing Spider-Man" movie set up other potential villains, and holding off the payoff of what exactly happened to Peter Parker's parents as Marvel tried to stretch Spider-Man into a female-led film, one focused on the villains, a movie led by Spidey character Venom and more.
Amazing Spider-Man first 10 minutes
The sequel showed diminishing returns, though, and plans for further sequels and spinoffs began to seem up in the air.
In the midst of the Sony hack, documents revealed that Sony and Marvel had been negotiating over Marvel using Spider-Man in its own films — despite Sony having the rights to the character in perpetuity as long as they kept producing films, a deal worked out before Marvel had the resources and the belief in their own filmmaking capabilities. Still, the documents also showed that the talks had fallen apart, and hopes for Spider-Man appearing with Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the rest of his Marvel friends appeared dim.
Then, Monday, Marvel shocked everyone by announcing that Spider-Man was coming home and would be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after all. There had been reports that they'd wanted Spider-Man for the third Captain America film, and with that film set for 2016, that may still happen. They also pushed back four of their "Phase Three" movies to make room in 2017 for a new "Spider-Man" movie, with reports indicating that the movie will feature a new actor taking over and Andrew Garfield getting pushed aside.
Andrew Garfield will likely go down in comics movie history as the right guy at the wrong time. He was a likable lead with a strong supporting cast, but Marvel looks ready to turn the page. Those on the Marvel side have previously indicated they'd avoid doing another origin story, so we'll probably skip seeing Uncle Ben killed to inspire Peter Parker once again.
"The new relationship follows a decade of speculation among fans about whether Spider-Man – who has always been an integral and important part of the larger Marvel Universe in the comic books – could become part of the Marvel Universe on the big screen," Marvel said in the announcement of the new deal.
Fans online have been largely ecstatic over the announcement of Marvel getting control of the character. Reports indicate that Sony still gets final say over Spider-Man, but that they're letting Marvel take the creative lead. Marvel also announced the possibility that other Marvel characters could appear in future Spider-Man films.
While Sony's Amy Pascal stepped down as the motion picture head of Sony following the hacking scandal and its associated public embarrassments, she's staying on as a producer — including co-producing the next Spider-Man film with Marvel creative film leader Kevin Feige.
Some fans have also asked for an even bigger step away from the traditional Spider-Man by introducing Miles Morales, the popular half-black/half-hispanic Spider-Man from an alternate universe in the comics, but the official Marvel press release does mention Peter Parker, and Marvel executives have previously taken a strong stance against moving away from Parker as the secret identity.
Still, as Badass Digest's Devin Faraci notes, the executive who'd taken the strongest stance against Miles Morales — Avi Arad — isn't mentioned in the press release about the new film, so maybe Marvel will surprise fans once again. Also, relations have apparently been icier between Marvel and Fox, with fans speculating that Marvel is trying to ice out the X-Men and the Fantastic Four from their comics — but if the companies could work out a deal to use those heroes in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, it could prove to be an even bigger surprise.
The new Spider-Man film is set for July 28, 2017, and he may appear in another Marvel film sooner.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
File: (L-R) "The Sarah Silverman Program" writer Harris Wittels, comedian Sarah Silverman, executive producer/head writer Dan Sterling and actress Laura Silverman, arrive at Comedy Central's Emmy Awards party at the STK restaurant Sept. 21, 2008 in Los Angeles.; Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Mike Roe with Jennifer VelezHarris Wittels, a comedy writer who worked on "Parks & Recreation," has died at 30, the Los Angeles Police Department's Jane Kim tells KPCC.
Wittels was discovered by his assistant around 12 p.m., Kim said, and was already dead. Kim said that Wittels' death was a possible overdose, but that the Coroner's Office would determine the cause of death. Wittels had attended drug rehab twice.
Comedy Central, where Wittels worked on "The Sarah Silverman Program" and "Secret Girlfriend," confirmed Wittels' death, as did the comedy show he appeared at Wednesday night.
Wittels was also well known for his @Humblebrag Twitter account and later book, helping to popularize the idea online of the false modesty of bragging while trying not to look like you're bragging.
Wittels had spoken about his struggles with addiction in places including Pete Holmes's podcast "You Made It Weird" in a November episode.
"I just really stopped caring about my life," Wittels said on "You Made It Weird," explaining how he got into doing drugs. "I just really started to think, well, if I'm only here for 80 years, then who cares if I spend it high or not?"
Wittels received his first big break when Sarah Silverman saw him performing comedy and gave him a job writing for her Comedy Central show.
Wittels also wrote for HBO's "Eastbound & Down," several MTV awards shows and the American Music Awards. He had a recurring role on "Parks & Recreation" and was a regular guest on the "Comedy Bang Bang" podcast.
Comedians, actors and fans mourned Wittels' death online.
See Wittels in a scene from "Parks & Recreation":
Listen to Wittels on "Comedy Bang Bang":
This story has been updated.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Jerry "The King" Lawler with Jim Ross.; Credit: WWE
Mike RoeJim Ross is the most famous pro wrestling play-by play commentator of all time. He's a native Californian, but grew up in Oklahoma and took his trademark drawl into doing commentary. He's worked in wrestling for more than 40 years, calling matches on shows seen by millions of people around the world.
This weekend, he's in the Bay Area for Wrestlemania weekend (the first Wrestlemania in Northern California, and the first in California in 10 years). Ross no longer commentates for WWE, but he's still a storyteller, online and in person. He hosts regular live storytelling shows with stories from his decades-long career and a bit of comedy, along with a live guest, and he also has a huge online presence including a podcast that went to number one in sports its first week out.
Ross has been watching wrestling since he was a kid.
"My dad wasn't a big fan of it. He missed the point. The point is not whether it's real or if it's staged. The point is, are you entertained by it, or not? And I was," Ross said.
He's been at ringside for numerous historic matches, helping the wrestlers to tell their stories ever since he got his first job in wrestling out of college at 22.
"The greater the star, the easier it is to tell their story," Ross said. "Those participants make music. They make different kinds of music, and the announcers, the broadcasters, have to be able to provide the adequate lyric to the competitors' music."
Ross's voice is so powerful that it's become a meme online to pair his voice with another dramatic footage, from sports and beyond — you can even find it paired with dramatic moments from shows like "Breaking Bad" and "Game of Thrones." Ross says that the first time he saw someone do that was with a hit by Michigan running back Jadaveon Clowney, a video which went viral and sparked others to do likewise.
"I get sent these memes all the time. 'Hey JR, check this one out.' Or people will say, somebody will make a great dunk at an NBA game, and somebody will say 'I can't wait to see this get the JR treatment.' And now there are major sports websites that will send out a tweet, 'Here's a great play from Sunday's 49er-Charger game that's got the JR treatment.' So now it's got a name. 'The JR Treatment.'"
Those viral videos have even helped him land new commentating roles since leaving WWE. He did a call of a fight between NASCAR drivers for the Daytona 500 for a special pre-show video, and it's led to him having opportunities in traditional sports.
"It's been done in boxing, and MMA. Believe it or not, I've gotten feelers that we're entertaining now from a variety of combat sports entities that actually heard what my call would sound like doing their product," Ross said. "It had my tone, had my inflection, had my level of enthusiasm."
Ross also played a huge role behind the scenes, working as WWE's executive vice president of talent and signing future stars like the Rock, Mick Foley and more. He says that Mick Foley's match against the Undertaker in 1998's Hell in a Cell match was his most memorable to call.
"I have people walk up to me and start quoting my commentary when Undertaker threw Foley off the Hell in a Cell, this massive cage with a roof on it, that was about 17 feet high from the roof to the floor," Ross said. "It looked like no human being, quite honestly, could survive that fall. You don't practice falls like that in wrestling school."
Ross has managed to stay relevant with the help of a popular podcast and 1.3 million followers on Twitter, where he regularly dispenses his thoughts on wrestling and beyond. He started doing that podcast after being lobbied to do it by "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, and continues to try new things.
"I was very reluctant to engage in social media, and primarily because we sometimes get set in our ways, especially the older we get," Ross said. "But change, for any of us, in any walk of life, whether it's your diet, it's your relationships, the way you approach your job, or any changes that you need to affect, whether it's on doctor's orders, your significant other's suggestions — change is not always a negative thing. So I got on Twitter, and then Twitter connected me to so many people."
While some may feel that pro wrestling, given its predetermined results, doesn't need real athletes, Ross disagrees and says there are plenty of reasons to want real athletes.
"They're competitive. They don't want to be on the second team. They want to be in the game. And they've been in that mindset since some of them were in little league, or Pop Warner football, or elementary school wrestling, or whatever it may be."
He says they also understand how to be coached and how to play well with others, as well as handling the bumps and bruises that come with the territory and the difficult travel schedule.
"I don't know that anybody in any entity, unless you're the most well-traveled comedian or entertainer, has that. Because the thing about pro wrestling is it doesn't have an off-season, so you don't get a chance to really go recharge your batteries. You've got to maintain that competitive edge to survive."
Ross says there's one match he wishes he had another shot at calling: Ric Flair's retirement match against Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 24 in Orlando at the Citrus Bowl. While Ross has traditionally been a play-by-play commentator, that night he was assigned to be a color commentator, which gave him some different challenges.
"I thought I had great stories to tell because of my relationship with Ric — I've known him for 25 years — and I didn't think that I contributed as much to that match from an emotional standpoint as I could. I was obligated to get in soundbites and get in, get out," Ross said. "That's the biggest match at the biggest stage, and I love both those guys, and I really wanted to be extra special that night, and I just don't know in my heart that we got there."
He says California has its own wrestling legacy to be proud of. The California Wrestlemania match that Ross says he'll always remember: Bret Hart versus Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 12 in Anaheim, where two now wrestling legends wrestled for more than an hour.
He also thinks the economics of Wrestlemania make a lot of sense for whichever city hosts it, thanks to the travelers it draws in from around the world. Cities now bid to try to bring in Wrestlemania, Ross says. With Los Angeles gearing up to build a new stadium, Ross has a Wrestlemania prediction for that stadium.
"I will bet you money — I will bet you some of my barbecue sauce — if L.A. builds a stadium, that Wrestlemania will be one of the first non-football events in that stadium. And they will sell it out. They'll fill every seat. And it'll be great for the city, and the businesses of Los Angeles.
Ross says that what made him a great broadcaster is the same thing that can make someone a success in wrestling or anywhere else — most importantly, don't talk down to your audience.
"You have to be a fan of the genre, or a fan of the game, and you have to be willing to prepare and be ready for your broadcast," Ross said. "You have to be willing to tell the story that the average fan — not the hardcore fan, but the average, casual fan can understand and relate to. ... You know, we're storytellers, and some people are just natural-born storytellers."
Ross plans to continue telling stories for the foreseeable future, on stage, online, calling matches in the legit sports world and wherever else his life takes him. He's even gotten into acting — you can see him in the new film "What Now."
"I think retirement is overblown. How many days can you go fishing? How many rounds of golf can you play?" Ross said. "I had the idea when I left WWE after 21 years, I'm going to reinvent myself. I'm not going to become a trivia answer. ... I don't think you're going to read anywhere, anytime soon, that Jim Ross has finally retired — until you read my eulogy."
Listen to the audio for the full hour-long interview with Jim Ross, talking his career past, present and future — along with the origins of his signature barbecue sauce.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
A cosplay gathering in the Anaheim Convention Center's Grand Plaza during WonderCon Anaheim 2014.; Credit: Kevin Green/SDCC
Mike RoeFor all the sad comic book and pop culture fans who weren't able to get tickets to San Diego Comic-Con, we've got good news for you: They run another convention, and it's closer to Los Angeles. Their little brother WonderCon Anaheim has been growing, with some comparing it to the Comic-Con of old — before it got way too crowded. It's this Friday through Sunday, April 3-5. They're starting to have big stars and lots of great panels, so if you want to get your geek heart sated, here are some of the events you won't want to miss.
The most highly anticipated event at this weekend's convention, Warner Brothers is putting on a special presentation with footage from these two upcoming action films. They haven't announced which stars will be on hand, but these panels often surprise with star power, so you may get a visit from stars like "San Andreas's" Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson or "Mad Max: Fury Road's" Tom Hardy or Charlize Theron. At the Comic-Con panel last year for the "Mad Max" flick, the director talked in detail about the film, so you'll probably at least get his take on the franchise and its resurrection.
While Marvel has been dominant on the big screen, DC has put out a diverse slate of TV shows, with "The Flash" being the biggest hit among them. It's among those getting a spotlight at WonderCon, with creators and stars dishing on the programs that have captured the imaginations of TV fans and comic fans alike. All three shows are also getting special video presentations, likely showing clips of what you can expect the rest of this season. And in case you didn't already know, "iZombie" comes from "Veronica Mars" creator Rob Thomas, so come find out about his latest project.
It's become a tradition at both WonderCon and San Diego Comic-Con for DC Comics to debut their latest animated movie, and the new one is based on the critically acclaimed "Court of Owls" storyline by writer Scott Snyder. (Be sure to check out our previous interviews with Snyder — he's even an NPR fan.) The original story is based on how Batman thinks he knows everything there is to know about Gotham City and faces the discovery that there are deep secrets about the city that he had no idea about, and the film also emphasizes him fighting his son Damian.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Drives Us Bats
People go to comic conventions to geek out, and what's geekier than a good old-fashioned singalong? In addition to one for geek god Joss Whedon's much loved Web series "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," they're also doing one for the musical episode of animated series "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" — which, just like "Dr. Horrible," features singing by the one and only Neil Patrick Harris. In the Batman cartoon, he plays the Music Meister, a Batman villain who makes both heroes and villains sing, as he drops some tunes of his own.
There's a reunion of stars from the first two of the classic Christopher Reeve Superman movies, including Lois Lane herself, Margot Kidder. You can also see the actors who played characters like Jimmy Olsen, several of the villains and more, as well as two of the producers. Find out what you don't know about the movie that broke ground when it came to depicting flight on-screen and, like the ads promised, made you believe a man could fly.
Two panels will give you a peek into the world of the writers who write some of the hottest shows on TV: "TV Guide Magazine's Fan Favorites Showrunners" and "Inside The Writers' Room: Earth's Mightiest Writers Re-Assemble Redux." The first of those includes legendary TV showrunners like Dan Harmon of "Community" and the minds behind shows including "Orphan Black," "The Goldbergs" and more. Meanwhile, at the writers room panel, you'll get writers who've worked on shows like "Lost," "Firefly," "Heroes," "The Big Bang Theory," "Agent Carter" and more.
This includes a lot of different panels, but it's a sign of the way fandom is shifting — it's a lifestyle that's far more diverse than it used to be, with a lot more gender parity. This track includes panels on topics like body confidence in cosplay, fashion, fitness, race and more. See what sparks your interest and might invite you into having an identity as a fan being a bigger part of your life while not letting anyone make you feel excluded.
There's so much more, like Will Forte doing a panel promoting his new show "The Last Man On Earth," the annual cosplay masquerade and so much more. Tickets are sold out for Saturday, but at press time, tickets were still available for both Friday and Sunday at WonderCon.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Yesterday, we heard about the hyper-loop, a system that could get you from L.A. to San Francisco in about 30 minutes without losing your eyeballs.
Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, that might come in handy given how crowded California's air corridor has become...
Mark Lacter: We'll talk about the hyper-loop in a moment, Steve, but yes, the L.A.-to-San Francisco air route is the busiest in the U.S., and it's already the most competitive. We're talking about more than 50 flights a day, which - if you spread them out between six in the morning and 10:30 at night - there'd be one flight every 20 minutes. But, Delta obviously thinks there's room for more because it's announced an hourly shuttle between the two cities. That's another 14 daily flights beginning September 3. The airline will be using a somewhat smaller jet, and it sounds as if the focus will be on the business traveler, with free newspapers, wine, and beer.
Julian: How much will it cost, do we know?
Lacter: As usual, it's a lot cheaper if you make an advance purchase, but if you're buying your tickets at the last minute - which is what a lot of business travelers do - roundtrip runs a hefty $430. Actually, this Bay Area shuttle is just the latest effort by Delta to expand out of LAX, which is different from other major airports in that it doesn't have any one airline that dominates (United has a slight edge in market share over American, with Delta about three percentage points behind). American also has been adding flights out of LAX.
Julian: Sounds like the airline business is improving...
Lacter: That's what happens when you pack planes to the absolute max, which is bad news for travelers being crammed into coach seats. But it's good news for LAX, which continues to be the airport of choice among airlines looking to add service - matter of fact, domestic passenger traffic was up almost 8 percent in June compared with a year earlier. Some of those gains might be at the expense of service elsewhere - most especially Ontario Airport, which has seen a big exodus among airlines and passengers. Ontario city officials have been trying to regain control of the airport, which has been operated by the city of Los Angeles.
Julian: Back to the hyper-loop - is this kind of transport possible?
Lacter: Well, it's the brainchild of billionaire Elon Musk, and you never say never with this guy. He started the electric car company Tesla and the private space company Space X. The hyper-loop is a high-speed system of passenger pods that would travel on a cushion of air (think of air hockey table). The pods would travel at more than 700 miles per hour, but they wouldn't result in sonic booms that severely restricted the Concorde aircraft. Of course, anything that promises super-speed travel is bound to get people talking - and, from what the physics professors are saying, the Musk idea seems feasible.
Julian: How would its cost compare to the bullet train?
Lacter: He says a lot cheaper. The price tag on the train is $70 billion at last check; Musk says he can do his for $6 billion. But, the issue isn't so much the cost or even the technology, but the politics. As a rule, governments do not think outside the box, and that's what a project like this is all about. Already, you have bullet train supporters saying that the hyper-loop is impossible, but what they're really saying is we have a lot riding on the train, and we don't want this guy to mess it up.
Julian: But, how much demand is there for high-speed transport?
Lacter: You'd think there would be a lot, but when Boeing came up with a nifty idea for a souped-up plane that would shave almost an hour from L.A. to New York, the airlines said no because it would require more fuel - and that would mean raising fares. Musk says his system would be a lot cheaper than traveling by plane, which could be a game changer in the attitudes about going places. But, those attitudes won't change until the thing is actually built, and that can't realistically happen until attitudes change. That's the ultimate problem.
Julian: Hence, why we're content to squeeze into coach.
Lacter: Yep.
Mark Lacter is a contributing writer for Los Angeles Magazine and writes the business blog at LA Observed.com.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
When you look at fast growing private companies in the U.S., you need look no further than a small city next to Los Angeles International Airport.
Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, tell us about the company that's based in El Segundo.
Mark Lacter: It's called Fuhu, Steve - that might ring a bell with some parents because Fuhu is the maker of the Nabi. The Nabi is an Android tablet for kids, and it's a very cool device that mimics a lot of the capabilities of regular tablet, including the ability to play games and get onto the Web (with controls that parents are able to set up). Last year, they sold 1.2 million Nabis, and that helped push the El Segundo company to the very top of Inc. magazine's list of fastest-growing businesses. That's number one on a list of 5,000 companies, with a three-year growth rate of 42,148 percent. Or, to put it another way, company revenue was $279,000 in 2009; it was almost $118 million in 2012. Now, by the standards of an Apple or a Samsung, those are still not huge numbers -
Julian: - and maybe that explains why there's been relatively little media coverage of this company.
Lacter: It might also explain why local tech companies in general get short shrift. Many of them are quite successful, but they're often on the small side, and they're also privately held as opposed to publicly-traded on a stock exchange. That's one big difference from Silicon Valley, which has so many huge public corporations: Apple, Intel, HP. L.A. County has only six Fortune 500 companies, and not a single one devoted solely to technology. In Silicon Valley, there are 22 in the Fortune 500.
Julian: And yet, the L.A. economy has more than held its own without those large corporations.
Lacter: Matter of fact, the accounting firm PriceWaterhouse studied more than two dozen cities around the world to determine where it was easiest to do business (that's based on factors like access to labor), and what they found - somewhat surprisingly - was that L.A. ranked ahead of both San Francisco and Tokyo. And, you can see evidence of that with the increase in venture capital money coming into all parts of L.A. Now, it's important to keep an eye on all these up-and-coming companies because these businesses are helping generate higher-wage jobs. And, for an area with a still-high unemployment rate - still over 10 percent in some places -- that's a big deal.
Julian: Speaking of companies, does anyone want to buy the L.A. Times?
Lacter: The answer is yes - most recently, the controlling owner of the Dodgers, Mark Walter, said he was interested in both the Times and the Chicago Tribune (though there's no way to know whether there are actual discussions taking place). You also have several local groups, including one that involves billionaire Eli Broad, that have been interested to one degree or another. But what was thought would be a fairly straightforward auction process has turned enormously complicated. It's now to the point where the Tribune board has decided spin off the papers into a separate business, and that process will take until next year to complete and could preclude any sales for quite some time after that.
Julian: So, it's Limbo-land for the Times for who knows how long.
Lacter: Steve, it's not that Tribune really wants to keep the newspapers. But, selling them off presents huge tax implications. Also, there are assets that the potential buyers thought would be part of the package - assets that include real estate - that Tribune wants to hold onto. So, what's left to sell are just the newspapers themselves, and frankly, they're among the least valuable properties.
Julian: Now, last week came word that the billionaire Koch brothers, who were believed to be interested in the Tribune properties, decided not to pursue a deal...
Lacter: ...that's right, they don't consider the Times or the other dailies to be economically viable. You might recall a bit of an outcry over the prospect of having the Kochs, who are staunch conservatives, becoming the owners of these papers. So, they're out of the picture. But for the L.A. Times, it's really the worst of all worlds: no new owner and no vision for recasting the paper, at least in the near term.
Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Across the country, the sale of electric cars is sluggish.
Susanne Whatley: But business analyst Mark Lacter, that's not quite the case in California...
Mark Lacter: Well, comparatively speaking, Susanne. L.A. and San Francisco alone made up 35 percent of the electric cars sold in the entire U.S. during the first half of the year - 35 percent! Keep in mind that statewide just 9,700 electric cars were sold in that six-month period, which translates to a little over 1 percent of all car sales in California. So, they're not exactly lining up around the block, even in a region that's known for its early adopters. Of course, electric cars were always going to be a tough sell -
Whatley: I've been driving one for about half a year now... and I absolutely love it. But they ARE expensive, and I'm sure that's a factor.
Lacter: - and that's even after a federal tax credit, but they also require drivers to learn about recharging the battery - sometimes in not-very-convenient places - and, from a design standpoint, most of them don't stand out (one of the automakers that's now out of business had been selling what was a basically plain vanilla Mitsubishi sedan). Now, the one notable exception is the Tesla - so long as you have at least $90,000 to shell out, and are willing to wait a while to get your car delivered. In affluent sections of L.A., this is truly the hot car - just 600 or so Teslas have been sold in Southern California during the first seven months of the year. It's also received rave reviews from all the big automotive publications.
Whatley: And perhaps most surprising of all, Tesla has been making money…
Lacter: That's right, although the stock price is ridiculously overvalued at around $20 billion (that's one-third the market value of General Motors, even though Tesla cranks out all of 21,000 vehicles a year while GM sells almost 5 million). People seem to love this car almost in spite of it being battery powered, which gets us back to the challenges in trying to sell these things. Elon Musk, who founded the company (he's also behind SpaceX and he co-founded PayPal), has managed to win over customers because the car itself is so much fun to drive. The other makers of electric cars - not so much.
Whatley: So, for the folks still on the fence... might it be better to wait until driverless cars become available?
Lacter: That's going to be quite a wait, although all the automakers are working on their versions of self-driving cars. The Mercedes people just announced plans to launch in 2020 - the same year that Nissan wants to bring out its car - and Google, which has had self-driving cars tooling around California for several years, is looking at 2017. So, what we're seeing is real, but the question is what sort of real it'll turn out to be. Certainly, the possibilities are nothing short of revolutionary - you're looking at, potentially, faster commute times because cars will be able to travel closer to one other (reaction times would be faster than with a human behind the wheel); in addition, fewer accidents and injuries (also a function of reaction times). But, how well the vehicles work once they get beyond the testing phase is anyone's guess. California does allow self-driving prototypes car for testing purposes, but that's far different than full-scale authorization.
Whatley: What if something goes wrong?
Lacter: That's one of the big concerns - liability, but the real issue is public acceptance. Already, surveys are finding reluctance to buying a driverless car, or even having them on the road. That's not a huge surprise considering how novel the concept still is - and all it takes are a few mishaps to affirm the skeptics. All of which points to a lengthy transition period - not unlike the early days of the passenger plane, when most folks couldn't imagine getting into a flying machine. Eventually, they got used to them, but it took time.
Whatley: And finally, some thoughts on Cal Worthington?
Lacter: Certainly one of the great showmen in the annals of L.A. broadcasting - Cal Worthington wasn't the first auto dealer to discover the benefits of commercials, but he lasted longer than anyone else, selling more than a million cars (that according to his count), and grossing billions of dollars. The Worthington ads are sometimes considered the first infomercials - that might be a stretch, but three factors really made it all come together: Southern California's appetite for the automobile, the ease by which Cal could deliver his schtick (remember when he was strapped to the wing of a biplane?), and the fact that there was so much available air time to sell in L.A.. Definitely a legend in his own time.
Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
When talk turns to the economy, it's clear that LA brings out the best and the worst.
Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, where do you see the best of it here?
Mark Lacter: You see the best of the economy, Steve, with all kinds of startup activity - much of it tech-related - and you also see the large number of auto sales, the improved housing market, and the record number of people visiting Southern California - all indications of a growing economy. But then, you have the other L.A. economy, with large numbers of families struggling to make ends meet, and seeing very little sign of recovery. You know, the government has been releasing income data covering the last few years, and what you see is that the disparity between the richest 1 percent and the other 99 percent is at its widest point since the 1920s. You especially see that kind of bifurcated economy in Southern California, which has some of the wealthiest people in the country, and also some of the poorest.
Julian: Now, the split between rich and poor has been happening for a good long time, hasn't it?
Lacter: Yes, but L.A. is in a special class because there are so many immigrants with limited job skills - in fact, a new study by the UCLA Anderson Forecast says it's a much higher percentage than immigrants living in Miami, San Francisco, and New York. What's interesting is that 20 years ago the job skills among immigrants were significantly higher in L.A. Limited job skills mean there's very little opportunity to move up the income ladder. That factors into buying homes, sending your kids to college - really becoming part of the middle class.
Julian: I imagine that's particularly true for factory work…
Lacter: Yes, some of the same jobs that newly-arrived immigrants in previous generations would gravitate to. Today, many of those jobs are gone, and they're being replaced by positions that require greater skill that's borne out of greater education. And that, of course, is another problem: a sizable percentage of recently-arrived immigrants never finished high school, much less college, and that makes it even less likely that they'll be able to move up.
Julian: Related, or unrelated, to the recession?
Lacter: Actually, L.A. had serious income inequality in December of 2006, before the recession, when the county's unemployment rate was just 4.3 percent - a stunningly low rate when you consider that as of July, the jobless rate was almost 10 percent. This points out that the division of haves and have-nots can happen even when the economy is doing well.
Julian: And it seems the last C-17 to be built for Air Force is a reminder of wage gap.
Lacter: That's right - it'll be up to foreign customers to keep the program in Long Beach alive. Boeing currently has an order from India for 10 of the cargo planes, which will keep the line moving through the third quarter of next year. Frankly, the only reason the C-17 has lasted this long is heavy political pressure by congressional lawmakers whose districts have an economic stake in the program. At one time, as many as 16,000 people may have worked on the C-17 in Long Beach, but that number has fallen sharply over the years.
Julian: Still, this is the last airplane manufacturing plant in Southern California.
Lacter: And that, of course, speaks volumes about the state of the aerospace business, which had been one of the main economic drivers back in the days leading up to World War II. Aerospace continued to be very important until the end of the Cold War, when you had a huge industry consolidation that resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of local jobs throughout the 1990s. There's still quite a bit of aerospace activity locally that involves missiles, satellites, and electronics - both for the major defense contractors like Boeing and Northrop, and for smaller contractors and sub-subcontractors that still get a piece of the military pie.
Julian: But most of them require high skill levels…
Lacter: Yes, and that gets us back to the folks who are stuck in low-paying jobs with little prospect for moving up. This is what the L.A. economy is all about, the good and the bad.
Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
We've been reporting on the city of Los Angeles approving major developments without seismic studies attached.
Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, why is this?
Mark Lacter: Steve, this is a real gotcha moment for the L.A. Planning Department, the City Council, and everyone else at City Hall who signed off on these projects. The latest revelation, which was reported by the L.A. Times, shows that a planned 39-story residential tower in Century City is just 300 feet from the active Santa Monica fault. And, we're only learning about this because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority did its own seismic testing near the site when it was looking for potential subway stops, and officials decided that it was too close to the fault. This also comes after three large-scale projects in Hollywood were found to be located quite close to the active Hollywood fault.
Julian: The concern is that if any faults were to rupture, the foundation of a building could be split apart.
Lacter: Kind of an inconvenient truth both for the developers, who have millions of dollars riding on these projects, and for L.A. city officials who are betting on a future that will include many more high rises. And, we should note that more than two-dozen high rises are either in the process of going up, or are at least on the drawing board. In case you're wondering why there aren't regulations that monitor this sort of thing, the answer is that there are regulations. California has a law that requires state geologists to map active earthquake faults, and then set zones on either side of the fault line.
Julian: Has the state done this?
Lacter: The state says it hasn't had the time nor the money to map areas within the city of L.A., though the faults have been known to be in the general vicinity of these projects - and so, you'd think the city would want them tested extensively. Of course, that would mean more delays, which the developers wouldn't be happy with.
Julian: Of course, seismic studies are not always definitive.
Lacter: They're not - and it's possible that different geologists would come up with different findings. But so far, most of the information seems to be coming from the developers, and you have to wonder whether it's a great idea to rely on folks who have a financial interest in a project to tell us what's safe and what isn't. Probably not.
Julian: Your article in the new issue of Los Angeles Magazine raises a broader point about the city's business climate.
Lacter: Steve, for many years, L.A. has been branded as a terrible place to do business because of government interference, but that's largely a myth. If anything, city officials have been too accommodating. Frankly, the anti-business rap never made much sense when you consider the thousands of companies that start up here each year. A study by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers ranks L.A. particularly high when it comes to ease of doing business, which runs counter to the conventional wisdom.
Julian: You're not saying it's truly easy, are you?
Lacter: Easy, no. There certainly are plenty of reasons for business owners to pull out their hair. And those hassles, along with an unemployment rate that remains quite high, has given developers and others the leverage to ask for various giveaways. All they have to do is say that their projects will generate more jobs, and city officials tend to respond favorably - no matter how questionable those proposals might be. And, by the way, job creation doesn't always determine economic growth, certainly not in the short term.
Julian: We all remember during the mayoral campaign, candidates were talking about how their policies would lead to lower unemployment...
Lacter: ...right, almost like they could pick up jobs at Ralphs. Well, it doesn't work that way. Thing is, the city of L.A. doesn't need to cut so many deals - the local economy is rich enough and broad enough to keep prospering. Which is why city officials would be much better off laying off the incentives, and focusing on the basics - public safety, transportation, the parks, and libraries. Do that right, and the business climate will take care of itself.
Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
The partial federal government shutdown is one week old, but economists are still saying that its impact in Southern California and elsewhere will be limited.
Susanne Whatley: Business analyst Mark Lacter, why is that?
Mark Lacter: If you look back on the history of these things, Susanne, you see that the disputes are resolved before too much damage gets done. As for Southern California, I notice that KPCC's Alice Walton was asking around over the weekend about the shutdown, and most folks gave it a shrug. The regional economy is just too diversified - and not especially tied to federal employment. You have about 46,000 federal workers employed in L.A. County in one capacity or another - that's out of a workforce of nearly 5 million. And, now it appears as if the federal employees who have been furloughed are going to receive their back wages whenever the shutdown finally ends.
Whatley: That still might make things dicey when it comes time to pay the monthly mortgage...
Lacter: ...but at least money will be available before most folks run into serious liquidity issues. That's what the shutdown really comes down to - inconvenience rather than dislocation. And, you see this with the various government services affected: the E-Verify website is down - that lets business owners know whether the people they're wanting to hire can work legally in the U.S., which obviously is important. The Small Business Administration has stopped processing loan applications, and the Federal Housing Administration is reporting delays in its loan processing, which could mean a home buyer might not complete his or her paperwork all that quickly.
Whatley: But, what if this were to go on for months?
Lacter: Well, then it would create problems, but nobody really thinks that's going to happen. The real issue, not just nationally and regionally - but globally - is the refusal by Congress to raise the debt ceiling. The deadline is a week from Thursday, and - of course - there's been all sorts of debate about what this would mean for the economy.
Whatley: All right, so what would this mean for the economy?
Lacter: Well, no one knows exactly. But, then again, no one knows exactly what would happen if you fell out of a airplane without a parachute. I just wouldn't want to test it out. And, of course, let's keep in mind that these are manufactured crises - not reflective of anything that's going on with the real economy. It's certainly not reflective of anything that's going on in L.A., which saw a big jump in payroll jobs for 2012 - actually it was the sharpest increase since 2005, and nearly double the national rate (that's despite an unemployment rate that remains very high in certain parts of Los Angeles).
Whatley: What about some of the big locally based companies?
Lacter: Well, if your company is publicly traded, there's a good chance your shares took a dip these past few days. Going back to September 18, the Dow has lost almost 700 points, which - percentage-wise - is not very much, but it is reflective of how uneasy Wall Street has become. Public companies based in the L.A. area are taking it on the chin - Disney, Amgen, Mattel, DirecTV - their stock prices are all down going back to the middle of September.
Whatley: Even so, hasn't this been a good year for the stock market?
Lacter: It has - those local companies are up anywhere from 13 percent 30 percent year to date, and the Dow is up 14 percent year to date. Of course, the stock price of a company doesn't always match the amount of money it makes, and this year, even before worries about the debt ceiling, the numbers haven't been as good as they should be at this stage of a recovery. And, that's why there's particular concern about next week. You do have to wonder whether a default could have ripple effects involving trade, consumer spending, the dollar - who knows what? Now, it's still a pretty good bet that saner heads will prevail, although there are no guarantees - and again, if worse came to worse, do you really want to be jumping out of that plane? Guess we'll find out.
Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Yesterday may have been a holiday on paper, but if you were navigating LA's major freeways, there was no sign people had the day off.
Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, is this more evidence that Southern California traffic getting worse?
Mark Lacter: Steve, L.A. continues to be the most clogged-up city in the U.S. - according to something called the TomTom Traffic Index - with commuters caught up in delays, on average, 35 percent of the time. Or, to put it another way, L.A. commuters are in congestion up to 40 minutes of each hour they're driving. The worst time of the week to commute is Thursday night; that's when there's congestion more than 80 percent of the time. Monday morning commutes are the lightest.
Julian: After L.A., where should you not live if congestion bugs you?
Lacter: The next worst cities in the U.S. are San Francisco, Honolulu, Seattle, and San Jose. Now, the Census Bureau comes up with its own commuting surveys, and if you compare the most recent numbers with those back in 2000, you'll see that things aren't all that different. Matter of fact, the percentage of commuters driving alone to work actually increased a little over the last decade to 72 percent, while the percentage of those carpooling has declined.
Julian: What about public transit?
Lacter: Well, the numbers are up slightly from 2000, but only to 7.3 percent of all commuters. So, even assuming that the number inches up in the next couple of years when the Expo Line extends into Santa Monica, it's still a smallish piece of the pie. And, since many of the other public transit projects being planned are decades away from being completed, those numbers might not change much. One other thing, Steve: less than 1 percent of all L.A. commuters bike to work, which would throw cold water on the idea that biking in L.A. is becoming a popular way of getting to the office.
Julian: People just prefer commuting by car…
Lacter: It remains the most convenient way of getting around - despite the congestion. New car sales are up 14 percent through the first nine months of the year in Southern California. Add to that are generally affordable gas prices (they've been especially low in the last few weeks). In other parts of the world, congestion is considered a good thing because it means that the economy is doing well. Which explains that while L.A. is the most congested city in the U.S., it doesn't rank among the 10 around the world. On that front, Moscow is tops, followed by Istanbul, and Rio de Janeiro.
Julian: What about driverless cars?
Lacter: Well, these vehicles hold the most promise for reducing accidents, lowering travel times, and improving fuel economy - and you don't have to give up your car. Actually, a lot of the technology is already in place - that includes stuff like radar-based cruise control, and devices that keep you at a safe distance from the car in front of you. The trick, of course, is taking these individual capabilities and integrating them into an entirely driverless car. Several car companies say they could be ready to start selling by 2020, with Google saying that its car could be ready even sooner.
Julian: Is that realistic?
Lacter: Who knows? But even if the dates can be met - and that's a big if, considering how complex these systems are - legislatures will have to determine, among other things, whether vehicles can be fully autonomous (meaning that you can curl up and take a nap while the computer is driving by itself). Or, whether they will only be semi-autonomous, which would be like an airline crew using automatic pilot, but always prepared to take over the controls.
Julian: Is that a liability issue?
Lacter: Yes - if something does go wrong, who will get the blame? The owner of the vehicle? The carmaker? The suppliers of the car companies? These questions might take years to get resolved in the courts - and even then, it could be years before the percentage of these vehicles on the road is large enough to truly have an impact. But, considering that most commuters aren't willing to give up their cars, this would seem to be the most exciting, most desirable idea. One day.
Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Source: Dr. Douglas Loe 11/12/2024
This medical device owner could team up with a biotech firm that just prioritized its diabetes program, noted a Leede Financial Inc. report.Sernova Corp. (SVA:TSX.V; SEOVF:OTCQB; PSH:XERTA) should benefit from Sana Biotechnology's recent prioritization of its diabetes-targeted cell therapy programs, reported Leede Financial Inc. analyst Dr. Douglas Loe in a Nov. 6 research note. Now Sana's clinical programs in oncology and Huntington's disease are a secondary focus.
"Our model assumes that Sernova's cell reservoir device Cell Pouch will itself remain focused on Type 1 diabetes, and we are thus encouraged to see a U.S. peer prioritize its pipeline in ways that are consistent with our own views on how priorities in regenerative medicine will evolve in coming years," Loe wrote.
Leede has a CA$1.50 per share target price on Sernova, trading at the time of the report at about CA$0.25 per share, noted Loe.
"At current price levels, our price target corresponds to a one-year return of 500%, a return that we believe is imminently achievable by 2025E but likely with a milestone-driven, and not a linear, trajectory," the analyst wrote.
The company is a Speculative Buy.
Loe highlighted that Sernova and Sana could benefit from aligning their programs, on a timeline providing synergies to both.
"We are encouraged to see a leading regenerative firm choose to expedite its diabetes cell therapy program in preference to other initiatives that it could fund if it chose to," Loe wrote. "This is consistent with our own view that the most attractive medical market for regenerative firms, and for Sernova, to target is the large and growing diabetes market both for economic and technical reasons."
Sana's primary focus is its program to treat Type 1 diabetes with its Phase 1-stage, hypo-immune platform (HIP)-modified primary pancreatic islet cell therapy UP421 and its preclinical HIP-modified, stem cell-derived pancreatic islet platform SC451.
Through this platform, regenerative cell therapies can be modified genetically to evade immune detection post implantation. This is achieved by reducing expression of major histocompatibility-complex, classes one and two human leukocyte antigens while increasing expression of CD24. This is a surface protein found on stem cells in the pancreas.
As for Sernova, it has a well-vascularized, sustainably functioning cell reservoir platform, Cell Pouch, proven for some time. Development of regenerative islet platform technology is now catching up. Sernova has a clinical trial underway that combines the two technologies. This Phase 1 trial in diabetes, in partnership with the University of Chicago, already has shown "impressive long-term insulin independence data" up to five years in some study participants.
This is "well beyond what we believe is a reasonable threshold for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to require for future Cell Pouch approval, at least for Type 1 diabetes," Loe wrote.
Currently, with regard to this program, Sernova optimizing background immunosuppression in Cell Pouch patients. Details of its new immunosuppressive regimen are expected in the biotech's next Phase 1 study update, likely in early H1/25.
"Future enrollees could be subjected to novel immunosuppressive therapies that conceivably could extend islet survival and perhaps even reduce the immunosuppressive burden that transplant patients must endure at present," Loe commented.
Further, Sernova is considering conducting a Phase 1 study using its Cell Pouch and Evotec AG's stem-cell-derived iBeta platform to treat diabetes. Before this can happen, though, Evotec needs to be able to produce iBeta at a clinical scale, which Loe expects can happen by H2/25.
"We see no reason why Sana and its UP421/SC451 modified islet platforms could not be incorporated into a Cell Pouch environment as a way to sustain their therapeutic half-life in the body post-implantation," wrote Loe.
Loe provided a handful of potential catalysts for Sernova's share price. They are:
1) Sernova's conclusion of its ongoing Phase 1 study in Type 1 diabetes with the University of Chicago, which Loe asserted should happen a quickly as possible given available capital. Also, the biotech should incorporate into this trial or a separate one to commence soon after, regeneratively produced pancreatic islets.
2) Sernova, in partnership with Sana, launching a Phase 1 iBeta/Cell Pouch trial late next year, which could boost Sernova's share price.
3) Sernova identifying additional developers of regenerative cell therapies with which it could combine Cell Pouch in mutually beneficial ways.
4) Sernova starting clinical programs in hemophilia A and in thyroid disease, expected to happen in the coming quarters.
5) Sernova incorporating its confocal cell coating technology into one or more future protocols for stem cell-derived pancreatic islet production, even its current Phase 1 diabetes trial with the University of Chicago. Before this can happen, however, coating polymer composition and manufacturing methodologies must be honed to meet good manufacturing practices specifications.
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Disclosures for Leede Financial Inc., Sernova Corp., November 6, 2024
Important Information and Legal Disclaimers Leede Financial Inc. (Leede) is a member of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF). This document is not an offer to buy or sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any security or instrument or to participate in any particular investing strategy. Data from various sources were used in the preparation of these documents; the information is believed but in no way warranted to be reliable, accurate and appropriate. All information is as of the date of publication and is subject to change without notice. Any opinions or recommendations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Leede. Leede cannot accept any trading instructions via e-mail as the timely receipt of e-mail messages, or their integrity over the Internet, cannot be guaranteed. Dividend yields change as stock prices change, and companies may change or cancel dividend payments in the future. All securities involve varying amounts of risk, and their values will fluctuate, and the fluctuation of foreign currency exchange rates will also impact your investment returns if measured in Canadian Dollars. Past performance does not guarantee future returns, investments may increase or decrease in value, and you may lose money. Leede employees may buy and sell shares of the companies that are recommended for their own accounts and for the accounts of other clients. Disclosure codes are used in accordance with Policy 3600 of CIRO.
The analyst or any associate of the analyst responsible for the report or public comment hold shares or is short any of the company's securities directly or through derivatives.
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Canadian Disclosures This research has been approved by Leede Financial Inc. (Leede), which accepts sole responsibility for this research and its dissemination in Canada. Leede is registered and regulated by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and is a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF). Canadian clients wishing to effect transactions in any designated investment discussed should do so through a Leede Registered Representative.
U.S. Disclosures This research report was prepared by Leede Financial Inc. (Leede). Leede is registered and regulated by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and is a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF). This report does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities discussed herein. Leede is not registered as a broker-dealer in the United States and is not subject to U.S. rules regarding the preparation of research reports and the independence of research analysts. Any resulting transactions should be effected through a U.S. broker-dealer.
( Companies Mentioned: SVA:TSX.V;SEOVF:OTCQB;PSH:XERTA, )
Director Michael Apted (L) with Larry Mantle in the AirTalk studio.
Larry MantleThis past Wednesday on "AirTalk," film director Michael Apted came in to talk with us about his eighth documentary in the series that's followed the lives of 13 people, beginning in 1964 when the kids were seven. They've shared their stories with Apted every seven years, and he's clearly invested a lot of emotion into this project.
"56 Up" is wonderful for how it shows the mid-life evolution of the participants. Apted includes scenes from earlier interviews, so that we see what aspects of today's 56-year-olds were present in childhood and what turns their lives have made over these years.
"56 Up" is showing at the Nuart in West Los Angeles, and Apted will be doing Q-and-A at some of the screenings.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
"Sailor Moon" cosplayers at Anime Revloution 2014 in Vancouver, Canada.; Credit: GoToVan/Flickr Creative Commons
Charles SolomonJapanese animation — anime — offers very different visions from its American counterparts, and it's extremely popular with college and high school students. They can be extremely difficult for well-meaning parents, uncles and aunts to shop for, so here, in no particular order, are some titles that can transform an adult’s image from clueless doofus to knowing friend. Plus, we have a few suggestions for younger children (who can also be a pain to shop for).
Cardcaptor Sakura: Complete Collection
NIS America: $249.99; 9 discs, Blu-ray, plus book
When cheerful fourth-grader Sakura Kinamoto opens an odd book in her father's study, strange lights fly out. Kerberos, who looks like a plushie of the lion on the book's cover, explains that she's inadvertently released a deck of magical cards. Despite her protests that’s she just an ordinary little girl, Kero insists Sakura must become a Cardcaptor and retrieve them before they work mischief on the world. Many American series talk about empowering girls — in this one, the viewer sees Sakura grow stronger and more confident as she learns to master the magical cards.
Cowboy Bebop: The Complete Series
Funimation: $59.98; Blu-ray, 4 discs
The sci-fi action series "Cowboy Bebop" redefined cool in animation when it debuted in 1998. Twenty-first-century bounty hunter Spike Spiegel is an anti-hero in the tradition of '40s film noir detectives. Spike is a tough guy; a crack shot, an ace pilot and a skilled martial artist. But his cynical exterior conceals a never-healed wound left by the woman he loved and lost. Seventeen years later, "Cowboy Bebop" is so popular that two special editions of the series for holiday gifting have already sold out (!). But it’s available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods
Funimation: $34.98; DVD/Blu-ray combo pack; 3 discs
The first new "Dragon Ball Z" animation in 17 years, "Battle of the Gods" (2013) proved how popular the franchise still is, selling over 1 million tickets in just six days in Japan. The filmmakers keep the animation flat, limited and hand-drawn, so "Battle of the Gods" looks like the classic TV series and delivers the mixture of slapstick, friendship and over-the-top battles Dragon Ball fans remember and want to see again — especially guys in their 20s who grew up watching it.
Naruto Shippuden: Road to Ninja: The Movie 6
VIZ: $29.99 DVD/Blu-ray combo; 2 discs
The title hero of the long-running "Naruto" and "Naruto Shippuden" series is a come-from-behind hero whose world centers on magical ninja techniques, outrageous fights, slapstick, friendship and ramen. "The Road to Ninja" incorporates these well-loved elements, but stresses the lonely, compelling side of the title character. Audiences would quickly weary of Naruto if he were just a knuckleheaded prankster. His dedication to overcoming his weaknesses and achieving his goals makes him heroic, as well as comic — and one of the most popular animated characters of the new millennium.
(A scene from "Ranma 1/2," an anime series about a 16-year-old boy who's transformed into a girl whenever he's splashed with water.)
Ranma 1/2: Sets 1, 2, 3 & 4
VIZ: $54.97 each, Blu-ray; $44.82, DVD: 3 discs
Because he once fell into a cursed spring, black-haired high school martial artist Ranma Saotome turns into a buxom, red-haired girl when he’s hit with cold water. (Hot water restores his proper gender.) Ranma and his father Genma are freeloaders in the home of Suon Tendo. To ensure the continuation of the family dojo, the fathers have decided that the loutish Ranma and Suon’s hot-tempered daughter Akane are engaged. "Ranma 1/2" supplies the slapstick insanity animation can provide in abundance. The filmmakers carefully sneak in just enough grudging affection between Ranma and Akane to keep the series from feeling mean-spirited.
Pokémon: Indigo League (Season 1): Complete Collection
VIZ: $54.98 9 discs
"Pokémon" is no longer the trend du jour it was 20 years ago, when it swept America. But the games and the animated series remain popular. Although it's product-based and sometimes cloying, "Pokémon" is an agreeable show for elementary school children that stresses friendship, perseverance, fair play and good sportsmanship. These early adventures take the main characters through the first part of the game in its original Red/Blue versions. With his friends Misty and Brock, aspiring master Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum defeats other trainers, captures wild Pokémon and outwits the inept comic villains of Team Rocket.
Princess Nine Complete Series
Bayview Entertainment: $39.99 DVD
Ryo Hayakawa inherited her late father’s talent as a pitcher, but she works as a waitress in her mother’s tiny cafe. Determined to overcome sexist opposition and create a girls’ baseball team that can compete in the national championships, Ms. Himuro, the head of prestigious Kisaragi High, gives Ryo a scholarship. She must recruit players and build an effective team. Ryo is a very likable character — she’s proud of her abilities, but surprised at where they take her. "Princess Nine" ranks among the better girls’ series of recent years, with characters who are strong, capable individuals but who exhibit human weaknesses.
Short Peace
Sentai Filmworks: $29.98 Blu-ray
For "Short Peace," Katsuhiro Otomo ("Akira") and three other directors made short films in personal styles they felt suited the stories they’d chosen, two of them evoking the look of 19th century woodblock prints. In Shuhei Morita’s Oscar-nominated "Possessions," a wandering tinkerer seeks refuge from a storm in a remote forest shrine. Inside, he must pacify umbrellas, bowls and other household objects that resent being thrown away after years of devoted service. Otomo’s "Combustible" focuses on childhood sweethearts Owaka and Matsukichi, the son and daughter of wealthy merchants in 18th century Edo (Tokyo). The climactic blaze that brings the star-crossed lovers together — only to separate them forever — is stunningly beautiful.
(Oscar-winning Japanese animator and film director Hayao Miyazaki walks past an advertisement following the release of his film "Ponyo.")
No figure in contemporary animation is more admired than Hayao Miyazaki. Walt Disney Home Entertainment has just released to DVD/Blu-ray 2-disc sets of three of his major films at $26.95 each:
Kiki's Delivery Service
A charming coming-of-age story, "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989) follows the very human ups and downs of an adolescent witch who must leave her family for a new city where she’ll discover her special talent. Kiki copes believably with tight budgets, self-doubt and the awkward attentions of a flight-obsessed boy. The late comedian Phil Hartman gave his final performance as Gigi, the sardonic black cat who provides a running commentary on Kiki's misadventures.
Princess Mononoke
The ecologically-themed "Princess Mononoke" (1999) was the first of Miyazaki’s features to receive a major theatrical release in the U.S. The problems posed by rampant development and consumerism figure prominently in the film. “If you want to discuss any aspect of the problems we face as humans, you cannot ignore ecology,'' he said. Miyazaki juxtaposes visually and emotionally intense scenes of the characters, with quiet images of clouds, streams and forests. When rain begins to fall, he lingers on a stone that darkens as it absorbs moisture.
(A screenshot from Japanese director and animator Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke.")
The Wind Rises
In "The Wind Rises" (2013), Miyazaki carries the viewer through rapturously beautiful fantasies, hard-won pleasures and poignant sorrows in this biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the A6M Zero Fighter for Mitsubishi during World War II. "The Wind Rises" isn’t focused on speed — Miyazaki concentrates on the magic of flight. Instead of launching the viewers on a CG rollercoaster ride, he enables them to savor the magic of escaping gravity in a way that approaches visual poetry. "The Wind Rises" may be Miyazaki’s last feature, but the director is still clearly at the height of his powers; although premature, it’s a glorious exit.
Death Note: The Complete Series
Light Yagami, the hero of the dark fantasy-adventure "Death Note" (2006) is brilliant, alienated— and murderous. He found the Death Note: the notebook of a Shinigami (god of death). If anyone writes the name of a human in the book, that person dies within minutes. Light launches a vigilante campaign to rid the world of criminals and create his vision of a perfect society. But the unexplained string of deaths attracts the attention of the police, who turn the case over to the secretive master crime solver known only as L. Although it begins slowly, "Death Note" gets better with each installment, as the stakes grow higher in the macabre duel of wits between Light and L.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Sophie Hunter arrive at the 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Film Festival Awards Gala at Palm Springs Convention Center on January 3, 2015 in Palm Springs, California.; Credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
R. H. GreeneThe 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival opened this weekend, distinguished by robust audience turnouts, megawatt celebrity visitations and constant reminders of the unique space PSIFF occupies and the specialized services it provides to Hollywood.
Falling as it does just before Sundance and just after the Golden Globes nominations, Palm Springs is as much a part of the awards season calendar as it is the festival circuit. Big ticket screenings are presented with all the photo op pomp that would greet a major world premiere at, say, the Los Angeles Film Festival, but in many cases this is to build buzz for (or to re-energize) films that are already in theaters.
At Sundance or Tribeca, the suspense is usually about whether the films in competition will get good reviews and/or find distribution. At Palm Springs, especially on opening weekend, it's more about whether you'll run into Brad Pitt in the guest and industry suite at the Renaissance Hotel.
At the PSIFF awards gala, Golden Globe nominee Reese Witherspoon took home the oddly gender specific Chairman's Award for her performance in "Wild."
J.K. Simmons received something called a Spotlight Award for his superb turn as the menacing music instructor in "Whiplash."
David Oyelowo grabbed the "Breakthrough Performance Award (Male)" for depicting Martin Luther King Jr. in "Selma." Brad Pitt's sing-along presentation of Oyelowo's award became the meme for much of the post-event press coverage.
Rosamund Pike got the "Breakthrough Performance Award (Female)" for "Gone Girl."
Michael Keaton presented the Director of the Year award to his "Birdman" collaborator Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
And the Palm Spring Convention Center stage was home to two young British heartthrobs who are in Oscar contention this year for period biopics about scientific genius: Eddie Redmayne, who grabbed the Desert Palm Achievement Award (Male) for portraying ALS sufferer Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything," and Benedict Cumberbatch, who split glory with the cast of the Alan Turing biography "The Imitation Game" as co-winner of the Ensemble Performance Award.
The Desert Palm Achievement Award (Female) went to Julianne Moore in the Alzheimer's drama "Still Alice."
Every single one of the movies honored is in theaters now, almost all of them in the midst of slowly expanding release patterns as they mount their long slow march toward the Academy Awards.
The generous "one award per movie" policy and the care with which PSIFF avoids alienating celebrity affections by giving out trophies with such blunt and unequivocal titles as "Best Actress" or "Best Actor" mark the PSIFF awards gala as a psuedo-event: a kind of open-armed Hollywood team huddle before things get grim and serious with the Oscar announcements at the end of the month.
Even an Oscar-worthy oddity like Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" managed to find a place in the parade, with Linklater, who directed Shirley MacLaine in the 2010 black comedy "Bernie," presenting the 80-year-old actress with the Sonny Bono Visionary Award, essentially for career achievement.
Meanwhile, the festival's generous supply of indie, studio and foreign movies churned away in various local movie theaters, a really quite remarkable cluster of buzzworthy pictures, almost all of which have played elsewhere, including at Sundance and Toronto and Tribeca, and in many cases at your local multiplex.
This programming approach can be a double-edged sword. Director Ava DuVernay, whose civil rights-era epic "Selma" opened the festival, was unable to stay for her full run of Palm Springs personal appearances because her movie has been out long enough to spark a rather bitter controversy over its depiction of President Lyndon Johnson. DuVernay abandoned a Palm Springs Q and A in order to defend her film on Charlie Rose.
While some audience members were bitterly disappointed at missing the chance to hear one of this year's golden ones, I'm sure the PSIFF Board of Governors understood completely. This time of year, you have to play the long game, and, in the words of the civil rights anthem, "keep your eyes on the prize."
Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene, former editor of Boxoffice Magazine, is in Palm Spring this week to cover the 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. Look for his missives here, and listen Saturday to Off-Ramp for his report on the festival.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
; Credit: John Rabe
John RabeDear Off-Ramp fans,
What is a blog, after all? Words and images.
And what is a radio story on the web? Words, images, and sound.
Can't they live together in harmony? We say YES.
And with that in mind, we're killing the Off-Ramp blog page.
But don't fear; we're not cutting back on content: everything that would have found a home here - Marc Haefele's art reviews, recommendations for fun events, etc. -- will now be on the regular web page of the Off-Ramp radio show.
All the old blog entries will continue to stay on this page as an archive, like Catherine Deneuve's fading vampire lovers in The Hunger.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
An apartment in Pomona that leases through the Housing for Health Program. (Matt Tinoco/LAist)
Matt TinocoOur California Dream collaboration is looking for solutions to some of California's most pressing problems, in this case, homelessness. An initiative in Los Angeles seeks to save taxpayer money by housing some of the most vulnerable residents — those who cycle from the street to the emergency room and back again.
The California Dream series is a statewide media collaboration of CALmatters, KPBS, KPCC, KQED and Capital Public Radio with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the James Irvine Foundation.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Two tents in Hollywood erected beneath the 101 Freeway during a January rainstorm. (Matt Tinoco/KPCC)
Matt TinocoAs the holiday season and its accompanying cold and rainy weather arrives in Southern California, tens of thousands of people will be living through it all outside. And those of us indoors, well, many of us want to help them. KPCC’s Matt Tinoco has this story on how you can help those living without shelter.This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Homeless advocates erected a line of tents outside the Echo Park office of City Councilman Mitchell O'Farrell Feb. 12, 2020 to pressure him into meeting with them.; Credit: FILE PHOTO
Sharon McNaryMembers of several groups of homeless advocates from across Los Angeles converged on a homeless encampment at the north end of Echo Park Lake on Feb. 12 to protest the routine weekly litter collection.
A cleanup crew assisted by park rangers and city police officers did a once-through the campsite for miscellaneous trash, followed closely by a chanting and critical crowd of protesters.
The homeless advocates had erected extra tents that morning in protest of what they consider invasive cleanups. They also were trying to get City Councilman Mitchell O'Farrell to agree to meet with them as a group, same as he has met with other local organizations of homeowners and residents.
O'Farrell's spokesman Tony Aranga had insisted staffers were willing to meet with individuals to address their housing and other support needs.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Source: Michael Legg 11/12/2024
This New York-based company has made large strides in building out its nuclear reactor program, noted a Benchmark Co. report.Nano Nuclear Energy Inc. (NNE:NASDAQ) saw a 69% raise in its target price to US$66 per share from US$39 by The Benchmark Co. in light of the nuclear energy company's robust internal development, reported analyst Michael Legg in a November 7 research note. Nano Nuclear is developing 1–2 megawatt small modular reactors (SMRs).
"Nano Nuclear's balance sheet has been bolstered by capital raises placing over US$65 million (US$65M) on [the] balance sheet, allowing [the company] to continue to execute on its strategy," Legg wrote.
As the company was trading at the time of the report at about US$19.05 per share, the new target price implies a 246% return, noted Legg.
Nano Nuclear remains a Buy.
This New York-headquartered company improved its balance sheet to the point of having US$65M in cash and no debt, which allowed Nano Nuclear to keep working its strategy.
"We have lowered our discount rate on our net present value analysis to 20% from 25% to reflect reduced risk," Legg wrote.
The analyst reported Nano Nuclear's newest achievements and progress. They include:
1) Advancing development of its ZEUS and ODIN SMRs to the physical test work phase from the design stage and starting initial rig construction. The company also did external design audits on its SMRs.
2) Expanding its team, adding advisers and engineers, to expedite program development. Nano Nuclear appointed John Vonglis as chairman of its Executive Advisory Board for Strategic Initiatives. Vonglis is a former chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Acting Director of DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
The energy company appointed Lieutenant General Terry G. Robling, USMC (Ret.), as chair of its Executive Advisory Board for Federal and Defense Appropriations and Requirements. It appointed Carlos Maidana as head of its Thermal Hydraulics and Space Program and added six engineers to its Nuclear Technology and Engineering team.
3) Acquiring for US$1.71M in August a 14,000-square-foot, two-story building in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to be its Nuclear Technology Center location.
4) Signing a memorandum of understanding with the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board, which could result in deployment of SMRs and microreactors in the African country.
5) Starting its pre-application review with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Nano Nuclear provided the NRC and DOE the status of its microreactor designs and the estimated development timelines, so the NRC may line up the personnel needed to oversee the related licensing. Nano Nuclear is in the process of identifying places for a test bed reactor site.
6) Winning a DOE Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) voucher, which provides it with funding for 80% of a winning proposal, the remaining 20% to be covered by Nano Nuclear. This increases its chances of being awarded additional vouchers in the future, purported Legg.
Momentum in the clean energy sector, particular nuclear power, being sought out for artificial intelligence data centers, bitcoin mining and electric vehicles, also is benefitting Nano Nuclear, Legg wrote.
A string of recent events exemplify the demand. Amazon.com announced it will buy power from SMRs, and Google partnered with Kairos for nuclear power. Sam Altman and Bill Gates invested in nuclear. President-Elect Donald Trump had noted while campaigning that he would expand nuclear power were he elected.
Further, the U.S. federal government passed the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act, aimed at ramping up development of advanced nuclear technology and preserving existing nuclear power generation.
"We believe this passing is further justification that nuclear is needed to reach climate initiatives, as nuclear is the only large-scale, reliable, emission-free energy source," Legg wrote.
Legg noted that ongoing operational success could positively impact Nano Nuclear's share price.
Other catalysts, he wrote, include increased knowledge about and demand for SMRs, expected to happen as climate change efforts favor emission-free energy and the public accepts safety and use cases.
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Disclosures for The Benchmark Co., Nano Nuclear Energy Inc., November 7, 2024
The Benchmark Company, LLC. (“Benchmark” or “the Firm”) compensates research analysts, like other Firm employees, based on the Firm’s overall revenue and profitability, which includes revenues from the Firm’s institutional sales, trading, and investment banking departments. No portion of the analyst’s compensation is based on a specific banking transaction. Analyst compensation is based upon a variety of factors, including the quality of analysis, performance of recommendations and overall service to the Firm’s institutional clients.
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Source: Streetwise Reports 11/12/2024
NexGold Mining Corp. (NEXG.V:TSXV; NXGCF:OTCQX; TRC1.F:FRA)and Signal Gold Inc. have successfully closed their previously announced oversubscribed and upsized concurrent financing. Read more as NexGolds acquisition of Signal Gold sets the stage for near-term production with combined resources and capital driving project development.NexGold Mining Corp. (NEXG.V:TSXV; NXGCF:OTCQX; TRC1.F:FRA) and Signal Gold Inc. have successfully closed their previously announced oversubscribed and upsized concurrent financing, generating a total of US$18.5 million. Initially disclosed in joint announcements from both companies on October 10 and October 23, 2024, this financing is part of a larger plan in which NexGold will acquire all shares of Signal Gold to combine both companies' gold projects to create a near-term gold developer.
The financing involved two components. The first was a flow-through (FT) unit private placement by NexGold, which raised CA$8.085 million through the sale of 10,106,250 FT units at CA$0.80 per unit. Each unit includes one flow-through common share and half of one purchase warrant, allowing the holder to buy an additional non-flow-through share at CA$1.05 for the next two years. In the second component, Signal Gold's private placement of subscription receipts yielded CA$10.45 million by issuing 120,075,840 receipts at CA$0.08705 each. These receipts will convert into Signal units once specific escrow release conditions are met, including completion of the acquisition. Each unit consists of one common share and half a purchase warrant, allowing the holder to acquire additional shares for CA$0.11818 over two years.
The net funds from this financing will be used to retire debt, fund the exploration and development of both companies' gold projects - including NexGold's Goliath gold complex in Ontario and Signal's Goldboro project in Nova Scotia - and for general corporate purposes. The gross proceeds from FT units will go toward qualified exploration expenses for NexGold's projects, with renunciation planned by December 31, 2024, as per Canadian tax requirements.
Investor interest included an acquisition by a Sprott Asset Management sub-advised fund, which purchased 2.5 million FT units for CA$2 million, bringing Sprott's holdings to 11.43% of NexGold's issued shares (14.95% on a partially diluted basis). NexGold also extended an investor awareness agreement with i2i Marketing Group, providing up to six months of marketing services for CA$250,000 to increase investor visibility.
Gold's surge to the US$2,800 mark due to a "perfect storm" of factors, according to an October 29 report from Kitco. Gary Wagner explained that this historic rise, approximately 35% this year, was driven by geopolitical tensions, anticipated Federal Reserve rate cuts, consistent central bank demand, and U.S. political uncertainty in the run-up to the presidential election.
Chen Lin offered a positive outlook on NexGold, noting heightened investor interest following recent updates, including expanded financing and merger plans.
Wagner noted that "geopolitical, political conflicts" and "uncertainties about the outcome of the upcoming presidential election" were critical components, with emerging market central banks increasing their gold reserves to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar.
On October 30, LiveMint highlighted gold's global appeal. The article mentioned how central banks continue to expand their gold reserves, with net buying reaching 337 tonnes in Q3 2023.
This marks a near-record level, according to the World Gold Council. Escalating geopolitical tensions, especially in the Middle East, have also led investors to seek gold as a safe haven, pushing prices upward. In addition, strong economic data in the U.S., such as job growth and consumer spending, has affected expectations around Federal Reserve policies. These, in turn, have indirectly influenced gold.
By November 4, Egon von Greyerz, in his analysis of the global financial system, emphasized gold as a reliable store of value. He argued that "gold has always stood as a protector" during economic downturns, describing the asset as "the best-performing asset class in this century." Von Greyerz asserted that gold's continued strength could be attributed to its resistance to the "destruction of fiat money," making it an essential wealth-preserving asset in an increasingly unstable financial environment.
NexGold's acquisition of Signal Gold is expected to accelerate its growth as a mid-tier gold producer. According to NexGold's September 2024 investor presentation, this financing supports the ongoing development of the Goliath Gold Complex in Northern Ontario, which holds a combined measured and indicated gold resource of over 2.1 million ounces. Additionally, Signal's Goldboro project in Nova Scotia adds strategic value with historical production potential and significant exploration upside.
The Goliath project benefits from robust infrastructure, an approved environmental assessment, and a promising pre-feasibility study indicating a post-tax NPV of CA$336 million at US$1,750/oz gold. With this acquisition, the combined entity is expected to leverage its enhanced capital position to pursue further exploration and optimization, aiming for near-term production and establishing a solid platform for growth and consolidation in the Canadian gold sector.
Ron Stewart, a mining analyst at Red Cloud Securities, maintained a Speculative Buy rating on NexGold with a target currently Under Review in his September analysis. Stewart stated that the merger with Signal Gold offered NexGold an accretive pathway to growth by adding the Goldboro project's resources to its portfolio. He noted that the combined assets of NexGold and Signal would form a "multi-asset company with over 6 million ounces in gold resources," which he described as synergistic and favorable for shareholders. Stewart anticipated the merger would close in Q4 2024, with upcoming catalysts including the Goliath Feasibility Study in Q1 2025 and a potential construction decision for Goliath in H2 2025. [OWNERSHIP_CHART-1961]
In the October 24 edition of What is Chen Buying? What is Chen Selling? Chen Lin offered a positive outlook on NexGold, noting heightened investor interest following recent updates, including expanded financing and merger plans. Lin's analysis aligned with Stewart's views on the company's growth potential, highlighting that, with the combined projects and new funding, NexGold is well-positioned for substantial operational growth and asset value expansion in the years ahead.
The company notes management and insiders own 3.4% of NexGold.
Institutions own 17%.
Strategic investors own 37.4%. Frank Guistra owns 10.1%. On a partially diluted basis, Sprott owns 14.95%. Extract owns 14%. First Mining owns 4.3%. Matrix owns 1.9%, and Teck own 1.9%.
NexGold has 76 million shares and a market cap of CA$57.16 million.
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( Companies Mentioned: NEXG.V:TSXV; NXGCF:OTCQX; TRC1.F:FRA, )
Citi has announced its partnership with Bank of Shanghai in order to launch a payment solution for international travelers that visit the region of China.
SafetyTech company Privately SA has partnered with Privado ID to develop a privacy-focused, device-based age verification solution.
Patt's Hats for April 17, 2013.; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC
Patt Morrison with Michelle LanzIs it, by chance, Helena Bonham Carter’s birthday? This begged me to take it out of the closet this morning, a frock very much a la Bonham Carter mode. [We all do know that her husband, Tim Burton, is from Burbank, right?]
The dress is from Stefanel – anyone know of Stefanel? An Italian company that’s done especially knockout knits. I don’t know that it has any shops here in the U.S. but I hazarded into Stefanel in Europe and liked the attitude, as well as the silhouettes, and this one in particular.
The sweater-ribbed knit band at the bottom puts an edge on the frou-frou of the skirt, as do the big hardware snaps on the bodice. [That word, froufrou, or frou-frou, meaning fussy or embellished, or covered with "furbelows." "Furbelows" is one of my favorite fashion words.
"Froufrou" dates to France in about 1870, when women’s clothes were exactly that. Sarah Bernhardt, one of my style icons, starred in a play entitled “Frou-Frou.”
Of course Bernhardt gets to die ravishingly and at length in the play – she had more ways of expiring than James Bond’s villains ever dreamed up – and even though she only performed in French, American audiences ate it up when she toured here. Bernhardt said she could always recoup her fortunes in the United States, and “Frou Frou” helped her to do just that.
This dress, with the taffeta bubble skirt, reminded me of the style worn by Tom Wolfe’s New York society matrons in “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” It’s the magnificently seminal social novel about race and wealth in 1980s New York. Wolfe he called the women “social X-rays” for the bony gauntness they cultivated. If you have not read it, you really must. It lays the groundwork for the lifestyles of the Wall Street rich and notorious of today, and is one of my favorite novels.
The Lucite heel on the ankle boots – "Perspex," as the British call it – gives the effect of floating, ballerina-like, across the floor – an effect I will never achieve in real life, so must rely on footwear to give me a semblance of it.
I coveted the Lucite-wedge shoes that Maison Margiela sold briefly at H&M, but didn’t have the stamina to wake up at dawn and line up at 6 a.m. back when they went on sale, so these shoes gave me a bit of the same look, along with a full night’s sleep.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Patt Morrison's outfit from her June 5, 2013 Patt's Hats entry. ; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC
Patt MorrisonThere are so many things I like about this dress – the sleeve length, the boat neck, the fact that it’s navy and not black, and the fact that it wasn’t made in Bangladesh – but mostly it’s the gaily asymmetrical floral design that caught my eye.
The pattern is front and back, and I’m a stickler about those things. It looks like I have been loaded down with festive leis, but also loaded with one too many Mai Tais, so the flower garlands are askew as if I were listing a little bit.
There’s more of my current yellow shoe madness with these very Michelle Obama kitten-heel slingbacks in two different tones of yellow, one a more acid shade and the other more canary, or perhaps chrome yellow. That’s not to be confused with “Crome Yellow,” a very sardonic Aldous Huxley novel parodying the artsy intelligentsia set of 1920s England.
I hope you can see this bracelet. It’s a piece of Victorian mourning jewelry. The Victorians went way, way over the top on this stuff; some of it borders on the ghoulish, with lockets containing elaborately braided locks or even portraits or scenes made entirely from the hair of the deceased. I can admire the artistry but the sentiment can seem excessive. This piece, though, has a black and white enamel border around a tiny fly. Why a fly, I wondered. Then I read the inscription inside:
“From JR to AHR [clearly a husband to a wife] in loving memory of our darling little May Queen, died 7th August 1880, age 14 Mos.”
That inscription made the fly make sense. It’s a mayfly, a creature that lives a few days, or even just a few minutes, and here was this little girl, born in May – hence the May Queen reference to the mythical springtime queen of antiquity -- and died barely a year thereafter. So sweet, so sad, so human, all from an inscription on a bracelet. The girl’s parents are long dead, and so too are any siblings she may have had, but it can touch us more than 130 years later.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Patt Morrison models a headdress from the movie "The Lone Ranger."; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC
Patt MorrisonTrust me – you’re going to be seeing a lot of these between now and Halloween.
I went to “The Lone Ranger” premiere last month, and outside the theater, Disneyland began selling a version of the Tonto headdress dreamed up by Johnny Depp and his folks for his role in the film, which I found to be a rollicking, ironic version of the classic action adventure with some very sober scenes evoking Native Americans’ tragic history.
The inspiration, Depp says, was artist Kirby Sattler’s interpretive 2006 painting “I Am Crow.”
Depp himself has claimed Native American ancestry, and the bird atop his bean plays a substantial if silent role in the proceedings. It is an interpretive painting, as I said, not a literal rendering of any tribal makeup. In the Sattler painting, the bird is flying above the figure’s head, not perched on it.
But the movie’s invested in storytelling, not the fine points of accuracy. If it had been, it wouldn’t have made the historical solecisms of relocating both Monument Valley and the transcontinental railroad to … Texas.
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Patt Morrison's ensemble for Aug 8, 2013.; Credit: Dave Coelho/KPCC
Patt MorrisonWhat shall we call this color scheme? How about ‘Manhattan Mermaid’?
The petrel blues, the turquoises, the aquas – and then that uptown/downtown black, in this case a black linen duster over a Peter Max-style splashy-print silk dress. The way the hem pools at the sides a bit reminds me of the cut of Pre-Raphaelite ladies’ tunics; I’d love to dress “period” for a week to see whether I’d like it.
Imagine, a week of hoop skirts … a week of 1950s tailleurs … a week of bustles … a week of hobble skirts … a week of liberated Pre-Raphaelite velvet gowns!
The hat is so unmistakably summer in fabric and color that it doesn’t get out of the hatbox as much as it should, poor thing. And the shoes – I did not get them together, honest, but even though the prints don’t match, it’s the dissonance that makes them work better together than if they had.
The fabric is a very textured canvas and printed like batik. [They are not the soul of comfort – oh what a dreadful pun, but is there any other kind of pun? – but they look smart hooked over the railing of a chair in a chic bistro, which is where I intend to take them!]
And the bracelets, one from a great-aunt who had a fine eye for jewelry – the turquoise is almost Persian, it’s so green, but it’s more likely to be American. The cuff is definitely Southwest, with the rope-pattern trim and the irregularly shaped bezels, although the turquoises themselves are symmetrical.
Because I’m left-handed, my right arm bears the singular honor of being “ornamental,” and bearing the burden of the bling.
Summer on, ladies!
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Will Davidson and his Minecraft creation, modeled off the Santa Cruz Mission; Credit: Steve Henn
Minecraft is a deceptively simple video game. You're dropped into a virtual world, and you get to build things. It's like a digital Lego set, but with infinite pieces.
Its simplicity makes it a big hit with kids, like 10-year old Will Davidson. Last year, Will built a Spanish mission for a school report. He modeled his off the Santa Cruz Mission. "I made a chapel over here," Davidson says. "I also have a bell tower."
After he turned in his report, he added a few things. Like skeleton archers. "And zombies ... and exploding things, and spiders, that try to kill you," he said.
Minecraft is popular with kids because they're free to create almost anything, says Ramin Shokrizade, a game designer.
Also, kids aren't manipulated into clicking buttons to buy add-ons within the game. In other games, designers give players a special power for free at first, then take it away and offer it back at a price.
Zynga, the creator of Farmville, calls this fun pain, according to Shokrizade. "That's the idea that, if you make the consumer uncomfortable enough, and then tell them that for money we'll make you less uncomfortable, then [they] will give us money," he says.
Kids, Shokrizade says, are especially susceptible to this — and Minecraft has a loyal following, in part, because it doesn't do it.
Susan Linn, from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, agrees. She says a big reason she likes Minecraft is because after you purchase the game upfront, that's it.
"Parents don't have to worry that their kids are going to be targeted for more marketing," Linn says. "How forward-thinking!"
But Linn is worried. Microsoft bought Mojang, the company that created Minecraft, on Monday for $2.5 billion, and she says that any time a large company spends billions to acquire a smaller company, executives are bound start looking for new ways to get even more money out of it.
Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Nutella has turned into a global phenomenon, which is boosting the demand for hazelnuts. ; Credit: Ingrid Taylar/Flickr
Nutella, that sinfully indulgent chocolate-hazelnut spread, turns 50 this year, and it's come a long way, baby.
There's even a "Nutella bar" in midtown Manhattan, right off Fifth Avenue, tucked inside a grand temple of Italian food called Eataly. There's another Nutella bar at Eataly in Chicago. Here, you can order Nutella on bread, Nutella on a croissant, Nutella on crepes.
"We create a simple place," explains Dino Borri, Eataly's "brand ambassador," a man so charming that he should be an ambassador for the whole Italian country. "Simple ingredients, few ingredients. With Nutella, supertasty, supersimple. When you are simple, the people love!"
Nutella was the product of hard times. During World War II, an Italian chocolate-maker named Ferrero couldn't get enough cocoa, so he mixed in some ground hazelnuts instead. Then he made a soft and creamy version.
"It was one of the greatest inventions of the last century!" says Borri.
It's a bold claim, but greatness, you have to admit, is a matter of taste. In any case, Nutella conquered Italy and, eventually, the world.
The recipe for world domination, it turns out, isn't too complicated: Sugar, cocoa, palm oil and hazelnuts. Three of those ingredients are easy to get. Sugar, cocoa and palm oil are produced in huge quantities.Hazelnuts, though, which some people call filberts, are a different matter. Most of them come from a narrow strip of land along the coast of the Black Sea in Turkey.
Karim Azzaoui, vice president for sales and marketing at BALSU USA, which supplies hazelnuts to the U.S., says the hazelnut trees grow on steep slopes that rise from the Black Sea coast. The farms are small; grandparents and children help to harvest the nuts, usually by hand. "It's a very traditional way of life," Azzaoui says. "The Turkish family farmers are extremely proud of the hazelnut crop, as it has been part of their family history for centuries. Farmers have been growing hazelnuts here for 2,000 years."
Nutella is now making this traditional crop extremely trendy.
Ferrero, the Nutella-maker, now a giant company based in Alba, Italy, uses about a quarter of the world's hazelnut supply — more than 100,000 tons every year.
That's pushed up hazelnut prices. And this year, after a late frost in Turkey that froze the hazelnut blossoms and cut the country's hazelnut production in half, prices spiked even further. They're up an additional 60 percent this year.
Because they're so valuable, more people want to grow them. Farmers are growing hazelnuts in Chile and Australia. America's hazelnut orchards in Oregon are expanding.
And now, one can even find a few hazelnuts in the Northeastern United States, where they've never been successfully grown before. They're standing in a Rutgers University research farm, an oasis of orchards tucked in between highways, just outside New Brunswick, N.J.
"All the green leafy things you see here are hazelnut trees. But in the beginning, they all used to die from disease," says Thomas Molnar, a Rutgers plant scientist who is in charge of this effort.
The disease, called Eastern Filbert Blight, is caused by a fungus. Some relatives of the commercial hazelnut, native to North America, can withstand the fungus. But the European hazelnut, the kind that fetches high prices, cannot. When the fungus attacks, it ruptures the bark around each branch, and the tree dies.
About 10 years ago, though, a plant breeder at Rutgers named C. Reed Funk embarked on a quest for hazelnut trees that could survive Eastern Filbert Blight. Similar efforts have been underway at Oregon State University, because Eastern Filbert Blight has made its way to Oregon as well, threatening the orchards there.
"I personally went and made seed collections in Eastern Europe, Russia, Poland, Ukraine," says Molnar. "I collected thousands of seeds. We grew them as we normally would, and I'd say that 98 percent of them died."
The other 2 percent, though, did not. They carried genes that allowed them to survive the blight. Molnar cross-pollinated these blight-resistant trees with other hazelnut trees, from Oregon, that produce lots of high-quality nuts. He collected the offspring of that mating, looking for individual trees with the ideal genetic combination: blight resistance and big yields.
Molnar shows me a few candidate trees. They're thriving, and producing lots of nuts. Molnar and his colleagues now are conducting field trials of these trees in 10 locations around the Eastern U.S. and Canada to see whether they yield enough nuts to be commercially successful.
Molnar is optimistic. His efforts have even caught the attention of Ferrero, the Nutella-maker. "They've come here several times," Molnar says. "They've told me, if we can meet their quality specifications, they'd be interested in buying all the hazelnuts that we can produce."
If you just want to get one of these trees and grow hazelnuts in your backyard, though, Molnar does have a warning. "I haven't seen any other food that drives squirrels more crazy than hazelnuts," he says. Squirrels will do almost anything to get their greedy little paws on the nuts before you do.
So your hazelnuts may need a guard dog — one that likes to chase squirrels.
An image released by Google shows an early version of its driverless vehicle. The company has built several prototypes of the self-driving car.; Credit: /Google
California is one step closer this week to making the 1980s Hollywood fantasy of Knight Rider a 21st century reality because permits for self-driving cars issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles officially went into effect Tuesday. Now a handful of companies can test automated cars on public roads.
Buckle up — it's gonna be a wild ride.
John O'Dell is a Senior Editor at Edmunds.com, and he joins Alex Cohen to talk about what this means for the future of the driverless car industry.
Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corporation, gestures as he makes a speech during the New Economy Summit 2014 in this file photo taken in Tokyo on April 9, 2014. The company said Thursday, September 18, 2014, that Ellison would step aside as CEO and become chairman and chief technology officer.; Credit: TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images
Oracle says Larry Ellison is stepping aside as CEO of the company he founded. The business software maker promoted Safra Catz and Mark Hurd to replace him as co-CEOs.
Ellison will reclaim the title of chairman at Oracle and is also taking the role of chief technology officer. Oracle says Ellison wants to focus on product engineering, technology development and strategy. Jeff Henley, Oracle's chairman since January 2004, is now its vice chairman.
Catz and Hurd were co-presidents of the Redwood Shores, California, company. Catz will be in charge of the company's manufacturing, finance and legal functions. Hurd will be in charge of sales, service, and other global business units.
Ellison founded Oracle Corp. in 1977 and was its chairman from May 1995 to January 2004.
Last year was the second straight year the poverty rate stayed flat after four years of going up in the United States.; Credit: David McNew/Getty Images
Income in greater Los Angeles is rising – slightly - according to new American Community Survey numbers released Thursday from the Census Bureau, but greater L.A. still ranks as one of the poorest major metropolitan areas in the nation.
The L.A. area (defined as L.A., Long Beach and Anaheim) had a median household income of $58,869 last year, which is $804 more than the year before, but still $1540 under the 2010 level, during the first full year after the recession.
"These numbers paint a bleak picture for California,” said Marybeth Mattingly, a researcher at Stanford University’s Center on Poverty and Inequality.
Mattingly is particularly troubled by the child poverty rate, which was 25.3 percent in 2013, up from 22.6 percent in 2010.
“In the West, Hispanics have the highest poverty with nearly one in three Hispanic kids poor, and it's even a little higher for blacks” she said.
Nationally, last year was the second straight year the poverty rate stayed flat after four years of going up. Among big metro areas, the L.A. area had the highest poverty rate in the nation, tying Phoenix, Miami, and the Inland Empire. But that’s based upon a national poverty line of $23,550 for a family of four; When you take into account how much it really costs to live here, L.A. fares even worse.
“We find that Los Angeles stands out even more, unfortunately," said Sarah Bohn, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California. "Housing costs are really playing a big role in family budgets and being able to make ends meet.”
Bohn says these new numbers suggest we’re going in the right direction, but she wishes we’d move at a faster pace.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell talks during a press conference at the Hilton Hotel on Sept. 19, 2014 in New York City. Goodell spoke about the NFL's failure to address domestic violence, sexual assault and drug abuse in the league.; Credit: Elsa/Getty Images
Update 1:04 p.m. Goodell: 'Same mistakes can never be repeated'
Commissioner Roger Goodell says the NFL wants to implement new personal conduct policies by the Super Bowl. At a news conference Friday, Goodell made his first public statements in more than a week about the rash of NFL players involved in domestic violence. He did not announce any specific changes, but said he has not considered resigning.
"Unfortunately, over the past several weeks, we have seen all too much of the NFL doing wrong," he said. "That starts with me."
The league has faced increasing criticism that it has not acted quickly or emphatically enough concerning the domestic abuse cases.
The commissioner reiterated that he botched the handling of the Ray Rice case.
"The same mistakes can never be repeated," he said.
Goodell now oversees all personal conduct cases, deciding guilt and penalties.
He said he believes he has the support of the NFL's owners, his bosses.
"That has been clear to me," he said.
The Indianapolis Colts' Darius Butler was among those who tweeted criticism of the press conference:
The commissioner and some NFL teams have been heavily criticized for lenient or delayed punishment of Rice, Adrian Peterson and other players involved in recent domestic violence cases. Less than three weeks into the season, five such cases have made headlines, the others involving Greg Hardy, Ray McDonald and Jonathan Dwyer.
Vikings star running back Peterson, Carolina defensive end Hardy and Arizona running back Dwyer are on a special commissioner's exemption list and are being paid while they go through the legal process. McDonald, a defensive end for San Francisco, continues to practice and play while being investigated on suspicion of domestic violence.
As these cases have come to light, such groups as the National Organization of Women and league partners and sponsors have come down hard on the NFL to be more responsive in dealing with them. Congress also is watching to see how the NFL reacts.
In response to the criticism, the NFL announced it is partnering with a domestic violence hotline and a sexual violence resource center.
Goodell also said in a memo to the clubs late Thursday that within the next 30 days, all NFL and team personnel will participate in education sessions on domestic violence and sexual assault. The memo said the league will work with the union in providing the "information and tools to understand and recognize domestic violence and sexual assault."
The league will provide financial, operational and promotional support to the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
12:07 p.m. Roger Goodell to break silence on domestic abuse and the NFL
Roger Goodell will make his first public statements in more than a week about the rash of NFL players involved in domestic violence when he holds a news conference Friday.
The NFL commissioner will address the league's personal conduct policy. The league has faced increasing criticism it has not acted quickly or emphatically enough concerning the domestic abuse cases.
His last public appearance was at a high school in North Carolina on Sept. 10.
The commissioner and some NFL teams have been heavily criticized for lenient or delayed punishment of Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and other players involved in recent domestic violence cases. Less than three weeks into the season, five such cases have made headlines, the others involving Greg Hardy, Ray McDonald and Jonathan Dwyer.
Vikings star running back Peterson, Carolina defensive end Hardy and Arizona running back Dwyer are on a special commissioner's exemption list and are being paid while they go through the legal process. McDonald, a defensive end for San Francisco, continues to practice and play while being investigated on suspicion of domestic violence.
As these cases have come to light, such groups as the National Organization of Women and league partners and sponsors have come down hard on the NFL to be more responsive in dealing with them. Congress also is watching to see how the NFL reacts.
In response to the criticism, the NFL announced it is partnering with a domestic violence hotline and a sexual violence resource center.
Goodell also said in a memo to the clubs late Thursday that within the next 30 days, all NFL and team personnel will participate in education sessions on domestic violence and sexual assault. The memo said the league will work with the union in providing the "information and tools to understand and recognize domestic violence and sexual assault."
The league will provide financial, operational and promotional support to the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
"These commitments will enable both the hotline and NSVRC to help more people affected by domestic violence and sexual assault," Goodell said in the memo.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides domestic violence victims and survivors access to a national network of resources and shelters. It is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week in 170 languages. Goodell noted that the hotline received 84 percent more calls from Sept. 8-15, and the organization said more than 50 percent of those calls went unanswered because of lack of staff.
"The hotline will add 25 full-time advocates over the next few weeks that will result in an additional 750 calls a day being answered," he said.
NSVRC supports sexual violence coalitions across the United States. The NFL's initial support will be directed toward state coalitions to provide additional resources to sexual assault hotlines.
This story has been updated.
A job seeker fills out an application during a career fair at the Southeast Community Facility Commission on May 21, 2014 in San Francisco; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
California employers added 44,200 jobs in August, the largest gain of any state in the country. The state's unemployment rate stood still at 7.4 percent, compared to 6.1 percent nationwide.
"When the national numbers came out for August, and we saw a significant slowdown in job creation, we were a little bit concerned that we'd see the same thing happening here," said economist Kimberly Ritter-Martinez of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. "But in California, we stayed pretty much on track, outpacing the nation in terms of job creation."
The construction sector was a huge contributor to California's job growth in August, with a gain of 13,600 jobs. The other sectors with large gains were Education/Health Services (+12,200), and Professional/Business Services (+10,600).
"We've been seeing steady increases in construction employment for some time, but it has been a slow steady increase," said Tom Holsman, CEO of the Associated General Contractors of California.
"Recent increases are attributable to many projects that have been in the early stages of startup gaining momentum," Holsman added, citing LA County Metro transit projects and the new Wilshire Grand Hotel construction project as local examples.
In Los Angeles County, the unemployment rate also stayed flat at 8.1 percent, but it remains far lower than the 9.9 percent of August of 2013. In the last twelve months, the L.A. County Metro area has gained 6,600 construction jobs, a rate of 5.6 percent.
Ritter-Martinez, of the LAEDC says other economic indicators support a boost in construction jobs at the Los Angeles and statewide levels: permits for new housing construction, remodeling, and non-residential construction are all on the rise.
"Builders and developers are reporting that they're having trouble finding some skilled labor for construction," Ritter-Martinez said. "It's taken so long for that sector to come back, a lot of construction people have gone off and found other kinds of jobs or moved out of the region."
In Orange County, the unemployment rate was 5.4 percent, down from 5.7 percent in July. The unemployment rate in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario area was 8.7 percent in
August 2014, down from a revised 9.3 percent in July 2014.
