Maybe we had in mind the wrong kind of dinosaur. These days IBM looks more like some born-again T-rex, rampaging down Wall Street. How hot can you get? Other tech stocks have been slumping; IBM keeps going up and up. Industry analysts who bad-mouthed its shares at $48 two years ago now think the stock could hit $150, within striking distance of its 1987 high of $175. Certainly the company’s prospects are the best in years....
Now, alas, it’s beginning to look like our odd couple may have a fourth thing in common: they seem to have lost their touch. MJ’s abortive comeback with the Washington Wizards was, to be polite, an embarrassment. And Grasso seems to have turned overnight from Mr. PR to Mr. Clueless. This is the man who turned the exchange’s opening bell into MTV happenings, who attracted the likes of Spider-Man to the corner of Broad and Wall streets to mark the start of trading of Marvel Entertainment....
Article Five of the Constitution contains the way we can propose amendments. The second way is that the states can gather when two thirds of the states decide, and they can propose amendments — and then those amendments go out to the states for ratification by 38 states. That’s what it takes to put it in the Constitution. So currently, there’s an effort underway by our organization to have a debate around the idea of who decides....
The Welch split will be one of the highest-profile corporate divorces in history–and could land Mrs. Welch one of the biggest settlements ever. It may also spark debate about the fair distribution of assets in a failed second marriage. The Welches’ net worth is estimated at $900 million, leading to speculation that Mrs. Welch could get $450 million (their prenup expired on their 10th anniversary, in 1999). But that reasoning is wrong....
Forget about looking under the hood. These days, interior decorating counts for more than horsepower. Drab plastic dashboards with a few cup holders just won’t do. Auto-interior designers, once the Rodney Dangerfields of the auto industry, are now crafting sleek postmodern dashboards with metallic finishes and clocks that look like expensive jewelry. What’s driving this look inward? All that time we spend stuck in traffic, for one thing. Today’s road warrior logs an average of 82 minutes a day behind the wheel, more than double the commuting time of 20 years ago, according to the latest federal transportation studies....
As the vanguard of what the CIA has dubbed the “next wave” of the global AIDS crisis, India and China could have 40 million HIV-positive people by the end of this decade–the same number the entire world has today. The CIA predicts that India alone will have 20 million to 25 million infections, up from 4 million today, “even if the disease does not break out significantly into the mainstream population....
The children who died, aged 12 months to 13 years, had symptoms such as high fevers and rashes. They were initially treated with antibiotics that can obliterate nonresistant staph infections–the type normally seen outside hospitals. But the children had somehow contracted a strain called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which is resistant to many drugs, including those they were given. When they failed to get better, several got vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic of last resort capable of killing MRSA if used quickly....
The merger signified more than the marriage of two of America’s most respected newspapers. The $1.1 billion, or $15-a-share, price-to be paid in cash and stock -was the highest ever for an American newspaper. And the agreement marked yet another instance of a family-owned newspaper’s being gobbled up by large outsiders. Still, William O. Taylor, chairman of the Globe’s parent, Affiliated Publications, called it “a strong strategic and cultural fit,” while Times chairman Arthur Ochs Sulzberger dubbed it a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity....
Mention Woolworth and most people picture trinket-filled variety marts offering everything from goldfish to grilled-cheese sandwiches. But the company Frank W. Woolworth started 113 years ago has left the five-and-dime business far behind. Faced with tough competition from discounters like Kmart and Wal-Mart, the chain has spent the past decade transforming itself from a colorless main-street mass merchant into one of the most versatile specialty retailers in the business. The make-over is finally paying off: after three years of lackluster performance, Woolworth’s earnings rose 59 percent in the third quarter of 1992, and brokerage-house analysts say there’s more to come (chart)....
This is the kind of deal that shows why the finance and tax staffs are GM’s biggest moneymakers, hot October auto sales notwithstanding. The case in point is the $22 billion deal announced last week, in which EchoStar will in effect buy Hughes Electronics, the GM subsidiary that owns DirecTV. If the transaction goes through as planned, it will be the grand finale, capping several brilliant tax-avoiding deals that GM has done with Hughes’s stock and assets....
In fact, he did kill someone-his first wife, smothered to death in a jealous rage. Carcaterra’s discovery of this crime at the age of 14, and the way it changed his feelings toward his father from a mixture of fear and love to one of fear and hate, is the crux of this remarkable book. His mother, who had known about it since shortly after her own marriage, waited until she and Lorenzo were safely 4,000 miles away in Italy to tell him....
The director of “A Sunday in the Country” and “Round Midnight,” working from a deeply personal script in both English and French by his ex-wife Coco Tavernier O’Hagan, has made a CinemaScope chamber piece for three superb players. The mercurial screenwriter daughter (Jane Birkin) of an urbane but selfish Englishman (Dirk Bogarde) and a French mother (Odette Laure) rushes to their villa on the Cote d’Azur when she learns her father has been hospitalized....
In Arkansas Times, LP v. Waldrip, the full court sitting en banc upheld an anti-discrimination law prohibiting state entities from contracting on ordinary terms with companies that discriminatorily boycott Israel. A majority of states have adopted similar bills, motivated by the rise of the antisemitic “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement, and while BDS supporters across the country have cleverly tried to pretend these laws somehow infringe on their First Amendment rights, the first appellate test of the issue thoroughly debunked that claim....
In the meticulously researched “Tulipmania” (University of Chicago Press; 400 pages), Anne Goldgar tells another story entirely. In her account, the tulip traders were wealthy merchants with money to burn—hardly a representative cross-section of Dutch society. Far from wiping out the Dutch economy, she writes, the 1637 crash only dented the bank accounts of those rich enough to speculate in the first place. Meanwhile, in the two years prior, bubonic plague had killed approximately 135,000 Amsterdam residents and the region was mired in decades-long military conflict....
EGYPTIAN AND Israeli diplomats say relations between their two countries are possibly at their lowest point since the Camp David peace accords were signed in 1979. Gideon Ben-Ami, Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, has had no official contact with the Egyptian government since April, when the status of his mission was downgraded in protest over Operation Protective Wall–the Israeli occupation of the West Bank that followed a Passover suicide attack in Netanya....
“Please come in and look how we live!” they would say. And there we were, instantly taken into the reality of their life. They were workers or jobless, young or retired, just the ordinary people of Russia. Ten years after the beginning of reform, injustice is installed as a system and the landscape frozen into chaos, without perspective or illusions. It would be simplistic to talk only about an economic disaster confronting the people we met....
Do 3 repetitions, holding each time for 15 to 30 seconds. A weak pectoralis major contributes to that rounded-shoulder posture, and can overload the rhomboid muscles. [2] X Research source Repeat the stretch 2 to 4 times, then switch arms so that the hand that was clasped on the bottom is now clasped on the top. Hold the stretch for 15 seconds, breathing deeply. Then return to start and repeat. Do 2 - 3 repetitions, then switch and do the same stretch on the other side....
If you have an oval or heart-shaped face, start the layers around your chin. If your face is more square, start the layers above your cheekbones instead. If you have very long hair, start your layers at your cheekbones to create balance. When giving your hair layers, make sure not to cut it unevenly—layers should fall so they match up on either side of your face and follow the shape of your haircut....
Foods like cookies, scones, muffins, chocolate cakes, and quick breads taste good when made with whole wheat flour instead of white flour. You can also use regular milk or buttermilk for additional liquid. For example, add 2 teaspoons (9. 9 ml) of liquid per 1 cup (240 ml) of whole wheat flour. As whole wheat flour absorbs liquid more slowly, whole wheat doughs will be stickier than white flour doughs....
