This image is a colour composite of the Omega Nebula (M 17) made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximatelly 4.7 x 3.7 degrees.
Image: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin. [high-resolution]
Caption: ESO
(Reuters) – Cleotha Staples, a founding member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame R&B and gospel group The Staple Singers, has died after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, the group said on Friday. She was 78.
Staples, who died on Thursday at her Chicago home, is best known for singing on the group’s 1970s hits, including “I’ll Take You There,” “Respect Yourself” and “Let’s Do It Again.”
“We will keep on,” Mavis Staples, the group’s lead singer, said in a statement. “Yvonne and I will continue singing to keep our father’s legacy and our sister’s legacy alive.”
Mavis, who is known for her raspy voice that gave the group its distinct personality, said she would dedicate her forthcoming album to Cleotha’s memory.
The oldest of five children, Staples was born in Drew, Mississippi, to Roebuck “Pops” Staples and Oceola Staples. The family moved to Chicago when Staples was 2 years old in 1936, where sisters Mavis and Yvonne were born.
The Staple Singers, known as “God’s greatest hitmakers,” were formed in 1948 with Pops on guitar and siblings Mavis, Cleotha, Pervis and Yvonne singing.
The group first played churches in the Midwest and put out their first recording in 1953. Their gospel hits included “On My Way to Heaven,” “With the Circle Be Unbroken” and “Pray On.”
The family became active in the civil rights movement in 1962 after hearing Martin Luther King Jr. speak while the family was on tour. They are thought to be the first black group to cover Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” in 1963.
The Staples Singers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 and were honored with a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2005.
Cleotha Staples is survived by her sisters Mavis and Yvonne and brother Pervis.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa Shumaker)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SACRAMENTO — In his seven-year career with the Denver Broncos, running back Terrell Davis, a former Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, dazzled fans with his speed and elusiveness.
At the end of his rookie year in 1995, he signed a $6.8-million, five-year contract. Off the field he endorsed Campbell's soup. And when he hung up his cleats, he reported for the National Football League Network and appeared in movies and TV shows.
So it may surprise Californians to find out that in 2011, Davis got a $199,000 injury settlement from a California workers' compensation court for injuries related to football. This came despite the fact Davis was employed by a Colorado team and played just nine times in California during an 88-game career, according to the NFL.
Davis was compensated for the lifelong effects of multiple injuries to the head, arms, trunk, legs and general body, according to California workers' compensation records.
He is not alone.
Over the last three decades, California's workers' compensation system has awarded millions of dollars in benefits for job-related injuries to thousands of professional athletes. The vast majority worked for out-of-state teams; some played as little as one game in the Golden State.
All states allow professional athletes to claim workers' compensation payments for specific job-related injuries — such as a busted knee, torn tendon or ruptured spinal disc — that happened within their borders. But California is one of the few that provides additional payments for the cumulative effect of injuries that occur over years of playing.
A growing roster of athletes are using this provision in California law to claim benefits. Since the early 1980s, an estimated $747 million has been paid out to about 4,500 players, according to an August study commissioned by major professional sports leagues. California taxpayers are not on the hook for these payments. Workers' compensation is an employer-funded program.
Now a major battle is brewing in Sacramento to make out-of-state players ineligible for these benefits, which are paid by the leagues and their insurers. They have hired consultants and lobbyists and expect to unveil legislation next week that would halt the practice.
"The system is completely out of whack right now," said Jeff Gewirtz, vice president of the Brooklyn Nets — formerly the New Jersey Nets — of the National Basketball Assn.
Major retired stars who scored six-figure California workers' compensation benefits include Moses Malone, a three-time NBA most valuable player with the Houston Rockets, Philadelphia 76ers and other teams. He was awarded $155,000. Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin, formerly with the Dallas Cowboys, received $249,000. The benefits usually are calculated as lump-sum payments but sometimes are accompanied by open-ended agreements to provide lifetime medical services.
Players, their lawyers and their unions plan to mount a political offensive to protect these payouts.
Although the monster salaries of players such as Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant and Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning make headlines, few players bring in that kind of money. Most have very short careers. And some, particularly football players, end up with costly, debilitating injuries that haunt them for a lifetime but aren't sufficiently covered by league disability benefits.
Retired pros increasingly are turning to California, not only because of its cumulative benefits but also because there's a longer window to file a claim. The statute of limitations in some states expires in as little as a year or two.
"California is a last resort for a lot of these guys because they've already been cut off in the other states," said Mel Owens, a former Los Angeles Rams linebacker-turned-workers' compensation lawyer who has represented a number of ex-players.
To understand how it works, consider the career of Ernie Conwell. A former tight end for the St. Louis Rams and New Orleans Saints, he was paid $1.6 million for his last season in 2006.
Conwell said that during his 11-year career, he underwent about 18 surgeries, including 11 knee operations. Now 40, he works for the NFL players union and lives in Nashville.
Hobbled by injuries, he filed for workers' compensation in Louisiana and got $181,000 in benefits to cover his last, career-ending knee surgery in 2006, according to the Saints. The team said it also provided $195,000 in injury-related benefits as part of a collective-bargaining agreement with the players union.
But such workers' compensation benefits paid by Louisiana cover only specific injuries. So, to deal with what he expects to be the costs of ongoing health problems that he said affect his arms, legs, muscles, bones and head, Conwell filed for compensation in California and won.
Even though he played only about 20 times in the state over his professional career, he received a $160,000 award from a California workers' compensation judge plus future medical benefits, according to his lawyer. The Saints are appealing the judgment.
On one hand (er, wrist), you’ve got the Pebble and other smartwatch upstarts, which come with built-in smartphone connectivity, customizable screens, and burgeoning developer communities eager to feed their app ecosystems. They also, by and large, look like uninspired pieces of mass-produced Chinese plastic, and that’s because they are.
On the “stylish” end of the spectrum is … not much. Except this: Citizen’s Eco-Drive Proximity.
The Citizen learns the current time from your phone, and the watch’s hands spin around to the correct positions.
By all outward appearances, the Proximity looks like any another chronograph in a sea of handsome mechanical watches. It has all the features you’d expect, including a 24-hour dial, day and date, perpetual calendar and second time zone. But housed within its slightly oversized 46mm case is a Bluetooth 4.0 radio, so it’s capable of passing data over the new low-energy connectivity standard appearing in newer smartphones, including the iPhone 5 and 4S. And for now, the Promixity is only compatible with those Apple devices.
Initial pairing is relatively easy. After downloading Citizen’s notably low-rent iOS app, you can link the watch to your phone with a few turns and clicks on the crown.
The gee-whiz feature is the automatic time sync that takes place whenever you land in a different time zone. Once connected, the Citizen learns the current time from your phone, and the watch’s hands spin around to the correct positions — a welcome bit of easy magic, considering the initial setup is a tedious finger dance.
The watch can also notify you of incoming communications. Once you’ve configured the mail client (it only supports IMAP accounts), you’ll get notified whenever you get a new e-mail — there’s a slight vibration and the second hand sweeps over to the “mail” tab at the 10-o’clock position. If a phone call comes in, the second hand moves to the 11-o’clock marker. If the Bluetooth connection gets lost because the watch or phone is outside the 30-foot range, you get another vibration and the second hand moves to the “LL” indicator. And really, that’s the extent of the functionality around notifications.
But notable in its absence is the notification I’d like the most: text message alerts. And it’s not something Citizen will soon be rectifying because the dials and hardware aren’t upgradable.
I also experienced frequent connection losses, particularly when attending a press conference with scads of Mi-Fis and tethered smartphones around me. This caused dozens of jarring vibrations both on my wrist and in my pocket, followed by a raft of push notifications on my phone informing me of the issue. Reconnecting is easy (and generally happens automatically), but the lack of stability in certain environments matched with the limited capabilities of the notifications had me forgetting to reconnect and not even worrying about it later on.
But actually, I’m OK with that. I still like the fact that it never needs charging. Even though there aren’t any solar cells visible on the dial, the watch does have them. They’re hidden away beneath the dial, and yet they still work perfectly. And even when its flagship connectivity features aren’t behaving, it’s still a damn handsome watch. It feels solid, and it looks good at the office, out to dinner, or on the weekend — something very few other “smart” watches on the market can claim.
However, those things can be said of almost all of Citizen’s EcoDrive watches. The big distinguishing feature here is the Bluetooth syncing and notifications, and they just don’t work that well.
WIRED A smart watch you won’t be embarrassed to wear. Charges using light. Combines classic styling with cutting-edge connectivity. Subtle notifications keep you informed without dominating your attention.
TIRED Loses Bluetooth connection with disturbing frequency. Limited notification abilities. No text message alerts. Janky iPhone app.
U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Steve Horton
Capt. Richard Koll, left, and Airman First Class Mike Eulo monitored a drone aircraft after launching it in Iraq.
The study affirms a growing body of research finding health hazards even for those piloting machines from bases far from actual combat zones.
“Though it might be thousands of miles from the battlefield, this work still involves tough stressors and has tough consequences for those crews,” said Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively about drones. He was not involved in the new research.
That study, by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, which analyzes health trends among military personnel, did not try to explain the sources of mental health problems among drone pilots.
But Air Force officials and independent experts have suggested several potential causes, among them witnessing combat violence on live video feeds, working in isolation or under inflexible shift hours, juggling the simultaneous demands of home life with combat operations and dealing with intense stress because of crew shortages.
“Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.”
Dr. Otto said she had begun the study expecting that drone pilots would actually have a higher rate of mental health problems because of the unique pressures of their job.
Since 2008, the number of pilots of remotely piloted aircraft — the Air Force’s preferred term for drones — has grown fourfold, to nearly 1,300. The Air Force is now training more pilots for its drones than for its fighter jets and bombers combined. And by 2015, it expects to have more drone pilots than bomber pilots, although fighter pilots will remain a larger group.
Those figures do not include drones operated by the C.I.A. in counterterrorism operations over Pakistan, Yemen and other countries.
The Pentagon has begun taking steps to keep pace with the rapid expansion of drone operations. It recently created a new medal to honor troops involved in both drone warfare and cyberwarfare. And the Air Force has expanded access to chaplains and therapists for drone operators, said Col. William M. Tart, who commanded remotely piloted aircraft crews at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.
The Air Force has also conducted research into the health issues of drone crew members. In a 2011 survey of nearly 840 drone operators, it found that 46 percent of Reaper and Predator pilots, and 48 percent of Global Hawk sensor operators, reported “high operational stress.” Those crews cited long hours and frequent shift changes as major causes.
That study found the stress among drone operators to be much higher than that reported by Air Force members in logistics or support jobs. But it did not compare the stress levels of the drone operators with those of traditional pilots.
The new study looked at the electronic health records of 709 drone pilots and 5,256 manned aircraft pilots between October 2003 and December 2011. Those records included information about clinical diagnoses by medical professionals and not just self-reported symptoms.
After analyzing diagnosis and treatment records, the researchers initially found that the drone pilots had higher incidence rates for 12 conditions, including anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and suicidal ideation.
But after the data were adjusted for age, number of deployments, time in service and history of previous mental health problems, the rates were similar, said Dr. Otto, who was scheduled to present her findings in Arizona on Saturday at a conference of the American College of Preventive Medicine.
The study also found that the incidence rates of mental heath problems among drone pilots spiked in 2009. Dr. Otto speculated that the increase might have been the result of intense pressure on pilots during the Iraq surge in the preceding years.
The study found that pilots of both manned and unmanned aircraft had lower rates of mental health problems than other Air Force personnel. But Dr. Otto conceded that her study might underestimate problems among both manned and unmanned aircraft pilots, who may feel pressure not to report mental health symptoms to doctors out of fears that they will be grounded.
She said she planned to conduct two follow-up studies: one that tries to compensate for possible underreporting of mental health problems by pilots and another that analyzes mental health issues among sensor operators, who control drone cameras while sitting next to the pilots.
“The increasing use of remotely piloted aircraft for war fighting as well as humanitarian relief should prompt increased surveillance,” she said.
States are increasingly alarmed that they could become collateral damage in Washington’s latest fiscal battle, fearing that the impasse could saddle them with across-the-board spending cuts that threaten to slow their fragile recoveries or thrust them back into recession.
Some states, like Maryland and Virginia, are vulnerable because their economies are heavily dependent on federal workers, federal contracts and military spending, which will face steep reductions if Congress allows the automatic cuts, known as sequestration, to begin next Friday. Others, including Illinois and South Dakota, are at risk because of their reliance on the types of federal grants that are scheduled to be cut. And many states simply fear that a heavy dose of federal austerity could weaken their economies, costing them jobs and much-needed tax revenue.
So as state officials begin to draw up their budgets for next year, some say that the biggest risk they see is not the weak housing market or the troubled European economy but the federal government. While the threat of big federal cuts to states has become something of a semiannual occurrence in recent years, state officials said in interviews that they fear that this time the federal government might not be crying wolf — and their hopes are dimming that a deal will be struck in Washington in time to avert the cuts.
The impact would be widespread as the cuts ripple across the nation over the next year.
Texas expects to see its education aid slashed hundreds of millions of dollars, which could force local school districts to fire teachers, if the cuts are not averted. Michigan officials say they are in no position to replace the lost federal dollars with state dollars, but worry about cuts to federal programs like the one that helps people heat their homes. Maryland is bracing not only for a blow to its economy, which depends on federal workers and contractors and the many private businesses that support them, but also for cuts in federal aid for schools, Head Start programs, a nutrition program for pregnant women, mothers and children, and job training programs, among others.
Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican, warned in a letter to President Obama on Monday that the automatic spending cuts would have a “potentially devastating impact” and could force Virginia and other states into a recession, noting that the planned cuts to military spending would be especially damaging to areas like Hampton Roads that have a big Navy presence. And he noted that the whole idea of the proposed cuts was that they were supposed to be so unpalatable that they would force officials in Washington to come up with a compromise.
“As we all know, the defense, and other, cuts in the sequester were designed to be a hammer, not a real policy,” Mr. McDonnell wrote. “Unfortunately, inaction by you and Congress now leaves states and localities to adjust to the looming threat of this haphazard idea.”
The looming cuts come just as many states feel they are turning the corner after the prolonged slump caused by the recession. Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a Democrat, said he was moving to increase the state’s cash reserves and rainy day funds as a hedge against federal cuts.
“I’d rather be spending those dollars on things that improve our business climate, that accelerate our recovery, that get more people back to work, or on needed infrastructure — transportation, roads, bridges and the like,” he said, adding that Maryland has eliminated 5,600 positions in recent years and that its government was smaller, on a per capita basis, than it had been in four decades. “But I can’t do that. I can’t responsibly do that as long as I have this hara-kiri Congress threatening to drive a long knife through our recovery.”
Federal spending on salaries, wages and procurement makes up close to 20 percent of the economies of Maryland and Virginia, according to an analysis by the Pew Center on the States.
But states are in a delicate position. While they fear the impact of the automatic cuts, they also fear that any deal to avert them might be even worse for their bottom lines. That is because many of the planned cuts would go to military spending and not just domestic programs, and some of the most important federal programs for states, including Medicaid and federal highway funds, would be exempt from the cuts.
States will see a reduction of $5.8 billion this year in the federal grant programs subject to the automatic cuts, according to an analysis by Federal Funds Information for States, a group created by the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures that tracks the impact of federal actions on states. California, New York and Texas stand to lose the most money from the automatic cuts, and Puerto Rico, which is already facing serious fiscal distress, is threatened with the loss of more than $126 million in federal grant money, the analysis found.
Even with the automatic cuts, the analysis found, states are still expected to get more federal aid over all this year than they did last year, because of growth in some of the biggest programs that are exempt from the cuts, including Medicaid.
But the cuts still pose a real risk to states, officials said. State budget officials from around the country held a conference call last week to discuss the threatened cuts. “In almost every case the folks at the state level, the budget offices, are pretty much telling the agencies and departments that they’re not going to backfill — they’re not going to make up for the budget cuts,” said Scott D. Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, which arranged the call. “They don’t have enough state funds to make up for federal cuts.”
The cuts would not hit all states equally, the Pew Center on the States found. While the federal grants subject to the cuts make up more than 10 percent of South Dakota’s revenue, it found, they make up less than 5 percent of Delaware’s revenue.
Many state officials find themselves frustrated year after year by the uncertainty of what they can expect from Washington, which provides states with roughly a third of their revenues. There were threats of cuts when Congress balked at raising the debt limit in 2011, when a so-called super-committee tried and failed to reach a budget deal, and late last year when the nation faced the “fiscal cliff.”
John E. Nixon, the director of Michigan’s budget office, said that all the uncertainty made the state’s planning more difficult. “If it’s going to happen,” he said, “at some point we need to rip off the Band-Aid.”
LAS VEGAS — A spectacular predawn crash on the Strip — triggered when bullets fired from a black Range Rover peppered a Maserati — hit this resort city right between the eyes. In the end, three people were dead and a major intersection under lockdown during a three-state manhunt for the shooters, leaving even casino veterans used to the extraordinary scratching their heads.
The mayhem was sparked, witnesses told police, by a quarrel early Thursday at a hotel valet stand.
The two vehicles left the Aria resort hotel and were heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard at 4:20 a.m., an hour when the casino marquees shine brightly but the gambling thoroughfare is largely empty. At Harmon Avenue, occupants inside the Range Rover opened fire on the Maserati, police said.
The silver-gray sports car, which was struck several times, sped into the intersection at Flamingo Road, ramming a Yellow cab. The taxi exploded, killing the driver and a passenger. Four other vehicles in the intersection were also involved in the crash and explosion, but officers offered no details.
"Omg Omg Omg that car just blew up!" one witness tweeted shortly after the crash, posting a photo of the wreckage. "God Bless their Souls! Omg!"
The driver of the Maserati died later at a hospital, police said. A passenger in the vehicle received minor injuries and was being interviewed by investigators. At least three others were also injured.
Police in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah were on alert for the distinctive black Range Rover SUV, described as having dark-tinted windows, black rims and out-of-state paper dealer plates.
"We are going to pursue these individuals and prosecute them," Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said at an afternoon news conference. "This act was totally unacceptable. It's not just tragic but unnecessary — the level of violence we see here in Las Vegas and across America."
Authorities had not publicly identified the dead. But a Las Vegas television station late Thursday identified the taxi driver as Michael Boldon, 62, who the station said had recently moved here from Michigan to care for his 93-year-old mother.
The victim's son, who drives a limousine, told Fox News 5 that he last talked with his father after 3 a.m., and later called his cellphone shortly after the crash to warn him to avoid the Strip. But there was no answer.
The station also identified the driver of the Maserati as Ken Cherry, a rap artist from Oakland who also is known as "Kenny Clutch." The station quoted family members identifying Cherry as the driver. An Internet video of a Cherry song called "Stay Schemin" shows two men in a vehicle on the Strip.
Police had more questions than answers.
"It began with a dispute at a nearby hotel and spilled onto the streets," said Capt. Chris Jones of the Las Vegas Police Robbery and Homicide Division.
The morning's events threw the Strip into disarray all day. The gambling boulevard's busiest and best-known intersection was cordoned off by yellow police tape until nightfall, keeping traffic and curious pedestrians away from the carnage. Even skywalks were blocked off.
While slot machines beeped and card games continued inside casinos around the accident scene — including the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Paris Las Vegas — hotel bell captains were fielding questions from tourists who had awakened to news of the crash and the Strip shutdown. The alleys and side streets between nearby hotels were clogged with pedestrians who inched along on narrow sidewalks, past delivery doors, many making their own paths between the landscaped bushes and palm trees.
Even casino industry workers were thrown into turmoil. Hotel maids and dealers who finished their midnight shifts after dawn were left without bus service home. "I'm stranded," said Tiruselam Kefyalew, 25, a maid. "What a day to leave my cellphone at home."
Limousine drivers who normally prowl the city's gambling core improvised detours. Some said the police blockade would cost them $500 or more in lost business and tips.
"Most people understand, but you have your complainers," said Jim DeSanto, a limo driver who waited for fares outside Bally's casino. "Those people will complain, even when everything is perfect."
Well after noon, guests peered out nearby hotel windows and others leaned into the street to glimpse the crime scene.
"Hey, honey, it must have happened right here," one man told his wife as they left Caesars around noon. The tourist, who would only say that he had arrived from Tampa, Fla., the previous evening, had looked out his hotel window at 4:30 to see a vehicle in flames.
Say you’re Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra. You’re on the road, in the last five minutes of a close game, facing a key decision: Who do you want shooting the ball? Conventional wisdom says get the ball to LeBron James. But data gleaned from a trove released online by the NBA shows that Chris Bosh is a better bet.
In a clutch situation — when leading or trailing by five, in the last five minutes of a road game — Bosh has been nearly perfect this season, making 10 of 11 attempts. That isn’t to say James is a slouch — the man has made 18 of 39 shots in the same situation. But it’s clear who’s better when the pressure’s on. And it’s exactly the type of insights coaches and fans can glean from the deepest set of stats the league has ever released.
More on Sports Data Tracking:
NBA.com/Stats is an amazing treasure chest fans can use to settle a bar bet or analyze their favorite basketball team’s most effective lineup with a few clicks of the mouse. It began as a password-protected tool for journalists and league personnel. But after a design makeover and the addition of a powerful database from SAP, it was ready for a public debut during All-Star Weekend. The league began by digitizing the box score of every NBA game ever played, so it’s as easy to find details on Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962 as it is to find last week’s Lakers’ score.
Such information will no doubt be a huge hit with fans who still debate whether the 1992 Chicago Bulls were better than the 1996 Chicago Bulls. But it also will be a powerful tool that scouts and coaches can use to evaluate players and make tactical decisions. In addition to Bosh’s sharpshooting prowess in tight road games, the site reveals that the Houston Rockets’ James Harden has nearly 100 more fast-break points than anyone else in the league, and his inside-outside skills make him the only player so far this season to score 200 baskets from inside five feet and 50-plus baskets from 25 to 29 feet away.
The filters and splits in the tool let you take deep dives into the data and come up with some esoteric results. Want to know who led all rookies in the 2002-03 season in three-point percentage? Boston’s J.R. Bremer, an undrafted free agent from St. Bonaventure, hit 35.3 percent of his three-pointers. After two seasons in the NBA, Bremer went on to a long career in the European pro leagues.
Inside the site, you’ll will find shooting charts for each player, showing both where they like to shoot from and where they’re most successful. (Not always the same thing.) Other statistical breakdowns for players and team include performances per possession, in the clutch, team performance when a particular player is in the game and on the bench, and each team’s best combination of players over the past seasons.
It’s all built on SAP’s HANA database, chosen for its speed and flexibility in handling queries. Capable of handling even larger data sets than all NBA stats from the past 67 years, HANA’s strength lies in providing quick responses to a nearly unlimited combination of stats. League officials estimated that if the site were built with flat files to accommodate all the potential permutations of data, they’d need 4.5 quadrillion pages to hold them.
“The NBA has had all of this data, but there really wasn’t a technology out there that was going to allow them to get it out there in a way that could scale,” said Steve Peck, senior vp of global strategic initiatives at SAP. “Our in-memory database lets people go in there in real time and come up with a new idea.”
Updated stats will be available about 15 minutes after each game and any page can be shared on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
While there’s plenty to appeal to stat heads, the NBA has built in a few learning tools that open the door to more casual fans. The home page lists the league’s top five scorers, but also spotlights and explains a deeper stat known as true shooting percentage (TS%): a percentage that takes in account the value of free throws, regular two-point baskets, and three-point shots.
Ken Catanella, the director of basketball operations for the Detroit Pistons, said the site’s features could help team officials evaluate players and help coaches with tactical decisions. For example, a chart of shots taken this season by Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce confirms that his favorite spot on the court is the right elbow, where the free-throw line and lane marker come together. Heading into the All-Star break, Pierce was shooting 45.4% (50 of 110) from that area. If you force him a step or two back, however, Pierce’s shooting percentage drops to 29.7% (25 of 84).
“We’d look at a team’s or player’s tendencies: What’s their comfort zone and how can we get them out of their comfort zone?” Catanella said. “If somebody’s used to going to their sweet spot to score, you might want to consider putting them in a different spot they don’t feel so comfortable in.”
Other sites, including Basketball-Reference.com, HoopData.com, and 82games.com, have had these comprehensive stats available for some time, but Steve Hellmuth, the NBA’s executive vice president for operations and technology, believes NBA.com/stats has the edge with better tools for fans to analyze what’s happening on the court.
“I was talking with someone the other day who said he expects coaching staffs to hear a lot from NBA fans after this,” said Hellmuth, who added that video will soon be added to the site so fans can see the game action behind the numbers. “This is a whole new category for fans to see what is going on on the court.”
The proposed Dell buyout may be motivated more by fear than greed.
Dell’s founder, Michael S. Dell, and the investment firm Silver Lake are offering to take the company private in a $24.4 billion deal. One interpretation of the offer is that savvy investors, using cheap loans, see a nice opportunity to unlock the value from a company that has fallen out of favor with stock investors. The fact that large shareholders are opposed to the deal, thinking it is priced too low, supports the idea that Dell is a diamond in the rough.
But there is an opposite interpretation: The buyout is a last-ditch effort to revive the company. To some, taking Dell private is what’s necessary to implement the sort of bold measures that could prevent the steady decline of a company that has been left behind in many of its markets. And like many acts of desperation, the risks are high that going private will fail.
This viewpoint starts with Dell’s cash flows. How much actual money a company makes each quarter is always an important metric. It’s especially critical at firms that go private in leveraged buyout deals. Once private, Dell would have a lot more debt – and it would need divert more cash to service it.
Going private may allow the company to slash costs, which preserves cash. But management may also feel liberated to spend more on initiatives it feels enthusiastic about, which would use up cash initially. In a botched buyout, management’s plans fail to produce results and a dangerous cash crunch occurs.
And there are some signs that Dell’s cash flows are weakening going into the deal.
The cash flow metric that matters is called free cash flow, which takes the money generated by Dell’s operations and then subtracts what the company spends on capital expenditures. Through the end of its latest fiscal year, which ended in February, Dell’s free cash flows were $2.77 billion. That is well below the $4.85 billion reported in the prior fiscal year. And the recent cash flows may have gotten a boost from financial moves that might be hard to repeat. In the most recent quarter, Dell generated a lot of cash from taking longer to pay its suppliers.
It’s easy to paint a grim picture from these numbers. A privately held Dell might have an extra $700 million to $1 billion of extra interest a year, which could in theory take annual free cash flows below $2 billion. That provides little margin for safety if Dell’s operations run into serious trouble, even if the company does decide to dip into its large pool of overseas cash.
But there are some reasons to believe this analysis is overly pessimistic.
First, the cash flow numbers probably don’t fully factor in how much cash can be generated by Dell’s recent acquisitions. Just as a couple of items helped bolster cash flows in recent quarters, others used up a lot cash, and may not do so in the future. For instance, Dell had a $450 million cash drain in the last fiscal year just from the “deferred income taxes” line. That could be the result of a one-off action rather than a recurring trend.
With all its acquisitions contributing, optimists might contend that Dell can produce $3.5 billion of free cash flow a year. If investors paid seven times that, the company would be valued at the $24 billion, which is where it is valued today on the stock market. Other shareholders think Dell is worth a lot more than $24 billion, and has the cash flows to justify it.
But right now, Dell’s cash flows are weakening. And if they continue to wane, Mr. Dell may soon have a tough job ahead of him. He may already know that — looking at those cash flows.
It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events.
You hear about the grand Oscar parties, but you will never be invited. The award ceremony may be taking place minutes from where you live, but you watch it at home, on TV, in your sweat pants — and you might as well be in Dubuque.
Rodeo Drive too can make you feel like a scrap on the cutting room floor. As you stroll the wide and immaculate sidewalks of Beverly Hills' iconic shopping street, you pass by boutiques you'd feel self-conscious walking into. In the windows are baubles and trinkets you could never in three lifetimes afford.
Which is why it is rather nice to be invited to make a private appointment at the house of Bulgari, the fine Italian jeweler that opened its doors in 1884.
Elizabeth Taylor loved Bulgari jewels. Richard Burton, whose torrid affair with her began during the filming of "Cleopatra" in Rome, accompanied her often to the flagship shop on the Via Condotti. He liked to joke that the name Bulgari was all the Italian she knew.
So it is fitting that starting Oscar week, the jeweler is celebrating the Oscar-winning star with an exhibit of eight of her most treasured Bulgari pieces.
They are heavy on diamonds and emeralds — of rare size, gleam and value.
And Bulgari knows their value well.
After Taylor's death, it reacquired some of the gems at a Christie's auction. One piece, an emerald-and-diamond brooch that also can be worn as a pendant, sold for $6,578,500 — breaking records both for sales price of an emerald and for emerald price per carat ($280,000).
That brooch, whose centerpiece is an octagonal step-cut emerald weighing 23.44 carats, was Burton's engagement present to Taylor. He followed it upon their marriage (his second, her fifth) with a matching necklace whose 16 Colombian emeralds weigh in at 60.5 carats. Bulgari bought the necklace back too, for $6,130,500.
They are in the exhibit, along with Burton's engagement ring to Taylor and a delicate brooch — given to her by husband No. 4, Eddie Fisher — whose emerald and diamond flowers were set en tremblant so that they gently fluttered as Taylor moved.
The jewels are not for sale.
On Tuesday night, actress Julianne Moore wore the Burton necklace, with pendant attached, at a gala for Bulgari's top clients. At the dinner hour, guests were escorted along a lavender-colored carpet to a nearby rooftop that had been transformed into a Roman terrace.
Those honored guests, of course, got private viewings of Taylor's jewels.
But so did Amanda Perry, a healer from West Hollywood who arrived the next morning for one of the first appointments available to the public.
Someone had emailed news of the collection to the 35-year-old Taylor fan. She walked in off the street Tuesday, when the exhibit was open only to press — and Sabina Pelli, Bulgari's glamorous executive vice president, fresh from Rome, was taking sips of San Pellegrino brought to her on a silver tray between back-to-back interviews that started at 5 a.m.
The camera crews were long gone when Perry came back Wednesday. She had the exhibit, and handsome sales associate Timothy Morzenti of Milan, entirely to herself.
In a black suit, still wearing on his left hand the black glove he dons to handle fine jewels, Morzenti whisked Perry off via a private elevator to the exhibit on the second floor. The jewels stood in vitrines mounted high off the ground. Behind them were photos and a slide show of Taylor, bejeweled.
"Which piece would you like to see first?" Morzenti asked her as a security guard stood by. "I personally love the emerald ring."
Then he proceeded at leisure to explain Bulgari-signature sugar-loaf cuts and trombino ring settings, while tossing in occasional Taylor stories.
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