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As part of our month-long build up to WIRED’s Star Wars special issue – and The Force Awakens – we’ve got a special look at some of the hand-crafted props used in the upcoming film.
By: Oliver Franklin-Wallis,
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The long-awaited, much hyped new teaser for next spring’s superhero smackdown (no, not that one) has arrived, with Batman v Superman treating fans to…. 49 seconds in a bunker.
To be fair, they’re 49 tense, rather exciting seconds, starting with Ben Affleck’s Batman strung up in an underground cell, hanging from chains next to what appear to be rebel fighters. Henry Cavill’s Superman crashes in, ominously inspiring armed guards to bend their knees to the Man of Steel, before silently, sullenly tearing off the Dark Knight’s cowl.
By: Matt Kamen,
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Hedge fund manager David Einhorn, the founder of Greenlight Capital, is on track for his second-losing year in his fund’s 19 year history.
According to Reuters’ Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Greenlight’s main fund fell 5% in November. The fund is down 20.6% year-to-date.
The fund’s performance has been hit by wind and solar power company SunEdison’s massive decline, with the stock falling by more than 83% since January.
For the first part of the year, SunEdison had been the fund’s biggest winner. The stock rallied from $19.51 to a peak of $32.13 on June 23 before collapsing. SunEdison’s share price was last trading around $3.27.
In the third quarter, Greenlight pared back its SunEdison stake, selling 6.2 million shares, according to the fund’s 13F regulatory filing. The fund last held 18.6 million shares, the filing showed.
Einhorn’s only previous down year was in 2008, when his fund lost 23%.
The average equity hedge fund is down 1.23% this year, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.
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NOW WATCH: JAMES ALTUCHER: The American Dream is a lie
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The Iran nuclear deal will clear a crucial milestone on December 15, when the International Atomic Energy Agency submits a report on the extent of Iran’s previous nuclear-weaponization activities.
The completion of that investigation into the possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program is one of the major prerequisites for the full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the landmark nuclear deal that Iran and a US-led group of six countries signed in July.
In theory, the JCPOA won’t be implemented unless Iran complies with a separate “roadmap” agreement with the IAEA. That agreement, which was signed the same day as the JCPOA, lays out the parameters of the agency’s weaponization investigation. The JCPOA isn’t supposed to go into effect unless the sides “fully implement” that roadmap agreement.
But “full implementation” doesn’t really have a fixed meaning within the JCPOA, an agreement that is voluntary and non-binding. And according to an Associated Press analysis out Monday, the IAEA’s investigation is likely going to have inconclusive results.
As the AP notes, the head of the IAEA has “been careful to diminish expectations, describing his upcoming report last week as ‘not black and white.'” And according to the AP, Iranian officials have spoken about the IAEA probe using similar language, “suggesting they already know that the agency’s conclusions won’t be damning.”
Iran has already threatened that it simply won’t comply with the JCPOA if it’s dissatisfied with the IAEA’s report. That might be more than just an empty ultimatum, since according to the AP the announcement is consistent with what Iranian diplomats are saying behind closed doors as well.
“Two Western diplomats familiar with the issue say those same threats have been made in negotiations with IAEA officials,” the AP reported.
The weaponization report is considered crucial to the successful implementation of the nuclear deal, as it will be used to formulate an inspection baseline for Iran’s nuclear program. There is extensive evidence that Iran had a nuclear weapons program until as late as 2003. The IAEA needs to be able to identify key personnel, facilities, supply chains, and past activities to establish exactly how far along Iran’s weaponization activities really are and to recognize whether those activities have been restarted.
But as the AP’s analysis suggests, the roadmap is also contentious — and perhaps even inconvenient, given its potential to interrupt the smooth implementation of a deal that Iran and the US-led group spent nearly two years negotiating. There are already signs that the US wants to get past the investigation as smoothly as possible — even if the IAEA’s “roadmap” doesn’t result in Iran’s full disclosure of its past weaponization work.
Business Insider has obtained a State Department document submitted to congressional offices during the Congress’s review of the JCPOA in July.
The 18-page document, a “verification assessment report” that is essentially the department’s outline of the nuclear deal’s various stipulations, is unclassified. But congressional staffers were only allowed to read it inside of a SCIF, or a special area for viewing and storing classified or compartmentalized information.
The section entitled “Addressing ‘Possible Military Dimensions'” discusses the US’ interpretation of the IAEA “roadmap” and its requirements.
“Iran’s implementation of its commitments under the Roadmap will bring to an end the years-long delay in the IAEA’s ability to address PMD [Possible Military Dimensions] issues,” the document reads.
Two paragraphs later, it explains that even with this high level of confidence that the IAEA investigation will resolve the PMD issue, the US’ standards fall somewhat short of full Iranian disclosure on weaponization-related matters.
“An Iranian admission of its past nuclear weapons program is unlikely and is not necessary for purposes of verifying JCPOA commitments going forward,” the report reads. “US confidence on this front is based in large part on what we believe we already know about Iran’s past activities”
“The United States has shared with the IAEA relevant information, and crafted specific JCPOA measures that will enable inspectors to establish confidence that previously reported Iranian PMD activities are not ongoing,” it continued. “If credible information becomes available regarding any renewed Iranian efforts, it would be shared with the IAEA as appropriate, whether involving previous people, locations, entities, or otherwise. We believe other IAEA member states will do the same.”
This report was circulated in Congress not long after the deal was signed. From a relatively early stage, the State Department believed that the IAEA was capable of monitoring Iran’s nuclear program without Iran fully disclosing its past activities.
This wasn’t because of any particular US trust in the Iranians. Rather, it was due to State’s confidence that US intelligence already knew enough about the extent of Iran’s weaponization program to make such an admission of past weaponization work unnecessary.
Even so, State apparently never expected full Iranian transparency on weaponization. And the Obama administration believed that Iran had no responsibility to admit to a past weaponization program under the JCPOA.
Washington always intended to give Iran a pass on full disclosure — and the result may be a watered-down IAEA investigation that’s treated more as a formality than as an integral element of an arms control agreement designed to last for decades.
SEE ALSO: Putin is promising to export nuclear equipment to Iran
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SoFi, an online lender based in California, has emerged as a darling of the fintech world.
The company raised $1 billion in September, helping establish Mike Cagney’s startup as one of the best-funded startups in Silicon Valley.
The fundraising was the single biggest financing round by any company in the fintech industry.
Cagney is taking SoFi up against online lenders and brick-and-mortar banks alike — and pursuing a $30 billion valuation.
“We have a path that we’re executing against, and it’s around the idea that these are things, we think, [will] get us to a $30 billion valuation,” he said in an interview with Business Insider.
So far this year, the startup has lined up more than $4 billion in loans. That accounts for roughly 80% of its $5 billion in loans issued since its launch in fall 2011. Cagney believes there’s a lot more room for its origination platform to grow.
“We’re looking at the entire landscape of financial services,” he told Business Insider. “Like, life insurance, for example.”
He cites the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as a catalyst for SoFi’s success.
“It’s opened up not just niche opportunities, but large swaths of consumer lending for folks like SoFi, and mortgage loans, and personal loans and student loans that might not have been there pre-crisis.”
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NEW YORK (AP) — Soon, a determined girl named Dorothy will ease on down that road in NBC’s “The Wiz Live!”
Hers is an odyssey that began in 1900 with the publication of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” then continued with the classic 1939 movie musical starring Judy Garland, followed by the 1975 Broadway production of “The Wiz” (which, billed as “the Super Soul Musical,” won seven Tonys, including best musical) and, in 1978, by the film starring Diana Ross.
To transform “The Wiz” yet again, this time into a live TV extravaganza, is anything but easy.
For weeks the star-studded cast (including Elijah Kelley, Ne-Yo, David Alan Grier, Mary J. Blige, Queen Latifah, Uzo Aduba, Common and newcomer Shanice Williams as Dorothy) has mustered at Long Island’s Grumman Studios (the one-time Grumman aeronautics complex where the Apollo lunar module was built that put man on the moon). In free moments, they and the executive producers of “The Wiz” look ahead to 8 p.m. EST on Thursday, and their one-night-only trip to Oz.
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WHY ‘THE WIZ’:
“People think, ‘Oh, you’re doing “The Wiz” because “Empire” is such a big hit,'” says Craig Zadan, who is producing the show with his longtime partner Neil Meron. “The truth is, staging this musical has been a dream of ours since the ’90s, but the rights were tied up. It’s just coincidental that, this year, when we were choosing a new musical, the rights were cleared.”
“Both of us loved the original Broadway production,” says Meron. “But ‘The Wiz’ is a cultural touchstone in the black community, with an emotional connection we didn’t really know about until we were doing it. Bottom line: ‘The Wiz’ is phenomenal entertainment, and even with the racial divide at its highest point in decades, we want to put that on pause and do something for the family and for the spirit, and have a great time.”
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A TIMELESS MESSAGE:
Kelley (who co-starred in “Hairspray” and here plays the Scarecrow): “Understanding the ability to conquer your fears is one of the things that propels you to any success you desire. That’s what ‘The Wiz’ is about.”
Grammy-winning singer-actor Ne-Yo (the Tin Man): “Everybody thinks, ‘I’m not pretty enough,’ ‘I’m not thin enough,’ ‘I’m not this-or-that enough.’ But none of that is true. ‘The Wiz’ teaches you that everything you need to make your dreams come true is already there inside you.”
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IN DOROTHY’S SHOES:
Williams, a 19-year-old New Jersey native chosen from hundreds of hopefuls, had already appeared in her middle-school production of “The Wiz.” But she had been “too scared” to try out for Dorothy, instead scoring the part of Addaperle, Good Witch of the North.
“But when there was an open call for the TV production, I went, just for the learning experience,” she says. “Then they kept calling me back and calling me back. There was finally a point where I was like, ‘Hold on! I might actually get this.’ Now I’m having the time of my life!”
And at her side is Stephanie Mills, who here plays Auntie Em but was the original Dorothy in the Broadway production.
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DRESSED TO KILL?:
Actor-comedian Grier (on his Cowardly Lion getup): “It is SO very hot, sir! I’m a fuzzy stovepipe!”
Ne-Yo (on his Tin Man costume): “It’s 30 or 40 extra pounds. And it doesn’t breathe!”
Kelley (on his Scarecrow duds): “The costume isn’t heavy, but I have to always stand like this,” and he demonstrates an ache-inducing bandy-legged posture. “What I don’t have to deal with in my costume, I make up for with muscle contortion.”
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HIGH HOPES:
For Ne-Yo, the biggest challenge is “trying to figure out what you can bring to the role. There’s no topping Diana Ross or Michael Jackson (the film’s Scarecrow) or Nipsey Russell (its Tin Man). Instead, you have to ask yourself, ‘How can I add to the legacy of my character?'”
Meanwhile, Zadan and Meron hope to continue their partnership with Cirque du Soleil and take this new production to Broadway next year. They have designed it in a more proscenium-like style than their cinematic “Sound of Music” and “Peter Pan” live specials.
An important visual device: digital effects played across huge LED panels.
Like the tornado: “It’s incredible!” says Zadan. “We’re going in visual directions that are new to television.”
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NERVES?:
Just before airtime, Ne-Yo will be telling himself: “You know what you’ve rehearsed for, so get out there and do what you know you can do and just be great!”
“I’m ‘anticipitatious,'” says Grier. “I’m anticipating the anticipation. But that’s GOOD nerves. We’ll be ready!”
“If you don’t pray, worry,” says Williams. “But don’t worry, if you’re gonna pray. And I’m praying every day.”
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HIGH STAKES:
Two years ago, “The Sound of Music” was alive for a huge audience of 19 million viewers. But last year, “Peter Pan Live!” crashed with less than half that.
“Carrie Underwood clearly drove ‘The Sound of Music,'” says Zadan. “For ‘Peter Pan’ we had terrific actors, but not stars, and we did not do nearly as well. ‘The Wiz’ is contemporary and the music is R&B-cool, plus the cast is amazing — with no shortage of stars!”
“We love the tradition of a live holiday musical every year,” Meron says, “and the only way that’s going to continue is if the numbers are up this year. So the pressure is on for this show.”
With an upsurge in the neighborhood of “Sound of Music” numbers, “we’re assured that NBC will want to do it again next year,” says Zadan. “The future depends on how ‘The Wiz’ does.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore@ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier. Past stories are available at http://ift.tt/1hRHGTt
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Online:
http://www.nbc.com
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NEW YORK (AP) — Taraji P. Henson and Alicia Keys are joining forces to fight HIV and AIDS.
Henson, Janelle Monae and Laila Ali are signing on as ambassadors for the newly formed power council on Keys’ charity, Keep a Child Alive. The announcement was made Tuesday to coincide with World AIDS Day.
Henson, Monae and Ali will offer support to Keep a Child Alive, which Keys launched in 2003 to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS.
Keys held her annual Black Ball charity event in New York City last month, raising $3.8 million.
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The nation’s biggest pharmacy benefits manager is muscling back into the debate over soaring drug costs by promoting a less-expensive alternative to a life-saving medicine with a list price of $750 per pill.
Express Scripts Holding Co. said Tuesday that it will make a treatment for the rare infection toxoplasmosis that costs $1 per pill available on its biggest formulary, or list of covered drugs.
Daraprim, the drug that costs $750 per pill, comes from Turing Pharmaceuticals, which stirred outrage among doctors, patients and politicians when it bought rights to the pill earlier this year and then subsequently jacked up the price. The 62-year-old drug had been priced at $13.50 per pill before that.
Other drugmakers have also recently purchased the rights to old, cheap medicines that are the only treatment for serious diseases and then hiked prices. The practice has triggered government investigations, politicians’ proposals to fight “price gouging,” and heavy media scrutiny.
The Express Scripts decision means that a cheaper alternative to Daraprim created by Imprimis Pharmaceuticals will now be available to about 25 million customers through its formulary. What those customers pay will depend on their insurance coverage. That could mean prescriptions that come with a co-payment as low as $10 or $20 for the whole bottle of pills.
Express Scripts manages pharmacy benefits for customers like insurers and employers. It makes recommendations on drug coverage, and those customers can then customize the guidelines.
Leaders of the HIV Medicine Association and The Infectious Diseases Society of America said in an email that they are urging other pharmacy benefits managers and health insurers to make the Imprimis option available as well. They noted that care providers have faced “significant challenges” in obtaining the treatment for patients since Turing raised the price in August.
A Turing Pharmaceuticals representative did not immediately return a call Tuesday morning from The Associated Press seeking comment on the Express Scripts decision.
Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic infection that mainly threatens people with weak immune systems, such as HIV and organ transplant patients, and pregnant women, because it can kill their baby. Express Scripts says only a few hundred of its customers were treated last year for the infection, but the company is always looking to remove wasteful spending from the health care system.
“We believe we now have a safe, high-quality and extremely cost-effective way to provide access to a Daraprim alternative,” Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steve Miller said in a statement from the company.
Imprimis, a 3 ½-year-old drug-compounding firm based in San Diego, had said in October that it will supply capsules containing the ingredients pyrimethamine and leucovorin as an alternative to Daraprim.
Mass-produced drugs must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Imprimis, like other compounding pharmacies, instead makes up individual prescriptions using drug ingredients already approved. In this case, that involves combining pyrimethamine, Daraprim’s active ingredient, with leucovorin to limit pyrimethamine’s side effects.
Express Scripts and Imprimis said Tuesday that prescriptions for the Imprimis compound will be processed starting later this week.
Express Scripts, which manages prescription drug benefits for about 85 million people, has long been a vocal critic of rising drug prices.
Last year, the St. Louis company threw its weight into the debate over new hepatitis C drugs that cost nearly $100,000 for a course of treatment by choosing AbbVie Inc.’s Viekira Pak as its preferred treatment for patients with the most common form of the condition over alternatives Sovaldi and Harvoni. That exclusive deal brought Express Scripts a huge price discount.
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The Paris climate talks, which began Monday and bring together more than 150 world leaders, are aimed at finding solutions to curb the rising levels of pollution, cut dependency on fossil fuel, and halt the ensuing rise in temperatures.
The talks are facing protests on multiple fronts. One vibrant series comes from the London-based anti-advertising campaign Brandalism, which has denounced the “corporate takeover of the COP21 climate talks.”
Brandalism is displaying its displeasure with the talks by inundating the French capital with more than 600 “fake” advertisements that were installed in advertising spaces all over the city.
The campaign claims it “has worked with Parisians to insert unauthorized artworks” across the city and that the fake ads were placed in spaces owned by JC Decaux, the biggest outdoor advertising company in the world. The artworks were created by over 80 artists from 19 countries.
Brandalism’s Joe Elan explained in a statement that the campaign was targeting companies sponsoring the talks that it believed were actually “part of the problem.”
“By sponsoring the climate talks, major polluters such as Air France and GDF-Suez-Engie can promote themselves as part of the solution – when actually they are part of the problem,” he said.
The fake advertisements parody different companies and sponsors, such as Volkswagen and Air France, and also feature different heads of state.
One of the artists taking part said in a statement, “We are taking their spaces back because we want to challenge the role advertising plays in promoting unsustainable consumerism.”
The group also takes issue with the state of emergency the French government installed after terrorist attacks in Paris last month, which left 130 people dead. The state of emergency cracked down on big civil mobilizations, something the group sees as an attempt to silence climate activists.
Over the weekend, protesters clashed with police in Paris, where people had gathered despite the ban to protest. Some posters also invited people to take part in different protests.
“We call on people to take to the streets during the COP21 to confront the fossil fuel industry. We cannot leave the climate talks in the hands of politicians and corporate lobbyists who created this mess in the first place,” Brandalism’s Bill Posters said in a statement.
SEE ALSO: Obama invokes MLK to urge action on climate change: ‘There is such a thing as being too late’
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In just a matter of years, the American “energy renaissance” has made the region a leader in global oil.
Joseph P. Quinlan, the chief market strategist at US Trust, attributes the US’s energy boom to three factors:
One, pro-market policies at the state and local level. Two, revolutionary technologies. And three, “good old American entrepreneurship/risk-taking.”
“By combining all three, the United States has upended the global energy markets,” he wrote in a recent note to clients. “However, and unfortunately, the boom has also turned a virtue (soaring oil/gas production and the attendant positive effects) into a vice (oversupply and ensuing negative knock-on effects).”
Oil prices have been depressed since crashing in the second half of 2014, and that’s had huge implications for the industry. With that in mind, US Trust put together the following 10 charts that show exactly where American energy is right now — and what it might mean for the future.
Production peaked around July at 9.6 million bpd, and is currently around 9.2 million bpd. Much of this has gone into storage.
“The declining rig count, coupled with a sharp drop in oil-related infrastructure among major oil producers, portends slowing or declining US oil production over the medium term, and a bottoming out of oil prices over the next year,” writes Quinlan. “Supply cutbacks in the US and overseas, coupled with stronger global growth in 2016, could boost world oil prices back into the range of $50-65 per barrel over the next twelve months.”
Source: US Trust
“Super” oil fields, or those that produce over 1 million barrels a day, are pretty rare around the world. But over the last two years, two “new” ones emerged in the US: the Eagle Ford in South Texas and the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana.
Although the production of both super oil fields has declined in the past few years, they still “lie at the core of America’s energy revolution,” writes Quinlan.
Source: US Trust
By 2014, daily oil production topped 9 million barrels a day.
Moreover, production increased by 2.2 million bpd in the past two years — which, to put it in perspective, is greater than the entire production of Brazil.
Source: US Trust
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