Publicist: Thurman engaged to financier Busson (AP)

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Thurman filed for divorce from Ethan Hawke in 2004. They have two children. The 38-year-old actress was previously conjugal to Gary Oldman.

Busson has two sons with Elle Macpherson.

Thurman received an Oscar nomination during the term of 1994’s “Pulp Fiction.” Her shroud credits likewise include the “Kill Bill” thrillers and “My Super Ex-Girlfriend.”

Huskies cut ties with Hasty and Murchison

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J.R. Hasty not at any time made as much noise on the football battle-field at the University of Washington as was expected after a standout course of action at Bellevue High.

So fittingly, his Huskies career ended on Saturday with nary a whimper.

The school made not any official announcement that Hasty, a younger running back, had finally been divide heedless for profit, simply releasing an updated roster adhering its Web site that didn’t take in his name. The name of more advanced cornerback Jordan Murchison, who battled legal trouble last season and played sparingly, was also absent from the roster. A school spokesman later confirmed that neither wish play for the Huskies again. Both were recently told by UW coach Tyrone Willingham that they were not having their scholarships renewed for the 2008 season.

Hasty, who scored a state-record 50 touchdowns as a senior at Bellevue in 2004, said he was told by Willingham that “he complaisant of just didn’t really assured anticipation me, I guess.”

His career ends with just 18 yards on six carries, all ultimate season.

Hasty had been unofficially suspended since midway through spring football for undisclosed disciplinary reasons. He was pendulous for the beginning of hop practice for what he said was absent more offseason conditioning drills. He returned for a couple of practices before again being suspended.

Hasty said Willingham told him then that the coach wanted more time to think about whether he should be allowed back on the team. Hasty before-mentioned he wanted to return but got the final word a small in number weeks ago.

“It’s tolerably frustrating to come in thinking you are the top guy and they take it from you,” he said. “That hurts real bad. And from my own greatness [school], that kills me.”

Hasty was considered the plum of Willingham’s first recruiting class at UW in 2005. He impressed coaches with his play early on to the degree that a true freshman and he made trips to absent games at UCLA and Oregon as Willingham debated whether to play him before it was decided he would redshirt.

But the following year he struggled during spring practice after adding weight in an essay to get stronger. He then was declared academically ineligible that summer and missed the 2006 qualify.

Hasty said he thinks that’s when UW coaches may have started to bewilder faith in him.

“It accommodating of seemed like that a little bit,” he before-mentioned. “It just didn’t work out for whatever reason.”

How to Wage Executive Warfare

At the top administration level, writes David D’Alessandro, leaders need real insight into how their employees and peers think

by Oriana Schwindt

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David D’Alessandro wasn’t born with much business acumen. The Utica (N.Y.) native went to Syracuse University with the idea of becoming a journalist.

"Unfortunately," D’Alessandro says, "I just wasn’t a good plenty quill-driver."

So he left journalism and turned to corporate management, rising to the CEO spot at John Hancock Financial Services, in 2000. Now he has written his third book, Executive Warfare, a guide to climbing to the upper end of the corporate ladder. Executive Warfare follows D’Alessandro’s Brand Warfare and Career Warfare, his guides for beating other brands and beginning that incorporated ladder climb, respectively.

The book, set to hit stores on July 8, is a product of conversations D’Alessandro had with "a parcel of smart, accomplished race." He says these discussions augmented several lessons he himself has learned over the course of his course. The greatest part important one, he says, is that people are motivated by their own interests. Contributions you execute to the house are rewarded by some managers, punished by others, and even flat-out ignored by a not many, barely on this account that your actions might or might not be in the manager’s best interests. Not everyone learns this lesson.

"I was stunned at by what mode many persons people I know become deer in the headlights which time they make it to upper skill," D’Alessandro says. In intermediate cunning practice, it’s enough to work hard and be smart. But at the top, it’s suddenly not. "Everyone up in that place is smart and hardworking," he points on the outside.

Instinctive Understanding of Human Nature

What separates the wheat from the chaff, then, is an instinctive understanding of human intelligence, which gives you insight into how your employees and peers think. In a profession age dominated by dint of. analysts and financial gurus, D’Alessandro says many companies are discarding the human element: "So many management populace forget they are human, and that they are dealing with humans."

It’s like a man nature that prompts employees to stay at a corporation so much as after they’ve been passed over for a promotion. They cling to their circulating position, hoping to be noticed the next time around. "They should just move on," D’Alessandro says. That’s precisely what he did after four years as head honcho at Hancock. After Canadian insurer Manulife Financial acquired Hancock betimes in 2004, D’Alessandro saw his chance to escape. Rather than staying on as president of Manulife and CEO of Hancock, the then-53-year-old left. "I’d been doing that for 20 years, I wanted to pursue other things," he says.

When you bring about move on, D’Alessandro recommends some serious close attention. If the company is bringing you aboard to effect a fundamental change in its corporate culture or public image, cause to exist sure the company—not just one board subordinate part—wants this change. And if the founder is still in charge, think no more of it. D’Alessandro says chiefly company founders are resistant to change and in most cases unwilling to concede power. However, if you convince the board only you can up the company’s value, they’ll force the founder out of the picture.

Most important, though, is knowing you be able to’t always get what you crave. D’Alessandro saw he had none future as a reporter, contemptuous opposition his desire. He says he had no idea where his what may occur hereafter was, but eliminating one dead end helped open him up to other possibilities. "Recognize your limits," he says, "strange to say though you don’t know what your potential is."

For a slide show on lessons for CEOs and CEO wannabes, click in the present life.

Teen decapitated by roller coaster at Six Flags

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A teenager was decapitated by a roller coaster after he hopped a pair of fences and entered a restricted area Saturday at Six Flags Over Georgia, authorities said.

Six Flags officials are uncertain why the unidentified 17-year-old from Columbia, S.C. scaled two six-foot fences and passed signs that said the restricted area was off-limits and risky, spokeswoman Hela Sheth said in a news release. Some witnesses said the teenager was deplorable to retrieve a hat he lost while riding the Batman roller coaster, Cobb County police Sgt. Dana Pierce said.

Police said the ride was going full-speed when the teen was struck. The ride’s top speed is 50 mph, according to the Six Flags Web site. No one riding attached the roller coaster was injured, Sheth reported.

Fort Bragg soldier is person of interest

A soldier at Fort Bragg in North Carolina is a person of interest in the death of a pregnant servicewoman whose body was found in a motel bathtub a week since, a militia spokesman said Saturday.

The soldier is training at a institute where special operations ranging from raids to redintegration projects are taught, said Lt. Col. John Clearwater, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. The soldier is studying psychological operations.

“We be an intelligent being … that a soldier assigned to the command as a student for instruction is a person of interest,” Clearwater aforesaid.

There was not any remark Saturday from the Fayetteville Police Department. Police have called the death of Spc. Megan Lynn Touma, 23, suspicious. The dental specialist was seven months gravid and had recently arrived from a base in Germany.

Archbishop picked for solution Vatican mail-carrier

What’s Bill Gates really like? That’s a billion-dollar question

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People always ask what I really conclude about Bill Gates.

Sometimes it’s a test, to see if I share their view that he’s the scourge of techville.

Other state of things it’s an dawn line for someone who wants to gripe about problems with a computer or a Hotmail account.

By a huge margin, though, people are asking inasmuch as Gates is one of the most fascinating characters in modern history

They’re especially curious in the present life in the Puget Sound yard, where people have been asking themselves the kind of to think about Bill since he became so famous, controversial and the face of Seattle to much of the earth.

It’s a complicated question. The native son has been a difficult child at times. His smug performance in the in good time antitrust case tempered regional rate highly in the regular course he bamboozled IBM and skimmed the cream from the PC change, perhaps the biggest industrial conversion of the hundred.

While Gates was changing the world with software, Microsoft was making Seattle richer, more cosmopolitan and more congested than it would have become in other respects. (That should have cured the city of its inferiority complex regarding San Francisco

I first met Gates in downtown Seattle during the 2001 earthquake, the day I broke the story that he was expanding his house in preparation for a third child. After running into the lobby of the Westin, we chatted and watched the TV coverage, then walked lacking to his car

He always seemed polite, humorous and charismatic. He’s only turned gone to disregard a few of the questions I’ve asked, and the wisecracks about reporters that I’ve heard him make were said quietly to other executives in the room, never to my face.

It’s not any wonder he attracted thousands of splendid people to Redmond and inspired them to do incredible things. Maybe more of them would still have being acting there on the supposition that he didn’t use a brutal Socratic method, especially in the earlier years

Once I asked Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s research chief, if Gates really had mellowed posterior the antitrust trial ended and Steve Ballmer assumed greatest in number of the economy duties. Rashid said there was less yelling.

Maybe that’s just the nature of the beast. Steve Jobs apparently uses a similar approach at Apple, and Microsoft lost some of its edge since Gates turned his focus to philanthropy.

I was warned by handlers that Gates doesn’t like to be physically touched. But it seems like the closer people are to him, the again devoted they become.

During a Las Vegas tech conference a few years ago, I had drinks with Microsoft old-timer Carl Stork. While Gates was regaling a mob of fans across the room, Stork reminisced about early days at the interview, when they would save money by the agency of sharing a occasion and Stork would have to pick off up his boss’s underwear in the morning.

Most people probably don’t give the question of what to think of Gates much study, since Microsoft’s image-makers bring forth spent decades grooming Bill’s public persona.

At first he was the brilliant-but-thrifty computer genius, riding coach on his space to conquer the world. Then it was the industry visionary whose memos and musings for the period of annual “think weeks” on Hood Canal turned the tide of history.

More not long ago they’ve been painting a picture of a wizened techno-philosopher monarch, slurping orange pop and scribbling on legal pads in his quest to solve the great riddles of globe health and economics, now that he’s put computers on each desk.

I’m quiet not sure what to make of the guy.

It’s easier to point out some of the lessons we’ve learned watching his amazing trajectory.

One is that you be possible to’t rate below the true value the value of a great training and a family that encourages learning. Gates may have dropped out of Harvard, but his imagination and interests were nurtured by Seattle’s public and private schools.

Another is the snare of judging someone by appearances. Misreading the gangly young goat from Seattle by the agency of big spectacles cost IBM tens of billions.

The story of Bill Gates should also be a reminder to consider long-suffering with our children, even when they’re obnoxious, and have faith that they’ll end up structure the world a better establish.

.

Change the Way You Create Value

The financial services industry did it by rethinking credit cards. What do you sell that you need to rethink?

by Rita McGrath

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Posted on Dynamic Strategies: June 27, 2008 10:51 AM

Executives often complain that politics, embedded systems, and processes suppose it hard for them to combat new rivalry that comes into their industry and competes with a deviating business model. Yet, in that place are plenty of examples of companies doing a great do job-work innovating in their business models—changing what we dub the “unit of business.” Consider these examples from financial services, every industry in which innovation is publicly arduous.

Example #1: The photo-bearing credit card. In 1994, Citibank was the first monetary services organization to offer its customers the opportunity to put their photographs on its credit cards, an oblation that was marketed as the Citi® Photocard (Citibank Corporate Website, 2006). This was marketed primarily since a security technique, making it more difficult for criminals to falsely charge stolen credit cards. The cards proved unexpectedly popular in places like Florida, New York City, and Chicago. It turns out that in locations in which many persons people don’t import a drivers’ allow, the photo feature of the credit card was accepted by many merchants as an choice.

Example #2: The VISA Buxx Card. Visa Buxx, launched in 2000, is a debit card developed for teenagers and their families. The idea is that someone who earns an income (i.e., mom & dad) transfers cash from their avow credit cards or bank accounts to the teen’s card (up to $1,000). The teen can then spend it on all of life’s essentials (or inessentials, say mom and dad), up to the limit of their lot. That alone is a terrific idea—parents can get their teens the convenience and flexibility of a evidence of debt card with some sensible limits built in. At the same time, the teens learn budgeting skills and can use the card when traveling, for impulse, that is safer than carrying cash around.

It gets better. If the parent transfers money from a different bank than the undivided issuing the Buxx Card, a small pass over fee is assessed to the parents’ card. A desire to avoid the compensation in short excursion leads some customers to apparent a new, no-annual-fee account with the sponsoring bank. It really happened to me—I’m now the proud holder of a Wachovia VISA card because that’s the one that funds my kids’ BUXX card. A abundant better solution than sending them not on to college with credit cards in hand.

Example #3: The “keep the change” debit card. Bank of America has reach up with an imaginative twist on the conventional debit card. Here’s how it works: The customer uses a debit card to make a small purchase (say a goblet of coffee). It costs $1.50. The bank direct round the purchase cost up to the next dollar (in this instance $2) and put the value of the rounded amount into the customers’ savings account. Moreover, the bank order put a bonus of 5% of the saved amount on top of the savings, up to a total of $250/year. As of this inscription, the program has been credited by attracting 2.5 million customers in less than one year, to accessible more than 700,000 new checking accounts and one million new savings accounts. These customers also “churn” less than typical customers. BOA estimates their retention rate at 95 percent.

What’s the bottom line? Sometimes there is a lot to subsist gained by dint of. rethinking to which place you occasion appreciate and what you exchange.

SIFF Cinema presents the “Bond … and Beyond” film series

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If there were a Justice League for this accommodating of thing, these spies would be in it: Derek Flint. Diabolik. Harry Palmer. Matt Helm. Modesty Blaise. And, of methodical arrangement, 007. (Fathom, not so much.) They’re part of a 12-film series at SIFF Cinema called “Bond … and Beyond.”

Maybe you’re numbed after the innumerable James Bond marathons adhering cable. This is variant. It’s one assemblage of some of the best spy movies of the ’60s weaken, from the serious to the silly, with only two — and pair of the best — Bond entries. Although it’s still not a severe way to celebrate Ian Fleming’s centennial this year. Among other ways.

And ay, Agent Smart, most of these are available upon the body DVD, but if you miss a possibility to see something with the vibrant, mod ensign, far-out visual flair and trippy music of, say, “Danger: Diabolik” on a huge screen — and with other fans — then you be worthy of a timeout in the Cones of Silence.

Saturday

“From Russia With Love” (1963), 2:10 and 7 p.m.

The Bond series fully kicked into gear in its second film with the characters (”Q” debuts), gadgets (that briefcase!), format and John Barry score. Yet it was the smallest fanciful of Sean Connery’s half-dozen. SPECTRE wants to kill the British agent who embarrassed them, and lures 007 with a knockout (Daniela Bianchi) who can get him the Lektor decoder — which looks just like every going to decay manual typewriter. Meester Bond meets two of his worthiest adversaries: Red Grant (Robert Shaw), whose fight with 007 in each Orient Express compartment is a brutal masterpiece that would have Jason Bourne shifting surrounding in his theater seat. Red wine with fish? Suckaaaa! And there’s Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), whose lethal shoes would not be admired by those “Sex and the City” tramps.

“On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969), 4:20 and 9 p.m.

When the otherwise estimable Keith Olbermann referred to this as a “bomb” on MSNBC’s “Countdown,” I fired off a nerd e-mail correcting him: It was the second-biggest box-office hit of the year after “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Still waiting for that on-air correction, Mr. O. Whatever — in his only Bond film, George Lazenby was great, and the in the greatest degree physical 007 until Daniel Craig. In a back-to-basics rehearsal with no gadgets, he falls in love with a troubled mob princess (Diana Rigg, Mrs. Peel from “The Avengers,” for godsakes) and infiltrates a vast eminence lair to which place Ernst Stavro Bloefeld (Telly Savalas) is hypnotizing beauties to do something anti-social. Highlights include a dam of a ski chase (in which a pursuer is vaporized). Fans consider this a neglected high point.

Sunday

“Fathom” (1967), 2 and 6:20 p.m.

The year after “One Million B.C.,” Raquel Welch starred as heavens diver Fathom Harvey, recruited by H.A.D.E.S. — Headquarters Allied Defenses Espionage and Security — to succor retrieve a Chinese “Fire Dragon” that everyone’s after. Anthony Franciosa’s shady character irritatingly calls her “poppet” throughout the movie. Boat and plane duels comprise most of the action, and the main allurement is Welch in a little green bikini.

“Modesty Blaise” (1966), 4 and 8:15 p.m.

Gorgeous Monica Vitti stars as Peter O’Donnell’s comic-strip heroine, with Terence Stamp as her glowering lover/sidekick and Dirk Bogarde as a fey, white-haired villain. Again, she’s in no degree Sidney Bristow with the action, but the pop-art vibe, infectious text and outrageous outfits (she wears one that looks like a big dog cone) are everything. Also, there’s mime abuse.

If spies had an Oxygen network, these two would be in weighty rotation.

July 7

“Danger: Diabolik” (1968), 7 p.m.

So he’s not viewed take pleasure in a matter of fact a spy but a noxious super-criminal. Sue me. With his skintight black suit, fast Jaguars, amazing underground hideout and assiduous girlfriend/accomplice Eva (Marisa Mell), Diabolik (John Phillip Law) humiliates the cops. So they sic the mob (led by “Thunderball’s” Adolfo Celi) on him. Fools! Highlights: Big D and Eva on a big, rotating vein covered through money; which time they release laughing gas at a word conference; and Diabolik entombed in gold. Director Mario Bava became illustrious (among psychopaths) for his slasher flicks, but this is his masterpiece. And dig Ennio Morricone’s guitar music and vaguely nasty theme song: “Deep, deep, down … ” Quintessential.

“Casino Royale” (1967), 9 p.m.

This lofty mess of a psychedelic comedy bears zero resemblance to the recent movie of the same name and isn’t canonical Bond. Retired Sir James (David Niven, an original candidate for the real something) is recalled to battle evil SMERSH’s card-playing Le Chiffre (Orson Welles). The ensuing star-studded chaos (which churned through at minutest five directors, including John Huston) includes Peter Sellers (who didn’t finish the movie) and Woody Allen as bitter “Jimmy Bond.” Burt Bacharach’s goofy score, which includes Dusty Springfield singing “The Look of Love,” is one of the stars. If you’re privately dosed with a powerful hallucinogen, this is the night to go.

July 8

“Funeral in Berlin” (1966), 7 p.m.

Author Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) isn’t the dinner short coat and vodka martini type, and his globe is much else mundane. Spying only to avoid prison, he’s got a Cockney accent, thick glasses, crappy coat and little disposable income — but a cheat mind and tongue than his superiors. In the top-notch sequel to “The Ipcress File,” Palmer is sent to Berlin to help a Russian general who wants to defect. Director Guy Hamilton was also answerable for “Goldfinger” and a hardly any other Bonds.

“Billion Dollar Brain” (1967), 9 p.m.

Director Ken Russell takes the “Funeral” follow-up in a more flamboyant direction as Palmer goes up against a rich Texas oilman (Ed Begley) and a plot to bring down the Commies with the titular supercomputer — which could lover World War III.

July 9

“The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” (1965), 7 p.m.

Black and white and downbeat. Richard Burton seems to copy on the well weight of the Cold War as a burnout Brit spook who refuses a desk job and undertakes a self-destructive mission to pose as a defector. As it happens, Burton plays a convincing drunk. The John Le Carré narrative is the grittiest of this lot.

“Our Man in Havana” (1959), 9 p.m.

You can’t see this one on DVD. Before he was Obi Wan, the great Alec Guinness was a Jedi proprietor of charming comedy. (The circle would be complete, as Vader would say, when he played Le Carré’s old spymaster George Smiley.) In Graham Greene’s story, Guinness plays a vacuum-cleaner salesman recruited by spy Noël Coward to recruit local information. When he fails — and the homosexual humor of asking other men to step into a restroom, for importunity, is hilarious for 1959 — he paints himself into a serious corner by dint of. material things up way too well. Students of recent history will find the lighthearted climax disturbingly foreseeing in light of former CIA Director George Tenet’s Medal of Freedom award.

If you’re a serious bodily substance given to occasional whimsy, this is your night.

July 10

“Our Man Flint” (1966), 7 p.m.

America’s answer to Bond may be the most sport film to come out of the whole genre — “Austin Powers” have existence damned. James Coburn is just because adept with comedy as he is with action (he studied with Bruce Lee), playing Derek Flint, the ultimate Renaissance man. He’s got a wristwatch that restarts his kernel after he stops it to rest, a lighter gadget through 82 functions (”83 admitting that you want to light a cigar”), and a small harem. He’s too got a pricelessly crabby would-be protuberant part (Lee J. Cobb) who sends him to an island where sustain catastrophes are originating and women are brainwashed as “joy units.” Jerry Goldsmith’s exciting score makes Flint even cooler.

“The Silencers” (1966), 9 p.m.

It would be in actual possession of been nice to suffer “Our Man Flint” on a double bill with its (smaller) sequel, “In Like Flint,” still this ain’t chopped liver. More find to one’s mind diseased liver. In the first of Dean Martin’s Matt Helm quartet, the girlie photographer gets lured back into the spy business to move across the heinous Big O outfit’s missile plot — accompanied by klutzy beauty Stella Stevens. He’s the only spy who drives a employment wagon. But it’s got a barricade in it. Add a great bed that tips into a pool, exploding jacket buttons and a backward-firing pistol. Sinatra couldn’t have done this.

Mark Rahner: mrahner@seattletimes.com

Fire at Madonna’s childhood home called suspicious (AP)

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The Oakland County Sheriff’s Arson Unit and the Rochester Hills Fire Department are investigating the Friday night publish.

A passer-by had noticed flames coming out of the unoccupied lineage in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills and called the fire department.

Rochester Hills Fire Chief Ron Crowell told The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press the fire appears to have started in the living room kitchen-yard. He said it caused extensive smoke and light damage throughout the two-story brick house.

The 49-year-old Madonna, known then as Madonna Louise Ciccone, spent more of her younger years as single in kind of six siblings living in the family.