Kenya's Geoffrey Mutai Wins 2012 BMW Berlin Marathon and World Marathon Major Title in Bizarre Finish

After running stride for stride for 26.2 miles and on world-record pace until the final two miles, Geoffrey Mutai edged training partner Dennis Kimetto to win the 2012 BMW Berlin Marathon in 2:04:15 to Kimetto's 2:04:16 in a truly bizarre finish.

• Kenyans take first 8 places

Geoffrey Mutai won the Berlin marathon this morning, edging out his training partner Dennis Kimetto by one second with little fanfare. The racing community, however, is viewing this a little cockeyed exactly because of the ho-hum way this thing ended.

Neither man made a push to win the race. Rather, they maintained the same pace they had throughout. Kimetto never made a move to overtake Mutai and Mutai never sought to put Kimetto away. Which is kind of strange when you think about the difference between finishing first and finishing second in a marathon. There's the glory and the personal satisfaction of having accomplished the ultimate goal. Winning is almost always better than not winning.

With the win, Mutai won the World Marathon Majors title. As reader, commenter and racing nut Raysism explains:

Berlin is the 5th of the 5 major marathons — they're like the PGA Championship or Australian Open...Geoffrey Mutai, who by virtue of his 2011 Boston and NYC wins, just needed another major to lock up the $500,000 prize for majors (on a 2-year cycle).

And there's the rub. On top of glory and all that other crap, Mutai was guaranteed to win $500,000 with a first place finish and Kimetto stood to win nothing (financially) with a first place finish and...something, possibly, with a second place finish and Mutai win.

LEADING RESULTS (Kenyan unless stated)

MEN
1. Geoffrey Mutai 2:04:15
2. Dennis Kimetto 2:04:16
3. Geoffrey Kipsang 2:06:12
4. Nicholas Kamakya 2:08:28
5. Josphat Keiyo 2:08:41
6. Jonathan Maiyo 2:09:19
7. Eliud Kiptanui 2:09:59
8. Felix Keny 2:10:22
9. Masakazu Fujiwara 2:11:31/JAP
10. Suehiro Ishikawa 2:11:46/JAP

WOMEN
1. Aberu Kebede 2:20:30/ETH
2. Tirfi Tsegay 2:21:19/ETH
3. Olena Shurhno 2:23:32/UKR
4. Filomena Chepchirchir 2:24:56
5. Fate Tola 2:25:14/ETH
6. Alevtina Biktimirova 2:28:45/RUS
7. Caroline Chepkwony 2:30:34
8. Anna Hahner 2:30:37/GER
9. Sonia Samuels 2:30:56/GBR
10. Degefa Biruktayit 2:33:27/ETH

Former NY Times executive Arthur Sulzberger dies at 86

(Arthur Ochs Sulzberger in 1992, the year he relinquished the position of publisher to his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.  The portrait in the background is of his grandfather, Adolph S. Ochs, who bought The New York Times in 1896.)

(Reuters) - Former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who led the company for 34 years in a period of growth that made it a multibillion-dollar media enterprise, died on Saturday at the age of 86, the newspaper said.

Sulzberger, whose family bought the Times in 1896, died at his home in Southampton, New York, after a lengthy illness, his family said.

Sulzberger, known by his childhood nickname Punch, became publisher of the Times in 1963 and it won 31 Pulitzer Prizes under his leadership. He turned over the publishing job to his son, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., in 1992 and gave him the chairman's position in 1997.

"Punch, beloved by his colleagues, was one of our industry's most admired executives," Sulzberger Jr. said in a statement.

From left, Mr. Sulzberger, nicknamed Punch, and his sisters Judith (Judy), Ruth and Marian in March 1927.

Mr. Sulzberger as a Marine, circa 1951. He joined the Corps in 1944 at 17, and served in both World War II and the Korean War.

Mr. Sulzberger with his third wife, Allison S. Cowles, in 1996. Ms. Cowles died in 2010.

While he has not been active in the company for more than a decade, the elder Sulzberger's stamp on one of the world's most influential newspapers is still in place.

He helped the company achieve financial stability, started nationwide distribution, added sections that are now staples in newspapers across the country and took it public in 1969 using a duel class structure in which the family controls around 90 percent of Class B shares.

Sulzberger's grandfather Adolph S. Ochs purchased the Times in 1896 and the Ochs-Sulzbergers are one of a small group of families in the United States still serving as stewards of newspapers and media empires.

Storied newspaper names like the Pulitzers, Chandlers and Bancrofts have since exited an industry racked with challenges.

Newspapers are suffering from a drastic decline in advertising revenue and a loss of readership as people turn online and to digital products to get their news.

The passing of Sulzberger comes at a time of uncertainty for the Times. It has been selling off many of its properties and has not paid a dividend in several years. Its share price also has been slumping.

Under Sulzberger's stewardship, the New York Times became a sprawling media conglomerate with newspapers throughout the United States, magazines, television, radio and online properties.

"He was a great champion of the newsroom," said Joseph Lelyveld, executive editor of the Times from 1994-2001.

"I think the editors who had the good luck to serve him always knew on a key issue they could count on his backing if they truly believed it was a matter of great importance to the independence of the paper."

PRESS FREEDOM ISSUES

The Times won two important freedom-of-the-press fights during Sulzberger's tenure.

In 1971, the Times published the Pentagon Papers, a highly classified government history on the Vietnam War that embarrassed the administration of President Richard Nixon, which demanded the Times stop publication of the series on grounds of national security.

The Times, citing the First Amendment, refused and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the newspaper's favor.

"He was a mythic figure in our house - the man who defied the orders of the White House and the threat of jail to publish the Pentagon Papers," said Andrew Rosenthal, the Times' editorial page editor and son of former Times editor Abe Rosenthal.

The high court also sided with the newspaper in the Times v. Sullivan, a case that began before Sulzberger took over but was settled in 1964 when he was publisher. The ruling established standards for malice that must be proved in libel cases.

"Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press," Sulzberger Jr. said.

In a statement from the White House, President Barack Obama said: "Over the course of more than 30 years, Arthur helped transform the New York Times and secure its status as one of the most successful and respected newspapers in the world."

Sulzberger was born in 1926, the youngest of four children of Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger. It was his father who coined his nickname "Punch" when he created an illustrated book involving Arthur's sister Judith.

According to the Times, his father described Arthur as having "come to play the Punch to Judy's endless show," referring to the centuries-old popular British puppet show "Punch and Judy."

Sulzberger spent nearly his entire professional life at the Times - he worked briefly for the Milwaukee Journal and served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War Two and the Korean War. He started as a city staff reporter at the Times, working to become a foreign correspondent in the paper's Paris, Rome and London bureaus.

Despite his pedigree, his appointment to lead the company was not an obvious one, according to Gay Talese's "The Kingdom and the Power." The Times was running under the leadership of Sulzberger's brother-in-law Orvil Dryfoos, who was expected to run the paper through the 1970s.

But Dryfoos' sudden death left a vacuum at the top.

Initial concerns about Sulzberger's lack of executive experience were quickly set aside: He became the newspaper's youngest leader in its history when he was named publisher at the age of 37.

The world's richest Jews

Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg, Sergey Brin, Lawrence (Larry) Page, Steven Ballmer, George Soros, Michael Dell, Mikhail Fridman, John Paulson, and Roman Abramovich.

1. Larry Ellison

Age: 66. Net worth: $28 billion.

Lawrence Ellison, today ranked sixth on Forbes list of the world’s richest people but for a time at the very top of it, is the ultimate against-theodds success story. He was born in Manhattan to a 19-year-old unwed Jewish mother (and an Italian-American air force pilot father), grew up with his great aunt (and a great uncle who constantly belittled him), didn’t even meet his mother until he was in his late 40s, and yet had the drive and ability to found what became an extraordinary computer software giant, Oracle, with $1,400 of his own money.

He got his first taste of computer designing at the University of Chicago but never completed an academic degree, moving to California at age 20 and finding a job with the Ampex electronics company, where he worked on a database for the CIA. He adopted that project’s title, Oracle, for his own firm, which he developed into the world’s foremost supplier of software for information management.

Oracle employs 200 people in Israel and has been operating here since 1996. Ellison, however, only visited Israel for the first time in 2007. Touring Sderot on that trip, he was told it needed $500,000 to reinforce a community center against rocket attack, and immediately donated the money.

Four times married and today residing in a $70 million estate in Woodside, California, Ellison, who is on a base salary of just $1 for 2010, has earned annual compensation ranging between $50 million and $80m. in recent years.

He has used some of his money pursuing his passion for sailing, and a great deal more on philanthropy, with reported donations of over $150m. in 2003 alone, and well over half a billion in total, including a $115m. pledge to Harvard. In 1997, he created the Ellison Medical Foundation to support research on infectious diseases in the third world and age-related diseases and disabilities. In August of this year, he became one of numerous billionaires to pledge his support for the Warren Buffett and Bill Gates “Giving Pledge,” under which some of the wealthiest Americans have pledged to give away at least 50% of their wealth. Ellison has personally pledged to donate 95% of his wealth when he dies.

2. Michael Bloomberg

Age 68. Net worth: $18 billion.

Michael Bloomberg, now in his third term as mayor of New York City, is a former equity trader and partner at Salomon Brothers who used some of his $10 million severance package after being fired in 1981 to develop what became the global financial news and media company Bloomberg L.P.

Born in Boston to a family with Russian immigrant origins, Bloomberg stepped down as the CEO of his company, which today has 250,000 terminals operating worldwide, when he entered politics, winning the mayoralty in 2001 as a Republican, having previously been a lifelong Democrat.

A major philanthropist, who has annually made donations of a hundred million dollars or more and has also signed up to the “Giving Pledge,” Bloomberg funded the renovation of his hometown synagogue, Temple Shalom, in Medford, Massachusetts.

He came to Israel in February 2007 to attend the cornerstone-laying ceremony for Jerusalem’s refurbished Magen David Adom station, renamed in honor of his father, William, making the major donation of $1.5 million. He was accompanied by his mother, Charlotte, who was then 98 and is still reportedly in good health.

On other Israel visits, Bloomberg has attended Holocaust commemorations, traveled on buses in Jerusalem in solidarity at the height of the second intifada, and toured Sderot and Ashkelon during Operation Cast Lead. On that trip, flying in on his private jet, he declared that “if anyone in New York was being threatened, my instruction to the NYPD would be to use all the resources at their disposal to protect civilians.”

3. Sergey Brin

Age 37. Net worth: $17.5 billion.

Moscow-born Sergey Brin is the cofounder, with Larry Page, of Google, the world’s largest Internet company, which is based on the data mining systems they developed into their peerless search engine while roommates at Stanford.

Brin and his family moved to the US when he was six, after it became clear to his mathematician father that he had no academic future in the Soviet Union because he was Jewish. His parents’ goal of giving their son the educational opportunities they were denied saw Sergey graduate from the University of Maryland with a double degree in mathematics and computer sciences, and move on to Stanford, where his studies for a PhD in computer sciences were interrupted by the staggering success of Google.

The founders’ vision has been to make all the world’s information accessible and useful. Google’s capacity to achieve that goal was recognized in their ranking last year as joint fifth in Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful people. The pair are also now applying their formidable capabilities to research into climate change and alternative energy.

Google has a sizable Israel operation, including premises in Haifa and Tel Aviv. And Brin has visited several times, first on a three-week tour as an 11-year-old.

Three years ago, Brin married Anne Wojcicki, his longtime sweetheart, the Jewish daughter of a Stanford physics professor father and a journalism teacher mother.

Among his philanthropic contributions was a poignant 2009 donation of a million dollars to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which had helped the family when they first moved to the US. A year earlier, when his mother, Eugenia, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he made a donation to the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine where she is being treated.

4. Lawrence (Larry) Page

Age 37. Net worth: $17.5 billion.

Larry Page, like his Google partner Sergey Brin, is the son of mathematically gifted parents. Both were computer science professors at the University of Michigan, and Page has recalled a childhood in a home drowning in computer magazines, with computers – his first toys – strewn all over the place.

Graduating from Michigan with an honors degree in computer engineering, he went on to Stanford, received a master’s in computer science and enrolled in the PhD program there. Then he met Brin at a university welcome event, and the rest is Internet history.

Page’s maternal grandparents were Jewish – his grandfather was an early resident of the Negev town of Arad – but he was not raised with a strong Jewish identity, and did not have a bar mitzva.

But he has visited Israel along with Brin, including a trip several years ago where they were particularly enthusiastically welcomed at a Tel Aviv school for gifted math students.

It was Page who came up with the idea “Googling For Charity,” under which the firm sets aside 1% of its equity, profits and employees’ time for charitable efforts including work to alleviate world poverty and address environmental problems.

5. Steven Ballmer

Age: 54. Net worth: $14.5 billion.

Detroit-born Ballmer is the CEO of Microsoft, having joined the fledgling company in 1980 as its 24th employee. Ballmer had befriended founder Bill Gates at Harvard, stayed on while Gates dropped out, worked for Proctor and Gamble and then entered Stanford Business School before finally succumbing to Gates’s appeals to join the company. A flamboyant character, Ballmer is known for eccentric appearances at various Microsoft events, and was the subject of a 2002 book entitled Bad Boy Ballmer, The Man Who Rules Microsoft.

Ballmer grew up in Farmington Hills, Michigan, the son of a Swiss-American father and a Jewish-American mother whose family has its origins in Iran. His activities on behalf of Jewish causes includes his membership of the Jewish National Fund’s World Chairman’s Council.

Ballmer has been deeply involved in Microsoft’s substantial operations in Israel.

In 2004, he attended a Microsoft conference here and hailed the country’s thriving hi-tech center. Two years ago, he flew in for three hours to launch a new R&D center in Herzliya, and declared that “Microsoft is as much an Israeli company as an American company.” The proportion of Microsoft employees per capita in Israel, he explained, was similar to that in the US.

6. George Soros

Age: 80. Net worth: $14 billion.

Born George Schwartz in Budapest, Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary after his father paid a government employee to pose as his godfather and told him to hide his Jewishness. He emigrated to England after the war, graduated from the London School of Economics, moved to New York in the mid-1950s and began a career in finance that saw him enjoy extraordinary success as a savvy speculator, most notoriously as the so-called “man who broke the Bank of England” by making $1 billion during the UK’s 1992 currency crisis.

Soros is the founding chairman of Soros Fund Management and heads the Open Society Institute, a grant-making foundation. An effective liberal activist, he is credited with a significant role in his native Hungary’s peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in the 1980s, and in the Georgian Rose Revolution of 2003, and he was a passionate critic of president George W. Bush.

Soros is a prolific philanthropist, having given away an estimated $7b. in the past 30 years, though not to Israeli causes. Often critical of Israel, he has intimated that he partially blames the upsurge in anti-Semitism on aspects of Israeli policy, although he has also qualified such comments to say that he does not blame Jews for anti-Semitism. A critic of the pro-Israel lobby groups in the US, he was involved early in the process that led to the formation of the left-wing J Street lobby but withdrew his involvement amid reported concern that his liberal reputation would harm it.

7. Michael Dell
Age: 45. Net worth: $13.5 billion.

Along with Larry Ellison, Michael Dell is one of the most successful college dropouts in history, quitting the University of Texas to create what became the largest and most valuable personal computer company in the world.

Houston-born Dell was tinkering with computers from junior high, disassembled his first Apple in his mid-teens, and was upgrading computers as a sideline from early in his aborted pre-med studies. Recognizing the financial advantage in selling PCs directly from manufacturer to user, cutting out the retail middleman, he started PCs Limited in 1984 and, beating IBM and the rest of the heavyweights at their own game, had driven the renamed Dell into the Fortune 500 within eight years. In 2001, Dell passed Compaq as the No. 1 brand of PC computers, although it has since fallen back to second place.

Dell’s charity, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, has donated more than $650 million to children’s health and education projects in the US, India and South Africa. Other gifts include a 40-acre plot of land given to the Jewish Federation of Austin for the development of a community center in 1994.

Dell made what was reported to have been his first official visit to Israel in 2008, and reports last spring suggested he was considering opening an R&D center here, which would mark something of a shift for a man who caused a stir in 2000 by telling a Ma’ariv reporter that “the situation in Israel does not give us positive reasons to invest there.”

8. Mikhail Fridman
Age: 46. Net worth: $12.7 billion.

Born in Lviv, Ukraine, Fridman is regarded as the third richest man in Russia. A graduate of the Moscow Institute of Steel, he is the founder of the Alfa Group, a conglomerate holding interests in banking (including the Alfa Bank, the largest private commercial bank in Europe), construction, oil and telecom (including Russia’s largest retail cellular company, X5). The sale of half of Alfa’s Tyumen Oil subsidiary to BP in 2003 for over $6 billion represented the biggest ever foreign investment in Russia.

Fridman co-founded the Russian Jewish Congress in 1996, and is a major donor to the non-profit European Jewish Fund, which promotes inter-religious dialogue. Two years ago, he cofounded the Genesis Philanthropy Group, a social-investment fund focused on Russian-speaking Jewry which has also recently been linked to an initiative to award a million-dollar annual Nobel-style prize for Jewish contributions to humanity. Genesis has also funded the Nativ program that prepares non-Jewish Russian immigrants to Israel for conversion.

Fridman told a Genesis conference last year that most Russian Jews like him “don’t follow many rules and traditions that are characteristic of Jews.

We don’t speak the national language, whether Hebrew or Yiddish. We’re just simple citizens.” Thus Genesis should work to preserve and encourage “the values and principles of the Jews,” rather than any specific notion of religion or nationhood, he said.

9. John Paulson
Age 54. Net worth: $12 billion.

New York-based John Paulson graduated first in his class at New York University’s College of Business and Public Administration, and in the top 5 percent of his MBA class at Harvard. He worked on Wall Street, including at Bear Stearns, before founding his own hedge fund.

Capitalizing on the recent insecurity in the mortgage and foreclosure market, Paulson & Co. made profits of $15 billion in 2007 alone. His fund was also a partial crafter of mortgage-related products related to the ongoing SEC lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, though neither his fund nor its employees are cited as defendants.

Paulson, who attended a Hebrew school affiliated with his local Queens Conservative synagogue, was honored last December by the UJA-Federation of New York for his ongoing support. The 1,000 participants at the Wall Street Dinner raised $19 million that night. Paulson recently donated $15m. to the Center for Responsible Lending and $20m. to the New York University Stern School of Business.

10. Roman Abramovich
Age: 43. Net worth: $11.2 billion.

Born in Lithuania, Roman Abramovich rose from steel-maker, mechanic, toy-maker and commodity trader to become an oil oligarch and, though dogged intermittently by brushes with the law, Russia’s fourth richest man. He is best known outside his home country as the high-profile owner of England’s Chelsea football club since 2003, where he employed Israel’s Avram Grant for a tempestuous period as club manager.

Extremely well-connected politically, he has been close to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, served in the Duma representing the region of Chukotka, and from 2000 to 2008 was the governor of Chukotka, lavishing over $1 billion of his own money on the district.

In 2004 Abramovich was recognized as Russia’s Jewish philanthropist of the year after donating money for a Moscow community center. He has visited Israel several times in recent years, including last Pessah, and regularly puts up the money to bring top eastern European teams here to play in a brief annual cup competition.

Chicago: Sam Zell, Ken Griffin and a lot of Pritzkers on Forbes' billionaire list

Sam Zell, five Pritzkers and Ken Griffin are among the 12 Chicago-area business CEOs appearing on the Forbes' 2012 ranking of the richest people in America.

No. 1 on the Forbes list is Bill Gates, the Microsoft Corp. chairman with $66 billion in his pocket. Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett follows with $46 billion, and Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison, with $41 billion, is No. 3. (Interesting sidebar. Mr. Ellison grew up in a two-bedroom apartment in a middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Shore before moving to California.)

Mr. Zell, the real estate and private-equity mogul who's been expanding his operations into Brazil, is the first Chicagoan to pop up. He's in the 103 spot with $3.8 billion.

With $3.1 billion, Mr. Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel Corp., tied for 128th with flamboyant New York businessman Donald Trump.

J.B. Pritzker is the first of five Pritzkers on the list. He's 179th with $2.5 billion. He founded New World Ventures private-equity group and co-leads the Pritzker Group.
Thomas Pritzker, with $2.2 billion, is 218th. He is chairman and CEO of the Pritzker Organization and heads Hyatt Hotels Corp., which is where much of the family wealth originates.

Filmmaker Gigi Pritzker, with $1.9 billion, is 250th.

Penny Pritzker, with $1.8 billion, is 271st. She is CEO of PSP Capital Partners and its affiliate, Pritzker Realty Group.

And James Pritzker, who heads the Pritzker Military Library on Michigan Avenue, is 311th with $1.5 billion.

Other notable Chicago names on the list:

Beanie Babies founder Ty Warner, $2.4 billion, is 190th on the list.

Real estate and casino mogul Neil Bluhm, $2.1 billion, is 229th.

Brothers Chris and Jude Reyes, who are in the food and beverage distribution business (McDonald's is a major client), tied for 239th, each with $2 billion. 

Morningstar Inc. CEO Joe Mansueto is 297th with $1.65 billion.

And Patrick Ryan, who will have to pay a hefty tax bill since Aon Corp., the company he founded, moved to London, is 360th on the list with $1.2 billion. It's going to take more than a tax hit of multiple millions of dollars to affect his billionaire status.

Forbes also makes note of those who have fallen off its annual list since last year, given they hover too close to the $1.1 billion mark that puts you on the list. Among the Chicagoans are Nicholas Pritzker ($1.07 billion) chairman and CEO of Hyatt Development Corp.; Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky ($1.03 billion); and Zynga founder Mark Pincus ($760 million).

Since Oprah Winfrey (58th on the list with $2.7 billion) officially decamped to Los Angeles, Chicago is lacking in star power. 

Given that Hollywood producer George Lucas spends a lot of time in Chicago with his longtime partner, Ariel Investments LLC's Mellody Hobson, it's worth noting he's 120th on the list with $3.3 billion.

Chicago Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts is among Forbes' Ones to Watch, as an emerging philanthropist.

Forbes says the combined wealth of America's richest is $1.7 trillion, up from $1.5 trillion in 2011, partly because of the rising stock market; a rebound in real estate values, mainly in cities such as Los Angeles and New York; and rising values for artworks.

The average net worth of a Forbes 400 member is a staggering $4.2 billion, up from $3.8 billion last year, and the highest in at least a decade, as two-thirds of the individuals added to their fortunes in the past year. Net worth increased for 241 members, and decreased for 66 members. Cost of admission to the 2012 list is $1.1 billion, up from $1.05 billion a year ago.

OMG: Lady Gaga has gained a ton of weight!!

In Amsterdam September 2012

below: A much trimmer Lady Gaga on stage in 2009

The Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point 

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most congested international waterways. It is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point and is bordered by the Iranian coast to the north and the United Arab Emirates to the south.

Why is the US presidential election date always the first Tuesday after the First Monday of November?

By federal law since 1792, the U.S. Congress permitted the states to conduct their presidential elections (or otherwise to choose their Electors) any time in a 34-day period before the first Wednesday of December, which was the day set for the meeting of the Electors of the U.S. president and vice-president (the Electoral College), in their respective states.  An election date in November was seen as useful because the harvest would have been completed (important in an agrarian society) and the winter storms would not yet have begun in earnest (a plus in the days before paved roads and snowplows). However, in this arrangement the states that voted later could be influenced by a candidate's victories in the states that voted earlier, a problem later exacerbated by improved communications via train and telegraph. In close elections, the states that voted last might well determine the outcome.

A uniform date for choosing presidential Electors was instituted by the Congress in 1845.  Many theories have been advanced as to why the Congress settled on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  The actual reasons, as shown in records of Congressional debate on the bill in December 1844, were fairly prosaic. The bill initially set the national day for choosing presidential Electors on "the first Tuesday in November," in years divisible by four (1848, 1852, etc.). But it was pointed out that in some years the period between the first Tuesday in November and the first Wednesday in December (when the Electoral College met) would be more than 34 days, in violation of the existing Electoral College law. So, the bill was amended to move the national date for choosing presidential Electors forward to the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, a date scheme already used in the state of New York.

Tuesday was chosen as, in 1845, the United States was a predominantly agrarian society. Most people traveled by horse and buggy. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the Sabbath. So that left Tuesday and Wednesday and, as Wednesday was market day, Tuesday was chosen.

Skinnygirl Cocktails

Repeat reality TV personality Bethenny Frankel has come across as an independent-minded woman on shows such as “The Real Housewives,” “Bethenny Ever After” and “The Apprentice.” She’s also proven to have a savvy business mind, with best-selling books and the Skinnygirl line of workout videos, skin care products, and more to her credit. Then there’s the low-calorie Skinnygirl ready-to-drink margarita, which Frankel managed to sell last year to liquor distribution giant Beam for a whopping $120 million. Skinnygirl Cocktails are now available in Pina Colada, White Cranberry Cosmo, and various wine flavors, and a recent study named it the hottest-selling brand of spirits in the country.

The end of a 25-year run for stainless steel?

Major manufacturers are placing bets on different potential successors to the shiny, upscale appliance finish, which surprised everyone with its resilience.

It is a pivotal moment in kitchen design: While stainless steel is still the dominant look, there are clear signals it has outworn its welcome, even with no clear successor in place.

The appliance industry has tried to promote new looks before. In recent years, manufacturers have pitched "oiled bronze," "antique copper" and a gray hue called "meteorite," as well as aluminum and other look-alikes, but none has been able to unseat stainless steel.

The new colors and materials, though not as vibrant as the avocado-green and harvest-gold of previous eras, try to blend in with their surroundings, rather than stand out like a trophy of technology the way shiny stainless steel tends to do.

Strauss-Kahn's Wife Confirms Separation

PARIS—Just months into a new career as the editor of the French edition of The Huffington Post, and after 21 years of marriage, Ms. Sinclair moves on.

The wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief, acknowledged in a newspaper interview on Friday that the two have separated.

Anne Sinclair, a famous French television journalist who is now editor in chief of Le Huffington Post, the local version of the U.S. online news service, stood by Mr. Strauss-Kahn last year when he was arrested in New York on charges—which were subsequently dropped—of sexually assaulting a hotel maid.

Asked by French daily newspaper Le Parisien how she felt since breaking up with Mr. Strauss-Kahn, Ms. Sinclair said: "Very well, thank you....I am in good shape; I took some vacation; I work hard again."

An assistant to Ms. Sinclair confirmed the content of the interview. Anne Hommel, the assistant, declined to elaborate on whether the couple has filed for divorce. Mr. Strauss-Kahn's lawyers didn't return phone calls seeking comments.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn stepped down as IMF managing director in May 2011 after a New York hotel housekeeper said he had assaulted her. Mr. Strauss-Kahn denied the accusations. Criminal charges were later dropped.

Nafissatou Diallo, the maid, filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, seeking damages stemming from the alleged assault. Mr. Strauss-Kahn denied the accusations in the ongoing civil case, and in May filed a civil lawsuit of his own against Ms. Diallo, saying the claim was "false" and ruined his life, personally and professionally.

The New York scandal brought to a halt Mr. Strauss-Kahn's political aspirations at the time. The French Socialist had been preparing to run in this year's presidential election, in which rival Socialist François Hollande prevailed.

Accusations surrounding Mr. Strauss-Kahn's sexual behavior have remained in the spotlight in France. Earlier this year, French prosecutors launched a preliminary investigation into an accusation that he took part in a gang rape in the U.S. in 2010.

The accusations stem from a broader judicial investigation into an alleged prostitution ring based out of the northern French city of Lille—a case in which 63-year-old Mr. Strauss-Kahn faces preliminary charges of "aggravated pimping."