happy trails, lady jane :(

Jane Russell, stunning star of 'The Outlaw' and other 1940s and 1950s films, dies at 89...

By John Rogers

– 1 hour 5 minutes ago

• Enlarge Photo

  24 Feb. 2008 pic of Jane Russell
  

• Enlarge Photo

  An original poster from the 1943 movie "The Outlaw" starring pin-up icon Jane Russell. …

• Factbox: Facts about buxom actress Jane Russell

  53 minutes ago

• Legendary US pin-up Jane Russell dies: family

  1 hour 0 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Jane Russell, the busty brunette who shot to fame as the sexy star of Howard Hughes' 1941 Western, "The Outlaw" died today of respiratory failure, her family said.

She was 89.

Although Russell largely retired from Hollywood after her final film, 1970's "Darker Than Amber", she had remained active in her church, with charitable organizations, and with a local singing group, until her health began to decline just a couple weeks ago, said her daughter-in-law, Etta Waterfield.

She died at her home in Santa Maria.

"She always said, "I'm going to die in the saddle, I'm not going to sit at home and become an old woman"," Waterfield told The Associated Press.

"That's exactly what she did, she died in the saddle."

Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire, put her onto the path to stardom when he cast her in, "The Outlaw", a film he fought with censors for nearly a decade to get into wide release.

With her sultry look and glowing sexuality, Russell became a star before she was ever seen by a wide movie audience.

The Hughes publicity mill ground out photos of the beauty in low-cut costumes and swim suits, and she became famous, especially as a pinup for World War II GIs.

Then in 1948 she starred opposite Bob Hope in the box-office hit, "The Paleface", a comedy-western in which Russell was tough-but-sexy Calamity Jane to Hope's cowardly dentist.

Although her look and her hourglass figure made her the subject of numerous nightclub jokes, unlike Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, and other pinup queens of the era, Russell was untouched by scandal in her personal life.

During her Hollywood career, she was married to star UCLA and pro football quarterback, Bob Waterfield.

"The Outlaw", although it established her reputation, was beset with trouble from the beginning.

Director Howard Hawks, one of Hollywood's most eminent and autocratic filmmakers, rankled under producer Hughes' constant suggestions, and finally walked out.

"Hughes directed the whole picture — for nine bloody months!" Russell said in 1999.

The film's rambling, fictional plot featured Russell as a friend of Billy the Kid as he tussles with Doc Holliday and Sheriff Pat Garrett.

It had scattered brief runs in the 1940s, earning scathing reviews.

The Los Angeles Times called it "one of the weirdest Western pictures that ever unreeled before the public".

But Hughes made sure no one overlooked his No. 1 star.

The designer of the famous "Spruce Goose" airplane used his engineering skills to make Russell a special bra (which she said she never wore) and he bought the ailing RKO film studio to turn it into a vehicle for her.

Wisely, he also loaned her to Paramount to make "The Paleface", because at RKO she starred in a series of potboilers such as "His Kind of Woman" (with Robert Mitchum), "Double Dynamite" (Frank Sinatra, Groucho Marx), "The Las Vegas Story" (Victor Mature), and "Macao" (Mitchum again).

Hughes had rewarded her with a unique 20-year contract paying $1,000 a week, then he sold RKO and quit making movies.

Russell continued receiving the weekly fee, but never made another film for Hughes.

Her only other notable film was "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", a 1953 musical based on the novel by Anita Loos.

She and Monroe teamed up to sing "Two Little Girls From Little Rock", and seek romance in Paris.

At a 2001 film festival appearance, Russell noted Monroe was five years younger, saying, "It was like working with a little sister."

She followed that up with the 1954 musical, "The French Line", which like "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" had her cavorting on an ocean liner.

The film was shot in 3-D, and the promotional campaign for it proclaimed "J.R. in 3D.

"Need we say more?"

In 1955, she made the sequel "Gentlemen Marry Brunettes", without Monroe, and starred in the Westerns "The Tall Men", with Clark Gable, and "Foxfire", with Jeff Chandler.

By the 1960s, her film career had faded.

"Why did I quit movies?" she remarked in 1999.

"Because I was getting too old!

"You couldn't go on acting in those years, if you were an actress over 30."

She continued to appear in nightclubs, television, and musical theater, including a stint on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim's "Company".

She formed a singing group with Connie Haines and Beryl Davis, and they made recordings of gospel songs.

For many years she served as TV spokeswoman for Playtex bras, and in the 1980s, made a few guest appearances in the TV series "The Yellow Rose".

She was born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on 21 June 1921, in Bemidji, Minn., and the family later moved to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.

Her mother was a lay preacher, and she encouraged the family to build a chapel in their back yard.

Despite her mother's Christian preachings, young Jane had a wild side.

She wrote in her 1985 autobiography, "My Paths and Detours", that during high school she had a back-alley abortion, which may have rendered her unable to bear children.

Her early ambition was to design clothes and houses, but that was postponed until her later years.

While working as a receptionist, she was spotted by a movie agent who submitted her photos to Hughes, and she was summoned for a test with Hawks, who was to direct "The Outlaw".

"There were a lot of other unknowns who were being tested that day," she recalled in a 1999 Associated Press interview.

"I figured Jack Beutel was going to be chosen to play Billy the Kid, so I insisted on being tested with him."

Both were cast, and three months would pass before she met Hughes.

The producer was famous for dating his discoveries, as well as numerous Hollywood actresses, but his contract with Russell remained strictly business.

Her engagement and 1943 marriage to Waterfield assured that.

She was the leader of the Hollywood Christian Group, a cluster of film people who gathered for Bible study and good works.

After experiencing problems in adopting her three children, she founded World Adoption International Agency, which has helped facilitate adoptions of more than 40,000 children from overseas.

She made hundreds of appearances for WAIF and served on the board for 40 years.

As she related in, "My Path and Detours", her life was marked by heartache.

Her 24-year marriage to Waterfield ended in bitter divorce in 1968.

They had adopted two boys and a girl.

That year she married actor Roger Barrett; three months later he died of a heart attack.

In 1978 she married developer John Peoples, and they lived in Sedona, Ariz., and later, Santa Barbara.

He died in 1999 of heart failure.

Over the years, Russell was also beset by alcoholism.

Always she was able to rebound from troubles by relying on lessons she learned from her Bible-preaching mother.

"Without faith, I never would have made it," she commented a few months after her third husband's death.

"I don't know how people can survive all the disasters in their lives if they don't have any faith, if they don't know the Lord loves them and cares about them and has another plan."

Survivors include her children, Thomas K. Waterfield, Tracy Foundas, and Robert "Buck" Waterfield, six grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.

A public funeral is scheduled 12 March at 11 a.m. at Pacific Christian Church in Santa Maria.

In lieu of flowers the family asks donations be made in her name to either the Care Net Pregnancy and Resource Center of Santa Maria, or the Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Barbara County.

___

Associated Press Writer Bob Thomas contributed to this story.

*************************************

Jane Russell...

AKA Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell

Born: 21-Jun-1921
Birthplace: Bemidji, MN
Died: 28-Feb-2011
Location of death: Santa Maria, CA
Cause of death: Respiratory failure

Gender: Female
Religion: Born-Again Christian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor, Activist, Singer

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

To star in The Outlaw, his epic story of cleavage in the old west, Howard Hughes conducted a nationwide search for an actress with the necessary screen presence.

He found Jane Russell, who had been working as a receptionist.

Her father was an office manager for Jergens Soap, her mother taught elocution, but had once been a stage actress, and Russell yearned to be a performer herself.

There had been previous icons of sexuality, but the beautiful, well-endowed, and photogenic Russell may have been the first woman sought out and hired specifically to be a sex symbol.

Hughes had his engineers design a seamless underwire brassiere, a breakthrough in bra science to lift Russell's 38-D breasts, leaving no visible support lines to interrupt the under-blouse contour of her bosom.

It was the first practical "lift and separate" push-up bra, but Russell later said she did not wear the uncomfortable contraption during filming.

Instead she wore her own bras, adding a layer of tissue paper over the cups to eliminate unsightly support lines.

Hughes, despite directing the picture himself, never knew the difference.

Completed in 1941, The Outlaw was unable to pass muster with the Hays Code.

A legacy of Will H. Hays, one-time chairman of Republican Party and the first president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), "the code" was written to enforce morality in Hollywood movies.

It stipulated, for example, that there be no nudity, no vulgar language, and dramatizations of bad behavior from adultery to illegal drugs to any form of criminality had to be followed in the plot by an appropriate 'punishment'.

There was no explicit rule against cleavage and jiggling, but The Outlaw obviously starred Russell's breasts, so the required certificate of approval was denied, effectively blocking the movie's release.

Hughes, a millionaire unaccustomed to hearing the word "No", released the movie in defiance of the code in 1943, but under heavy pressure few cinemas were willing to book it, and the film was almost immediately withdrawn.

After several more years of bickering between Hughes and the censors, The Outlaw was released to a few theaters in 1945 and 1946, eventually reaching smaller cities for its first screening as late as 1950.

As an actress, especially an actress with no experience, Russell's performance was adequate, and the controversy ensured the film's financial success.

As entertainment, The Outlaw has not passed the test of time.

Co-starring Thomas Mitchell and a pre-wrinkled Walter Huston, it is a rather boring black-and-white western, notable mostly for so many scenes of Russell bending over or bouncing, as she rode a horse.

Russell's contract was owned by Hughes through much of her career, and he squandered her talent in many forgettable films.

When given the chance, though, Russell could shine on-screen.

Her first non-controversial acclaim came when Ginger Rogers was unavailable to play Calamity Jane in The Paleface opposite Bob Hope.

Russell stepped in and showed sharp comedic talents, and the film was the funniest send-up of westerns until Blazing Saddles.

She later starred twice with Robert Mitchum, in the excellent gangster drama His Kind of Woman and the sultry smuggling thriller Macao, and she re-teamed with Hope for the well-received sequel Son of Paleface.

Of course, Russell's best work and biggest hit came in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Marilyn Monroe.

The movie is remembered for its perfect presentation of Monroe's sexy screen persona, but Russell matched her, tit for tat, as best friend Dorothy Shaw, the been-around-the-block brunette.

Based on the novel by Anita Loos, the husband-hunting story had been filmed as a silent comedy in 1928, then made into a musical for Broadway in 1949, but Russell's show-stopping song, "Ain't There Anyone Here For Love" was written just for her by Hoagy Carmichael.

Strutting through the ship's exercise room while men glistening with sweat worked out all around her, she sang, "I like big muscles, and red corpuscles, I like a beautiful hunk of man..."

It might just be the sexiest musical number in Hollywood history.

Russell had success as a singer, beginning in the late 1940s, when, between film jobs, she was a frequent headliner at the Latin Quarter Club, in Miami Beach.

She often sang on Kay Kyser's popular radio broadcasts, and in the mid-1950s she toured in all-woman trios and quartets she organized herself, often alongside her friend, Rhonda Fleming.

In Son of Paleface, she sang a trio of "Am I in Love?" with Hope and Roy Rogers, and the song was Oscar-nominated.

Russell first appeared on the charts in 1950 when her duet of "Kisses and Tears" with Frank Sinatra, from Double Dynamite was released as a single, and later the soundtrack for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes made it into the Top 10.

She also recorded several albums of Christian music.

In 1954, Russell was again embroiled in MPAA squabbles over The French Line, a gaudy musical co-starring Gilbert Roland.

It offered what was then called "vulgar" humor, with a bubble bath scene and "Lookin' for Trouble", a suggestive number Russell sang while dancing a hootchy-kootchy, and wearing very little.

Furthermore, The French Line was filmed in 3-D, causing audiences to lean back in their chairs every time Russell turned toward the camera.

Condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, the movie ran an hour and forty-two minutes, but many theater owners snipped away as many as twelve minutes of footage fearing it might offend local morality.

As a result, most audiences wondered what the fuss was about, and the box office fizzled.

In 1955 she starred with Jeanne Crain but without Monroe in an unnecessary sequel Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, and in 1957 she wore The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, an amusing comedy with Keenan Wynn, about a kidnapped movie star falling in love with her kidnapper.

Her movies, though, were not finding an audience, and Russell disappeared from films and returned to nightclub singing.

She served as TV spokeswoman for Lustre Creme shampoo, appeared in a few pictures in the 1960s, and made her last big-screen appearance in 1970 with a supporting role in Darker Than Amber, a now-forgotten but really quite good action movie with Rod Taylor.

Russell had a long run on Broadway, replacing Elaine Stritch in the musical Company, and appeared in TV commercials in the 1970s for the Playtex Cross-Your-Heart Bra, describing its structural advantages for "full-figured gals".

When she was 19, unmarried and pregnant, young Russell needed an illegal abortion, but it was clumsily performed, leaving her unable to bear children.

With her first husband, she adopted and raised a daughter and two sons, but the wait and paperwork for their adoptions had taken several years, and after that, Russell spent much of her off-screen time working to make adoption easier.

In 1952, she founded the World Adoption International Fund (WAIF), a group which eventually facilitated more than 50,000 adoptions.

She testified before Congress in support of the Federal Orphan Adoption Bill in 1953, which allowed children fathered by American troops abroad to be adopted by American parents.

In 1980, she was at the forefront of the lobbying effort for the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, which provides reimbursement for eligible foster and adoptive parents, and financial assistance for the additional costs incurred with adopting handicapped children.

Her first husband was her high school sweetheart, Bob Waterfield, who earned his fame as star quarterback of the Cleveland Rams.

Waterfield threw two touchdown passes as Cleveland defeated the Washington Redskins 15-14 in the 1945 NFL Championship Game, later coached the team after its move to Los Angeles, and he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1965.

Russell and Waterfield were married for 25 years, before she divorced him in 1967.

Her second husband was Roger Barrett, a stage actor who had appeared with Russell in a summer stock play.

They were married only three months before he suffered a heart attack and died, reportedly in the throes of passion with Russell.

Her third husband was a real estate broker, John Calvin Peoples, again the marriage lasted 25 years, until his passing in 1999.

After her last husband's death, Russell found herself a little lonely and missing the limelight, so she organized a few un-famous friends as her back-up band and began singing in a local Mexican restaurant.

After a year and a half at the restaurant her un-advertised performances needed a larger venue, and the eighty-something star took her show to an airport hotel in Santa Maria, California.

At last word, Russell still performed there, twice monthly.

Father: Roy William Russell (office manager, Jergins Soap, d. 1937 gallstones)
Mother: Geraldine Jacobi (elocution teacher)
Brother: Thomas Russell (b. 1924)
Brother: Kenneth Russell (b. 1925)
Brother: Jamie Russell (b. 1927)
Brother: Wallace Russell (b. 1929)
Boyfriend: Howard Hughes (batty billionaire, dated 1940-41)
Boyfriend: Jorge Guinle (Brazilian millionaire, b. 1916, together early 1940s, d. 2004 aortic aneurysm)
Husband: Bob Waterfield (football player, b. 26-Jul-1920, m. 24-Apr-1943, div. Jul-1968, d. 1983, three adopted children)
Daughter: Tracy (b. 1952, adopted 1952 with Waterfield)
Son: Tommy Kavanaugh (b. 1951, adopted 1952 with Waterfield)
Son: Robert John "Buck" (b. 1956, adopted 1956 with Waterfield)
Husband: Roger Barrett (actor, b. 1921, m. 25-Aug-1968, d. 18-Nov-1968 heart attack)
Husband: John Calvin Peoples (b. 1925, m. 31-Jan-1974, d. Apr-1999)
Boyfriend: Jorge Guinle (d. 2004)

High School: Van Nuys High School, Van Nuys, CA (1939)

RKO Radio Pictures under contract
TheVanguard.Org Board of Advisors
Hollywood Walk of Fame 6840 Hollywood Blvd.
Endorsement of Liggett Group Chesterfield cigarettes (1942-48)
Risk Factors: Smoking, Alcoholism

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Darker Than Amber (14-Aug-1970)
The Born Losers (18-Aug-1967)
Waco (25-Jun-1966)
Johnny Reno (9-Mar-1966)
Fate Is the Hunter (16-Oct-1964) Herself
The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (Aug-1957)
The Revolt of Mamie Stover (11-May-1956)
Hot Blood (Mar-1956)
Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (29-Oct-1955)
The Tall Men (5-Oct-1955)
Foxfire (13-Jul-1955)
Underwater! (9-Feb-1955)
The French Line (8-Feb-1954)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (15-Jul-1953)
Road to Bali (19-Nov-1952)
Montana Belle (7-Nov-1952)
Son of Paleface (14-Jul-1952)
Macao (30-Apr-1952)
The Las Vegas Story (1-Jan-1952)
Double Dynamite (25-Dec-1951)
His Kind of Woman (29-Aug-1951)
The Paleface (24-Dec-1948)
Young Widow (4-Mar-1946)
The Outlaw (5-Feb-1943)

Appears on the cover of:
Modern Screen, Sep-1956, DETAILS: Jane Russell's Teenage Escapades

smart parking...

Parking a gamble for Halifax woman...

28 Feb 2011

A stop at the slot machines is helping a Halifax woman with her... parking problem.

For the past month, Suzanne Jordan has been gambling at Casino Nova Scotia, in downtown Halifax, so she can park 'for free'.

Jordan needs to gamble $10 a day to have her parking validated.

Sometimes, she even wins some money back.

"The way I'm looking at it is, I have to spend this money anyway, but with this experiment, I might get a discount," she told CBC News.

Jordan lives off the peninsula, far from a bus route.

After starting a job in downtown Halifax, she discovered the cheapest pay-by-day parking was $10.

Then she heard about the casino's deal.

So she parks her car, spends no more than $10 at the slot machines, then walks six minutes to work.

"If I'm gambling $10, I'm not spending any more than I would at a pay-by-day facility, but I have that added benefit — if you could call it that — every once in a while I might come out ahead," she said.

Jordan keeps track of her wins and losses.

Some days she wins back her $10, but on most others she loses it all.

She says she has spent about $80 on parking since starting her experiment on 04 Feb.

That's way cheaper than regular monthly parking, Paul MacKinnon, executive director of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission.

"The local range here can be anywhere between the low $150s, up over $200," he said.

Jordan is having fun with her experiment.

She says she's not a real gambler, and there's no danger of becoming addicted to the machines.

She's thinking about continuing her experiment for another six months.

"I'm not a casino person at all.

"I was actually kind of nervous about trying it, because I thought, are there risks here, where I might get carried away?" she said.

"I know my personality, and I'm just not that type of person, and I haven't been tempted yet."

like 'typhoid annie'?

Health officials track measles exposure at four U.S. airports...

By Lauren Keiper

– 2 hours 5 minutes ago

Related Blogs

• Air Travelers May Have Been Exposed …

  ABC News - Mon, 28 Feb, 2011 11:52 AM EST

CHICAGO (Reuters) - State, local, and federal health agencies are working to prevent an outbreak of measles, after a woman carrying the contagious infection traveled widely within the United States, federal officials said Sunday.

The woman contracted the airborne virus in the United Kingdom and arrived in the United States last week, passing through three U.S. airports on her way to New Mexico, where she is believed to reside, said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

"The work is going on to reach those individuals that were sitting in close proximity to the infected person," Skinner said.

"We need to reach those that were within five rows in front and five rows behind the infected person."

The woman, who some media reports have identified as a U.S. resident in her twenties, arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport on 22 February, from London.

She then flew to Denver International Airport and ended at Albuquerque International Airport in New Mexico, Skinner said.

The CDC is still looking to see if other infections have occurred in connection to this exposure.

"Measles is a highly contagious disease and for some people it can be pretty serious.

"We need reach out to those at risk," Skinner said.

In a separate incident, about 180 people have been vaccinated in a Boston office building where another infected woman traveling from France went to work while contagious with measles.

Those infected will experience a fever, runny nose, cough and develop a rash, according to the CDC's website.

Measles is a virus that kills nearly 200,000 people each year around the world, and a leading cause of death among children in the developing world.

Those who have had an active measles infection or who have been vaccinated against the measles have immunity to the disease.

In the U.S. and Canada, childhood vaccination reduced the number of measles cases to nearly zero in recent decades, but rates have begun to rise again recently, according to the National Institutes of Health.

More than 130 cases of measles were reported in 15 U.S. states in 2008, the most recent large outbreak in the U.S., according to the CDC.

rid...

tough tramp[oline]...

being...

barkies!

parent abuse! GRRRRRRRRRRRR

Senior made to live in cold garage: police say...

28 Feb 2011

A 68-year-old woman is in life-threatening condition in hospital, after her son and daughter-in-law allegedly moved her into an uninsulated garage at a northeast Toronto home, for much of the winter.

Toronto police said today officers responded to a call of elder abuse at a home near McCowan Road and Finch Avenue east, last Wednesday morning.

Officers found the woman "freezing to death" in a garage adjoining the home, said Cst. Tony Vella.

The woman, who was suffering from frostbite, was taken to hospital.

She was also not being given an appropriate amount of food, Vella said.

Police allege she had been living in the space since November.

They have determined she slept in a makeshift bed, and used a washroom in the garage.

The son and daughter-in-law were charged, Friday, with failing to provide the necessaries of life, and criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

He said the couple owned a two-story home with "several" bedrooms.

"Obviously, there was plenty of room for the woman ... to reside in, but for whatever reason — that's what we're still trying to determine — she was told to live in the garage," Vella said.

nuke war damage...

A Small Nuclear War Would Stall Global Warming...

By Natalie Wolchover

– 7 minutes ago

NASA computer models reveal what a small, regional nuclear war in one part of the world would do to the global climate and environment.

The results are grim.

If 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, each as powerful as 15,000 tons of TNT, were exchanged in a war between two developing-world nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan, models show the resulting fires would send five million metric tons of black carbon into the upper troposphere - the lowest-altitude layer of the atmosphere.

There, the soot would absorb solar heat, and rise like a hot-air balloon, reaching heights from which it would not easily settle back to the ground.

In the shade of this carbon shield, Earth would cool.

"The effects would lead to unprecedented climate change," said NASA physical scientist, Luke Oman, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last week.

Oman's and his colleagues' models show that for two to three years after a regional nuclear war, average global temperatures would drop by at least 2.25 degrees F (1.25 degrees C), and as much as 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F (3 to 4 degrees C) in the tropics, Europe, Asia, and Alaska.

The reversal of the global warming trend wouldn't be a good thing.

"Our results suggest agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in areas susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts," said Oman, who compared the likely post-war crop failures and famines to those that followed the 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora, in Indonesia.

Additionally, the models showed global precipitation would reduce by 10 percent globally for one to four years, and the ozone layer would thin, resulting in an influx of dangerous ultraviolet radiation.

These results confirm predictions made previously by researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

One hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs make up a mere 0.03 percent of the worldwide nuclear weapons arsenal.

• Small Nuclear War Would Cause Global Environmental Catastrophe
• How Weather Changed History
• Top 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming

dylan's muse dies... :(

Artist, Dylan muse, Suze Rotolo dies: Village Voice...

By Mike Collett-White,

editing by Paul Casciato

28 Feb 2011

• Enlarge Photo

  Author, Suze Rotolo, poses for a photograph in Greenwich Village
  

Related Blogs

• Artist, Bob Dylan muse Suze Rotolo dies

  MSNBC.com - 1 hour 31 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American artist, Suze Rotolo, most famous for her three-year relationship with singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, died, her friend and Village Voice critic, Jim Hoberman, said.

He wrote in his blog the 67-year-old died "after a long illness, at home in her Noho (New York) loft, and the arms of her husband of 40 years, Enzo Bartoccioli."

Rolling Stone magazine credited Rotolo with being the muse behind some of Dylan's early love songs, including "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right",

"Boots of Spanish Leather", and "Tomorrow Is a Long Time".

Her left-wing background also meant she played "a huge role in Dylan's political awakening", Rolling Stone added.

Rotolo was photographed with Dylan on the cover of his 1963 album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", and her 2009 memoirs were titled, "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties".

She was 17 years old when she began dating Dylan in 1961.

In the song, Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, he wrote: "I once loved a woman, a child I'm told/I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul."

After three years, the couple split, and Rotolo went on to marry Italian film editor, Bartoccioli whom she met on a trip to Italy in 1962.

They had a son named Luca.

She called her artwork "book art", or "a reinterpretation of the book as an art object, thereby altering the perception of what a book can be."

Rotolo was described as an intensely private person and for years refused to discuss Dylan in interviews.

She agreed to be interviewed in Martin Scorsese's 2005 documentary about the singer, "No Direction Home".

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

humongous!

Special report: The biggest company you never heard of...

25 February 2011

BAAR, SWITZERLAND (Reuters) - On Christmas Eve, 2008, in the depths of the global financial crisis, Katanga Mining accepted a lifeline it could not refuse.

The Toronto-listed company had lost 97 percent of its market value over the previous six months, and was running out of cash.

Needing to finance its mining projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo -- a country which has some of the world's richest reserves of copper and cobalt -- Katanga's executives had sounded the alarm and made a string of calls for help.

Global credit was drying up, the copper market had fallen 70 percent in just five months, and Congo -- still struggling to recover from a civil war that killed some five million people - was the last place an investor wanted to be.

One company, though, was interested.

Executives in the wealthy Swiss village of Baar, working in the wood-paneled conference rooms in Glencore International's white metallic headquarters, did their sums and were prepared to make a deal. Their terms were simple.

They Wanted Control

For about $500 million in a convertible loan and rights issue, Katanga agreed to issue more than a billion new shares and hand what would become a stake of 74 percent to Glencore, the world's biggest commodities trading group.

Today, with copper prices regularly setting records above $10,000 a tone, Katanga's stock market value is nearly $3.2 billion.

Deals like Katanga have helped turn Glencore into Switzerland's top-grossing company, and earned it comparisons with investment banking giant, Goldman Sachs.

In the world of physical trading -- buying, transporting and selling the basic stuff the world needs -- Glencore is omnipresent and controversial, just as Goldman is in banking.

Bigger than Nestle, Novartis and UBS in terms of revenues, Glencore's network of 2,000 traders, lawyers, accountants and other staff in 40 countries gives it real-time market and political intelligence on everything from oil markets in Central Asia to what sugar's doing in southeast Asia.

Young, arrogant, and often brilliant, its staff dominate their market.

The firm's top executives have forged alliances with Russian oligarchs and well-connected African mining magnates.

Like Goldman, Glencore uses its considerable heft to extract the best possible terms in every deal it does.

Some might add, Glencore also fits the description Rolling Stone magazine gave to Goldman: "A great vampire squid, wrapped around the face of humanity".

Some time in the coming weeks, Glencore is likely to announce its Initial Public Offering.

The firm currently operates as a privately held partnership, with staff sharing the profits according to a performance-based incentives scheme.

Sources familiar with Glencore's plans say it may list 20 percent of the company, possibly split between the London Stock Exchange and Hong Kong.

Such a listing could yield up to $16 billion and value the firm at as much as $60 billion.

Fueled by the lofty prices in many of the raw materials that Glencore buys, mines, ships and sells, the float would be among the biggest in London's history.

It could launch the firm onto the FTSE 100 index alongside resource giants such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch Shell, and from there into the pension funds and investment portfolios of millions of people who know virtually nothing about the secretive giant.

It would also represent a huge payday for investment banks -- perhaps $300 to $400 million, according to estimates by Freeman & Co., a mergers and acquisitions consultancy.

At the same time, it would force a company that for four decades has thrived outside the limelight to reveal some of its secrets.

Can it withstand becoming a household name?

Does it risk losing its prized traders?

Given Glencore's impeccable timing in deals, is an IPO a certain sign that we've reached the top of the commodities cycle?

"Their knowledge of the flow of commodities around the world is truly frightening," says an outsider who has worked closely with senior Glencore officials and who, like most people interviewed by Reuters for this report, declined to be identified speaking about the company for fear it could jeopardize sensitive business relationships.

Glencore executives declined to comment on the record, though the company did issue a statement about its current disclosure policy.

UNDER THE RADAR

Nestling in a lakeside village in Switzerland's low-tax canton of Zug, Glencore's starkly modern headquarters reflect a culture where trading aggression is coupled with public discretion.

In front of the building a simple concrete sculpture -- a sphere spinning atop a pyramid -- hints at Glencore's global reach.

Inside, the hushed hallways are adorned with modern art, the offices eerily quiet.

"Glencore is looked on as guys screaming into telephones, but it's more the dull old business of logistics," says a mining industry source, describing hours spent on the phone and organizing trade-related paperwork.

"Glencore trading floors are more akin to DHL offices than Goldman Sachs."

Yet within the commodities and mining sectors, Glencore is regarded with a mix of admiration and fear.

"It's an incredibly performance-based culture -- investment banking times three, probably," says a second outsider.

Glencore's client list is a roster of the world's largest firms including BP, Total, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhilips, Chevron, Vale, Rio Tinto, ArcelorMittal and Sony, as well as the national oil companies of Iran, Mexico, and Brazil, and public utilities in Spain, France, China, Taiwan, and Japan.

Physical commodities traders, like Glencore and its main rivals Vitol, Trafigura and Cargill, make their money finding customers for raw materials and selling them at a mark-up, using complex hedges to reduce the risk of bad weather, market swings, piracy or regime change.

Unlike Chicago traders, who scream out bets on the future prices of orange juice or pork bellies, physical commodity traders negotiate prices, and arrange shipments of cargo quietly, keeping their positions well hidden from others.

"It's modern financial engineering meshed with an old-fashioned commodity trading house," said John Kilduff, a partner at the hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York.

"It's amazing how this formula has flown under the radar for so long, as the profits and growth of these firms has been astounding."

Glencore's profit after tax topped $4.75 billion in 2008, not far off its best year ever, 2007, when profit ran to around $5.19 billion.

Even in the gruesome market of 2009, it raked in more than $2.72 billion.

Performance is rewarded on a scale that would turn even Wall Street green, with bonuses for star traders running into the tens of millions. Glencore's 500 partners and key staff are sitting on a book value of $20 billion.

The secret, says the second outsider, is the traders' incredible focus.

"I don't recall talking to any of these guys -- and I've spent a lot of time with them -- about anything other than business," he told Reuters.

"I have no idea what sort of family life these guys have.

"This is everything."

Employees are hired young and expected to make a career at the group, where they are known as either "thinkers" -- bright number-crunchers who design the company's complex financial deals -- or "soldiers", the hard-driven traders who fight to win the transactions.

The company's 10 division managers are aged 37 to 52 and remain largely anonymous outside Glencore's business circles.

"They're really bright guys, they are really focused, they play to win every day," says a mining executive in North America.

As the second outsider puts it: "They look like kids, really -- but they are incredibly impressive individuals."

Nobody more so than Chief Executive, Ivan Glasenberg, a lean publicity-shy operator whose sport is race-walking.

Glasenberg, 54, grew up in South Africa, and has been a champion walker for both South Africa and Israel.

Each morning he runs or swims, often with colleagues.

"The thing about Ivan, he can fly in and meet presidents of countries but he also talks to the guy on the trading floor," said Jim Cochrane, chief commercial officer and executive director of the Kazakh mining group ENRC.

After earning an MBA at the University of Southern California in 1983, Glasenberg was hired by Glencore as a coal trader in South Africa.

He does not suffer fools and has a fiery temper, but is also intensely charming and has a sharp memory for details about people, according to people who know him.

Despite being a billionaire in charge of thousands of staff, "this is a guy that picks up his own phone," the second outsider said.

THE MARC RICH LEGACY

Glencore likes to promote from within and build a kind of closed, self-sustaining network of senior traders, a culture encouraged by the company's founder Marc Rich.

Not that Glencore likes to mention Rich, a figure so notorious that he's not even mentioned in the official history on Glencore's website.

Rich escaped Nazi Europe as a seven year old, and grew up in the United States.

He launched the trading group which would become Glencore under his own name in 1974.

Rich was a sensation in commodity circles -- he is credited by some with the invention of the spot market for crude oil -- but by 1983 U.S. authorities had charged him with evading taxes, and selling oil to Iran during the 1979-81 hostage crisis, and Rich fled to Switzerland where he lived as a fugitive for 17 years.

Rich has always insisted he did nothing illegal, and he was officially pardoned by Bill Clinton, [if nothing illegal, why the pardon? GRRRRR] on the President's last day in the White House in January 2001.

Among those who lobbied on his behalf were Israeli political heavyweights Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres, according to "The King of Oil", a book about Rich by journalist Daniel Ammann.

In the book -- written after interviews with Rich - the trader admits supplying oil to apartheid South Africa, bribing officials in countries such as Nigeria and assisting Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.

In the time of the Shah, Rich says, he engineered a deal for a secret pipeline through which Iran could pump oil to Israel.

"Rich was faster and more aggressive than his competitors," Ammann told Reuters last year.

"He was able to recognize trends and seize opportunities before other traders.

"He went where others feared to tread -- geographically and morally.

"Trust and loyalty are very important to him.

"In many deals he wouldn't rely on contracts but on the idea that 'my word is my bond'."

Living as a fugitive put a strain on Rich, but according to Ammann, it was a business blunder in 1992 that paved the way for the power struggle that ended his connection with the trading house he had founded.

Rich spent more than $1 billion trying in vain to control the zinc market.

His bid failed and with $172 million in losses, the firm was close to collapse.

Rich was ultimately forced to sell out to his management and hand over control to a former metals trader, the German, Willy Strothotte.

The forced sale, in 1994, netted Rich a reported $480 million.

He picked up an extra $120 million when the firm was revalued and he learned its new owners had broken their side of the deal by secretly selling on around 20 percent of the stock.

Fifteen years ago, then, his majority stake in the company translated into about $600 million.

Today the company is worth $60 billion, according to Liberum Capital.

The company was reborn under Strothotte as Glencore.

It has never said where the name comes from but some have speculated it might be an amalgam of the first two letters of the words "global, energy, commodities and resources".

The firm continued to trade, make money -- and occasionally become implicated in controversial dealings.

It was one of dozens accused of paying kickbacks to Iraq in 2005 by a commission that probed the United Nation's Oil for Food program.

While Dutch-based rival Vitol was fined $17.5 million after pleading guilty, a preliminary judicial investigation into Glencore by Switzerland's attorney-general found a "lack of culpable information".

Glencore maintained, if any payments were made by agents, it did not know or approve of them.

The impulse to seize opportunities that others don't see, or decide to avoid, lives on.

Could a flotation shed unwanted light on the business methods that have so far stayed under the radar?

A SIGNATURE DEAL

Glencore's Christmas swoop on Katanga Mining was something of a signature deal for the firm, proof it can use its role as the trading world's biggest middleman to its advantage.

The company is always on the prowl for opportunities to sell producers' output.

It also likes to set things up so that when markets tumble, it's ready to buy those same producers outright.

Katanga had just the right combination of elements: relationships built over time, a project in need of funds and an exclusive marketing agreement, and the scope for equity participation.

The losers, in this case, would be the company's minority shareholders, most of whose holdings were diluted by over 800 percent.

The acquisition was the culmination of 18 months of deal-making in Congo, where the first freely elected government in four decades had embarked on a sweeping review of mining licenses granted by previous regimes.

Workers in Congo's southeast copper belt had battled for two years to rebuild what had once been Africa's richest copper mines, but were now littered with rusted hulks.

In 2007, when markets had been riding high on cheap credit and commodity prices boomed, Katanga had been the subject of a $1.4 billion hostile takeover bid by a company led by former England cricketer, Phil Edmonds.

It had the potential to become the world's biggest producer of cobalt -- used in batteries, jet turbines and electroplating.

As the credit crisis began to bite, metals prices tanked and risky companies around the world found it ever tougher to raise finance.

Where others saw risks, though, Glencore scented opportunity. In June 2007, Glencore and partner Dan Gertler, an Israeli mining magnate, paid 300 million pounds for a quarter-stake in mining company Nikanor, which was seeking to revive derelict copper mines next to Katanga's.

That deal gave Glencore exclusive rights to sell all Nikanor's output -- an "offtake" agreement.

Offtake deals are common in risky projects like mining, where banks are reluctant to lend because of uncertainty about how they will be repaid.

An offtake ensures a miner has customers before it starts digging, and provides a guaranteed source of raw materials to a trader, which can also act as security if the trader provides finance.

By investing in Nikanor, Glencore consolidated a powerful partnership: half of the stake it bought was on behalf of a trust linked to Gertler, an old Congo hand who industry sources say has close ties to government officials including President Joseph Kabila.

Katanga's mines were just months from producing copper and cobalt again.

The mining company had spent the summer of 2007 fighting off a hostile bid from Central African Mining and Exploration Company (CAMEC), headed by Edmonds, the former cricketer.

After searching fruitlessly for a "white knight" -- a big miner willing to pay top dollar to fend off CAMEC -- Katanga turned to Glencore.

The trading company was ready to oblige.

In October it agreed to a 10-year offtake deal and a loan of $150 million that could be converted into Katanga shares.

Just one month later, Katanga and its neighbor Nikanor merged, giving Glencore 8.5 percent of the enlarged firm.

In June 2008, with the global financial crisis deepening, Katanga Chief Executive Art Ditto resigned for "personal reasons".

Glencore, exercising a clause from its earlier Nikanor purchase, appointed a caretaker chief executive.

It was then that Katanga embarked on its increasingly desperate search for new funds.

Issuing a statement that said it was "in serious financial difficulty", Katanga struck its deal with Glencore, which added $100 million plus outstanding interest to its earlier loan, to give a total of $265 million.

The Swiss trading firm subsequently sold on about a quarter of the loans to RP Capital, a hedge fund also linked to Gertler.

Then in a linked deal that closed in July 2009, Katanga's debt burden was slashed by swapping the loans for shares alongside a $250 million rights issue.

Most of that equity, too, went to Glencore.

Now Glencore had a mining complex with the potential to be Africa's biggest copper producer.

To approve the arrangement, Katanga had used Toronto stock exchange rules that exempt companies in financial distress from a shareholder vote.

That left most of Katanga's minority shareholdings facing a virtual wipeout from the heavy dilution, a measure they voted through in a subsequent shareholders' meeting.

"Everybody got taken down.

"There were a couple of savvy guys who got out early, but most people got taken for a ride.

"It's a sad story," said analyst Cailey Barker with Numis Securities in London.

Barker says Katanga had little choice but to accept Glencore's terms since it was probably a couple of weeks away from bankruptcy.

"The only person that was left was Glencore," Barker said.

"They said we'll get involved, but we'll take our pound of flesh."

This sort of deal -- with the right to convert debt into equity in the tail -- has proved pivotal to Glencore as it has built up its mining assets.

Analyst Michael Rawlinson at Liberum Capital, who was previously an investment banker for JP Morgan Cazenove and has worked on deals in Congo for Nikanor, says the fact Glencore was on the spot is key.

"If you're someone like Rio Tinto or Anglo American, often in these early-stage places you have no reason to be there, you haven't got any assets there," he says.

"If you're Glencore, you source concentrate and product from these places, you have trading relationships.

"They're on the ground first, so they see these opportunities first."

Glencore is constantly cutting similar deals, some of the biggest of which it already has in place with its Swiss neighbor and close affiliate Xstrata.

In the space of two weeks recently, Glencore agreed offtake deals with London Mining for its Sierra Leone iron ore production and Mwana Africa for nickel output in Zimbabwe.

The deals often come with, or are followed by, a financing arrangement: U.S. PolyMet Mining Corp, for instance sealed an arrangement in January that involves Glencore buying shares with the right to convert the company's debt into equity.

A NECESSARY EVIL

People familiar with the IPO planning say Glencore's top managers have yet to give a final sign-off to a float, though Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse are all working on the potential transaction.

The earliest possible date for a launch would be April, after first-quarter results are compiled.

It's inevitable the timing will attract attention.

"It's almost guaranteed that when they decide to list, everyone will say they're calling the top of metals market," says analyst Tom Gidley-Kitchin at Charles Stanley in London.

"Like Goldman, people will ask, 'Why are they selling now?'"

As one mining industry source puts it: "We all know Glencore never leaves any crumbs on the table."

Like Goldman, which floated in 1999, Glencore wants the permanent capital that comes with a listing.

In a private partnership, payouts to departing partners shrink the capital base, but public companies' equity remains intact even if the shares change hands at dizzying speeds.

Raising public capital would help Glencore pay out any retiring employees, whose compensation is now set to be disbursed over five years from the firm's $20 billion book value.

New equity would also reassure the big credit rating agencies, which rate Glencore debt a notch or two above "junk". The more flexible capital structure that comes with a listing should also allow it to make really meaty acquisitions.

It has long been Glasenberg's ambition to merge Glencore with London-listed Xstrata, industry sources say.

The companies are already so close the Financial Times' influential Lex column has dubbed them the "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" of their industry.

Glencore owns 34.4 percent of Xstrata stock, they share a chairman, Willy Strothoffe; and Xstrata's assets could, in a stroke, fill the gaps in Glencore's portfolio to create a mining and trading powerhouse.

When speculation surfaced last year around a Glencore-Xstrata merger, Xstrata shareholders opposed it, arguing a valuation for Glencore should be set by market forces, not agreed to behind closed doors.

"It's very difficult to value Glencore because you just don't know enough about it.

"That's why most investors would prefer an IPO -- which will give you more visibility," one of the top 10 biggest institutional investors in Xstrata told Reuters last year.

Perhaps to force things to a head, Glencore in December 2009 set the clock ticking on a change in its set-up by issuing a convertible bond.

A year after picking up Katanga, the firm sold $2.2 billion in bonds that can convert into shares to a select band of investors, including energy-focused private equity firm First Reserve, Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, China's Zijin Mining Group, financier Nathaniel Rothschild plus U.S. fund managers BlackRock, Fidelity and Capital Group.

The convertibles pay a staid interest rate of 5 percent a year until they mature in 2014, but carry extra incentives for Glencore to transform itself.

If by December 2012 Glencore has not floated or merged with another company, bondholders can sell their bonds back to Glencore at a price which would give investors an annualized return of 20 percent -- in line with the sort of returns you might expect from equities.

This payment could take place from mid-2013, though Glencore will not be penalized if markets turn lower and an IPO is not attractive.

ROBUST DIALOG

Industry sources expect merger talks to begin about six months after the IPO.

If Glencore and Xstrata do not combine forces, the two could end up competing for mining assets.

That would heighten the increasingly tense relationship between their brash, strong-willed South African CEOs: Glasenberg and Xstrata's Mick Davis.

"You would expect any dialogue between them to be very robust - both of them have black-and-white views on value," says an industry source who knows both men.

Beyond Xstrata, Glencore's ambitions could soar.

As a blue-chip name it would be able to compete against BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto for some of the biggest deals around.

One recent rumor, according to Liberum's Rawlinson, is that Glencore might make a play for Kazakh miner ENRC, a London-listed FTSE-100 company with a market value of $21 billion -- too big to swallow now, but feasible once Glencore could issue shares as payment.

Other majors would likely regard ENRC, which focuses on emerging nations including Congo, as too risky.

"I don't think any other firm would dare look at them, but Glencore would," said Rawlinson.

"They know how to deal with Congo, they know how to deal with oligarchs and they already operate in Kazakhstan.

"So, there's a perfect example of how they'll do stuff that other people won't."

HANDCUFFS AND RISKS

A listing would also bring a host of issues to grapple with.

For one thing, Glencore will have to reassure investors that its prized traders won't just cash in and take off.

People in the industry point out that traders who have accumulated large fortunes without any public attention may prefer to keep working in a private environment -- perhaps at a competitor, or a trading house they set up themselves.

"I think there could be serious concerns about what happens when the very senior management receives shares," says Jonathan Pitkanen, head of investment grade research at fund manager Threadneedle.

"I would expect key individuals would have to enter into some form of golden handcuffs so they are tied to that business for an extended period of time."

There are other risks in exposing a secretive, agile business to the scrutiny of public ownership.

Glasenberg can be affable to those he knows, but he cherishes his privacy and dreads the day an IPO will force him to step into the limelight, industry sources say.

The firm would also need to appoint independent directors to its board, and would likely search for a chairman with top credentials in financial circles but no existing links to Glencore.

In that light, the company's most significant departure could be Strothotte, 66, who joined in 1977 and ran the metals and minerals division before replacing Rich as CEO in 1993.

"Clearly there's going to be a sea-change once they are publicly listed, given the requirements of listings first of all, plus the complexity that you have within Glencore as well," says Pitkanen.

A big part of that would be the requirement to publicly share information Glencore now gives only to its banks and bond investors.

Currently, "Glencore is a private company and our communications policy with the media reflects this status," the firm said in a statement to Reuters.

"Full financial disclosure is made to all of the company's shareholders, bondholders, banks, rating agencies and other key stakeholders.

Glencore publicly discloses aspects of the company's financial performance on a six monthly basis."

Could the glare of a public listing be less dramatic than some fear?

Resource groups such as BP, which houses one of the world's biggest oil trading operations, have managed to juggle public life without revealing too much about exactly what their trading arms are up to.

Gidley-Kitchen says, like many banks, a listed Glencore should also manage to keep most details of its trader compensation under the radar: "Goldmans and Barclays Capital managed to avoid revealing absolutely everything they are doing and I would think Glencore would be able to do the same."

ACTIVIST RISKS

But that wouldn't stop activists from digging.

Gavin Hayman, director of campaigns at activist group Global Witness, says information disclosed as a result of an IPO could help environmental and corruption campaigners keep track of what Glencore is doing in far-flung corners of the globe.

"Trading companies like Glencore are notoriously opaque, even by the standards of an opaque sector like natural resources.

"They deal with a part of the chain particularly prone to mismanagement, corruption and diversion," Hayman says.

"Hopefully, listing will bring more transparency and allow greater scrutiny of its operations, which is good news."

In one example, officials in Zambia believe pollution from Glencore's Mopani mines is causing acid rain and health problems in an area where 5 million people live.

The Environmental Council of Zambia has said it is looking into "a number of complaints" regarding pollution from Mopani, but has not penalized the company for any wrongdoing.

"Smelting operations release sulphur dioxide, and other pollutants, which have severely affected residents with various skin, eye and respiratory diseases.

"Because of mining waste Mufulira has acidic and poisoned water," Mufulira town clerk Charles Mwandila told Reuters in an interview.

Mopani says it has already significantly improved environmental performance since privatization, and is following a clear and agreed plan to make further progress.

"Investment to improve environmental performance has already amounted to some $300 million with another $150 million of investment planned."

Glencore's huge coal operation in Colombia, Prodeco, was fined a total of nearly $700,000 in 2009 for several environmental violations, including waste disposal without a permit and producing coal without an environmental management plan.

Xstrata had to pay the fines during its temporary ownership in 2009, but said the violations occurred before it took over.

Prodeco said the violations themselves took place years earlier, before it acquired and ran the network of mines.

Xstrata, like many major mining groups, has experience in meeting demands for tough green standards and says it put in place an environmental management system at Prodeco before handing the mines back to Glencore in early 2010.

In Ecuador, the current government has tried to reduce the role played by middle men such as Glencore with state oil company Petroecuador, says Fernando Villavicencio, a Quito-based oil sector analyst.

"Glencore has not been transparent in its business in Ecuador," Villavicencio said.

The company "had been a favorite of almost all the democratic governments of Ecuador.

"It won almost all the contracts it competed for.

"They signed contracts with apparently low differentials, only to renegotiate the contracts in the middle of their terms, arguing that their costs had risen.

"Petroecuador usually went along with it."

Tenders such as those in Ecuador are public and subject to extensions and negotiations which are expressly written into contracts, according to Glencore.

WHO WON'T BUY?

To ready it for public life, Glencore is preparing a sustainability report to bring it into line with mining majors and using Finsbury, a public relations firm whose clients include Royal Dutch Shell and Rio Tinto, for strategic advice.

Former Shell spokesman Simon Buerk has been taken on to reinforce in-house communications.

No matter what Glencore does, some investors will steer clear.

Mike Fox, head of UK equities at Co-Operative Asset Management and the manager of two sustainable funds, says ethical investing can embrace the natural resources sector -- his funds have stakes in BG Group, the natural gas producer, and Lonmin, whose platinum is used in catalytic converters - but it would be difficult to hold shares in many oil and mining companies: "Sustainable investors will always have an issue with the very fundamental nature of these businesses," he says.

Glencore's size alone, though, would mean scores of pension funds that track the FTSE index buy the stock.

It would also pick up automatic demand from tracker funds that mimic the index or the wider FTSE All-Share.

A Swiss banker with knowledge of the plans puts it simply: "All the funds will have to participate."

Glencore's arrival in the FTSE would intensify the London exchange's shift into natural resource firms.

Fox says the increasing domination by a single sector is a "big headache" for smaller British investors who want a diversified portfolio.

"It concerns me as much from a financial perspective as a moral perspective," he says.

"Customers will not expect that when they invest in a mainstream UK growth fund a third of their money will end up in commodities."

While commodities remain hot, though, that's unlikely to change.

As Glencore ponders a float, Katanga Mining is reaping the benefit of the surging markets and its wealthy, powerful owner.

After losing $108 million in 2009, it posted an annual profit of $265 million in 2010.

(Additional reporting by Kylie MacLellan and Karen Norton in London, Jason Rhodes and Martin de Sa'Pinto in Zurich, David Sheppard and Joe Giannone in New York, Santiago Silva in Quito and Chris Mfula in Lusaka; Editing by Sara Ledwith and Simon Robinson)

crash...

quake hits arkansas!

Rare earthquake hits Arkansas...

By Nicolas Asfouri

– 1 hour 6 minutes ago

A rare earthquake measuring 4.7 hit the southern US state of Arkansas late Sunday, the US government reported.

The epicenter of the tremor, which occurred at 11:00 pm local time (0500 GMT Monday), was located six kilometers (four miles) northeast from the town of Greenbrier, according to the US Geological Survey.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage.

KARK 4 TV said callers to its newsroom from the Greenbrier area reported pictures and decorations being shaken off the walls.

The reading was based on the open-ended Moment Magnitude scale, now used by US seismologists, which measures the area of the fault that ruptured and the total energy released.

perverts...

tymz...

please!

foller yer bliss!

mascot dorks...

27 Feb '11

Meet the dorky, controversial mascots for the 2014 Olympics...

By Chris Chase

A snowboarding leopard, a figure-skating bunny and a polar bear wearing a scarf will be the three mascots for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.

Though those are some of the safest choices imaginable, the decision has led to charges of plagiarism, corruptibility... and vote-rigging.

The winners were announced on a live television show, broadcast throughout the country.

Viewers cast over one million votes for the nine candidates, and officials selected the top-three to serve as Sochi's official mascots.

The snow leopard came out on top with 28 percent of the vote.

The announcement was not without some controversy.

Ded Morez, the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus, had led in early polling but was pulled from the ballot at the last second when Russian organizers feared that their country's folk hero would become official property of the IOC.

That decision left room for the following three winners, which are said to "encapsulate much of Russia's self-image."

Snow leopard

The snow leopard was the favorite of Vladimir Putin's.

The Russian prime minister favored the cat because he is "big, strong, fast... and beautiful".

Not coincidentally, the mascot's popularity rose once Putin threw support its way.

Its self-confidence swagger is "not unlike Putin's own projection of machismo", and the fact the leopard enjoys the prime minister's favored martial arts makes some think the character was based on Putin himself.

Prominent Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told a Moscow radio station that he believes there may have been some voting irregularities in the telephone voting system that led to the leopard's victory.

The insinuation is, Putin wanted the leopard so the leopard, somehow, made it to the top of the voting.

That's silly.

A rigged vote in Russia?

Preposterous!

Bunny

The bunny will be wear ice skates in a nod to Russia's once-great figure skating program.

No word on whether the bunny was in cahoots with the French judge... to help with the victory.

Polar bear

The Associated Press says the final mascot looks "dorky".

Whether that's true or not (and it totally is), the creator of Russia's last Olympic mascot says it's plagiarism.

Viktor Chizhikov, the man who designed the mascot to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, believes this bear is a direct copy of his.

"This polar bear, everything, is taken from mine, the eyes, nose, mouth, smile," he told a Moscow radio station.

"I don't like being robbed."

You be the judge:

Yes, both bears have eyes, noses, mouths and smiles, as do all cartoon bears.

There's only so many ways to draw an anthropomorphic cartoon bear.

You don't see Winnie the Pooh with snarling fangs, you know?

One is white and has a scarf.

The other is brown and wearing an Olympic ring belt buckle.

Other than the fact they're both from the ursus genus, there aren't many similarities.

The Sochi mascot may be unoriginal, uninspired, and bland, but it's not a copy.

Olympic officials are in a no-win situation when it comes to choosing mascots.

If they go for something different, they're ripped for making nonsensical choices that have nothing to do with sports or the host city.

If they play it safe, the officials get lambasted for not having any vision.

Mascots exist for merchandising and it's easy to image a child snuggling up with a Sochi polar bear or playing a video game with the snowboarding lion.

Sochi's choices aren't groundbreaking but they're not awful and they'll serve the purpose for which they were created.

Best of all, they won't terrify children... like these guys.

texas tragedy! :(

5-year-old girl dies, 110,000 acres burned, nearly 70 homes destroyed, in West Texas wildfires...

by Betsy Blaney

– 18 minutes ago

• Enlarge Photo

  A fence post continues to burn 27 Feb. 2011 along Willow Creek in Amarillo
  

AMARILLO, Texas - Wildfires sweeping across West Texas destroyed 68 homes, forced evacuations, and closed an interstate after heavy smoke caused an accident that killed a 5-year-old girl, yesterday.

The fires blackened almost 88,000 acres (35,000 hectares) and destroyed homes from the Texas Panhandle to the southern plains, Texas Forest Service spokesman, Lewis, Kearney said.

Heavy smoke from a wildfire near Midland, about 330 miles (530 kilometres) west of Dallas, was blamed for an eight-vehicle accident along Interstate 20 that killed the 5-year-old girl.

The roadway was shrouded in smoke when a tractor-trailer hit the pickup truck she was riding in, said Trooper John Barton of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

A man and another child were injured.

One firefighter suffered second-degree burns fighting a blaze near Colorado City, but no other injuries were immediately reported.

The largest fire burned about 30,000 acres (12,000 hectares) in the Panhandle northeast of Amarillo, destroying 27 homes and damaging seven others, Kearney said.

A local kennel also was burned, but it was unclear how many animals died, said local emergency management spokeswoman, Donna Makkhavane.

Gusty winds fueling the wildfires weren't expected to weaken overnight, said Mark Stanford, chief of fire operations for the Texas Forest Service.

He said conditions were "very severe".

Aircraft that help gather information about the scattered fires couldn't get into the air because of the winds.

Humidity rose to about 25 per cent in the Amarillo area by nightfall, which could offer some relief to firefighters, Stanford said.

___

Associated Press writer Terry Wallace contributed to this report from Dallas.