Category: today’s top story

“Same-day delivery has long been the holy grail of Internet retailers, something that dozens of startups have tried and failed to accomplish. (Remember Kozmo.com?) But Amazon is investing billions to make next-day delivery standard, and same-day delivery an option for lots of customers. If it can pull that off, the company will permanently alter how we shop. To put it more bluntly: Physical retailers will be hosed.”

The eight-time Oscar nominee, who turns 80 next month, said in a statement, “It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. The heart for it has gone out of me; it won’t come back.”

“This is no nip-and-tuck job, no simple face-lift. The Rodin and its surrounding gardens have been transported back in time to 1929, thanks to a $9.1 million reincarnation of the original vision of architect Paul Crét and landscape architect Jacques Gréber.”

The writer’s brother says that García Márquez’s decline is partly due to cancer treatment: “Chemotherapy saved his life, but it also destroyed many neurons, many defences and cells, and accelerated the process. But he still has the humour, joy and enthusiasm that he has always had.”

“Strictly speaking, overcrowding is not the reason why the Louvre is building a $200 million facility in the Pas-de-Calais region of France. It has more to do with the accessibility of the town of Lens – which can be reached by train in two to three hours from Paris, London and Brussels – and a deep need for urban renewal in an old coal industry center that lost its last mine in 1986, pushing unemployment to 15 percent.”

Kimberly Camp, who is writing a book on the museum’s controversial move, posted on her blog, “Bankruptcy was not the reason we filed the petition to move the Foundation to the city. At the time the petition was filed, the Barnes Foundation had a cash surplus and we had no debt – none. But, saying so made the rescue so much more gallant.”

“Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes have destroyed the centuries-old mausoleums of saints in the Unesco-listed city of Timbuktu in front of shocked locals, witnesses say. The attack by the al-Qaida-linked Ansar Dine group came days after Unesco placed Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger.”

Someone sent an email to the Venus Over Manhattan gallery, from which the painting was stolen June 19, with an express mail tracking number. “Postal inspectors intercepted it at Kennedy International Airport before it was sorted for delivery.”

“The Museum of Contemporary Art has fired chief curator Paul Schimmel, a respected art world figure who was at odds with board members and director Jeffrey Deitch over the direction of the museum.”

“Set in Stone,” a new study out of the University of Chicago, ” finds that many institutions recently expanded their buildings in part because everyone else had. Other reasons that organizations will build too much are overambitious trustees, self-interested architects and unrealistic financial projections.”