WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve is reviewing the ethics policies that govern the financial holdings and activities of its senior officials in the wake of recent disclosures that two regional Fed presidents engaged in extensive trading last year. Robert Kaplan, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, in 2020 traded millions of dollars of stock in companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Google, while Eric Rosengren, president of the Boston Fed, traded in real estate investment trusts, according to financial disclosure forms. Both pledged last week to divest those holdings after they were reported by The Wall Street Journal. Comments made by Fed presidents can move markets and they have a hand in creating U.S. monetary policy. Such high placed officials often have exclusive access to discussions about upcoming policy shifts that could benefit or be detrimental to some economic sectors, though they are prohibited from trading on that knowledge and are unable to trade in the … [Read more...]

NEW YORK (AP) — Colleen Hoover's years as a published — and self-published — novelist have been one long, pleasant surprise. The Texas-based writer broke through in 2012 when, through an Amazon.com program, she released “Slammed," which became a showcase for how an author in the Internet age can succeed through luck and worth of mouth. Bloggers and social media helped the book grow a following online, and within months “Slammed” was on The New York Times e-book fiction list, despite having no organized publicity. By the end of the year, Hoover had self-published a best-selling sequel, “Point of No Retreat,” and signed a deal with the Simon & Schuster imprint Atria. She has since been a prolific and reliably popular romance (sometimes called “New Adult”) and thriller writer, with more than 20 novels and novellas, including ”Maybe Someday," “Confess" and the upcoming “Reminders of Him." Her work has been in especially high demand this year — but not because of a new book, movie … [Read more...]

In its opening moments, “The Mad Women’s Ball” slowly focuses on the nape of a woman’s neck and the swirl of her hair pinned in a bun. It is an image that may recall Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” Here it confirms that the director Mélanie Laurent’s drama — set in Paris in the late 1800s and based on a novel by Victoria Mas — will indeed touch on horrors. The daughter of a status-driven father, Eugénie (Lou de Laâge) appears haunted by spirits. Talking with her grandmother or readying for bed, she’ll begin rapidly breathing, trembling, staring at something that no one else sees. She also tends to speak her mind. To the heartbreak of her loving brother (Benjamin Voisin), Eugénie is committed by her father to the asylum where a diagnosis of hysteria has become all the rage. The soiree of the title was an actual event thrown at the Salpêtrière hospital during the tenure of the famed neurologist, Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot. Depicted here, the gathering is as grotesque as one might … [Read more...]