Reshaping Brazil’s Retail Scene, Inspired by Vegas and Vanderbilt

BRUSQUE, Brazil — As Brazil’s leaders consider whether consumption should be an antidote for a sluggish economy, a department store tycoon is racing ahead with his answer, taking unfettered American-style consumerism to a gaudy new level. Proclaiming the gambling mecca Las Vegas as his ideal city, the tycoon, Luciano Hang, has been opening department stores this year at a pace of one every 15 days, from southern Brazil to the Amazon in the northwest. Each cavernous new structure is an homage to American capitalism, with columns intended to evoke the White House and giant replicas of the Statue of Liberty, some more than 100 feet high, stationed at its entrance. To see the full article, subscribe here.

U.S. and Russia Reach Deal to Destroy Syria’s Chemical Arms

GENEVA — The United States and Russia reached a sweeping agreement on Saturday that called for Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons to be removed or destroyed by the middle of 2014 and indefinitely stalled the prospect of American airstrikes. The joint announcement, on the third day of intensive talks in Geneva, also set the stage for one of the most challenging undertakings in the history of arms control.

The bystanders, two women from Manhattan, happened to be walking in the area when the officers opened fire, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference at Bellevue Hospital Center early Sunday morning. A bullet hit one woman, 54, in the leg, fracturing her tibia and fibula, Mr. Kelly said. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where she was expected to undergo surgery. The other woman, 35, suffered a graze wound to the buttock. She was treated at Roosevelt Hospital and was in the process of being released, Mr. Kelly said. Both women were shot on the northeast corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. Neither woman was identified. The agitated man, who witnesses and officials said had been darting in front of cars on 42nd Street at Eighth Avenue, was in police custody at Bellevue, Mr. Kelly said. The man’s identity was not immediately disclosed. The man is 35 years old and from New York, Mr. Kelly said. Witnesses said the man was hit by several cars. The extent of his injuries was unclear. In a video of the episode captured by a witness on his cellphone, the man is seen running erratically around the intersection as officers try to corral him out of the street. “He was just wandering, running away from the cop,” said a witness who described himself as a retired police officer and did not want to be named. “He tried to run and ended up getting hit by three different cars.” But at the news conference early Sunday, Mr. Kelly, citing the preliminary investigation, said the man had not been hit by any cars. “It appeared that he wanted to be struck by cars,” Mr. Kelly said. At one point, the man put his hand in his pants, then withdrew it and mimicked shooting at the officers, the commissioner said, though the man's hand was empty. That is when the two officers opened fire. One officer fired one shot, and the other fired two shots, Mr. Kelly said. Neither officer's bullets hit the man. He was later surrounded by officers, shocked with a Taser and subdued, Mr. Kelly said. The police later wheeled the man into an ambulance. He was conscious and sitting upright, dressed in a green sweater. He appeared to be handcuffed. He only had a wallet in his possession, Mr. Kelly said. One of the officers involved had been with the Police Department for one and a half years, Mr. Kelly said. The other had three years of experience. Neither had been involved in any shootings before Saturday, he said.

Not to Be, Um, Trifled With, Texas Guards Its Slogans

The trademarked slogan started out nearly 30 years ago as the clarion call of a campaign to reduce highway littering. But over the years it has become something far bigger: an identity statement, a declaration of Texas swagger — from barrooms to sports arenas to political conventions. And Texas is touchy about who uses it and how. In July, a Montana company that makes Western-themed accessories stopped selling a “Don’t Mess With Texas” belt buckle after the Texas Department of Transportation, which owns the federally registered trademark on the phrase, threatened legal action and told the firm to ship the offending merchandise to Austin. The author of a romance novel titled “Don’t Mess With Texas,” “a thrill ride of hunky heroes, hilarious high jinks and heartwarming romance,” found herself in a legal battle with the state after it filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Austin alleging trademark infringement. Days before the book was to be released, the state’s lawyers asked a judge to prohibit it from being sold while the case was under way. The judge denied the state’s request, but Texas ultimately won a dispute that dragged for nearly nine months. The suit was settled last year, and the author, Christie Craig, agreed to pay Texas $2,500 and change the book’s title. “Don’t Mess With Texas” became “Only in Texas.” In a state whose governor likes to point out that Houston was the first word spoken on the moon, it should come as no surprise that Texas not only invented its most famous catchphrase, but that it also fights to ensure that catchphrase is used to the state’s satisfaction. Texas officials say they want to prevent “Don’t Mess With Texas” from losing its original antilittering message and protect the authorized use of its trademark. But others say that the state has been overzealous and that it is seeking to control a phrase so popular and well worn that people now associate it more with tough Texans than with litterbugs.

The Two Wills of the Heiress Huguette Clark

With flawless etiquette, every year from 1977 to 2010, Katherine Hall Friedman sent a Christmas card to the home of her distant relative Huguette Clark, a copper heiress whose father was once one of the richest men in America. She never got an answer.

For many of those years, Mrs. Friedman, a branding consultant known professionally as Carla Hall, lived just across Manhattan, an easy taxi ride or a meandering walk through Central Park from Mrs. Clark, who died in 2011 at 104, but she never tried to meet her. Why not stop by? “I was brought up to believe that she was a private person,” Mrs. Friedman said recently in a sworn deposition, “and that everybody in the family respected her privacy. I never expected to meet with her.” Now, that very privacy has been exploded by a court case brought by 20 of Mrs. Clark’s grandnephews, grandnieces, great-grandnephews and great-grandnieces, including Mrs. Friedman. They are challenging the disposition of her estate, which has been estimated at more than $300 million. In 2005, Mrs. Clark executed two wills, just six weeks apart. The first, signed in March, would have given virtually all of her fortune, including possession of her Santa Barbara, Calif., oceanfront estate, Bellosguardo, to members of her family. The second, signed in April, cut them out with a nasty Dickensian flourish: “I intentionally make no provision in this my Last Will Testament for any members of my family, whether on my paternal or maternal side, having had minimal contacts with them over the years. The persons and institution named herein as beneficiaries of my Estate are the true objects of my bounty.” In that version, the lion’

The Annual Republican Crisis

The fiscal year is about to end, so the annual awakening of Tea Party Republicans in the House and Senate is about to begin. Most of the time they sit around and do virtually nothing but gripe (they have made the current Congress the least productive ever), but a new fiscal year finally gives them a chance to govern the only way they know how: by creating a false crisis in order to tear down a piece of the government.

This year, as has been the case so often in the past, their target is President Obama’s health care reform law. If it is not repealed or defunded or delayed or otherwise left bleeding in the public square, they will not pass a spending bill needed to keep the government open past Sept. 30. And if that doesn’t cripple the health law (which it won’t), they will resort to the far more serious threat of default, refusing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, no matter the catastrophe that would cause. It has been clear for months that House Republicans are not going to agree to the Senate’s reasonable spending plan for 2014, one that replaces the damage of the sequester with a mix of revenue increases and less-harmful cuts. The House budget, in fact, calls for cuts to below the sequester level. The best that can be hoped for is a stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution, to keep the government running through mid-December at this year’s inadequate level. But on Wednesday, with time running out, House leaders announced they couldn’t manage even something as simple as that. Speaker John Boehner and Eric Cantor, the majority leader, had come up with a far-fetched scheme to placate the radicals in their coalition by attaching a provision to the spending resolution that would force the Senate to vote on defunding health reform. The Senate would, of course, instantly reject the health care language, but it could then approve the spending measure to prevent a shutdown.

The Payday at Twitter Many Were Waiting For

He had already signed up a number of well-known Silicon Valley financiers, but he also dashed off a note to his old friend Dick Costolo, who had just sold his company to Google, asking if he would like to put in $25,000 or $100,000.

“I’m on the $25k bus,” Mr. Costolo replied three minutes after receiving the e-mail. “Thanks Ev, this will be a lot of fun.”

Mr. Costolo, who is now the chief executive of Twitter, is one of a handful of individual investors who stand to reap the rewards of a potential initial public offering of stock in the social network. The company said on Thursday that it had filed early paperwork with regulators to conduct such a sale, which will probably occur late this year or early next year.

Although many details are still unclear — most of all the offering price of Twitter’s stock — Mr. Costolo’s initial investment is probably worth more than $10 million, with additional shares he has received as an executive worth many millions more, according to people knowledgeable about the company’s finances.

Twitter declined to comment on its finances, citing the confidential nature of its I.P.O. filings at this stage in the process.

Mr. Williams, who provided crucial early financing forTwitter and remains its largest shareholder, will almost certainly become a billionaire. The venture investor Chris Sacca and at least two venture capital firms, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, will also most likely end up with stakes exceeding $1 billion each, according to an analysis of financial documents and interviews with people who know about Twitter’s finances. Others could make tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not everyone will be so lucky.