The Insanity of Lorena Bobbitt | Europe's Next Soccer Stars Will Be ... American?

Maya Devi’s “sitting strike” helped change the law for saleswomen in the shops of Kerala, India. But it’s only the beginning.

When Maya Devi started work as a “salesgirl” in a leading textile showroom in Kerala state in 2012, she was just like a majority of her co-workers — grown women hailing from low-income families with basic education and no particular work skills. Now she’s a leading labor agitator, standing up for the sake of sitting down.

The daughter of a daily wage laborer and a homemaker, Devi and her brother had a quiet, humble childhood. “We adjusted our lives to circumstances and never even dreamed that we could stand up for our rights,” she says. The transformation started mildly enough for Devi, the 43-year-old mother of two who gained influence by being outspoken during meetings at Kalyan Sarees. In 2014, she helped negotiate a raise for her fellow saleswomen, to Rs 7,000 ($98) per month. But the problems went beyond meager pay.

American soccer has officially arrived. MLS is increasingly the source that’s sending bright young stars to the world’s biggest leagues.

Marcus Samuelsson, the New York restaurateur of Red Rooster and Food Network fame, is seated on a soccer ball, smiling for cameras while trying not to visibly shiver from the cold. His hot pink sweater and New York City Football Club (NYCFC) scarf are no match for the 30-degree winds blowing through Rockefeller Plaza this Friday afternoon in Manhattan. Next up, he’ll take a few shots in a 24-hour exhibition game where the club’s players and New Yorkers will mix it up over a day’s play. Some of those players might not be at the club next year. But don’t shed tears. For the club, and for Major League Soccer, that’s an even bigger sign of success than endorsements from celebrities like Samuelsson.

Robo-investing and micro-investing let novices and experts alike make cash with smaller investments.

After finishing his master’s degree in January 2019 and beginning full-time work, New York–based Bill Walsh decided to pay off his student loans, but he swapped one kind of stress for another: No debt also meant no savings. To get a jump on nest-egging again, he tried a micro-investing app that automatically rounds up digital transactions — the equivalent of “spare change” — to the nearest dollar and invests this money in a stock portfolio. It was a passive way to save that didn’t require much thought, and each transaction was “too small to hurt,” he says. So far, he’s seen about 2 percent return on his invested funds.