To a medley of whoops, hollers and gasps on Monday night, Pablo Picasso’s 1955 painting “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)” sold for $179.4 million including fees at Christie’s “Looking Forward to the Past” sale of artworks spanning the 20th century. The price was the highest on record for a work of art sold at auction, the company said, and was well over its estimate of $140 million.

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Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)” is the most opulent and imposing of a series of paintings that the Spanish-born artist produced from 1954 to 1955 in response to Eugène Delacroix’s 1834 Orientalist masterpiece, “Women of Algiers.” It had last been on the market in November 1997, when it sold for $31.9 million at a Christie’s auction of works owned by the American collectors, Victor and Sally Ganz. It was bought at that auction by a Saudi collector and kept in a house in London, said two dealers with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be named because of concerns over confidentiality. Monday night’s seller, who was not identified, had been guaranteed a minimum price by Christie’s, which estimated the work would fetch about $140 million.

The Swiss-born sculptor Giacometti is renowned for his hauntingly emaciated figures made in postwar Paris when Europe was in the grip of Existentialist angst. He became one of the art market’s ultimate trophy names in February 2010 after the billionaire Lily Safra paid 65 million pounds (then $103.4 million) for the 1961 bronze, “Walking Man I,” at a Sotheby’s auction in London.



“Pointing Man,” an earlier, hand-painted bronze from 1947-51, is regarded by many as more compelling. Made in an edition of six, plus an artist’s proof, it had been acquired from the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1970. Christie’s anonymous seller has been identified as the New York real estate magnate Sheldon Solow, according to artinfo.com. The Giacometti had been estimated to sell for $130 million and did not carry any financial guarantees. A less obviously commercial lot than the Picasso, it attracted just two telephone bidders.

Fans of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle have threatened to rape and kill former RT anchor Abby Martin for criticizing the deceased Navy SEAL and creating a T-shirt they find offensive.

“Some psychotic Chris Kyle fan just doxxed me & my family’s personal information on a bunch of sniper forums. If anything happens to me or them you know who to blame. These are the real f*cking terrorists,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

Martin had criticized Kyle in the past for describing Iraqis as “savages” in his book. She also described the American Sniper movie as “dangerous propaganda that sanitizes a mass murdering psycho.” But it was her shirt that appears to have set off a campaign of harassment against her.

This week, conservative websites posted a picture of Martin wearing a “F*ck Chris Kyle” shirt. She had uploaded a photo of the shirt to her Instagram account last week. One website, which incorrectly identified her as a “liberal artist,” called on readers to “publicly shame” her for her “treasonous actions.”

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The reaction on social media was even more visceral. Users of Twitter and Facebook have mentioned raping and beheading her, threatened to murder her, told her to kill herself, and bombarded her with misogynistic insults. Addicting Info reported that one person called on American Sniper fans to “put on our raping shoes and find this b*tch.”

“F*cking c*nt. How dare you disgrace his name like that. He gave his life so you can have yours. F*cking b*tch. Don’t worry I know where you live thanks to your ip address. And don’t worry I’m a Marine,” said Jamie Lugo in a message shared by Martin. “So u won’t see me coming. I’m going to cause you pain beyond your imagination.” He later added: “Tic toc times running out.”

Mara Wilson, writer and performer who made her name as a child actress in Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire, is sitting in front of a gray screen, hair gathered in a messy bun, wearing a sweatshirt with a stylized cat face on it and a big blue pin that says "UROK." In a casual tone that previous generations could never have conjured for such personal subjects, she is talking about anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and the arc of her life from "anxious kid" to "anxious adult."

"I wish somebody had told me it's OK to be anxious, that you don't have to fight it," Wilson says. "When you face anxiety ... when you understand it's just this false alarm in your body, then you can work with it, then you can overcome it."

Wilson is one of the celebrities who have recorded videos for a new video platform, Project UROK, which stands for "you are OK." The month-old nonprofit features candid videos with comedians, actors and other public figures talking frankly about their mental health and how they came to accept themselves.

"We're trying to think of ourselves as a sort of mental illness destigmatization network," Jenny Jaffe, founder of Project UROK, tells Mashable.

The aim is to use the force of the Internet for good — a vast departure from the texting, bullying, shaming minefield of social media that can, and has, driven teens to suicide from a sense of isolation. Project UROK aims to give teenagers struggling with mental illness a sense of community, an assurance that they aren't alone and permission to see mental health as a subject that can be mentioned out loud.

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On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has been pushing hard to overhaul of the country's broken campaign finance system. "We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccounted money out of it, once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment," Clinton said during one of her first official speeches in Iowa last month.

Clinton's campaign finance rhetoric appears to be aimed at super-PACs, the quasi-independent organizations that bolster campaigns by buying ads. But when it comes to the major funders behind her own presidential campaign, the Democratic front-runner has yet to answer questions about how transparent she's willing to be. When Mother Jones questioned the Clinton camp about whether it will disclose the names and fundraising totals of the key supporters—known as "bundlers"—who raise vast sums of cash, a spokesperson declined to provide an answer, saying only that the campaign was still figuring out its plans.
The Clinton campaign plans to reward supporters who bundle at least $27,000 with an invitation to a special campaign confab.

What exactly are bundlers? Donations to campaigns from individuals are capped at $2,700 for the primary election and $2,700 for the general election (meaning donors can give up to $5,400 to a candidate over the entire cycle). In theory, these restrictions limit the amount of influence that individual donors can exert over a campaign. But bundlers get around these caps by raising tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from their wealthy friends and colleagues and channeling these massive sums to candidates. Even in an era when a few superrich donors can give as much money as they please to independent super PACs, bundlers are essential to most presidential bids. Super-PACs might be able to fund expensive ad buys with million-dollar donations, but it's large bundled contributions that allow campaigns to hire staff, conduct polls, and carry out the rest of their day-to-day operations.

Because of the outsize role that bundlers play in paying the bills for would-be presidents, advocates for campaign finance reform have long called for a robust system of disclosure. But under current law, it's up to each candidate to decide whether the names of these fundraisers will ever become public.