In some recent fashion shoots in both New York and London, many models appear to have no eyebrows. Either they have been shaved off, or so much foundation pasted on them that there are no dark hairy crescents above the models' eyes.

The result is a strangely robotic or zombie android face. The function of eyebrows is difficult to guess at, but I think they underlie human facial expression. Without them the models' faces look impersonal, affect-less, mechanical, inhuman.

Officially we have eyebrows because some of our (Neanderthal) ancestors' heavy brows sloped outward from their hairline, ending with hairy growth to protect against sweat or dandruff getting into their eyes. But I don't think this is really why evolution favored the brow. It was more likely because eyebrows are part of the way faces communicate emotions.

Back in the 1920s and 30s there was a trend for ladies to tweeze to achieve very fine (supercilious) eyebrows. The Duchess of Windsor set the pace but you can see it also in Downton Abbey. Another fashion trend was shaving one's eyebrows to paint them in higher up the brow. This is what Japanese geishas did and, now that she is defending her father's legacy, is also something that I recall was imposed on Luci Baines Johnson by a makeover artist before her first marriage. It enlarges your eyes and gives you a startled expression. She dropped it along with her first husband.

Here in no special order are some of the initial public offerings to come in the next few weeks:

Poundland Group, the UK chain of ultra-cheap single-price variety stores for the poor, being listed pricily in London;

Yandex and Mail-ru, already trading overseas, to bring tech growth stocks to the OAO Moscow Exchange. YNDX is on Nasdaq and Mail.ru is listed in London;

Weibo, a Twitter-like social media and micro-blogging site, being spun off bySina, a Chinese Internet platform;

Alibaba, owner of 18% of Weibo, is itself going public either in Hong Kong or on Nasdaq.

What these mean for our portfolio is discussed below along with news about recent trades, and some excellent performance by our holdings in the last week, with one of our shares the best performing large cap stock in the world, up 9.6% and another No. 16, up 5.8%. This week's articles are mostly about e-commerce, cellphones, and closed-end funds. Lots of snippets after our heavy lifting last week.

*The stock which rose the mostest last week was Teva which we sold down last year in despair at its boardroom shenanigans. Under its new Israeli deal-maker CEO it is reviving. It is still my largest holding even though I sold it out of my IRA account (because I couldn't afford to pay the taxes had I sold it from my regular brokerage account.)

*Spanish telco Telefonica is facing European Union antitrust demands hindering its takeover of E-Plus in Germany, after eluding German spin-off demands as the price for its euros 8.6 bn deal. The EU is split between the need to consolidate and rationalize telephony across borders and its fear of oligopoly. Unfortunately the Treaty of Rome, written back in the 1970s, focuses on the risk of market dominance rather than streamlining mobile phone systems around Europe. TEF is preparing to face a demand that it give up spectrum or offer it cheaply to its remaining 2 German rivals. Brussels is preparing "a statement of objections" to the TEF deal, according to The Financial Times today.

*Many uranium miners are up today on the realization that Japanese nuclear plants will start to buy uranium by the end of this year to re-start plants.Cameco is expected to be a buyer rather than a seller, but CCJ is up too on the calculation that U238 prices will rise as much as 40% by year-end. Chat about CCJ buying miners is a constant rumor among nuclear mine bulls. We recently bought CCJ back after taking a loss last year.

*Yandex CFO Alexander Shulgin told last week's conference call that by midsummer, after incorporating Mail.ru, Yandex will increase its prices to make more money from ads. Last fall YNDX last year paid with heavy ad fees formail.ru eyeballs. Mail.ru Q3 revenues rose by very smartly after the deal while YNDX grew revenues but not profits. Mail.ru also sold its stake in Facebook so I cannot estimate exactly where YNDX can grow its profits. Yandex sold its paypal clone so it is also hard to estimate where it failed to earn. (I accessed the conference call transcript via www.seekingalpha.com).

*Naspers CEO Koos Bekker is stepping down and the stock is up to a new high on the news that he will be replaced by an e-commerce expert from within the firm, Bob van Dijk, who is Dutch, not Afrikaaner. NPSNY is the share which rose 5.8% last week.and it is up some more today. We own Mail.ru through Naspers.

*Another NPSNY holding, which we also own directly, is being targeted by China along with Alibaba. Our Tencent like its rival offers Chinese savers a chance to buy money market funds (MMFs) on the Internet to gain higher yields than they can get at the bank. While government ceilings cap interest at 0.35%, the money market funds (if you tie up your money for long enough), pay as much as 6%. Some other vehicles like MMFs are offered to rich Chinese by their banks as well, but these sometimes are unsafe.

The Internet MMFs, notably Alibaba's Yu'e Bao fund, were attacked as being "vampires" by a state financial broadcast over the weekend. TCTZF launched a rival high-yield MMF in Jan. on its WeChat site and the Internet is luring in Chinese fed up with no return on traditional bank savings accounts.

Separately, Tencent is rumored to be in talks to merge its e-commerce sites51buy.com and Yixun.com with JD.com, a B2C e-commerce leader, a step toward greater consolidation in Chinese e-commerce and also a challenge to Alibaba. This would be transformative but also costly, as the price being talked about may be as high as $1 bn.

*Our more restrained play on e-commerce in China, Global Logistics Properties,today signed a strategic partnership with state-sector logistics firm Sinotrans to jointly develop a network. The first warehouse park facilities will be in Shanghai and Guangzhou. China is taking a 30% stake in the GBTZF sub operations in China through its sovereign wealth fund, announced last week.

*Relatedly, Brazilian Cosan SA is merging its Rumo transportation unit with ALL (America Latina Logistica) and we may wind up owning 36.5% of ALL when the deal closes, if it closes. The last time CZZ was going to buy ALLAY it paid over reais 896 mn and then was forced out. After lawsuits, it won the right to pay another 1.2 bn reais for priority shipping its sugarcane and ethylene to market and the new deal floundered too. Third time lucky?

*Our new shareholdings had a mixed performance today. Caesarstone, CTSE, is up to $56.15. I may be able to replace my vinyl kitchen counters after all. Frida tipped this as a US-Euroland housing play Friday.

*Naibu after eluding my grasp until I capitulated to the high ask on Fridayfell to GB pence 85.48 in London trading this morning, from 88 pence. NBU:London.

*Our other Chinese schmattes (Yiddish: rags) company, Camkids, rose to 90.1 pence from 88. CAMK:LSE is more active in e-commerce than NBU, as I noted in my follow-up piece to Vivian Ng's commissioned report on NBU of Weds.

*Notable too, was a 3% drop in the price of the Red Rooster railway, Guangshen, GSH.The fall was before the GBTZF news hit.

*Our just-upgraded Reckitt Benckiser made a new 52-wk high in London Stock Exchange trading. RBGLY.

*Our upgraded Dutch engineering firm, Chicago Bridge & Iron, also is up. CBI.

*I didn't upgrade Dr Reddy's but it hit a new high in our speculative portfolio today, at $44.49. This is a benevolent form of ratcheting, when a stock rises in Bombay, and then in NY, and then on the BSE etc. It used to work for Teva, like RDY a generics drug producer.

*The wily Finns at Nokia plan to launch a $122-200 Google Android Nokia X hybrid phone line incorporating some Windows services like Skype and Bing, plus tiles for the home screen after closing of the sale of its handset business toMicrosoft. Android is open source.

*I never dared recommend Vodafone but its ADR hit a new high today after it demanded international arbitration over one of those irritating and impossible Indian tax demand surprises under the Netherlands-India Bilateral Investment Protection Agreement. Its 2007 India investments were done through Vodaphone International B.V. of the Dutch Antilles, buyer of 2/3 of Hutchison WhampoaIndian operations for $11.2 bn. India is seeking $2 bn of the payment not from Hutch but from Vodafone. In 2012 the Indian Supremes rules for VOD but then New Delhi retroactively changed its laws to snare this and other tax bills.

*Israel is aiming to boost royalty fees on resource extraction companies. But it is notable that once the Mediterranean offshore field at Tamar came on last year, Jerusalem's gas royalty income was boosted 160% mostly from the NIS 513 mn it was paid by the partners in the new field and the old Yam Tethys field, led by Delek Group, DGRLY.

*JP Morgan began coverage of Canadian Solar with an overweight rating and a $50 target price, up nearly a third from current level of CSIQ.

Fund news follows:

*After falling last week, Fibra Uno is back on track, up 2.6% today. It fell because of concern at its big deals. FBASF.

*Macquarie Global Infrastructure-Utilities Dividend & Income Fund, MFD, will distribute 35 cents in D&I Feb 28 to shareholders of record tomorrow. Based on the market price the payout ratio is well over 8%. Some of the payout may be from return of capital rather than income or capital gains, but this will be worked out at the end of this year. The level payout ratio creates an unfathomable risk of capital gains and/or getting your own money back untaxed for closed-end fund investors.

*Korea Fund named Chris Leung (who is of Chinese heritage) to be its lead portfolio manager, replacing Sang Won Kim. Leung worked for another fund manager covering Korea, Hong Kong, and China before returning to Allianz to work on Korea alone.

*Alliance Bernstein High Yield Income Fund, AWF, lost net asset value inits fiscal Q3 (to Dec. 31) both against the prior quarter and against the prior Q3. This was only partly offset by high income. Its total net assets came to $1.284 bn vs $1.308 bn in the Sept. quarter and $$1.32 bn in Q3 2012. Per share the figure was $14.89 vs $15.17 and $15.36. Per share investment income was 32 cents in Q3 2013 vs 25 cents in the prior quarter and 33 cents the year before.

Trying to figure out what was wrong I noted that its top holdings while very diversified, had bonds from Argentina in first place and 6th; Russian ones in 3rd and 8th place. The fund is aiming for yield with these bonds paying up to 10%.

*A Maryland reader says that if I am so enthusiastic about activist Carl Icahn forcing companies he invests in to raise their dividends, I should buy into Cahn Enterprise, his Master Ltd Partnership at c$111. It has a $5 dividend, the reader writes, and Mr. Icahn owns 90% of the IEP stock. It sounds too domestic for me and too controlled to boot, and I know nothing about the share but you may want to follow our reader in.