Hostess Brands, the maker of Twinkies, the cream-filled sponge cakes well-loved in the US, has said it will close down the company, leading to the loss of 18,500 jobs.
Hostess Brands said a strike by the bakers union would force it to shut all operations and sell all assets.
It has long been in trouble – emerging from bankruptcy protection in 2009 only to file again in January 2012.
The wind-down also means the closure of 33 bakeries, 565 distribution centres and 570 bakery outlet stores.
“We deeply regret the necessity of today’s decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike,” said chief executive Gregory Rayburn.
“Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.”
The company is also behind the Wonder and Merita bread brands, as well as Drake’s cakes.
Twinkies maker, Hostess Brands, has said it will close down the company, leading to the loss of 18,500 jobs
Last week, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union went on a nationwide strike.
On Thursday, Hostess Brands said it determined that an “insufficient number of employees had returned to work to enable the restoration of normal operations”.
Hostess Brands was founded in 1930 and had revenues of $2 billion last year.
The union’s pension fund is its biggest unsecured creditor, and is owed about $944.2 million.
Bobby Brown, ex-husband of late star Whitney Houston, has pleaded not guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol.
Bobby Brown, 43, maintained his innocence at Los Angeles court on Friday, despite the fact it is the third time he has been charged with DUI.
He denied multiple charges stemming from being pulled over at around 1:00 a.m. on October 24, 2012 after police believed he was driving erratically in the Tarzana area of Los Angeles.
Officers subsequently discovered Bobby Brown was behind the wheel without the dashboard breathalyser he was previously ordered by court to carry around with him.
Deputy City Attorney Diego Edber, told E! Online Bobby Brown was not in court but that his attorney, Tiffany Feder, entered not guilty pleas on his behalf.
Bobby Brown maintained his innocence at Los Angeles court on Friday, despite the fact it is the third time he has been charged with DUI
Bobby Brown is facing charges of driving under the influence with a refusal to submit to a chemical test, driving with a suspended license due to a conviction of an alcohol offence, and driving a vehicle without an ignition interlock device.
The last two counts are the result of another DUI arrest back in March in the San Fernando Valley. Bobby Brown received three years’ probation and did a spell in rehab after pleading no contest in that case.
The judge ordered Bobby Brown attend three Alcoholics Anonymous classes per week as a condition of his release until the next court date, with the next pretrial hearing scheduled for December 13.
However, the lawman also denied the prosecutor’s request to impose a $75,000 bail on the entertainer.
If convicted of the new charges, Bobby brown could face a maximum of two years in jail.
Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were spotted out together on a secret date night on Thursday.
The young superstars, who set tongues wagging last week as split rumors circulated, seem to be trying to build bridges as they went to The Laugh Factory in LA together.
Clearly in need of a bit of light relief Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez kept their heads down as they made their way into the comedy club to catch some stand-up.
While Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber were rumored to have met up for crisis talks in Brooklyn last weekend, it was unclear whether they had resolved any of their problems.
While Justin Bieber performed in the city, Selena Gomez jetted back to Dallas to spend some time with her family on Tuesday, but obviously made a quick trip to Los Angeles two days later to see her on/off boyfriend.
Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were spotted out together on a secret date night at The Laugh Factory in LA
According to TMZ, Selena Gomez was so angry with her popstar other half that she had blocked his number and deleted all his text messages.
The website also claimed that the reason behind the split was “absolutely, positively” because of another woman.
Selena Gomez, 20, is clearly intent on repairing the damaged relationship and appears to be giving her boyfriend another chance.
Looking causal for the reunion, Selena Gomez wore a pair of black leggings, a baggy white jersey top and a pair of tan, tasseled wedge boots.
Wearing her dark locks tied back, Selena Gomez added a silky scarf and wore heavy black eye make-up.
Justin Bieber tried to keep a low profile as he left the club, also looking dressed down in black shiny trousers, a white shirt and bright blue trainers.
Natalie Khawam and her twin sister Jill Kelley, the Florida housewife whose complaint over threatening emails revealed David Petraeus’ affair, have visited the White House three times in the past three months, it has emerged today.
In by far the most astonishing example of her determination to reach the top, Jill Kelley and Natalie Khawam were invited to two “courtesy” meals in the Executive Mansion mess hall as a guest of a White House aide, an Obama administration official has revealed.
Jill Kelley met the mid-level aide through her work with MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, where she also rubbed shoulders with the military’s top brass, including General David Petraeus.
On one further occasion, she received a White House tour with her family, the official added.
This latest revelation shows just how far Jill Kelley soared from her humble beginnings as the daughter of Lebanese immigrants in Pennsylvania to the host of lavish military parties at her Florida mansion.
Natalie Khawam and her twin sister Jill Kelley have visited the White House three times in the past three months
It also suggests that Jill Kelley was telling the truth in an email she wrote to a reporter at the Tampa Bay Times on September 28, in which she boasted of visiting the White House.
“Btw I was made the [honorary] Ambassador to US Central Command’s Coalition!” Jill Kelley wrote.
“In addition to that, I was just recently appointed to be the Honorary Consulate General to South Korea! I’m in DC today – just left from breakfast at the White House…. I really hope to see you soon!”
Further examples also emerged today of how the married mother of three, who is reportedly steeped in debt, has attempted to exploit her connections as she finds herself at the centre of the military scandal.
Jessica Simpson began filming her next long-awaited advert for Weight Watchers on Thursday.
The singer is getting paid a reported $4 million to be the face of the diet program.
Jessica Simpson, 32, posted a sneak peek of her filming the advertisement on her Twitter account.
In the snap, Jessica Simpson is seen standing outside a gourmet market and is looking svelte in a pair of black figure-hugging trousers, a fitted blazer and sky-high heels.
“That’s a wrap on the @weightwatchers commercial!” she says in an accompanying caption.
Her former assistant and best friend CaCee Cobb, friend Erin Alexander and stylist Nicole Chavez also posed with the star for a behind-the-scenes happy snap.
In the photograph, Jessica Simpson is wearing a pair of jeans tucked into Ugg boots, a black vest top and a plaid shirt.
She look noticeably slimmer around the jawline and upper body.
Jessica Simpson’s first advert for the company was filmed back in July as she got stuck into her weight loss regime following the birth of baby Maxwell.
Yet the footage failed to capture her full figure, presumably the one thing that viewers want to see so that they can make a comparison between her before and after figure.
The advert instead focuses on Jessica Simpson’s upper body, with close-ups of her face.
“I’m Jessica Simpson and yes I’m doing Weight Watchers,” she tells the camera, smiling.
“There is a lot of pressure to lose weight but I’m not a supermodel. I’m just Jessica trying to eat real food in the real world and I really just wanna be healthy for my daughter.
“So I knew Weight Watchers was the only way to go. It’s working.
“I’m on my way and it feels amazing. Really I just wanna be a better version of myself.”
Jessica Simpson began filming her next long-awaited advert for Weight Watchers on Thursday
Talking on Katie Couric’s chat show not long after it was revealed, Jessica Simpson admitted that at the time she wasn’t comfortable revealing her whole frame.
Meanwhile, the filming of her newest commercial comes after Jessica Simpson’s unwavering dedication to her diet plan had apparently earlier this month hit a snag – with the stress of gay allegations about her father “derailing” her efforts.
Jessica Simpson was said to have lapsed from her Weight Watchers plan.
According to reports online, the singer was no longer sticking to the correct portion sizes, which had slowed her weight loss.
“Jessica’s diet has been seriously derailed ever since the gay allegations against her father were released,” a source told RadarOnline.
While she’s not diverting from the diet, Jessica Simpson isn’t sticking to the portion plan and isn’t losing as much weight as she should.
“She knows that as the Weight Watchers spokesperson she has to be more disciplined, but her emotions are all over the place right now.”
It has certainly been a tumultuous few months for Jessica Simpson’s family.
Her parents Tina and Joe Simpson recently revealed they had filed for divorce after 34 years of marriage.
Former model Lauren Scruggs has revealed for the first time what actually happened in the horrific accident that robbed her of left arm and eye, and changed her life in an instant.
Lauren Scruggs, 24, from Dallas, Texas, spoke on Today show about the December 3 accident, where she walked into a still-spinning plane propeller, in the lead up to a Dateline interview that airs Friday November 16 at 10:00 p.m.
With little memory of the accident, Lauren Scruggs explained: “My dad actually went to look at the plane. I was always taught to get out in front of the wing, but when you do that [with this kind of plane] you’re basically on the propeller. So I think I basically just got out onto it.”
She added: “I remember getting into the plane, and I was fearful for some reason. We landed, which I thought was interesting, because I thought we might crash. I remember my feet touching the ground, but that’s all I remember.”
Her mother, who was also on the Today show with her husband, Lauren Scruggs’ father, explained how the pair had been to church, before going over to some friends’ for dinner, “like we always do”.
“They live in an airport so we ate dinner, and then they decided they were going to do some recreational flying, look at some Christmas lights and everything,” she said.
“Then, she was out there laying on her stomach in a pool of blood and I wasn’t really sure if she was dead or alive.”
Speaking about the bleak diagnosis given by the paramedics at the time, her father said: “They warned us there was a potential she wouldn’t have the same personality, that she may never form a sentence again, but as you can see today, that’s the case.”
Lauren Scruggs admits the hardest thing about the accident was losing her hand.
“It changes your life,” she said.
“You appreciate life a lot more, my compassion for people has strengthened, I have compassion I couldn’t have had before. It was a dose of reality, and was hard to see.”
Speaking about living life with only one hand, the fashion blogger and former model said: “It’s amazing how your body just does what it needs to do – things that were hard in the beginning a lot easier now. I don’t really think about them now.”
Lauren Scruggs has revealed for the first time what actually happened in the horrific accident that robbed her of left arm and eye
The blonde beauty is also honest in how her injured looks deeply affected her in her interview with Dateline.
“[When I saw myself], I think I just saw the reality of what had happened. I had my eye patch on, I didn’t have my hand, half my head was shaved. I was just thinking, <<Wow. How life can change in an instant and how that’s not the way I have looked in the past>>.”
The fashion blogger also spoke to People magazine this week about the future and learning to live with three different prosthetic limbs, hair extensions where her head was shaved and having to do everything with one hand.
A sometimes fashion model before the accident, Lauren Scruggs revealed she has struggled to come to terms with her changing looks.
She said: “Sometimes it’s easy to dwell on the fact that I don’t look the same. I still struggle with that – I want to look nice. But every day I’m feeling better and better.”
“When I got home from hospital I would cry a lot and it was hard to look in the mirror. Before the accident I would get a lot of attention for the way I looked, so I held a lot of my identity there.
“But these things aren’t going to make you feel whole. They’re empty things.”
Wondering if any guy would ever like her because of her prosthetic arms, she reveals she now feels good about them.
Lauren Scruggs has three different arms – her passive prosthetic which she can’t move but looks incredibly lifelike, her workout prosthetic which she uses for boxing and other exercises and another arm that come with attachments, including a paddle-like device for swimming.
She is in rehab for up to three hours a day to practice ordinary tasks without her left hand and can now tie her shoes, put her hair up and drive – which she does with the help of her knee.
Referring to losing her hand, she said: “Reality hit me when I got off my pain medication. I just wanted my hand back. I went through the process of grieving and still am today.
“My doctor told me that losing your hand is like losing someone in your family. Because it’s a part of you.”
David Petraeus has told US Congress that the CIA believed almost immediately that al-Qaeda-linked terrorists were behind the September 11th attacks in Benghazi, according to a leading Republican congressman.
Representative Peter King of New York, a member of the House Intelligence Committee that David Petraeus briefed, said that the former general left a “different impression” today than he had when he testified on Capitol Hill three days after the attack.
Now, Peter King said, David Petraeus insisted that the “original talking points prepared by the CIA were different than the final ones put out” and used by Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Sunday talk shows to say – incorrectly – that the attack was sparked by anger over an anti-Islam video made in California.
“The original talking points were much more specific about al-Qaeda involvement and yet the final ones just said <<indications of extremists>> even though it was clearly evident to the CIA that there was al-Qaeda involvement,” Peter King said.
The former CIA director was giving classified testimony and was accompanied by a CIA analyst. Peter King said David Petraeus did not speak under oath.
David Petraeus arrived early Friday for closed hearings on Capitol Hill as lawmakers seek details from the retired general about the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Peter King said that there was only brief mention by David Petraeus of his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, which triggered his shock resignation last Friday.
“He was asked at the start did that have any impact on his testimony, he said no…10 seconds into it, that was off to the side.”
David Petraeus has told US Congress that the CIA believed almost immediately that al-Qaeda-linked terrorists were behind the September 11th attacks in Benghazi
The New York congressman said that David Petraeus had explained that the talking points ultimately used by Susan Rice had been altered by inputs by a number of other government agencies after the CIA had made its assessment.
“He said that it goes though a long process, an interagency process and when they came back it was taken out.”
The House Intelligence Committee, which was hearing from David Petraeus before he briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee, met in a secure room several floors below the main area of the Capitol Visitors Centre, where tourists gather when they are visiting Congress.
Republicans and some Democrats have demanded an explanation of why the Obama administration initially described the attack at Benghazi as a protest gone awry, leading to the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, diplomat Sean Smith and CIA contractors and former Navy SEALS Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
Five days after attack, the administration sent Susan Rice onto the Sunday news shows to describe what precipitated the assault. She relied on initial intelligence talking points that subsequently proved incorrect.
Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell told the House committee on Thursday that Susan Rice was provided with an unclassified version of events at the American mission, according to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, a committee member.
The assessment concluded that a spontaneous protest over anti-Islam video, The Innocence of Muslims, had evolved into an attack on the American consulate, a description that Rice presented in the television interviews.
David Petraeus hoped that by testifying he would put an end to some of the wilder rumors following his resignation over reveal of his affair with Paula Broadwell.
“He did not like the conspiracies going around that somehow he had something to hide on Benghazi,” said retired Colonel Peter Mansoor, who served as David Petraeus’ executive officer in Iraq.
“I think his offer to testify crossed with the Congress’ request to him to testify. But anyway he looks forward to that.”
The Hague war crimes court has overturned the convictions of two Croatian generals charged with atrocities against Serbs in the 1990s.
Appeals judges ordered the release of Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac.
In 2011 they were sentenced to 24 years and 18 years respectively over the killing of ethnic Serbs in an offensive to retake Croatia’s Krajina region.
The men arrived in Zagreb later on Friday to a hero’s welcome. But their release was condemned in Serbia.
On Friday morning, the presiding judge at the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Theodor Meron, said the court had entered “a verdict of acquittal” for General Ante Gotovina and General Mladen Markac, both aged 57.
Last year the two men were convicted of murder, persecution and plunder.
Judges at the time ruled that they were part of a criminal conspiracy led by late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to “permanently and forcibly remove” the Serb civilian population from Krajina.
But on Friday, Judge Theodor Meron said there had been no such conspiracy.
The appeals judges also said the 2011 trial chamber had “erred in finding that artillery attacks” ordered by General Ante Gotovina and General Mladen Markac on Krajina towns “were unlawful”.
The two former generals have always argued that they did not deliberately attack civilians.
Court officials also said prosecutors would not appeal against the ruling, describing it as “the final judgement”.
Neither defendant showed emotion in court, but their supporters in the gallery hugged each other and clapped after the verdict.
The Hague war crimes court has acquitted Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac charged with atrocities against Serbs in the 1990s
In Zagreb’s main square, thousands of people – who watched the proceedings live on giant TV – burst into applause.
“Our generals are heroes because they risked their lives to save our country and liberate the people,” student Andjela Anic, 26, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
“The verdict confirms everything that we believe in Croatia: that generals Gotovina and Markac are innocent,” Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said.
On Thursday, candle-lit vigils were held in Zagreb and Catholic churches around the country as war veterans and bishops asked supporters to “raise their voices against injustice”.
After the verdict, the two former generals were driven from The Hague to nearby Rotterdam airport before boarding the government plane to fly back home.
“I think it is only fair to get the boys back home,” Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic told reporters.
Meanwhile, Serbia’s President Tomislav Nikolic condemned the verdict as “political”, saying it “will open old wounds”.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Rasim Ljajic said The Hague tribunal had “lost all its credibility”, Serbia’s Beta news agency reported.
Rasim Ljajic said the appeals decision was “proof of selective justice which is worse than any injustice”.
He added that it was “a move backwards and the public opinion of the tribunal (in Serbia) will be worse than it already is”.
Gen. Ante Gotovina and Gen. Mladen Markac were last year convicted over the Croatian offensive in Krajina, which had been under Serbian control since the start of the war in 1991.
About 200,000 ethnic Serbs were driven from Croatia in 1995 and at least 150 were killed in a military offensive in Krajina known as Operation Storm.
The operation to retake the region was ordered by Franjo Tudjman. The Croatian leader died in 1999 while under investigation by The Hague tribunal.
The aftermath of the war is a key issue both in Croatia’s domestic politics and its external relations.
The European Union made it clear to former Yugoslav republics that they will not be considered for membership until war criminals were brought to justice.
Jill Kelley, the Florida housewife whose complaint over threatening emails revealed David Petraeus’ affair, has attempted to exploit her connections once again.
In her first words since her part in the scandal was revealed over the weekend, Jill Kelley has sent a string of pleading emails to the Tampa Mayor, complaining she has been receiving threats and claiming: “The truth will one day prevail.”
The anguished messages, seen by the Tampa Bay Times, were sent in the early hours of Tuesday and Wednesday to Bob Buckhorn, whom she knows socially.
Jill Kelley claims her three children are scared to return home and her husband, Dr. Scott Kelley, has been forced to sleep at the hospital because he cannot get into their driveway, due to the swarms of media.
“Dear Mayor Bob,” Jill Kelley wrote, adding that she, David Petraeus and General John R. Allen – whom she was found to have exchanged “flirtatious” emails with – “have been exploited by the media”.
“I wouldn’t care – if they got the facts right and the focus was on the criminal that stalked all of us,” she added, apparently referring to David Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell.
“But the truth will one day prevail.”
It is the second instance of her trying to exploit her “position” – after she called the police asking for “diplomatic protection” from the media due to her role as honorary consul to South Korea.
“I’m an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they should not be able to cross my property,” Jill Kelley told the 911 operator.
“I don’t know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well, because that’s against the law to cross my property because, you know, it’s inviolable.”
But the move backfired – with the police releasing the calls to the media and failing to provide her the protection reserved for those in positions of genuine authority.
“To put insult to injury, your police dept gave the local 911 tapes to the press!” Jill Kelley wrote to Bob Buckhorn, adding that the recordings included her cell number, so: “I have been receiving threats all night.”
“I’m scared and cannot believe what my city, in which I have contributed so much of my love, time, money and leadership, has now done to me and my innocent family,” Jill Kelley wrote.
Bob Buckhorn told the Times that he did nothing in response to Jill Kelley’s complaint and simply said that the 911 recordings were public records.
He added that he knew the Kelleys socially after he won the mayoral race in March 2011 – even though they did not support him in his bid and he had never met them before.
Jill Kelley with General David Petraeus and his wife Holly at her home in 2011
Yet just three weeks after Bob Buckhorn was sworn into office, Dr. Scott Kelley and his wife hosted a reception for him at their lavish $1.3 million home on Bayshore Boulevard.
Jill Kelley has since invited Bob Buckhorn to a string of social events, including her daughter’s sixth birthday party, which are also documented by email, the Times reported.
She invited him and his wife to a dinner party for the King of Jordan and, after he was unable to attend, she wrote to him again.
“The King and his sister [the Princess] are awesome people!” Jill Kelley said.
“Actually your name was brought up by the Generals when they were showing off the party I hosted you! (everyone loved that party).”
They met again when Bob Buckhorn and his wife gave her a ride home following an event at MacDill Air Force Base, for which she organized events as a volunteer social liaison officer.
“Gen. [James] Mattis, was so kind to offer, but I realized you two were passing my way,” Jill Kelley emailed the mayor the following day.
Their messages also show how she involved herself in a spat over a radio host’s claims that he was going to deep fat fry the Koran earlier this year, according to the Times.
Officers at MacDill told the mayor that the publicity stunt could harm troops, and asked him to speak with the host.
Jill Kelley also called the mayor to tell them she had been speaking with Gen. John Allen and Vice Admiral Robert Harward, the deputy commander of CentCom, who said they needed the mayor’s help.
When Buckhorn responded to say it was being dealt with, Jill Kelley said “they asked me to get involved, like I did when it happened with the Pastor last year”.
Her shrewd social-climbing tactics also came to light this week when she was pictured with Marco Rubio and her twin sister, Natalie Khawam, when he was running for the Senate.
The photograph was tweeted by Republican Angelette Aviles who said that it was taken at a March 2010 fundraiser, where tickets were $1,000.
But the twins didn’t pay – instead, they appeared, took the photo and left, Angelette Aviles told the Times. They did not contribute to his campaign.
Yet over the past week, Jill Kelley’s connections have given her more exposure than she was perhaps intending.
After David Petraeus dramatically resigned from the top of the CIA last Friday, it emerged that Jill Kelley had played a key role in exposing his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
In May, Jill Kelley alerted the FBI that she had been receiving threatening, anonymous emails warning her to “back off” David Petraeus, whom Kelley and her husband are good friends with.
The FBI was forced to launch an in-depth investigation as some messages contained classified information about David Petraeus’ whereabouts, and they feared there could have been a security breach.
Experts warn that resistance to antibiotics is one of the greatest threats to modern health.
The warning from England’s chief medical officer and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) comes amid reports of growing problems with resistant strains of bugs such as E. coli and gonorrhea.
They said many antibiotics were being used unnecessarily for mild infections, helping to create resistance.
And they urged patients to take more care with how they used medicines.
This is particularly important as there are very few new antibiotics in development.
The chief medical officer, Prof. Dame Sally Davies, said: “Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness at a rate that is both alarming and irreversible – similar to global warming.
“I urge patients and prescribers to think about the drugs they are requesting and dispensing.
“Bacteria are adapting and finding ways to survive the effects of antibiotics, ultimately becoming resistant so they no longer work.
“The more you use an antibiotic, the more bacteria become resistant to it.”
To reinforce her message, Dame Sally Davies has issued a list of “dos and don’ts”.
These include:
Do remember antibiotics should be taken only when prescribed by a health professional.
Do complete the prescribed course even if you feel better, as not taking the full course encourages the emergence of resistance.
Don’t share antibiotics with anyone else.
Do remember that antibiotics cannot help you recover from infections caused by viruses, such as colds or flu.
Robert De Niro started an argument with Jay-Z at Leonardo DiCaprio’s birthday party in New York after the rapper failed to return not just one, but six of his phone calls.
Robert De Niro, 69, was sitting at a table at the upscale bash when Jay-Z came over to say hello, but the Raging Bull star was in no mood to be friendly.
A New York Post insider then overheard Robert De Niro complaining the rapper, who lives near the Oscar winner in the posh TriBeCa area, agreed to record a song for the Tribeca Film Festival, but failed to follow through.
Robert De Niro rang Jay-Z on several occasions to plan the project, but his calls were never so much as returned.
The insider said: “Bob wasn’t in any mood to make polite conversation.
“He told Jay that if somebody calls you six times, you call them back.
“It doesn’t matter who you are, that is just rude.”
Robert De Niro started an argument with Jay-Z at Leonardo DiCaprio’s birthday party after the rapper failed to return his calls
Jay-Z tried make light of the situation by claiming he is terrible on the phone, but that failed to douse Robert De Niro’s anger, and he continued to humiliate his foe in front of the likes of Martin Scorsese, Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz.
Even the feminine charms of his curvy wife Beyonce were not enough to get him off his high horse.
The source said: “De Niro kept telling him that he thinks he’s the man, but that he was disrespectful.
“Beyoncé came over, but that didn’t calm Bob down.
“It was the talk of the party. Everyone was saying there’s only one star in New York bigger and badder than Jay-Z, and that’s Robert De Niro.
“He can be quite scary when he’s angry.”
The latter is certainly an understatement, given his fame for playing characters with explosive tempers in the likes of Goodfellas and Raging Bull.
However, a source close to Robert De Niro tried to play down the seriousness of the incident.
The insider said: “It was a low-key private conversation between two people that was apparently overheard. It was not a heated discussion.”
The Taliban are not usually known for their sense of humor, but when it comes to the troubles of their enemies it seems they can see the lighter side.
A spokesman for the Islamic fundamentalist group this week mocked David Petraeus’ extra-marital affair which led to his resignation as director of the CIA, describing him as a “bastard”.
He added that David Petraeus would have been executed for his adultery under a Taliban regime, and blamed America’s “free sex society” for his infidelity.
David Petraeus was commander of the Western forces in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011, leading the effort to prevent the Taliban returning to power.
He joined the CIA last year, but suddenly resigned last week after an FBI investigation revealed he had been cheating on his wife with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
A Taliban official showed unusual levity when asked about the affair Agence France-Presse, bursting out laughing during an interview in Pakistan.
“What a bastard!”, the official said.
“But all Americans are the same, it’s nothing new.”
A spokesman for Taliban group mocked David Petraeus’ extra-marital affair which led to his resignation as director of the CIA, describing him as a bastard
While David Petraeus lost his job over the ongoing scandal, which has also roped in his successor in Afghanistan, General John Allen, the consequences could have been much worse if he lived under a regime controlled by the Taliban.
The anonymous official pointed out that adultery is a capital offence under the laws of the Pashtun people as well as under Islamic sharia law.
“From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress’ family,” he said.
“From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death.”
David Petraeus may have sacrificed his career and his reputation, but under U.S. law he is not expected to face any criminal charges.
The Taliban official said the former general’s indiscretion was unsurprising, given the permissiveness of Western societies.
“It’s quite normal for Americans and Western people to behave like this,” he told AFP.
“They live in free sex societies where nobody cares about this sort of thing, so what do you expect?”
While radical Islamists may believe that “nobody cares” about sex scandals in the U.S., those who have been dragged in to the Petraeus affair may not feel the same way.
As well as David Petraeus and John Allen, Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite who uncovered the cheating after being sent threatening emails by Broadwell, have found themselves at the centre of a media storm since the scandal first hit last Friday.
IKEA has said it “deeply regrets” the use of forced labor by political prisoners in communist East Germany.
The Swedish furniture giant asked accountants Ernst & Young to look into the matter, dating back to the 1970s.
The study, now published, indicates that political and criminal prisoners were involved in manufacturing for IKEA suppliers.
It also said that IKEA representatives at the time knew that political prisoners were possibly used.
IKEA gave contracts to the East German government in the 1970s.
Former political prisoners of the Stasi, the feared secret police, said they worked on the furniture, prompting IKEA to commission the Ernst & Young report.
Those former prisoners may now expect compensation.
“We deeply regret that this could happen. Using political prisoners in production has never been accepted within the IKEA Group,” said Jeanette Skjelmose, IKEA’s sustainability manager.
IKEA has said it deeply regrets the use of forced labor by political prisoners in communist East Germany
The company said that although it took steps to try to ensure that prisoners were not used in production, “it is now clear that these measures were not effective enough”.
Jeanette Skjelmose added that IKEA now had one of the most rigorous codes of conduct for suppliers and this, together with close co-operation with suppliers and external inspections, effectively reduced the risk of something similar happening again.
“IKEA had contracts with GDR Enterprises to produce their furniture here,” said Dr. Hubertus Knabe, director of the Stasi Prison Memorial, a former prison that has been turned into a museum.
“They didn’t ask who were producing their furniture and under what kind of conditions,” he said prior to the report being published.
“In each case you are responsible [for] with whom you are dealing and if you are dealing with dictatorship, if you don’t have a look under what kind of conditions your furniture is produced, then you are responsible for that.”
Egypt has promised to support Gaza against Israeli attacks, as violence escalated for a third day.
President Mohammed Mursi said he would not leave Gaza on its own and condemned Israel’s “blatant aggression”, hours after his prime minister visited Gaza.
Israel mounted a huge attack overnight, targeting dozens of locations. Later, Gaza militants targeted Tel Aviv with a missile but there were no casualties.
Twenty Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed since Wednesday.
Militants and civilians, including at least five children, were among the Palestinian dead, Palestinian officials said.
Two Israeli women and a man died when a rocket fired from Gaza hit a building in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi on Thursday, Israeli officials said.
The Israeli army began an initial draft of 16,000 reservists on Friday, after the government authorized the call-up of 30,000.
Rumors have been swirling that a ground attack is imminent, but Israeli officials have said no decision has yet been made.
Israel targeted more than 130 locations in an overnight assault it said was aimed at knocking out rocket-firing facilities.
Egypt has promised to support Gaza against Israeli attacks, as violence escalated for a third day
Sporadic Israeli air strikes have continued throughout Friday, and militants in Gaza have fired dozens of rockets.
Mohammed Mursi sent Prime Minister Hisham Qandil to the territory for a three-hour visit on Friday to show solidarity with the Palestinians.
“Egypt will not leave Gaza on its own, and what is happening is a blatant aggression against humanity,” the president said shortly after Hisham Qandil returned from Gaza.
Ties between Hamas and Egypt have strengthened since Mohammed Mursi’s election earlier this year.
Hamas was formed as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Mohammed Mursi belongs.
Meanwhile, the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, some 75 km (45 miles) north of Gaza, came under attack for a second day.
A missile launched from Gaza sparked panic in the city and air-raid sirens once again sounded.
The missile appears to have done no harm, with police officials quoted variously as saying it had landed in the sea or in an unpopulated area.
It is the first time Tel Aviv has come under attack since the 1991 Gulf War.
Analysts say it is the first time Gaza militants have deployed such powerful missiles.
Western leaders have appealed for both sides to stop the escalation in violence.
Britain and Germany both said Hamas bears the brunt of the blame and should stop firing rockets immediately.
Chanel Hula Hoop bag was the most talked-about item on the fashion house spring/summer 2013 catwalk creating a huge social media buzz when it was unveiled at the Grand Palais at Paris Fashion Week in October.
Baffled fashion critics declared it completely ridiculous and unusable but Chanel supremo Karl Lagerfeld wasn’t fazed: “It’s for the beach!” he said, hoping to explain away its bonkers design.
And although the full size bag isn’t actually going on sale, thanks to the hoopla that the hula hoop arm candy caused a smaller version of the design is going to be made will be available next spring.
Measuring 24 centimetres across, the mini hula hoop bag could be all yours for $2,400.
It incorporates the trademark quilted design as well as brand new hooped handle details.
Measuring 24 centimetres across, Chanel mini hula hoop bag could be all yours for $2,400
“You need space for the beach towel and then you can put it into the sand and hang things on it,” Karl Lagerfeld explained of the larger catwalk version.
No word from Chanel yet on what you can fit in to the baby bag.
But the new design from the fashion house is bound to be spotted on the arms of the most fashion forward A-listers when it hits stores.
Avid fans of the French label include Keira Knightley, Blake Lively and Jennifer Lopez, who took up a front row seat alongside daughter Emme at the spring/summer show.
Congressmen watched harrowing footage of the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, being dragged out of the consulate during the terror attack which killed him.
Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were shown a video of Chris Stevens being taken out of the building in Benghazi while it was attacked by radical Islamists on September 11.
The lawmakers watched the video during a hearing in which the acting director of the CIA told them that the administration’s mistaken statements on the causes of the raid were down to incorrect intelligence information.
The footage was shown as part of an attempt by the CIA to provide the fullest account yet of the deadly assault, which left Stevens and three other Americans dead.
It captured some of the last moments of Chris Stevens’ life, showing the attack on the consulate building as well as Stevens being removed from the building as he suffered from the injuries which would eventually kill him.
Mike Morell, the acting CIA director who took over for disgraced boss David Petraeus, told the committees that UN ambassador Susan Rice had been provided with an unclassified version of what happened during the deadly September attack in Libya that was incorrect
Senator Dan Coats told CNN the video was “combination of video from a surveillance camera and a drone”.
He added: “It gave us a good picture, from the surveillance standpoint, what was happening.”
Mike Morell, the acting CIA director who took over for disgraced boss David Petraeus, told the committees that UN ambassador Susan Rice had been provided with an unclassified version of what happened during the deadly September attack in Libya that was incorrect.
Emerging from the session, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said Michael Morell told the panel that Susan Rice was given an initial assessment that a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video evolved into an attack on the consulate.
Susan Rice’s comments on national talk shows five days after the attack has drawn fierce criticism, with some Senate Republicans vowing to block her nomination if she is tapped to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Adam Schiff said the ambassador’s interview remarks were based on the “best initial assessment”.
This is the topless photograph which FBI agent Frederick Humphries sent to Florida socialite Jill Kelley, who is at the centre of the David Petraeus sex scandal.
Frederick W. Humphries emailed the picture to Jill Kelley from an account he shared with his wife, two years before he started the investigation which would lead to David Petraeus’ resignation and very public disgrace.
The picture shows Fred Humphries with his shirt off, posing with two bullet-riddled dummies which look remarkably similar to the 47-year-old.
It was Fred Humphries who initiated the investigation into harassing emails sent to Kelley that ultimately led to the resignation of David Petraeus.
Amid the heat of that exposure the news of his own apparent indiscretion was treated as another layer of sexual intrigue in this tangled tale.
In fact, Frederick Humphries insists, it is nothing of the sort. The email was a joke that backfired more spectacularly than he could possibly have imagined and, perhaps, was allowed to.
The image in question was not some leering pose, directed at the object of his desire, but a round-robin joke – the sort of which the 47-year-old Special Agent was in the habit of sending – that ended with a picture punchline.
In stark contrast to the covert “dead drop” technique of Paula Broadwell and David Petraeus’s email correspondence, Fred Humphries’s message was sent from an account he shared with his wife, teacher Sara.
This is the topless photograph which FBI agent Frederick Humphries sent to Florida socialite Jill Kelley, who is at the centre of the David Petraeus sex scandal
The snapshot showing Frederick Humphries – bald, muscular and shirtless – posed between two buff, bullet-ridden target dummies and carrying the punchline: “Which one is Fred?” was framed and displayed on his wife’s desk at work. His supervisor even pinned it on the notice board in the Bureau.
In fact as the Seattle Times reports, one of the newspaper’s staff was among those to receive the email, sent in 2010 shortly after the Special Agent had been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to the Bureau’s Tampa office.
The email was sent on 9 September 2010. All of which points to the motivation of the sources that first leaked word of its existence being mischievous at best.
Because if not quite an Icarus figure fallen to earth, Fred Humphries reputation has certainly been allowed to wilt in the heat of the media glare.
The CIA has opened an investigation into the conduct of its former director David Petraeus, who resigned last week citing an affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.
A CIA spokesman says the inquiry by the agency’s inspector general would see if there are any lessons to be learned.
Paula Broadwell, 40, was found to have classified information, but both she and General David Petraeus deny it came from him.
David Petraeus will testify on Friday on Capitol Hill about September’s deadly attack on the US consulate in Libya.
The CIA said in a statement on Thursday: “At the CIA we are constantly reviewing our performance. If there are lessons to be learned from this case we’ll use them to improve.
“But we’re not getting ahead of ourselves; an investigation is exploratory and doesn’t presuppose any particular outcome.”
In his first interview since resigning, David Petraeus told CNN on Thursday he had not given any classified information to his former lover.
He also said he quit because of the affair, not the assault two months ago on the consulate in Benghazi that left four Americans dead.
The CIA has opened an investigation into the conduct of its former director David Petraeus, who resigned last week citing an affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell
David Petraeus will be questioned by lawmakers behind closed doors on Friday about that attack, which has been the focus of Republican claims that the Obama administration misled the American people.
Meanwhile, intelligence officials continued on Thursday to defend their handling of the investigation into David Petraeus’ affair.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and acting CIA Director Michael Morell appeared before the House intelligence committee.
Dutch Ruppersberger, the panel’s top Democrat, said after the hearing that he was satisfied with the FBI’s investigation.
He said the agency was right not to have notified political leaders sooner, because of rules set up post-Watergate to prevent meddling in criminal investigations.
But another committee member, Representative Adam Schiff, also a Democrat, said “there’s a lot of information we need … with respect to the facts about the allegations against General Petraeus”.
At a press conference in New Orleans, US Attorney General Eric Holder was also asked why the justice department did not inform the White House or lawmakers earlier about the investigation.
Eric Holder said: “As we went through the investigation and looked at the facts and tried to examine them as they developed, we felt very secure in the knowledge that a national security threat did not exist.”
The scandal was discovered when FBI officials looked into harassing emails, allegedly from Paula Broadwell, that were sent to a Florida socialite who is a family friend of the Petraeuses.
The inquiry has also ensnared the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen.
John Allen is under investigation for sending what officials describe as “flirtatious” emails to the Tampa hostess, Jill Kelley.
Adultery is illegal under military law, but General John Allen denies wrongdoing.
The questions and the allegations keep coming in the Petraeus scandal that has blazed for days, reducing the general’s position to dust and licking at the doors of a growing cast of characters.
But the one thing that seemed fireproof was the fact of Paula Broadwell’s academic prowess: until now.
Because Paula Broadwell did not complete that PhD. She did not fulfill the demanding requirements of the public policy programme that facilitated her meeting with David Petraeus. It is a detail she has repeatedly glided over, allowing the truth to slip unnoticed to the floor in each book promoting interview and talk.
Speaking to theBoston Globe, one of Paula Broadwell’s former professors at Harvard recalled her presence at the University: “It was very much, <<I’m here and you’re going to know I’m here>>. She was not someone you would think of as a critical thinker.”
It may not have stretched as far as a convincing answer to the question: “How did she get so close?”
So close that she took classified military documents home; so close that she felt entitled to warn socialite Jill Kelley off the man she clearly considered her own. Nothing quite explained all that.
But her much vaunted intellectual prowess did at least go some way towards bridging that troubling, yawning gap between Paula Broadwell the unknown and Paula Broadwell the soldier- scholar, biographer to David Petraeus. Well it doesn’t anymore.
The details of her shortcomings are unclear but Kennedy School faculty and enrollment records show that Paula Broadwell did not continue at Harvard after two years.
The withering conclusion of one unnamed academic was: “I don’t remember her as a student. I remember her as a personality.”
Paula Broadwell didn’t complete PhD that led to David Petraeus biography
Presumably it was that personality that relieved David Petraeus of his critical faculties when he invited Paula Broadwell well and truly into his camp.
Paula Broadwell left Harvard with a lesser diploma in 2008, a master of public administration, after one additional semester.
According to her former professor news that she was to become David Petraeus’s biographer shocked many in the national security faculty at Harvard because, “she just didn’t have the background – the academic background, the national security background, or the writing background”.
On the face of it the extent to which David Petraeus let his guard down is breathtaking. Certainly it is an act he rues today. He has told his friend Colonel Peter Mansoor that he considers his behavior, “morally reprehensible”, though interestingly could not resist a flick of self-defence, pointing out that he had “violated no laws”.
But then Paula Broadwell is nothing if not convincing when it comes to outlining her own credentials and, given the glowing portrait of ‘strategic leadership’ she penned as David Petraeus’s biography, nothing if not flattering.
In one television interview she recalled approaching General David Petraeus and asking him to be a case-study for her dissertation. She wanted to show, “What Petraeus’s role was in forcing the military to adapt to win the wars we were in.”
And while Paula Broadwell stroked her subject’s ego with one hand she shored up her own credibility with the other; part Mata Hari, part blue-stocking.
Key to that credibility, as well as her doctorate dissertation turned book, were the two Master of Arts degrees she laid claim to on professional networking site, LinkedIn.
Paula Broadwell listed both from the University of Denver, one in international security and one in international negotiations.
In fact as the Boston Globe reveals the university registrar only lists her as having been awarded one degree in international security in 2006. It didn’t stop the University inviting Paula Broadwell back to address their alumni society in 2012.
But the recent revelations did see a wobble of sorts when, earlier this week, the angst-ridden administration removed the video of her speech which had been proudly posted on line. It has since been reinstated.
As far as a second Harvard professor is concerned Paula Broadwell was, “a lot of talk but not a lot of follow-through”. David Petraeus may beg to differ.
Certainly Paula Broadwell never tired of talking herself – or her subject – up. When it came to promoting her book, for Paula Broadwell, establishing her own academic, military and security credentials came second only to establishing whether General David Petraeus was, as Jon Steward put it, “awesome or incredibly awesome”.
Paula Broadwell dropped academic qualifications and security clearance the way a socialite might pepper her conversation with boasts of parties attended and “bffs” made. According to Paula Broadwell, being embedded in Afghanistan with David Petraeus was not the huge leap many imagined because, she explained: “We had previously met through academia.”
She herself was a graduate of West Point and a specialist in counter-terrorism with black ops experience, high security clearance, “and then some”.
Staring at Jill Kelley’s $1.3 million mansion from the street, it would be hard not to think that this was a person who had made it in life.
The vast 1923 brick house is in one of the most fashionable districts of Tampa, Florida, and is over the bay from one of New York Yankee Derek Jeter’s homes.
The lawns are perfectly manicured, it has six bedrooms and four bathrooms for the hundreds of military guests who used to attend parties there.
A closer look, however, and you notice that the paint is peeling on the outside and wooden chairs at all rather too well worn.
The owners have been sued for $4.1 million of debts and are, as we found out this week, at the centre of the biggest scandal to rock the military in living memory.
If ever there was a perfect metaphor for the life that Jill Kelley has been living, then her house would be it. A lot of front, in other words, and a hollow, brazen ambition on the inside.
Until this week the only view we had to Jill Kelley’s life was that of the outsider, but now we all know what was going on behind closed doors it raise more questions than it answers.
General John Allen, the commander of US troops in Afghanistan, sent her up to 30,000 emails including some which were reportedly of an inappropriate nature.
Through her connections, Jill Kelley grew so close to General David Petraeus that she was invited to his daughter Anne’s wedding.
Even the FBI agent who investigated her claims that David Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell had sent her threatening emails was so enraptured that he sent her a picture of himself with no shirt on.
So beloved was the “social liason” to the military that all Jill Kelley had to do was give the guard at MacDill Air Force Base a wave of her perfectly manicured hand and she would be let in to fraternize as she pleased.
But no longer – with her access revoked and the scandal in full public view, many are asking the questions they should have asked from the beginning.
What exactly it is about this former mathlete that powerful men cannot resist?
And what is it about her that takes great pleasure in seeing a man in uniform go weak at the knees when she walks into the room?
A look into Jill Kelley’s background reveals that she could not have been more different than how she has ended up.
Jill Kelley and twin sister Natalie Khawam waited until their teens at the earliest before embarking on their transition to a more shameless version of the Kardashians. (Which takes some doing, considering that Kim Kardashian became famous for starring in her very own sex tape.)
Jill Kelley’s parents Marcelle and John Khawam moved to Philadelphia from Lebanon in the 1970s, presumably to give a better life to their children, whom they raised as Catholic.
They opened a Middle Eastern restaurant in Voorhees, New Jersey before moving to Pennsylvania where both girls attended Lower Moreland High School in Huntingdon Valley.
Classmates remembered the girls as “The Twins” because they spent so much time together, never went to any parties and did not appear to have even gone to the prom.
But in a sign of things to come, at 18, Jill Kelley, then Jill Khawam, responded to taunts about her big nose: “You’ll be in awe of me after I have a nosejob.” Jill Kelley, now a mother of three, appears to have met her future husband Scott, a cancer surgeon, in Pennsylvania and a decade ago they moved to Tampa, taking in Natalie Khawam as a permanent guest in their new home, which they bought in 2004.
Jill Kelley and her twin sister Natalie Khawam pictured with David Petraeus and his wife
It was there that Jill Kelley set about turning herself into the to go-to girl for any party that the military put on.
First she had to look the part – out went the t-shirts, jeans and cheap pearls of her high school days.
In came designer dresses, high heels, expensive handbags and a new sleek hairstyle instead of her voluminous youthful look.
In also came the guests at her regular parties – David Petraeus, General John Allen, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is a close ally of Mitt Romney.
There are even claims her sister, Natalie Khawam, dated the former Florida governor, Charlie Crist.
It is likely senior FBI officials were also invited to sup cocktails on the lawn and meet the mayor and other local dignitaries.
A band would sometimes play amid a Cosmopolitan atmosphere that included high ranking French and Italian military officers.
So good a host was Jill Kelley that she became “honorary consul” to South Korea, a title with no responsibilities but official enough for her to put on her number plate.
Such delusions of grandeur were apparent when she phoned police in recent days asking for “diplomatic protection” because she was annoyed at journalists knocking on her door.
Meanwhile we now know that Jill Kelley’s world was falling apart.
She has been sued by Central Bank for $1.9 million for failing to keep up with mortgage payments on a home she bought after starting a property company.
Regions Bank sued her and her husband, Scott Kelley, for $1.8 million over the mortgage on another home and filed another claim for $453,000.
Bank of America followed suit for $25,000 of unpaid credit card charges.
Then came the Petraeus sex scandal, which makes her financial problems look like a drop in the ocean.
And Natalie Khawam has had it no easier, even appealing to David Petraeus and General John Allen to write letters to a judge on her behalf as she fought a doomed battled to win back custody of her four-year-old son.
A year ago, the judge had resoundingly denied custody to Natalie Khawam, saying he had serious concerns and reservations over her mental stability and her grasp on reality.
He also cited Natalie Khawam with “outrageous conduct”, “bad faith litigation tactics”, and “illogical thinking” before awarding full custody to the father, Grayson Wolfe, who had been unable to see his child for more than a year.
The New York Post claimed Grayson Wolfe won sole custody of the boy after the judge found out Natalie Khawam, a lawyer, repeatedly lied under oath and filed false domestic-violence and child-abuse claims against her husband.
Wal-Mart employees are planning to stage their largest walkout ever on Black Friday, the biggest holiday shopping day at the world’s largest retail store.
Motivated by strikes at Los Angeles stores before spreading to 12 other cities last month, the walkout is warned by at least one expert to potentially threaten not only their workforce but customers caught in the middle.
Expecting 1,000 protests both at stores and online is watchdog group Corporate Action Network and Union-supported groups OUR Wal-Mart and Making Change at Wal-Mart.
Employees in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and D.C. have signed up in the walkout according to Making Change’s director Dan Schlademan. Work stoppages are also planned in Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Minnesota.
Dan Schaldeman said no specific store locations are being released for fear of worker retaliation ahead of next week.
To Wal-Mart the numbers projected are said to be incremental, with a spokeswoman saying those expected to strike are only a small percentage of their 1.4 million workforce.
“This is just another exaggerated publicity campaign aimed at generating headlines to mislead our customers and associates,” Wal-Mart responded to the strikes in a statement obtained byKNWA.
“Our associates care about providing a great customer experience on Black Friday and we’re confident that’s what customers will have at Wal-Mart this year,” they said.
“Even if there aren’t that many people, it could have an effect, because their campaign in front of stores could discourage shoppers,” Ken Margolies, senior associate at the Worker Institute at Cornell University told CNN.
Ken Margolies hinted it having a much greater impact if involving their supply centers as well.
Strikes did take place last month at one Southern California warehouse as well as at a distribution center in Illinois which supplies Wal-Mart stores.
The issues over pay, hours, benefits, as well as employees’ ability to speak up has rallied the workers.
“I kept asking myself, <<when is the retaliation for speaking our mind and acting on our rights going to stop?>>” William Fletcher, a Wal-Mart employee in Duarte, California told CNN.
With roughly half of Wal-Mart’s stock controlled by descendants of company founder Sam Walton, Wal-Mart’s labor practices have garnered criticism among consumers and have gotten attention in the press, but so far have not affected investors.
Wal-Mart employees are planning to stage their largest walkout ever on Black Friday, the biggest holiday shopping day at the world’s largest retail store
In 2008, Wal-Mart agreed to pay as much as $640 million to settle dozens of federal and state class-action lawsuits alleging it deprived workers of wages.
In the latest lawsuit filed in Chicago last month the corporation is accused of failing to pay temporary workers a minimum of four hours’ pay on days a laborer was contracted to work, but was not utilized for a minimum of four hours.
“It’s a successful company that profits $16 billion a year, that can afford to pay its executives $10 millionwhile I can’t afford to support my family on $16,000 a year,” Sarah Gilbert a striking worker in Seattle toldAOL.
According to Glassdoor.com, the average Wal-Mart sales associate earns $8.83 an hour.
If working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, their annual salary would be $18,400.
On Wednesday the latest public smear against the company came from the mouth and public arrest of a former employee seen handcuffed while visiting his old store in Orlando, Florida, to talk to workers about the planned strike.
Alex Rivera accused managers of intentionally misleading city police officers to cause his detainment, he told The Nation.
He now fears that with his former co-workers having seen him in handcuffs for voicing his support against the corporation they will be fearful of protesting alongside him.
“They’re going to say, <<If I join the organization and do something like that, this is what’s going to happen to me>>,” he said.
“Unfortunately the facts just don’t support what Mr. Rivera is saying,” a Wal-Mart spokesperson responding to his story told the Nation accusing Alex Rivera of ignoring a signed trespassing warning.
According to Alex Rivera, that warning was not signed until after his arrest, to the mutual described anger of arresting officers.
Cities expected to be involved
Walkouts:
Chicago
Dallas
Miami
Los Angeles
Milwaukee
D.C.
Work stoppages:
Oklahoma
Mississippi
Louisiana
Minnesota
*specific store locations are not being released ahead of next week by Making Change
Mick Jagger took out an injunction stopping his first serious girlfriend, former model Chrissie Shrimpton, from publishing a trove of his old love letters, she has revealed.
Chrissie Shrimpton, 67, sister of Sixties fashion icon Jean, said she was so “disgusted” when she heard of the legal action, she sent most of them back.
But in what the Rolling Stone may read as a veiled threat, Chrissie Shrimpton let slip she still owns some of the missives Mick Jagger, 69, wrote as an up-and-coming musician.
Chrissie Shrimpton said: “Many years ago it came to the notice of a journalist that I had hundreds of love letters from Mick Jagger. She tried to persuade me to publish them, which I did not want to do, as it happens.
“Mick Jagger got wind of this and to my amazement I heard on the Radio 4 news that I was involved in a court case regarding this issue.
“Mick Jagger had put up an injunction preventing their publication on the grounds that while I owned the paper they were written on, he owned the words. I was not even informed of this by his legal party.”
She added: “I was so disgusted I sent most of the letters back to him. However, a few have turned up over the years; my fifth grandchild opened an old book at my house recently and one fell out.”
Mick Jagger took out an injunction stopping his first serious girlfriend, former model Chrissie Shrimpton, from publishing a trove of his old love letters
The revelation came in a letter Chrissie Shrimpton wrote to a national newspaper, in response to the news that another of Sir Mick Jagger’s former girlfriends plans to auction a series of his handwritten love letters next month.
American-born singer Marsha Hunt, 66, who inspired the Rolling Stones’ 1971 hit Brown Sugar, will sell ten letters he wrote her from Australia, while he was dating pop star Marianne Faithfull.
Chrissie Shrimpton added: “I wonder if he will stop Marsha from publishing her letters to him.”
It is not the only time Mick Jagger has sought the help of lawyers to suppress his old love letters. In 1992, his solicitors warned the Mail on Sunday not to publish notes he wrote to schoolgirl Cleo Sylvestre while he was dating Chrissie Shrimpton.
Now married with two daughters, Chrissie Shrimpton dated Mick Jagger from 1963 to 1966. They met when he was a 19-year-old student at the London School of Economics and she was a secretary.
In a recent interview, Chrissie Shrimpton said her friends thought the musician was too ugly to be her boyfriend. She said: “I used to hear them whispering, <<Poor Chrissie, her boyfriend’s so ugly>>.
“Mick would come and meet me for lunch. One day, as we walked through the market, a stall-holder threw a cabbage at his head and shouted <<You ugly f*****>>.”
But once Mick Jagger found a legion of adoring fans he began to cheat on Chrissie Shrimpton, before leaving her for Marianne Faithfull in 1966. Shortly before they split, Chrissie Shrimpton tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
She said later: “I remember thinking <<He doesn’t want me, and I can’t live without him>>. I really wanted to die.”
A freight train in Texas has crashed into a parade float carrying wounded veterans en route to a charity benefit in Midland, Texas, killing four people and injuring 16 others.
The crash happened at a railroad crossing in the city of Midland, as the flat-bed truck was on its way to an event honoring wounded US veterans.
The crossing gate and lights were reportedly working and an investigation is under way. One eyewitness said the float became stuck at the crossing.
The veterans and relatives were heading to a banquet, which has been cancelled.
According to the local officials, the float hit by the train was the second being pulled along the parade route. The first had already safely crossed the railroad.
Officials say the eastbound train was sounding its horn before it struck the float with 26 people on board.
Panic reportedly swept through those on the trailer as the locomotive approached, with eyewitnesses saying some people jumped off the float.
The crash happened at a railroad crossing in the city of Midland, as the flat-bed truck was on its way to an event honoring wounded US veterans
Patricia Howle, who was waiting at a nearby traffic light, told KOSA-TV: “People on the trailer saw the train coming and they were flying in every direction.
“I covered my face. I didn’t want to see.”
“I’ve been through five combat tours, and this is worse than probably, getting blown up,” Michael Morris, who said a good friend had died in the accident, told the Odessa-American.
Spokesman Tom Lange said a preliminary investigation indicated the crossing gate and lights were working at the time, though he said he did not know if the train crew had seen the float approaching.
“There is going to be a very thorough investigation,” Tom Lange said.
“It’s obviously a very tragic incident.”
Eyewitness Daniel Quinonez said the second float “could not go anywhere because of the other one being right in front of it”.
“I just saw the people on the semi-truck’s trailer panic, and many started to jump off the trailer,” Daniel Quinonez told the Associated Press news agency.
“But it was too late for many of them because the train impacted the trailer so fast,” he added.
National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson says his agency is investigating the crash.
Ten of the 16 injured people were later released from hospital, but at least one person remained in critical condition.
Special Agent Fred Humphries has been revealed as the face, and torso, of the “Shirtless FBI Agent” whose images were found in socialite Jill Kelley’s email account.
It was Frederick Humphries who initiated the investigation into harassing emails sent to Jill Kelley that ultimately led to the resignation of General David Petraeus.
Amid the heat of that exposure the news of his own apparent indiscretion was treated as another layer of sexual intrigue in this tangled tale.
In fact, Fred Humphries insists, it is nothing of the sort. The email was a joke that backfired more spectacularly than he could possibly have imagined and, perhaps, was allowed to.
The image in question was not some leering pose, directed at the object of his desire, but a round-robin joke – the sort of which the 47-year-old Special Agent was in the habit of sending – that ended with a picture punchline.
In stark contrast to the covert “dead drop” technique of Paula Broadwell and David Petraeus’s email correspondence, Fred Humphries’s message was sent from an account he shared with his wife, teacher Sara.
The snapshot showing Frederick Humphries – bald, muscular and shirtless – posed between two buff, bullet-ridden target dummies and carrying the punchline “Which one is Fred?” was framed and displayed on his wife’s desk at work. His supervisor even pinned it on the notice board in the Bureau.
In fact as the Seattle Times reports, one of the newspaper’s staff was among those to receive the email, sent in 2010 shortly after the Special Agent had been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to the Bureau’s Tampa office.
Fred Humphries sent topless picture to Jill Kelley from email account he shared with his wife
The email was sent on September 9, 2010. All of which points to the motivation of the sources that first leaked word of its existence being mischievous at best.
Because if not quite an Icarus figure fallen to earth, Fred Humphries reputation has certainly been allowed to wilt in the heat of the media glare.
According to the New York Times, Fred Humphries has a reputation as a “hard-charging” field agent. It is a turn of phrase that implies an approach more likely to earn results than friends.
Fred Humphries reportedly received a dressing down from his superiors when he impatiently tried to push forward the investigation into the emails received by Jill Kelley.
General David Petraeus has spoken out for the first time since his affair with Paula Broadwell became public, forcing him to resign – and revealed he is determined to make his marriage work.
Breaking his silence almost a week after he dramatically stepped down, David Petraeus also revealed he has not spoken to his mistress, Paula Broadwell, since the scandal emerged and denied he had ever given her classified military documents.
He maintained that his shock resignation on Friday had nothing to do with hearings about the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which he was due to testify at this week.
Instead, David Petraeus, speaking with HLN reporter Kyra Phillips, said he stepped down as he was deeply remorseful about the affair and the only honorable thing left to do was to admit his failings.
And, relaying her conversations with David Petraeus toHLN on Thursday, Kyra Phillips said he was now focusing on repairing the damage inflicted on his family, including his two adult children, Anne and Stephen.
He admitted to her that he had “screwed up terribly” and that he “felt fortunate to have a wife who is far better than he deserves”, Kyra Phillips said.
“He knows he made a big mistake,” she said.
“He does want to move forward making things work with his family. He doesn’t want to throw 37 years out the window with his wife.”
“This woman is strong,” she added of Holly Petraeus.
“She knows what she wants. She’s obviously, according to people that know her well, not happy about this – very, very upset about this.
“I do not know if she’s committed to working this out with Petraeus… But I do know that Dave Petraeus does not want to throw 37 years away and would really like to make this work and make things right with his family.”
Speaking with HLN reporter Kyra Phillips, David Petraeus said he stepped down as he was deeply remorseful about the affair with Paula Broadwell and the only honorable thing left to do was to admit his failings
David Petraeus, 60, revealed very little about his ten-month affair with Paula Broadwell, which ended in July, but said they had not spoken since Friday.
“They have not talked since this story broke,” Kyra Phillips said.
“They talked a couple of times when he ended this relationship which was a couple [of] months ago. But they have not talked since the story broke.”
These previous conversations have been confirmed by sources who saw David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell chatting at an intelligence event in Washington on October 27, weeks after the start of the FBI probe.
