RIM shows how BlackBerry 10 touch screen keys could rival its traditional keyboards [video]

Read More..

“Bennifer” buried as Ben Affleck’s star soars

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – It has taken 10 years of hard work and indie movies, but Ben Affleck finally has moved past his “Bennifer” nightmare.

Affleck, 40, once a tabloid staple who risked becoming a laughingstock during his romance with Jennifer Lopez and their movie flop “Gigli,” is back on top in Hollywood, winning accolades for his work both in front of and behind the camera.

Fifteen years after Affleck shared an Oscar with Matt Damon for their first screenplay, “Good Will Hunting,” buzz is building over a likely second Academy Award nomination next month. It would be Affleck’s first since 1997.

“Finally, people now are ready to go, ‘Wow! He’s at the very top of the food chain,’” Damon told Reuters.

Affleck’s latest film “Argo,” a part-thriller, part-comedic tale of the real-life rescue of six American diplomats from Iran in 1980, this week picked up five Golden Globe nominations and a nod from the Screen Actors Guild for its top prize of best ensemble cast.

The film, which Affleck directed, produced and stars in, has also delighted critics and brought in some $ 160 million at the worldwide box office.

In “Argo,” Affleck’s clean-cut looks are hidden under a long, shaggy 1970s hair cut and beard as he plays CIA officer Tony Mendez, who devised a fake film project to spirit six hostages out of Tehran after the Islamic revolution.

The kudos Affleck is now receiving follows the embarrassing headlines he attracted over his 2002-2004 romance with Lopez.

“It was tough to watch him get kicked in the teeth for all those years because the perception of him was so not who he actually was,” Damon said.

“It was upsetting for a lot of his friends because he’s the smartest, funnest, nicest, kindest, incredibly talented guy. … So that was tough. Now I’m just thrilled. … He deserves everything that he’s going to get,” he added.

With a huge, pink diamond engagement ring for Lopez and gossip about matching Rolls Royces, the pair dubbed “Bennifer” starred in the 2003 comedy romance “Gigli,” which earned multiple Razzie awards for the worst comedy of the year.

SELLING MAGAZINES NOT MOVIES

Damon, by contrast, was seeing his career surge with “The Bourne Identity,” “Syriana” and “The Departed.” But he recalls Affleck’s pain.

“He said (to me), ‘I am in the absolute worst place you can be. I sell magazines, not movie tickets.’ I remember our agent called up the editor of Us Weekly, begging her not to put him on the cover any more. Please stop. Just stop,” Damon said.

About a year after splitting with Lopez, Affleck married actress Jennifer Garner, had the first of three children with her, and started writing and directing small but admired movies like “Gone Baby Gone” in 2007 and 2010′s gritty crime film “The Town.”

Last month, Affleck was named Entertainment Weekly’s entertainer of the year, largely on the back of “Argo.”

The actor-turned-director said that managing the various tones of the film was his hardest challenge.

“I had to synthesize comedic elements and the political stuff and this true-life drama thriller story. … It was scary and it was daunting,” Affleck told Reuters, saying he powered through by “overworking it by a multiple of ten.”

A trip to the Oscars ceremony in February is now considered a shoo-in by awards pundits, but Affleck is not convinced that success is sweeter the second time around.

“It’s harder. On the one hand, coming from obscurity, you have a neutral starting place. Because of the tabloid press and over exposure, I was starting from a deficit,” he said.

“It can be very unpleasant to be in the midst of a lot of ugliness. But I just put my head down and decided … I was going to work as hard as I could, and I never let the possibility enter my mind that I might fail – at least consciously. Subconsciously, I knew I could fail and I was really scared, so it made me work harder.”

(Additional reporting by Zorianna Kit; Editing by Will Dunham)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Mental health toll emerges among Sandy survivors

NEW YORK (AP) — The image of his brother trapped in a car with water rising to his neck, his eyes silently pleading for help, is part of a recurring nightmare that wakes Anthony Gatti up, screaming, at night.

Gatti hauled his brother out of the car just in time, saving his life at the height of Superstorm Sandy. The two men rode out the hurricane in their childhood Staten Island home and survived. But weeks afterward, Gatti still hasn’t moved on.

Now he’s living in a tent in the backyard, burning pieces of furniture as firewood, refusing to leave until the place is demolished. Day and night, he is haunted by memories of the storm.

“My mind don’t let me get past the fact that I can’t get him out of the car. And I know I did,” Gatti said, squeezing his eyes tightly shut at the memory. “But my mind don’t let me think that. My mind tells me I couldn’t save him, he dies.”

As communities battered by Sandy clear away the physical wreckage, a new crisis is emerging: the mental and emotional trauma that storm victims, including children, have endured. The extent of the problem is difficult to measure, as many people are too anxious to even leave their homes, wracked by fears of wind and water and parting from their loved ones. Others are too busy dealing with losses of property and livelihood to deal with their grief.

To tackle the problem, government officials are dispatching more than 1,000 crisis counselors to the worst-hit areas in New York and New Jersey, helping victims begin the long work of repairing Sandy’s emotional damage.

Counselors are assuring people that anxiety and insomnia are natural after a disaster. But when the trauma starts to interfere with daily life, it’s probably time to seek help. And in a pattern that played out in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, symptoms may only get worse as victims transition from the initial shock to the disillusionment phase of the recovery.

“Folks are starting to realize that they may be in this for the long haul,” said Eric Hierholzer, a commander in the U.S. Public Health Service. “And things aren’t necessarily going to get better tomorrow or next week.”

At St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, the psychiatry department has recorded a 20 percent increase in walk-in patients since the storm hit, with residents reporting the whole gamut of stress-related symptoms. Anxiety. Insomnia. Panic attacks.

Local schools have referred 25 percent more children than usual to the hospital’s outpatient mental health programs.

“The children are very, very traumatized,” said Fern Zagor, who runs the Staten Island Mental Health Society. “They have a hard time making sense of this sudden change in their world. It’s frightening to them.”

A 5-year-old girl who was pulled from floodwaters clinging to her father hasn’t been able to attend kindergarten since the storm, Zagor said, because she’s too traumatized to be parted from him now. An 11-year-old boy is working with counselors after floating in water up to his neck on the second floor of his home for several hours before being rescued.

“This child has said he worries about rain,” Zagor said. “He worries about whether he’ll ever want to swim in a swimming pool again.”

The society is among many mental health providers who are working with Project Hope, a New York crisis counseling program funded by an $ 8.2 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that has just begun sending counselors to local communities. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office estimates the program will help more than 200,000 people.

Project Hope Counselor Yomira Natera has been seeking out storm victims who don’t speak English as their first language.

“We’ve seen an increase in substance with folks who may have language barriers,” she said. “Who may be frustrated with the system, who find it difficult to communicate.”

At least 20,000 people have so far made contact with counselors from the New Jersey Hope and Healing Program, which has dispatched hundreds of state-trained disaster crisis response counselors into the storm zone. The state also launched a hotline for people to call and talk to a counselor.

In Union Beach, N.J., a working-class enclave on Raritan Bay, Kathy Parsells helped coordinate deliveries volunteered at a FEMA recovery center on a recent afternoon, helping to coordinate deliveries. Her daughter and grandchildren had to be rescued during the storm.

“I’m OK,” she said, stifling tears. “My grandsons have nightmares. My grandson, the first night, was screaming: ‘It’s coming up the stairs.’”

Jeannette Van Houten, who lost her home in Union Beach, said in a telephone interview that she feels like she’s going through the same stages of grief that she endured when her niece was murdered in 2008.

“I have days that I can’t put a thought together. Like you start talking and you forget what you’re saying,” said Van Houten, who sleeps just two or three hours on a good night nowadays. “And the numbness, like you look at things that are happening around you, but you’re not part of it.”

The Rev. Matthew Dowling, a pastor at the Monmouth Church of Christ in Tinton Falls, N.J., volunteered as a crisis counselor in the days after the storm and heard a lot of survivor’s remorse from people who were more fortunate than their neighbors. But there was also a great deal of frustration.

“When FEMA arrives, they think everything is going to be fixed,” Dowling said. “The reality is it’s going to take months and months to get back to normal. Just like the steps of grief there’s anger at the new normal.”

Distress calls to LifeNet, New York City’s local crisis hotline, doubled during the first few weeks after the storm hit, averaging more than 2,000 calls per week from people who were angry and worried that basic needs — food, clothing, shelter — had not been met.

Officials are now preparing for a new wave of calls from people struggling with depression and other mental health issues, said Christian Burgess, director of the Disaster Distress Helpline, a national crisis hotline run by the federal government that provides a network of trained counselors in the aftermath of a major disaster.

Coming to grips with the loss of everything she owned has been difficult for Carol Stenquist, who stood outside borough hall in Union Beach, nervously dragging on a cigarette and crying.

“I have anxiety over it. Even when I lay down at night I feel my heart palpitating with the loss of everything,” said Stenquist, whose home was destroyed. “I was there for 20 years.”

She thinks she needs to talk to a professional counselor, but hasn’t sought one out yet.

“I’m kind of afraid that the emotional stuff I feel now is just part of what I’m going to feel when it’s over,” she said. “I’ve had my breakdowns, cries, feelings of depression. I’ve had all of that.”

On Staten Island, volunteers have been quietly stopping by Anthony Gatti’s tent to check in on him during his long vigil, dropping off boxes of cereal and cans of coffee. A volunteer therapist tried to talk him into leaving, but to no avail. He spends his days patrolling the property for looters and gazing at photos of the storm’s destruction on his laptop.

“I keep trying to make him understand. It’s a lot of wood and metal and pipes, that’s all it is,” said his mother, Marge Gatti. “You’ve got to get numb. You gotta get tough. If I’m not numb, I can’t function.”

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Wall Street dips at open on “cliff” overhang

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks were little changed on Friday, with the Nasdaq weighed by a 3-percent drop in shares of tech giant Apple, amid investor worries about a lack of progress by politicians in ongoing fiscal negotiations.

Apple was down 2.8 percent at $ 515.11 as UBS cut its price target to $ 700 from $ 780. The stock has tumbled in recent months for a variety of reasons, including investors locking in profits ahead of scheduled capital-gains increases for next year.

President Barack Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner held a “frank” meeting Thursday to try to break an impasse in negotiations over the “fiscal cliff,” tax hikes and spending cuts set to kick in early in 2013.

“The uncertainty that (the fiscal talks) is creating is basically holding the markets hostage in the short term,” said Andres Garcia-Amaya, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, in New York.

Frustration has mounted over the lack of progress in the discussions, with market participants’ worries reflected in a 0.6 percent drop in the S&P 500 on Thursday. Investors are concerned that going over the cliff could tip the economy back into recession. While a deal is expected to ultimately be reached, a drawn-out debate – like the one seen over 2011′s debt ceiling – can erode confidence.

Still, expectations of an eventual agreement have helped the S&P 500 bounce back over the last month, and on Wednesday, the index hit its highest intraday level since late October. For the year, the S&P has advanced more than 12 percent.

“For the end of this year, I wouldn’t expect a lot of big decisions by investors,” Garcia-Amaya said. “It’s been a fairly good year for equities and for that reason a lot of people don’t want to be a hero going into the end of the year.”

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> edged up 11.05 points, or 0.08 percent, at 13,181.77. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> slipped 2.49 points, or 0.18 percent, to 1,416.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 12.62 points, or 0.42 percent, to 2,979.54.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>

Best Buy Co Inc slid more than 15 percent to $ 11.90 after it agreed to extend the deadline for the company’s founder to make bid.

Consumer prices fell in November for the first time in six months, indicating U.S. inflation pressures were muted. A separate report showed manufacturing grew at its swiftest pace in eight months in December.

Meanwhile, data out of China was encouraging for its key trading partners, including the U.S., and for the prospects for global growth. It showed manufacturing in the world’s second-largest economy grew at its fastest pace in 14 months in December.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Home invasion victim gets help over Xbox headset

NORTH APOLLO, Pa. (AP) — Police say a Pennsylvania man used his Xbox headphones to call for help after being bound with duct tape and menaced with a gun during a home invasion.

Investigators say the 22-year-old suburban Pittsburgh man was playing video games in an upstairs bedroom when he heard his front door open. The man initially thought it was a family member but saw an armed man wearing a ski mask when he looked downstairs.

Authorities say the intruder bound Derick Shaffer and led him around the North Apollo home to locate valuables, then fled in Shaffer’s car. Shaffer reached a friend over his Xbox Live headset and had him call police.

The missing car was located about an hour later. Police questioned three people but are still trying to identify a suspect.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps signs new first look deal with Fox

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Fox has signed a new three-year first look deal with director/producer Shawn Levy‘s 21 Laps, the production company behind “Night at the Museum” and “The Watch,” the companies announced on Wednesday.

21 Laps is already based at Fox, having supplied the studio with several comedy titles over the past few years. While its most recent, “The Watch,” disappointed at the box office, the company has otherwise provided a steady supply of hits.

The original “Night at the Museum leads the pack with $ 570 million at the global box office, while the sequel surpassed $ 400 million.

“Shawn’s boundless energy, ambition and effortless creativity make him the perfect partner,” Emma Watts, Fox’s president of production, said in a statement. “We are lucky he continues to call Fox his home.”

21 Laps has a couple of projects due for release in 2013 – “The Internship,” starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, and “The Spectacular Now,” starring Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley.

Levy directed “The Internship,” his first job since “Real Steel,” which Disney released. That film debuts June 7.

21 Laps also has several projects in development, including a third installment of “Night at the Museum” and “Project Aloha,” which Levy plans to direct from a script by Nick Stoller. It is also at work on projects beyond Fox, such as “Story of Your Life,” a sci-fi thriller that Nic Mathieu will direct.

In signing a new deal with Fox, 21 Laps also announced a series of promotions. Billy Rosenberg moves up to the Senior Vice President level from Vice President while Dan Cohen rejoins the company from Mandeville as VP.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Roche wins EU nod for breast cancer drug Perjeta

ZURICH (Reuters) – European health regulators recommended Roche‘s breast cancer drug Perjeta for approval on Friday, cementing the company’s hopes that the drug will become the standard of care for an aggressive, incurable form of cancer.

Roche is hoping that combining Perjeta with its older drug Herceptin will become the standard treatment for women with a form of cancer known as HER2-positive, which makes up about a quarter of all breast cancers and has no cure.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide, with about 1.4 million new cases diagnosed each year and more than 450,000 women dying of the disease annually, according to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

U.S. health regulators already granted the drug approval in June. Recommendations from the European Medicine’s Agency (EMA) are normally endorsed by the European Commission within a couple of months.

Perjeta is an effective but costly drug. A typical 18-month course of Perjeta plus Herceptin costing approximately $ 188,000.

Vontobel analyst Andrew Weiss forecasts peak sales of 2 billion Swiss francs ($ 2.15 billion) for the drug.

Roche is also developing an “armed antibody” known as TDM-1 as a treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer. TDM-1 combines Herceptin with a derivative of a powerful type of chemotherapy and is designed to reduce unpleasant side effects.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Walmart vs. Walmart

Cindy Murray has been working at Walmart store No. 1985 in Laurel, Md., for 13 years. She’s stationed in the fitting rooms and earns $ 12.40 an hour. Murray, who’s in her fifties, says she loves her job. She thinks of herself as a model employee. She also helped start OUR Walmart, or Organization United for Respect at Walmart, the group of employees who defied one of the most powerful companies in America by holding protests at about 1,000 stores on the busiest day of the year for retailers. OUR Walmart says it has at least 4,000 members. The protests, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, involved about 500 of them, as well as many thousands of others sympathetic to their cause. Murray and her colleagues are asking Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) for more full-time jobs with predictable schedules instead of part-time work with hours that can change every three weeks—and wages that can provide their families a decent life. They also want respect.

Photograph by Christopher Leaman for Bloomberg BusinessweekOUR Walmart member Cindy Murray in Maryland

On the morning of Nov. 23, instead of going to work, Murray put on her bright green OUR Walmart T-shirt and boarded a bus provided by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried and failed to unionize Walmart associates for more than a decade. “Walmart isn’t on a good path, and someone needs to stand up and speak out,” says Murray. “But we always have fear inside of us, too.” They weren’t sure how many police would be present or if shoppers would support them. They weren’t sure if afterward their hours would be cut or if managers would make their lives difficult. None of them could afford to lose their jobs.

Murray was one of several hundred people, employees and activists and community leaders, who met at a store in nearby Hanover, Md. She helped lead chants, including “Stand up! Live better!” a play on Walmart’s slogan, “Pay less, live better.” They sang and marched for a couple of hours, then moved on to another store. At 7 a.m. on Saturday, she punched in for her regular shift.

Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S., with nearly 1.4 million workers in 4,602 stores. The company operates in 26 other countries, employing an additional 780,000 people. Its efficiency, in stores and throughout its supply chain, has remade the retail industry. When Walmart decides to sell mortgages, local produce, or compact fluorescent light bulbs, the effects ripple through the economy. So do its decisions about workers’ schedules, wages, and benefits. With revenue of $ 464 billion over the past year, it’s the biggest company in the U.S.

As it has expanded, Walmart has been vilified by activists and watchdog groups who say the company’s relentless growth has come at the expense of its workers, the environment, and the law. Since 2005 it has agreed to pay about $ 1 billion in damages in six different cases related to unpaid work. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating allegations of corruption by company executives in its Mexican subsidiary, Walmart’s biggest, and a potential coverup by executives at its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Walmart says it’s cooperating with the investigations and is conducting its own internal investigation and review.

Last month more than 100 workers died in a fire at a factory in Bangladesh that was sewing clothes for several retailers, including Walmart. The company says it was unaware its supplier had sent work to the factory and has fired the firm. According to Bloomberg News, the previous year Walmart had declined to sign an agreement among retailers to pay their suppliers to improve safety conditions at Bangladeshi factories. Walmart said it would be too expensive.

Walmart has survived labor fights before. But Murray and a core group of about 100 employees—along with the largest union of retail employees in the country and a branding firm founded by a top adviser to President Obama—are the architects of what may prove to be the most potent challenge yet. Crucially, the thousands of associates who have joined OUR Walmart say they’re not agitating for legal recognition or collective bargaining rights; unlike previous efforts, they’re not trying to unionize. They say they want to make Walmart a better place to work and shop. “It’s a cause that affects every American,” says Murray.

There’s also growing financial pressure. Walmart wants to expand into big cities where its size and power are controversial. Elected officials, community leaders, and residents often see the company as a disruptive economic force and a socially dubious one as well. “A business case can be made that it would be smart for them to figure out a way to improve the situation for their workers so that OUR Walmart is an ally, not an opponent,” says Ken Jacobs, chairman of the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center. Or it could continue to dismiss OUR Walmart as a small group of disgruntled associates who speak only for themselves and their union backers. Despite the organization’s success in attracting attention to the Black Friday strikes, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the company’s U.S. workforce participated. What’s certain is that Walmart’s management is facing a new kind of unrest at a time when it’s already vulnerable. Says Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas School of Law: “This is a battle for the soul of Walmart’s workforce.”

Walmart has been opposed to unions since Sam Walton opened his first store in Rogers, Ark., in 1962. These days, “we have human resources teams all over the country who are available to talk to associates, and we will get questions about joining a union,” says David Tovar, a spokesman for the company. “We would say: ‘Let us remind you of all that Walmart offers, and of what might go away. Quarterly bonuses might go away, vacation time might go away.’ ”

Tovar says the company is proud of the jobs it offers, that its benefits are affordable and comprehensive, and that there are plenty of opportunities for associates to advance. Walmart has more employees working full-time than its competitors do, he says, and a lower turnover rate. “The suggestion that the issues OUR Walmart is raising are widespread or representative of any sizable number of associates is ludicrous,” he says. “We know this because we have hard data. And we know this because our managers and executives are in our stores every day asking associates questions. They believe what they’re getting at Walmart is a good deal.”

In a rare public appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Dec. 11, Walmart Chief Executive Officer Mike Duke, interviewed by Bloomberg LP CEO Daniel Doctoroff, dismissed the idea of a rift between Walmart’s employees and management. “The characterization is not always accurate,” he said. “This tension for me is not a tension.”

Murray’s campaign started six years ago. Backed by the UFCW, and a coalition it called “Wake Up Walmart,” Murray tried to get workers in her store to join the union. She didn’t get far. “We knew we had to do something different this time,” she says. “The organization had to be made by associates and for associates so they would feel more free to join.”

Organizers at the UFCW felt the same way. In 2010 the union hired a veteran labor leader, Dan Schlademan, to be the director of “Making Change at Walmart,” a campaign it had just launched. “We needed to build something new,” says Schlademan. He connected with Murray and a few other Walmart employees and then turned to ASGK Public Strategies, the media and branding firm started by David Axelrod, a senior political adviser to President Obama. (Axelrod had sold his stake by 2010.) “There is a permanent political campaign around the legitimacy of Walmart on both sides,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. “Walmart hires operatives who are in and out of political campaigns. Unions enlist the hottest political consultants around.”

On its side, Walmart had Leslie Dach, who had been a strategist in several Democratic campaigns and a vice chairman at public-relations firm Edelman. Dach was hired in 2006 in part to improve the company’s reputation, especially with liberal politicians and shoppers. By 2010 the company had reduced waste and energy use, tried to offer more affordable health insurance, and had supported Obamacare. At an analysts’ meeting that October, Dach said: “I think the numbers clearly show that customers and elected officials like us better. … And that makes it easier for us to site stores, makes it easier for us to stay out of the public limelight when we don’t want to be there.”

In the fall of 2010, ASGK began conducting opinion research about how to effectively reach Walmart employees. The firm declined to comment on its work, but as a former executive described it, they realized that buying an ad on Facebook (FB) would allow them to target users who had identified themselves as Walmart employees. There were about 150,000 of them. Then ASGK asked the employees to rate themselves according to how committed they were to Walmart. It focused on the group in the middle: dedicated employees with a couple of complaints. Chief among them was that they weren’t treated with respect by their managers. Second was their pay.

“ASGK was good at getting to the heart of what really was important to people,” says Schlademan. The firm helped name the movement and craft a logo that looks like the OK hand sign. “Three employees have it tattooed on their arms,” he says.

OUR Walmart had a brand. Now it needed more leaders. Maggie Van Ness was an overnight stocker at store No. 1563 in Lancaster, Calif., when she heard about the group from a UFCW representative. In the fall of 2010, Van Ness and another employee began holding meetings at a cafe every Friday, telling their co-workers about the new movement. For a couple of months, they went to the Los Angeles union hall every other week for training. “The union was very good at teaching us what we could and couldn’t do,” says Van Ness, who left the company earlier this year for health reasons. “They stood behind us and pushed in the right direction.”

Photograph by Ryan Lowry for Bloomberg BusinessweekOUR Walmart member Mary Pat Tifft in Wisconsin

Mary Pat Tifft, from store No. 1167 in Kenosha, Wis., joined the organization in the spring of 2011 and quickly emerged as an effective spokeswoman. Tifft, who’s 57, has worked for Walmart for almost 25 years. She says she was a contented employee until 2005, when union organizers got hold of a memo from a Walmart executive to the board of directors. The memo proposed ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits without damaging Walmart’s reputation. It suggested capping pay, discouraging unhealthy people from applying, and expressed the company’s frustration that workers with seniority made more than new employees but were no more productive. “Reading that tells you how they feel about associates,” says Tifft. “It was degrading.” Tifft makes $ 19.96 an hour, the most she can earn without moving into management, which doesn’t interest her. Others in her store don’t make enough to support themselves, she says, and rely on the local food pantry that Walmart takes pride in contributing to. “Everyone always banked on the fact that Walmart would have your best interests at heart. But it’s not true,” she says.

In June 2011, OUR Walmart made its debut. At the UFCW’s expense, Murray, Van Ness, and Tifft, along with 97 other associates, traveled to Walmart’s headquarters a couple of weeks after the company’s annual shareholder meeting. They wrote a 12-point declaration that asked for wages and benefits that ensured no associate would have to rely on government assistance. They also called for dependable schedules, expanded health-care coverage, and the freedom to speak up without facing retaliation. In the parking lot, they presented the document to Karen Casey, the senior vice president for global labor relations. “It was really scary,” says Murray. “I think the executives were just as shocked as we were. Walmart heard us, but they didn’t listen.”

Photograph by Ryan LowryOUR Walmart protesters take part in a Black Friday demonstration in Chicago

The Bentonville trip was the first time many OUR Walmart members met face to face. “I was so taken aback listening to other associates’ stories,” says Tifft. “It made me want to speak louder.” The first discussion about holding protests on a Black Friday began then. At a hotel conference room, Schlademan set up computers for associates to learn how to use Facebook to stay in touch and reach other potential members.

During the next year, union organizers and employee leaders worked on recruitment. Van Ness says she signed up 25 employees at her store, about 10 percent of the staff. Murray says there are 40 members at her store, though most are silent. Monthly dues are $ 5.

OUR Walmart returned to Bentonville in June 2012 for the annual meeting, which coincided with Walmart’s 50th anniversary. The group had proposed a shareholder resolution calling for greater disclosure about incentive pay for executives, spurred by allegations in the New York Times that top executives in Bentonville covered up evidence from Walmart’s own investigation into accusations of bribery in Mexico. Schlademan had found experts to help Tifft and three others, all shareholders, craft the resolution. Then he got them a lawyer when Walmart tried to have it removed from the ballot.

In front of about 16,000 people, Proposal 6 was read aloud: “We have cut costs too far, stores are understaffed and associates cannot provide customers the service that Sam Walton built the company on and that we are proud to provide. … Sam Walton said, ‘Listen to your associates, they are your best idea generators.’… There has to be a new relationship based on honesty, based on trust, based on respect.” The auditorium was full of cheers; Tifft looked stunned. The resolution, supported by Institutional Shareholder Services, a leading proxy advisory group, won about 9 percent of the vote. The Walton family controls almost half of the shares in the company.

As the holiday shopping season approached, several dozen employees at warehouses that serve Walmart walked off the job in California and Illinois to protest what they said were poor working conditions. Then, in early October, OUR Walmart staged its first strike, in Pico Rivera, Calif. From there, some members went to Bentonville for the annual meeting for analysts. They stood in the parking lot, chanting: “We do not get enough hours. We cannot take care of our families.” Later, Colby Harris, who’s 22 and works in the produce department in a Walmart in Lancaster, Tex., led a dozen or so people to Walmart’s first store. The group collected water jugs, buckets, trash cans, cooking utensils. They found a rhythm and began chanting, “What do we want? Respect! When do we want it? Now!” Says Harris: “I think we caught the managers off guard. It was exhilarating.”

Photograph by Ryan Lowry for Bloomberg BusinessweekOUR Walmart member Colby Harris in Texas

At the meeting itself, Walmart noted how well it treats its associates. The company had already issued guidelines to store managers about how to respond to walkouts or work stoppages on Black Friday. “We wanted to ensure we provided the safest possible shopping environment for our customers,” says Walmart spokesman Tovar. The company also engaged in its own workers’ campaign. “If OUR Walmart people are in a store trying to talk to associates about joining a union, we do educate them about what it would mean,” he says.

Acknowledging their existence proved Walmart was paying attention. “That was a tactical mistake,” says Lichtenstein of UC Santa Barbara. “That ratified the importance of the protests.” Murray agrees: “It was a great recruiting tool.” She and other leaders spoke to associates afterward, explaining that despite Walmart’s assertions, their group is not trying to form a union. “Right now that’s not even a topic of conversation,” says Tifft.

On the Monday evening before Thanksgiving, Tovar told CBS News that the protests were “another union publicity stunt.” He added: “If associates are scheduled to work on Black Friday, we expect them to show up and to do their job. And if they don’t, depending on the circumstances, there could be consequences.” As encouragement, Walmart offered associates an additional 10 percent discount if they worked the full day. (They are normally entitled to a 10 percent discount.) “Some people might call that an incentive,” says Tifft. “I call it a bribe.”

On the day of the protests, Tovar issued a statement accusing the UFCW of exaggerating the scope of the demonstrations. “We had our best Black Friday ever,” he said. A week later, though, Walmart felt compelled to again counter the perception that its employees were in revolt. Michael Bender, the president of Walmart West, wrote an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle with the headline, “Our workers love their jobs.” “I want our associates to know we have their backs,” he wrote.

Cindy Boyd has been a full-time associate at a Walmart in Glendale, Calif., for the past 15 years. Her husband and son work there, too. She doesn’t support OUR Walmart. “I feel like, if they’re not happy, maybe it’s not the right fit for them,” she says. “They shouldn’t bash the company that feeds them.” Shirley Jeanine Clem says she thought the protests were silly and unnecessary. She’s been working at a Baytown (Tex.) store for nine years and was among the women reimbursed after the company found they had been paid less than men for the same work. “As a caring mother, I do not hesitate to tell my daughters to work for Walmart,” she says.

OUR Walmart’s decision to create a new kind of organization makes it a less predictable adversary than the company is used to. Yet it’s hard to assess if the group will achieve its goals without the legal protections that come with union recognition. “Walmart has the advantage of money and power, but these things can be overcome,” says Getman of the University of Texas. “The very fact that the situation is unusual gives an advantage to OUR Walmart.” The group has gotten Walmart’s attention. Beyond that, it may be years before it’s possible to assess its impact on the company.

Meanwhile, Walmart has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming OUR Walmart has been organizing without seeking union recognition. The UFCW is reviewing more than 100 violations of workers’ rights by Walmart and has promised to continue supporting OUR Walmart as long as the group needs help. “Everything will be building toward an even bigger Black Friday 2013,” says Schlademan.

“I’m pretty sure Bentonville knows that we’re here to stay,” says Murray. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not backing down.”

Businessweek.com — Top News

Read More..

Lidl Christmas dinner offer goes viral on Twitter

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Discount retailer Lidl faces a 200,000-euro ($ 260,000) Christmas dinner bill after an offer of chicken vol-au-vents and ice cream cake for the poor went viral.

The supermarket launched a Twitter campaign in Belgium on Monday, saying it would hand out five four-course Christmas dinners to food banks for each tweet on a hash tag.

Lidl had expected to hand out about 1,000 of the 20-euro dinner packs, consisting of tomato soup, vol-au-vents with chips, an ice-cream cake and chocolates, a spokesman for the German-based company’s Belgium unit said on Wednesday.

But local newspapers wrote about the offer and people retweeted using the hash tag – #luxevooriedereen, Dutch for “luxury for everyone”.

By the end of the 24-hour campaign, 1,500 people had tweeted, meaning Lidl has to deliver 7,500 dinners. That sparked reports the supermarket had been caught out by its campaign.

To quash such talk, Lidl rounded up the number of dinners to 10,000, and branded the campaign a success.

Lidl said it had not yet decided whether to repeat the exercise next year.

“We’ve learnt quite a few lessons over the past 48 hours, to say the least,” the spokesman said.

($ 1 = 0.7693 euros)

(Reporting By Ben Deighton. Editing By Sebastian Moffett.)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Britney Spears, Taylor Swift are top-earning women in music

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Pop star Britney Spears edged past Taylor Swift to claim the title of top-earning woman in music after bringing in an estimated $ 58 million from her album, endorsements and a perfume in the past year, Forbes said on Wednesday.

Country-pop singer Swift, 22, was a close second with an estimated $ 57 million paycheck thanks to her tour – which made more than $ 1 million each night – a contract with CoverGirl cosmetics, her own line of fragrances and her new album “Red.”

R&B star Rihanna, 24, earned an estimated $ 53 million to put her at No. 3, two places up from last year, followed by Lady Gaga, 26, who slipped from No. 1 in 2011 to fourth place with $ 52 million.

Katy Perry, 28, the only musician other than Michael Jackson to produce five No. 1 hit singles from one album, rounded out the top five with about $ 45 million in earnings.

“I think people love the comeback story – Britney never really finished her run as a superstar,” Steve Stoute, marketing expert and author of “The Tanning of America” told Forbes.

Spears, 31, who was No. 10 last year, earned most of her money from her latest album “Femme Fatale” and her tour, according to Forbes, which compiled the list with estimated earnings from May 2011 to May 2012.

In September, Spears became a judge on the reality TV singing show “The X Factor,” reportedly for $ 15 million.

Despite their huge incomes, only eight of the top women music earners were among the 25 best-paid musicians, which Forbes attributes in part to career breaks to have children.

Madonna made the list in ninth place with an estimated $ 30 million in earnings, which did not include profits from her latest tour because it was outside the time period considered for the ranking.

Forbes compiled the list after estimating pretax income based on record sales, touring information merchandise sales and interviews with concert promoters, lawyers and managers.

The full list can be found at http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2012/12/12/the-top-earning-women-in-music-2012/

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Maureen Bavdek)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..