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| THURSDAY • JUNE 11, 2009 |
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WHO SET TO DECLARE FIRST FLU PANDEMIC SINCE 1968: The World Health Organization was poised on Thursday to declare that the new H1N1 virus has caused the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years, health sources said on Thursday. The move will trigger heightened health measures in the WHO’s 193 member states as authorities brace for the worldwide spread of the virus that has so far caused mainly mild illness.
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ADMINISTRATION: REIN IN PAY IN US PRIVATE SECTOR: The Obama administration says executive compensation must be better managed to prevent the sort of risk-taking that jeopardizes the economy. Gene Sperling, who advises Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, said Thursday the administration does not want to impose caps on executive pay. But he also laid out for the House Financial Services Committee a list of guidelines calling on publicly-held companies to link compensation to long-term performance, not short-term gains.
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NEW WAR PLAN: The new commander in Afghanistan has a wide berth to handpick a dream team of subordinates as he moves to carry out a new strategy involving attacks on Taliban fighters and narcotic networks.
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 GAY GROUPS GROWING CONCERN OVER ‘BRUNO’: After an exhaustive and controversial production process, Sacha Baron Cohen and Universal are finally set to unleash BRUNO onto the multiplex — and gay groups are reacting with “deeply mixed” emotions! “Some people in our community may like this movie, but many are not going to be OK with it,” Rashad Robinson, senior director for the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation, tells the New York Times in a planned Sunday expose. “Sacha Baron Cohen’s well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others.” Brad Luna, a spokesman for human rights campaign, warns the movie should come with disclaimer: “We strongly feel that Sacha Baron Cohen and Universal Pictures have a responsibility to remind the viewing public right there in the theater that this is intended to expose homophobia.” Billed as an encore to the blockbuster Borat, with a twist, the film is set for July 10. It’s delivered R-rated and ready to shock. In one scene Bruno appears on a talk show holding a baby who is wearing a T-shirt reading “Gayby.” The sequence flashes to Bruno having sex in a hot tub while the baby sits nearby. He then boasts to the outraged studio audience that the baby is a man magnet. “You’re going to burn in hell for that one!” shouts an unknowing audience member. Elton John blushed and balked when Cohen asked if he could play “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” for a scene in which Bruno, participating in a cage-fighting match in Arkansas, pulls down his opponent’s pants and kisses him on the mouth, prompting a horrified crowd to throw garbage at him. [Elton does make a cameo later in the movie.] Cohen’s favorite BRUNO scene is said involve the comic strutting around ultra-orthodox streets of Jerusalem in short-shorts and Hasidic black hat. The New York Times’s Brooks Barnes is planning to go thousands of words on the societal implications of it all, newsroom sources tell the Drudge Report.
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LBN READERS GET IT - FAST! FAST! FAST!: Yesterday afternoon all 300,000 readers in all 50 of the United States and 23 foreign countries in 11 timezones saw the Phil Spector’s brand new prison mug shot (minus his wig) BEFORE…..CNN, The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Fox News, The New York Post.
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BIGGEST EMITTERS FAIL TO SHOW THE WAY FORWARD: China and the US failed to achieve a breakthrough at their latest round of climate talks on Wednesday, raising the stakes in the global effort to fight global climate change. The two countries responsible for almost half of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions ended three days of negotiations in Beijing.
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AHMADINEJAD LASHES OUT AT RIVAL BEFORE IRAN VOTE: Iran’s hard-line president took a final shot at his rivals Wednesday during his last public pre-election rally, accusing them of resorting to a smear campaign against him similar to the one used by Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is locked in a neck-and-neck race against reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi. Both have launched intense political attacks against each other and have turned the presidential election into a display of Iran’s deep political divides. In the biggest protest ever since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago, hundreds of thousands of people showed up to support Mir Hossein Mousavi, the pro-reform candidate. This is just two days before the election day.
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AT A MONUMENT OF SORROW, A BURST OF DEADLY VIOLENCE: At 12:40 p.m. yesterday a man stepped through the doors of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He took two paces, lowered his rifle at a security guard and, before anyone could react, opened fire in a popular national landmark. The guard, who did not have time to draw his gun, fell bleeding and fatally wounded to the polished floor. Other guards fired back, cutting down the assailant. Terrified patrons, many of them children, dived for safety. And what moments before had been a bright weekday in June became a tableau of violence. A white separatist acquaintance of alleged Holocaust Museum shooter James von Brunn told the Washington Post that Von Brunn had lost his Social Security and was growing increasingly despondent and violent-minded in the weeks leading up to the attack.
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 LBN-NOTICED: ***When Patricia Clarkson learned her LAX-JFK American Airlines flight was canceled due to stormy weather Tuesday, she burst into tears. “Honestly, people thought someone had died,” said an eyewitness. “She was sobbing. The drama was over the top.” Clarkson — who was expected last night at the Cinema Society screening of “Whatever Works” — calmed down and later explained to her castmate in the Woody Allen movie, Larry David, “I’m just so tired.” Said our witness, “An obviously embarrassed David looked like he wanted to run the other way.” ***Plastic surgeon Dr. Jon Perlman having dinner last night at the Melrose Bar and Grill in West Hollywood. ***LCO Executive Vice President Liam Collopy having lunch yesterday at Sparks Grille on Pico Blvd in L.A. ***Julia Roberts and Danny Moder hiding behind a huge bodyguard as they walked through Times Square in NYC when a pedicab driver in a SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirt tried to take their photo. ***Kirsten Dunst drinking double Patron margaritas while cheering on the Lakers at Village Pourhouse in NYC. ***Michael Keaton and his son Sean, 26, celebrating for reasons unknown at Commerce in NYC. ***Rant columnist Ericka T. Bass wearing a “Obama is lousy in bed, I know!” T-shirt eating dinner last night at the Hamburger Hamlet on the Sunset Strip in L.A. ***Rihanna and the guy rumored to be her new man — Canadian recording artist Aubrey Drake Graham — out last night in New York at the Griffin Night Club. ***In Bangkok at the World Comedy Film Festival. In attendance last night at the opening was my client Keith David, Verne Troyer (Mini-Me), Keenan Ivory Wayans with his girlfriend Brittany Daniels, and the Prime Minister of Thailand.
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 SMART PEOPLE READ THE LBN E-LERT: Political commentator and best-selling author Dick Morris along with approximately 300,000 other “influencers” understand that information is power and the LBN E-Lert is a power-tool.
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DOCTORS GROUP OPPOSES PUBLIC INSURANCE PLAN: As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system. The opposition, which comes as Mr. Obama prepares to address the powerful doctors group on Monday in Chicago, could be a major hurdle for advocates of a public insurance plan. The A.ME.A., with about 250,000 members, is Americas largest physician organization.
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LBN-HEALTH WATCH: ***The Venezuelan government of U.S.-critic President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday ordered Coca-Cola Co. to withdraw its Coke Zero beverage from the South American nation, citing unspecified dangers to health. ***The FDA has warned consumers not to use Clarcon skin products.
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LOOK WHO IS SHOPPING: Many Goodwill stores are courting the shoppers who scour high-end resale shops and department store sales racks for bargains.
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 BRET MICHAELS IS BLOODY MAD: You’re looking at the face of a man who took on the Tony Awards — and barely made it out alive. Bret Michaels just posted these gruesome pics of his busted ass face after a prop at the award show came down and cracked him in the kisser at the end of a live performance Sunday night.
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 ACROSS THE UNIVERSE: France is just one of the 23 foreign countries with daily LBN E-Lert readers.
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 LBN-MEDIA INSIDER: ***Glenn O’Brien says he had plenty of reasons to quit after a year and a half as editorial director of Brant Publications, which puts out Interview, Art in America and Antiques. “They’re not paying anybody — even people under contract,” O’Brien told Page Six yesterday. “They owe everybody — retouchers, printers, photographers, writers . . . It’s been horrible for months. You don’t want to assign stories if the writers won’t get paid.” O’Brien, who was Barneys’ creative director of advertising for 10 years, has nothing nice to say about Peter Brant, who owns the magazines, or his son, Ryan, who’s been running them. ***Gannett plans to add more hotel and airport copies of USA Today to help retain its U.S. circulation lead over News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal. USA Today will take a “far more aggressive stance,” says publisher David Hunke. The Journal is “very serious competition for us.”
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LBN-BOOK NEWS: ***Divorce will never have looked better on a woman than it will tonight at Mr. Chow in TriBeCa in NYC, where novelist and screenwriter Gigi Levangie Grazer is celebrating the release of her fourth book, “Queen Takes King.” The statuesque redhead, whose divorce from “Da Vinci Code” producer Brian Grazer was finalized in May, netting her $13 million, will also have a party on Satur day at the Southampton home of Rita Schrager, ex-wife of hotelier Ian Schrager. ***Mica Ertegun found herself temporarily cashless at the party at Elaine’s in NYC for the publication of “Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography,” and had to borrow $60 from Elaine Kaufman to buy two copies of the book by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, composers of such hits as “Jailhouse Rock” and “On Broadway.” The widow of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun — who worked with the songwriters going back to the ’50s — paid Elaine back when her driver returned. Other guests included Kenny Vance of “Jay and the Americans,” movie director Stanley Donen (”Singin’ in the Rain”), producer Ken Waissman (”Grease”), Anne Slater, author Bruce Jay Friedman and Leslie Uggams, who recorded Lieber and Stoller’s “Is That All There Is” before Peggy Lee made it a No. 1 hit. ***Guy Lalibert is furious about the new biography we reported on last month in which the Cirque du Soleil creator is portrayed as a bed-hopping scoundrel. Yesterday, he sent a letter to Transit Publishing demanding all copies of Ian Halperin’s “Guy Lalibert: The Fabulous Story of the Creator of the Cirque du Soleil” be yanked from stores in the next 24 hours or he’ll sue. But a defiant Halperin told us, “We intend to fight this vigorously and take this as a gross infringement on freedom of the press. Everything in my book is true and can easily be proven. If he continues to ha rass me . . . I will launch a slander suit.” ***Bookstore sales fell 2.6% in April, to $969 million, according to preliminary estimates released this morning by the U.S. Census Bureau. Bookstore sales have fallen every month this year and the April decline was slightly higher than the 1.4% drop reported in March. Through the first four months of 2009, bookstore sales declined 3.8%, to $5.21 billion. For the entire retail segment, sales were down 4.0% in April and 9.9% for the four-month period.
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LBN-HOLLYWOOD INSIDER: ***Joy Behar, a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” is joining CNN sister channel HLN to host a 9 p.m. talk show. HLN hopes to raise its prime-time ratings with Behar, who is known for her comedic and sometimes controversial sensibility. Behar will continue to co-host “The View.”
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LBN HISTORICAL COMMENTARY: Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. (1941)
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LBN-COMMENTARY By MARK DEO (Financial Expert and Author): Am I in Favor of a Flat tax? I am in favor of a flat tax. In order to return our economy to health and growth we MUST provide tax burden relief for small businesses. They currently employ half the work force, produce half of the private sector output, shoulder the largest tax burden and are likely to benefit from a flat tax more than the larger businesses. A flat tax could eliminate tax deductions and credits which are less widely available to small businesses as well as reduce compliance costs, lower interest rates and ultimately increase exemption for individual and small business taxpayers. ***To reply directly to Mark Deo, e-mail LBNElert@TimeWire.net. (Please put Mark Deo in the subject line).
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LBN-COMMENTARY By MEGHAN DAUM: A study released last month from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the University of Pennsylvania showed that even though men’s and women’s happiness levels have both gone down over the last few decades, women’s “subjective well-being” has declined “both absolutely and relatively to men.” The data came from a cross-section of ethnic and socioeconomic groups in several industrialized countries, and appeared to be big news primarily for one reason: When the same research was conducted in the 1970s, women reported higher levels of happiness than they do today. Is that because feminism turned out to be a total dud? Or were women in the ’70s hypnotized into serenity by those yellow smiley faces? No one seems quite sure.
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 LBN-A DIFFERENT VIEW:….Christian Bale…..
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 LBN-COMMENTARY By GEORGE WILL: The nation could subtract from its health care bill a significant portion of the costs caused by violence, vehicular accidents, AIDS, coronary artery disease, lung cancer and Type II diabetes resulting from obesity.
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LBN-OVERHEARD: ***Carrie Prejean has been dethroned as Miss California USA for “contract violations,” including missing scheduled pageant events, according to a state pageant official. ***Shia LaBeouf, 23, is on the cover of the upcoming issue of Parade magazine. Inside Dotson Rader describes the Transformers actor as “foul-mouthed, resentful, funny, prickly, quick-witted, and charming — a package of contradictions.” LaBeouf says the source of his humor is from “seeing my parents have sex, smoke weed, my mom being naked … [and] twisted R-rated humor.”
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LBN-DID YOU KNOW: ***People that use mobile phones are 2.5 times more likely to develop cancer in areas of the brain that are adjacent to the ear they use to talk on the mobile phone. ***Over 90% of diseases are cause or complicated by stress. ***Over 436,000 U.S. Troops were exposed to depleted uranium during the first Gulf war.
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LBN-QUOTE: “I would trust a citizen journalist as much as I would trust a citizen surgeon.”—–Morley Safer, 60 Minutes.
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LBN-HISTORY: On June 11, 1942, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a lend lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in World War II.
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LBN E-Lert Edited by Shannon Donnelly
Contributing Editors: Kathleen Spennrath, Meridith Berk, Rosalyn Isidoro
LBN E-Lert Disclaimer: 1.) The LBN E-Lert accepts no liability for the content of this email, or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided. The LBN E-Lert is not associated with any commercial or political organization and is transmitted via the web for the sole benefit of its subscribers. 2.) Unfortunately, computer viruses can be transmitted via email. The recipient should check this mail and any attachments for the presence of viruses.
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