- Take that, French Muslims…who also happen to be
incarcerated and forced to live in one of the world’s most interesting
countries from a concrete cell with only half a baguette per day. You may have
foolishly believed that you were entitled to and would receive the specialized
meals that meet your religion’s dietary specifications, but you were sorely
mistaken. Now that France's highest administrative body has suspended a plan to
provide Halal meals for Muslim inmates at Saint-Quentin-Fallavier prison in Grenoble,
eastern France, it’s only a matter of time before this executive hammer drops
on other inmates making absurd demand about the gruel piled on their plastic
trays at the prison cafeteria. The council of state decided that providing
Halal meat was impractical "owing to its financial cost and high needs for
organization,” saying in so many words that spending extra cash to procure and
prepare a specific type of meat for a group of lawbreakers who are supposed to
be paying their debt to society and not being catered to while behind bars is a
bad idea. France's Justice Minister Christiane Taubira also argued the plan
would infringe France's robust rules on secularism that ban religious
expression in public places, which was a nice way of back-stopping against
potential backlash for the decision. France's highest appeals court will make a
final decision on the case, which came before the council after the request of
a Muslim inmate last November. Given that France has the largest Muslim
population in western Europe, estimated at some 5 million, the result of this case
matters quite a bit………
- Carmelo Anthony may have never won an NBA championship and
may have just signed a new contract with the New York Knicks that ensures he
never will, but starting next season, the nine-figure earner will be able to
tie himself directly to championship gold. Anthony and his Knicks teammates
will have a gilded addition to their uniforms starting next season, as all
franchises that
have won a championship will wear a small gold tab on their back jersey collars.
The story first broke after images obtained from an adidas retail catalog
appeared online, showing a gold championship tab that would be the first
league-wide championship badge ever used by one of the four major North
American professional sports leagues. The rationale behind the gold tab isn't
tough to trace, as the World Cup just concluded and the tab is similar to the
way soccer teams denote World Cup titles on the uniforms they wear when they
head out to the pitch for 90 minutes of scorless soccer followed by 30 minutes
of scoreless overtime soccer and a totally arbitrary penalty kick shootout to
end things. The NBA is clearly looking to thieve something great from another
sport and make that something it’s own, further augmenting its quest to elbow
past the NFL as America’s most popular sport. Soccer uses a star for each
title, while the NBA will use a single gold tab regardless of how many tittles
a team has won. Franchises with dozens of titles, like the Boston Celtics, will
have the same number of gold tabs as one-time champions like the Portland Trail
Blazers...........
- Ron Howard is a man steeped in 1960s entertainment lore
and fame, so of course he is the right man to direct a new documentary about The
Beatles' early years. Howard has signed on for the film, which will be produced
for the Beatles' Apple Corps Limited company with White Horse Pictures and will
be made with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono
Lennon and Olivia Harrison. The obvious question is whether Howard’s access to
those who know the stories at the heart of the film will outweigh to puff piece
it is likely to be for that very same reason, but it is expected to put a
magnifier over a time in The Beatles’ history that hasn’t typically been a
focal point in previous documentary or autobiographical efforts. It will zero
in on the formative touring days of the band, from shows at Liverpool's Cavern
Club and their time in Hamburg, up until their 1966 gig in Candlestick Park in
San Francisco. "I am excited and honored to be working with Apple and the
White Horse team on this astounding story of these four young men who stormed
the world in 1964. Their impact on popular culture and the human experience
cannot be exaggerated,” Howard said. After recently directing a movie about Jay
Z's Made In America festival,
perhaps Howard was simply in a musical frame of mind. In addition to Howard’s
project, The Beatles' movie “A Hard
Day's Night” was will be re-released in cinemas on its 50th anniversary.
It was fully restored and after hitting theaters, it will be part of a
limited-edition DVD and Blu-ray release to grab even more cash………
- Unions rarely fight for well-deserved rights to be enjoyed
by hard-working, talented employees. Teamsters Local 743 is a rare and
beautiful exception and its latest battle is one that every working man and
woman should be able to appreciate. Employees at Chicago's WaterSaver Faucet
company are blue collar folks with wants and needs, specifically the want to
not urinate on themselves and the need to make a few trips to the restroom
during the day. That’s not easy when The Man will only allow you six minutes a
day inside the employee restroom and threatens to discipline you if you go
beyond the allotted time. Yes, WaterSaver is timing bathroom breaks and
tightening the noose….on employees’ bladders. Thankfully, the union has swung
back, filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming
unfairly disciplined 19 workers in June for "excessive use" of
washrooms. According to the knobs in the company's human resources department, "excessive
use of the bathroom is... 60 minutes or more over the last 10 working
days," according to the affidavit. The drama began last winter, when
WaterSaver decided it was an excellent use of corporate resources to install swipe
card systems on bathrooms located off the factory floor on the grounds that some
employees were spending way too much time in there, and not enough time on the
manufacturing line. Why anyone would want to spend excess time in non-private,
filthy restroom is unclear, but WaterSaver CEO Steve Kersten said 120 hours of
production were lost in May because of bathroom visits outside of allotted
break times. The thought that The Man was monitoring their toilet time had to
be unnerving, so the company decided to incentivize the idea of holding it
until your insides threaten to explode. WaterSaver has adopted a rewards system
where workers can earn a gift card of up to$1 a day if they don't use the
bathroom at all during work time. Stunningly, Kersten said only a few workers
have earned them. He also claimed that so far no one has been suspended or
terminated, although warnings have been issued as the first step in a
three-part disciplinary process. Union leaders rightly claimed that said
monitoring bathroom time is an invasion of privacy. "The company has spreadsheets
on every union employee on how long they were in the bathroom,"
WaterSavers union representative Nick Kreitman said. “There have been meetings
with workers and human resources where the workers had to explain what they
were doing in the bathroom.” The prevailing theory, by the way, is that
employees are getting around a ban on cell phone use on the factory floor by
taking their iPhone to the bathroom stall……….
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