Free Republic

Dilek Ertek, 71, was the distributor of Tiffany's jewelry in Turkey for over two decades. After falling from the Norwegian Spirit cruise ship, her family has raised questions surrounding the circumstances — including missing jewelry from her cabin — of her mysterious death. Ertek's son, Gokce Atuk, claims jewelry went missing from his mother's safe in her cabin aboard the cruise ship prior to her unexpected death. The Turkish newspaper, Sabah, has reported that Ertek's family has urged police to investigate the death of the matriarch — specifically her lover, a 74-year-old Swiss national, who waited twenty hours before reporting...

For The First Time Ever, A Tiffany’s Ad Features A Gay Couple By Peter Holley January 10 As far as Tiffany & Co. ads go, it’s standard fare: a chic, exceptionally attractive couple sharing a romantic moment that is captured in a beautiful black and white photograph. This time around, the only difference is that said couple is composed of two men, making them the first gay couple ever featured in the luxury jeweler’s engagement campaign, according to Elle. The future husbands, who can be seen sharing a loving moment on the stoop of a brownstone, are not models, but...

Questions Surface On Gingrich Campaign Travel Payments By Luke Rosiak February 17, 2012 When Newt Gingrich’s campaign disclosed in October it planned to pay the candidate $70,000 for travel expenses in the third quarter, the transfer was an anomaly among presidential campaigns. But weeks ago, the former House speaker revised his third-quarter bill: He actually expected to personally receive $115,000 of the funds donated to his campaign to reimburse himself for expenses during that period. The campaign would not explain how the candidate forgot about $45,000 in receipts, what they were for or why the campaign wasn’t simply paying the...

"I thought NBC this morning, in a program that had nobody on camera, nobody quoted by name, that quoted reporters talking anonymously about cowardly people, who, frankly, lied about my wife..."

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich had a second line of credit at the high-end jewelry store Tiffany’s for as much as $1 million dollars, his presidential campaign acknowledged Tuesday. Joe DeSantis, a spokesman for Gingrich, said that the candidate’s personal financial disclosure filing, which is due within 30 days of his formal entrance into the presidential race, will “show that the Gingriches had a $500,000 to $1 million line of credit at Tiffany’s, that it has a zero balance, and it has been closed.” DeSantis added that all debts to Tiffany’s had been paid in full. He offered no details...

At the same time Tiffany & Co. was extending Callista (Bisek) Gingrich a virtual interest-free loan of tens of thousands of dollars, the diamond and silverware firm was spending big bucks to influence mining policy in Congress and in agencies over which the House Agriculture Committee–where she worked–had jurisdiction, official records show…

Barack Obama's campaign tossed around nearly $600 at Tiffany's last month - for a trinket that remains a secret. Obama's team tapped his flush campaign bank account to pay the $572.25 tab at the famed jeweler last month, recently released federal fund-raising records show. When asked about the curious expenditure, campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, "That was mistakenly charged to a campaign credit card and the money has been refunded to the campaign." Psaki insisted that the senator did not make the purchase himself but she refused to say whether the gift was in any way connected to him or...

Some time ago, in my eternal quest to set the record straight, I suggested that the true hero of the motion picture industry wasn’t Thomas Edison or D.W. Griffith, not Chaplin or Keaton, not Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer, but the anonymous fellow who first came up with the notion of putting salt on popcorn, thus turning packing material into a concession stand bonanza that costs more per-pound than lox and caviar put together. But there are others who, more often than not, get overlooked while far too much praise is lavished on actors and directors. I refer to...