Free Republic

New York's top restaurants plagued by tip trouble Seasoned travelers know that waiters in the United States expect tips of 15 to 20 percent -- $60 on a $300 dinner for two at one of New York's top restaurants. What is less well known is that the money doesn't all go to the waiters and more lowly staff. In lawsuits filed in the last three years, staff have accused dozens of New York restaurants, including many well-known ones, of stealing tips and cheating them out of wages. Among those named in the suits are celebrity haunt Pastis; three New York...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2008 – Iraqi citizens of Babil province yesterday led U.S. soldiers to the seizure of a huge amount of components suitable for the construction of deadly explosively formed penetrator-type bombs, military officials reported. Acting on a tip from local Iraqi citizens, the U.S. soldiers discovered more than 2,500 bomb-making components at three separate locations in an area southeast of Samrah Village in Babil province. Officials believe this discovery will significantly disrupt explosively formed projectiles attacks within central Iraq. U.S. soldiers found the cache after a group of local Iraqi citizens informed them of a suspected cache location...

Restaurants are feeling the pinch in two directions. With money tight, consumers are cutting back on how often they dine out. Meantime, food costs more. Way more. Egg prices have doubled in the last six months. Dairy, chicken, beer and bread crumb prices are all climbing higher. Even when the core commodity escapes the trend, packaged ingredients and other restaurant supplies are more expensive as the costs of transportation climb due to higher fuel prices. When people do go out, they are ordering less. "Appetizer sales are down. Dessert sales can almost disappear," says Dan Simons, principal at Vucurevich Simons...

College Knowledge Check List by: Deborah Lambert, March 21, 2008 Longtime radio talk show host Dennis Prager has some advice for aspiring college students and/or their parents. Before plunking down wads of cash for that life-changing campus experience, you might want to ask a few questions about prospective schools that include the following: 1. “Can one obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree at your college without having to read a single Shakespeare play, one Federalist paper or one book of the Bible?” 2. "Does the college allow military recruiters on its campus?" 3. "What is the ratio of Democrats to...

In a San Diego County class-action lawsuit, a judge ordered the coffee giant to pay back tips, with interest, that the company had handed over to shift supervisors. Some baristas (coffee servers) could receive more than $10,000, according to their attorney. The ruling was met with cheers by California baristas. "I'm stoked," said Leekeisha Smith, who makes coffee drinks in the Starbucks at Sunset Boulevard and La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. "Wow. I'm just shocked that we'll get that [money] back." Smith, 23, said she found out about the lawsuit from a letter sent to employees. Starbucks Corp. said...

A Concerned Local Citizen pulls back part of an armchair revealing unknown bulk explosive inside the cushion, Dec. 4, in an insurgent safehouse in Arab Jabour. The building was destroyed by a joint direct attack ammunition bomb once it was found to be booby-trapped. Photo by Sgt. Kevin Stabinsky, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs. FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — An insurgent safehouse in Arab Jabour was rendered useless, Dec. 4, by two joint direct attack ammunition bombs. Although dropped by an Air Force F-16 Falcon jet, the operation was a combined effort conducted on the ground...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7, 2007 – Decreased violence in Iraq is the result of ongoing U.S. surge operations and Iraqi citizens’ increasing willingness to confront al Qaeda insurgents, a senior U.S. military officer said here today. Army Lt. Gen. Carter F. Ham, the Joint Staff’s director for operations, provides an operational update during a news conference at the Pentagon, Nov. 7, 2007. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Molly A. Burgess, USN  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “No matter how you categorize it, you cannot deny that multinational force operations against al Qaeda in Iraq have had significant effect,”...

HUSSEINIYAH, Iraq – A citizen of Husseiniyah led Coalition Forces to a building where explosively formed penetrators and improvised explosive devices were being constructed Oct. 31.Soldiers of Battery A, 2nd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, from Fort Lewis, Wash., discovered a large cache of explosives at the home, including about 10 fully assembled EFPs of various sizes including one 12-inch EFP – the largest found in Iraq – approximately 90 copper plates of various sizes, more than 200 pounds of C-4 explosive, other explosive materials including TNT and numerous other materials used in...

KHAN BANI SA’AD, Iraq – A concerned citizen led Coalition Forces to a largeweapons cache yesterday in a home in Sa’ada Village, Iraq.This cache is one of the largest discoveries of explosively formed penetratorsfound in at one location in Iraq. The find included more than 120 fully-assembled EFPs,more than 150 copper disks of four different sizes used in making EFPs (including 12-inch disks – one of the largest ever discovered in Iraq), 600-plus pounds of C4 andother explosive materials, 100 mortar rounds of various caliber, approximately 30107mm rockets, two mortar tubes and 20 claymore-type mines.“A find like this helps keep...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE HAMMER — After receiving tips, Coalition forces detained three people in Salman Pak, Oct. 11, during Operation Belleau Wood, a raid to find insurgents linked to al-Qaida cells operating in Iraq. Soldiers from Company A, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, detained the men after they were identified as al-Qaida members responsible for improvised explosive device placement along a road frequently used by the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. The Soldiers also cleared 13 houses during their search. Maj. John Cushing, from Rochester, Mich., the 1-15th Inf. Regt. operations officer, believes the recent organization of concerned...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27, 2007 – Iraqi citizens are helping coalition forces hunt down al Qaeda terrorists in a vast rural area south of Baghdad, a military commander said today. “As the summer went along, we started building the confidence of the people,” Army Lt. Col. Ken Adgie told online journalists and “bloggers” from Patrol Base Murray, which is situated beside the Tigris River in the mostly agricultural region of Arab Jabour. With its desolate location, rugged terrain, thick palm groves and almost-exclusively Sunni population, the region is a perfect breeding ground for terrorism, Adgie said. “There is no Iraqi army...

Country music star, Toby Keith, speaks on-air during an interview on Armed Forces Network Iraq’s Freedom Radio at the Combined Press Information Center Tuesday. Keith’s visit to Baghdad is part of his fifth United Service Organizations (USO) tour. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Carl N. Hudson, Combined Press Information Center. BAGHDAD — Country music star, Toby Keith, visited troops stationed in Baghdad Tuesday.Singing songs and playing guitar are a few things Keith, an Oklahoma native, does quite well. Visiting troops in combat is another activity he takes pride in.Keith’s visit to Baghdad is part of his fifth United Service Organizations...

FORT DIX, N.J. -- Six foreign-born Muslims were arrested and accused Tuesday of plotting to attack the Army's Fort Dix and massacre scores of U.S. soldiers - a plot the FBI says was foiled when the men took a video of themselves firing assault weapons to a store to have the footage put onto a DVD. The defendants, all men in their 20s from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, include a pizza deliveryman suspected of using his job to scout out the military base. Authorities said there was no direct evidence connecting them to any international terror organizations...

Federal Reserve policymakers aren't the only ones worried about price pressures. Hot demand for inflation-indexed bonds signals that the market sees inflation staying high even as the economy slows. The yield spread between Treasury bonds and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS, has widened in recent weeks as inflation hovers stubbornly above the Federal Reserve's 1% to 2% comfort zone. TIPS spreads are seen as good proxies for long-term inflation expectations. Nevertheless, the 10-year Treasury yield was 246 basis points above the comparable TIPS yield. That's essentially at the highest levels since early September. "The spread on TIPS is widening versus...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26, 2007 – Tips that led to the discovery of a bomb-making factory in western Iraq demonstrate that the Iraqi people are fed up with terrorists operating in their midst and stepping forward to help remove them, military officials in Baghdad told reporters today. Officials from 3rd Brigade, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 6, briefed reporters about a search for weapons caches that ultimately led to the bomb factory Feb. 20 in Gharmah, about 10 miles east of Fallujah. Army Capt. Matt Gregory, commander of Company A, described the materials uncovered during the raid: blasting...

Coming to a Bad End: Lost chromosome tips linked to heart problems Nathan Seppa The prime risk factors for heart disease are well known—obesity, smoking, elevated cholesterol, and high blood pressure. Yet many people with these warning signs develop heart problems, while others don't. This observation indicates that yet-unrecognized factors must also influence risk. A new study finds that the sequence-repeating sections of DNA called telomeres, which protect the ends of chromosomes, might play a role. Middle-aged men with long telomeres are only half as likely to develop heart disease as are men of the same age with short telomeres,...

The summer I turned 6 years old, some of the neighborhood boys started bullying me. Back then, I owned a pair of cabbage patch kid roller-skates and my favorite activity was skating around the block singing nursery rhymes at the top of my lungs. One day, a few boys in the 8-10 range thought it would be pretty humorous to push me around and watch me flail. I tried to run from them, but I couldn’t skate faster than they could run. They taunted me for a while and then knocked me down. Angry, humiliated, and with two freshly skinned...

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of thousands of California waiters, hairstylists, bellhops and other workers who rely on tips to boost their incomes could see their wages slashed under federal legislation the U.S. Senate could take up by Friday. The House already passed HR 5790, a far-reaching bill that would raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in nine years, reinstate tax cuts for teachers and those who pay college tuition and reduce estate taxes for the richest of Americans. But Democrats are blasting a provision in the GOP-written bill that would require that tips be counted as part of...

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2006 – Tips from Iraqi citizens led coalition and Iraqi soldiers to foil a terrorist attack and find weapons caches in Baghdad yesterday, U.S. military officials in Iraq reported. A concerned Iraqi citizen's tip led Iraqi army soldiers to a shop south of Baghdad last night, where they found a munitions cache. Soldiers from 4th Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, investigated the carpentry shop and seized 58 homemade bombs, three rocket-propelled-grenade boosters, and two improvised explosive devices attached to batteries. Iraqi soldiers also detained a suspected terrorist at the site and seven others suspected of...

If you were to ask Diane Wilson, who has done 7 long-term fasts, "What do I need to do to fast?" her response would probably be, "Just Stop Eating!" But if that still leaves you with more questions on fasting, here are some "fast tips". How long am I supposed to fast? We ask anyone who wants to take part in the fast to dedicate at least 24 hours. Any additional days are great. And if you are interested in long-term fasting, we recommend 2 weeks or more. Where should I fast? You can join us in fasting in Washington,...