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NEW YORK -- For months, former New York Post scribe Jared Paul Stern was at the center of unseemly accusations that he tried to shake down billionaire Ronald Burkle in exchange for good press in the newspaper's gossip pages. Now Stern has fired back in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Burkle, the Post's archrival Daily News _ even former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Stern accuses of attacking him in an effort to suppress negative stories about themselves. Represented by a longtime critic of the Clintons, Stern alleges the defendants defamed and inflicted emotional distress on...

Sources say the diminutive movie mogul is motivated by jealousy because his old friend Bill Clinton now prefers the company of supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle. Geffen's animosity is also fueled by Burkle's attempt to buy the Los Angeles Times, which Geffen had wanted to purchase for himself. ... said one West Coast source. "Geffen is on a jihad right now." Bill Clinton used to stay at Geffen's mansion (once owned by Jack Warner), but now he stays at Burkle's estate (the former home of silent film star Harold Lloyd) whenever he's in town. Another Democratic source scoffed at Geffen's explanation...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As with most gossip, the full story of the New York Post writer investigated on suspicion he tried to extort a billionaire to keep his name out of the paper may never be known. Nine months after Jared Paul Stern, a contributor to New York's premiere gossip column Page Six in the Post, himself became tabloid fodder, federal prosecutors have dropped the case. Stern and his lawyer said on Wednesday they had been told by the U.S. Attorney's office that prosecutors will no longer pursue the investigation. That clears Stern legally, but he says his career...

Two of the Southland's wealthiest residents made a bid for one of the nation's largest media companies Wednesday in an attempt to restore local ownership of the Los Angeles Times. Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and Ron Burkle, who made his fortune in the supermarket industry, submitted an offer for Chicago-based Tribune Co. In addition to The Times, Tribune owns KTLA Channel 5, three dozen other newspapers and television stations and baseball's Chicago Cubs. The pair would not disclose details of their offer, which was made through companies they control. The bid was "competitive" with at least four offers made for...

My new column, Deal Or No Deal, compares what's happening with Eli Broad, Ron Burkle and David Geffen and the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Co. to NBC's hit game show and asks the question: Broad, Burkle, Geffen... when it comes to the Times, whose briefcase is bigger? (Thursday's New York Times also looks at Geffen's interest in buying the paper. But the story has nothing new in it.) In my view, more and more, the newspaper on Spring Street is beginning to resemble Deal or No Deal. Forget all those ink-stained news males: bring on the female eye candy. Or better...

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and prominent investor Ron Burkle submitted a bid today to buy Tribune Co. of Chicago, which owns the Los Angeles Times, KTLA Channel 5 and the Chicago Cubs. Details about the offer and the price that the duo would be willing to pay remained unclear, but the Los Angeles-based businessmen have said for months that they wanted a local group to take control of The Times ADVERTISEMENT"Affiliates of the Broad Investment Company and [Burkle's] Yucaipa Companies have submitted a competitive bid for acquisition of the entire Tribune company," a source familiar with the offer said. Broad...

Mendacious: Given to or marked by deliberate concealment or misrepresentation of the truth. John Garamendi is running for Lt. Governor and to supplement an apparent mendaciousness, he is praying for induced selective memory loss. Some fifteen years ago, as California insurance commissioner, Garamendi seized the assets of the Executive Life Insurance Company. In doing so, he allowed a questionable junk-bond player and a French government-owned bank to realize a humongous windfall despite a bunch of annuities and policyholders getting the short (and dirty) end of the stick. It is beyond troubling that the man who is ‘supposed’ to be the...

SIR RICHARD BRANSON has joined forces with two of America’s top venture capitalists to slake California’s thirst for environmentally friendly fuels. Branson has injected more than $60m (£32m) into Cilion, a company that will make bioethanol from corn. He is investing alongside Vinod Khosla, the renowned Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and Ron Burkle, a Los Angeles billionaire who counts Bill Clinton among his advisers. The project is the start of a move by Branson’s Virgin empire into environmental businesses, a plan known internally as the Gaia Capitalism Project, after the environmental theory developed by the British scientist James Lovelock. Virgin Fuels,...

Bill and Hillary Clinton, who made influence peddling into an art form, are apparently at it again. The Clintons have developed a profitable and compromising connection with billionaire Ron Burkle. In the past, Burkle has contributed large amounts of cash to the Clintons’ campaigns, their legal defense fund, and to the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Most recently, on April 21, 2006, he hosted a fundraiser for Hillary’s Senate reelection campaign at his Green Acres (Beverly Hills) mansion. But the financial connections do not stop there. Bill Clinton is a senior advisor to Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies. Hillary is...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got off to a fast start in his annual September Veto Parade yesterday by saying he would reject state Sen. Sheila Kuehl's nonsensical, poorly drafted bill mandating that California adopt socialized medicine. It is a sad commentary on the Legislature that Kuehl's bill made it this far. Perhaps the governor next can tackle measures that are, respectively, anti-consumer, anti-common sense and pro-corruption. AB 2592, by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would allow car-rental companies to omit the cost of airport fees when advertising rental rates. How does Leno – who sees himself as a classic liberal do-gooder...

The state Republican Party has launched a television ad attacking state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi for mishandling the collapse of the Executive Life Insurance Co. The ad targeting Garamendi, a Democrat running against Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, for lieutenant governor, began running Aug. 28 in the Sacramento and Los Angeles media markets. (snip) ANALYSIS: The GOP advertisement attempts to weaken Garamendi, a former gubernatorial candidate and statewide officeholder, by exploiting what is perhaps his greatest political vulnerability. Garamendi has long been dogged by criticism for allegedly mishandling the collapse of the Executive Life Insurance Co. In 1991,...

BILL GATES 'CHARITY' FOUNDATION FINANCES NEWSPAPER PURCHASES The BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION declares its noble mission is to bring "innovations in health and learning to the global community." But the world's largest philanthropic organization also is among the organizations that collectively loaned nearly $400 million to MEDIANEWS GROUP INC. -- for the acquisition of newspapers in California and Minnesota! "I thought this foundation was all about starving kids, not starving newspapers," mocked one Seattle insider. MORE The GATES FOUNDATION loaned an unspecified amount to MEDIANEWS, along with GENERAL ELECTRIC. In April, MEDIANEWS agreed to buy four newspapers, including the...

Three Billionaires Bidding for LA Times Three billionaires, including Hollywood mogul David Geffen, have expressed interest in buying the Los Angeles Times, but have been rebuffed for the time being by its owner, Tribune Co., the paper reported. Geffen, property developer Eli Broad and supermarket investor Ron Burkle each wrote to the board of directors of the Chicago-based firm, which is under pressure from shareholders to boost its flagging share price, the paper said in its Saturday edition. The report, citing unidentified sources, said Tribune's directors considered the three letters at a July 19 board meeting. Tribune Chairman and Chief...

Though more local school bonds are passing, voter support for these measures is in decline. This seeming contradiction can be understood by looking at the impact of Proposition 39 passed by voters in 2000. That year, a small group of multimillionaires and billionaires, most from the Silicon Valley, spent more than $60 million on a campaign to lower the vote threshold for the passage of local school bonds that only property owners are obligated to repay. The two-thirds vote for local bonds was established in the California Constitution of 1879 in recognition of the fact that not everyone who voted...

Dissident group says will continue efforts for sale or breakup of company... Tribune Co. shares gained ground Tuesday, rising as the media company that's been working to revamp operations amid shareholder unrest announced the results of a Dutch tender auction. Analysts said any gains could prove short lived, however. Chicago-based Tribune Co said that about 45 million, or 15%, of its common shares were tendered and that it expects to buy the shares at a price of $32.50 each. The number of shares tendered came in 8 million short of the maximum that the company had initially authorized in the...

Beer distributor Yusef Jackson has finally added a coveted title: publisher... Son of Rainbow/PUSH Coalition leader Rev. Jesse Jackson is attempting to resuscitate Radar, a saucy New York culture magazine that folded last year. He also said he’s hungry for other media properties, including the Chicago Sun-Times, for which he was an unsuccessful suitor in 2004, and possibly properties Tribune Co. sells off as it pares $500 million in assets amid a corporate restructuring. Mr. Jackson declined to say who his co-investors are in Radar. In 2004 he sought to buy the Sun-Times with California billionaire Ron Burkle, but he...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Tribune Co.'s second-largest shareholder has raised the stakes in its dispute over the company's strategic direction, calling for "decisive action" by the newspaper publisher and broadcaster, including a possible sale. The Chandler Trusts, which own more than 12% of Tribune's < outstanding shares, had objected last week to Tribune's plan to buy back up to 25% of its stock, which was part of an attempt to lift a stock price that has lost nearly half its value in the last two years. Most of those shares are to be purchased in Dutch-auction tender offer. In a regulatory...

Local investors express interest in bidding for the Tribune Co. paper amid a boardroom rift. Could the Los Angeles Times once again be up for sale? That question is on the minds of several of the city's richest businessmen, who reaffirmed this week their interest in bidding for the country's fourth-largest daily newspaper. Billionaire investor Ron Burkle, former Olympics organizer and Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and philanthropist Eli Broad have indicated in recent interviews or in comments to others that they would like to buy The Times or see it in local hands. "The L.A. Times is a...

Yucaipa is headed by supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, a close friend of former President Clinton. He was recruited by the Guild because of his reputation as a union-friendly boss. Bidding continues for papers McClatchy chain plans to sell... Representatives of the Yucaipa Cos. could visit the Times Leader next week as the deadline looms to submit final bids for six so-called orphan Knight Ridder newspapers. Yucaipa, a California private equity firm, has joined with The Newspaper Guild, a journalists’ union, in an attempt to execute a “worker-friendly” purchase of the papers, including the Times Leader. The McClatchy Co., which is...

Newly unsealed documents in billionaire Ron Burkle's divorce include allegations by his former wife that he spied on her, their young son and her boyfriend. The documents, released late Friday, also included a declaration from Burkle's 29-year-old daughter that her father once told her his security staff had videos of wife Janet Burkle and her boyfriend having sex. Burkle's attorney, Patricia L. Glaser, disputed the allegations in a letter to the Los Angeles Times. "Mr. Burkle never told his daughter any such thing," Glaser said. "There are no such videotapes. There was no such eavesdropping. This is not true." The...