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Darden Restaurants Inc., the company whose 28,000 workers serve at Red Lobster, Olive Garden and the upscale Capital Grille restaurants, found itself on the defensive in September, as CEO Clarence Otis tried to explain to shareholders why year after year earnings per share dropped and restaurant servers labored under a $2.13 per hour federal “tipped” minimum wage, with no paid sick leave.
A couple quietly living out their golden years in the Missouri Ozarks have been charged with killing their ex-spouses and two children, then hiding the bodies — cases that went cold decades ago.
Bipartisan legislation to provide retroactive pay
for the more than 800,000 federal workers furloughed because of the
irresponsible House Republican government shutdown
was introduced Tuesday in the House and Senate. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), chief sponsor of the House bill (H.R. 3223), said:
Nearly a million federal workers could lose their pay because Congress failed to do its job and keep the government up and running....Our civil servants have weathered furloughs, frozen pay and diminished benefits. Now they may go without their pay altogether because of this reckless Tea Party-led government shutdown.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released
a report
in response to a
complaint
brought under the free trade agreement between the United States and the Dominican Republic, known as the Central America Free Trade Agreement–Dominican Republic (
CAFTA–DR)
, which detailed severe worker abuse on sugar plantations. The vast majority of sugar workers are Haitian or of Haitian descent. Most are undocumented, leaving them particularly vulnerable to extreme exploitation. The DOL’s report confirms ongoing, systematic abuses, including human trafficking; the use of child and forced labor; hazardous working conditions; wage theft; denial of medical, pension and other benefits if the worker is undocumented; routine violations of minimum wage and overtime rules; and retaliatory firings against union activists and workers who attempt to mount legal challenges against their employer.
Two people were arrested after the discovery of two suspicious packages — one of which authorities said “certainly had some destructive nature” — closed the Jacksonville, Fla., airport for five hours.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers remained at home, national parks were closed, tourism dollars slipped away, the National Zoo’s panda-cam remained dark, and politicians took potshots at one another on Twitter on Wednesday as the first government shutdown crawled into its second full day.
Search-and-rescue officials planned to renew their efforts Wednesday to locate a man and a woman missing in separate, remote parts of southwest Washington after a helicopter rescued two other hikers from waist-deep snow.
A second biker has been charged following a high-speed chase which ended in an assault on a family's SUV, police said early Wednesday.Allen Edwards, 42, of Jamaica, Queens, handed himself in late Tuesday.
Jacksonville International Airport reopened late Tuesday after being evacuated amid "police activity" concerning two suspicious packages.
The Jacksonville International Airport has reopened after being evacuated Tuesday amid "police activity" concerning two suspicious packages.
