President Obama and the First Lady had a special word for every one – Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
THE FIRST LADY: We know how busy this time of year is for everyone, so we’re not going to take much of your time.
But we did want to take a moment to wish you all a Merry Christmas, from our family to yours.
THE PRESIDENT: This is a season for millions of Americans to be together with family, to continue long-held holiday traditions, and to show our gratitude to those we love. And along the way, some of us might even watch a little basketball or eat some Christmas cookies, too.
A fierce winter storm that brought a White Christmas to many northerners also delivered a dark Christmas for thousands of others who lost power in Michigan, Maine, Vermont and New York State.
Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remained without power in parts of central and northeastern U.S. after a weekend ice and snowstorm rolled across the region
Brad Hoving, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids, Mich., said most people were without power in some counties between Grand Rapids and Lansing, Mich. Some may not have electricity until Wednesday or even Thursday, he said.
“It’s a big deal,” Hoving said. “It’s Christmas and we’ve just had a major ice storm,” with trees toppling over and ice-covered power lines.
In Michigan, more than 230,000 electric customers – including 49,000 in metro Detroit – were still blacked out in the state’s lower peninsula Tuesday evening, the Detroit Free Press reported, quoting local energy providers.
“This is our largest Christmas-week storm in our 126-year history, and it’s our largest ice storm in the last 10 years,” Consumers Energy spokeswoman Debra Dodd said. “We are working as hard as we can to get people back on. We recognize that this is a terrible time for this to happen.”
Disgraced ex-governor Eliot Spitzer and his estranged, long-suffering wife, Silda, confirmed Tuesday night that their marriage is over.
“We regret that our marital relationship has come to an end and we have agreed not to make any other public statement on this subject,” the couple said in a joint statement released by Spitzer spokeswoman Lisa Linden.
The announcement follows the revelation that Spitzer, 54, has been dating former spokeswoman Lis Smith, 31, as documented in exclusive photos published by The Post.
Smith is currently Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s chief spokeswoman, but de Blasio has refused to say if he’ll keep her on since the disclosure of her affair with Spitzer.
A college student who was abused by her biological parents has now found a surrogate mother for the holidays after posting a Craigslist ad.
Jackie Turner, 26, posted an ad on the online marketplace ‘looking to rent a mom and dad who can give me attention and make me feel like the light of their life just for a couple of days because I really need it’.
The response she received was overwhelming and she was flooded with letters from both prospective parents and other children who felt neglected and in need of some caring attention.
Now she was not only able to find a match for herself but also one for six other students.
‘This time of year is hard. Everyone is talking about their cousins, their families, all the things that make up Christmas,’ Jackie told CBS News.
Jackie got paired up with Anita Hermsmeier, a woman who works in student services at Jackie’s college, William Jessup University.
‘I’ve found my mentor!’ Jackie said when she and Ms Hermsmeier hugged at the mixer she arranged for the students and parents looking for love.
‘People are hurting and broken and we need each other! We need to be loving people,’ she said.
Adding to the success, none of the would-be ‘parents’ asked for the $8-per-hour that Jackie offered to pay for their uninterrupted attention.
A River North sandwich shop gave its employees an unwelcome Christmas surprise on Sunday night, firing them all by email.
The 20 employees of Snarf’s Sub Shop at 600 W. Chicago Ave. received the email last night around 5 p.m. Grid obtained it this morning. It reads as follows.
1. Due to increased competition and losses, ownership has decided to consider remodeling and reconcepting the store at 600 West Chicago Ave.
2. The store is closing, effective tomorrow, December 23, 2013 for an unknown period of time for this remodeling and reconcepting.
3. All staff is terminated, effective Monday, December 23, 2013.
4. All staff may apply for unemployment, if eligible.
5. Return any keys and Company property to Will Ravert at 600 West Chicago Avenue on Monday, December 23, 2014 during normal business hours.
6. Payroll will be processed as usual this week and paid on Friday, December 27, 2013.
7. Keep an eye out for the grand opening of the new store.
8. Ownership appreciates your service and wish you well in your new endeavors.
Doug Besant
Director of Operations
A Snarf’s spokeswoman confirmed the email’s contents.
The remodel will include the addition of a burger concept, according to Jill Preston, the restaurant’s director of marketing. She says the restaurant will be likely closed for more than a month.
The mass firing comes just three weeks after Snarf’s employees were striking for higher wages and better benefits. They joined workers of fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Subway, Potbelly and others in a broader strike orchestrated by the Worker’s Organizing Committee of Chicago.
As a result, the restaurant was closed for four days, from Dec. 5 until Dec. 8, Preston says.
McDonald’s’ employee-only resource and advice site — has been dispensing a hot mess of helpful tips in recent months: From advising workers to get a second job, to suggesting they sell their stuff for quick cash, to reminding them to tip their nannies and pool boys generously this holiday season.
An image posted on the site labels a McDonald’s-like meal of hamburger, fries, and a coke as an “unhealthy choice,” and warns employees against consuming such foods, which are “almost always high in calories, fat, sugar, and salt.”
“It is hard to eat a healthy diet when you eat at fast-food restaurants often,” the site goes on to say. “Many foods are cooked with a lot of fat, even if they are not trans fats. Many fast-food restaurants do not offer any lower-fat foods. Large portions also make it easy to overeat. And most fast food restaurants do not offer many fresh fruits and vegetables.”
So what can employees do to eat healthier? For one thing — stay away from McDonald’s.
“In general,” the site suggests, “eat at places that offer a variety of salads, soups, and vegetables.”
In a statement to CNBC, McDonald’s insisted the website’s tips “continue to be taken entirely out of context.”
None the less, the company said it was “looking into the matter.”
Ricky “Lord Infamous” Dunigan, a co-founding member of the Memphis, Tenn.-based rap group Three 6 Mafia has died. He was 40.
News of Infamous’ death was confirmed by his half brother/fellow Three 6 member DJ Paul, who told Rolling Stone that Infamous died in his sleep of a heart attack Friday night at his mother’s house in Memphis.
“He was at home sitting at the table and he just lay his head down and he just left us,” Paul said.
Lord Infamous began his hip-hop career alongside DJ Paul in Memphis in the early 1990’s. The pair, along with Juicy J, formed Three 6 Mafia in 1991 and released their debut album, Mystic Stylez four years later. Three 6 gained worldwide exposure in 2005 after becoming the first rap group to win a Best Original Song Oscar for their song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” The track was featured in the film “Hustle and Flow.”
Earlier this year, most of the Three 6 Mafia’s members reformed under the name Da Mafia 6ix and released a mixtape called “6ix Commandments.”
Prior to his death, Lord Infamous had been working with the group on a new album, which is set for release in March 2014, DJ Paul said. Although he had not been ill recently, Paul also said that Infamous suffered a stroke and heart attach in 2010
Pope Francis urged anti-austerity protesters who attended his weekly blessing to use dialogue and not violence to press their demands.
Addressing a group of protesters among the pilgrims gathered Sunday in St. Peter’s Square, the pope appealed for “a constructive contribution, rejecting the temptation for conflict and violence and following always the path of dialogue.”
The pope read aloud one of their banners: “The poor cannot wait.” He urged everyone from charities to Italian authorities “to do everything possible so that every family can have a house” this holiday season.
Protests aimed at impressing upon Italian leaders the pain inflicted on ordinary people by the country’s economic crisis have been under way across the country for two weeks. Some of them have erupted into violence.
What started out as the so-called “pitchforks protest” by Sicilian farmers nearly two years ago has grown nationwide expression of citizen impatience over rising unemployment, stubborn recession and unproductive lawmakers.
Last week, one protester’s placard read: “too much bureaucracy, skyrocketing taxes, useless politicians. Go home.”
If Juan Williams keeps this up, his next invitation to Fox News will be lost in the mail.
On Fox News Sunday, Fox News analyst Juan Williams called the conservative outrage over last week’s suspension of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertsonhypocritical, given the right’s history of hounding MSNBC host Martin Bashir and others—which is notable as Williams, as he himself pointed out, is a Fox News analyst because he was fired from NPR for a remark about Muslims made in 2010.
“The right goes after Martin Bashir, they wanted Martin Bashir fired,” Williams said. “Remember Dixie Chicks, or Tim Robbins, or Bill Maher? All of that, the right says get them out of here. But then they want to cry foul when people are intolerant of them.”
“The reason that the right is so strongly backing this is because they think this is a potential wedge issue, especially with older, white, evangelical voters,” Williams said.
“When I got fired, it was part of an honest debate about terrorism in our society. My employer didn’t like it and fired me. But this is not about honest debate. What was said actually shuts down debate. It was ugly language about homosexual acts. It invites bigotry. It invites people to hate people who are gay. And this is amazing, because it is not in the Christian tradition to make judgments about them and to put them in a box.”
Former NSA contractor and leaker Edward Snowden shouldn’t get amnesty, President Barack Obama’s top national security official said.
“We don’t think that Snowden deserves amnesty,” National Security Adviser Susan Rice said of Snowden, during an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes that aired Sunday night. “We believe he should come back, he should be sent back, and he should have his day in court.”
Still, administration officials have kept open the possibility of some amnesty, and Rice didn’t engage when Stahl asked whether refusing him amnesty was worth the potential threat of more leaks that could further damage the United States’ reputation abroad.
“Lesley, you know I’m not going to get into a negotiation with you on camera about something that sensitive,” she said.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
