Forced overtime, cheated of wages, constant harassment, trapped in abject poverty in a Salvadoran sweatshop.
Some NFL players still complain about "their situation;" meaning wanting more money.
Chi Fung, S.A. de C.V.
Carretera Troncal del Norte Km. 12 ½
Apopa, San Salvador
El Salvador
Phone: (503) 2216-1060
Fax: (503) 2216-6048
Taiwanese-owned: Mr. Wen Ling Tsao
wtsao@chifung.com.sv
Workforce: Approximately 550 workers, 80 percent of whom are women.
NFL jerseys have been sewn under illegal sweatshop conditions at the Chi Fung factory in San Salvador for at least the last four years. In 2006 and 2007, it appears that the NFL jerseys being sewn at Chi Fung were a subcontract order from another garment factory called Partex. In 2008 and 2009, it is unclear if Reebok placed the orders for its exclusive line of NFL jerseys with Chi Fung directly, or whether production continued under subcontract agreements. At any rate, according to Chi Fung’s website, they are an “approved Reebok producer.”
In the year 2000, Reebok agreed to pay the NFL $250 million over the next ten years to be the exclusive apparel distributor for the National Football League. However, the NFL-Reebok mega-deal has done nothing to lift workers across the developing world who sew NFL jerseys out of poverty.
In 2008 and 2009, two production lines at Chi Fung were dedicated to NFL jerseys. The workers could easily rattle off the names of the team jerseys they have sewn—Colts, Vikings, Cowboys, Patriots, Ravens, Jets, Steelers, Giants, Green Bay Packers, Dolphins, San Francisco 49ers, Panthers and Raiders. Most of the jerseys they sewed carried the names and numbers of NFL star players such as Peyton Manning, Number 18, of the Superbowl-bound Indianapolis Colts. Continue Reading »
Following the Halloweenesque scare fest on Capitol Hill earlier this week — where National Intelligence director Dennis Blair and CIA director Leon Panetta warned of impending terrorist doom — the has House has The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act (H.R. 4061).
“The House today overwhelmingly passed a bill aimed at building up the United States’ cybersecurity army and expertise, amid growing alarm over the country’s vulnerability online,” reports the New York Times. “The bill, which passed 422-5, requires the Obama administration to conduct an agency-by-agency assessment of cybersecurity workforce skills and establishes a scholarship program for undergraduate and graduate students who agree to work as cybersecurity specialists for the government after graduation.”
The new law will create a mega-agency to “represent the government in negotiations over international standards and orders the White House office of technology to convene a cybersecurity university-industry task force to guide the direction of future research,” according to Slashdot. Michael Arcuri, a New York Democrat who sponsored the bill, called cybersecurity the “Manhattan Project of our generation” and estimated the U.S. needs 500 to 1,000 more “cyber warriors” every year in order to keep up with potential enemies.
Despite Obama’s mantra of everything is okay, Americans in general still seem to feel uncomfortable with the economy according to latest polls.
Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just nine percent (9%) of adults put more blame on the unwillingness of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.
Ninety-four percent (94%) of Republicans and 91% of voters not affiliated with either major party place the blame on politicians, and two-thirds (66%) of Democrats agree.
Just 11% of all voters now think the government spends taxpayers’ money wisely and well. Seventy-eight percent (78%) do not believe that to be true.
This is probably why 46% of voters favor a tax cut for all Americans. With concerns about the economy and mounting federal deficits before them, 46% of voters nationwide favor an across-the-board tax cut for all Americans. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 35% oppose such a tax cut, and 19% are not sure. Of course Obama does not favor this kind of stimulus package which would prove better than the one he and Bidden love which is the tax-and-spend method. It must be working. His approval rating rose all the way to -8.
The bank bailout still seems to remain unpopular, despite the insistance by Obama that it saved jobs, as 42% of Americans still seem to have faith in the banking system. Those figures include just 6% who are very confident and 10% who are not at all confident. I haven’t seen the movie theater ads by Ben Bernake and the Federal Reserve (brought to you by your tax dollars), but one wonders if they are working.
False images from Cosmopolitan infect computers with fake antivirus product
BitDefender®, an award-winning provider of innovative anti-malware security solutions, today warned of a new threat following the flood of interest in the result of the January 19th Massachusetts elections.
The day after his winning Senate campaign, nude pictures of Cosmopolitan’s Sexiest Man of 1982 Scott Brown not only stirred women’s imaginations, but also got the interest of malware creators. The latter exploited the news to spread a fake antivirus: Trojan.FakeAV.XP. Instead of spicy pictures, the targeted user received messages of false infections on their computer and prompts to buy a fake antivirus product.
This is the second attack to take advantage of sudden interest in Scott Brown. The first was a massive wave of infections in the US due to Trojan.FakeAV.ABT. Data provided by BitDefender’s Real-Time Virus Reporting System shows that in North America, the number of systems infected with this Trojan, increased just before the elections day (January 18th) by almost 8 percent, while the number of infected files raised by nearly 13 percent.
In the last two days, the number of infected systems also grew in locations around the globe. In Canada, they increased by 62 percent on January 19th and by 14 percent on January 20th. The same ascending trend for infections was observed in the UK. The number of infected systems there grew by more than 29 percent, while the number of the infected files grew by almost 53 percent. In France, the number of infected systems increased by 23 percent, while the number of the infected files increased by about 32 percent. In Romania, the numbers also climbed, with infected systems rising by more than 11 percent.
The rogue antivirus resembles the program suite from the operating system. Once onto the user’s system, it creates a start-up registry value, “Enterprise Suite”, in order to run every time the operating system starts. It damages the content of several systems files, delivering pop-up windows with fake infections, while requiring the user to buy a license for it.
Homeschooling has been illegal in Germany for most of the 20th century. But a decision in the United States granting asylum to a German homeschooling couple has revived an ongoing debate on the freedom of education.
An American judge on Tuesday granted asylum to a German couple who wanted to homeschool their children, bringing international attention to the debate in Germany over the rights of parents to freely educate their children.
The decision came from immigration judge Lawrence O. Burman in Memphis, Tennessee. Judge Burman said the German government violated Uwe and Hannelore Romeike’s “basic human rights,” according to the website of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Virginia-based pro-homeschooling organization that represented the couple.
“Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress,” Burman was quoted as saying. “This family has a well-founded fear of persecution … therefore, they are eligible for asylum.”
Trafficking of children and human organs is occurring in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated parts of Haiti, killed more than 150,000 people, and left many children orphans, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Wednesday.
“There is organ trafficking for children and other persons also, because they need all types of organs,” Bellerive said in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
NEW YORK (AP)
A national coalition of women’s groups called on CBS on Monday to scrap its plan to broadcast an ad during the Super Bowl featuring college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, which critics say is likely to convey an anti-abortion message.
“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year — an event designed to bring Americans together,” said Jemhu Greene, president of the New York-based Women’s Media Center.
The center was coordinating the protest with backing from the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority and other groups.
CBS said it has approved the script for the 30-second ad and has given no indication that the protest would have an impact. A network spokesman, Dana McClintock, said CBS would ensure that any issue-oriented ad was “appropriate for air.”
The ad — paid for by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family — is expected to recount the story of Pam Tebow’s pregnancy in 1987 with a theme of “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.” After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child and gave birth to Tim, who went on to win the 2007 Heisman Trophy while helping his Florida team to two BCS championships.
Currently, 72% of over 90,000 in a poll on the Fox Sports web site answered Yes that the ad should run during the Super Bowl.
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that.”
COLUMBIA, S.C. – When things looked their darkest for Gov. Mark Sanford — when he was in danger of being impeached for running off to Argentina to see his mistress — his best insurance policy may well have been South Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer.
Lawmakers knew if they removed Sanford, they would end up with Bauer, a fiercely ambitious Republican with a reputation for reckless and immature behavior.
By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 2, 2010
For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different.
The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation’s growth. Continue Reading »
By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Foreign governments, longtime Democratic fundraisers, entertainers and thousands of individuals gave money to former president Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation in 2009, according to a list of donors the foundation released Friday under an agreement with President Obama to prevent the appearance of conflicts with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s role as secretary of state.
Some foreign governments that had been multimillion-dollar donors in the past, including Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar, did not give in 2009, which was Hillary Clinton’s first year in the Cabinet post. But other governments continued their giving, including Norway, which has given between $10 million and $25 million over the past several years, and Oman, whose donations have totaled between $1 million and $5 million. Continue Reading »
The good news for Senator Ben Nelson is that he doesn’t have to face Nebraska voters until 2012.
If Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson for the Senate job, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the Republican would get 61% of the vote while Nelson would get just 30%. Nelson was reelected to a second Senate term in 2006 with 64% of the vote. Continue Reading »
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A Portland man who attacked his ex-girlfriend and impaled her pet fish this summer has been sentenced to two years probation, a psychological evaluation and community service.
Donald Earl Fite III, 27, pleaded guilty Tuesday to animal abuse and domestic violence assault.
According to court records, Sarah Harris had broken up with Fite but returned to her Portland apartment July 25 to find him lying on her bed, saying he wanted to get back together.
When Harris tried to leave, Fite shoved her against a wall, grabbed her hair and tossed her against a bathtub.
Harris fled but returned with an officer to find her fish — a bright purple betta named “DeLorean” — on the wood floor with a knife through it.
According to court records, Fite quickly admitted killing the fish, telling police: “If she can’t have me, then she can’t have the fish.”
Workers at an Arizona cryonics facility mutilated the frozen head of baseball legend Ted Williams – even using it for a bizarre batting practice, a new tell-all book claims.
In “Frozen,” Larry Johnson, a former exec at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., graphically describes how The Splendid Splinter” was beheaded, his head frozen and repeatedly abused.
The book, out Tuesday from Vanguard Press, tells how Williams’ corpse became “Alcorian A-1949″ at the facility, where bodies are kept suspended in liquid nitrogen in case future generations learn how to revive them.
Johnson writes that in July 2002, shortly after the Red Sox slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate the majors’ last .400 hitter.
Williams’ severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can.
The chief operating officer of Alcor for eight months before becoming a whistleblower in 2003, Johnson wrote his book while in hiding, fearful for his life.
Are there Zombies in Iowa?! On Sunday, a patron of Panchero’s Restaurant in Iowa City apparently thought as much when he saw another patron. He was so sure about it, that he felt the need to take matters into his own hands and physically assault the individual right in the middle of restaurant, while yelling “zombie.” (Yes, this is a REAL story.)
The impromptu vigilante, described as a “dark-complected white male with short brown hair, about 20 years old, between 6-feet and 6-feet-2 and weighing between 200 and 230 pounds” decided to stand up for the rights of the living, when the accused “zombie” had the audacity to walk into the restaurant, sit down, and order food! The vigilante then proceeded to punch the victim in the eye. After the accused undead patron attempted to call the police (or possibly the “Zombie Police?,”) the vigilante proceeded to hit him again, this time breaking his nose. The vigilante (can we call him “The Zombie Whacker?” ) immediately slipped out of a back door and (as of now) is still at large.
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around “as high as a kite”, a government official has said.
Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.
She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.
Australia supplies about 50% of the world’s legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.
SAN DIEGO – A man who sneaked a bag of his feces into a San Diego courtroom during his home-invasion robbery trial, smeared it on his lawyer and threw it at jurors has been sentenced to 31 years in prison.
A 44-year-old man was arrested earlier this month after witnesses at a Federal Way apartment complex spotted him using his genitals as a puppet.
Prosecutors have now charged Timothy Wayne Martin, of Auburn, with felony indecent exposure.
At issue, according to court documents, was a May 13 incident during which Martin was spotted by residents of the Arcadia Apartment Complex standing partially nude over an air conditioner intake.
Former actress also claims Tom Cruise was Japanese in a previous life
TOKYO – Japan’s next prime minister might be nicknamed “the alien,” but it’s his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world.
“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year.
“It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”
(Maybe we can send Al Gore and Obama there.)
Last month we told you about Dawn Rizos, the owner of a popular Dallas strip club who was going to be honored with an “Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Newt Gingrich’s conservative group. Rizos planned to attend a private dinner in D.C. and made a $5,000 donation to Gingrich’s group, American Solutions for Winning the Future, before the invitation was rescinded and the donation returned — presumably because Gingrich’s group realized they were about to honor a strip club owner.
Now Rizos is striking back. She’s taking the $5,000 she tried to donate to Gingrich and building a shelter for unwanted pit bulls at an animal shelter outside of Dallas.
In a statement, Rizos said, “At first our feelings were hurt. But then we figured at least we could make something positive out of his bad manners.”
The name of the shelter? “Newt’s Nook: A Home For Pit Bulls.”
No, we’re not talking fancy oak-barrel-aged liquor.
We’re talking heritage turkeys, relatively rare breeds of bird raised like their 19th-century counterparts — free range, natural mating (mainstream turkeys these days are too fat to mate) and slow growing — all part of the sustainable food production movement.
Tens of thousands of people, it turns out, are willing to shell out the cash for these high-priced turkeys for their Thanksgiving dinner tables, according to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. Makes you wonder: Are no traditions — however humble and hallowed by time — safe from food snobbery?
“The blunt answer is, ‘No, no foodstuffs are exempt from food snobs,’ ” said David Kamp, author of “The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation.”
Patrons claim service was so bad, they had to get napkins and silverware for themselves
If you’re frustrated by poor service at a restaurant, think twice before you decide to not tip. You may be in for a bit more than just a dirty look from the waiter. Continue Reading »
Public skepticism about the officially promoted cause of global warming has reached an all-time high among Americans.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of likely voters now believe that global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends.
Just 34% say climate change is due primarily to human activity, even as President Obama and other world leaders gather at a UN summit to limit the human activity they blame for global warming. Six percent (6%) say there is some other reason for global warming, and 10% are not sure.
Voters, as they have all year, rate cutting the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term as President Obama’s number one budget priority.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 42% put deficit cutting in first place, followed by 22% who say health care reform is most important. These numbers are virtually unchanged from a month ago and have been voters’ top two concerns – in that order – since the president listed his priorities earlier this year.
However, voters also continue to believe that cutting the deficit in half is the goal Obama is least likely to achieve and say health care reform is the one he is most likely to accomplish.
As for the president’s other budget priorities detailed in a speech to Congress in February, 17% of voters say ensuring that every child has access to a complete and competitive education is most important, while 12% think development of new sources of energy ranks highest.
Since Obama’s goal is to destroy the economy and the current health care proposals should do that by raising the defecit, Obama is not likely to back down from this unpopular platform item. Especially since the Democratic Party is poised to pass it very soon, though they may not make their Christmas deadline.
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