Kate Gosselin has spoken out about the controversial photo in which she dons a plastic geisha-style wig and pulls her eyes up at the corners to imitate the look of an Asian person.
"This was a happy memory of mine," Gosselin wrote on her website. A fan had sent the plastic wig, Gosselin said, and she and husband Jon took turns wearing it and snapping photos. Gosselin added a photo of Jon in the wig to her site. "Naturally, I 'slanted' my eyes to show him my best Asian impression, which made him smile," she wrote.
Jon Gosselin was born in Wisconsin, and his parents are a mix of European and Korean descent.
"At that time, a common topic of our show was 'everybody?s Asian' ? except for mommy, so a thoughtful fan figured she?d help me look Asian too," Gosselin wrote.
"I married an Asian," she said in the post. "I have eight biracial children therefore I?m quite certain that I?m the last person that could be called a racist."
The photo of Gosselin making the gesture was distributed Sunday by someone calling him or herself "KatieDeen." That person created a fresh account on Twitter on Sunday evening, and posted just one item -- this picture, with the accompanying caption information suggesting that Gosselin "makes fun of Asians with 8 half Korean children."
Gosselin did not say if she knew who had published the photo, but did write that it "was taken and misused without my permission and opportunistically turned into something that it never was intended to be."
The gesture has caused controversy for others in the past, including in 2008 when the Spanish Olympic Team were photographed en masse for an advertisement making the gesture.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it would allow two new cigarettes from Lorillard Inc onto the market, marking the first time the agency has exercised its power to regulate tobacco products.
The FDA, which got that authority in 2009, authorized the company to sell Newport Non-Menthol Gold Box 100s and Newport Non-Menthol Gold Box after it showed they were no more dangerous than products it already sold.
Lorillard's shares rose as much as 4.9 percent before dropping back. They closed up 0.3 percent at $43.53.
"The FDA actions are a very positive development for the tobacco sector, in our view," said Bonnie Herzog, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, who noted that the lack of action on the part of the FDA for so long had weighed on the industry. "Now that a potential precedent has been set," she said, "we believe future actions may occur more quickly."
The FDA, for its part, hailed its rulings as "historic," saying it is the only regulatory agency in the world that has the authority to scientifically review and determine whether a tobacco product should be allowed on the market.
The agency stressed that its decision to approve Lorillard's products "is not a finding that the product is safe or safer than its predicate product, or less harmful in general," and it said companies are not allowed to say their products are approved by the FDA.
Under the law, a company must receive premarket authorization from the FDA before it can sell a new product. The product must be shown to be appropriate for the protection of public health. No tobacco company to date has filed such an application.
A less daunting path to authorization exists if a company can show that its new product is substantially equivalent to one it was selling between February 15, 2007 and March 22, 2011 - known as a predicate product. It could also win authorization if it can show that its new product is less dangerous than existing products.
The FDA is currently reviewing some 4,000 applications. About 3,500 are for products that the agency has authorized on a provisional basis and are currently on the market. The remainder are for new products. The agency will decide whether products it authorized provisionally should remain on the market, and it will decide whether to authorize the new products.
Lorillard said it is "proud" to be the first company to receive authorization of a new product.
"We believe that the FDA has carried out its evaluation process in a deliberate manner reflecting sound science," Lorillard said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing productive engagement with the agency moving forward."
FLAGSHIP BRAND
Newport is Lorillard's flagship line, the second-largest brand in the industry, the company said, adding that it believes the addition of the new products to its line-up will strengthen its competitive position.
The FDA said that in addition to authorizing Lorillard's products, it also rejected four from companies it declined to name, saying they had not proved their products were substantially equivalent to marketed products.
Under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, the FDA was given the authority to regulate cigarettes, cigarette tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco but not, immediately, pipe tobacco, cigars or e-cigarettes. The law gives the FDA the potential to expand its authority to all tobacco products but it must first issue new regulations. Those are currently in development and the agency declined to say when they are expected to be complete.
(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Cynthia Osterman)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The White House says Russia has a "clear legal basis" to expel National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and is asking them to do so without delay.
National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden says even without an extradition treaty, Russia should expel him to face espionage charges in the United States.
Hayden's statement Tuesday came after Russian President Vladimir Putin bluntly rejected the request for extradition and said Snowden is free to travel wherever he wants.
Hayden said the White House agrees with Putin that they don't want the issue to negatively impact their bilateral relations. But she said they are asking for Snowden's extradition to build upon their law enforcement cooperation, particularly since the Boston Marathon bombing.
Edward Snowden is reportedly seeking political asylum in Ecuador after arriving to Moscow today. Meanwhile, the US has revoked his passport. The former NSA contractor has been on the run since he first revealed details of Verizon's participation in a telecommunications industry program to store information on all telephone calls, and then broke news of the NSA/Silicon Valley PRISM system that watches over the whole Interent. Developing...
Snowden's final destination may not be Havana, however. The current speculation is that he may go to Caracas after landing in Havana. Other rumors point to Iceland. Wikileaks claims his final destination is Ecuador. Julian Assange and his organization claim they are helping him.
And it's not just data that flows between the California technology giants and the NSA. Facebook's former security chief, Max Kelly, left the social network to take a similar jobwith the National Security Agency.
Tuesday, June 18, 10:45 PM?The surveillance of Americans' phone calls and Internet activity is "transparent," President Barack Obama said on television Monday night. The names of these secret programs revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden are turning up on job sites all over the Internet.
The NSA and FBI has had access to private accounts on Facebook, Microsoft,Google and Apple during the last six months, and appears to be expanding and extending online surveillance that first began with the controversial Patriot Act programs launched after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Monday, June 17, 10:45PM?Edward Snowden?the NSA contractor employee who revealed the secret US government spy program Prism on June 6?now says that more details are coming.
11:23 AM?Answering The Guardian readers' questions, Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden claims that more details are coming no matter what happens to him: "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."
10:42 AM?Today, Apple has admitted that the government obtained data from 9,000 to 10,000 devices as part of investigations on "robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer?s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide." The company also claims it doesn't chat messages or videoconferences and that "it doesn't store Maps, location, or Siri data in any way that could identify you."
Saturday, June 15, 2013 3:00 PM?The Associate Press has numerous sources detailing that Prism's collaboration with tech companies is just the tip of the iceberg?the NSA actually captures every single bit of data that comes in and out the United States, storing it for analysis:
...larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.
Thursday, June 13, 2013 1:55 PM?The Silicon Valley giants are telling a very different story than the NSA, which explained in top secret Power Point presentations exactly how the data comes from the biggest Internet companies to the government's massive spying operations.
Patriot Or Traitor: Edward Snowden and the NSA Prism Surveillance Web
Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 7:25 PM?More Americans see Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden as a patriot than as a traitor, according to a new opinion poll. But the 29-year-old former intelligence contractor who leaked the details of the NSA's massive data mining operation is still unknown to most Americans?46% have no opinion on his motivations.
1:40 PM?Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden has resurfaced in Hong Kong, telling the South China Morning Post that he's "revealing criminality" and has no other motives. He plans to stay in Hong Kong and has more secrets to reveal.
Since the shocking revelations were revealed a week ago, Snowden has been vilified as a defector but also hailed by supporters such as WikiLeaks? Julian Assange.
?I?m neither traitor nor hero. I?m an American,? he said, adding that he was proud to be an American. ?I believe in freedom of expression. I acted in good faith but it is only right that the public form its own opinion.?
Snowden tells the Hong Kong paper, ?I will never feel safe."
Ron Paul Fears Edward Snowden Will Be Assassinated
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 11:39 PM?Congressman Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who first became a hero to young computer technicians in 2007, said today that he fears that the United States government will assassinate Edward Snowden using either a "cruise missile or a drone missile."
Google, Microsoft and Facebook released open letters today asking the U.S. government to get the tech firms off the hook for cooperating with widespread electronic spying on Americans by the biggest tech firms as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
In Maryland, the father of Snowden's girlfriend described Snowden as a man of "strong convictions of right and wrong." But because Snowden is generally "shy and reserved," Jonathan Mills said he was shocked by the revelations.
Lindsay Mills, the 29-year-old girlfriend of Snowden, reportedly texted her father but did not reveal her whereabouts. Snowden disappeared from his Hong Kong hotel at least a day ago, and has yet to surface.
6:40 PM?While the world's attention turned to Edward Snowden's pole-dancing ballerina girlfriend today, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a legal backlash against the NSA and FBI's widespread domestic spying as Google and Apple sought permission from the U.S. government to disclose at least some of what's going on.
The ACLU lawsuit is the first challenge to the widespread phone company spying revealed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old American who has single-handedly brought the nation's attention back to the long forgotten issue of constant surveillance.
2:31 PM?The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald wrote the shocking stories based on Snowden's leaks, but Greenwald knows firsthand that surveillance dragnets allegedy created to target foreign terrorists are just as easily?and clumsily?turned on U.S. citizens critical of an overreaching government that increasingly seems to exist only to protect itself from the nation it ostensibly serves. The Nation's Lee Fang describes what was revealed just two years ago:
Two years ago, a batch of stolen e-mails revealed a plot by a set of three defense contractors (Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal) to target activists, reporters, labor unions, and political organizations. The plans ? one concocted in concert with lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to sabotage left-leaning critics, like the Center for American Progress and the SEIU, and a separate proposal to "combat" WikiLeaks and its supporters, including Glenn Greenwald, on behalf of Bank of America ? fell apart after reports of their existence were published online. But the episode serves as a reminder that the expanding spy industry could use its government-backed cyber tools to harm ordinary Americans and political dissident groups.
The episode also shows that Greenwald, who helped Snowden expose massive spying efforts in the U.S., had been targetted by spy agency contractors in the past for supporting whistleblowers and WikiLeaks.
Majority of Americans Support NSA Spying
Monday, June 10, 2013 5:42 PM?NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has left his Hong Kong hotel as Republican members of Congress call for his extradition and the White House. The 29-year-old contractor for U.S. intelligence services provided details of Washington's decade-long spree of data collection on the phone calls and Internet use of all Americans, and now fears for his life.
Nearly 19,000 people have signed the "Pardon Edward Snowden" petition at WhiteHouse.gov. Daniel Ellsberg, whose life was upended by his decision to leak the Pentagon's bleak assessment of its war in Vietnam, today is praising Snowden's "conscience and patriotism."
Meanwhile, a solid majority of Americans surveyed by Pew Research Center say they're just fine with the constant surveillance of telephone calls and Internet use?56% of Americans support the illegal domestic spying, but only 27% of Americans claim to be closely following the scandal.
3:04 PM?Palantir, the Silicon Valley startup named for an evil all-seeing rock from Lord of the Rings reportedly behind the NSA's Prism program to spy on all Internet activity, takes the hobbit life very seriously. A company director explained in 2010 that a surveillance program called "Save the Shire" saw America's perceived enemies as orcs and dark wizards.
Sunday, June 9, 10:00PM?Edward Snowden: This is the man who told the world about PRISM, the NSA spy network capable of grabbing all your personal data?including private messages, photos and videos?with the help of America's top tech companies.
According to the Guardian, Snowden worked for the last four years at the National Security Agency. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," Snowden told The Guardian. ?I don?t want public attention because I don?t want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing.?
Following the revelation of his identity, Edward Snowden was hiding in a Hong Kong hotel.
Despite Denials, Tech Companies Collaborated With NSA
Saturday, June 8, 3:30 PM?The Guardian has revealed the existence of a second NSA surveillance network. Its name is Boundless Informant and, unlike PRISM, it covers the entire planet. Unlike PRISM, however, this network doesn't capture the data but merely organizes it, indexing countries by the metadata obtained from local phone and computer networks.
3:10 AM?The New York Times says that Facebook, Google and Apple are collaborating with the NSA, rebutting the companies' carefully worded statements. According to their sources, companies like Facebook built specific systems so the government could easily request and access their data.
This information contradicts Zuckerberg's denial, posted on his Facebook page Friday afternoon, which has the vague sound of many, many lawyers parsing their own language:
Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access [added emphasis] to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.
First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government?or any other government?direct access [added emphasis] to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a ?back door? to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
According to the Times, the key words here are direct access. The government didn't have a backdoor to access the data, but these companies built a system for them:
[C]ompanies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.
Obama Says PRISM Exists To "Keep Us Safe"
Friday, June 7, 3:31 PM?A mysterious Facebook-connected startup called Palantir?a Lord of the Rings reference to a magical method of surveillance?appears to be the entity that runs the NSA's PRISM program just revealed to be spying on all Americans at all times, with Barack Obama's approval. Obama was in Silicon Valley this morning shaking down the tech billionaires for campaign money:
1:36 PM?Obama claimed the massive, unprecedented national surveillance system involves only "modest encroachments on privacy." As for any political fallout in Congress, Obama also made it clear that "your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we're doing."
12:41 AM?Barack Obama, speaking live in Silicon Valley right now, said the electronic snooping "helps protect us from terrorism" and insists all the eavesdropping of every mobile call, email, instant message and file attachment is completely legal. Obama is in San Jose raising campaign money from the Internet billionaires who allow the NSA to spy on all Americans.
Newly exposed proof that all the major telecommunication companies in America continue to hand over all phone data to the National Security Agency means that the White House's illegal mass wiretapping of people suspected of no crime has continued for a dozen years.
Along with monitoring of web traffic, email and searches through the major telecom carriers, all phone calls been wiretapped with full cooperation of the communications companies since at least 2001. That the practice is illegal hasn't stopped the White House or NSA from continuing the wholesale surveillance. Congress reliably moves to make illegal spying legal whenever there's a scandal like the current Verizon outrage.
White House Says Spying On Millions of Verizon Calls a "Critical Tool"
Wednesday, June 6, 2013 9:03 AM?America's spy agencies have had full access to US cellphone call data to and from Verizon customers since April, the Guardian reports. The Obama Administration is defending the National Security Agency phone spying as a "critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States."
The secret order was obtained by the British newspaper and reported Wednesday night.
The Obama administration on Thursday acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack. Read...
The White House on Thursday defended the National Security Agency's need to collect telephone records of U.S. citizens, calling such information "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats." Read...
[T]he extent of the NSA?s surveillance shows that it has focused specifically on Americans, to the degree that its data collection has in at least one major spying incident explicitlyexcluded those outside the United States. Read...
A senior Obama administration official [...] stressed that the information acquired by the purported order "does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call." Read...
Data from all incoming and outgoing calls is provided to the NSA under the top secret order, which the Washington Post describes as a "routine renewal of a similar order first issued in 2006." The White House did not specifically address the Verizon order this morning, but referred to at least one telecommunications company.
Past revelations of major U.S. telecommunications companies spying on Americans suspected of no crimes has shown that the other carriers have consistently opened their lines and data banks to America's spy agencies since 2001.
[Photos by the Associated Press and Getty Images. Illustrations by Front]
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian government, facing an economic slowdown, will have to focus its spending efforts on priority areas, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday.
Medvedev was addressing a meeting of a fiscal planning commission at which new figures were released showing that federal spending would rise by only 3 percent in nominal terms next year.
That represents a sharp slowdown from spending growth of 17.8 percent last year, stoked by pre-election spending that helped President Vladimir Putin win election for a third presidential term.
"It's obvious that, in the difficult current circumstances, we need to concentrate resources on key programs," Medvedev said. "I also hope it is obvious to everyone that it will also be necessary to spend efficiently."
Briefing reporters later, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Medvedev had backed the belt-tightening spending plan, which would uphold the terms of a so-called fiscal rule introduced last year to contain borrowing.
Savings would come from reducing transfers to the state pension fund, a 5 percent in state procurement spending and unspecified changes to defense outlays, he said.
"Taking into account the slowdown in the pace of growth, revenues falling rather than rising in relation to our earlier forecasts," said Siluanov.
The downbeat comments echoed the tone set by Putin in his annual budget statement on June 13, when he said the government could not continue to raise spending for ever.
Putin reshuffled his economic team on Monday, and his new economy minister, Alexei Ulyukayev, said his primary task in government would be to stave off a possible recession.
Economic growth, at 1.8 percent in the first five months of the year, has fallen to its slowest pace in four years.
Under the draft three-year fiscal plan, the pace of nominal spending growth will pick up in 2015 and 2016. The Finance Ministry expects to run a small budget deficit in the next three years, breaking Putin's promise to balance the budget by 2015.
(Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Douglas Busvine; editing by Ron Askew)
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ROME (Reuters) - James Gandolfini, star of the U.S. Emmy-winning series The Sopranos, had a "wonderful" last day on holiday with his son before dying of a heart attack in Italy, a family friend said on Friday.
Michael Kobold told journalists an autopsy on Friday morning showed Gandolfini had died of natural causes, confirming an earlier report from medical officials.
The autopsy had shown "nothing out of the ordinary ... there was no foul play, there was no substance abuse," Kobold said.
Kobold, who was designated by the family to talk to the media, said Gandolfini, had had a good time with his 13-year-old son Michael and there was no hint anything was wrong.
"He had a wonderful day. He visited the Vatican and had dinner at the hotel with his son, awaiting the arrival of his (Gandolfini's) sister," Kobold said.
"He was on vacation with his son, he has an eight-month-old daughter. Everything was going really great. I just spoke to him on Father's Day. He was fine, he was happy. He was a good guy," Kobold said.
The star was found dead in his Rome hotel late on Wednesday.
His sister, Leta Gandfolfini, visited his body at the hospital morgue on Friday morning after the autopsy.
Asked if Gandolfini had previous heart problems, Kobold said: "No. He was happy. He was healthy. He was doing really fine."
Gandolfini, whose performance as New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano made him a household name and helped usher in a new era of American television drama, had been scheduled to attend the closing of the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily on Saturday.
FUNERAL IN NEW YORK
Gandolfini's manager, Mark Armstrong, said in an email the actor's son, Michael, found him collapsed in the bathroom of his Rome hotel room but Kobold refused to comment on that.
Claudio Modini, the emergency room chief, told Reuters on Thursday doctors had tried to resuscitate Gandolfini for 40 minutes when he arrived at the hospital.
Kobold said Gandolfini's body would be embalmed, which is not a common practice in Italy, ahead of its return to the United States, probably next week. The family hoped to have the funeral in New York City late next week.
It normally took up to 10 days to return a body but the family was working with Italian authorities to speed up the procedure, he added.
"We are all devastated by this loss. James was a devoted husband, a loving father of two children and a brother and cousin you could always count on," he said.
Since "The Sopranos" ended its six-season run in June 2007, Gandolfini appeared in a number of big-screen roles, including the crime drama "Killing Them Softly" and "Zero Dark Thirty," a film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Gandolfini had been working on an upcoming HBO series, "Criminal Justice," and had two films due out next year.
Apart from Michael, his son with his first wife, who he divorced in 2002, Gandolfini is survived by wife, Deborah Lin and baby daughter Liliana, born last year.
In the HBO series, the burly, physically imposing Gandolfini created a gangster different from any previously seen in American television or film.
Tony Soprano was capable of killing enemies with his own hands but was prone to panic attacks. He regularly saw a therapist to work out his anxiety problems.
(Additional reporting by Antonio Denti in Rome and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
This year's supermoon ? it's also a strawberry moon ? will be (slightly) larger and brighter than others, because its full phase comes as the orb makes its closest approach to Earth.
By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / June 21, 2013
A 'supermoon' rises behind the Temple of Poseidon in Cape Sounion, Greece. The phenomenon occurs when the moon passes closer to Earth than usual. The event this Sunday will make the moon appear larger than normal, but the difference is so small that most skywatchers won?t notice.
Dimitri Messinis/AP/File
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It's bigger than a bleached beach ball, able to orbit Earth in 27.3 days ? it's supermoon! And it's coming to a night sky near you on June 23.
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It will be bright, beautiful, but definitely not "five times bigger" than usual, as some widely circulating web alerts suggest. More like 12 percent larger than average ? a difference too small to detect by eye without help from a camera.
Take a picture of Sunday's full moon high in the sky, then take a picture of another full moon of your choosing ? at roughly the height above the horizon using the same magnification. Set the two white disks side by side, and the difference is easier to see ? but nowhere near a five-fold difference.
Still, what can be finer on an early summer's night (or winter's night in the Southern Hemisphere) than sitting on the front porch or back deck and enjoying Earth's companion, weather willing?
In fact, it's a two-fer. The first full moon in June is called a strawberry moon, marking the harvest of strawberries after their short growing season ends, according to that annual compendium of weather prognostications, recipes, and lore, the Old Farmer's Almanac.
Supermoons occur once a year. This month's super-strawberry moon will be (slightly) larger and brighter than others because its full-moon phase comes as the moon makes its closest approach to Earth.
The moon's orbit around the third rock from the sun traces an elliptical path.? At closest approach, or perigee, the moon swings to within 362,570 kilometers (224,793 miles) of Earth, while its most-distant point, or apogee is 405,410 km. But those are averages.
Sunday night, the moon's perigee will come within 356,989 km of Earth, about 2 percent closer than average. And the moon reaches full status about 20 minutes after perigee.
As Phil Plait, an astronomer who pens the "Bad Astronomy" blog over at Slate.com puts it: "That's pretty nifty timing."
As with any full moon, Sunday's supermoon will appear unusually large when it's close to the horizon. In one sense, that makes any full moon super to view. But don't be fooled. As the late, great 18-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant noted: "The astronomer cannot prevent himself from seeing the moon larger at its rising than some time afterwards, although he is not deceived by this illusion."
If you miss this supermoon, it's not too early to mark your calendar for the next one. It should show up Aug. 10, 2014. And it's free!
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Critics cry exploitation as a federal loophole allows companies to pay thousands of disabled workers across the country far less than the minimum wage. Harry Smith's full report airs Friday, June 21 at 10pm/9CDT on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.
By Anna Schecter, Producer, NBC News
One of the nation's best-known charities is paying disabled workers as little as 22 cents an hour, thanks to a 75-year-old legal loophole that critics say needs to be closed.
Goodwill Industries, a multibillion-dollar company whose executives make six-figure salaries, is among the nonprofit groups permitted to pay thousands of disabled workers far less than minimum wage because of a federal law known as Section 14 (c). Labor Department records show that some Goodwill workers in Pennsylvania earned wages as low as 22, 38 and 41 cents per hour in 2011.
"If they really do pay the CEO of Goodwill three-quarters of a million dollars, they certainly can pay me more than they're paying," said Harold Leigland, who is legally blind and hangs clothes at a Goodwill in Great Falls, Montana for less than minimum wage.
"It's a question of civil rights," added his wife, Sheila, blind from birth, who quit her job at the same Goodwill store when her already low wage was cut further. "I feel like a second-class citizen. And I hate it."
Section 14 (c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was passed in 1938, allows employers to obtain special minimum wage certificates from the Department of Labor. The certificates give employers the right to pay disabled workers according to their abilities, with no bottom limit to the wage.
Most, but not all, special wage certificates are held by nonprofit organizations like Goodwill that then set up their own so-called "sheltered workshops" for disabled employees, where employees typically perform manual tasks like hanging clothes.
For more on disabled workers and sub-minimum-wage pay watch 'Rock Center' tonight.
The non-profit certificate holders can also place employees in outside, for-profit workplaces including restaurants, retail stores, hospitals and even Internal Revenue Service centers. Between the sheltered workshops and the outside businesses, more than 216,000 workers are eligible to earn less than minimum wage because of Section 14 (c), though many end up earning the full federal minimum wage of $7.25.
NBC News
Harold Leigland, who is blind, with his guide dog on the bus during his morning commute to the Goodwill facility in Great Falls, Montana, where he works hanging clothing.
When a non-profit provides Section 14 (c) workers to an outside business, it sets the salary and pays the wages. For example, the Helen Keller National Center, a New York school for the blind and deaf, has a special wage certificate and has placed students in a Westbury, N.Y., Applebee's franchise. The employees' pay ranged from $3.97 per hour to $5.96 per hour in 2010. The franchise told NBC News it has also hired workers at minimum wage from Helen Keller. A spokesperson for Applebee's declined to comment on Section 14 (c).
Helen Keller also placed several students at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Manhasset, N.Y., in 2010, where they earned $3.80 and $4.85 an hour. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman defended the Section 14 (c) program as providing jobs to "people who would otherwise not have [the opportunity to work]."
Most Section 14 (c) workers are employed directly by nonprofits. In 2001, the most recent year for which numbers are available, the GAO estimated that more than 90 percent of Section 14 (c) workers were employed at nonprofit work centers.
Critics of Section 14 (c) have focused much of their ire on the nonprofits, where wages can be just pennies an hour even as some of the groups receive funding from the government. At one workplace in Florida run by a nonprofit, some employees earned one cent per hour in 2011.
"People are profiting from exploiting disabled workers," said Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. "It is clearly and unquestionably exploitation."
Defenders of Section 14 (c) say that without it, disabled workers would have few options. A Department of Labor spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News that Section 14 (c) "provides workers with disabilities the opportunity to be given meaningful work and receive an income."
Terry Farmer, CEO of ACCSES, a trade group that calls itself the "voice of disability service providers," said scrapping the provision could "force [disabled workers] to stay at home," enter rehabilitation, "or otherwise engage in unproductive and unsatisfactory activities."
Harold Leigland, however, said he feels that Goodwill can pay him a low wage because the company knows he has few other places to go. "We are trapped," he said. "Everybody who works at Goodwill is trapped."
Leigland, a 66-year-old former massage therapist with a college degree, currently earns $5.46 per hour in Great Falls.
His wages have risen and fallen based on "time studies," the method nonprofits use to calculate the salaries of Section 14 (c) workers. Staff members use a stopwatch to determine how long it takes a disabled worker to complete a task. That time is compared with how long it would take a person without a disability to do the same task. The nonprofit then uses a formula to calculate a salary, which may be equal to or less than minimum wage. The tests are repeated every six months.
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Harold Leigland works at the Goodwill facility in Great Falls, Montana, where he earns $5.46 an hour.
Leigland's pay has been higher than $5.46, but it has also dropped down to $4.37 per hour, based on the time-study results. He said he believes Goodwill makes the time studies harder when they want his wage to be lower.
"Sometimes the test is easier than others. It depends on if, as near as I can figure, they want your wage to go up or down. It's that simple," he said.
His wife, Sheila, 58, spent four years hanging clothes at the Great Falls Goodwill for about $3.50 an hour. She said the time study was one of the most degrading and stressful parts about her job. "You never know how it's going to come out. It stressed me out a lot," she said.
She quit last summer when she returned to work after knee surgery and found that her wage had been lowered to $2.75 per hour, a training rate.
"At $2.75 it would barely cover my cost of getting to work. I wouldn't make any money," she said.
Harold said he believes Goodwill can afford to pay him minimum wage, based on the salaries paid to Goodwill executives. While according to the company's own figures about 4,000 of the 30,000 disabled workers Goodwill employs at 69 franchises are currently paid below minimum wage, salaries for the CEOs of those franchises that hold special minimum wage certificates totaled almost $20 million in 2011.
In 2011 the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Southern California took home $1.1 million in salary and deferred compensation. His counterpart in Portland, Oregon, made more than $500,000. Salaries for CEOs of the roughly 150 Goodwill franchises across America total more than $30 million.
Goodwill International CEO Jim Gibbons, who was awarded $729,000 in salary and deferred compensation in 2011, defended the executive pay.
"These leaders are having a great impact in terms of new solutions, in terms of innovation, and in terms of job creation," he said.
Gibbons also defended time studies, and the whole Section 14 (c) approach. He said that for many people who make less than minimum wage, the experience of work is more important than the pay.
"It's typically not about their livelihood. It's about their fulfillment. It's about being a part of something. And it's probably a small part of their overall program," he said.
Read Goodwill's full statement
And Goodwill and the organizations that run the sheltered workshops are not alone in their support for Section 14 (c). In many cases, the families of the workers who have severe disabilities say their loved ones enjoy the work experience, enjoy getting a paycheck, and the amount is of no consequence.
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Sheila Leigland, who is blind, with her guide dog. She quit her job at Goodwill in Great Falls, Montana, after her hourly wage was lowered to $2.75.
"I feel really good about it. I don't have to worry so much about him," said Fran Davidson, whose son Jeremy has worked at Goodwill in Great Falls, Montana, for more than a decade. "I know he's not getting picked on, and he's in a safe place. He enjoys what he's doing, and he's happy, and that's what we like for our kids." Jeremy started out working for a sub-minimum wage but did well on his last time study and is currently earning $7.80 an hour, Montana's minimum wage.
But foes of Section 14 (c) have hopes for a new bill that's now before Congress that would repeal Section 14 (c) and make sub-minimum wages illegal across the board.
"Meaningful work deserves fair pay," the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Gregg Harper, R.-Miss., told NBC News. "This dated provision unjustly prohibits workers with disabilities from reaching their full potential."
The bill is opposed by trade associations for the employers of the disabled, and past attempts to change the law have failed. But Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind and a foe of the sheltered workshop system, is cautiously optimistic that this time the bill will pass, and end what he called a "two-tiered system."
That system, explained Maurer, says "'Americans who have disabilities aren't as valuable as other people,' and that's wrong. These folks have value. We should recognize that value."
Monica Alba contributed to this report.
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