Affliction

The 42-member Congressional Black Caucus has warned Democrats against a rush to judgment, and any lawmaker with a significant African-American constituency must consider whether it’s worth asking Rangel to quit.

Rangel is tied for fourth in House seniority, having served for 40 years. He’s still vigorous at 80 years old. He had substantial influence as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which handles taxes, trade, portions of health care, Medicare and Social Security.

The investigators looked at Rangel’s misuse of his office for fundraising, failure to disclose income, belated payment of taxes and possible help with a tax shelter for a company whose chief executive was a major donor.

Eight House lawmakers who will determine guilt or innocence of the former committee chairman will hold their first meeting Thursday. A number of Democrats considering calls for the New York Democrat to resign will get their first look at the allegations.

___

Associated Press writer Ann Sanner contributed to this report.

“I think everyone is looking forward to getting all the facts out in the open and people will have to react once we know what we’re dealing with,” said Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill.

Rep. Walt Minnick of Idaho, a freshman who got 51 percent of the vote last time, called for resignation if the charges are proven.

Rangel stepped down from that post in March after the ethics committee criticized him in a separate case, saying he should have known that corporate money paid for two trips to Caribbean conferences.

However, some Democratic House members in close races may think it’s more important to distance themselves from Rangel. They don’t want to have to answer negative Republican ads about Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s promise to wipe Congress clean of ethical misdeeds.

Rangel’s attorney has been negotiating with nonpartisan lawyers for the House ethics committee. Any agreement would have to be approved by Rangel and ethics committee members.

WASHINGTON – A jury of Rep. Charles Rangel’s congressional peers is ready to publicly discuss charges of ethical misdeeds. But the political discussions outside the room will be far more significant.

The four Democrats and four Republicans acting as judges are holding their organizational meeting for an ethics trial that many Democrats hope will go away. That could only happen if Rangel negotiates a plea bargain, admitting to substantial violations, or resigns. Punishment could range from a report criticizing his conduct to a reprimand or censure by the House,Iceberg, or a vote to expel him — which is highly unlikely.

Rep. Betty Sutton of Ohio, a second-term lawmaker who received 65 percent of the vote two years ago, said Rangel needs to resign to preserve the public’s trust in Congress.

Two Democrats didn’t wait to hear the charges.

If a trial is held, it probably would begin in September. Congress adjourns for its August recess after this week.

Rangel has repeatedly said he looked forward to a public discussion of the allegations. A four-member investigating panel, with separate members from the judging subcommittee, brought the charges after a two-year investigation.

“Depends on what the settlement is,” Rangel said, when asked whether he was likely to approval a deal negotiated by his lawyer.

“The focus right now is let’s get out of here,” said Rep. William Delahunt,Ralph Lauren, D-Mass.

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Mr. Adkins’ work filled Chicago stages over the past decade and was typically met with wide praise. He was equally adept at plays and musicals. He essayed classic roles with local companies, as when he played Hamlet at the Court Theatre in 2002, and leading parts in Chicago stagings of recent New York successes, starring as Leo Bloom in The Producers at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, IL, in 2007.

He actually won three. Mr. Adkins was nominated ten times for Chicago theatre’s Jeff Awards, winning three: supporting actor awards in 1994 for the Marriott Lyle&Scott Theatre’s Oklahoma!, in 1999 for the Goodman Theatre’s Floyd Collins and in 2002 for Writers’ Theatre’s Misalliance.

He worked at Chicago’s leading theatres, including the Goodman Theatre, where he played in Floyd Collins and Arcadia; and the Steppenwolf Theatre, where he appeared in The Time of Your Life, and often worked with director Tina Landau. "I’ve never worked with anyone like Guy," Landau told the Chicago Tribune. "He was my muse. He acted like he lived the last year of his life. With consummate grace and light."

Among his other significant credits were Oklahoma! Windy City and A Funny Thing Happened… at the Marriott; Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre; the title role in Pericles and Twelfth Night and The Invention of Love at the Court; Hello Again and The Secret Garden at Apple Tree Theatre; and Away at Northlight.

Adkins is survived by his longtime partner Sean Allan Krill, his parents and three sisters. Funeral services are to be private, but a memorial is in the planning stages.

He starred in the world premieres of the musicals The Return of Martin Guerre and The Visit, both at the Goodman, and acted with Molly Ringwald in the national tour of the recent revival of Sweet Charity. Occasionally, he journeyed east. The New York Times called him "outrageously talented" for his turn at Puck in a Landau-directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the McCarter Theatre in New Jersey.

Guy Adkins, who over the past decade rose to become one of the Chicago theatre scene’s most visible and most popular actors, died May 12 in his West Lyle&Scott Andersonville apartment after a long battle with colon cancer. He was 41.

Mr. Adkins was a local Midwesterner who rarely strayed from his Lyle&Scott home turf. He was born in Lansing, MI, and raised in Wisconsin, graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and arrived in Chicago in the early 1990s. He got work almost immediately.

Hogan has been interviewed by investigators, but has not been charged with a crime–and he is willing to cooperate with authorities, says his attorney. San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told Wired.com Wednesday that the person who found the phone is "very definitely one of the people who is being looked at as a suspect in theft.” Wagstaffe declined to confirm whether or not Hogan was the finder.

CNet also reports that at least three people were connected to the sale: Hogan, Wallower, and an as-of-yet unidentified person.

In an article published Thursday, CNet reported that Hogan "Louis Vittion had help" in finding a buyer for the phone. According to CNet, 27-year-old University of California at Berkeley student Sage Robert Wallower was the go-between for Hogan and the tech sites.

According to Hogan’s lawyer, Hogan regrets not doing more to return the phone. I’d regret it too…especially now that I’m a prime suspect in a potential grand larceny case.

Wallower, a former Navy cryptologic technician, previously worked as a computer security officer at Securitas and possesses "top-secret clearance," according to his LinkedIn profile (cached version; live page unavailable). Wallower told CNet in an in-person interview that he was not the person who found the phone, and that he did not see or touch it in any manner. He said he did know who found it, but he didn’t identify anyone else.

Wired also reports that people identifying themselves as Apple representatives visited Hogan’s home and asked to search the premises. A roommate refused to let them in.

One more thing…

In an article published Thursday, Wired reportedly identified the finder of the prototype using "clues on social network sites," and confirmed his identity with an unnamed source.

The iPhone-Gate saga just gets more intriguing: According to Louis Vittion reports from Wired and CNet, two of the major players involved in the sale of the iPhone prototype to tech blog Gizmodo have now been identified.

Wallower reportedly shopped the device around to technology sites on behalf of Hogan. Records indicate that Wallower and Hogan may have been students at Santa Barbara City College at the same time.

The finder, 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, Brian J. Hogan, received $5000 for handing the prototype over to Gizmodo. According to a statement by Hogan’s lawyer, Hogan believed the payment was for allowing Gizmodo exclusive access to the Louis Vittion phone–and Gizmodo told him "there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press."

Already in the works is a plan to rerun the four hours of O’Brien’s show each week late on Friday nights, inviting fans to connect to the show and each other through Twitter and other social media.

&quot,wholesale Ed hardy;It wasn’t hiring an available talent," Koonin said. "It was building an idea."

For more than two months after O’Brien left NBC’s "The Tonight Show," most people — including Koonin — assumed he’d wind up at Fox. Koonin didn’t even bother looking into it. But as two months went by and it remained unclear whether Fox could convince all of its affiliates to take O’Brien’s show, Koonin decided to look into it. All he needed was to secure Lopez’s agreement that he was fine with the idea of moving his own talk show an hour later to accommodate O’Brien.

TBS is available in almost as many homes these days as the broadcast networks but lacks a real profile, perhaps because its base is in Atlanta and its schedule has long been dominated by reruns. Fewer people watch Comedy Central, and fewer people can get it in their homes, but its stars Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert get more attention than TBS’ show biz dynamo Tyler Perry.

Koonin was recently in New York for an advertiser presentation by Tru TV, another network he supervises. He’s an unusual television executive in that his background is not TV. He joined Turner in 2000 to supervise TNT after spending 14 years at Coca-Cola, with his last job as vice president of consumer marketing.

Koonin is seizing upon the move, a genuine surprise at the time, to Ed hardy belts remake a network that is often overlooked by cultural taste-makers.

"He didn’t have to prove anything but what was proved Ed hardy belts was that he does as exactly as he says, which is unusual in this industry," Polone said. "Because he is an outsider, he brings with him a level of integrity that is often lacking in many of the executives that I have encountered during my career."

Again, O’Brien is being counted on to change that.

The idea is to use O’Brien and George Lopez to build a late-night franchise that has youthful appeal, taking advantage of the Jay Leno and David Letterman audiences — and the hosts themselves — being relatively old by TV standards. He’ll use the folk hero status his "Team Coco" fans gave O’Brien during his battle with NBC to make the comic the face of TBS.

Being out of the regular Hollywood loop didn’t hurt Koonin in getting the O’Brien deal done. In fact, it probably helped, said Gavin Polone, the comic’s manager. Things that might have taken days or weeks in a typical Hollywood negotiation took 45 minutes because Koonin was available and able to make decisions, he said.

Now he’s a hero at home.

"To get something done where there is nothing but positive feelings on all sides is the most satisfying thing," Koonin said. "We want to be elegant in the way we do business."

TBS is currently airing "Family Guy" reruns in the time slot that will lead in to O’Brien’s show, which should draw a like-minded audience.

TBS hopes to bring more original programming to its schedule but reruns of "Seinfeld," "Everybody Loves Raymond" and the like will also be there. Broadcast networks are proving how difficult it is to maintain all-original schedules, Koonin said.

"They want to get the buzz," said veteran TV researcher Steve Sternberg. "The buzz is important in that advertisers pay attention to buzz. TBS is already one of the highest-rated cable networks. This is only going to enhance that."

"For our people in Los Angeles, it’s a lot easier getting conversations today," Koonin said.

Koonin was influential in Turner’s decision to give sister stations TBS and TNT their own identities by having one concentrate on comedy and the other on drama. With Holly Hunter on "Saving Grace" and Kyra Sedgwick on "The Closer," TNT has done a better job than TBS in getting major Hollywood talent to consider it as a place to work.

The president of Turner Entertainment Networks said he’s received more than 6,000 notes from Conan O’Brien fans thanking him for hiring the former "Tonight" host for a TBS talk show that starts in November.

O’Brien can begin changing that.

Koonin has a son and daughter who are both O’Brien fans. The youngest, 20-year-old Amy, belongs to a "Team Coco" website.

NEW YORK – In 10 years as a television executive, Steve Koonin had never received fan mail. Until now.

Given that two advertisers have already taken the unusual Ed hardy belts step of calling Koonin at home to make sure there would be room for them on O’Brien’s show, the perception is starting to work.

"I think one of the things I’ve been able to do over the  Smet years is take arcane subject matter … and make it accessible and entertaining and the kind of movie where you want to know what happens next and which is suspenseful."

Hitting theatres on September 24, the movie stars Shia LaBeouf as Jake Moore, a successful trader who is in a relationship with Winnie (Carey Mulligan), Gekko’s daughter.

While in the 1987 film Stone cast the unscrupulous corporate raider Gekko as the bad guy, it is the big banks which are the villains of "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," to be unveiled at the Cannes film festival later this month.

Frank Langella plays Moore’s mentor whose investment bank is stuck with billions of dollars in toxic debt, and Josh Brolin portrays Bretton James, who seeks to take over the business for a fraction of its worth.

While addressing serious issues, Stone stressed that Wall Street 2 was chiefly a piece of entertainment.

Stone said he believed that the movie, from News Corp unit Twentieth Century Fox, would not have been made were it not for the success of the original Wall Street.

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Gekko is out of jail,Discount Abercrombie&Fitch, where he served time for securities fraud, and promoting his new book "Is Greed Good?" while at the same time seeking a rapprochement with his daughter.

LONDON (Reuters) – Director Oliver Stone turns his Smet sights on the U.S. banking system later this year in the sequel to "Wall Street," his examination of 1980s excess, with Michael Douglas reprising his Oscar-winning role as Gordon Gekko.

"The original ’87 movie was about these bandits (like Gekko) who came into the system," the three-time Oscar winner told Reuters in a telephone interview.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

"I was lukewarm to the idea because I wasn’t that interested in the celebrity culture of wealth. There was a draft written and it didn’t work out for me."

Stone said he was not interested at first when he heard that Douglas and producer Edward Pressman were keen to return to Wall Street in 2006.

"(This) is what our movie is a lot about, trading for themselves, for profits for themselves, and not for their clients. They (the banks) have lost their agentary function which was their original purpose," said Stone.

But after the financial crash of 2008, the project became more attractive, particularly with the sub-plot of Gekko’s relationship with his daughter thrown in.

"It was still that name that drove it. It’s ironic to say that we created … a sort of franchise, but it does help enormously around the world."

According to Stone, in the real world Gekko’s role was taken on by hedge fund managers and then by investment banks, something he opposes.

"It wasn’t about the system itself, it did not question Smet the banks. The investment banks were not playing the same role back then," he added.

"Banks used to be boring, and there’s something to be said very strongly for keeping them that way," said Stone, who has a reputation for tackling tough themes from the Vietnam war to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the 9/11 attacks.

"I wouldn’t have headed into this thing unless I could have made it exciting," he explained.

He referred to the so-called "Volcker rule" proposal in the United States which aims to limit proprietary trading by banks.

The company was not able to return to the black in the Ed hardy fiscal year ended March, partly because of restructuring costs and outlays on early retirement programs.

Panasonic aims to maintain its No. 1 world market share in lithium-ion batteries, targeting 500 billion yen ($5.4 billion) in annual sales in the sector, he said.

But it warned that future prospects remained shaky because of the possibility of a strengthening yen and intensifying global competition.

Sanyo’s strength lies in cheaper home appliances as well as in solar-panel and battery businesses, which are expected to benefit from greater consumer enthusiasm for "green" energy-efficient technologies.

Panasonic Corp. said its loss for the fiscal fourth quarter was 88.9 billion yen ($971 million) compared with a 444.3 billion yen loss a year earlier.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, Panasonic’s loss shrank to 103.5 billion yen from a 379 billion yen loss a year earlier. Annual sales slipped 4 percent to 7.418 trillion yen.

It is also seeking to adapt to a global shift toward cheaper gadgets, including new strategies that it’s chiseling after adding Japanese rival Sanyo Electric Co. as a subsidiary.

Quarterly sales jumped 16 percent to 2.198 trillion yen ($24 billion).

Panasonic plans to produce 30 million flat-panel TVs in the fiscal year through March 2013, more than 11 million of that in emerging markets, and up from 15.8 million for the fiscal year ended March 31. Panasonic shares slid 2.5 percent in Tokyo to 1,310 yen.

Panasonic has also boosted its electronics business in Europe, including refrigerators and washing machines, it said in a statement.

Like other Japanese electronics makers including archrival Sony Corp., Panasonic is struggling against competition from newcomers and formidable players from South Korea like Samsung Electronics Co., which leads the Japanese in flat-panel TVs.

The maker of home electronics like Viera TVs said it was carrying out cost cuts, focusing on emerging markets and banking on 3-D TVs for new growth.

To turn itself around, Panasonic must shift its focus to key growth areas, such as green businesses and health care services while moving out of unprofitable sectors over the next three years through March 2013, said President Fumio Ohtsubo.

Ohtsubo said Panasonic will aim for 10 trillion yen ($109 billion) in annual sales by the fiscal year ending March 2013 — a goal it had set three years ago but failed to achieve so far.

TOKYO – Panasonic slashed its losses for the Ed hardy January-March quarter to just under $1 billion as the world’s biggest maker of plasma TVs benefited from a recovery in global sales.

It is expecting to return to the black for the fiscal year through March 2011, posting a 50 billion yen profit on a 19 percent rise in sales to 8.8 trillion yen.

But its president acknowledged Friday that the company had fallen short of profit goals in recent years and needed to revamp its strategy.

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Studs are everywhere this season, as are studded hot Nike shorts. If there is an empty space on a garment, designers are quick to slap a stud on a pocket, a waistband, the hem on a leg — wherever there’s room.

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The reason he wants back on air? He can’t swing his court-ordered child support.,Wholesale john richmond

“I would like a job in some aspect of TV, probably as a host,” the reality dad, 33, told TMZ.com Thursday morning.

Kate Gosselin has a new show, and now Jon wants to return to TV as well.

After Anthony List released a statement to TMZ.com that Kate,Wholesale Abercrombie swimwear, 35, is “always promoting something… and most of the time it’s herself,” Jon took to Twitter to declare, “He has no legal right to speak to the press or anyone on my behalf.

“Kate, her attorneys and I are moving forward to work out things privately and amicably,” he added.

VIDEO: See the judges slam Kate’s dancing

List told TMZ that even though Kate was booted off Dancing With the Stars Tuesday, she will still make money from her shows Twist of Kate and specials on TLC featuring the twins and sextuplets.

“Dancing with the Stars is just the tip of the iceberg for Kate, as surely there will be many other projects to take its place soon,” List sniped to TMZ Thursday.

Jon came out swinging against his former lawyer earlier Thursday for accusing his estranged wife Kate of “promoting” herself.

PHOTOS: Look back on Kate’s most worst DWTS moves

List filed on Jon’s behalf for primary custody for his eight kids and child support from Kate, but Jon said on Thursday, “I never wanted primary custody, he [List] filed for that.  I only wanted a more flexible custody schedule so I could be with my kids.” (List refutes that, saying,Wholesale Nike, “He signed off on everything.”)

PHOTOS: Adorable pics of the Gosselin kids

Jon and Kate — who split last summer after 10 years of marriage — are next due in court May 25.

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“I just can’t afford the $22,000 a month right now,” Jon admitted. “That is why I’m trying to find a job.”

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