Former Hooters Waitress Claims She Was Ousted After ... - AOL Jobs

At 27, Sandra Lupo received some scary news: She needed brain surgery to remove a noncancerous cranial mass. She had a buzz cut, the surgery was completed, and she returned to work, with a scar. But what followed, says the former Hooters waitress, was even more horrifying: Her St. Peters, Mo., employer required her to wear a wig. (Lupo is pictured on the left, in a healed state.)

According to a lawsuit that she filed in February, Hooters caused her "extreme stress" and the wig prevented the scar from healing. Claiming disability discrimination, Lupo also says that her hours at work were reduced until she was forced to quit to find new work. She is seeking damages of at least $25,000, in addition to lost wages.

Lupo, an employee at Hooters in Missouri since 2005, says that she took medical leave for the surgery, and her manager, Brent Holmberg, initially told her that she could use "jewelry" to cover up her scar. But then, she claims, she was informed by regional manager Joe Orzent that "she could not return to work unless she wore a wig." Hooters has not responded to media requests for comment and has filed motions for the case to be dismissed.

More: 7 Ways You Can Be Fired For Your Appearance -- Legally

Upon returning to work on July 21, Lupo at first tried a wig, which she says she had to purchase on her own. But she decided that the wig was both uncomfortable and interrupted the healing process, according to her lawyer, Larry Bagsby. So she ditched it. She says that she was then asked to leave work and her hours "were reduced to the point [she] could not earn an income," forcing her to quit.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, she is currently working as a registered nurse in the St. Louis area. She says she began working at Hooters in 2005 to help pay for her education in nursing. Lupo, for her part, first filed a complaint with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights. In her complaint, she said that her customers had no problem with how she looked without the wig. "My customers were not offended, and were in fact curious about the obvious scar from my surgery," she said.

The Americans With Disabilities Act bans employers from discriminating against qualified workers who either have a disability or a perceived disability. In her lawsuit, Lupo also claims Hooters violated the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, saying that the company reduced her hours as a strategy to get her to quit.

Hooters, and other so-called "breastaurants," have been booming in America. And they are no strangers to legal and public relations scrutiny over their workplace culture. In speaking to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Marcia McCormick, an associate professor of law at St. Louis University, said so-called "breastaurants" tend to argue "We're not just selling wings or food ... we're selling sexuality. We're selling the flirting," she said.

But even if Hooters tries to use that argument, legal experts such as McCormick doubt that Lupo will walk away empty-handed. "Every case I know about has generally settled," she said.

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Source: http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/04/09/hooters-waitress-sandra-lupo/

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Minutes show Fed supports stimulus through midyear

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A majority of Federal Reserve policymakers want to continue extraordinary bond purchases to help boost the U.S. economy at least through the middle of the year, according to minutes from the Fed's last meeting released Wednesday.

But many members indicated they want to slow and eventually end the program before the end of the year, as long as the job market and economy show sustained improvement. The Fed's purchases of about $85 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage bonds are intended to lower long-term interest rates and encourage more borrowing and spending.

The minutes of the Fed's March 19-20 meeting were released at 9 a.m. EDT ? five hours earlier than planned ? after the Fed said it inadvertently sent them a day earlier to congressional staffers and lobbyists. The more than 100 recipients also included employees at JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs Group, Wells Fargo and other large banks , according to a list of email addresses released later in the day by the Fed.

"One gets the sense that many Fed policymakers are anxious to start paring back the size of the ... purchases as soon as the data allow," Dana Saporta, an economist at Credit Suisse, said in a note to clients.

Still, a weak employment report released Friday is likely to make policymakers even more supportive of keeping the measures in place for the foreseeable future.

The report showed employers added just 88,000 net jobs last month. That was the fewest in nine months and much lower than the average of 220,000 jobs a month created from November through February.

The unemployment rate dropped to a four-year low of 7.6 percent last month. However, the rate fell only because more people stopped looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed.

In its statement after the last meeting, the Fed said the economy had strengthened but still needed its efforts to help lower high unemployment. In addition to continuing the bond purchases, the Fed stuck by its plan to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent.

The minutes indicated that many of the Fed's members want to see sustained improvement in the job market ? from a wide range of economic indicators ? before making any decision to reduce the pace of purchases.

Stocks rose sharply after the minutes were released. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 16 points to 1,585 in midday trading ? above its all-time high of 1,576.09 set in October 2007. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 119 points to 14,792.

The Fed made minutes public earlier on Wednesday after learning that about 100 congressional staffers and lobbyists received them at 2 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. They had been scheduled to be released at 2 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.

Fed spokesman David Skidmore said the Fed notified the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission about the mishap. The Fed also asked its inspector general to investigate its procedures for releasing the minutes.

"At this time we do not know if there was any trading related to the early distribution," Skidmore said. "Every indication at this time is that the early distribution of the minutes was entirely accidental."

John Nester, a spokesman for the SEC, declined to comment on the release of the minutes, beyond saying that the Fed contacted the SEC staff.

Several staff members of both the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees were among those who received the minutes early.

The minutes showed a wide array of opinions and criteria for when to end the bond purchases, which have boosted the Fed's balance sheet to $3.2 trillion.

A few members want to end "relatively soon" the bond-purchase program. Those members say the costs likely outweigh the benefits. A few others saw the risks as increasing quickly and said the purchases would likely need to be reduced "before long."

Many members said an improved job market could lead them to slow purchases within a few months, and a few said economic conditions would likely justify continuing the program until late this year.

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AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/minutes-show-fed-supports-stimulus-midyear-161202893--finance.html

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Don't miss the 2013 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony tonight on USA Network!

The night before WrestleMania 29, six WWE Legends were immortalized inside The World?s Most Famous Arena ? Madison Square Garden ? as members of the 2013 WWE Hall of Fame class. Trish Stratus, Bruno Sammartino, Mick Foley, Booker T,?Bob Backlund and?Donald Trump?each took their rightful place in history and were recognized for their accomplishments and contributions in sports-entertainment.

The Garden was at capacity with WWE Superstars, Divas and members of the WWE Universe bearing witness to the momentous evening. Fortunately, you can tune in to USA Network?and take part in the celebration of each individual.

Tonight, USA will broadcast a one-hour special highlighting the WWE Hall of Fame inductions that took place the night before The Show of Shows. Don?t miss your chance to witness Legends being honored ? tune in to the WWE Hall of Fame special tonight at 10/9 p.m. CT, only on USA Network.

Also, for the first time ever, the WWE Universe can access exclusive content on WWE Active during the WWE Hall of Fame special. Make sure to tap into WWE Active at 10/9 p.m. CT for backstage interviews, photos, factoids and much more!

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Source: http://www.wwe.com/classics/wwe-hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-on-usa

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Was Chilean poet Neruda murdered?

By Rodrigo Garrido

ISLA NEGRA, Chile (Reuters) - The body of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, dead nearly four decades, was exhumed on Monday after his former driver said the poet was poisoned under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

Neruda, famed for his passionate love poems and staunch communist views, is presumed to have died from prostate cancer on September 23, 1973.

But Manuel Araya, who was Neruda's chauffer during the ailing writer's last few months, says agents of the dictatorship took advantage of his illness to inject poison into his stomach while he was bedridden at the Santa Maria clinic in Santiago.

"We're hoping for a positive result because Neruda was assassinated. Pinochet made an error when he ordered Neruda be killed," said Araya. Results are expected in coming months.

Neruda was a supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, who was toppled in a military coup on September 11, 1973, nearly two weeks before the poet's death at age 69. Around 3,000 people are thought to have been killed by the brutal 17-year-long dictatorship that ensued.

Neruda was buried in his coastal home of Isla Negra beside his third wife, Matilde Urrutia.

His remains will be brought to Santiago for analysis. Some samples could be sent to laboratories abroad.

Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto, better known by his pen name Pablo Neruda, was a larger-than-life fixture in Chile's literary and political scene.

While best known for his collection "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair," published in 1924, Neruda was also an important political activist during a turbulent time in Chile.

He organized a ship to bring about 2,000 Spanish refugees fleeing the civil war there to Chile in 1939, campaigned for Allende and was ambassador to France during the socialist's presidency.

The Andean country's intelligentsia frequently congregated in Isla Negra, as well as in his Santiago home "La Chascona" - so named for his then-mistress Urrutia's messy red hair - and La Sebastiana, his ship-themed home in the port town of Valparaiso.

Democratically elected Allende committed suicide in the presidential palace as it was under attack by the military, experts confirmed last year, amid accusations he had been murdered during the coup.

Chilean courts are also investigating the death of ex-President Eduardo Frei Montalva, who is presumed to have died in 1982 of an infection after a hernia operation. Some say he was poisoned by Pinochet's agents.

(Reporting By Rodrigo Garrido; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Eric Beech)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chilean-poet-nerudas-body-exhumed-murder-probe-141159039.html

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Weight Loss Supercombo | Biosanes Health & Nutrition | Healthy ...

It is a known fact that diet and exercise?in combination with a healthy lifestyle?play a key role in losing (and keeping) weight off. Biosanes? 30/60/90 Day Challenges include the best protein shakes for weight loss, and the best fiber supplement for women and men, and they offer a healthy eating plan for women and men!? To get the most out of your diet routine try to incorporate a fun exercise like the insanely popular Zumba!

Biosanes? Lose-It 30/60/90 Day Challenges

Enjoy your choice of two meal replacement supplements per day at breakfast, lunch or dinner. We recommend supplementing your breakfast and dinner. Choose a sensible, well-balanced option for your remaining meal. Consume three (3) Optinol capsules with a full glass of water 30-minutes prior to eating 3-times daily. Add three tablespoons of Natural Magic Pure to water or juice every day, or sprinkle Natural Magic Pure on your sensible meal for additional fiber consumption and immune boosting benefits at least 3 times per day.

We recommend 8-10 glasses of water per day for optimal results and to assist your body with the increased fiber intake from our products.

Burning Extra Calories? If you?re stepping up the workouts or simply wanting to boost your metabolism by consuming snacks between meals, simply consume one half to one full serving of The Magic Cookie? or our food replacement drinks, Lose-It Advantage,? between meals once or twice daily.? For meal ideas just check out our recipe section for ideas.

Why Zumba?

According to a recent CNN article, people are seeing drastic and amazing results by taking Zumba classes. Ashlee Tomsche takes classes five to six days a week and has dropped 123 pounds!

Benefits of Zumba

• 1. Say ?Burn Baby, Burn? to Calories ? The average number of calories burned during Zumba ranges anywhere from 817 to 1,050 per hour.
• 2. Total Body Toning ? During a Zumba class, you engage a ton of muscles and incorporate traditional fitness moves like squats and lunges into your exercise (most of the time without you realizing)
• 3. It Keeps You Coming Back ? Zumba is so enjoyable you actually want to keep coming back.
• 4. It Works for All Ages ? Zumba has a kids? program called Zumbatonic, designed to teach young dancers ages four to 12 about why it?s good to be active and healthy. There are often seniors in classes who top out at even 86!
• 5. Get Stress Release ? Give your mind a break from worrying about the day-to-day grind, or other more stressful life situations.
• 6. Can Be Adapted for Any Fitness Level ? Whether you?re just starting out with an exercise program or you?re an old pro, you can still make Zumba be an effective and challenging workout.
• 7. It Goes by Fast ? Class-goers swear you won?t even notice an hour has gone by. How many weight lifters can say that?
• 8. It?s Social! ? Regularly attending Zumba classes is a great way to meet people. Trainers often host ?Zumba parties? for corporate challenges, bachelorette parties and more.
• 9. Gives You More Awareness of Your Body ? Oh, you?ll be sore?in places you didn?t even know existed.
• 10. You Can Always Find A Class ? If you log on to the website you can find classes by zip code. Somewhere no classes are offered?? There are DVDs available to help you keep your routine going strong.
• 11. It Makes People Happy ? Zumba puts participants into an endorphin-release zone. Get ready to feel amazing!

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If you liked this article, also check out:

- How Yoga Best Benefits You

- The Importance of Positive Thinking

- Healthy Diets for Losing Weight: the Power of Protein

- Top 10 Diet Don?ts

Source: http://www.biosanes.com/blog/weight-loss-supercombo

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How to figure out what triggers a migraine headache

Do you suffer from migraine headaches but have had a hard time figuring out when one will strike? If so, you may want to stop trying. Researchers suggest it is nearly impossible to figure out when a headache will strike because most people lack enough information to pinpoint migraine triggers. Instead, try a formal experiment with your doctor.

Timothy T. Houle, Ph.D, associate professor of anesthesia and neurology at Wake Forest Baptist explained in a press release that trying on your own to figure out what causes a migraine is a ?flawed approach? because there are simply too many variables to consider.

According to the researcher, ??daily fluctuations of variables ? such as weather, diet, hormone levels, sleep, physical activity and stress ? appear to be enough to prevent the perfect conditions necessary for determining triggers.?

He says perfect conditions might only occur every 2 years. An example he gives is drinking wine for several days. Houle says if you?re trying to figure out if you will get a headache, just eating cheese with your wine might skew the results entirely.

In an effort to help people with migraine headaches understand how to find out what causes their headaches, Houle and co-author Dana P. Turner, M.S.P.H., also of the Wake Forest Baptist anesthesiology department determined it takes advanced statistical analysis techniques.

For their analysis, 9 women with migraine were asked to track their daily stress levels and food intake, in addition to submitting a morning urine specimen for 3 months to test hormone levels. The researchers also reviewed local weather for 3-years.

Houle said most people don?t have enough information to figure out the cause of their migraine headaches on their own. He suggests patients work with their doctor to develop a formal plan for testing.

The goal of the research is to help migraine sufferers predict their pain so they will know when to take medication that can put their live's on hold. In some instances medication can make pain worse, Houle says.

The research suggests it takes formal experiments to uncover what triggers migraine headaches and that it is nearly impossible for patients to predict when a headache will strike on their own.

Citation:
Dana P. Turner, Todd A. Smitherman, Vincent T. Martin, Donald B. Penzien, Timothy T. Houle. Causality and Headache Triggers. Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, 2013; 53 (4): 628 DOI: 10.1111/head.12076

Image credit: Morguefile

Source: http://www.emaxhealth.com/1020/how-figure-out-what-triggers-migraine-headache

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Magix Movie Edit Pro 2013 Plus

Magix makes some of the most popular video editing software in Europe, and it has a smaller but devoted following this side of the pond.? The Movie Edit Pro 2013 version debuts a few interface changes such as combining video and audio tracks, adds support for the new AVCHD 60p format, enables multi-cam video shoots, and gets a speedup through performing more operations on your PC's graphics processor. The software has been a leader in introducing 3D video editing to consumers, but it's fallen behind its U.S. competition, Adobe Premier Elements, Corel VideoStudio, and CyberLink PowerDirector in offering any really forward-looking new features like support for 4K footage. Nevertheless Movie Edit Pro is a capable and mostly intuitive enthusiast-level video editing app.

Install
Movie Edit Pro (not to be confused with Magix's actual pro software, the $399 Video Pro X5) installs on Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP. A separate free Windows 8 new-style app called Movie Edit Touch is also available. Mac users, as is the case with many pro-sumer-level video applications, are out of luck. A trial version of the program delivers full functionality for 30 days, after which you can pay for a license and activate the app without having to re-install. Three editions of Movie Edit Pro suit different users' needs: The $69.99 base edition is geared toward beginners who want wizards that automatically create their productions; it's limited to 32 tracks, and lacks the higher-end editions' multi-cam support and advanced color correction.

The Plus edition adds those capabilities, while also upping the track limit to 99. The Premium edition adds advanced effect packs from NewBlue, digieffects, and ProDAD. I was disappointed to see that the installer added a browser toolbar and a system cleaning utility to my PC by default; only if you choose Custom installation can you uncheck these extras, which you probably don't want?I sure don't.

Interface
The pleasing dark look of Movie Edit's main window hasn't changed much since my last review of the program. The Welcome dialog is less extensive than that of competitors like Corel VideoStudio, with simple options to watch an intro video, create a new project either from scratch or from a template, or open an existing video project. An Options dropdown adds choices for directory location and video and audio formats.

The standard three-panel interface has video preview and source areas on the top, and a timeline area extending along the whole bottom half of the window. It's a flexible interface, in that you can pull out each panel into its own window by dragging its top border, and each can be full-screened. Movie Edit Pro is less modal than Corel and Adobe's competing apps, which take you through the workflow from import to output. Buttons on the far top right, however, do offer Edit, Burn, and Export options.

The timeline area also can alternatively display a storyboard of your movie's clips, and this view offers more than most competitors' equivalents: Icons for text, sound volume, and transitions let you perform those actions. Moving around in and zooming the timeline seems natural using the mouse wheel. You can also easily drag-and-drop clips to different tracks and positions. I do wish the video preview pane had a pause button, since hitting stop takes you to the beginning of the clip.

The preview window does show the time value for the playhead position and total clip time along its top border; this took me a while to find, but these programs have to show so much info that I can't ding it because I was expecting this info to be near the playback controls. A Show Time context menu choice lets you overlay the preview with a big red timecode. Another preview window peeve is that there's no clear way to switch between previewing the current source clip versus the movie.

Import
The source panel's Import tab just shows PC folders; to import from a device, you hit the Record button under the video preview panel. Record options include AVCHD, HDV camera, DV camera, analog TV input, Audio, and even the screen?this last is a nice extra, saving you the cost of a separate screen cam program. You can also just capture a single frame from these sources. One thing I look for in a media-editing app like this?since you work with still images and audio as well as video clips?is an easy way to filter the source view to just photos or just video files. The Magix software doesn't give me this the way competitors like Adobe Premiere Elements do.

Basic Video Editing
Most trimming in Magix is done right on the timeline, with a razor icon for splitting, which can be switched to "Remove start," "Remove end," or "Split movie" functions.? For more precise edits, the Edit trimmer lets you fine tune a transition between clips, and the Object Trimmer window lets you do so for the start and end of a single clip. The dialog for both these activities is fairly complex, with three panels and no fewer than 25 control buttons, but I can see how, after getting accustomed to it, it could be useful.

In Movie Edit Pro, transitions are called "fades" and there's no search for them. A couple of the groups of fades weren't available to me?Effect, 3D Series, and Movement. But for your 3D projects, 10 Stereo fades are on offer. As in most good software these days, you can drag a clip's corner to produce a cross dissolve transition?the most commonly used kind.

Instant Movie Making
Choosing "Use movie template" from the welcome screen offered me just one choice, Blockbuster, but you can download 17 more, with topics like Action, Film Noir, and Winter Wonderland, for free from within the program. This is reminiscent of Apple iMovie's Trailers features, which has you insert clips of certain types of shot (close up, group, action, and so on) into template slots. As with a lot of features in Magix, a dialog asked me to authorize features like H.264 licensing before I could use this. But as with iMovie's trailers, the results are quite fun and engaging.

Two more instant-movie-making tools are available: "Travel Route Animation" wizard, which places your movie on a map, and Slideshow Maker. The latter's templates add transitions and background music, and it lets you use video clips, so it can really be considered as an instant movie-making feature. Slideshow Maker let me customize the transitions, effects, title text, and background music, and even save my customizations as a new template.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/e5zYkgFSpeY/0,2817,1777473,00.asp

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