Hear Exclusive Scoop from the Scandal Set




Style News Now





11/26/2012 at 09:00 AM ET



Kerry Washington Scandal
Vivian Zink/ABC


The dress Kerry Washington wears on this Thursday night’s episode of Scandal is anything but scandalous — though it did take a lot of work to find.


“We were having a really hard time finding anything,” Scandal costume designer Lyn Paolo tells PEOPLE. “There were a lot of needs for this dress: I wanted it to be white to echo [an episode from] last year, and she had to be able to move in it, too — she had to run down a hallway in one scene, and withstand wind effects in another. So I needed something that flowed.”


Knowing she wanted to go vintage, Paolo found a gorgeous white dress that was a few sizes too big for Washington — and in somewhat rough shape — but “fell in love with it,” she says. “There were so many challenges — the size, the destroyed hem — so we basically rebuilt the whole gown.”


The work was worth it, though; Paolo says that when Washington walked onto the Scandal set wearing the gown as her character, Olivia Pope, “the reaction of the crew and other actors was phenomenal.”


Paolo says a perk of her job is collaborating with Washington, whom she calls a true fashionista. “We spend a lot of time together in our costume room, talking about the tones of a scene, and try to tailor each individual costume to what’s happening in her head, in her world, the palette of the set,” she explains. “I think sometimes the rest of the crew wonders what the heck we’re doing in there!”



But with Washington changing outfits 13 or 14 times per episode, the serious costume consultations are necessary. “We’re constantly striving to one-up ourselves with the fashion on this show,” Paolo says.


As for Thursday’s stunning white dress, Paolo says she’s kept it, in case it’s needed for any flashbacks. “I decided that once it was Olivia Pope’s, it should stay as Olivia Pope’s,” Paolo explains. “And I think we might see it again …” Tell us: Are you loving Washington’s Scandal fashions?


–Kate Hogan


PHOTOS: SEE STARS IN COSTUME IN ‘LIGHTS! CAMERA! FASHION!’


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Bounce houses a party hit but kids' injuries soar

CHICAGO (AP) — They may be a big hit at kids' birthday parties, but inflatable bounce houses can be dangerous, with the number of injuries soaring in recent years, a nationwide study found.

Kids often crowd into bounce houses, and jumping up and down can send other children flying into the air, too.

The numbers suggest 30 U.S. children a day are treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains, cuts and concussions from bounce house accidents. Most involve children falling inside or out of the inflated playthings, and many children get hurt when they collide with other bouncing kids.

The number of children aged 17 and younger who got emergency-room treatment for bounce house injuries has climbed along with the popularity of bounce houses — from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to nearly 11,000 in 2010. That's a 15-fold increase, and a doubling just since 2008.

"I was surprised by the number, especially by the rapid increase in the number of injuries," said lead author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Amusement parks and fairs have bounce houses, and the playthings can also be rented or purchased for home use.

Smith and colleagues analyzed national surveillance data on ER treatment for nonfatal injuries linked with bounce houses, maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Their study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Only about 3 percent of children were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.

More than one-third of the injuries were in children aged 5 and younger. The safety commission recommends against letting children younger than 6 use full-size trampolines, and Smith said barring kids that young from even smaller, home-use bounce houses would make sense.

"There is no evidence that the size or location of an inflatable bouncer affects the injury risk," he said.

Other recommendations, often listed in manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, include not overloading bounce houses with too many kids and not allowing young children to bounce with much older, heavier kids or adults, said Laura Woodburn, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.

The study didn't include deaths, but some accidents are fatal. Separate data from the product safety commission show four bounce house deaths from 2003 to 2007, all involving children striking their heads on a hard surface.

Several nonfatal accidents occurred last year when bounce houses collapsed or were lifted by high winds.

A group that issues voluntary industry standards says bounce houses should be supervised by trained operators and recommends that bouncers be prohibited from doing flips and purposefully colliding with others, the study authors noted.

Bounce house injuries are similar to those linked with trampolines, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended against using trampolines at home. Policymakers should consider whether bounce houses warrant similar precautions, the authors said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

Trade group: http://www.naarso.com

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Husband killed wife, cooked her on stove, police allege



Frederick Joseph Hengl


A strange portrait was emerging of a 68-year-old Oceanside man accused of killing his 73-year-old wife, then cooking her body parts on their kitchen stove.


Frederick Joseph Hengl was seen by neighbors dressed in women's clothes and wearing makeup, according to neighbors.


They said they saw Hengl outside wearing a purple dress, pink makeup and various articles of jewelry, including a pearl necklace. The neighbors told Fox 5 News that his wife was once seen roaming outside with a knife making religious comments like “God will smite you.”


Hengl pleaded not guilty this week in court.


Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Flaherty told Vista Superior Court Judge
J. Marshall Hockett that police found pieces of meat cooking on the
stove at the family home and a severed head in the freezer.


Hockett ordered Frederick Joseph Hengl kept in jail on $5-million bail.


Police are unclear when Hengl's wife, Anna Faris, was killed. They
went to the couple's home after neighbors reported a strange smell and
hearing the sound of a power saw.



Several
people who live in the neighborhood said Anna-Maria Hengl had been
behaving bizarrely since last spring, exposing herself, wandering around
carrying a butcher knife and making religious pronouncements, telling
people such things as, “God will smite you.”


Her husband, meanwhile, had been going out dressed in women’s clothing, makeup and jewelry, area residents told news crews.


One neighbor said the one-time Home Depot employee, who had sold her a
ceiling fan, would sometimes wear blouses and makeup, including “hot
pink” lipstick. Another said he saw Frederick Hengl last summer clad in a
floor- length purple dress, pearl necklace and pearl earrings, carrying
an ornate purse.


Read more: http://fox5sandiego.com/2012/11/19/dismembered-womans-husband-to-face-judge/#ixzz2DLS2FbXM



Several people who live in the neighborhood said Anna-Maria Hengl had
been behaving bizarrely since last spring, exposing herself, wandering
around carrying a butcher knife and making religious pronouncements,
telling people such things as, “God will smite you.”


Her husband, meanwhile, had been going out dressed in women’s clothing, makeup and jewelry, area residents told news crews.


One neighbor said the one-time Home Depot employee, who had sold her a
ceiling fan, would sometimes wear blouses and makeup, including “hot
pink” lipstick. Another said he saw Frederick Hengl last summer clad in a
floor- length purple dress, pearl necklace and pearl earrings, carrying
an ornate purse.


Read more: http://fox5sandiego.com/2012/11/19/dismembered-womans-husband-to-face-judge/#ixzz2DLRAPQk6


 Flaherty told reporters that, "“There is no evidence of cannibalism at this time."


ALSO:


LAX union protesters arrested; delays anger travelers


Mitt Romney loses election, but still goes to Disneyland


Black family flees O.C. city after tires slashed, racial taunts


 -- Tony Perry in San Diego



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Bangladesh Fire Kills More Than 100 and Injures Many





MUMBAI — More than 100 people died Saturday and Sunday in a fire at a garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, in one of the worst industrial tragedies in that country.




It took firefighters all night to put out the blaze at the factory, Tazreen Fashions, after it started about 7 p.m. on Saturday, a retired fire official said by telephone from Dhaka, the capital. At least 111 people were killed, and scores of workers were taken to hospitals for treatment of burns and smoke inhalation.


“The main difficulty was to put out the fire; the sufficient approach road was not there,” said the retired official, Salim Nawaj Bhuiyan, who now runs a fire safety company in Dhaka. “The fire service had to take great trouble to approach the factory.”


Bangladesh’s garment industry, the second-largest exporter of clothing after China, has a notoriously poor fire safety record. Since 2006, more than 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in factory fires, according to Clean Clothes Campaign, an antisweatshop advocacy group in Amsterdam. Experts say many of the fires could have been easily avoided if the factories had taken the right precautions. Many factories are in cramped neighborhoods and have too few fire escapes, and they widely flout safety measures. The industry employs more than three million workers in Bangladesh, most of them women.


Activists say that global clothing brands like Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap and those sold by Walmart need to take responsibility for the working conditions in Bangladeshi factories that produce their clothes.


“These brands have known for years that many of the factories they choose to work with are death traps,” Ineke Zeldenrust, the international coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign, said in a statement. “Their failure to take action amounts to criminal negligence.”


The fire at the Tazreen factory in Savar, northwest of Dhaka, started in a warehouse on the ground floor that was used to store yarn, and quickly spread to the upper floors. The building was nine stories high, with the top three floors under construction, according to an garment industry official at the scene who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. Though most workers had left for the day when the fire started, the industry official said as many as 600 workers were still inside working overtime.


The factory, which opened in May 2010, employed about 1,500 workers and had sales of $35 million a year, according to a document on the company’s Web site. It made T-shirts, polo shirts and fleece jackets.


Most of the workers who died were on the first and second floors, fire officials said, and were killed because there were not enough exits. None of them opened to the outside.


“The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor,” said Maj. Mohammad Mahbub, the operations director for the Fire Department, according to The Associated Press. “So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building.”


In a telephone interview later on Sunday, Major Mahbub said the fire could have been caused by an electrical fault or by a spark from a cigarette.


In a brief phone call, Delowar Hossain, the managing director of the Tuba Group, the parent company of Tarzeen Fashions, said he was too busy to comment. “Pray for me,” he said and then hung up.


Television news reports showed badly burned bodies lined up on the floor in what appeared to be a government building. The injured were being treated in hallways of local hospitals, according to the reports.


The industry official said that many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition and that it would take some time to identify them.


One survivor, Mohammad Raju, 22, who worked on the fifth floor, said he escaped by climbing out of a third-floor window onto the bamboo scaffolding that was being used by construction workers. He said he lost his mother, who also worked on the fifth floor, when they were making their way down.


“It was crowded on the stairs as all the workers were trying to come out from the factory,” Mr. Raju said. “There was no power supply; it was dark, and I lost my mother in dark. I tried to search for her for 10 to 15 minutes but did not find her.”


A document posted on Tarzeen Fashions’ Web site indicated that an “ethical sourcing” official for Walmart had flagged “violations and/or conditions which were deemed to be high risk” at the factory in May 2011, though it did not specify the nature of the infractions. The notice said that the factory had been given an “orange” grade and that any factories given three such assessments in two years from their last audit would not receive any Walmart orders for a year.


It was unclear whether Walmart had suspended the company or was still buying clothes from it. The Web sites of Tuba Group lists the retailer and others like Carrefour, a French retail chain, as customers. A spokesman for Walmart, Kevin Gardner, said the company was “so far unable to confirm that Tazreen is supplier to Walmart nor if the document referenced in the article is in fact from Walmart.”


Bangladesh exports about $18 billion worth of garments a year. Employees in the country’s factories are among the lowest-paid in the world, with entry-level workers making a government-mandated minimum wage of about $37 a month.


Tensions have been running high between workers, who have been demanding an increase in minimum wages, and the factory owners and government. A union organizer, Aminul Islam, who campaigned for better working conditions and higher wages, was found tortured and killed outside Dhaka this year.


Fire safety remains weak across much of South Asia. In September, nearly 300 workers were killed in a fire at a textile factory in Karachi, Pakistan, just weeks before it passed an inspection that covered several issues, including health and safety.


Julfikar Ali Manik contributed reporting from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Stephanie Clifford from New York.



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Tom Cruise Films Helicopter Scene in Empty Trafalgar Square















11/25/2012 at 03:15 PM EST







Tom Cruise in Trafalgar Square


FameFlynet


Back to work!

After spending Thanksgiving with daughter Suri, 6, Tom Cruise filmed scenes for the sci-fi action film All You Need Is Kill in London on Sunday.

The actor, who plays alien fighter Lt. Col. Bill Cage, landed in a helicopter in the middle of the usually bustling Trafalgar Square, which was shut down for the scene, in the heart of London.

Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel, the movie follows Cage as he battles the Mimics, a violent race of alien invaders, while stuck in a time loop.

Emily Blunt also stars in the film as Special Forces fighter Rita Vrataski, who according to Deadline.com, has destroyed more Mimics than anyone else on earth.

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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Big fight over Victoria's Secret underwear caught on tape













Shopper Lawrence Corpus used his cellphone camera to catch a Black Friday brawl over women's underwear at the Roseville Galleria outside Sacramento.


Corpus pulled out his cellphone as two women started throwing punches at each other. And as the camera
continued to record, the fight spread to three men. The video shows
Black Friday shoppers  scrambling out of the way as the
men crash into a barrier set up around an amusement area at the
Galleria.


PHOTOS: Black Friday shopping in Southern California


Fox 40 reported that the fight apparently started over a sale at a nearby Victoria's Secret shop.









“I’ve been in the retail business six years now, and I’ve never see a Black Friday this bad,” said Jessica Wilbourn of Victoria's Secret.


Wilbourn said
soon after the doors opened, customers went crazy, climbing up
on the “panty bar,” throwing clothes and boxes, pushing and shoving and
trampling one another. She said one girl got hit in the head with a box
and another got punched in the stomach.


— Fox 40.













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Morsi Urged to Retract Edict to Bypass Judges in Egypt


Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times


A demonstrator takes a breather during protests in downtown Cairo on Saturday. More Photos »







CAIRO — The association of judges here called Saturday for courts across Egypt to suspend all but their most vital activities to protest an edict by President Mohamed Morsi granting himself unchecked power by setting his decrees above judicial review until the ratification of a new constitution.




The judges’ strike, which drew the support of the leader of the national lawyers’ association, would be the steepest escalation yet in a political struggle between the country’s new Islamist leaders and the institutions of the authoritarian government that was overthrown last year. As it spills into the courts and the streets, the dispute also increasingly threatens to undermine the credibility of Egypt’s political transition as well.


A council that oversees the judiciary denounced Mr. Morsi’s decree, which was issued Thursday, as “an unprecedented attack on judicial independence,” and urged the president to retract parts of the decree eliminating judicial oversight.


State news media reported that judges and prosecutors had already walked out in Alexandria, and there were other news reports of walkouts in Qulubiya and Beheira, but those could not be confirmed.


Outside Egypt’s high court in Cairo, the police fired tear gas at protesters who were denouncing Mr. Morsi and trying to force their way into the building, the second day in a row that protesters took to the streets over the presidential decree, which critics have assailed as a return to autocracy.


Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, a prosecutor appointed by Mr. Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, declared to a crowd of cheering judges that the presidential decree was “null and void.” He denounced what he described as “the systematic campaign against the country’s institutions in general and the judiciary in particular.”


A coalition of disparate opposition leaders including the liberal former United Nations diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, the leftist-nationalist Hamdeen Sabahy, and the former Mubarak-government foreign minister Amr Moussa formed a self-proclaimed National Salvation Front to oppose the decree. In addition to demanding the dissolution of the constitutional assembly, the group declared that it would not speak with Mr. Morsi until he withdrew his decree.


“We will not enter into a dialogue about anything while this constitutional declaration remains intact and in force,” Mr. Moussa said. “We demand that it be withdrawn and then we can talk.”


As the judges group called for a suspension of the courts, a growing number of lawyers filed claims demanding that the courts seek to overturn Mr. Morsi’s decree, joining the battle between the executive and judicial powers.


Advisers to Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s first democratically elected president, defended his action, saying he was trying to prevent the courts from disbanding the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly, which is writing a new constitution. The nation’s top courts had already dissolved the Islamist-led parliament and an earlier Islamist-led constituent assembly.


The advisers said a court decision on the new constitutional assembly had been expected as soon as next Sunday.


The judges’ group, as well as the newly unified secular opposition, have demanded that Mr. Morsi withdraw his decree, and that he disband and replace the current constitutional assembly. Many of the assembly’s non-Islamist members, including secularists and representatives of the Coptic Church, had already quit the body to protest the Islamists’ domination.


The increasingly vocal criticism of the assembly threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the ultimate charter, and has only increased the likelihood that the Islamist leaders may seek to pass and ratify it on their own, over the opposition of other groups, further damaging its credibility.


The opposition to the decree has also reinforced the fears of Islamists that judges appointed by Mr. Mubarak and the secular opposition were deliberately seeking to derail the process rather than accept their defeats at the polls.


Nevine Ramzy and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.



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Russia blames technical error for brief YouTube blacklisting












MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian officials offered assurances they were not seeking to block access to YouTube on Wednesday, saying a technical error caused the popular video-sharing website to appear briefly on a register of sites containing banned content.


For about an hour, YouTube was listed on the newly-created register, which the government says is needed to fight child pornography but critics of President Vladimir Putin fear may be used to censor the Internet and stifle dissent.












YouTube was subsequently removed from the register, maintained by Russia‘s communications watchdog agency, Roskomnadzor, which said there was no plan to block access to the site.


“An unfortunate technical mistake occurred,” Roskomnadzor spokesman Vladimir Pikov said. “We work closely with them (YouTube). Basically, we see no reason now to apply towards its owners any preventive measures.”


Russia’s consumer protection rights watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said YouTube took down several videos earlier this week as requested by officials under the new law tightening Internet controls that took effect on November 1.


The blacklist includes websites containing pornographic images of children, instructions on how to make, use and where to get drugs, as well as others describing suicide methods.


Under the legislation, websites have three days to remove content considered harmful or illegal by Russian authorities before they can be blocked.


YouTube is owned by U.S.-based Google Inc..


A spokeswoman for Google in Russia, Alla Zabrovskaya, said all requests from the authorities are handled by the company’s global headquarters in the United States.


Anti-Putin activists, who have used the Internet to organize demonstrations, say the law is part of a crackdown on dissent orchestrated by the Kremlin since Putin, a former KGB spy, returned to presidency in May.


After a stint as prime minister, Putin was elected to a third presidential term in March after a series of opposition protests that were the biggest of his 13-year rule.


(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Sophie Hares)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Beyoncé & Amanda Seyfried Take on Fantasy Roles















11/24/2012 at 04:15 PM EST







Amanda Seyfried and Beyoncé


Splash News Online; Mike Coppola/Getty


Call it escapism or call it just plain fun, but a crop of upcoming big-screen experiences are full of fantasy for kids and adults alike.

The animated tale Epic features a host of celebrity voice talent – Beyoncé, Amanda Seyfried, Josh Hutcherson, Aziz Ansari, Jason Sudeikis and Steven Tyler for starters.

FirstShowing reports that the 3-D film, based on William Joyce's children's book The Leaf Men will hit theaters Memorial weekend.

More Casting News:

Hugh Laurie, meanwhile, is out of the ER and onto the open sea. He will star as Blackbeard on NBC's pirate drama Crossbones, The Hollywood Reporter confirms. Crossbones, which takes place in 1715 on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, is based off Colin Woodard's book The Republic of Pirates.

Woody Allen is showing that at 76 he's still got it. He'll be playing a pimp in the movie Fading Gigolo, Zimbio reports.

Lenny Kravitz will pay homage to a Motown legend by playing Marvin Gaye, it's been widely reported. The film will follow the last years of Gaye's life, including his addiction problems and rescue by music promoter Freddy Cousaert.
  

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