Friday, September 24, 2010

Lindsay Lohan Goes to Jail and is DENIED bail! Good going!


It's about time that they system starts working for celebrities as it does for us common everyday folks.
Lindsay should be lucky because is some states she would be serving a jail sentence for quite some time.
But upon hearing todays decision I still wonder to myself what it would be like say if a minority celebrity say latin or
african american had done what Lohan has. Personally I think we'd be looking at a totally different thing. It happens
in sports all the time.

The 'Mean Girls' star rolled up to the Beverly Hills courthouse wearing a black top, white skirt and a smile. It was her first appearance before Judge Fox, who issued an arrest warrant earlier this the week to compel Lohan to appear. He previously outlined that he would sentence the actress to a month in jail if she failed a drug test. However, it was believed that unless Lohan requested immediate sentencing, the judge would set bail and release her until a formal probation hearing.

Instead, Fox denied bail and set Lohan's next court appearance for Oct. 22. According to reports, the shocked actress was handcuffed before being taken into custody.

The star's estranged father, Michael, spoke briefly following the hearing, saying the judge's decision was a "wake-up call" and that he was going to "pray" for his daughter's recovery. At the same time, he didn't seem to fault Judge Fox for the decision.

"The judge has to do what the judge has to do," he said.

Sesame Street's 'Cereal Girl'

Parody of Madonna's 'Material Girl'

Ashton & Demi Speak Out

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher speak at the Clinton Global Initiative about their campaign to help end child sex slavery.

New Bank Fee's Arriving At A Bank Near You...

Well we knew this was bound to happen when the government cut a whole in the pocket of the big bad banks fees.

Here's a bank-by-bank look of what to expect.

Bank of America: Just last week, Bank of America said it plans to raise minimum balance requirements over the next 12 months and charge a monthly account fee for customers who can't maintain those balances.

"We currently estimate over time through these and other items we are working on that we will have the ability to offset a substantial majority of the revenue from the various regulatory changes," Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) CEO Brian Moynihan said in a presentation to investors last week.

Customers enrolled in the lender's new eBanking checking account will be charged $8.95 per month if they opt to receive paper statements and visit tellers instead of banking online. Since the launch of eBanking in August, nearly half of all new checking accounts fall into this category.

Earlier this year, annual fees ranging from $29 to $99 were applied to a variety of Bank of America credit card accounts.

Wells Fargo: Remember how Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) fought a pitched battle with Citigroup for the right to merge with Wachovia? Well, Wachovia customers are now being fully integrated -- including being charged Wells' higher fees. Receive images of cancelled checks with your paper statement? $2. Use your savings as overdraft protection? $10 fee every time you make a transfer.

Previously, these fees already existed for Wells Fargo customers but were only applied to a very small number of Wachovia customers.

HSBC: HSBC (HBC) is charging a $19 annual fee for customers who open a line of credit beginning July 1 and an additional $10 every day they use the credit line as protection from overdrawing their checking account.

"This is not unusual in the industry and our competitors have been charging similar such fees for some time," an HSBC spokesman said. "The change aligns us with our competitors."

Other banks let customers link their savings and checking accounts as an alternative option for overdraft protection. But HSBC doesn't, meaning customers will either pay a fee to open a line of credit (if they have good enough credit to qualify), pay a fee for overdrafting their account or get their card declined.

Citibank: Citi (C, Fortune 500) announced changes to its checking accounts this month and will now assess monthly maintenance fees of up to $30, depending on the checking account and whether the customers meet certain requirements -- such as making a certain number of monthly transactions or carrying a specific minimum balance.

Monthly maintenance fees were previously as low as $3, depending on the account.

Earlier this year, Citi imposed a $60 annual fee that could be waived if customers spent about $2,400 a year. But the new regulations banning inactivity fees led the bank to eliminate the fee soon after it was introduced.

American Express: American Express (AXP, Fortune 500) has added $29 fees to more of its cards. As of July, the new fees affect customers with Delta, JetBlue, Hilton and Starwood cobranded cards who want to recoup reward points they forfeited for paying a bill late.

The point-forfeiture fee already existed on other cards, so the bank said it wanted to be "consistent and have it across cards."

Customers jumping ship
Because of how competitive the already cutthroat industry has become, banks have to be careful how far they go -- or they risk losing desperately-needed customers.

"They have to be really careful about rolling anything new out in this environment," said Peter Garucci, a spokesman for the American Banking Association. "They've always competed for the same number of wallets, but if the number of wallets is smaller because of the down economy and new rules, the competition is going to increase and the last thing they're going to want to do is make their customers mad."

Consumers should take advantage of this increased competition to negotiate fees with their banks.

"Fees especially are very much negotiable, so if you see something show up in your account that you don't like, call and complain, and threaten to take your business elsewhere," Arnold added. "Chances are if there's a fee or interest rate you don't like one place, you'll find something better somewhere else."

Drug Cartel Wanted To Kill Danielle Staub - Really? ...


Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about former 'Real Housewife' Danielle Staub – it really doesn't get much more informative than a sex tape, does it? – along comes testimony that Pablo Escobar's Medellin drug cartel put a hit on her back in the 1980s. You read that right, folks. Pablo Escobar. A hit. Danielle Staub.

It seems that our friend Danielle used to run with a rather tough crowd. According to RadarOnline.com, long before her 'Housewife' days, Danielle was living in Miami, working as a prostitute and went by the name Angela Minelli. She fell into the world of drugs, and soon sought out opportunities to sell them to make some quick cash. But when $100,000 worth of cocaine was stolen during a deal, Staub quite literally found herself in Escobar's crosshairs.

The startling revelations came out during testimony in a deposition in a slander suit against the star filed by her ex-husband, Kevin Maher. Daniel Aguilar, who was an "enforcer" for the Medellin cartel in Miami, revealed under oath that Stuab came to him and said, "I have this guy and he wants to buy big weight ... four kilos of cocaine."

In court documents, Aguilar claims that he and Staub were "intimate friends" and that "she would do her drugs ... and sometimes I'd wonder was she hanging out for the drugs, which most girls back then did." He also claims to have witnessed Staub smoking marijuana "sprinkled" with cocaine "more than 50 or 100 times."

Aguilar, who went on to spend nine years in federal prison for extortion and drug-related charges, introduced Staub to people affiliated with the Medellin cartel after she inquired about dealing. She quickly found herself in hot water, however, when her drug transaction went off the rails and $100,000 worth of cocaine came up missing. Staub claimed she'd been "ripped off," but that wasn't excuse enough for the Medellin cartel.

"Even my men were saying, 'We should just kill her. Get her out of the way. She's nothing but a prostitute and a b**ch,'" Aguilar said in his testimony. But Aguilar was on Staub's side and pleaded with the drug lords to let him "find out what happened here."

"I cared about this woman at the time and I believed her at this point," he continued. "I didn't want her life to end."

Luckily for Staub, the FBI was already on the case. They arrested Aguilar and entered into a plea deal with Staub. In exchange for her testimony, she was given five years probation and mandatory cocaine testing but never spent any time behind bars.

For his part, Aguilar thought for some time that the cartel had caught up with Staub. "I was told by my people that she was dead," Aguilar said in the deposition. "[I was told] she's flipping and turned federal witness ... that's when my people wanted her dead; they had called me weak for letting her live ... they told me, we should have had her dead to begin with."

Her disappearance was instead, thankfully, part of a federal witness protection deal. And Aguilar can't understand why his former friend decided to resurface in such a public way: "Ain't nobody that stupid enough to make themselves publicly known after doing what they did," he said of Staub.

While the details are not clear, Aguilar alleges he paid the $100,000 to save her life after the failed drug deal, and is now attempting to get the money back.

Aguilar appeared in court as a witness for Kevin Maher, Staub's ex, who is suing the reality star for $5 million over her accusations that he raped her on broken glass and hanged her dog. He denies the allegations.