SOURCE 

Syracuse Police have confirmed to CNY Central they are in the very early stages of an investigation into allegations made against Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine.

Police would not elaborate on what those allegations are, but ESPN.com is reporting that those allegations involve molesting a team ball boy. Syracuse Police say the information came to the department today.

According to ESPN.com, the alleged abuse started in the mid-1980s and lasted for more than a dozen years. The alleged victim told ESPN’s Outside the Lines that he was entering the seventh grade at the time it started.

We have put in several calls to the Syracuse University Athletics Department. So far, no calls have been returned.

The accelerated pace of cyber courtship is getting part of the blame for an increase in sexually transmitted diseases.

“You don’t have to spend a week in a bar to find somebody your comfortable with,” said St. Louis Health Director Pam Walker, “People are doing it online and they’re doing it faster.”

Walker says 90 percent of the some 400 new cases of gonorrhea and 126 new cases of chlamydia are African Americans between the ages of 15-to-24.

New numbers released today by the CDC also show 18 new cases of syphilis.  Gay men who know they are HIV positive account for the all of the new syphilis cases, Walker said.

“Two people who know their status and know they are positive for HIV feel like they can have sex without a condom, because they’re already infected,” Walker said, “And what they’re doing is giving each other syphilis.”

With syphilis up 46 percent, gonorrhea up 31 percent and chlamydia up three-percent, Walker says none of the increases appear linked to any cutbacks in health department spending.

“I have not cut communicable disease control in the five years that I’ve been director,” Walker said.

Without yet calling forfunding increases, Walker warns that reducing STDs could be an expensive public policy problem.

“If I put 20 disease investigators in the field and they followed those 55 people around who have syphilis, could I probably get rid of it?” Walker asked, “Yeah, but that would cost about $400,000.”

Walker is calling on private providers and community clinics to help her locate the sex partners of people with known sexual diseases.  She points to a new law in the state — the Expedited Partner Therapy law — that allows for clinics to dispense enough antibiotics to a known carrier of gonorrhea , chlamydia or syphilis to give anonymously to sexual partners to treat them.

“If you have gonorrhea, then your partner probably has gonorrhea,” Walker said, “I need to talk to that partner and find out if they have three other partners, or we never break the chain.”  Walker says

Of particular concern among the three STDs on the increase, chlamydia shows no symptoms and if left untreated in women, it can lead to infertility.  Based a national CDC study, Walker estimates that one in three women in the city may be infected with chlamydia.

SOURCE 

One in four American women take medication for a mental disorder

• Women more likely than men to take antipsychotic drugs, according to new report
• Most often prescribed to females over 45
  
• Prescriptions for psychiatric problems in all adults have risen 22% since 2001
• Usage has quadrupled among men aged between 20 and 64 over the last decade

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Last updated at 1:59 PM on 17th November 2011

More than one in four American women took at least one drug for conditions like anxiety and depression last year, according to an analysis of prescription data.

The report, by pharmacy benefits manager Medco Health Solutions Inc, found the use of drugs for psychiatric and behavioral disorders in all adults rose 22per cent from 2001.

The medications are most often prescribed to women aged 45 and older, but their use among men and in younger adults climbed sharply.

On the rise: A bar graph showing the increase in the number of Americans using mental health medication between 2001 and 2010. There are considerably more women doing so than men

In total, more than 20per cent of American adults were found to be on at least one drug for mental health disorders.

A number of celebrities have gone public in recent years with their battles with mental health disorders.

They include Catherin Zeta-Jones, who was treated for a form of bipolar disorder earlier this year due to the stress of coping with her husband Michael Douglas’s fight with cancer.

Model Brooke Shields admitted suffering postpartum depression after the birth of her baby in 2003, while fellow big screen icon Carrie Fisher, of Star Wars fame, told how she had turned to electroshock therapy to treat the worst symptoms of her chronic depression.

Needed help: Actress Catherin Zeta-Jones (left) was treated for bipolar disorder earlier this year, while model and movie star Brooke Shields revealed she had suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter in 2003

Ends of the spectrum: Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher, 54, turned to electroshock therapy to help treat her chronic depression, while Olympic gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps was diagnosed with ADHD when he was nine years old

In adults 20 to 44, use of antipsychotic drugs and treatments for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) more than tripled, while use of anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax, Valium and Ativan rose 30per cent from a decade ago.

The statistics were taken from Medco’s database of prescriptions and is based on 2.5million patients with 24 months of continuous prescription drug insurance and eligibility.

The company said women are twice as likely as men to use anxiety treatments as 11per cent of women 45 to 65 are on an anxiety medication.

Women are also more likely than men to take antipsychotic drugs like Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Abilify, which treat disorders like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

However, among men 20 to 64, use of the drugs has quadrupled over the last decade.

Geographical differences: In the ‘diabetes belt’ states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama, about 23per cent of people are on at least one mental health drug. The lowest rate is less than 15per cent

The sex divide: This graph shows how far more women used anti-depressant drugs last year compared to men

Dr David Muzina, a psychiatrist and national practice leader of Medco’s Neuroscience Therapeutic Resource Center, said: ‘There has been a significant uptick in the use of medications to treat a variety of mental health problems.

‘What is not as clear is if more people — especially women – are actually developing psychological disorders that require treatment.

‘Or (it might be) if they are more willing to seek out help and clinicians are better at diagnosing these conditions than they once were.’

Pharmaceutical companies have also sought and received approvals to market their drugs to larger groups of people.

Drugs for ADHD, which Olympic gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps was diagnosed with when he was nine, are prescribed to boys more often than girls, but adult women now take the drugs more often than men.

ADHD prescriptions to adult women grew 2.5 times from 2001. However, ADHD prescriptions for children have been declining since 2005.

That reflects a decline in prescriptions for psychiatric and behavioral drugs for children.

Worrying trend: There has been a sharp rise in the the percentage of Americans aged between 20 and 44 taking ADHD medication since 2001

Medco found that prescriptions of those drugs for children have dropped since 2004, when the FDA warned they were linked to suicidal thoughts when used in people under 19.

The company said less than 1per cent of children use antipsychotics drugs, although the figure has doubled since 2001.

In the ‘diabetes belt’ states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama, about 23per cent of people are on at least one psychiatric or behavioral disorder drug.

Diabetes is particularly widespread in those states and the condition is associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety disorders.

The lowest rate of prescriptions was found in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, where less than 15 per cent of people are using those medications.

Read more: http://trade.cc/hyh#ixzz1dzQViKfo

SOURCE 

Intraday woosh down at around 12:30pm EST. Nasdaq currently down more than 2%

Victims of Allen Stanford’s alleged $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme may soon have a chance to submit claims, though it remains unclear how much of their losses they might ultimately recover.

Ralph Janvey, the court-appointed receiver for Stanford’s firm, asked a federal judge in Houston for permission to set up a claims process, more than 2-1/2 years after the financier’s arrest, a Wednesday court filing shows.

Approval of the request could pave the way for investors to recover at least some of their losses from Stanford’s alleged fraud, a sum believed to be $2 billion or more.

Stanford, 61, faces 14 criminal charges and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges over allegations he deceived investors who bought fake certificates of deposit from his Antiguan bank, Stanford International Bank Ltd.

His February 2009 arrest came two months after Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was uncovered.

Wednesday’s filing is “a major step” toward returning money to victims, Kevin Sadler, a partner at Baker Botts representing Janvey, said in an email.

Though a court-appointed examiner and a committee of Stanford investors expressed disagreements over parts of the process at an Oct. 13 court conference, “the court made clear at the status conference that the process should begin, and the receiver has acted accordingly,” he added.

Peter Morgenstern, a lawyer for the investors’ committee, on Thursday declined immediate comment. John Little, the examiner, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It is unclear how much money will be distributed, when payouts will begin, and how such amounts will be calculated.

“For investor claimants, the amount of the investor’s net investment in the Ponzi scheme will be one of the most significant factors” in determining payouts, Janvey said.

The $7.2 billion figure reflects CDs on Stanford’s books when the receivership was set up, not actual investor losses.

At the Oct. 13 conference, Sadler said at least $2 billion of investor funds had been lost through a series of backdated fictitious loans. “If one wanted to consider a floor of money that’s gone, that certainly would be a candidate,” he said.

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS SOUGHT

According to a court filing, Janvey had $80.1 million of unrestricted cash on hand as of Oct. 31, after accounting for professional fees and costs.

The trustee is seeking another $955.3 million in litigation. This includes $610 million from other Stanford investors and vendors, and $335 million in British, Canadian, Swiss and other accounts.

Liquidators in Antigua have sought control of some of these accounts, court papers show.

Stanford recently moved to a Houston federal detention center from the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, where he was treated for an addiction to an anti-anxiety medication.

His criminal trial is expected to begin in January in the federal court in Houston. Stanford is scheduled to be arraigned under his most recent indictment on Nov. 28. That proceeding had been delayed because of his treatment at Butner.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who oversees the criminal case, barred Stephen Cochell, a lawyer for Stanford in the SEC case, from meeting his client at the Houston detention center until the criminal case is finished.

The judge said public comments by Cochell about Stanford’s current mental status could impact the criminal trial. Cochell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term at Butner.

The civil case is SEC v. Stanford International Bank Ltd, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas, No. 09-00298. The criminal case is U.S. v. Stanford, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, No. 09-00342
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President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating remains in the mid-40s, where it has been since July, and he continues to receive much higher marks for foreign policy than for domestic issues, according to a new national survey out one year before he is up for re-election.

A CNN/ORC International Poll released Tuesday indicates that 52% of all Americans approve of how the president is handling the situation in Iraq, an indication that Americans tend to favor Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from that country by year’s end. Forty-eight percent of those questioned approve of how he is handling the war in Afghanistan. By contrast, only 35% have a positive view of his economic track record, and just 38% approve of how he is handling health care policy.

Full results (pdf)

It all adds up to an overall 46% approval rating for the president, with 52% saying they disapprove of how Obama is handling his job in the White House.

“That’s par for the course for Obama, whose overall approval rating has been hovering in the mid 40s in every CNN poll conducted since June,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

In comparison to recent incumbents running for re-election, Obama’s 46% approval ranks above only Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford – who both lost their re-election bids – in November of the year before an election. Most incumbents who were re-elected had an approval rating above 50% a year before the election. But George W. Bush, at 50%, and Richard Nixon, at 49%, also won re-election, and Bush’s father George H.W. Bush had a 56% approval rating yet lost to Bill Clinton the following year.

“Translation: while the approval rating is an important indicator of a president’s strength, it is not a foolproof predictor of election results,” Holland said.

See how Obama’s number stack up.

The poll indicates that the standard partisan divide over the president remains, with three-quarters of Democrats giving Obama a thumbs up but only 15% of Republicans approving of the job he’s doing in office. By a 54%-42% margin, independent voters disapprove of how the president’s handling his duties.

Women are divided on how Obama’s performing, but men disapprove by a 55%-43% margin. White Americans give Obama a thumbs down by a 61%-36% margin, with non-white Americans give the president a thumbs up by a more than 2-1 margin.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International from November 11-13, with 1,036 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

SOURCE 

Read what sound legal reasoning looks like, supported by relevant case law. 

SOURCE 

“This is what we have to deal with all day.”

Out-of-touch professors + Debt-ridden students = Bad combination

______________

Sacramento State professor George Parrott walked out of his Psychology 101 lab class Thursday morning because his students didn’t bring any snacks.

Instead, he says, he went to breakfast with his teaching assistant.

The professor said students are told of the requirement to bring snacks on the first day of class. A handout from the teacher is clear – “Not having a snack = no Dr. Parrott or TAs. Now you are responsible for your own lab assignment.”

He said the snack obligation is his way of encouraging students to work collectively. It connects students who might not otherwise interact on a commuter campus, said the professor.

“Having these goodies in the class breaks down some of the formality and some of the rigidity in the class, which is one of the most stressful for students,” Parrott said.

But students are crying foul, saying the teacher left before a review for a midterm to be given Monday. The test accounts for a good portion of their grade.

“Our education isn’t worth food, it’s for us,” said Francisco Chavez, a student in the class.

It’s also not clear why homemade baked goods would teach teamwork better than a box of Oreos. The handout offers suggestions and pictures of which snacks are preferred. It lists homemade or bakery items and vegetable or fruit platters under “Good Ideas” and Nabisco products or pre-packaged items under “Bad Ideas.”

It also suggests that two people take responsibility for each day’s snack – in case one forgets – and that they should avoid bringing the same thing every week.

The professor said he has required classes to bring snacks for at least 39 years.

His afternoon lab class brought pizza Friday, he said. But they haven’t always followed instructions either. “The afternoon lab had an externally similar failure to be collectively involved a month ago,” Parrott said, adding that he left that class, too. “They were taken aback. Their collective involvement has been more cooperative since.”

Parrott listed additional benefits of requiring “goodies” in an email to The Bee. He said the snacks maintain glucose levels that affect mental sharpness, keep students from leaving class to find food and alleviate stress in what he calls one of the most difficult courses in the department.

But the goodies aren’t just for the students. The teacher and his teaching assistants eat, but don’t contribute, according to students.

“I’m not always observing how much the TAs eat,” Parrott said Friday. “In the last month I’ve had one mini cupcake and maybe six or eight carrot sticks.”

Parrott said he doesn’t feel bad about asking college students to bring food to class. The cost, he says, is offset by savings – about $200 – which students realize by not having to buy a textbook for the course.

“This is also designed to relieve financially strained CSUS students from typical costs for texts and to provide each student the token resources to buy, bake, or otherwise access the snacks/goodies when their once per semester turn would occur,” he said in an email to The Bee.

The professor, who is 67 and retired in 2006, works part time at the university. His salary for 2010 was $44,000, according to state data.

Parrott doesn’t regret his decision to walk out Thursday. “I can understand the immediate frustration,” he said. “I’m sympathetic, but I’m absolutely comfortable with the conclusion. The ethos I’m trying to promote is incredibly important. It may not be appreciated, and that’s even more unfortunate. It speaks to their lack of understanding of higher education.”

University officials, contacted Thursday, said they take the allegations seriously and will investigate.
Read more: http://trade.cc/gtm

SEC FILING HERE 

Years before he was arrested for allegedly molesting children, former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky said he loved being around children and having “a good time with them.”

“I enjoy being around children,” Sandusky said in a 1987 NBC interview made public today. “Their enthusiasm. I just have a good time with them.”

Of course, Sandusky’s comments now have a chilling connotation to them after he was recently arrested for molesting eight boys and charged with 40 counts in connection with a string of sex abuse claims dating back 13 years.

“Everybody needs people to care for them. … Kids are growing up awfully fast these days,” Sandusky said in that same interview when asked about his charity work with troubled kids.

In 1997, ten years after that NBC interview, Sandusky was first accused of showering with and fondling a boy at Penn State.

McQUEARY CONSULTS LAWYER, SANDUSKY CHARITY CEO RESIGNS

No charges were filed at the time and a year later Sandusky retired as an assistant coach to spend more time with his Second Mile charity.

This comes as the president of the charity linked to Sandusky resigned today, saying he hopes his departure after 28 years as the group’s CEO would help restore faith in its mission.

The Second Mile’s board of directors said in a statement it had accepted the resignation of Jack Raykovitz.

Raykovitz, a psychologist, had testified before the grand jury that indicted Sandusky. The grand jury said Sandusky found his victims through the charity’s programs.

The board also said that would conduct an internal investigation to assess policies and make recommendations regarding future operations.

Raykovitz said in a statement that he hopes his resignation would mark the beginning of a “restoration of faith in the community of volunteers and staff” at The Second Mile.

Sandusky founded The Second Mile in 1977. The group has said that its youth programs serve as many as 100,000 children a year.

With AP

Read more: http://trade.cc/gtd

CLICK HERE TO WATCH LIVE 

Thieves have nabbed a 3-foot-long copper sword atop Lincoln’s Tomb in what is believed to be the first theft at the site in more than a century.

An employee noticed last week that the sword was cut from a statue of a Civil War artillery officer, the (Springfield) State Journal-Register reported Saturday. Officials think the sword was stolen sometime between September and early November.

Nothing had been stolen from the Springfield site, which is the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln, since the sword on the same statue was taken more than 100 years ago, said Dave Blanchette, a spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Then, the sword was bronze.

“We just cannot imagine why someone would even think about doing it, let alone climb up the steps and actually do it,” Blanchette said.

The statue is on the tomb’s balcony, which is closed to visitors. Workers would likely have spotted a thief during the day, but no one guards the tomb at night, Blanchette said.

A security guard was posted overnight after a 1987 incident in which racist graffiti was spray-painted on the tomb. Five teenagers were arrested. But budget cuts ended that position within a few years of the incident, he said.

The rest of the statue was unharmed. Officials plan to fix the statue, Blanchette said.

Dedicated in 1874, Lincoln Tomb is the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln, his wife Mary, and three of their four son, according to its website. The eldest son, Robert T. Lincoln, is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

According to the website, “the 117-foot tomb, designed by sculptor Larkin Mead, is constructed of brick sheathed with Quincy granite. The base is 72-foot square with large semi-circular projections on the north and south sides. Double sets of north and south stairs lead to a terrace, above which rises the obelisk. At the corners of the shaft, large pedestals serve as bases for four bronze sculptures, each with a group of figures representing one of the four Civil War services—infantry, artillery, cavalry, and navy. A taller base on the obelisk’s south side holds a heroic bronze statue of Lincoln.”

SOURCE 

Republican presidential candidates said on Saturday they would stop Iran from developing an atomic bomb but differed over how to do it in a debate that tested their knowledge of world hotspots.

The economy has been the No. 1 issue for the 2012 election campaign, so the CBS News/National Journal debate offered a rare opportunity to hear the candidates explain how they would handle the job as commander-in-chief.

The candidates made no major stumbles during the first hour of the 90-minute gathering, but Texas Governor Rick Perry’s belief that the United States should consider eliminating foreign aid to Pakistan stirred debate among the candidates.

Newt Gingrich, who came to Spartanburg, South Carolina, riding a new wave of support as the conservative alternative to the more moderate Mitt Romney, declared he would launch covert operations within Iran in order to be able to deny them later.

Romney, who for months has been a front-runner to win the right to challenge President Barack Obama in the election next year, vowed in the debate at Wofford College to prevent Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

“One thing you can know is if we elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon,” said Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. “If you elect me … as the next president they will not have a nuclear weapon.”

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, on Tuesday reported that Iran appears to have worked on designing an atomic bomb and may still be conducting secret research related to building such weapons.

Businessman Herman Cain, who has been dogged by sexual harassment allegations recently, said the only way to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon was through economic means, squeezing Tehran through sanctions and boosting Iran’s opposition movement.

Perry, hurt by a string of poor debate performances, including an embarrassing gaffe Wednesday night that some observers say might have crippled his campaign, was insistent that Washington should consider cutting aid to Pakistan.

While Gingrich agreed, Rick Santorum was adamantly opposed.

“Pakistan is a nuclear power,” Santorum said. “We cannot be indecisive about whether Pakistan is our friend. They must be a friend.”

None of the eight candidates on the stage have much in the way of foreign policy experience, save for former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, but they all criticized Obama for mishandling U.S. relations abroad..

SOURCE 

UPDATE: The content below is from a source linked to at the end of this post. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of iBankCoin Financial News. 

________________

Last week’s guilty verdict in the trial of 28-year-old Brittany Norwood — accused of first-degree murder in the grisly slaying of her 30-year old co-worker Jayna Murray — has brought to a close — for now, at least — the latest ugly chapter in the history of Lululemon, the posh yoga apparel company whose suburban outlet on the outskirts of Washington, DC was the setting for a killing that seasoned homicide detectives have described as one of the worst they’ve ever seen.

It would be tempting to dismiss the savage murder — Norwood stabbed and bludgeoned Murray an estimated 330 times over the course of 20 minutes, severing her spinal cord — as a bizarre and random event. That’s surely what the Canadian-based Lululemon, which seems to have nine lives when it comes to recurring scandal and controversy, is hoping for. But for the American yoga community, which extols the virtues of peace and non-violence, the killing raises deeply disturbing issues. How could two female “yogis” — the Sanskrit word for devotees of the ancient Hindu practice — arrive at a place where lethal force became an “option”? And what kind of workplace environment would fuel, or at least fail to ameliorate, such a dispute?

Lululemon is no typical workplace, in fact. It’s highly competitive — indeed, cultish — corporate culture has raised serious ethical concerns for years, and so have the company’s exploitative marketing and advertising policies. But those concerns have largely been ignored, or downplayed, because of Lululemon’s position as the yoga industry’s leading “pioneer,” with net revenues of $239 million projected for 2011, six times the level reached in 2004. The company, with stocks publicly traded on Wall Street since 2007, has been in the forefront of re-branding yoga as a trendy, eco-friendly lifestyle, similar to the way an earlier generation of marketers exploited urban hip-hop to reap billions from suburban whites starved for “authenticity.”

In fact, most of America’s up-and-coming yoga “gurus” — men like John Friend, a self-styled corporate mogul — who are anxious to see their spiritual movement expand — and their own celebrity enhanced — have struck a Faustian bargain of sorts with companies like Lulelemon. They’ve largely stayed quiet, amid a string of controversies like this one, hoping to exploit yoga’s commercial success, even if Lululemon’s commitment to yoga as an authentic “wellness” practice — in fact, even much of the pricey apparel it sellshas no actual relation to yoga — remains dubious at best.

The seeds of the company’s problems were planted early, with its initial founding in Vancouver in 1998. Former CEO Chip Wilson, an avid snowboarder, said he came up with “Lululemon” because he delighted in the idea that trying to pronounce the name — with its three syllables beginning with “l'” — would pose a special challenge for the Japanese, whom he enjoyed making fun of. From that less-than-enlightened starting point Nelson went on to create a huge controversy in 2005 when he announced that the firm would rely on child labor and “sweat shops” in China, after three competitors in his native Vancouver went belly up due to rising labor costs.

Wilson, with characteristic elan, argued that Lululemon would be giving poor Chinese youth jobs, and should be applauded, not lambasted, for wanting to assist in Third World “development.” Critics didn’t see it that way, of course, noting that Chinese youth would be better off getting an education, and that sweatshop workers, usually young women, couldn’t support themselves with the wages they’d be paid. But Nelson, still smarting from criticism from Canadian trade unions that his past use of local non-union Vancouver labor hadn’t really demonstrated a socially responsible commitment to the welfare of his workforce, would hear none of it.

It took only a year for Lululemon to step into an even larger controversy. In 2006, the firm rolled out a line of “Vita-Sea” apparel bags that it claimed were made with seaweed fiber, and had health and medicinal effects for consumers, including stress reduction, through the release of amino acids and vitamins into the skin’s natural moisture. But skeptics, including the New York Times, decided to sponsor lab tests, which revealed that Lululemon wasn’t just misleading consumers: it was lying. There was no seaweed of any kind in the bags the newspaper tested. There was no difference, in fact, between the Lululemon bags and other bags made of cotton – except that Lululemon’s, of course, were a lot more expensive.

Company executives, with characteristic arrogance, refused to issue an apology and privately chalked it up as a “growth” experience. But apparel industry watchdogs weren’t amused: a major investigation of the eco-claims of a large number of mainstream companies ensued.

And then there’s Lululemon and sex. Sex-based advertising has become increasingly
popular in the yoga world, even appearing in the pages of the industry trade magazine Yoga Journal. But Lululemon, as always, has been a trend setter. It’s creepiest manifestation, perhaps, was revealed in early 2008 when a mother and her daughter unwittingly discovered secret messages woven into the fabric of Lululemon products that appeared to extol the virtues of getting high and having multiple orgasms. Lululemon had also included more traditional inspirational messages but the more risque adages had been placed underneath those, apparently to be digested subliminally.

How has Lululemon managed to fend off one scandal after another? Recording record profits year after year for your shareholders surely helps, but so does the firm’s clever co-optation strategy. Most of its stores offer free weekly yoga classes taught by “neighborhood” yogis who often turn out to be specially recruited fitness pros new to yoga but who have already drunk the Lululemon kool-aid. The company calls these local yogis “brand ambassadors” — currently, there are roughly 1,000 nationwide — and often features them in Lululemon publications. It’s a win-win deal: the yogis get free marketing, and a ready-made pool of prospective yoga clients. Lulu reaps extraordinary “word-of-mouth” and gets more shoppers into its stores, where they typically receive 15% discounts just for attending the free yoga class.

Lululemon is quite blunt in its assessment of the “typical” yoga personality. Wilson early on experimented with yogis who extolled the virtues of stillness and introspection — genuine yoga, that is — but found that as workers, hard-core spiritual yogis didn’t move his merchandise fast enough. Wilson is also devotee of the Landmark Forum, a successor organization to EST “human potential” movement started by scientologist Werner Erhard in the 1970s. Wilson and his successors talk a lot about transitioning people from “mediocrity to greatness,” and freely admits that he likes to recruit highly competitive “Type-A” personalities to staff and run his stores. That’s great for business, perhaps, but the concentration of estrogen and ego, heightened by a faux Tantric mysticism that celebrates every woman as a reincarnation of Shakti — or worse, Kali, the goddess of destruction — has the potential to turn your company into a furnace of creativity — or simply an emotional powder keg.

Which is why for Lululemon, the less said about the workplace murder, the better, perhaps. Last Thursday, in a bizarre public statement, the company’s CEO Christine Day, who’s anxious to do for the company what she previously did for Starbucks — expand its empire overseas – personally thanked the judge, the prosecutor, the police, and the jury for their speedy resolution of the case. Her statement contains none of the language one might expect from a company genuinely concerned about the welfare of its employees, other than stating that Norwood’s behavior was “contrary to our values.” There was no mention of the incident as a “terrible tragedy” or the need for “healing” in the two families, let alone any call for “reflection” or a promise to review internal policies. Just the usual exculpatory language one might expect from a company that’s boldly taking yoga where it’s never gone before and that clearly doesn’t want a nasty, still-unexplained murder conducted on its premises standing in its way.

Occupy Wall Street? That’s the new rallying cry of yoga progressives. And why not — that’s where you’ll find Lululemon’s investors, extolling the firm’s phenomenal growth and record profits amid the nation’s rampant joblessness and recession.

But that’s why protesting yogis might want to take their critique of greed and capitalism one step further, and end their semi-official silence on a company that’s more predator than partner, more pariah than pioneer. The demand for corporate responsibility, like most things in life, begins at home. Physician, heal thyself.

SOURCE