NEW YORK — Leona Helmsley, the hotelier who went to prison as a tax cheat and was reviled as the “queen of mean,” died Monday at age 87. Already experienced in real estate before her marriage, Helmsley helped her husband run a $5 billion empire that included managing the Empire State Building. For the better part of a decade, a glamorous Leona Helmsley smiled out of magazine ads dressed in luxurious gowns and tiara, advertising that the Palace was the only hotel in the world “where the Queen stands guard.” She became a household name in 1989 when she was […]

Local residents are being encouraged to donate unwanted computers, monitors, printers, scanners and other electronics to any of Goodwill’s 18 donation centers in the region. Any brand is accepted and donors are responsible for removing any personal data from hard drives and other storage media before donating. President and CEO Mark Boyd says Goodwill is joining with Dell computers in the Reconnect program: “Dell estimates that in the first year of our program just in the Philadelphia area, we’re probably going to generate about 4 million pounds of used computer equipment and no one wants to see that end up […]

BMW has built the first of their Hydrogen 7 cars for public use, and handed the first set of keys over to U.S. funny-man, Will Ferrell. 25 of the first 100 cars will be handed out to celebrities in order to promote their hydrogen cars in a predictable PR stunt that we just walked straight into. Another 25 will be used for evaluation purposes and testing. Other lucky celebrities include Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Liguori, Richard Gere, Sharon Stone and An Inconvenient Truth producer, Davis Guggenheim, as well as more unusual names like German Federal Minister […]

HUNTINGTON — After a camera lowered through a fourth bore hole again showed no signs of six workers trapped in the Crandall Canyon mine, officials on Sunday acknowledged what many had already feared. “It’s likely that these miners may not be found,” Rob Moore, vice president of mine owner Utah Energy Corp., said during a Sunday afternoon news conference. Video from the latest bore hole drilled from the top of the mine into caverns below showed extensive damage to that area of the mine, and oxygen levels measured at 7 or 8 percent — not enough to support life. Work […]

BY ANDY STERN/ PRESIDENT SERVICE EMPLOYEE INTERNATIONAL UNION As I write I’m thinking about the mine workers’ union members I used to know when I worked in Pennsylvania in the 1970s. Back then, most of the coal industry was unionized, and bright young miners like Cecil Roberts, who is now the United Mine Workers president, got together to make their union stronger and more effective. When they couldn’t get the coal companies to protect their lives on the job, the miners went out on several long national strikes to win, among other things, expanded safety rights. They had safety committees […]

BY EVA LIAO BEIJING — I’ll admit it: In times of desperate measure, somewhere between Last Call and beddy bye, I’ve patronised some of the many Chinese fast food joints Philly has to offer. Places with names like Mr. Chow, Mr. Wong and David’s Mai Lai Wah taste best right around 3 A.M. And that’s all well and good, as long as nobody is laboring under the delusion that this is what Chinese food really tastes like — because, almost without exception, Chinese food in America is about as ‘real’ as the tits hanging on Anna Nicole, RIP. Truth is, […]

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