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Gore & Hyatt taking media company public
The media company co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt five years ago plans to go public.
Current Media, which operates a TV network and a web site aimed at young audiences, notified the SEC of its intentions today.
The company launched Current TV in 2005. The TV network now has about 51 million subscriber households, according to SEC documents. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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Current Media also unveiled a website, Current.com, in October 2007. Combined revenues in 2007 were $63.8 million, with losses of $6.1 million. Gore, Hyatt and programming president David Neuman each received salary and bonuses of about $1 million in 2007.Current Media aims to fill what it describes as a programming gap for young adults. “Young adults need and want news and information about what is going on in their world; however, they have not had a news and information source on TV that speaks to them,” the company said.
The SEC documents underscored Gore’s importance in the venture, particularly in relationships with key distributors. However, the company said, “Mr. Gore has a number of other commitments that limit the amount of time he can devote to our business.”
Gore’s many commitments include being a director of Apple, a partner at Kleiner Perkins and chairman of Generation Investment Management, which invests in green companies. While his time is limited, his connections have obviously paid off. Gore is also an adviser to Google, which supplies content to Current Media.
Yet he isn’t the only high-profile personality in the company. Co-founder Joel Hyatt founded Hyatt Legal Services and recently became a director of Hewlett-Packard.
Billionaire Ron Burkle, a close friend of Bill Clinton, is a director of Current Media, as is investment banker Richard C. Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
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Wexner’s prize, Victoria’s Secret
While visiting his West Coast Limited stores in the late 1970s, Leslie Wexner was intrigued by a shop that sold women’s underwear. It was called Victoria’s Secret.
It was brothel Victorian, he once said in an interview. Not erotic, but very sexy.
Wexner, who left his family’s general clothing store to specialize in women’s casual wear, saw the possibilities. He bought the store and catalog in 1982 for $1 million. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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In 2007, Victoria’s Secret accounted for more than half of Limited Brands nearly $9.5 billion in revenue. Wexner is a multi-billionaire with strong ties to the arts (Wexner Center for the Arts and the Wexner Prize), philanthropy (Wexner Foundation) and Ohio State University.
Wexner is a trustee of the University and Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee is a director of Limited Brands. The Wexner Center is located at the University. Wexner’s wife, Abigail Wexner, a Barnard-educated lawyer and community activist, is also on the Limited Brands board.
Limited Brands’s other stores include Bath & Body Works, La Senza, C.O. Bigelow, Henri Bendel and the White Barn Candle Co.
Loyal customers swear the Victoria’s Secret bras fit better (that troublesome strap never strays) and while many will still go to Costco to buy practical, everyday underwear, they go to Victoria’s Secret for special occasions.
One such customer is Orange County, Calif., civil engineer Agnes Villanueva, 46. She introduced this writer to Victoria’s Secret several years ago and once picked up half a dozen cotton thongs as an unusual party favor. Her guests were middle-aged women she met at a private Catholic school in the 1970s.
By email, Villanueva recently explained her motivation: “Wearing sexy, skimpy, almost non-existent underwear was such a taboo. We were raised to be modest and conservative, but I wanted to encourage that naughty beast in each of us to break free.”
Sexy sophisticate is more what Wexner had in mind when he invented the story of Victoria as the fictional founder of the store and conceived of her as finely bred lady of French and English descent. Her lingerie reflected that refinement.
And Wexner gambled on women paying a little more money for the cache of a “brand” name, one equated with quality, beauty and comfort. That gamble paid off for the company and for him. Forbes lists Wexner’s net worth at $2.8 billion.
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Judith Regan settles suit with News Corp.
Judith Regan may have published a book with a dull last chapter. It doesn’t make for good reading, but it would seem worth her while.
Regan’s sensation-filled lawsuit against News Corp. and HarperCollins has been settled for an undisclosed amount, Regan and her adversaries announced Friday.
Both sides aren’t saying much, and lots of questions raised by the lawsuit, a document that read like a novel with a heroine (Regan) and quite a few villains, remain unanswered.
Regan, who had published hundreds of authors and made millions in the process, had sued the companies in November for $100 million. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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She had alleged that she had been wrongly terminated in December 2006. She also claimed that she had been made to seem anti-Semitic and that she had been forced to withhold information about Rudy Giuliani that might damage his presidential campaign.When the lawsuit was filed, a News Corp. spokesman dismissed Regan’s claims as “preposterous.”
On Friday, News Corp. issued what amounted to an apology.
“After carefully considering the matter, we accept Ms. Regan’s position that she did not say anything that was anti-Semitic in nature, and further believe that Ms. Regan is not anti-Semitic,” it said in a statement.
Regan, too, issued a statement.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with so many gifted people and am looking forward to my next venture,” she said.
And that was that. The other allegations in the lawsuit aren’t addressed.
No mention was made of the Regan’s claim that she was told not to disclose damaging information about Giuliani that she had learned while dating Bernard Kerik, a Giuliani associate and former New York City police commissioner who is now under indictment.
Unmentioned, too, is Regan’s charge that she was unfairly made the scapegoat for the bad publicity generated by her project with O.J. Simpson.
Regan had planned on publishing the former football’s star’s “hypothetical” account of how he would have murdered his wife if he had murdered his wife.
In the face of adverse publicity, HarperCollins canceled the publication. Regan alleged that the company had supported the project and then abandoned her when the going got tough.
“As a result of this corporate shirking of responsibility, false representations and defamation, Regan was unfairly attacked worldwide for her involvement in the O.J. project,” the lawsuit claimed. “She received death threats, hate mail and was shunned, humiliated and caused great harm.”
Other questions remain unanswered:
Did her bosses at HarperCollins neglect to take care of Regan’s office? It reportedly had no air conditioning in the summer and too much heat in the winter.
Did those same bosses fail to investigate “serious security breaches” which led to a light fixture crashing onto Regan’s desk?
Did those bosses do nothing when Regan complained that people within the company were attributing her rise in the company to sexual activities?
Followers of this real-life legal drama may never know.
One of her lawyers suggested to The Wall Street Journal that Regan doesn’t want to look back.
“It is better for her to get on with her life,” said Bert Fields.
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Rumsfeld proposes U.S. propaganda agency
Donald Rumsfeld has returned to the spotlight, promoting an idea that got him into hot water when he ran the Defense Department.
In his first major speech since departing the Bush administration in 2006, Rumsfeld pushed for a new propaganda agency to combat the anti-U.S. rhetoric emanating from Muslim countries and to burnish the American image abroad. He said the U.S. needs an agency bigger and better than the old United States Information Agency, the Cold War-era operation that was absorbed into the State Department. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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“We need someone in the United States government, some entity, not like the old USIA,” Rumsfeld said in a conference here Wednesday sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement.“I think this agency, a new agency has to be something that would take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that exist today. There are multiple channels for information … The Internet is there, pods are there, talk radio is there, e-mails are there. There are all kinds of opportunities,” he said.
The U.S. government, he said, currently does not “with any systematic organized way attempt to engage the battle of ideas and talk about the idea of beheading, and what’s it’s about and what it means and talk about the fact that people are killing more Muslims than they are non-Muslims, these extremists.
“They’re doing it with suicide bombs and the like. We need to engage and not simply be passive and allow that battle of competition of ideas,” Rumsfeld said, according to a transcript provided by Wired News.
In the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Rumsfeld created just such an agency when he was defense secretary, under the direction of then-Under Secretary Douglas Feith.
Known as the Office of Strategic Influence, the agency’s mission, in part, was reportedly planting misleading stories in foreign media. Lawmakers expressed concerns that those types of propaganda efforts, which had all the traits of military psychological operations, would undermine rather than promote U.S. interests abroad.
Under pressure, Rumsfeld announced in February 2002 that the agency had been shut down.
If there was any irony in Rumsfeld’s attendance this week at the conference it was this: The company L-3 Communications sponsored an “invitation only” luncheon with the former defense secretary. L-3 Communications owns Titan Corp., which did severe damage to the U.S. image aboard when a handful of its translators were implicated in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
Contact: eric@muckety.com
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Let me guess, Rummy would call this agency the Ministry of Truth…
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Why is Rumsfeld relevant? Go back to your golf game, you old man. You were a failure. Thanks for the billion dollars a day we are spending now in a stupid war based on your lies.
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Yucaipa may pay Bill Clinton $20M
Democrats are quick to criticize President Bush’s handling of the economy. However, at least one top Democrat has done pretty well during the last eight years.
Former President Bill Clinton made $9.2 million in speaking fees in just his first year out of office in 2001. He later got a reported advance between $10 million and $12 million for his memoir, My Life.
All this money adds up. Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, listed their assets as between $17.4 million and $53.7 million, in the most recent report made public.
And now it appears that Bill Clinton is eligible for a $20 million payout for his relationship with a private equity firm. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Clinton will receive the money as a result of his role as an advisor from 2002 to 2007 to funds managed by Yucaipa Companies.Ronald W. Burkle, Clinton’s friend and a major Democratic Party contributor, is the founder and managing partner of Yucaipa. The firm has invested heavily in supermarkets and other ventures.
The Journal reported that Clinton last year decided to end his connection to Yucaipa, so as not to complicate his wife’s presidential bid.
A Yucaipa fund, the Yucaipa Global Partnership Fund LP, is connected to the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the paper reported. That link could become controversial if the power of foreign investments in this country becomes a campaign issue for Sen. Clinton.
According to the Journal, Clinton is eligible for the $20 million because Yucaipa sold Wild Oaks Market Inc. and Pathmark Stores. The transactions substantially increased the profits of two Yucaipa domestic funds, triggering the payout.
In a 2006 story in The New York Times, Burkle described Clinton’s role at the company:
“He explains to people better than we can why these are good things to invest in,” Burkle said. “He’ll talk about the importance to the economy, to the community. And he builds the brand of Yucaipa.”
The Times quoted Clinton from a 2003 speech in which he explained why he decided to join Yucaipa:
“(The company) has earned a phenomenal return in investing in three things I care about,” he said. “In underserved communities, in underperforming companies that are friendly to their workers and their families, and in minority-owned businesses.”
Burkle and Clinton met in 1992, when Clinton was running for the presidency. They became friends, and Clinton would stay at Burkle’s house when he was in California.
Burkle hosted a March 2007 fundraiser for Sen. Clinton at his home in California that took in $2.6 million.
In 2007, Forbes magazine estimated Burkle’s wealth at $3.5 billion, placing him at number 91 on the list of 400 richest Americans.
A college dropout, Burkle started out in the grocery business by stocking shelves.
Burkle has looked into the newspaper business, but his efforts to acquire the Tribune Company and Knight Ridder did not pan out.
The New York Daily News reported in 2006 that Jared Paul Stern, a contributor to the gossip pages of the New York Post, attempted to extort $220,000 from Burkle in exchange for good coverage, money that Burkle did not pay.
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Making lots of hay at Deere & Company
Maybe Robert Lane, chairman and CEO of Deere & Company, is underpaid at $50 million a year?
Tuesday, with world stock markets melting down and the Dow off nearly 130 points, Deere shares gained nearly nine percent. One analyst even raised the target price for Deere stock, saying the prospects for the company’s tractors and other farm equipment are strong. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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In addition, the filing showed, Lane held vested, unexercised options worth $79 million on October 31 last year, and not-yet-vested options worth $23.4 million. That was at a stock price of $77.45. Deere closed Tuesday at $83.13.
With the value of those unexercised options alone, Lane could fund the annual budget ($112.7 million) of Deere’s hometown, Moline, Ill., and still have a few million left.
While Deere is based in Moline, it’s CEO has strong ties to Chicago. Lane is a national director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and an honorary director of Lincoln Park Zoo, one of the nation’s oldest zoos.
Last year, Lane added Clayton Jones, chairman and CEO of Rockwell Collins, and Charles O. Holliday Jr., chairman and CEO of DuPont, to Deere’s powerful board of directors.
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Robert Trout takes on another high-profile case
The trial of Rep. William J. Jefferson, D-La., begins next month with the nine-term congressman and former chairman of the U.S. congressional caucus on African trade facing a 16-count indictment including fraud, bribery, racketeering and money laundering.
Jefferson is charged with taking more than $500,000 in bribes and soliciting much more in a scheme to broker business deals in Africa.
Making the case for the congressman, whose freezer was stuffed with $90,000 in cash in $10,000 packets wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers, will be attorney Robert P. Trout. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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A former federal prosecutor, Trout has defended other Democratic notables, including Carol Browner, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration. Browner had been charged with illegally destroying agency computer files that had been sought by a conservative legal foundation.Trout also defended Schuyler Tilney, a Houston-based Merrill Lynch executive, against charges of securities fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission accused Tilney of helping Enron Corp. improperly inflate its profit figures.
Trout is a partner in the law firm Trout Cacheris with Plato Cacheris, who has represented Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, spies serving life sentences. Other former clients of Cacheris include Monica Lewinsky, former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell and Fawn Hall of Iran Contra fame.
Jefferson has hired PR chief Judy Smith of Impact Strategies, a crisis communications company in Washington, to help coordinate press queries and shape his media message during the trial. Smith work as a deputy press secretary for former President George H.W. Bush and has done work for Lewinsky, Sen. Larry Craig, and the family of Chandra Levy, the murdered congressional staffer who had an affair with former Rep. Gary Condit.
Trout has argued in recent pretrial hearings that certain evidence, including some of Jefferson’s statements to the FBI and evidence from Jefferson’s home, should not be admitted at the trial.
Trout asserts that FBI agents who raided Jefferson’s home in 2005 were overly hostile to Jefferson, who assumed they were going to arrest him.
“He thought he was going to be taken out in handcuffs,” Trout said.
Trout maintains that given the circumstances of the raid, the agents should have read the congressman his Miranda rights, but failed to do so.
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Alice Waters, food fighter
Advocating locally grown food has taken Alice Waters far beyond Berkeley, home of Chez Panisse, the restaurant she founded in 1971.
Waters is author of nine cookbooks, head of the Chez Panisse Foundation, vice president of Slow Food (as in the opposite of fast food) International. And this week, she will be rubbing elbows with the global muckety mucks attending the World Economic Forum in Davos. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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Sessions on the forum agenda include “Rethinking the Food Chain” and “Are We Being Bio-Foolish,” topics close to her heart.Waters has been called a food revolutionary for her belief in organically grown foods, served only when they are in season.
Chez Panisse serves only one meal a day, using meats, vegetables and other foodstuffs provided by a carefully developed network of suppliers. Without knowing what the menu will be, diners reserve tables months in advance.
“Chez Panisse is a much larger enterprise than a restaurant,” wrote biographer Thomas McNamee, in Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. “It is a standard-bearer for a system of moral values. It is the leader of a style of cooking, of a social movement, and of a comprehensive philosophy of doing good and living well.”
Waters also pioneered the Edible Schoolyard project, in which schoolchildren prepare and eat food they grow themselves.
Now she is planning an event for Labor Day weekend, called Slow Food Nation, in which farmers and chefs will demonstrate earth-friendly foods.
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Riding Lou Dobbs’ coattails
Lou DobbsLou Dobbs, the tough-talking anchor for CNN, is expert at riding popular opinion. Last week, a group called Americans for Legal Immigration attached itself firmly to Dobbs’ popularity as it launched an effort to draft him for president.
If nothing else, it was a good public relations move by ALIPAC, headed by William Gheen. The group shares Dobbs’ fervor against illegal immigration.
Kevin Horrigan reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that in the first 24 hours Gheen’s group received campaign pledges, should Dobbs choose to run, totaling $160,000. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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In his column headlined “Loupublicans and Dobbsocrats,” Horrigan wrote that when he first saw the email announcing the draft Dobbs effort, he thought it was a joke. He probably wasn’t alone.
But it would be a mistake to discount the appeal of the Harvard-educated broadcaster who has transformed himself into a raving populist. Dobbs says free trade costs American jobs. He regularly bashes big business, big government and the established political parties. CNN calls Dobbs the “leading media advocate” for America’s working men and women.
“The truth is not ‘fair and balanced,’ Dobbs told the New Yorker in 2006.
The Dobbs-for-president buzz is not new. It received a jumpstart in early January when the The Wall Street Journal ran a story about Dobbs gaining attention as a possible independent candidate.
The story quoted Gheen and Dobbs, who said he wasn’t a candidate but he had not ruled out the possibility.
Later that day, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed Dobbs about the Journal’s story. Dobbs said he was flattered by the interest and repeated that he wasn’t a candidate but could never say never.
“I’m an advocacy journalist and I’m having a great, great time right now,” Dobbs told Blitzer.
Whether he runs or not, Dobbs will have an impact on the election because of the audience he appeals to. Writing in The Politico last October, Christopher Gacek said that Dobbs “may be the most important person in the 2008 presidential election aside from the candidates themselves.”
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What a huge breath of fresh air should Lou Dobbs throw his hat in the ring. I would definitely vote for him. Not only is he the only MSM news anchor taking on illegal immigration (which he is totally correct on), he has taken on the economy, special interests, lobbyist influence peddling, government corruption, truth in government, religion in politics, free trade and favored trade status issues, national security, the folly of the Iraq War and how contractors are becoming enriched from it, middle class erosion and American worker protection, outsourcing jobs for larger corporate profit, excessive issuance of H-1B visas, our crumbling infrastructure, education, food safety and inspections, the environment, China’s dangerous imports and its influence on our national deficit, NAFTA, SPP, NAU, LOST, ridiculous government treaties, crime, drugs, racial issues and the list goes on.
Lou Dobbs has talked about, taken stances on, exposed and researched more issues than any other presidential candidate ever has or ever will.
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Lou Dobbs is a demagogue living on a 16 mil a year salary in a 300 acre home. He has found a way to be relavant in a world where he has to compete with the likes of oreilly and Hannity. I will vote for a candidate who is sincere on issues. Ron Paul is a believer. Lou Dobbs is a phony.
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Because of Lou there are more than 800,000(nightly viewers) American Citizens that know what’s going on in this country. Meddling foreigner leaders controlling our Politicans all the way up to our President!
The newspapers and television telling us that we are not smart enough to think for ourselves and telling and showing only what they want. Even they although, they’re probably fearful of losing their jobs…won’t admit the truth. Into days world, wrong is right and right is wrong, the is, at least, one person who see through the murky lens and tell the truth based on facts.
Because of that, he is shot down as an over zealous tv personality looking for ratings. Well guess what…….they’re wrong and the silent voices were listening and are now being heard. Guess that makes some people and governments nervous, so be it……LOU will get my money and my time if he runs!!! We need an American for America and not for businesses or foreign countries!
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Lou Dobbs quote from his book ‘Independents Day’:
The key difference between our two parties is purely partisan: While Democrats describe themselves as liberal, progressive, and committed to civil liberties, and Republicans describe themselves as conservative and committed to tradition and social stability, the truth is, their only guiding principles are that Democrats are anti-Republican while Republicans are anti-Democrat. They have become nothing more than two wings of the same bird.
If the distinction between Republicans and Democrats is blurred and increasingly unclear, it’s in large part due to the fact that both parties are dependent on the largesse of corporate America and the influence of special interests. Bush has sent tens of thousands of our troops around the world to fight the war on terror, and hundreds of thousands to Iraq and Afghanistan, yet for 6 years he has insisted upon leaving our borders and ports open to the illegal traffic of millions of illegal aliens and billions of dollars in illegal drugs.
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LOL, he will go as far as Tom Tancredo. I hope he runs. The guy is a LOSER
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We also need someone who has the guts to stand up to the President of Mexico who can not get it through his thick head we are a sovereign Nation run by “we the people”. Lou Dobbs is the only one to stand on national tv and tell Caleron to “stuff it” and mind his own business. Has our so called President or any member of our congress done this yet….I think not.
And because they haven’t, expect Calderon’s visit in Feb.to be apart of a pandering visit with our congress to try to stop what he calls the rhetoric in our presidential campaign by the GOP against illegal aliens. Something he can not get though his pea brain that citizens are demanding the issue be talked about.
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Scary Spice gets even, and more
Tracking the breakup aftermath for Spice Girl Melanie Brown and Eddie Murphy, it would seem that Scary Spice is coming out on top.
After ending his romantic involvement with the pregnant Brown in 2006, Murphy famously said, “I don’t know whose child that is until it comes out and has a blood test.” Brown and Murphy went to court to determine the paternity of Angel Iris Murphy Brown, and it was determined that Murphy was the father.
Since then, Melanie Brown has had a record year. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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Brown juggled rehearsing for the Spice Girls reunion tour with practicing for her American television debut on ABC’s reality hit, Dancing with the Stars. She outshined her competitors, including Marie Osmond and Jennie Garth, and ended up finishing in second place.
She also married her new boyfriend, Stephen Belafonte, in June, 2007.
Meanwhile, Eddie Murphy lost the best supporting actor Oscar to Alan Arkin, and then had to have his publicist dispel rumors that he stomped out of the award show, upset at his loss.
Murphy has made recent headlines for equally embarrassing reasons. After his breakup with Brown, he started dating film producer Tracey Edmonds. He proposed and they exchanged vows in a ceremony in Bora Bora on New Year’s Day.
A mere two weeks later, the couple decided against legalizing their wedding vows in the U.S., releasing the statement: “While the recent symbolic union in Bora Bora was representative of our deep love, friendship and respect that we have for one another on a spiritual level, we have decided to remain friends.”
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Hah!! I absolutely love MEL B. she is amazing.. as for Eddie Murphy!!
what a prik!! Mel B. Is way out of his leugue.. he should have felt blessed to be with her.. looks like he screwed that up!! what a nobber!!
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