Unions target new Revel casino in Atlantic City

  WAYNE PARRYATLANTIC CITY -- Union pickets could be going up soon outside the newly opened Revel casino, even as the $2.4 billion month-old resort tries to build its business before a grand opening on Memorial Day weekend.

Three major labor unions, including the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers, announced Monday that they'll press to unionize workers at Atlantic City's newest casino.

The unions are joining with Local 54 of the Unite HERE union to start a unionization drive at Revel, whose dealers, hotel workers, beverage servers and others are not represented by a union.

Local 54 has repeatedly clashed with Revel over tax subsidies that the casino has received, as well as four or five-year term limits it has imposed on many customer service jobs.

Revel, which opened earlier this month, is Atlantic City's 12th casino. It has reached pacts with some other unions.

"Revel wants to open a non-union casino in the midst of a union town, and destroy the standard of living that generations of workers have walked picket lines and gone on strike to achieve," said Bob McDevitt, president of Local 54. "That is unacceptable and impossible for us to ignore."

The casino said it is working on a proposal to let its workers decide whether they want to join a union.

"Revel has received a proposal from the three unions to hand Revel professionals over to these unions without an election," it said in a statement. "Such a proposal is hardly fair to Revel's professionals. We feel strongly that we need a progressive, non-adversarial approach that would take our professionals into account first and foremost by making sure that they would have a truly fast and easy way of deciding whether or not they wanted to be represented by any union. Revel's approach would guarantee Revel professionals an un-coerced freedom of choice."

Spokeswoman Maureen Siman said the casino cannot yet discuss the details of its planned proposal.

McDevitt said pickets and other demonstrations outside Revel are a real possibility.

"How much disruption there is depends on whether Revel is willing to participate in a cooperative relationship with the unions like all the other casinos in Atlantic City do, or whether they want to have a fight to the death," he said. "We don't picket our friends."

Revel has signed a memorandum of understanding with skilled tradesmen including carpenters, painters and operating engineers. But McDevitt said that agreement covers only about 100 workers out of 5,500 Revel employees.

The unions are also particularly angry over Revel's first-of-its kind policy limiting workers in jobs including dealers, beverage servers and bartenders to no more than four or five years before having to reapply for their jobs. The casino says the rule is needed to prevent workers from becoming burned out and unresponsive to customer needs.

The UAW has been organizing dealers in Atlantic City for the past four years. It represents dealers at four Atlantic City casinos - Trump Plaza, the Tropicana Casino and Resort, Bally's Atlantic City and Caesars Atlantic City.

"It is appalling that Revel has taken hundreds of millions of dollars in state assistance, and then it turns around and institutes anti-worker policies," said Scott Adams, director of the UAW's Region 9 unit that includes Atlantic City. "That is a slap in the face to workers in this heavily unionized region."

Marcus King, president of Teamsters Local 331 in Atlantic City, promised his union will do everything it can to fully unionize Revel.

"Revel's policies of term-limiting service employees and huge use of part-time workers are a direct attack on the labor movement," he said. "We are going to use all the tools available to us to let people know Revel is out of bounds."

The union move comes while Revel is in its so-called preview period leading up to its grand opening over Memorial Day weekend. The luxury resort is being counted on to help revive the sagging fortunes of Atlantic City, which recently lost its rank as the nation's second-largest gambling market to Pennsylvania.

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Target truck falls through ice

  John Antalek, Eyewitness NewsMINNESOTA (WABC) -- A truck driver was forced to crawl to safety when his big rig sank through an ice-covered pond.

The driver was hauling a Target trailer when he lost control and ran off an interstate in Minnesota.

The semi skidded up to 200 yards across the ice before breaking through, sinking about six feet.

The rig was eventually pulled out of the pond.

The driver was not seriously hurt.

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Breastfeeding at Target: Moms Stage Demonstration

Michelle Hickman, left, smiles as she joins other mothers at nurse-in at a Webster, Texas Target store. (Courtesy Penny Montgomery-Schlanser)

A nursing mother’s upsetting experience at her local Target last month has led to “nurse-in” demonstrations at Target stores nationwide.

Mothers from across the country have posted pictures of themselves nursing at Target stores — from Maryland to Minnesota — to a Facebook page used to organize the event. (A Target spokeswoman has confirmed that nursing mothers showed up at Target stores today but said the chain was still gathering information on the scale of the demonstrations.)

“I never knew that sitting in a Target and doing what’s normal — which is feeding my baby — would result in all of this one day but I’m glad it did, ” Michelle Hickman, the woman who inspired the event, told ABCNews.com.

Last month at a Webster, Texas Target store, Hickman began nursing her fussy, hungry infant son in the store’s women’s clothing section. Hickman, 35, said that eight Target employees eventually surrounded her and two asked her to move to a fitting room to finish nursing. The other employees, she said, rolled their eyes at her and gave her dirty looks.

Hickman said she tried explaining that Texas law allowed her to breastfeed in public, but the employees wouldn’t listen. Hickman said she later called Target’s corporate offices but was disatisfied with their response. She said the retailer has yet to apologize to her directly.

In a statement to ABCNews.com, Target said that it supports the use of fitting rooms for breastfeeding — even if other customers are waiting to use the rooms — but also that “(g)uests who choose to breastfeed in public areas of the store are welcome to do so without being made to feel uncomfortable.”

“We continually educate our team members in stores across the country on store policies to ensure all guests have a great experience. Target has been in touch with the store to ensure all team members are aware of our breastfeeding policy. Target is proud to support all mothers who breastfeed year-round, including today,” the retailer said.

Hickman, who is calling for a national law to protect women’s rights to breastfeed in public, said the nationwide demonstration was organized by fellow moms with whom she shared her experience. Her story was also publicized by the pro-breastfeeding group, Best for Babes, which later contacted Target about the incident. (The response the group said it received from Target is posted here.)

Hickman participated at a nurse-in this morning at the same Target store where the November incident took place. She was joined by an estimated 50 other mothers.

“It felt great, it’s nice to see us all just coming together,” said Kelly Roth, 29, of Lake City, Texas, one of the organizers. “We shouldn’t have to sit at home or in a bathroom to (nurse.) Babies shouldn’t have to wait.”

A nurse-in took place at Whole Foods supermarket stores last summer after a Utah mother complained of how employees treated her while she was nursing. Whole Foods later issued an apology and praised the nurse-in.

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'Anonymous' hackers target US security think tank

  By CASSANDRA VINOGRADLONDON -- The loose-knit hacking movement "Anonymous" claimed Sunday to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor.

One hacker said the goal was to pilfer funds from individuals' accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.

Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor's confidential client list, which includes a range of entities from banks to Apple the U.S. Air Force to the Miami Police Department, and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.

"Not so private and secret anymore?" the group taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

Anonymous said the client list it posted was a small slice of its 200 gigabytes worth of plunder it stole from Stratfor and promised more leaks. It said it was able to get the credit details in part because Stratfor didn't bother encrypting them - an easy-to-avoid blunder which, if true, would be a major embarrassment for any security-related company.

Austin, Texas-based Stratfor provides political, economic and military analysis to help clients reduce risk, according to a description on its YouTube page. It charges subscribers for its reports and analysis, delivered through the web, emails and videos.

Lt. Col. John Dorrian, public affairs officer for the Air Force, said that "for obvious reasons" the Air Force doesn't discuss specific vulnerabilities, threats or responses to them.

"The Air Force will continue to monitor the situation and, as always, take apporpriate action as necessary to protect Air Force networks and information," he said in an email.

Miami Police Department spokesman Sgt. Freddie Cruz Jr. said that he could not confirm that the agency was a client of Stratfor, and he said he had not received any information about any security breach involving the police department.

It soon became clear that proprietary information about the companies and government agencies that subscribe to Stratfor's newsletters did not appear to be at any significant risk, and that the main threat was posed to individual employees.

Hours after publishing what it claimed was Stratfor's client list, Anonymous tweeted a link to encrypted files online with the names, addresses and account details.

"Not as many as you expected? Worry not, fellow pirates and robin hoods. These are just the "A"s," read a message posted online that encouraged readers to download a file of the hacked information.

It also linked to images online that it suggested were receipts for charitable donations made by the group manipulating the credit card data it stole.

"Thank you! Defense Intelligence Agency," read the text above one image that appeared to show a transaction summary indicating that an agency employee's information was used to donate $250 to a non-profit.

One receipt - to the American Red Cross - had Allen Barr's name on it.

Barr, of Austin, Texas, recently retired from the Texas Department of Banking and said he discovered last Friday that a total of $700 had been spent from his account. Barr, who has spent more than a decade dealing with cybercrime at banks, said five transactions were made in total.

"It was all charities, the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children.

So when the credit card company called my wife she wasn't sure whether I was just donating," said Barr, who wasn't aware until a reporter with the AP called that his information had been compromised when Stratfor's computers were hacked.

"It made me feel terrible. It made my wife feel terrible. We had to close the account."

Stratfor said in an email to members that it had suspended its servers and email after learning that its website had been hacked.

"We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other web sites," said the email, passed on to The Associated Press by subscribers. "We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained."

The email, signed by Stratfor Chief Executive George Friedman, said the company is "working closely with law enforcement to identify who is behind the breach."

"Stratfor's relationship with its members and, in particular, the confidentiality of their subscriber information, are very important to Stratfor and me," Friedman wrote.

Repeated calls to Stratfor went unanswered Sunday and an answering machine thanked callers for contacting the "No. 1 source for global intelligence." Stratfor's website was down, with a banner saying "site is currently undergoing maintenance."

Wishing everyone a "Merry LulzXMas" - a nod to its spinoff hacking group Lulz Security - Anonymous also posted a link on Twitter to a site containing the email, phone number and credit number of a U.S. Homeland Security employee.

The employee, Cody Sultenfuss, said he had no warning before his details were posted.

"They took money I did not have," he told The Associated Press in a series of emails, which did not specify the amount taken. "I think why me? I am not rich."

One member of the hacking group, who uses the handle AnonymousAbu on Twitter, claimed that more than 90,000 credit cards from law enforcement, the intelligence community and journalists - "corporate/exec accounts of people like Fox" news - had been hacked and used to "steal a million dollars" and make donations.

It was impossible to verify where credit card details were used.

Fox News was not on the excerpted list of Stratfor members posted online, but other media organizations including MSNBC and Al-Jazeera English appeared in the file.

Anonymous warned it has "enough targets lined up to extend the fun fun fun of LulzXmas through the entire next week."

The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on companies such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, as well as others in the music industry and the Church of Scientology.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Kway in Miami, Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston, Texas and Daniel Wagner in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.

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