SAO PAULO — A Brazilian court ruled this week that McDonald’s must pay a former franchise manager $17,500 because he gained 65 pounds while working there for a dozen years. The 32-year-old man said he felt forced to sample the food each day to ensure quality standards remained high, because McDonald’s hired “mystery clients” to randomly visit restaurants and report on the food, service and cleanliness.
HELSINKI — The second in a pair of the largest cruise liners in the world – an extravagant behemoth spanning nearly four football fields, with a 3-D move theater, an open-air central park and room for 8,300 people – set sail Friday for its new home port in Florida. The Allure of the Seas, which cruised out of the shipyard in Finland, faces its first big test Saturday, when it must squeeze under a Danish bridge, just one foot taller than the ship – even after its telescopic smokestacks are lowered.
LOS ANGELES — A jury has absolved Anna Nicole Smith’s doctor of prescribing excessive drugs for her but convicted her boyfriend and a psychiatrist of conspiring to use fake names on prescriptions, in a case that refocused attention on the deceased model’s made-for-tabloids story.