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WASHINGTON • Unpaid internships have long been a path of opportunity for students and recent grads looking to get a foot in the door in the entertainment, publishing and other prominent industries, even if it takes a generous subsidy from Mom and Dad.

But those days of working for free could be numbered after a federal judge in New York ruled this week that Fox Searchlight Pictures violated minimum wage and overtime laws by not paying interns who worked on production of the 2010 movie “Black Swan.”

The decision by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III may lead some companies to rethink whether it’s worth the legal risk to hire interns to work without pay. For many young people struggling to find jobs in a tough economy, unpaid internships have become a rite of passage essential for padding resumes and gaining practical experience.

“I’m sure this is causing a lot of discussions to be held in human resource offices and internship programs across the country,” said David Yamada, professor of law at Suffolk University in Boston.

There are up to 1 million unpaid internships offered in the United States every year, said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank. He said the number of internships has grown as the economy tumbled and he blamed them for exploiting young workers and driving down wages.

“The return on a college investment has fallen, students are facing higher and higher debt burdens, and the reaction of employers is to make matters worse for them by hiring more and more people without paying them,” Eisenbrey said.

In the ruling, Pauley said Fox should have paid the two interns who filed the lawsuit because they did the same work as regular employees, provided value to the company and performed low-level tasks that didn’t require any specialized training.

The interns, Eric Glatt and Alexander Footman, performed basic administrative work such as organizing filing cabinets, tracking purchase orders, making copies, drafting cover letters and running errands.

“Undoubtedly Mr. Glatt and Mr. Footman received some benefits from their internships, such as resume listings, job references and an understanding of how a production office works,” Pauley wrote. “But those benefits were incidental to working in the office like any other employees and were not the result of internships intentionally structured to benefit them.”

Chris Petrikin, a spokesman for 20th Century Fox, said the company believes the ruling was erroneous and plans to appeal.

Juno Turner, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said it was the first time a court had given employee status to young people doing the types of duties commonly associated with interns cash advance companies. The case is one of several that have been filed in recent years demanding that all interns deserve a salary.

“This is an incredibly important decision as far as establishing that interns have the same wage and hour rights as other employees,” Turner said. “You can’t just call something an internship and expect not to pay people when the interns are providing a direct benefit to the company.”

In ruling for the interns, the judge followed a six-part test outlined by the Labor Department for determining whether an internship can be unpaid. Under the test, the internship must be similar to an educational environment, run primarily for the benefit of the intern as opposed to the employer, and the intern’s work should not replace that of regular employees.

Glatt, the lead plaintiff, lamented the fact that unpaid internships have become so normal “people do it without blinking an eye.”

“It’s just become a form of institutionalized wage theft,” he said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters. Glatt has an MBA from Case Western Reserve University and said he is currently studying law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Another prominent lawsuit is challenging unpaid internships at Hearst Magazines. Last month, a federal judge in New York declined to let the interns pursue their case against Hearst as a class action.

Camille Olson, an attorney who represents employers in workplace litigation, said the Fox decision was just one judge’s opinion that may be overturned on appeal. But she said many employers are now “taking a harder look at the issue.”

“There’s a lot more interest in making sure intern programs are structured correctly or, if an employer doesn’t want to have any risk, then paying minimum wage,” Olson said.

She said many employers believe they don’t need to pay interns because they offer counseling and mentoring similar to what a teacher might offer in a vocational program.

“They view themselves as actually spending a lot of resources on these programs,” Olson said.

But Yamada, the law professor, said the growth of unpaid internships unfairly leaves out students and graduates from lower economic levels who can’t afford to work for free.

“If you’re a college kid that has to make some money over the summer, maybe you go work for a food store instead of applying for that fancy internship in the entertainment or arts industry,” he said. There’s nothing wrong with a tryout program that lets them scout out the talent, but they should at least pay minimum wage.”

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More than 190 criminal and civil actions have been brought across the country over the past two years to combat the rising problem of timeshare retail fraud involving shady telemarketing operations, federal and state officials said Thursday.

Complaints about timeshare fraud targeting sellers tripled from 2010 to 2011, when more than 6,000 people called a hotline about the problem, The Federal Trade Commission said. Last year, there were fewer, about 4,600 complaints, as the FTC and various law enforcement agencies ramped up efforts to stop the fraud, said Charles Harwood, acting director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection.

“Our message to timeshare owners is simple: Never pay for a promise, get everything in writing first, and pay only after your unit is sold,” Harwood said. “Our message to timeshare scammers is simple, too: Law enforcement agencies at every level of government are working together to put an end to this problem.”

Investigators have pursued fraud cases involving timeshare sellers in nearly every state in the country, but as a major vacation destination, Florida tops the list.

Miami U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said his office alone has filed 18 separate criminal cases against 69 defendants, including 41 involved with a now-defunct Broward County telemarketer, Timeshare Mega Media and Marketing Group Inc. More than 2,000 people were scammed out of $5 million in that case. Most of the defendants in that case, including the two owners, have pleaded guilty.

“They use very aggressive, high-pressure tactics to defraud people out of their money,” Ferrer said.

Typically the fraud starts with a cold phone call to a timeshare owner looking to sell. The caller usually says a buyer has been found — often offering more money than the owner expects — and all the owner has to do is send some upfront cash to get the deal rolling. In the Broward County case, those fees ranged from just under $2,000 to $10,000, according to court documents.

The timeshare owner never sees the money again.

“They claim sales are about to happen, but there are no buyers, and consumers lose hundreds or thousands of dollars,” said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

One such victim was Tracy Casaceli of Jupiter, who said her nightmare began in 2006 when she paid an $800 up-front fee to sell her timeshare, and nothing happened. Then two years later she got another offer, followed in 2011 by a telemarketer claiming to be affiliated with the FTC that was assigned to sell the timeshares of the original fraudulent firm — if she’d send in $2,200 up front.

This time, Casaceli said she filed a complaint with the FTC and the agency was able to get a civil judgment against the firm. Her advice: “Ask detailed questions. And call the FTC.”

All told, the two-year timeshare fraud investigation has resulted in criminal charges against 184 people across the country. In addition, 83 civil actions have been brought by officials in 28 states and 25 actions by agencies in 10 other countries.

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Five countries on emergency aid, six consecutive quarters of economic contraction and 19 million people out of work haven

FARGO, N.D.—Some local officials say they are disappointed that a TV version of the Oscar-winning movie Fargo is not going to be made in Fargo.

The FX Network said primary production of the 10-episode miniseries based on the Coen brothers 1996 classic will be shot in Canada, most likely Alberta or Manitoba.

Charley Johnson, president and CEO of Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he’s not surprised by the move because of Canada’s tax incentives to attract foreign film and television productions.

“I was afraid they might want to shoot it in Canada,” Johnson said.

FX spokesman John Solberg told The Forum newspaper that although most of the series will be shot in Canada, specific filming locations have not been determined.

“Nothing’s been finalized in terms of physical locations,” Solberg said.

North Dakota does not have an active film commission or offer tax credits to attract the production of movies and TV shows, said Sara Otte Coleman, state tourism director.

“It’s one of those games that you can’t get into without the ‘go big or go home’ mindset,” Otte Coleman said. “We’re talking millions of millions of dollars in order to compete with locations like Canada, and a few other places in the U.S. that have gone after it pretty aggressively.”

Though the movie’s story is mostly based in Minnesota, it made Fargo a household name for many across the country — and upset some of the locals who didn’t immediately like the parody. But most residents have since warmed up to the promotional benefits.

The film starred Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson, a pregnant police chief who investigates a series of murders, and William H. Macy as a car salesman who hires two criminals, played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare, to kidnap his wife. In one of the final scenes, Stormare feeds Buscemi’s body into a wood chipper, which is now on display at the city’s primary tourist centre.

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Health Minister Deb Matthews says she is open to the Ombudsman’s Office investigating complaints about the province’s health and long-term care system.

It is a marked departure for provincial governments of all stripes that have vehemently opposed having ombudsman’s office sticking its nose into what happens at hospitals and other facilities. Ontario is the only province where the ombudsman has no jurisdiction over this sector.

“I wouldn’t close the door on the ombudsman,” Matthews told the Star in an exclusive interview.

Earlier this week, Premier Kathleen Wynne appeared to slam that door shut when she rebuffed a demand by NDP Leader Andrea Horwath to give Ombudsman Andr

The price of oil fell below $93 per barrel Thursday after a survey showed manufacturing activity in China falling to its lowest level in seven months, a sign that the recovery in the world’s No. 2 economy is fading.

Benchmark oil for July delivery was down $1.37 to $92.91 per barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract declined $1.90 to close at $94.28 a barrel on Wednesday.

HSBC Corp. said a preliminary version of its monthly purchasing managers’ index fell to 49.6 for May from 50.4 in April. Numbers below 50 indicate contraction. Oil prices fell because a downturn in energy-hungry China would likely lead to a decline in crude demand.

“I think the economic slowdown in Europe, the U.S. and Japan is finally hurting China,” said Francis Lun, chief economist at GE Oriental Financial Group in Hong Kong. “It confirms a pattern since the beginning of the year of a slow decline in the manufacturing sector business cards design.”

Stock markets in Asia fell sharply and Japan’s Nikkei 225 plunged more than 7 percent as a spike higher in government bond yields and the Chinese data sparked a correction that traders said was inevitable given the benchmark’s remarkable 50 percent gain this year before Thursday’s plunge.

Brent crude, a benchmark for many international oil varieties, dropped $1.25 to $101.35 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

In other energy futures trading on Nymex:

_ Wholesale gasoline fell 2.2 cents to $2.791 a gallon.

_ Heating oil lost 3 cents to $2.838 a gallon.

_ Natural gas rose 2.3 cents to $4.215 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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In the midst of his recent testimony about the Ontario government’s gas-plant fiasco, Dalton McGuinty countered one opposition attack with the sort of axiom he favoured back when he was Premier Dad.

“You shouldn’t try to outsmart the truth,” the former premier told MPPs on a legislature committee. “We should just let it breathe.”

Voters could be forgiven in recent days, weeks and months for thinking all levels of government have been bent not just on outsmarting the truth, but on strangling it.

At City Hall, Mayor Rob Ford has essentially ignored public concerns that go to the heart of his fitness for office and personal well-being.

At Queen’s Park, McGuinty’s Liberal government decided in the election season of 2011, for what his successor has acknowledged were political reasons, to relocate two suburban Toronto gas plants without a clue how much it would cost — then grudgingly spooned out information while the scales eventually settled at about $585 million.

In Ottawa, the flagrant contempt of Conservative senators for spending rules, and the bizarre involvement of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff in trying to solve the problem with his own cheque-book, led this weekend to the resignation of the latter (making Nigel Wright the only player in the piece with an apparent sense of honour).

“All this coming together is remarkable,” said Professor Nelson Wiseman of the University of Toronto.

Professor Bryan Evans of Ryerson University agreed that there had been an “astonishing convergence” of, at a minimum, poor decision-making and flouting of accountability.

As usual, the ancient wisdom applies: It is not so much our mistakes that cause us grief; it is the length we go to defend them.

At all levels, the political response to a problem has succeeded only in making a bad situation worse. And the policies of deny, spin, ignore or anesthetize-by-talking-points have merely added to a cynicism about politics that rises as fast as voter turnout plummets.

Evans attributes the apparent unwillingness to admit misdeeds or mistakes to a more polarized, winner-take-all politics that has developed in Canada and elsewhere over the last several decades.

“It’s led to a different kind of politics a different style of political leadership which is more hard-edged, more brutal, more unforgiving, more may-the-winner-take-all and leave the hindmost to the devil.”

But what those bent on outsmarting the truth should take heed of, Wiseman told the Star, is that any such approach is less likely than it once may have been to succeed.

Wiseman’s theory is that lower levels of trust in government go hand in hand with higher levels of education.

“Canada has the highest percentage of people with degrees now than any of the OECD countries,” he said. “That leads to a public that actually has a more skeptical and critical disposition guaranteed personal loan approval.

“They’re not as intimidated as they were before. People see a politician on TV, making an argument, especially when it’s straight spin, repeating himself seven times, and think, ‘Hey, you didn’t answer the question, you sound like an idiot. I could do a better job’.”

In Ford’s case, his flight from the latest scandal about his conduct — a video in which Star reporters who have seen it say the mayor appears to be smoking crack cocaine, using homophobic and ethnic slurs — is a patently inadequate defence.

Even strong supporters, as did former Speaker of the Ontario Legislature Chris Stockwell in a tweet this weekend, are saying Ford needs to explain himself. “There is no middle ground on this one,” Stockwell tweeted. “Explain why the video is untrue or resign and get help.”

The 24-hour news cycle, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Not only will silence be taken, as silence usually is, for concurrence to a proposition, it will leave a screaming void to be filled by speculation.

Wiseman said Ford should know he functions in a more competitive contemporary media culture and works with the beady eye of modern technology always at hand.

“A lot of things which were never reported now would be,” Wiseman said. “Years ago, there was all kinds of drinking going on in the legislature. People would be really soused and it was obvious to everybody. It’s just harder to keep things undercover now.”

For Evans, there has been a change in the kind of people drawn to politics — less those with big ideas and dreams of grand national projects than those bent on shrinking government and diminishing expectations.

“We can’t talk of what we’re watching here in Toronto, sadly, without connecting it to bigger forces that have been at play for nearly 40 years,” he said.

If politics involves nothing more than shrinking things, the types attracted are less inspiring; and “if your motivations are primarily about your ambition, your career, your personal interest, then you have every interest in avoiding accountability.”

The good news, Evans said, is that he is astonished at this convergence of scandal precisely because it “doesn’t happen all the time.”

There is also the unavoidable fact that, as Dalton McGuinty said during his testimony, government (like all institutions) “consists exclusively of people, with all of their noble strengths and all of their human frailties.”

Voters would probably be satisfied if those involved would just admit to those and — as most grownups do and all leaders should — accept the consequences.

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Mayor Rob Ford is calling allegations that he was videotaped smoking what appears to be a crack pipe “ridiculous” but he has not outright denied the facts in a Toronto Star story.

Ford emerged from his office Friday, said: “Anyways, like I said this morning, these allegations are ridiculous, another story with respect to the Toronto Star going after me, and that’s all I have to say.”

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Ford ignored reporters questions and moved to an elevator to go to flag-raising ceremony held by parents of gays and lesbians.

Councillors accustomed to Mayor Rob Ford scandals and gaffes are urging him to address this most explosive allegation head on.

“It’s just shocking stuff,” said Councillor Josh Colle, an influential centrist.

“You hope it’s not true but, either way, I just hope the mayor says something as soon as possible. Because it’s salacious, it will be a massive distraction and we’re dealing with important things.

“I feel for him and his family but also for the city — we all thought the (downtown) casino was a big story but nobody is talking casinos today.”

Councillor John Parker, a former Ford ally who broke with the mayor over transit expansion, said: “I would think the mayor would be wise to address the story head on and put it to rest.

“We all hope that the inferences that are floating around are untrue and the only one who can set us straight on that is the mayor.”

“I think the business of the city hall goes on regardless of all of this but certainly it’s in the interest of all of us that we stick to business and get on with the work that people want us to do.”

Asked how shocked he is by the allegation, Parker said: “It’s at that point now that nothing seems to shock any of us around here any more.”

Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday said he didn’t believe the allegation but hoped Ford would make a full statement as soon as possible.

“Certainly we all know that videos can be altered and we certainly know that drug dealers can’t be trusted so we don’t know what we’re dealing with here and until we do I don’t have much to say,” Holyday said.

Asked if he has full confidence in Mayor Ford, Holyday said: “I do at this point.” Asked what would shake his confidence, the veteran councillor said: “Well, if these accusations were substantiated. That would certainly change a lot of things, I think, but at this point as far as I know the mayor is denying it and until such things change my position doesn’t change.”

Holyday also seemed to suggest Ford’s political enemies might be involved.

“Well, there’s a large contingent of political people that want the mayor out of office. They don’t want him to make the changes that he’s been making,” he said.

“I totally agree with the changes that he’s put forward and the agenda that he’s put forward and I’ve tried my best to support it and I will continue to support it whether he’s here or not here, but the people that are opposed to this seem to be willing to go to any lengths to make a change.”

When the Star reported that Ford was asked to leave a military gala because he appeared impaired, Holyday said he had never seen the mayor impaired and had no reason not to believe the story.

Adam Vaughan, Ford’s most vocal critic on council, said this is just the latest distraction for a mayor who seems disinterested in building a city.

“We’ve been working around the mayor since the day he was elected an on most files we achieve a consensus when we move forward. Politics is tough when you don’t have a mayor who is full-time . . . ,” Vaughan said.

“He’s a bad mayor because he makes bad decisions and he’s leading the city in a direction it shouldn’t be going.”

Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby, a fellow Etobicoke representative who has known Ford more than a decade, called the allegations “mind-blowing” and urged the mayor to address them as soon

She recommended that Ford address the issue as soon as possible.

“Come out with it,” Lindsay Luby said. “Be honest. Say, ‘Yes it happened,’ or ‘No it didn’t.’ That’s the only way to deal with something like this.

“Don’t run away from it. Just deal with it.”

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There were 69 attacks there last year, putting it well ahead of the 42 attacks in both San Antonio and Seattle.

The only good news for Los Angeles letter carriers is that unlike the national figures that show a 5% rise in letter carriers being bitten, the L.A. attacks were down from 83 the previous year. Los Angeles’ size and warm weather keep it at or near the top of the rankings most years, according to Postal Service spokesman Mark Saunders.

Chicago comes in fourth on the most recent rankings with 41 letter carries being bitten, followed by 38 in San Francisco, 34 in Philadelphia and 33 in Detroit.

Overall, the Postal Service says 5,879 letter carriers were attacked by dogs last year. Two of the attacks led to letter carriers’ deaths, one who was apparently knocked down by a dog and died from head injuries, and another who suffered a heart attack following an attack no teletrack payday loans.

The ranking is released ahead of National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which is May 19-25.

The Postal Service, which has come up with suggestions for avoiding dog attacks and keeping your dog from biting, said as big a threat as dog bites pose for letter carriers, it is only a fraction of the overall problem for the nation as a whole. The service said 4.7 million Americans are bitten by dogs annually — more than half of whom are children.

The Postal Service is in the process of cutting jobs in an effort to stem losses, although it has backed off a plan announced earlier this year to halt Saturday mail service.

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ENGLEWOOD, N.J.—Authorities have arrested three people following allegations of prostitution and drug use at a senior citizen housing complex in northern New Jersey.

Authorities have charged 75-year-old James Parham and 66-year-old Cheryl Chaney with possessing drug paraphernalia and maintaining a drug nuisance at the Vincente Tibbs Senior Citizen Building in Englewood.

Detective Capt. Timothy Torell tells The Record newspaper Parham also admitted providing prostitutes to some of his younger neighbors.

Police also charged 54-year-old Selma McDuffie, who has been suspended as a school crossing guard, with having a crack pipe.

Chief Arthur O’Keefe tells the newspaper residents were essentially prisoners in their own building.

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