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Gottschalks Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, saying it will use the Chapter 11 law to stay open while it seeks a buyer.

But the horrendous business climate, coupled with a squeeze on credit, will make potential buyers less likely to step forward in time. The Central Valley department store chain has a March 24 deadline to get a deal done.

"Even the buyers who want to buy can't buy," said New York retail consultant Burt Flickinger III. "Doing an auction in the depths of this retail recession is going to have a higher degree of difficulty."

The recession just claimed Mervyns and could soon force Circuit City Stores Inc., which is in Chapter 11, out of business as well. Goody's, a clothing chain in the Southeast that already said it would liquidate, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said U.S. retail sales fell 9.8 percent in December, compared with a year earlier, and were down 2.7 percent from the previous month.

The Gottschalks bankruptcy filing capped a three-month struggle for the 104-year-old Fresno retailer, a mid-priced department store that serves many Central Valley towns. The company has lost money the past two years and warned in November that it could run out of cash by late January. Last month, a bailout plan collapsed.

"A bad day in Fresno," said Gottschalks board member Joseph Penbera. "A sad day for a lot of communities, if we don't save this."

But he dismissed the idea that Gottschalks can't survive. "Somebody could pick this company up relatively cheaply and have $600 million in (annual) sales," he said. "We feel there is real value in Gottschalks going forward."

The company, which employs 5,200 workers, obtained new financing and said it will operate business as usual. But under the terms of its new loan, it must have a sale completed by March 24, according to papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

"We just have a very short window in which to work," Penbera said.

Penbera acknowledged that a buyer would likely close some of Gottschalks' existing 59 stores. The company also has three specialty stores called Village East. In court papers, Gottschalks said its debts total $197.1 million.

"Whoever buys them is going to shrink it down," said Jeff Green, a consultant in Mill Valley. "I question if they'll even be able to make a deal."

The company operates four stores in greater Sacramento, and things were quiet Wednesday morning at the store at Country Club Plaza. Promotional signs announced post-holiday markdowns of up to 80 percent off. Shoppers struggled with the news.

"We're some of their biggest customers," said Gloria Walloupe of Sacramento, who's shopped Gottschalks in Fresno and Sacramento for 30 years. "We hope it stays open. I can always find something."

Gottschalks' troubles, along with store closures recently announced by Macy's (none in Sacramento), were too much for Bonnie Riley of Sacramento.

"It's scary," she said. "It's scaring me to death."

The bankruptcy protection filing sent Gottschalks' stock down 3 cents a share, to 15 cents, on the electronic "pink sheets" market.

Although it went public in 1986, Gottschalks has retained a family, community-oriented culture, especially in its Fresno hometown. Joe Levy, the grand-nephew of founder Emil Gottschalk, remains a board member.

"The hope is that it's a reorganization and they haven't closed the doors," said Al Smith, president of the Fresno Chamber of Commerce. "Mervyns went away, and that's a shame, but there isn't the emotional attachment in this community. … A lot of people in this community were raised going to Gottschalks."

Traditional department stores have been hammered in recent years by competition from discounters and high-end retailers. Gottschalks also may have been stretched thin by the distribution costs associated with its extended footprint, with stores as far away as the Palm Springs area and Fairbanks, Alaska.

Although it was profitable through 2006, revenues have suffered in recent years. In the fiscal year that ends Jan. 31, Gottschalks expects to lose $12 million on a cash-flow basis, according to court papers. Revenue is expected to drop 11 percent, to $557 million.

sources:http://www.sacbee.com/288/story/1543493.html

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- One of the pirates who held a Saudi-owned oil supertanker off the coast of Somalia before releasing it for ransom over the weekend told CNN how five in his group drowned in an operation gone wrong.
A small aircraft drops a ransom payment during a flight over the Sirius Star on Friday.

Pirates seized the Sirius on November 15. A $3.5 million ransom payment -- down from the initial demand of $25 million -- was dropped by parachute onto the ship Friday, but the pirates delayed the vessel's release after the drownings.

"Other pirates on the shore wanted a tip from the pirates on the Sirius Star, so they started to fire in the air as our people approached the land," Libaan Jaama told CNN. "When our pirates heard the shots, they thought they would be robbed, so they tried to return to the tanker. In that quick turn the boat capsized."

Jaama said he was mourning his friends, who, along with other pirates on board, took 23 crew members hostage. The Kenya Seafarers Association said the crew -- which included citizens of Croatia, Great Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia -- was in "good health and high spirits" when the vessel was released Saturday.

The supertanker, owned by Vela International Marine Ltd., a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian-based Saudi Aramco, was the largest ship ever hijacked by pirates. The ship is a VLCC, or "very large crude carrier," and more than three times the tonnage of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the U.S. 5th Fleet said.

The tanker's capture in November sparked fears for its enormous cargo. The Liberian-flagged tanker was carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil worth about $100 million when it was captured.

Andrew Mwangura of the Kenya Seafarers Association said it would have been a "disaster" if the pirates had fired guns aboard the ship, harming the cargo or igniting a fire.

Hijackings off East Africa are a cause of growing international concern, spurring a number of international navies to patrol the pirate-wracked Gulf of Aden.

Pirates attacked nearly 100 vessels and hijacked as many as 40 in the waters off the coast of Somalia in 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau. See how pirate attacks peaked in 2008
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The Gulf of Aden links the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. About 20,000 oil tankers, freighters and merchant vessels pass along the crucial shipping route near the largely lawless Somalia each year.

The financial and human costs of piracy are extensive. Ships ranging from luxury yachts to the Saudi supertanker have been held for ransom. At least one major company pulled its ships from the Gulf of Aden region in 2008, meaning cargo bound for Europe had to round the African continent rather than use the Suez Canal.

The pirates are based in Somalia -- a land racked by poverty and conflict -- and say hijacking ships is all about the money and the lifestyle.

"We have the best way of life," Jaama said. "We drive in white SUVs, we enjoy driving them and there is absolutely no difficulty in our life."

Jaama warned the flotilla of coalition warships in the region ready and authorized to strike at Somali pirates to back off.

"Those foreign forces are making a mistake targeting pirates because we only hunt in our waters," he said. "If they come to our borders, we will think of steps to take against them."

sources:http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/01/12/somalia.pirates/

A scary movie in every way except the ones that matter, "The Unborn" draws a dismaying line from the ghettos of the Holocaust to the Hollywood horror ghetto

"It has fallen on you to finish what started in Auschwitz," intones Sophie, the World War II survivor Jane Alexander plays, clutching a Star of David and a soupy German accent, and speaking the sort of dialogue that sounds like an opening line from a Judeo-digital video-game - "The Legend of Zelda Rubinstein."

In a movie bloated with Jewish kitsch, Rubinstein, that diminutive medium from those "Poltergeist" movies ("Carol Ann? Carol Ann?"), is conspicuous by her absence. Zelda, Casey Beldon needs you. Sophie explains that Casey and her friends (Meagan Good, Cam Gigandet) have been ensnared by a story of Nazi genetic experimentation and supernatural bunk that involves the dead twin brother Casey knew nothing about. Until just now. Is it him she's seeing all over her Chicago suburb or a long-lost concentration camp relative?

For almost 45 minutes, Odette Yustman, the woman playing young, dull Casey, cuts a gawkable figure for the camera. She can pivot in her panties, cock her head to one side, and yank open a medicine cabinet door like no one before her. And yet she seems less than human.

"Some people are doorways," Casey observes, in the midst of a metaphysical revelation. And where Yustman's acting is concerned, some people are doors.

The movie has what it thinks is a provocative idea: a Jewish "Beloved," perhaps. But it also has a heroine who appears to be getting in touch with her Judaic self in the least flattering ways. She learns of dybbuks and becomes the object of the rare kosher exorcism. The movie's writer and director, David S. Goyer (he wrote the "Blade" movies and "Batman Begins"), has spent most of his career with his head in the science-fiction, horror-thriller, comic-book clouds. Here he combines his interests into one gruesome exercise.

What begins as a disposable teen spookfest (Girl, don't go in there) ends in a nutty, barely Semitic bloodbath (Dude, don't go there). For good measure, Gary Oldman - as Rabbi Joseph Sendak - blows a shofar, and Idris Elba casts out demons before becoming one himself.

"The Unborn" joins a growing glut of Holocaust- and Nazi-themed material -- "Valkyrie," "Defiance" - that are long on posturing, suppositions, and righteousness, yet short on moral complexity. Nazism and its crimes have lately inspired theme parks more than actual movies. Too many rides on that roller coaster and I feel sick.

source:http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2009/01/10/nazi_demons_haunt_the_unborn/

The crowd was expectant, the media throng hurtled into the hall at the Moscone Centre and fought for the best camera position, and the audience gave the speaker the usual warm welcome accorded to the keynote presenter at Macworld.

So why did an hour and a half spent listening to details of Apple's shiny new products leave me just slightly underwhelmed - at least until the last five minutes? I don't think it was entirely the fault of Steve Jobs' less than charismatic stand-in Phil Schiller. Sure, he didn't pepper his keynote with as many "awesomes" and "really cools" as his boss. But then he didn't have anything really awesome to unveil.

When he started with a slide promising Three New Things, I was mildly excited. An iPhone nano? A tiny notebook computer? A big price cut? Err, no.

First, we had nearly an hour on an upgrade to the iLife suite of software. Sure, the upgrades to iMovie and iPhoto looked great. Facial recognition and geo-tagging is a clever way or organising your photos, and iMovie's latest incarnation seriously impressed my cameraman who uses far more expensive professional video editing software. But, hey, we get an upgrade to iLife every year, don't we? Hardly really new, and we didn't need all the wearisome details.

Then another twenty minutes on an upgrade to iWork, Apple's productivity software. But does anyone really use this rival to Microsoft Office, apart from hardcore Mac devotees who wouldn't sully their hands with anything emanating from Redmond? Ah, but here was something really revolutionary - iwork.com. So Apple will now allow you to put your documents online in the "cloud" so that they can be accessed anywhere by anyone. But even though it will start off as a free beta, it will eventually become a paid-for service. Just a minute - Google offers something similar , if less sophisticated, for nothing. So is this really going to change the world.

The final "new" thing was a 17" Macbook Pro. So does an extra two inches really count as novel? Phil Schiller made great play of a battery life of up to eight hours. That sounds great - but it's achieved by embedding the battery in the laptop. So in the unlikely event that the power supply fails, you will end up being without your computer for days while it is repaired.

That was the point I got up and headed for the exit to tell my bosses in London that Macworld had produced nothing new. But luckily there was One More Thing - and it was pretty good.

The deal with the big four record labels to make every track on iTunes DRM-free may well be the day that marks the demise of the copy-protection software for music. It's also an important moment in the fractious relationship between Apple and the music industry. Each side has got a bit of what it wanted - Apple has the DRM-free music Steve Jobs called for nearly two years ago, while the labels have got some wriggle room on pricing, with three different prices for tracks.

So we were relieved to emerge at last with a story. But for me the highlight was the show's finale, Tony Bennett singing "The Best is Yet To Come." The only problem was that the Apple faithful emerged from the Moscone Centre wondering whether that was really true.

source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/01/macworld_whats_new.html

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