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Long before Paris Hilton, there was Sunny von Bülow: rich, blond, a fixture of upper-crust New York and Newport, the very definition of a glamorous 1950s socialite.

And with her death Dec. 6 after nearly 28 years in a persistent vegetative state – a coma-like condition her husband was accused of causing with a shot of insulin intended to kill her – von Bülow, 76, will remain forever n enigma.

Born Martha Sharp Crawford – and nicknamed “Sunny” for her cheerful disposition – Bülow inherited an estimated $75 million fortune from her father, energy magnate George Crawford.
With a beauty that earned comparisons to Grace Kelly and a party budget seemingly without limit, she become one of the most sought-after women in New York City. An Austrian prince, Alfred von Auersperg, caught her eye while von Bülow was traveling with her mother in Europe at age 24. They married and had a daughter, Ala, and a son, Alexander, before divorcing in 1965

A year later, Sunny wed Claus von Bülow, a Danish businessman who ran in the same circles as oil billionaire J. Paul Getty. They had their own daughter, Cosima, but it wasn’t long before their rocky union led to scandal.

In 1980, Sunny – who suffered from hypoglycemia – was found unconscious on the floor of the couple’s Newport, R.I. mansion, Clarendon Court. The mother of three would never wake up.

Two years later, following a sensational trial that featured testimony from his mistress, the darkly handsome Claus was convicted of twice trying to kill his wife by injecting her with insulin to lower her blood sugar.

In a stunning turn-around, he was granted a second trial on appeal and was acquitted in 1985. 

The scandal received international media attention and was portrayed on screen in the 1990 film Reversal of Fortune, starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons. (Irons won an Oscar for his chilly portrayal of Claus.)

After 28 years in a coma – during which she was fed through a tube in a private hospital room surrounded by fresh flowers and photos of her children, according to the New York Times – Sunny died Saturday in a Manhattan nursing home at age 76.

“I’m sure Claus is very sad,” his lawyer Alan Dershowitz told the Associated Press. “[It’s] a sad ending to a sad tragedy that some people tried to turn into a crime. It was never a crime.”

A large shareholder in DineEquity Inc., the parent to Applebee’s and IHOP, filed forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday to take a more active role in the restaurant company.

Shares of DineEquity rose more than 30 percent to close Friday at $15.70.

The Memphis, Tenn.-based Southeastern Asset Management Inc. said in its forms that it converted its ownership filing status from the benign 13G, which is required of all shareholders that own more than 5 percent of a company, to a 13D, which typically denotes a more active investor stance.

With its 18.4-percent stake in DineEquity, Southeastern said it already has talked with DineEquity’s management, “and will have additional conversations with management or third parties regarding opportunities to maximize the value of the company for all shareholders.”

DineEquity, which has seen its stock price fall nearly 64 percent this year, has been saddled with the turnaround of casual-dining chain Applebee’s, which it acquired in late 2007 in a deal valued at about $2 billion. The company still holds a large amount of debt from the transaction, which helped widen its latest-quarter loss. The company posted a net loss of $16.4 million, or 98 cents per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, versus a year-ago loss of $11.6 million, or 69 cents per share. Its latest-quarter revenue increased to $391.2 million from $91.4 million a year ago, which was prior to the Applebee’s acquisition.

In a statement to Nation’s Restaurant News on Friday, DineEquity said that the company “maintains an active dialogue with our investors and welcomes their views and ideas.”

“We carefully consider and, where deemed appropriate, act on investor suggestions and comments,” the statement continued. ”We remain focused on revitalizing and restructuring the Applebee’s business as well as continuing IHOP’s momentum, and we will continue to evaluate all avenues for creating long-term value that are in the best interest of our shareholders.”

DineEquity operates or franchises 3,400 restaurants under its two brands.

In September, Texas judge Charlie Baird sentenced a woman to ten years’ probation for injury to a child by omission. The woman, twenty-year-old Felicia Salazar, admitted that she had failed to protect her 19-month-old child from a brutal beating by the child’s father, Robert Alvarado, and that she had failed to seek medical care for the child’s injuries, which included broken bones. In addition to other, more ordinary probation conditions (including 100 hours of community service and psychological counseling), the judge ordered Salazar not to conceive and bear a child while on probation.

Notwithstanding the case law recognizing a fundamental right to determine one’s reproductive life, Judge Baird asserted that this unusual probation condition was an appropriate one. He explained, first, that the law gives him a great deal of discretion to set any reasonable probation condition. Second, he stated that he could unquestionably have sentenced Salazar to a prison term, during which she would not have been able to reproduce. Therefore, he suggested, he had effectively imposed a less severe version of what would have been a permissible prison sentence by ordering the probationer not to have a child.

Before assessing the constitutional legitimacy of the probation condition imposed, it is useful to take a closer look at the judge’s own arguments. First, though Texas law does give a judge considerable discretion in setting conditions of probation, this fact does not relieve him of the obligation to obey the dictates of the U.S. Constitution. If one may not deprive a person of her right to procreate as punishment for a crime, then a judge who does so has violated the law, regardless of what Texas statutes purport to authorize.

Second, on the question of Salazar’s not being able to procreate inside a prison anyway, such an argument may prove too much. There are many things that one cannot do inside a prison – including organizing a rally to protest an unfair law – that do not thereby become fair game as a probation condition.

The inability to procreate in prison is, to some degree, an incidental byproduct of confinement. To make it, instead, a deliberate and targeted intervention in an otherwise free person’s life is quite a different matter. Indeed, the death penalty incidentally eliminates a condemned person’s ability to do anything, once dead, but this does not mean that every deprivation that falls short of death (including compelled fasting, the removal of limbs, or a refusal to permit any expression of ideas) is necessarily acceptable.

The judge’s assumptions about his authority to prohibit Salazar from conceiving a child are therefore questionable. Nonetheless, we might ask, should a judge be able to order a person not to conceive?

Ricki Lake has trimmed 140lbs. from her all-time top weight of 270 pounds – and says she is holding steady.

“I can’t believe I was a fat person for most of my life,” the former talk show host, rocking a sexy black Herve Leger dress (size small), told PEOPLE at a recent benefit for the New Space for Women’s Health, a New York City birthing center slated to open in 2010.

“I didn’t have surgery and I worked hard. There’s no secret. I’m active. I watch what I eat,” Lake, 40, adds.

But she’s certainly not immune to the pressure to stay thin. “According to Hollywood standards, I’m not a thin girl. I’m a normal girl,” says the mom of two boys, Milo, 11, and Owen, 6. “I don’t want to perpetuate that obsession but yet I am also guilty of wanting … to lose weight.”

“I’m just grateful that I have sons and not daughters because it’s that much harder,” she says.

Lake sticks to meals delivered by a service called Fresh Dining (”It’s organic, it’s fresh, and I still love it,” she says) but admits unpredictable factors in life could one day interfere.

“With the weight stuff I don’t have any answers,” she says. “Something tragic in my life could happen and I could balloon and gain weight. I can’t promise I will be like this forever.”

Recently, Lake has been focusing on making a sequel to her 2007 documentary The Business of Being Born, and is working on a guide to pregnancy, due out in May.

And with the holidays in full swing? “I will be really conscious because I have this book coming out and I want to look great,” she says. “I don’t need to lose anymore weight. [But] I don’t want to go backwards. So I’m not going to pig out this Christmas.”

Amid less-than-jolly projections for holiday spending, restaurants are wrapping their gift cards with extra perks to tempt shoppers.

Many chains are offering such rewards as free food and separate gift cards for purchasers and independent restaurants are even banding together to offer gift cards, all in the face of forecasts for a weak holiday shopping season. This year the National Retail Federation expects total holiday gift card sales to decline more than 5 percent from last year. The federation added in a survey released last month that nearly 11 percent of consumers said they would rather shop for bargain-priced merchandise.

Restaurants are responding: Buyers of $100 in California Pizza Kitchen gift cards will each receive a $20 CPK Rewards Card; T.G.I. Friday’s is giving away $5 Bonus Bites cards with each $25 gift card purchase; and IHOP is handing out $5 coupons to any customer who buys a $25 gift card.

Higher-end chains are using a similar strategy. Ruth’s Chris Steak House said on its website that customers who buy at least $250 in gift cards will receive 10 percent of their purchase price in a bonus card. Another steakhouse operator, The Capital Grille, is offering the same deal for purchasers of at least $500 in gift cards.

Higher-end chains are using a similar strategy. Ruth’s Chris Steak House said on its website that customers who buy at least $250 in gift cards will receive 10 percent of their purchase price in a bonus card. Another steakhouse operator, The Capital Grille, is offering the same deal for purchasers of at least $500 in gift cards.

Others are offering free food or other items. Papa John’s Pizza is giving a certificate for a free medium one-topping pizza to each customer who buys a $25 gift card, and BJ’s Restaurants is handing out special edition pint glasses to purchasers of $50 gift cards. At Jamba Juice, customers who buy a $25 Jambacard can get a free 16-ounce smoothie or 12-ounce breakfast item.

Smaller operators also are looking to score in the gift card game. Union Square Hospitality Group, whose portfolio includes such well-known New York restaurants as Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern and Eleven Madison Park, is partnering with American Express in its holiday gift card promotion. Customers who use their AmEx cards to buy a $100 gift card will receive a $25 bonus card, USHG said.

Firm finances are getting a lot more scrutiny this year — including from potential lateral partners.

In good times, candidates tended to focus more on practice fit and compensation. Now they are asking more specific questions about the financial history, equity levels, borrowing habits and financing plans of the firms they are considering. And they are posing them earlier in the process, hiring partners and recruiters say.

Equity partners, in particular, have a lot at stake. That goes double in troubled times.

Former Heller Ehrman partner Michael Charlson, now at Hogan & Hartson, said he expects he and a number of Heller partners will lose between $400,000 and $500,000 in capital because the firm imploded this fall. On top of that, they won’t see any profit distributions that may have come at year’s end. The professional, personal and financial dislocation “was huge,” Charlson said, and he would not want to repeat it.

So finance questions were at the top of the agenda for Charlson, who said he interviewed with a handful of firms. “I’d be crazy not to ask,” he said. “You’re making a major investment — for most people it’s the largest except maybe their home — and the notion that you would do a little due diligence on the firm I don’t think is particularly surprising.”

Concern among lateral candidates has grown over the course of this year along with the increasingly shrill headlines from Wall Street and around the globe. Jones Day partner Joe Sims, who’s been hiring laterals on the West Coast since the summer of 2006, said that he saw a significant shift in attitudes in the early spring of this year, in tandem with the first signs of concern cropping up about Heller and other firms. Through the summer and fall, when the general economy took a sharper turn for the worse, people really started to home in on finances, he said.

“I’m seeing it from everybody,” he said. “I don’t have a conversation with a potential lateral partner where that subject doesn’t come up.”

Southern California legal recruiter Valerie Fontaine said it’s even more important to bring up now, because firms that didn’t appear vulnerable in good times have gone under. “We learned this lesson with Brobeck,” she said, referring to the 500-plus-lawyer firm whose fortunes rose and fell with the tech boom and bust before it dissolved in 2003. Fontaine said that her firm, Seltzer Fontaine Beckwith, has always asked clients to provide finance details and counseled candidates to ask whether and how retirement is funded, what the leases are and what the credit line is used for. Most law firm clients have been happy to oblige, she said.

Reed Smith partner Jack Nelson said that a couple of years ago, interviewees asked for a description of the capital requirements and a summary of the firm’s borrowing positions, including term debt. Now, candidates want to know more about leases, personal liability and the firm’s plans for capital and debt, “something that you rarely heard a couple of years ago,” he said. And they want to know that information earlier, long before an offer has been made, Nelson said. Today’s laterals seem to be using the information to weed firms out of consideration, rather than to make a final decision on a particular firm.

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman Chairman James Rishwain Jr. agreed that in previous years, a firm’s overall health wasn’t front and center: Candidates tended to focus more on potential earnings, equity buy-ins and bonus structures, Rishwain said in an e-mail.

“But now all candidates, including those who may be coming from troubled firms, are being particularly cautious and delving deeper than ever before to ensure they are joining a firm on solid financial ground,” he said.

The two unions appear to be reading from the same script with an eye to disrupting the upcoming Hollywood awards season, much as last year’s strike abbreviated the Golden Globes.

“If, God forbid, we should go on strike, you want to do it at a time when it has the most impact,” Guild president Alan Rosenberg told The Associated Press Monday. “We want to use whatever leverage we can muster.”

Federally mediated talks between the actors union and Hollywood’s major studios broke down early Saturday. The writers union ended a 100-day strike Feb. 12.

The actors union claims studios want to cut the residual fees actors receive when their work appears in reruns by shifting reruns to the Internet, where fees are a minimum of about $23 per actor, compared with more than $700 for TV reruns.

The Writers Guild of America said in an arbitration claim last week that the studios are not even paying the lower fee.

The writers union says the Internet residuals apply to films made after July 1971 and TV programs from 1977 and later, while the studios say they apply only to work done after Feb. 13 of this year.

The studios also argue any shift in reruns to the Internet is not deliberate, and that residuals are lower there because less revenue is generated online than on TV.

“The companies have reneged on this agreement,” John F. Bowman, chair of the Writers Guild of America’s negotiating committee last year, said in a statement. “The guild will not allow this to stand.”

Outrage has spilled into the ranks of actors and is serving as fodder for their union’s push for a vote as soon as possible on whether to strike.

Ron Perkins, a 58-year-old actor with a recurring role as a doctor on NBC’s Heroes, said the issue highlighted why actors have been holding out since their contract expired in June.

“The other unions who have accepted contracts are finding out, especially with the writers, that there are some problems,” he said. “I think we need to stand behind our leadership.”

Adding residuals for material reused via Internet downloads was a “core issue” of last winter’s writers strike.

A vote on whether actors authorize a strike could take more than a month. It requires 75% approval to pass.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the major Hollywood studios, said Monday in a statement that it “simply cannot put the future of the industry at stake — even if it means that awards shows are disrupted in some way.”

The studio group refuses to alter the new media agreement that it has reached with six other labor groups, including directors, writers, stagehands and another actors union.

“SAG cannot justify why it deserves a better deal,” the group’s statement said.

Rosenberg, the actors union leader, discounted the argument that the midst of a recession was the wrong time to call for a strike.

The guild is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and Rosenberg noted the group was founded in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, after studios sought to cut actors’ pay by 50%.

“The economy is bad for us and it’s bad for the employers as well,” he said. “These hard economic times ought to induce both of us to get back to the table and avoid a work stoppage.”

“You can’t use hard economic times as an excuse to sell out the future,” he said.

The days before Thanksgiving are calibrated by shopping lists and baking times, a checklist universe clicking down to a shared meal of thanks and camaraderie. And if your universe is populated with children, that checklist becomes even more important — especially if you’re taking your feast on the road.

Deciding on a portable course that involves the under-12 demographic is pretty easy: dessert. A selection of homey pies will involve them in the preparation and hold their attention — both in the baking process and during feast-time, as the kids can take charge of serving the meal’s finale. (Let’s play restaurant!)

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CHICAGO - Restaurant chains introduced a record-high number of limited-time offers and other menu additions this October as sluggish traffic prompted them to try new customer lures, according to a Technomic report.

The foodservice consultancy said its Menu Monitor service identified 547 new items in October, the largest number of menu additions in the past five years and 40 percent higher than the 2008 monthly average of 389. Menu Monitor studies menu trends at 250 restaurant chains.

Bernadette Noone, senior program manager at Technomic, said in a statement that the large crop of new menu items could be a response to the current economic climate, which has restaurants battling both rising costs and falling traffic.

“With consumers cutting back on eating out, restaurants needed to find new ways to bring customers through their doors,” Noone said. “Many chains are using LTOs as a cost-effective way to trial new items before doing large rollouts.”

Of the 547 new menu items in October, 157 were reported as “back” on the menu, 197 were LTOs and 193 were new items, according to Technomic’s Menu Monitor.