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January 07, 2014 | | UNEMPLOYMENT ADVANCE Led by Nevada Republican Dean Heller, six GOP senators joined with Democrats on Tuesday to extend unemployment insurance, making it all but assured the bill will pass. New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, Indiana's Dan Coats, Maine's Susan Collins, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, and Ohio's Rob Portman all voted for the extension. Heller and Collins had both thrown their support behind the bill earlier, but Ayotte and Coats came as a last-minute surprise. The bill will bring back unemployment benefits that expired on December 28 and extend them for three months. The Daily Beast's Patricia Murphy on Heller's bold break with the Republican Party—and how he convinced five fellow Republicans to vote with him. OH BOY Those women Kim Jong Un supposedly provided Dennis Rodman must have really done a number on him. Rodman went on an angry tirade on Tuesday on CNN's New Day about the upcoming basketball game he organized for Kim's birthday on Wednesday. "I love my friend," Rodman said in Pyongyang about Kim. That wasn't even the strangest part: Rodman also railed against Kenneth Bae, the American jailed in North Korea, saying "if you understand what Kenneth Bae did" but then never elaborating. Oh and also his players? "They dared to do one thing, they came here," Rodman said. The game comes on the heels of the brutal purging and execution of Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, and others (which happened during Rodman's last trip). The Daily Beast takes a look at the team, the not-fun version of Space Jam. REVOLT French workers at a Goodyear factory in Amiens took their boss hostage Monday and held him until police intervened on Tuesday. Goodyear has been trying to shut down the plant for five years a decision that has prompted huge protests and tire bonfires. Union leaders had said they would hold these bosses unless give the workers "huge amounts of money" in exchange for closing the plant. "It's a reaction of despair," said Sylvain Niel, a labor lawyer who has worked on similar issues. A boss-napping that lasts less than a week is punishable in France with five years in prison and a 75,000 euro fine, although workers are rarely prosecuted. At the Goodyear factory, union leader Michael Wamen said the captive managers had refused offers of mattresses and blankets. IMPLICATED Federal prosecutors on Tuesday slapped JPMorgan Chase with a $1.7 billion fine for not warning them about Bernie Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme. The fine will be paid to Madoff's victims. JPMorgan, Madoff's primary bank, did not plead guilty but entered into a deferred-prosecution agreement with the United States attorney's office, which suspends indictment for two years. Federal regulators are expected to announce their own punishment toward JPMorgan, which is expected to pay a total of $2 billion for negligence in the Madoff case. Prosecutors allege that JPMorgan's computer system raised two red flags in 2007 and 2008, but employees reportedly did not follow up and in fact noted in the file that the transactions did not appear to be unusual. DISAPPOINTMENT The U.S. team just won't be the same. Gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn won't be competing at Sochi, she announced on Tuesday, because of knee injury. "I did everything I possibly could to somehow get strong enough to overcome having no ACL but the reality has sunk in that my knee is just too unstable to compete at this level," Vonn said in a statement. Vonn underwent knee surgery 11 months ago, and she said she is having another procedure soon so she can compete in the World Championships in Vail next year. Vonn, the most accomplished female skier in U.S. history, tore the anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament in her right knee and fractured her tibia at the Alpine skiing world championship in Austria last year. She further aggravated the injury in a race in December. | | 
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