My children are fans of the food at Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG). Soft, fresh tacos; black beans; melted cheese - what's not to like? So I was intrigued when I read about a payment policy that the restaurant chain uses in some locations. It's called "rounding" (which, by coincidence, my daughter is learning about at elementary school).

Tim Boyle/Getty ImagesThe Consumerist recently riffed on a column in The Star-Ledger, which reported on Chipotle's practice of rounding the change in receipt totals for cash transactions at some restaurants. These locations do this so that cashiers don't have to handle lots of coins, which tends to slow the lines down. If you've ever been to Chipotle, you know that the food is dished out in assembly-line style, where you place your order and then walk along the counter, telling the staff that, yes, you'd like some guacamole, please, but hold the rice. You pay at the end of the line.

As The Consumerist pointed out, rounding to the nearest nickel isn't really a big deal, as long as the restaurant is rounding down. But if it rounds up, you pay extra - even if it's just a penny or two.

In one sense, this seems like a smart idea. Who wants excess change clogging up their pockets, anyway, especially if it means you'll get your food faster? But at least one customer objected to this "Chipotle-style math," the New Jersey newspaper reported, and sent in his receipts for review:

    "On the first, dated July 13, the nine items added up to $32.93. There was $2.31 in tax. The total should have been $35.24, but next to the 'total' line on the receipt, it said $35.25. The next receipt, with the same sale date, showed a subtotal of $8.64. The tax was $0.60, so the grand total should have been $9.24. But no. With Chipotle-style math, the total was $9.25."

I called a Chipotle spokesman, Chris Arnold, who said the chain uses rounding in a few "high volume" markets,  including New York, New Jersey and some locations in Boston. The idea is to reduce the time cashiers spend doling out pennies, to keep the lines moving quickly. (In some locations, he said, "there are lines out the door as soon as we open.") The total, he said, was previously rounded either up or down, to the "nearest nickel." The result generally was a wash for the restaurant, he said. And for most customers, he said, "I think generally it's been a nonissue."

But a few penny-pinchers (my description, not Mr. Arnold's) did object. So as of August, he said, the chain is only rounding down. (Also, receipts should now have a line showing the impact of the rounding math.) He said he didn't know of other outlets that round receipts.

Do you think rounding of meal receipts - up or down - to eliminate pennies is a reasonable policy for a busy restaurant?

The owner of an Indian clothing store said Wednesday that he would only change its name from "Hitler" if he was compensated for re-branding costs, amid a growing row over the new shop.

The outlet, which sells Western men's wear, opened 10 days ago in Ahmedabad city in the western state of Gujarat with "Hitler" written in big letters over the front and with a Nazi swastika as the dot on the "i".

"I will change it (the name) if people want to compensate me for the money we have spent -- the logo, the hoarding, the business cards, the brand," Rajesh Shah told AFP.

He put the total costs at about 150,000 rupees ($2,700).

Shah insisted that until the store opened he did not know who Adolf Hitler was and that Hitler was a nickname given to the grandfather of his store partner because "he was very strict".

"I didn't know how much the name would disturb people," he told AFP by telephone from Ahmedabad. "It was only when the store opened I learnt Hitler had killed six million people."

Members of the tiny Jewish community in Ahmedabad condemned the store's name, while a senior Israeli diplomat said the embassy would raise the matter "in the strongest possible way."

"People use such names mostly out of ignorance," Israel's Mumbai Consul General Orna Sagiv told AFP.

Esther David, a prominent Indian writer in Ahmedabad who is Jewish, said she was "disturbed and distressed" by the shop, but added that some Indians used the word "Hitler" casually to describe autocratic people.

David said Jewish residents had sought to change Shah's mind about the store's name and told him about the Holocaust.

The row evoked memories of a controversy six years ago when a Mumbai restaurant owner called his cafe "Hitler's Cross" and put a swastika on the hoarding, claiming Hitler was a "catchy" name.

The restaurant owner eventually agreed to change the name after protests by the Israeli embassy, Germany and the US Anti-Defamation League.

The arrival of a high-profile, reforms-oriented economist has created a stir in India’s finance ministry, which presides over an economy that has dramatically deteriorated over the past 12 months.

But Raghuram Rajan’s enthusiasm for reforms may not be enough to precipitate change in the government’s policies.

Dr. Rajan, the former International Monetary Fund chief economist who took charge as chief economic adviser to India’s finance ministry on Wednesday, didn’t have much to say on the first day of his job.

“I have no immediate comments to make on the Indian economy. As soon as we know more of the ground realities, I will speak,” he told reporters who had besieged his new office in New Delhi.

This reticence is not typical of Dr. Rajan, who is famous for warning of impending financial collapse at a 2005 gathering to honor former U.S. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Dr. Rajan has firm views on what ails India’s economy, which can be gleaned from a speech he made in April.

He is a strong believer in liberalization and privatization and says that the economic reforms of 1991 that set India on a high-growth path need to be carried forward.

“We need to become paranoid again [about growth], as we were in the early 1990s,” he said in the speech. To start with, he wants the government to raise fuel prices in quick steps and eventually deregulate them.

India subsidizes the prices of certain fuels such as diesel, cooking gas and kerosene to make them affordable to more people. These sops are blamed for swelling India’s fiscal deficit and fuelling inflation by keeping the consumption of fuel artificially high.

But Dr. Rajan is not alone in calling for the end to fuel subsidies. Apart from private-sector economists, the Reserve Bank of India and the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council are strong advocates of subsidy reform.

What makes this reform difficult is a) the move is politically unpalatable and b) the ruling Congress party has to bring on board coalition partners before it can take such a step, a tough task for a politically contentious move.

“Deficit-cutting is a good thing, but the finance ministry has political compulsions,” says Ashima Goyal, who advises the Indian central bank on monetary policy.

Dr. Rajan’s predecessor, Kaushik Basu, had also arrived with strong credentials as an economist. He was a professor of economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. Still, there’s not much he managed to push through in terms of reforms in the time he was India’s chief economic adviser.

Gaga has reportedly decided to record her new album, ARTPOP, completely in the nude. "Gaga has really taken to the idea of naked recording," a source allegedly told the UK's The Sun. "She has been recording vocals while she’s been completely starkers. She thinks it makes her voice sound better.”

Mother Monster is certainly not shy about baring her body, in public or in private.

Earlier this month, she posted a home video to her official YouTube page, in which she dances around her home and lifts her sweater to flash the camera [NSFW]. In July, Gaga posted a nude photo of herself online on her social networking site LittleMonsters.com, wearing nothing but nude-colored underwear and holding her knees against her breasts [NSFW]. She also got naked for her perfume ad with little men crawling all over her body.

Naked studio sessions seem quite tame, comparatively speaking.


Her makeup artist, Tara Savelo tweeted:

To which Gaga responded that ARTPOP will have a "stoned Disney Princess kinda vibe."

"Let's just say I feel, I feel that when I wrote Born This Way, I demonstrated a sense of maturity," she told MTV News. "And I feel that on the next album, there's a lack of maturity — it's a tremendous lack of maturity or sense of responsibility."

Three-and-a-half  year old Hunter Spanjer, who is deaf, signs his name by crossing his forefinger and index finger and moving his hand up and down.

To his family, friends and those who know the Signing Exact English (S.E.E.) language that the Grand Island, Neb., boy uses, that gesture uniquely means "Hunter Spanjer."

But to Hunter's school district, it might mean something else. The district claims that it violates a rule that forbids anything in the school that looks like a weapon, reports KOLN-TV.

And Hunter's parents claim that Grand Island Pubic Schools administrators have asked them to change their son's sign language name.

"Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous," Hunter's grandmother Janet Logue told the TV station. "This is not threatening in any way."

Hunter's father Brian Spanjer said, "It's a symbol. It's an actual sign, a registered sign, through S.E.E."

The family told KOLN that lawyers from the National Association of the Deaf may push for Hunter's right to sign his name at the school.

Jack Sheard, Grand Island Public Schools spokesperson told KOLN, "We are working with the parents to come to the best solution we can for the child."

One Grand Island resident said she disagrees with the school.

"I find it very difficult to believe that the sign language that shows his name resembles a gun in any way would even enter a child's mind," Fredda Bartenbach said in the news report.

Authorities say a storm surge driven by Hurricane Isaac is overtopping a levee in a thinly populated part of mostly rural Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans.

Parish spokeswoman Caitlin Campbell said water was running over an 18-mile stretch of the levee early Wednesday and some homes had been flooded.

Sheriff's deputies from St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes were going house-to-house looking for residents who'd remained after an evacuation order.

Parish President Billy Nungesser said a portion of the roof of his home had blown off. He described wind-driven rain coming into his home as "like standing in a light socket with a fire hose turned on."

Dozens of residents in Plaquemines Parish are stranded and trapped inside homes in the area, The Times-Picayune reported.

"The devastation of my house is worse than Katrina and the flooding in Woodlawn is worse than Katrina, so those things tell me that the damage on the east bank is worse than Katrina," Nungesser told The Times-Picayune.

Hurricane Isaac knocked out power, flooded roads and pushed water over the top of a rural Louisiana levee before dawn Wednesday as it began a slow, wet slog toward a newly fortified New Orleans, seven years to the day after Katrina.

Wind gusts and sheets of rain pelted the nearly empty streets of New Orleans, where people watched the incoming Isaac from behind levees that were strengthened after the much stronger Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

Water pushed by the large and powerful storm flooded over an 18-mile stretch of one levee in Plaquemines Parish south of New Orleans, flooding some homes in a thinly populated area. No injuries were reported. There have been no rescue efforts yet, due to the severity of the storm, the report said.

Isaac was packing 80 mph winds, making it a Category 1 hurricane. It came ashore at 7:45 p.m. EDT Tuesday near the mouth of the Mississippi River, driving a wall of water nearly 11 feet high inland and soaking a neck of land that stretches into the Gulf of Mexico. Its next major target was New Orleans, 70 miles to the northwest, where forecasters said the city's skyscrapers could feel gusts up to 100 mph.

World-famous rockstars have seen it all: jet-setting to shows around the globe, partying in the most exclusive clubs and carousing with endless groupies. But Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash might have them all beat.

Slash, formally known as Saul Hudson, really saw it all when he walked in on David Bowie naked with his mom. He found the glam-rock icon in bed with his costume designer mother, Ola Hudson, when he was just 8 years old.

Slash revealed the shocking incident to Australian radio station Triple M (via NME):

    My mum started working with David professionally at first. I'm pretty sure that’s how it started. Then it turned into some sort of mysterious romance that went on for a while after that. She did his wardrobe for his whole Thin White Duke period and The Man Who Fell To Earth movie that he did. She did all that and he was around for a while.

    He was always over -– they were always together. I caught them naked once. They had a lot of stuff going on, but my perspective was limited. Looking back on it, I know exactly what was going on. When I look back on that whole combination of people, I can only imagine how freaky it was.

Bowie dated Hudson when she and Slash's father broke up.

"I really didn't like him that much, because he was the new guy in the house," Slash is quoted as saying of the Ziggy Stardust rocker during an interview with Rolling Stone in 1990. "I was really resentful."

Bowie's dating history was quite expanisve.

The singer identified himself as a bisexual during an interview with Playboy in 1976. "It's true -- I am a bisexual. But I can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Fun, too. We'll talk all about it."

In 1993, he backtracked on this statement to Rolling Stone, as reported by the Orlando Sentinel, telling the magazine he was a "closet heterosexual" because he wanted to develop his on-stage alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, as much as possible.

''I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him," Bowie told Rolling Stone. "The irony of it was that I was not gay. I was physical about it, but frankly it wasn't enjoyable.''

In 1992, Bowie married supermodel Iman. The couple recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary.

 Hurricane Isaac made its second landfall in southeastern Louisiana early Wednesday, sending up to 12 feet of water into people’s homes as an 18-mile stretch of levee was overtopped, officials said.

Officials in Plaquemines Parish said Coast Guard personnel and others were attempting to rescue people stranded on top of one levee.

The storm surge also flooded areas of the Mississippi coast with water rising several feet in some parts, authorities said.

Some 380,000 homes and businesses were without power in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

The storm -- with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph -- hit land just west of Port Fourchon, La., at around 2:15 a.m. local time (3:15 a.m. ET), according to aircraft and radar data from the National Hurricane Center.


Caitlin Campbell, a public information officer with Plaquemines Parish, told NBC News that the water had overtopped 18 miles of levee from St. Bernard Parish Line to White Ditch.

Hurricane Isaac drenches multiple countries as it moves toward Louisiana.

Shawn Reynolds, a producer at The Weather Channel, said in a message on Twitter that Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser had said 12 feet of water was inside some houses in the area.

Nungesser added that officials were "working with U.S. Coast Guard to rescue people stranded on top of [a] levee," according to a Twitter message from The Weather Channel.

"Our main concern right now is to try to get these men to safety and anybody else that did not get out in time," he told The Weather Channel.

A fiery politician cast out of the ruling party Thursday hijacked the main memorial service for 34 striking miners killed by police, to accuse President Jacob Zuma's government of complicity in the shootings. Angry government ministers walked out.

Zuma did not attend any of the services. He called a news conference to announce a retired supreme court judge will head a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate "the facts and circumstances which gave rise to the use of force and whether this was reasonable and justifiable in the particular circumstances."

He announced a wide range of issues for the commission to investigate, including the role of London-registered Lonmin PLC, which owns the platinum mine where the violence was sparked by union rivalry.

The commission would look at Lonmin's conduct and report "whether the company, by act or omission, created an environment which was conducive to the creation of tension, labour unrest, disunity among its employees or other harmful conduct," Zuma said.

The somber and grieving tone of the memorial service at the mine was shattered by Julius Malema, who was expelled in April for sowing disunity in the African National Congress. Malema was applauded when he said the government has not intervened in the mines "because our leaders are involved in these mines." He said that President Zuma's foundation and other ANC leaders have shares in the mines.

"Our government has become a pig that is eating its children," charged Malema.

Malema's outburst came after church leaders had urged people not to use the memorial service to score political points.

About a dozen Cabinet ministers left before they could address the crowd of more than 1,000 at the mine at Marikana, 70 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

Last week's shootings were the worst display of state violence since apartheid ended in 1994 and have thrown the spotlight on growing anger at South Africa's massive inequality, poverty and unemployment.

The violence unfolded as some 3,000 rock drill operators demanded a minimum wage of 12,500 rand ($1,560). The poorest 10 percent of the population shares 1.1 billion rand ($137.5 million) while the country's richest 10 percent has 381 billion (nearly $48 billion), the Congress of South African Trade Unions noted Thursday.

Porn actor Mr. Marcus has come out and identified himself as the performer responsible for the current syphilis outbreak that has shut down production in the San Fernando Valley.

He believes he contracted the STD on set but admits that he altered his syphilis-positive test so that he could keep performing. His altered test was what started the scare and initiated the industry's self-imposed 10-day moratorium while actors are tested and treated for syphilis.

"I tried to cover it up… Because I said it was like the scarlet letter. It’s the word. Syphilis, whoa," Marcus said to XBiz. "Mr. Marcus, syphilis? Mr. Marcus, the one I worked with? The one that everybody works with? The one that’s been in this industry forever?"

In an emotional interview that brought the 18-year veteran actor to tears, Marcus said that he only altered the test because his doctor told him he would not be contagious 10 days after taking a shot of penicillin. “I have to live with this, no one else does,” he said. “I’m very sorry. I did not think that this would come out like this."

The porn actor was diagnosed with syphilis on July 12, received a penicillin shot on July 13 and returned to work 11 days later, on July 24, AVN reports. However, he still had the STD. Perhaps most disturbing, the producer of the shoot didn't ask for a paper or digital copy of Marcus' STD test. Instead, the actor showed a copy of the test on his cell phone so that the syphilis portion wasn't visible.

For a subsequent porn shoot, Marcus said he folded his test covering the syphilis portion and photocopied it. However, a producer noticed this time that the numbers were missing and called Marcus out on it.