Danny Puff

PARIS (Reuters) - The CEO of a U.S. tyre maker has delivered a crushing summary of how some outsiders view France's work ethic in a letter saying he would have to be stupid to take over a factory whose staff only put in three hours work a day.

Titan International's Maurice Taylor, nicknamed "The Grizz" for his negotiating style, told the left-wing French industry minister in a letter published by media on Wednesday that he had no interest in rescuing a plant set for closure.

"The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three," Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.

"I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!" Taylor added in the letter, which was posted by business daily Les Echos on its website and which the ministry confirmed was genuine.

"Titan is going to buy a Chinese tire company or an Indian one, pay less than one Euro per hour wage and ship all the tires France needs," he said. "You can keep the so-called workers."

Socialist President Francois Hollande might take some comfort in Taylor's view of his own country's business policies: "The U.S. government is not much better than the French," he said, referring to a dispute over Chinese exports.

Montebourg's office said the letter was an authentic response to Paris consulting Titan as a possible buyer of U.S. group Goodyear's Amiens Nord factory in northern France.

The minister refrained from an immediate reply: ""Don't worry, there will be a response," Montebourg told reporters on Wednesday after meeting Hollande. "It's better written down."

Union leaders were less cautious. CGT official Mickael Wamen said Taylor belonged more "in an asylum" than the boardroom of a multinational company.

DERISION

Taylor's comments are the latest blow to France's image after verbal attacks last year by Montebourg on firms seeking to shut ailing industrial sites prompted international mockery.

Combined with concerned over plans for a 75 percent "millionaires tax", Montebourg's antics drove London Mayor Boris Johnson to remark to an international business audience that it seemed France was being run by left-wing revolutionaries.

Montebourg has also lashed out at cheap imports of manufactured goods from low-wage countries like China and last year told the boss of Indian steelmaker ArcelorMittal he was unwelcome in a spat over a shuttered plant in France.

Despite having per-head productivity levels that rank among the best in Europe, economists blame France's rigid hiring and firing laws for a long industrial decline that has dented exports. Many also fault the country's 35-hour work week.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co's Amiens Nord plant employs 1,250 workers, who have been battling demands that they work more shifts or accept layoffs. The government said in January that the site faced imminent closure.

Talks with Titan over a possible purchase of the plant's farm tyre section fell through last September after a failure to reach a deal with the CGT union on voluntary redundancies.

Titan did not return calls on Monday evening for comment, but the company's website says that Wall Street analysts have dubbed Taylor "The Grizz" for his tough negotiating style.

His letter to Montebourg accuses the French government of "doing nothing" in the face of Chinese competition.

"Sir, your letter states that you want Titan to start a discussion. How stupid do you think we are?" he wrote. "Titan is the one with the money and the talent to produce tires. What does the crazy union have? It has the French government."

(Additional reporting by Christian Plumb and Elizabeth Pineau; Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - With its violent crimes, high unemployment, dwindling population and financial crisis, Detroit was named on Thursday as the most miserable city in the United States.

It toppled Miami, which held the title last year, and surpassed Flint, Michigan, Rockford and Chicago in Illinois and Modesto, California, which rounded out the five most unhappy urban areas.

"Detroit's problems are hardly news. It has been in a four-decade decline paralleling the slide in the U.S. auto industry," according to Forbes.com, which compiles the yearly ranking.

Earlier this week, a panel of experts said the automotive city was facing a fiscal emergency and potential bankruptcy, as well as a possible financial takeover by the state.

Flint, which is being run by an emergency manager appointed by the state governor more than a year ago, faces similar problems and has some of the worst crime rates in the country and a jobless rate of 11.3 percent, according to Forbes.com.

To compile the list, Forbes looked at 200 of the country's largest urban areas and ranked them on factors including crime rates, foreclosures, taxes, home prices, commute times, weather and decreasing populations.

Violent crime, high foreclosure rates and declining home prices pushed Chicago into the fourth spot, along with the high expense of living there.

New York, which came in at No. 10, was also cited for its high cost of living. The Big Apple has one of the country's highest income tax rates and longest average commuting time at 36 minutes.

The full list of the top 20 most miserable cities can be found at www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2013/02/21/detroit-tops-2013-list-of-americas-most-miserable-cities/

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) A royal penguin that became stranded on a beach more than 1,000 miles from its sub-Antarctic home has died at a New Zealand zoo.

The penguin was emaciated and suffering kidney failure when it arrived at the Wellington Zoo after being found Sunday by hikers.

The zoo did the best it could, Lisa Argilla, the facility's veterinary science manager, said Friday. They suspect the penguin suffered multiple organ failure. It was severely underweight, she said, and had no reserves.

The penguin was about a year old, 50 centimeters (20 inches) long and weighed about 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) when it arrived, Argilla said. Royal penguins can grow to about 75 centimeters (30 inches) and 5.5 kilograms (12 pounds).

They have a yellow crest, eat krill and squid and generally live around Macquarie Island, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. They are considered a threatened species but not endangered. They shed all their feathers during an annual molt, which the New Zealand penguin had been doing when found. Its sex had not been determined.

It was just the fourth time over the past 100 years that a royal penguin has been found on the North Island of New Zealand.

Jenny Boyne, who lives near Tora Beach where the penguin was found, said she drove it to the zoo in a fish crate after staff suggested she bring it in.

"It sat down like a little quiet lamb," she said.

The bird stood up briefly a couple of times and honked but generally lay still for the two-hour journey, she said. She blasted the air conditioning and spritzed the bird with water after zoo staff instructed her to keep it cool.

It had revived memories of another penguin, an emperor nicknamed Happy Feet, that arrived in 2011 and whose recovery at the zoo captured the hearts of many before he was released.

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NEW YORK (AP) Dan O'Brien's "The Body of an American" and Robert Schenkkan's "All the Way" have been named the inaugural winners of a theater award honoring the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Columbia University on Friday said the playwrights will share the award and $100,000, one of the largest prizes given for dramatic writing.

The Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History honors a new play or musical that explores the United States' past and deals with great issues of the day.

The play by Schenkkan, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for "The Kentucky Cycle," begins in November 1963 with Lyndon B. Johnson's sudden ascension to the presidency following the assassination of Kennedy's older brother John F. Kennedy and ends 12 months later with Johnson's historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. "All the Way" premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2012.

O'Brien's play is a story of war and war reporting that was inspired by the experiences of Paul Watson, who won a Pulitzer for a 1993 photo of a dead U.S. Army Ranger dragged through the streets of Somalia's capital. It premiered at Portland Center Stage last year.

The other finalists were "Hurt Village," by Katori Hall; "Party People," by the performance group Universes; and "Rapture, Blister, Burn," by Gina Gionfriddo.

The prize was established by Kennedy's sister Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith in consultation with playwright Tony Kushner. It will be announced each year on Feb. 22, the anniversary of Kennedy's birth. The Massachusetts senator died of cancer in 2009.

Plays and musicals that received their first professional productions in 2012 were eligible for the prize. The winners were selected by a panel of nine judges that included playwrights Lynn Nottage, Itamar Moses, Diana Son and Brian Yorkey and Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger.

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Online: http://kennedyprize.columbia.edu

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - British vegetarian rock singer Morrissey's concert in Los Angeles next week will be a little more meaty than the former Smiths frontman had initially hoped.

The longtime animal rights activist said earlier this week he had urged the Staples Center arena to close the concessions of fast-food chain McDonald's and to halt the sale of meat by other outlets at the venue for his March 1 performance there.

Morrissey's representatives said in a statement on Monday that Staples Center had agreed to the request, and they added it would the first time that all vendors within and around the Los Angeles venue would be 100 percent vegetarian.

But Staples Center arena operator Anschutz Entertainment Group, or AEG, said on Thursday that meat would still be on menus.

"As of right now, there will be meat options for fans," Staples Center spokeswoman Cara Vanderhook told Reuters.

It was unclear how the apparent confusion arose.

AEG will also roll out a special line of meatless food concessions for fans, including vegan sloppy Joes, vegan sushi, and hummus and pita bread.

The animal rights pressure group PETA recently named Staples Center as the most vegetarian-friendly venue in professional basketball. The National Basketball Association's Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers play their home games at the arena.

Morrissey, 53, who co-wrote The Smiths' 1985 song "Meat Is Murder," postponed a series of concerts on his North America tour last month after being hospitalized for a bleeding ulcer.

The singer is expected to relaunch the tour with a performance on U.S. late-night talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" next week.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The teenage star of the Oscar-nominated Canadian drama "War Witch" will get to travel from her native Congo to the Academy Awards in Los Angeles after she received a last-minute visa, the film's U.S. distributor said on Thursday.

Amateur actress Rachel Mwanza, 16, who grew up an orphan on the streets of capital Kinshasa, received her visa to the United States earlier in the week and will arrive in Los Angeles on Friday, two days ahead of Sunday's Oscar ceremony, a spokeswoman for distributor Tribeca Film said.

The French-language film is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at Hollywood's annual Academy Awards.

"To have her (Mwanza's) journey end on the red carpet is beyond anything she could have dreamed of," director Kim Nguyen said in a statement.

Mwanza will also visit Canada in the coming weeks for the Canadian Screen Awards and Quebec's Jutra Award for Francophone cinema in March.

"War Witch," set in sub-Saharan Africa, focuses on Mwanza's character Komona, who at the age of 12 is forced by anti-government rebels to kill her parents and fight as a child soldier.

Mwanza won Best Actress awards at the Berlin and Tribeca film festivals last year for the role.

The film, titled "Rebelle" in French, touches on family, love and the possibility of finding happiness after years of trauma and war and has been praised by critics for its poignancy and sensitivity.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)

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(Please note that this story contains strong language in paragraphs 10 and 21.)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Shia LaBeouf is taking a cue from his former co-star Alec Baldwin and using Twitter to defend his actions - in this case his split from "Orphans" on Broadway.

The show, which begins previews in less than a month, was to be the "Transformers" star's Great White Way debut. In a brief statement Wednesday, the actor's departure was attributed to those pesky "creative differences."

But LaBeouf, whose propensity to over-share has gotten him in trouble in the past, took to Twitter within hours of the announcement to post private emails from the show's director Daniel Sullivan and co-stars Baldwin and Tom Sturridge.

He also mused about the role of theater in society and posted his audition video for the show (he's twitchy, intense and, it must be said, pretty convincing as a criminal with a short fuse).

The correspondence does little to clarify the reasons for his abrupt exit, though his exchange with Sullivan hints at chemistry issues with Baldwin.

"I'm too old for disagreeable situations," Sullivan writes. "You're one hell of a great actor. Alec is who he is. You are who you are. You two are incompatible. I should have known it. This one will haunt me. You tried to warn me. You said you were a different breed. I didn't get it."

But an individual close to the production told TheWrap that the split had nothing to do with Baldwin; it was due to conflicts between the star and the show's producers, Frederick Zollo and Robert Cole.

Spokespeople for the production did not respond to requests for comment.

In his emails, LaBeouf also demonstrates a flair for the dramatic that New York theater critics will be denied an opportunity to see in the flesh.

"My dad was a drug dealer," LaBeouf writes. "He was a shit human. But he was a man. He taught me how to be a man. What I know of men Alec is."

"A man owns up," he adds. "That's why Mark McGuire is not a man."

If the message from Baldwin is to be believed, LaBeouf's former cast-mate wishes him well.

After LaBeouf apologizes for creating a "disagreeable situation," Baldwin assures him he doesn't have an "unkind word to say about you."

"I've been through this before," Baldwin writes. "It's been a while. And perhaps some of the particulars are different. But it comes down to the fact that what we all do now is critical. Perhaps especially for you. When the change comes, how do we handle it, whether it be good or bad? What do we learn?"

A spokesman for Baldwin declined to comment and a spokeswoman for LaBeouf did not respond to requests for comment.

Sturridge also is complimentary in his note to LaBeouf.

"I was stunned by the work you were doing, the performance you were giving," he writes."I think you lifted the play to a place higher than maybe it even deserved to be."

This is not the first time that LaBeouf has gotten in trouble for running his mouth off in public. In the past he irritated Steven Spielberg by speaking ill of their collaboration on "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"; said Oliver Stone played too nice when they teamed up on "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps," and once revealed that he hooked up with "Transformers" co-star Megan Fox when she was on a break from her husband Brian Austin Green.

His frank talk and propensity to criticize former collaborators has inspired at least one high-profile rebuke.

Harrison Ford told Details Magazine that he was displeased by his co-stars comments about the Indiana Jones sequel.

"I think I told him he was a f---ing idiot," Ford said. "As an actor, I think it's my obligation to support the film without making a complete ass of myself."

On Wednesday and Thursday, LaBeouf also took the opportunity to share some colorful thoughts about acting, as well as some historical lessons of questionable veracity.

"Actors used to be buried with a stake through the heart," he tweeted. "Those peoples performances so troubled on-lookers that they feared their ghosts."

Oh, and based on his messages with Rick Sordelet, the show's fight director and a faculty member at Yale University's drama school, an MFA may be in LaBeouf's future...possibly one from a certain New Haven-based institute of higher learning.

In a message, Sordelet hails LaBeouf's work ethic and says he has been in touch with the head of the school's acting program about having him matriculate.

"It must have been difficult for others in the room to be schooled by someone who's raw talent and enthusiasm out matched theirs," Sordelet writes.

Sounds like somebody might be passing James Franco on the quad some day soon.

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(Reuters) - Hollywood couple Diane Lane and Josh Brolin are divorcing after more than eight years, their representatives said on Thursday.

"I can confirm Diane Lane and Josh Brolin have decided to end their marriage," said Lane's spokeswoman, Kelly Bush.

A source close to the couple termed the split as "amicable" and said it was a mutual decision.

The divorce will be the second for both Lane and Brolin. They have no children together.

Lane, 48, who was Oscar-nominated for her role in the 2002 film "Unfaithful," and Brolin, 45, married in August 2004 after being introduced by Barbra Streisand, the actor's stepmother through her marriage to James Brolin.

Josh Brolin played a lead role in last summer's sci-fi comedy franchise "Men in Black 3" and his most recent film appearance was the January release "Gangster Squad."

(Reporting By Noreen O'Donnell in New York; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)

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NEW YORK (AP) Shia LaBeouf is out. Ben Foster is in.

A day after LaBeouf stepped away from the play that would have marked his Broadway debut, he was replaced by Foster.

LaBeouf responded to the backstage turmoil by posting private messages from the show's actors and creative team sent to him that expressed sadness for any creative disagreements and high admiration for LaBeouf's skills.

Foster, whose film roles include "3:10 to Yuma" and "The Messenger" and who was on TV in "The Laramie Project" and "Six Feet Under," had auditioned for the revival of Lyle Kessler's play "Orphans" but had lost the role to the star of the "Transformers" franchise.

After LaBeouf left the production on Wednesday due to what were described as "creative differences," Foster was picked. After the change was announced, LaBeouf tweeted: "Ben Foster is a beast. He will kill it," in all capital letters. Foster will be making his Broadway debut.

The play, which premiered in 1983, tells the story of two orphaned brothers living in a decrepit Philadelphia row house who decide to kidnap a wealthy man. LaBeouf was to play one brother and and Tom Sturridge the other; Former "30 Rock" star Alec Baldwin will be the target.

The switch in actors hasn't delayed the show. Producers said "Orphans" will still open on March 19 at the Schoenfeld Theatre. Rehearsals restart Friday.

LaBeouf apparently stepped away from the play without burning too many bridges at least according to the messages he's posted on Twitter. The actor published email messages between him, Baldwin, Sturridge and director Daniel Sullivan that indicated a somewhat amicable, if anguished, split.

"Sorry for my part of a dis-agreeable situation," he wrote to Baldwin in an email posted on LaBeouf's Twitter feed. LaBeouf also posted his raw audition video, allowing the world to weigh in on his approach.

Baldwin apparently wrote to the younger actor: "I don't have an unkind word to say about you. You have my word."

LaBeouf also posted an image of an email he got from former co-star Sturridge, who seemed shocked by the split and called it an honor to work with LaBeouf. "I was stunned by the work you were doing," he wrote. "I think you lifted the play to a place higher than maybe it even deserved to be."

As for Sullivan, the director apparently wrote to LaBeouf after the decision was made that the actor leave the show: "This one will haunt me. You tried to warn me. You said you were a different breed. I didn't get it."

A press representative for the show said the messages were legitimate.

LaBeouf seemed still somewhat shaken by the whole experience Thursday, writing on Twitter a series of slogans with opaque meanings.

"The theater belongs not to the great but to the brash. acting is not for gentlemen, or bureaucratic-academics. what they do is antiart," he wrote in one tweet.

He also posted an image of a commiserative email apparently from Rick Sordelet, a veteran fight director, who said, "It was obvious you were going to turn in a fantastic performance." In the same message, Sordelet wrote: "It must have been difficult for others in the room to be schooled by someone who's raw talent and enthusiasm out matched theirs." It was likely a note not intended for the rest of the company to see.

LaBeouf, whose other films include "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," was also recently seen in John Hillcoat's crime drama "Lawless."

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Online: http://www.orphansonbroadway.com

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Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lady Gaga said she has undergone surgery to repair an injured hip that forced the pop singer last week to cancel the remainder of her concert tour.

The "Born This Way" singer thanked fans in a blog post on her littlemonsters.com fan website on Thursday, saying the setback was "just a bump in the road."

"As they wheeled me into surgery...I thought about all of your pain and perseverance, your unique family situations, school environments, health issues, homelessness, identity struggles," wrote Lady Gaga, who often engages with her fans about their personal problems.

"So I thought to myself, 'I'm alive; I'm living my dream, and this is just a bump in the road,'" she added.

The 26-year-old singer tweeted on Wednesday that she was heading into surgery to treat a labral tear of her right hip.

No timetable has been set for Lady Gaga to return to performing, and her tour operator said last week that she would need "strict downtime."

Lady Gaga has been on the road for two years, performing concerts on six continents.

The injury forced her to cancel some two dozen concerts in the United States as part of her "Born This Way Ball" tour.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

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