A three-minute video featuring clothes by Louis Vuitton (LVMUY) is coming under fire for showing supermodels walking the streets of Paris as prostitutes.

The video has no words and a classical music soundtrack, and shows dark and blurred images of models in lingerie waiting in dark alleyways. The women are also seen getting into cars at night and taking off their clothes in front of a car's headlights. Later, the video abruptly switches to scenes from a Louis Vuitton show at Paris Fashion Week.

Women's groups are saying the clip glamorizes prostitution. "It's a disturbing video because it combines two different worlds -- the refinement of haute couture and the violence of the sex trade," a spokeswoman for the French group Osez le Feminisme told Le Parisien. 

When a company is riding high and its competitors are wondering what its secret is, that's usually the worst time for an extremely public slip-up.

 

The folks at Buffalo Wild Wings' (BWLD) corporate offices in Minneapolis are dealing with that worst-case scenario after an employee at a Manassas, Va., outlet refused service to a group of plainclothes police officers because their guns were on display, which Virgina's NBC12 WWBT notes is usually against the restaurant's signed policy. 

 

According to the Manassas Patch, a witness decided to launch a “public awareness campaign” just after the incident and sent the entire chicken-wing-and-spo​rts casual dining empire into crisis mode.

 

The pool of stocks available to investors is shrinking. At the end of last year there were only 3,687 stocks, as measured by the Wilshire 5000 Index ($W5000), USA Today reports.

That's down from 4,008 in 2010 and 6,639 in 2000.

This trend has worried Wall Street watchers for years. Stocks are disappearing for several reasons, but you can blame the huge number of mergers and private-equity buyouts for much of the action. Dell (DELL), US Airways (LCC) and OfficeMax (OMX) are some of the names jumping off the stock market this year.

You can also blame Facebook (FB). After the social network's disastrous IPO, other companies that had been mulling offerings backed away. 

Banks have never been considered warm and friendly, and Bank of America (BAC) has ranked among the worst, landing on lists such as the "most disliked companies in America."

But the newly released database of complaints from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is giving some numbers and perspective to just exactly how much people revile B of A. The bottom line? The hate is fairly staggering. 

The biggest share of complaints consumers lodged during the past 16 months were targeted toward B of A, according to an analysis of the data from The Wall Street Journal.

Nearly 23% of the 90,000 complaints were tied to B of A, while Wells Fargo (WFC) came in second place with 14% of total complaints, and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) placed third, with 11%, The Journal found. 

 

Some lawmakers in Tennessee think they have the answer to helping poor students who are struggling in school: Reduce welfare payments to their families. 

How would it work? If a poor kid fails a grade, that family's welfare benefits could be cut by up to 30%. The theory is that the threat of less money would prompt the parents to pay attention to their child's learning and education. 

"It’s really just something to try to get parents involved with their kids," Sen. Stacey Campfield, who sponsored the legislation, told the Tennessean newspaper. "We have to do something."

An amended version of the bill -- which added tweaks such as limiting maximum penalties to parents who don't attend parent-teacher conferences -- passed a state Senate committee earlier this week, according to the publication.

 

Supported by gun-rights advocates, the hunting industry is targeting Colorado for an economic boycott because of the state's new gun laws.

"Do not spend money here, and tell the state why you don't," Colorado resident Michael Bane told hunting enthusiasts on the nationally syndicated Gun Talk Radio program. "If you cancel a hunting trip here, send a note to the Colorado Division of Wildlife."

Bane is an independent producer and host of several programs on cable TV's Outdoor Channel (OUTD). He says he'll no longer film his programs in Colorado after last week's enactment of new state laws that, among other regulations, ban large-capacity ammunition magazines and expand background checks for gun purchases.

 

One of the two high-profile, same-sex marriage cases argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this week highlights the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. This law defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman and denies married gay couples from receiving federal recognition and benefits.

But the actual case in question before the court focuses on estate tax.

 

Edie Windsor is contesting the estate taxes she had to pay after her partner, whom she married in 2007 after a 40-year engagement, died in 2009. "I brought my case against the government because I couldn't believe that our government would charge me $350,000 because I was married to a woman and not to a man," she recently said on CNN Radio.

 

Whether it's a company like Red Lobster owner Darden International (DRI) telling customers they don't spend enough, or the National Restaurant Association telling The Daily Beast that customers aren't worth the investment it would take to let them pay their bills faster, restaurant patrons in the U.S. are getting one clear message from eateries lately: The problem is you.
 

Red Medicine, a Beverly Hills Vietnamese restaurant that L.A. Weekly considers “essential,” has no issue voicing that not only to customers, but to everyone who follows those customers on Twitter as well. When would-be patrons started no-showing on their reservations in growing numbers, restaurant owner and operator Noah Ellis just started calling them out on his restaurant's Twitter feed in an attempt to shame them out of doing it again.

For regulars at Lardy McStuffOnTheWalls who may not understand why Red Medicine doesn't just give the table to someone else and move the night along, Ellis gave an explanation via Eater LA: “Either restaurants are forced to overbook and make the guests (that actually showed up) wait, or they do what we do, turn away guests for some prime-time slots because they're booked, and then have empty tables.”