Skechers USA Inc. will pay $40 million to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission that the footwear company made unfounded claims that its Shape-ups shoes would help people lose weight and strengthen their butt, leg and stomach muscles. Kardashian, Burke and other celebrities endorsed the shoes in Skechers ads.

Wednesday’s settlement also involves the company’s Resistance Runner, Toners, and Tone-ups shoes and claims of deceptive advertising for those shoes as well.

Consumers who bought the shoes would be eligible for refunds, though it’s not clear how much money they’ll get. The FTC says that will depend on how many claims are received in the eight-month filing period. Buyers can go to the FTC website to file a claim.

Most of the $40 million federal settlement would be returned to consumers, but a small amount of the settlement would be used to administer the payouts.

The settlement is related to a broader agreement also announced Wednesday that resolves a multi-state investigation led by the attorneys general from Tennessee and Ohio and involving more than 40 states. The company will provide an additional $5 million to the states, and pay $5 million in class-action attorney fees.

“The FTC’s message, for Skechers and other national advertisers, is to shape up your substantiation or tone down your claims,” said David Vladeck, director of the agency’s consumer protection bureau. For millions of consumers, he said, “the only thing that got a workout was their wallet.”

The commission settled similar charges with Reebok last year over its EasyTone walking shoes and RunTone running shoes. That $25 million agreement also provided customer refunds.

Skechers denied the allegations but said it settled to avoid long litigation.

“Skechers could not ignore the exorbitant cost and endless distraction of several years spent defending multiple lawsuits in multiple courts across the country,” said David Weinberg, the company’s chief financial officer. “While we believe we could have prevailed in each of these cases, to do so would have imposed an unreasonable burden on the company.”

The company, based in Manhattan Beach, Calif., said it has received overwhelmingly enthusiastic feedback about the shoes from thousands of customers.

Skechers billed its Shape-ups as a fitness tool designed to promote weight loss and tone muscles with the shoe’s curved “rocker” or rolling bottom – saying it provides natural instability and causes the consumer to “use more energy with every step.” Shape-ups cost about $100 and are sold at retailers nationwide.

Ads for the Resistance Runner shoes claimed people who wear them could increase “muscle activation” by up to 85 per cent for posture-related muscles and 71 per cent for one of the muscles in the buttocks, said the FTC.

The commission says Skechers falsely represented that clinical studies backed up the company’s claims about its toning shoes. The FTC’s Vladeck said the studies had defects, such as one that said people lost weight wearing the toning shoes, when in fact they gained weight.

The settlement bars Skechers from misrepresenting any tests, studies or research on its shoes in the future.

Minutes of the central bank’s April 24-25 meeting released Wednesday stated that “several members” thought additional Fed support could be needed if the recovery lost momentum or if the risks to the economy became great enough.

The minutes did not spell out what circumstances would trigger further Fed efforts to lower interest rates to boost the economy. But they did note some threats to the U.S. economy. One is Europe’s debt crisis. Another is the risk that spending cuts and tax increases that could take effect at year’s end if Congress can’t reach a budget agreement could slow growth more than expected.

The comments stood in contrast to the previous minutes, which said that only “a couple” of members expressed support for further bond purchases. Since the financial crisis, the Fed has pursued two rounds of bond purchases to try to push down long-term interest rates, with a goal of encouraging borrowing and spending.

Private economists said the change in wording to “several” from “a couple” raised the possibility of further Fed action. But analysts said they still think no further moves will occur unless Europe’s crisis worsens or a budget impasse in Congress threatens the U.S. economy.

“Nothing in the minutes changes our view on policy,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

The stock market barely reacted to the Fed minutes, which essentially confirmed investors’ expectations for the Fed’s future moves.

On Wednesday, the Fed also announced that for the rest of this year and next year all of its meetings will last for two days to allow more time for discussion. Until now, some policy meetings had lasted only one day.

The Fed also altered the schedule for releasing a quarterly update of its economic forecasts. That release will occur when the Fed meets in the third month of each quarter: March, June, September and December. After those meetings, Bernanke will discuss the Fed’s new outlook with reporters.

Before the change, those forecasts and Bernanke’s news conferences occurred in January, April, June and October. Bernanke started holding regular news conferences a year ago.

The minutes released Wednesday cover the discussion that took place at the April meeting. In a statement after that meeting, Fed officials repeated their plan to keep a key short-term interest rate at a record low until at least late 2014. The action was approved on a 9-1 vote.

Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, opposed retaining the late-2014 target date. The minutes said Lacker believed the Fed will have to start increasing interest rates by mid-2013 in order to keep inflation under control.

At a news conference after April’s meeting, Chairman Ben Bernanke left open the possibility of further Fed action to stimulate the economy. Private economists generally say another round of Fed bond buying isn’t likely unless the economic outlook darkens considerably.

Bernanke said at his news conference that more bond purchases, or other steps by the Fed, were still an option if the economy weakens. He declared that “those tools remain very much on the table.”

Critics have expressed concerns that the central bank was raising the risk of higher inflation with its long-running campaign to keep rates low.

The Fed has kept its federal funds rate, the target for overnight bank lending, near zero since December 2008. That means consumer and business loans tied to that rate have also remained at super-low levels. The lower those loan rates, the more likely it is that consumers and companies will borrow and spend to invigorate the economy.

“We are seeing the dream of the Islamic Caliphate coming true at the hands of Mohammed Morsi,” the cleric, Safwat Hegazy, blared from his podium.

“The capital of the Caliphate and the United Arab States is Jerusalem, God willing,” he added, as thousands cheered and waved the Brotherhood’s green flag, chanting, “The people want to implement God’s law.”

On the campaign trail for the presidential election, now only nine days away, the Muslim Brotherhood has taken a sharp turn rightward, becoming bolder in saying it wants to bring a state where religion and Islamic law play a major role — and insisting that it has the right to rule.

As a result, it has moved away from the more moderate face that it promoted since even before the fall of Hosni Mubarak 15 months ago. During campaigning for parliament elections late last year, the Brotherhood insisted that implementing Islamic law was not its immediate priority, instead speaking vaguely of an “Islamic background” to government. It also sought to assuage fears that it seeks to take over the country by promising to work with other, liberal factions.

Critics and former Brotherhood members say the greater assertiveness represents the 82-year-old group’s true face, brought by hard-liners who over the past decades have squeezed out moderates and taken control of its leadership. Those hard-liners, the former members say, are more confrontational, more determined to impose Islamic strictures and less likely to share power with others.

Former members believe the group’s turn comes out of frustration that the political power they have long dreamed of is slipping away from them. The Brotherhood emerged from the parliament elections as the biggest party in the legislature, a victory it touted as proof of its right to push through its agenda. But it has discovered that the parliament is largely powerless in the face of the ruling military’s control.

Its initial candidate for president, Brotherhood deputy leader Khairat el-Shater, was disqualified from the race because of a Mubarak-era conviction. That forced them to turn to Morsi, seen as a weaker candidate. Morsi has struggled to rally religious voters behind him in the face of competition by Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, a more moderate Islamist, who has gained support from some of the ultraconservatives known as Salafis.

Morsi has lagged in polls, generally in fourth place in a field of 13 candidates for the May 23-24 first round of elections — behind two former regime candidates and Abolfotoh. The poor showing is so surprising given the Brotherhood’s electoral strength that many question the polls’ accuracy.

Whatever the reasons, the group no longer tap-dances around questions of implementing Islamic Shariah law.

“We will not accept any alternative to Shariah … The Qur’an is our constitution and it will always be so,” Morsi told a crowd of supporters at a Cairo University rally.

In an interview with The Associated Press, el-Shater — who appears alongside Morsi on the campaign trail so often that critics say he would be shadow president — said laws must conform with Shariah. He said the Brotherhood would stipulate that officials tasked with reforming Egypt’s economy, politics, media and other sectors also have religious expertise.

“Those who decide what system works best are specialists who are not only political scientists but who also studied Shariah,” he said. “They will work on putting together a system that abides by the general rules of Shariah but also with an eye on realities, experience and other countries’ experiences.”

For example, el-Shater said that a Mubarak-era law giving women the right to seek divorce should be reviewed. The law, he said, was because of the influence of then-first lady Suzanne Mubarak, who he said had a policy of “siding with women in any conflict with men.”

On Sunday, the Brotherhood caused controversy when its lawmakers objected to a World Bank loan allocated to improve Egypt’s battered sewage system because it would involve interest, which is banned under Shariah.

In an appeal to hard-liners this month, the Brotherhood’s spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan wrote a blistering commentary against Abolfotoh, warning that he was too liberal. He noted past moderate stances by Abolfotoh: for example that a Christian has the right to be president and that books promoting atheism should not be censored.

A string of recent moves by the Brotherhood to flex its power alienated moderates, even among its supporters, who felt it was going too far.

The group demanded the military allow it to form a government, even going so far as to freeze parliament for several days in protest when the generals refused. The Brotherhood and other Islamists tried to pack a panel tasked with writing the next constitution with their own followers — only to have liberals on the panel revolt. A court disbanded the Islamist-dominated panel.

Tarek el-Bishri, a prominent former judge seen as sympathetic to the Brotherhood, washed his hands of the group in an article Friday.

“It is using its legislative power not to serve the national interest, but to serve the party and a handful of individuals’ interests,” el-Bishri wrote. “As a former judge, I am screaming and ask others to scream against this behaviour, to clear my conscious before God.”

Several former Brotherhood members say the harder line reflects the mindset of the el-Shater and the core leadership, which came to the fore in the past two decades and pushed out moderates. Around 70 prominent moderates have left the group in recent years, including Abolfotoh.

Most of the current leaders believe the Brothers are the only “surviving group that can bring back Egyptians to Islam,” said Abdel-Sattar el-Meligi, who was once a senior figure in charge of Brotherhood finances until he fell out with the group.

Though the Brotherhood long included more moderate strains, el-Shater and the current leadership were more influenced by the more intolerant Wahhabi interpretation prevalent in Saudi Arabia, where some sought refuge from regime repression in the 1960s and 70s. They also come from a more secretive wing of the group that has long been working underground, the defectors say.

They point to a Brotherhood document titled “Empowerment on Earth,” uncovered in a 1992 raid on el-Shater’s office. The 14-page document outlines plans, complete with handwritten diagrams, to infuse Brotherhood supporters in key sectors, including professional syndicates, student unions, business circles and the military and police.

The Brotherhood has denied the plan’s authenticity, saying security services concocted it to tar the group. However, el-Meligi and another prominent defector from the Brotherhood, Haitham Abu Khalil, confirmed it.

“The plan is real and it carried working strategy for the group to topple down the regime,” el-Meligi said.

Padge Windslowe, 42, faces charges of aggravated assault and deceptive practices related to a so-called pumping party in Philadelphia.

An exotic dancer testified at a preliminary hearing Wednesday that she paid $1,000 for the injections on a dining room table. She said she met Windslowe through fellow dancers. The dancer said Windslowe had silicon in a water bottle and used Krazy Glue to close four injection sites.

The 23-year-old said she later suffered serious lung damage and was hospitalized for more than two weeks with respiratory problems. A doctor testified that the dancer has silicone particles on her lungs that can’t be removed and can prove fatal.

Police believe Windslowe also injected 20-year-old London tourist Claudia Aderotimi, who died last year. Aderotimi complained of chest pain and difficulty breathing following the procedure at a hotel near Philadelphia International Airport. No charges have been filed in her death as detectives await extensive autopsy test results.

Windslowe was being held on $750,000 bail.

The Telegraph reported in January that Pippa would be doing something for the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust, which helps disadvantaged young people with support and mentorship from sports stars. The report was vague on what exactly Pippa was going to do.

But according to today’s report, Pippa will be doing no such thing. It’s perhaps not a huge surprise. Last month Pippa’s image took a huge hit when she was photographed driving around Paris while the driver wielded a gun. The driver, a lawyer, insisted the gun was a fake, but many questions remained about Pippa’s judgment.

Earlier this month it was reported that Pippa had taken steps to put the shine back into her now-tarnished image. It’s possible that keeping a low profile for a while is part of the plan, especially with the Jubilee celebrations in full swing. According to one source, Pippa has even been contemplating a move to New York, far away from the European paparazzi.

Pippa has a party-planning book coming out this fall, for which she is reportedly being paid $645,000 by Pengiun.

A series about his project, “How to Travel the World for Free,” is airing on some PBS channels throughout May and June, using video Wigge shot of his adventures. Here are some details on how he did the project and how it went.

THE TRIP: Wigge, a travel journalist and videographer who speaks German, English and Spanish, left Berlin in June 2010 and travelled for 150 days through 11 countries, arriving in Antarctica in November 2010. More than 100 people helped, providing transportation, food and places to sleep. He planned the journey for a year before starting out, collecting contacts for those who might provide accommodations or odd jobs, but he also relied on the kindness of strangers.

FOOD: At first, Wigge scrounged for food from garbage bins behind supermarkets, but he soon realized that “Dumpster diving wasn’t necessary. I could walk in and do a barter. I offered to clean the floor or the shelf or wash the dishes in the restaurant in exchange for an old sandwich. And most of the people I approached in shops, supermarkets and restaurants gave me something.”

ACCOMMODATIONS AND ATTITUDES: In Latin America, he found that “people were very helpful if I went to their door and said, ‘I have no idea where I will sleep tonight, can I sleep here?’ There was this helpfulness, this hospitality, maybe because many people there are poor and they know how it feels. They didn’t care about my story. But in the U.S., it was more about the story. They would say, ‘This is cool, we want to help you reach your goal.’ Americans really go for this.”

WORK: He crossed the Atlantic working on a container ship from Belgium to Canada in exchange for his passage, doing everything from paint jobs to changing the oil in the engine room. In Las Vegas, he engaged in pillow fights for $1 on the street and offered his back as a “human sofa” for tired visitors. In San Francisco, he collected tips for “pushing heavy tourists up the hills.” Eventually he had 300 $1 bills, which he used to buy plane fare to Costa Rica. From there he hitchhiked to Panama, where he worked as a butler for the German ambassador.

To cross from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Antarctica, he worked on a luxury cruise ship as an assistant to the expedition leader. “You clean the boots of the tourists, you help them on the ice, you put red flags around the penguin field, you help refill the boats with gasoline,” he said.

WORST JOB: Wigge’s stint as a porter carrying tourists’ luggage in exchange for a trip to Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca city in the Peruvian Andes, ended “in a bit of a mess. I was the worst porter the Andes had ever seen,” he said.

The other workers were accustomed to handling tents and meals for tourists along the 50-mile (80-kilometre), five-day route, then running ahead carrying 60 pounds (27 kilograms) of luggage on their backs in time to set up the next campsite before the tourists arrived, all at 14,000-feet (4,267-meters)elevations. But Wigge did not have the stamina to keep up.

“They said, ‘This is not funny, you cannot do this, we do not want to lose our clients,’” he recalled. “I apologized.” After two days, they put his luggage on horses and allowed him to walk at a regular pace rather than staying behind and running ahead to help with campsites.

VIDEO DIARY: Wigge kept a “video diary” with the goal of eventually producing a TV series. To film himself and collect footage that was high-enough quality for TV, Wigge carried a Canon HDV 1080i camera with a good wide-angle lens and microphone. He ended up with dozens of tapes, which were edited down to five 30-minute segments.

He nearly lost the precious tapes while staying with a German expat in Cuzco, Peru. “The whole apartment burned down before we went to sleep,” Wigge said. But he was able to get his travel bag — including the videos and camera — out, and looks back on the incident philosophically: “We are still alive.”

RETURN TRIP: Once he’d achieved his goal of starting out with no money and completing a one-way trip to Antarctica, he had no qualms about accessing a bank account for return fare to Germany.

ADVICE: “I would like to motivate people, inspire people,” he said. “If you’re not too vain to do something like pillow fighting or being a human sofa, you can barter your way from something very small to something very big. Why not travel and be a bit silly?”

For more inspiration, take a look at Wigge’s website — http://www.howtotraveltheworldforfree.co m — and self-published book, “How to Travel the World for Free: I Did It, and You Can Do It, Too!”

Flaherty says he’s concerned failure to resolve the issue could have serious rebound effects on the Canadian banking sector and economy.

Flaherty told the Senate Finance committee he’s been urging the richer European countries to overwhelm the debt crisis with a massive bailout for years, but the no such package has materialized.

He says the European Central Bank’s latest announcement that it would refuse to deal with troubled Greek banks is the latest example of not living up to the responsibility implied in forming a common currency zone.

He fears the ECB’s decision could create a shock in financial markets that may reverberate in the U.S. and Canada as well.

In testimony before the Senate committee, Flaherty said he’s still opposed to the International Monetary Fund coming to the rescue of Europe, however.

He said rich eurozone countries have not committed enough of their own money and says emerging countries and the U.S. agree with him that it is not fair to ask the IMF to do the heavy lifting.

Eddie Fisher remains held in jail Wednesday, a day after being arrested on suspicion of assault, destruction of private property and disturbing the peace.

Lonnie Weygant told officers that she tried to hide in the bathroom after the fight but the 38-year-old forced the door open.

Fisher told police that she hit him in the head, and that he tried to leave but Weygant came out and took his dog as he was getting in his car.

It wasn’t known whether Fisher had retained a lawyer.

OneRepublic was nominated for a Grammy in 2008. Their songs include “Apologize” and “All the Right Moves.”

Andrew Blomberg, 29, was the first of four fired police officers to stand trial for their roles in the alleged beating of Chad Holley in March 2010.

Blomberg fought back tears after the verdict was read, then hugged his lawyers and started to cry as he embraced his parents. He could have faced up to a year in jail if convicted of the misdemeanour charge.

During his trial, Blomberg testified that he didn’t mistreat Holley and denied kicking or stomping on the black teenager’s head or neck. Blomberg, who is white, said he only used his foot to move Holley’s arm after the teenager refused to comply with an order to put his hands behind his back. The ex-officer said he never stepped on Holley’s hand or arm.

Holley, now 18, testified that he didn’t resist arrest and that he briefly lost consciousness during the daylight attack.

Community activists reacted with anger in a hallway outside the courtroom. They yelled “Racism!” and “Injustice!”

“It is pathetic. It is unacceptable,” the Rev. James Dixon of the Community of Faith Church said of the verdict. “This kind of expression says to me, to my children and to every black child in the city, ‘Your life is not worth manure.’”

In the security camera footage of Holley’s arrest, he can be seen face down on the ground surrounded by at least five officers who appear to kick and hit his head, abdomen and legs.

A community activist released the video to the media, prompting fierce public criticism of the police department who labelled it another example of police brutality against minorities.

Prosecutors told jurors that Blomberg kicked the teenager several times and Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland testified that he believed Blomberg kicked and stomped on the teen.

Blomberg’s defence attorneys countered that he was only trying to secure a potentially armed suspect. Several officers testified supporting Blomberg’s claim that Holley was resisting arrest.

Blomberg and the officers told jurors that before arresting Holley, they had been told the teen and several other suspects were potentially armed and dangerous participants in a series of bold daytime burglaries.

Defence attorneys tried to portray Holley as a gang member and Blomberg told jurors he thought at the time of the arrest that the teenager might have been in a gang. Holley denied being a gang member.

Holley was convicted of burglary in juvenile court in October 2010 and placed on probation.

A federal lawsuit Holley filed against Blomberg, the other fired officers and the city of Houston is pending.

Jazmin Carrera tells The Associated Press that a sister of Arnoldo Jimenez told the victim’s family about the phone call Sunday. Jimenez was crying and nervous, hung up on his sister and wouldn’t pick up when she called him back.

Police are searching for Jimenez, who is wanted on a murder charge.

Estrella Carrera was found stabbed in her bathtub, wearing a sequined cocktail dress she’d worn on her wedding night.

Jazmin Carrera says Jiminez had hit and bruised her sister in the past.