'Fatkini' Sells Out! Why the Plus-Size Swimsuit Is Summer's Hottest Look

Gabi Gregg's sold-out Galaxy bikini. (photo by GabiFresh.com)

(Yahoo)Who says you have to be a size 2 to wear a bikini? This summer's wildly popular swimsuit is made specifically for fuller figures. One in particular is such a hot commodity that it's selling out even before the official start of swimsuit season. The highly anticipated launch of the collaboration between plus-size blogger Gabi Gregg and retailer Swimsuits For All went off with a bang last week but sputtered as the company failed to keep up with the unexpected demand for Gregg's galaxy-print bikini, a style dubbed the "fatkini."  

"I didn't come up with the term 'fatkini' it's been a buzzword in the body-positive community for a while," Gregg told Yahoo! Shine. "There's definitely a momentum building for body acceptance and lots of online support for women of all body types these days."

Gregg, a renowned blogger in the plus-size world, rose to fame after she posted photos of herself hanging poolside in Las Vegas wearing a black-and-white-striped bikini. She wrote, "I don't expect everyone to feel comfortable in a two piece, but hopefully I can inspire some of you to take the plunge. I can't tell you how freeing it is to just have fun without worrying about what other people think." Cut to a "Today" show interview and a monthly column about plus-size fashion for InStyle magazine and Gregg has become a plus-size inspiration to many, with a huge following on her personal style blog, GabiFresh. 

When Gregg's swimsuits (which range from sizes 10 to 24) went on sale May 15, Twitter was awash with excitement. But after orders were processed for the galaxy bikini (pictured), some buyers received disappointing news: Due to a computer glitch, and overwhelming demand, some who were sent confirmation emails would not receive the item. Cue Twitter devastation. @reetherealist tweeted, "Just got an email from #SwimSuitsForAll that my suit is back ordered. How was I even able to put it in my cart and pay?"

Two days later, Gregg posted an email from Swimsuits For All on her Facebook page reassuring consumers that a jewel-print bikini was being restocked after the initial rush but that "the galaxy bikini is completely sold out." The statement continues: "As you know we produced in less than three months domestically and it will simply take too much time/be too expensive to start making more suits—and unfortunately the swim season will be over. As far as people getting some emails about back orders, there are a small portion of customers that will not receive the galaxy bikini that ordered it. The suits were selling so quickly that the inventory levels were moving so fast the system was not able to capture that it was sold out until a bit too late and continued accepting orders.”

However, customers weren't having it. Wrote one, "The fact that they are not restocking the galaxy print bikini is depressing! && bad business … why stop selling a fantastic product that has sold out?! ordered mine at 830am day of launch and got a email yesterday that they cancelled my order .. so sad!"

Kellie Brown, a spokesperson for Swimsuits For All, told Yahoo! Shine, "Unfortunately, due to the high demand of this one swimsuit and the temporary computer glitch, the system oversold the style. Swimsuits For All immediately emailed and called each customer and apologized for the error, offered them a 25 percent discount if they desired another style, and let them know that their cards were not charged for anything they didn't receive."

For now, Gabi Gregg fans can still purchase her remaining styles (all for $68) on the company site: A neon pink or green "convertible" bikini (its top can be worn as either a halter style or as a bandeau and the bottoms can be high-waisted, bikini cut, or skirted); a "Jewel Side Sheered" one-piece with an empire waist, and, a sheer coverup with galaxy-print for those mourning the bikini.

Gregg doesn't have immediate plans to design more bathing suits with Swimsuits For All but she's optimistic. "I would definitely love to and hope to do more," she says. 

Here are her three tips for rocking a bathing suit, no matter what size you are:

Be comfortable: "Don't worry so much about the size of your suit. How it fits is way more important."

Choose a suit with options: "You don't have to stick with one swimsuit or spend a lot of money on various styles. Choose one that gives you options, such as a convertible, so you can play with different looks."

Don't hide in your coverup: "Coverups have a tendency to look frumpy, so make sure you choose one that's sheer or has a flattering cut. And don't wear it while you sunbathe; otherwise, you'll look awkward and draw attention to what you're trying to not show."

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Whole neighborhoods razed by Oklahoma tornado that killed 24

(Reuters) - Rescuers went building to building in search of victims and thousands of survivors were homeless on Tuesday after a massive tornado tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, wiping out whole blocks of homes and killing at least 24 people.

The death toll was lower than initially feared, but nine children were among the dead, including seven who died at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which took a direct hit on Monday in the deadliest tornado to strike the United States in two years.

More than 24 hours after the tornado ripped through the Oklahoma City region with winds exceeding 200 miles per hour, emergency workers had pulled more than 100 survivors from the rubble of homes, schools and a hospital. About 240 people were injured.

Crews lifted broken doors, moved sections of shattered walls and tossed aside bricks looking for survivors, as cadaver dogs sniffed through the rubble and residents recounted their close encounter with the massive twister that left a trail of destruction 17 miles long by 1.3 miles wide.

"Can you imagine a lion, like a huge lion? You mix it with a freight train and that's what it was like. Scariest thing I've ever heard in my life," said Kim Limke, 40, in Oklahoma City's Westmoor subdivision. "It was like a freight train came out of a lion's mouth."

Limke rode out the tornado at her daughter's school and was surrounded by its destruction on Tuesday at her rented Westmoor home. For blocks around, houses were reduced to heaps of rubble and trees were stripped of their leaves. The air was tinged with the smell of wet pine from wrecked homes.

The National Weather Service upgraded its calculation of the storm's strength on Tuesday, saying it was a rare EF5, the most powerful ranking on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with winds exceeding 200 miles per hour.

TOLL COULD RISE

In the hours right after the storm, many more people had been feared dead. At one point, the Oklahoma state medical examiner's office said the toll could rise as high as 91, but on Tuesday officials said 24 bodies had been recovered, down from a previous tally of 51.

The earlier numbers likely reflected some double-counted deaths, said Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer for the medical examiner.

"There was a lot of chaos," she said.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin said the death toll could rise. "There may have been bodies that may have been taken to local funeral homes," Fallin said.

The National Guard, firefighters from more than a dozen fire departments and rescuers from other states were involved in the search-and-rescue effort in Moore, a town of 55,000 people.

Plaza Towers Elementary School was one of five schools in the path of the tornado. "They literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out," Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said. "They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them."

Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak said the damage to property was likely to exceed that caused by the 2011 twister in Joplin, Missouri, which killed 161 people. Insured losses from the Joplin tornado exceeded $2 billion and are expected to rise as claims are settled.

Disaster modeling company AIR Worldwide estimated the replacement value of the properties within a mile of each side of the tornado's track at around $6 billion. The figure represents a rough estimate of the potential upper limit of losses, not an actual loss estimate, it said.

'AS LONG AS IT TAKES'

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local efforts.

"The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground, there for them, beside them, as long as it takes," Obama said at the White House.

Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis warned residents of the danger of electrocution and fire from downed power lines and broken natural gas lines. Thunderstorms and lightning slowed the rescue effort and made conditions tough for families left with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

At Moore's Eastwood Estates, Nicole Moore, 32, and her husband, Kelly Regouby, 43, picked through the wreckage of what had been the master bedroom of their home.

The couple, their 9-month-old son, Regouby's 20-year-old daughter and Moore's mother huddled in a shelter built into the floor of their garage during the storm and the house came down over them. They emerged with only scratches.

On Tuesday they recover family pictures and mementos, all soaked by off-and-on rain.

"As long as we find stuff like this, I'll be happy," Moore said, her voice breaking. "We'd give up 10 of these houses to have our family safe."

In the neighborhood, brick walls were flattened and pink insulation was scattered everywhere. Hundreds of cars looked as if they had been shelled. In a sign of the tornado's strength, a bicycle wheel found in a sodden field had lost its rim and the spokes were wrapped around the hub.

Authorities warned the town 16 minutes before the tornado touched down just after 3 p.m.. That amount of time is more than the average eight to 10 minutes of warning.

Shelters were opened for families who lost their homes, and universities offered to house people. Albert Ashwood, director of Oklahoma's department of emergency management, said it was too early to say how many people were left homeless, but clearly it was thousands given the extent of the damage.

FIVE SCHOOLS HIT

U.S. Representative Tom Cole, who lives in Moore, said the Plaza Towers school was the most secure building in the area.

"And so people did the right thing, but if you're in front of an F4 or an F5 (in tornado strength), there is no good thing to do if you're above ground. It's just tragic," he said on MSNBC-TV.

Miguel Macias and his wife, Veronica, had two children at the Plaza Towers school. They found 8-year-old Ruby after workers rescued the girl but their son, 6-year-old Angel, was nowhere to be found, said Brenda Ramon, pastor of the Faith Latino Church where the family are members.

Ramon and several congregation members spent hours helping the family search for Angel. He was finally located at a medical center in Oklahoma City about five hours after the tornado hit.

"It was heart-breaking," Ramon said. "We couldn't find him for hours." The boy had wounds to his face and head, but was not badly hurt, Ramon said. "Their little bodies are so resilient," he said.

Witnesses said Monday's tornado appeared more fierce than a giant twister that was among the dozens that tore up the area on May 3, 1999, killing more than 40 people and destroying thousands of homes. That tornado ranked as an EF5.

The 1999 tornado ranks as the third-costliest in U.S. history, having caused more than $1 billion in damage at the time, or more than $1.3 billion in today's dollars. Only the devastating Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes in 2011 were more costly. (Graphic link.reuters.com/gec38t)

(Additional reporting by Alice Mannette, Lindsay Morris, Nick Carey, Brendan O'Brien and Greg McCune; Writing by Claudia Parsons and Jim Loney; Editing by Grant McCool and Philip Barbara

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Avril Lavigne Is Engaged To Nickelback Singer Chad Kroeger

avril and chad

From People:

    Avril Lavigne and Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger’s relationship has been so quiet that few even knew they were dating. Now, after a six-month courtship, the Canadian rockers are engaged to be married, Lavigne’s rep tells PEOPLE exclusively.

    Lavigne, 27, and Kroeger, 37, first got together in February to co-write a song for Lavigne’s upcoming fifth studio album.

    “A romantic relationship blossomed as they spent time writing together,” a Lavigne pal tells PEOPLE.

    On Aug. 8, Kroeger popped the question, presenting Lavigne with a 14-carat diamond sparkler. 

    “He makes her so happy,” a family source tells PEOPLE. “Both of their families could not be more excited.”

This will be Chad’s first marriage and Avril’s second. (Remember Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley?) I guess she has a thing for the front men of Canadian bands? Anyway, here are all the photos of the two of them together that the internet has to offer:

on Hello Canada

BUZZFEED

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WordPress’ Mullenweg Claims 72,000 Blog posts Imported From Tumblr in Just One Hour on Sunday

Despite largely anecdotal media speculation, it’s not clear how the acquisition of Tumblr by Yahoo for $1.1 billion will be greeted by users of the New York blogging service.

But rival blogging service WordPress’s founder Matt Mullenweg posted on his blog last night that WordPress imports from Tumblr on Sunday — after news of the deal had been broken by AllThingsD.com — had risen from a typical 400 to 600 blog posts an hour to more than 72,000.

Whoa!

That said, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Some users of Posterous fled the blogging service when Twitter bought it, and some Instagrammers huffed off when Facebook nabbed the photo-sharing site.

And, by comparison, Tumblr says it get 75 million blog posts per day — so 72,000 are just a drop in the ironic blogging ocean.

Plus, Mullenweg thinks the high price paid by the Silicon Valley Internet giant was low.

“I think we’re at the cusp of understanding the ultimate value of web publishing platforms, particularly ones that work cross-domain, and while Yahoo’s all-cash deal by some metrics, like revenue, is very generous, I think it’s a tenth of the value that will be created in these platforms over the coming years,” wrote Mullenweg.

Here’s his post:

It now looks pretty certain that Yahoo has pulled off a deal to buy Tumblr for 1.1B. The relationship between WordPress and Tumblr has always been pretty friendly: Tumblr’s own blog used to be on WP, WordPress.com supports Tumblr as a Publicize option alongside Twitter and Facebook, our Akismet team sends them daily emails of splogs on the service, and there’s healthy import and export traffic both ways. (Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000.)News like this, whether from a friend or a competitor, is always bittersweet: I’m curious to see what the creative folks behind Tumblr do with their new resources, both personal and corporate, but I’m more interested to know what they would have done over the next 5-10 years as an independent company. I think we’re at the cusp of understanding the ultimate value of web publishing platforms, particularly ones that work cross-domain, and while Yahoo’s all-cash deal by some metrics, like revenue, is very generous, I think it’s a tenth of the value that will be created in these platforms over the coming years.

AllThingsD

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Yahoo buys Tumblr $1.1billion: Founder David Karp is the new tech tycoon

BILLION dollar deal makes 26-year-old America's next tech tycoon: High school drop-out behind blogging site Tumblr sells it to Marissa Mayer's Yahoo

•   New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer believes purchase of mico-blogging site will be a 'stake in the ground' for her tenure as head of the tech giant 
•     Board approached all-cash purchase on Sunday, despite Tumblr having only $13million in revenue last year
•     David Karp founded Tumblr in his mother's Manhattan apartment in 2007
•     Site boasts 100million users and 90million daily blog posts

By Michael Zennie


David Karp, the 26-year-old founder of blogging site Tumblr, has just made to make a lot of money  - almost in spite of himself.

Yahoo's board of directors agreed on Sunday to buy his wildly popular blogging platform, which boasts 100million users and 90million posts per day, for $1.1billion cash.

The deal could make the native New Yorker the latest 20-something tech billionaire, even though he was publicly opposed, even just last year, to selling the company he founded out of his mother's small Manhattan apartment in 2007.

On Sunday afternoon, it was revealed Yahoo's board approved the purchase of Tumblr, despite its revenue of only $13million last year. Even that figure was only made possible after $125million in capital investments.

Rich man: David Karp, who founded Tumblr in 2007 in his mother's Manhattan apartment, just made hundreds of millions of dollars after his company was purchased by Yahoo

Tech news site AllThingsD reports that new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wanted to quickly snatch up Tumbler as 'the stake in the ground of what her strategy is going forward for Yahoo.'

Tumblr, which is a mico-blogging platform for quickly posting pictures, text and video, also functions as a social media site.

Its platform manages to blend elements of all of the major social networking sites. Sharing and posting photos and simple and easy, like Instagram. Gifs moving images, pictures, and videos are all easy to share. But, users follow other Tumblr blogs and compile news feeds, making the site similar to Facebook and Twitter.

The easy, simple layout of Tumblr blogs has spawned diverse, quirky, blogs. An enormously popular Tumblr called '#whatshouldwecallme' features a series of animated gifs explaining the reactions to daily life of a 20-something woman.

However, celebrities like Joe Jonas and Lady GaGa also have popular Tumblr pages and companies like the shoemaker Col Haan use the site as a creative way to market their products.

Tumblr is also popular with many pornstars and features numerous sexually-explicit blogs.

Tumblr boasts remarkable loyalty among its users. Some 85percent of Tumblr users make 20 or more posts a month.

Big deal: Marissa Mayer is reportedly staking her reputation as Yahoo CEO on this Tumblr deal

Big deal: Marissa Mayer is reportedly staking her reputation as Yahoo CEO on this Tumblr deal

However, Karp - a high school dropout who taught himself how to code - had expressed grave reservations about giving up his brainchild to a Silicon Valley tech giant.

In a 2012 interview with the Guardian, he said he had been swatting away buy-out requests for years.

'Particularly in the first three years, there were a lot of (mergers and acquisitions) people who would pull you aside and you'd think "Well, s***, I could be a pretty rich 23-year-old with very little effort,"' he said. 

'We stuck it out. I won't say I really knew why.'

Perhaps the perseverance makes sense to Karp now that he is 'very rich' at age 26.

The deal conjures images of another young man who is very rich - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

At $1.1billion, Tumblr's worth is nowhere near the value of $100billion Facebook, but 29-year-old Zuckerberg's success has become something of a pattern for young, brilliant tech entrepreneurs.

It is unclear how large a stake in the company Karp maintained before the Yahoo deal.

In 2008, he sold a 25percent stake to investors for $750,000.

The investor share of the company was $125million at the time of the deal, according to AllThingsD.

Karp grew up on Manhattan's tony Upper West Side, the son of a music composer father who wrote songs for films and TV shows and a mother who was a teacher.

Moving on up: Karp lives with his girlfriend Rachel Eakley, a graduate student and chef, in a modest apartment in Manhattan's West Village

Miss Eakley has been Karp's constant companion at public events for several years

He taught himself how to code HTML at age 11 and began setting up his own consulting business shortly thereafter. His parents allowed him to drop out of high school at age 15 and complete the remainder of his education by homeschooling.

At age 17, he moved to Japan, where he cemented his skill as a programmer and began pitching his ideas to tech companies.

He moved back to New York and sold his services as a consultant. He founded Tumblr in 2007 at age 21 - and it quickly consumed all of his time.

He started up an office in Manhattan and has ardently resisted the lure of moving to Silicon Valley. He also tried to resist the money that the tech world had to offer.

He told the Guardian that he wanted to remain independent - believing he could grow the company by growing ad revenue naturally.

Within a year, though, he was accepting funds from venture capital investors.

He currently lives with his girlfriend in a modest apartment in Manhattan's West Village. Rachel Eakley is a chef and a graduate student studying psychology.

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George Michael injured in M1 crash

George Michael was a passenger in a Range Rover

Singer George Michael has been airlifted to hospital with a head injury following a crash on the M1.

The former Wham! star, 49, remains in hospital after the crash at junction 6A, near St Albans, Hertfordshire,

A spokesman for Michael confirmed he had been involved in an accident on Thursday but said the singer only had "superficial cuts" and was "fine".

Michael was a passenger in a Range Rover and no other vehicles were involved, the spokesman added.

Connie Filippello, spokesman for Michael, said: "George Michael was a passenger in a vehicle involved in a traffic accident yesterday evening. No third party was involved.

"We have no further comment at this time."
'Circumstances unclear'

Ambulance spokesman Gary Sanderson said: "The man who we believe to be in his 40s sustained a head injury and following treatment, stabilisation and immobilisation by land and air ambulance crews, he was flown to hospital for further care."

Hertfordshire Police said the northbound carriageway of the road was closed for an hour while emergency services dealt with the incident.

Two people were in the car at the time of the crash at about 17:50 BST. No arrests have been made.

A police spokesman said: "The exact circumstances of what happened are unclear at this time and until further investigations have been carried out it would be inappropriate for us to comment further."

In September 2010, Michael was given an eight-week sentence for crashing his car while under the influence of cannabis.

He was also fined £1,250 at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court in London and given a five-year driving ban.

The singer was arrested in Hampstead, north London, after driving his Range Rover into a branch of photographic store Snappy Snaps

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