Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton Dies at 103; Aided Britain in War

Wide World PhotosLady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, then Natalie Latham, in 1941. She started Bundles for Britain. In 1939, Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, who died on Jan. 14 at 103, had neither that title nor that name. She was Natalie Latham, a fixture of Manhattan society whose beauty drew notice in Vogue magazine. She had achieved a dollop of fame when she and her two young daughters, nicknamed Mimi...

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Busy Philipps Feels No Pressure to Bounce Back After Baby

David Livingston/GettyBusy Philipps may be willing to dish out style advice to fellow expectant mamas — but she’s not about to start breaking out the postpartum weight loss lectures.Currently pregnant with her second child, the Cougar Town star admits that while her celebrity status opens her up for public scrutiny, she’s not planning a big bounceback after baby.“Like most things in this business,...

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New rules aim to get rid of junk foods in schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools.For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful.Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out...

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Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Sheehy resigns over phone scandal

(Reuters) – Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Rick Sheehy, the leading candidate to replace the current governor in the next election, resigned on Saturday after a newspaper investigation raised questions about improper cell phone calls made to women.The Omaha World-Herald investigation found that the 53-year-old Republican made about 2,000 late-night calls to four women, other than his wife, on his state-issued...

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Jenna Miscavige Hill Pens Revealing Scientology Book

02/01/2013 at 08:00 PM EST Jenna Miscavige and her uncle David inset Michael Murphree; Inset: Polaris What was it like to grow up inside Sea Org, the Church of Scientology's most elite body? In her memoir Beyond Belief, excerpted exclusively below, Jenna Miscavige...

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Healthier schools: Goodbye candy and greasy snacks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Goodbye candy bars and sugary cookies. Hello baked chips and diet sodas.The government for the first time is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful, a change that would ban the sale of almost all candy, high-calorie sports drinks and greasy foods on campus.Under new rules the Department of Agriculture proposed Friday, school vending...

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"Great Rotation"- A Wall Street fairy tale?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's current jubilant narrative is that a rush into stocks by small investors has sparked a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities that will power the bull market to new heights. That sounds good, but there's a snag: The evidence for this is a few weeks of bullish fund flows that are hardly unusual for January. Late-stage bull markets...

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Fireworks Explosion on Chinese Highway Kills 26

BEIJING (AP) — A truck carrying fireworks ahead of Chinese New Year celebrations exploded and destroyed part of an elevated highway Friday in central China, killing at least 26 people as it sent vehicles plummeting 30 meters (about 100 feet) to the ground, state media said. The huge blast destroyed an 80-meter (80-yard) stretch of highway outside the city of Sanmenxia in Henan province, and...

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Steven Tyler Auditions in Drag for American Idol

TV Watch American Idol By Steve Helling 01/31/2013 at 10:35 PM EST Steven Tyler sings before the AFC Championship NFL football game, Jan, 22, 2012 Elise Amendola/AP Former judge Steven Tyler made a surprise cameo on American Idol Thursday night – dressed as a woman....

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Hedgehog Alert! Prickly pets can carry salmonella

NEW YORK (AP) — Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Health officials on Thursday...

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BSkyB to offer sports channels online for daily fee

LONDON (Reuters) – BSkyB will offer its popular sports channels online for a daily fee, seeking new customers to offset slowing growth at its core pay-TV service amid sluggish consumer spending.Sky, Britain’s dominant pay-TV group which provides fixed-line telephony, TV and broadband to 10.7 million households, has adapted its strategy during the economic downturn after years of chasing new subscribers...

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S&P 500 posts biggest monthly gain since October 2011

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged lower on Thursday on caution ahead of Friday's all-important jobs report, but the S&P 500 still posted its best monthly gain since October 2011. The benchmark S&P 500 advanced 5.1 percent in January as investors cheered a compromise that temporarily postponed the impact of the "fiscal cliff" and fourth-quarter earnings were better than expected....

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World Briefing | Asia: Factory Owners Arrested in Bangladesh

The Bangladeshi police have arrested two owners of a factory that caught fire last week, resulting in the deaths of seven workers, in the latest blaze to strike the country’s garment export industry. Late Tuesday night, the police arrested Sharif Ahmed, chairman of Smart Export Garments, and his colleague, M. D. Zakir Ahmed. The Smart Export factory was manufacturing clothing for several European...

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American Idol Discovers Big Talent in Texas and California

TV Watch American Idol By Jamie Bufalino 01/30/2013 at 11:00 PM EST From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban Michael Becker/FOX. It's the final week of American Idol's cross-country talent search. And as the judges head...

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Sex to burn calories? Authors expose obesity myths

Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting...

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RIM rebrands as BlackBerry; launches nifty new devices

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd on Wednesday unveiled the long-delayed line of smartphones it hopes will put it on the comeback trail, but it disappointed investors by saying U.S. sales of its all-new BlackBerry 10 devices will not start until March, sending its share price tumbling 12 percent.Chief Executive Thorsten Heins also announced that RIM was abandoning the name it has used since...

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Lens Blog: Lynsey Addario's Photographs of Women in Combat

Lynsey Addario, a  photographer for The New York Times, has extensively covered the war in Afghanistan, often focusing on female soldiers. She spoke with James Estrin about the Pentagon’s recent lifting of the ban on women in combat. The conversation, which took place via Skype from her home in London has been edited.When I heard about the lifting of the ban on women in combat, I thought about...

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Ashley Judd Splits from Husband Dario Franchitti

01/29/2013 at 08:05 PM EST Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti Robin Marchant/Wireimage Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti are splitting after more than a decade of marriage."We have mutually decided to end our marriage. We'll always be family and continue to cherish...

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Soldier with new arms determined to be independent

BALTIMORE (AP) — After weeks of round-the-clock medical care, Brendan Marrocco insisted on rolling his own wheelchair into a news conference using his new transplanted arms. Then he brushed his hair to one side.Such simple tasks would go unnoticed in most patients. But for Marrocco, who lost all four limbs while serving in Iraq, these little actions demonstrate how far he's come only six weeks after...

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Asian shares gain on global recovery outlook, eyes Fed

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose to their highest level in nearly 18 months on Wednesday as strong U.S. data further boosted investor confidence in global economic outlook, ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary policy decision due later in the session. Optimism over economic recovery on strong U.S. housing market and China's economic growth forecast for 2013 raised expectations...

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Hiroshi Nakajima, Leader of World Health Organization, Dies at 84

Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, a Japanese physician who as leader of the World Health Organization started campaigns to fight malaria and other infectious diseases but whose tenure, from 1988 to 1998, was marred by repeated accusations of mismanagement, died on Saturday in Poitiers, France. He was 84. He died after a short illness, the organization said. Besides his efforts to fight infectious...

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

On Facebook, he describes himself as a "wounded warrior...very wounded."Brendan Marrocco was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, and doctors revealed Monday that he's received a double-arm transplant.Those new arms "already move a little," he tweeted a month after the operation.Marrocco, a 26-year-old New Yorker, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. He had the transplant...

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