02/15/2013 at 01:00 PM ET
Following the birth of her baby boy, Molly Sims was ready to sink her teeth into breastfeeding.
The only problem? Her son Brooks Alan had beaten her to it.
“Early on in the hospital, they really want you to breastfeed, so I’m trying everything,” the model mama, 39, shared during a Wednesday appearance on Anderson Live.
“And I’m like, ‘Gosh, this really, really hurts.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, we know.’”
Determined to find the root of the pain, Sims went searching in her newborn’s mouth — and was shocked at her discovery.
“I’m like, ‘Is there any way a baby could be born with a tooth?’” she recalls. “And they went, ‘Oh sweetie, I know you’re a model, but … babies aren’t born with teeth!’”
She continues: “Come to find out, my baby was born with a tooth!”
Courtesy ANDERSON LIVE
Despite countless attempts to successfully nurse — “I did nipple shields, nipple guards, supplemental nursing system, it was horrible,” the new mom says — Sims eventually decided to call it quits.
“He was literally like a vampire on me for three months — it was unbelievable,” she says with a laugh. “Cut to I’m not breastfeeding and I’m proud of it.”
Now Brooks, 7 months, has moved on to other milestones — including crawling — and is already taking after his dad, Scott Stuber.
“He has the hairline of my husband. It’s like an Eddie Munster kind of hairline. It’s not so attractive, but [he'll] end up growing into it,” Sims says.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is unfolding as a national experiment with American consumers as the guinea pigs: Who will do a better job getting uninsured people covered, the states or the feds?
The nation is about evenly split between states that decided by Friday's deadline they want a say in running new insurance markets and states that are defaulting to federal control because they don't want to participate in "Obamacare." That choice was left to state governments under the law: Establish the market or Washington will.
With some exceptions, states led by Democrats opted to set up their own markets, called exchanges, and Republican-led states declined.
Only months from the official launch, exchanges are supposed to make the mind-boggling task of buying health insurance more like shopping on Amazon.com or Travelocity. Millions of people who don't have employer coverage will flock to the new markets. Middle-class consumers will be able to buy private insurance, with government help to pay the premiums in most cases. Low-income people will be steered to safety net programs like Medicaid.
"It's an experiment between the feds and the states, and among the states themselves," said Robert Krughoff, president of Consumers' Checkbook, a nonprofit ratings group that has devised an online tool used by many federal workers to pick their health plans. Krughoff is skeptical that either the feds or the states have solved the technological challenge of making the purchase of health insurance as easy as selecting a travel-and-hotel package.
Whether or not the bugs get worked out, consumers will be able to start signing up Oct. 1 for coverage that takes effect Jan. 1. That's also when two other major provisions of the law kick in: the mandate that almost all Americans carry health insurance, and the rule that says insurers can no longer turn away people in poor health.
Barring last-minute switches that may not be revealed until next week, 23 states plus Washington, D.C., have opted to run their own markets or partner with the Obama administration to do so.
Twenty-six states are defaulting to the feds. But in several of those, Republican governors are trying to carve out some kind of role by negotiating with federal Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Utah's status is unclear. It received initial federal approval to run its own market, but appears to be reconsidering.
"It's healthy for the states to have various choices," said Ben Nelson, CEO of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. "And there's no barrier to taking somebody else's ideas and making them work in your situation." A former U.S. senator from Nebraska, Nelson was one of several conservative Democrats who provided crucial votes to pass the overhaul.
States setting up their own exchanges are already taking different paths. Some will operate their markets much like major employers run their health plans, as "active purchasers" offering a limited choice of insurance carriers to drive better bargains. Others will open their markets to all insurers that meet basic standards, and let consumers decide.
Obama's Affordable Care Act remains politically divisive, but state insurance exchanges enjoy broad public support. Setting up a new market was central to former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's health care overhaul as governor of Massachusetts. There, it's known as the Health Connector.
A recent AP poll found that Americans prefer to have states run the new markets by 63 percent to 32 percent. Among conservatives the margin was nearly 4-1 in favor of state control. But with some exceptions, including Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico, Republican-led states are maintaining a hands-off posture, meaning the federal government will step in.
"There is a sense of irony that it's the more conservative states" yielding to federal control, said Sandy Praeger, the Republican insurance commissioner in Kansas, a state declining to run its own exchange. First, she said, the law's opponents "put their money on the Supreme Court, then on the election. Now that it's a reality, we may see some movement."
They're not budging in Austin. "Texas is not interested in being a subcontractor to Obamacare," said Lucy Nashed, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, who remains opposed to mandates in the law.
In Kansas, Praeger supported a state-run exchange, but lost the political struggle to Gov. Sam Brownback. She says Kansans will be closely watching what happens in neighboring Colorado, where the state will run the market. She doubts that consumers in her state would relish dealing with a call center on the other side of the country. The federal exchange may have some local window-dressing but it's expected to function as a national program.
Christine Ferguson, director of the Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange, says she expects to see a big shift to state control in the next few years. "Many of the states have just run out of time for a variety of reasons," said Ferguson. "I'd be surprised if in the longer run every state didn't want to have its own approach."
In some ways, the federal government has a head start on the states. It already operates the Medicare Plan Finder for health insurance and prescription plans that serve seniors, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Both have many of the features of the new insurance markets.
Administration officials are keeping mum about what the new federal exchange will look like, except that it will open on time and people in all 50 states will have the coverage they're entitled to by law.
Joel Ario, who oversaw planning for the health exchanges in the Obama administration, says "there's a rich dialogue going on" as to what the online shopping experience should look like. "To create a website like Amazon is a very complicated exercise," said Ario, now a consultant with Manatt Health Solutions.
He thinks consumers should be able to get one dollar figure for each plan that totals up all their expected costs for the year, including premiums, deductibles and copayments. Otherwise, scrolling through pages of insurance jargon online will be a sure turn-off.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks could struggle to extend their seven-week winning streak as the quarterly earnings period draws to a close and the market bumps into strong technical resistance.
Many analysts say the market could spend the next few weeks consolidating gains that have lifted the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 <.spx> by 6.6 percent since the start of the year.
The S&P 500 ended up 0.1 percent for the week, recovering from a late sell-off on Friday after a Bloomberg report about slow February sales at Wal-Mart
Odds of a pullback are increasing, with the market in slightly overbought territory, said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.
"I do suspect the closing of the earnings season will lead to at least a pause and possibly a pullback," Zaro said. The S&P 500 could shave 3 to 5 percent between now and early April, he said.
Fourth-quarter earnings have mostly beaten expectations. Year-over-year profit growth for S&P 500 companies is now estimated at 5.6 percent, up from a January 1 forecast for 2.9 percent growth, and 70 percent of companies are exceeding analyst profit expectations, above the 62 percent long-term average, according to Thomson Reuters data.
On Thursday, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is due to report results, unofficially closing out the earnings period. Investors will be keen to see its quarterly numbers, especially after the Friday's news report that rattled investors.
The S&P 500 has gained 4.3 percent since Alcoa kicked off the earnings season on January 8.
The approaching March 1 deadline for across-the-board federal budget cuts unless Congress reaches a compromise adds another reason for caution, especially with recent economic data indicating the recovery remains bumpy.
Manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent last month, the Federal Reserve said on Friday, but production in November and December was much stronger than previously thought.
TESTING RESISTANCE
The S&P 500 has been trading near five-year highs, and it notched its highest level since November 2007 this week. But the gains have pushed the benchmark index almost as far as it is likely to go in the near term, with strong resistance hovering around 1,525 and 1,540, one analyst said.
As a result, the index is set to move sideways, said Dave Chojnacki, market technician at Street One Financial in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. "We just don't have the volume or the catalyst right now" to go above those levels, he said.
At the same time, other analysts say, the market has not shown significant signs of slowing, including a break below 15- and 30-day moving averages.
Such moves would be needed to show that momentum is slowing or that the market is at risk of a correction, said Todd Salamone, director of research for Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio. The S&P 500's 14-day moving average is at 1,511 while the 30-day is at 1,494. The index closed Friday at 1,519.
Recent M&A activity, including news this week of a merger between American Airlines and US Airways Group
In the coming days, the market will focus on minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting, due to be released on Wednesday, which could provide support if they suggest the Fed will remain on its current course of aggressive monetary easing.
The Fed minutes released in January spooked markets a bit when they revealed that some Fed officials thought it would be appropriate to consider ending asset purchases later in 2013. U.S. Treasury yields rose on that news, though market worries about a near-term end to quantitative easing have since faded.
Among other companies expected to report earnings next week are Nordstrom
(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Leslie Adler)
The United States Embassy in Mexico on Friday issued a statement denying an article in The New York Times that reported that Ambassador Anthony Wayne had met with senior Mexican officials to discuss American concerns about the possible appointment of Gen. Moisés García Ochoa of Mexico as that country’s defense secretary.
“Despite significant reporting in the Mexican press during the presidential transition about the potential candidates to head Mexico’s military,” the statement read, “Ambassador Wayne did not discuss Gen. Moisés García Ochoa with Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, now secretary of government, or Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, now secretary for agrarian, territorial and urban development (SEDATU), as reported in the New York Times story.”
The embassy’s statement comes 11 days after the Times article about Washington’s exchanges with Mexico regarding General García Ochoa. It follows an avalanche of outrage in the Mexican news media, whose columnists and commentators have accused the United States of “vetoing” General García’s nomination and of infringing on Mexican sovereignty. Some in the news media have called on Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to rethink the terms of his government’s cooperation with the Obama administration on security matters.
The embassy statement on Friday also came after an earlier statement by William Ostick, a State Department spokesman, that did not dispute the facts in the Times’ account.
On Feb. 4, The Times reported that some senior American officials suspected General García Ochoa of skimming money from multimillion-dollar defense contracts. It reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration suspected the general of having links to drug traffickers dating back to the late 1990s. And the newspaper reported that Ambassador Wayne discussed those concerns with Mexican officials.
In the end, General García Ochoa was passed over for his government’s top military job. The Times reported that it was unclear whether American concerns played a role in Mexico’s decision.
The Mexican government made no statement to The Times on the article. But Mr. Osorio Chong denied to Mexican newspapers that the United States had vetoed or made suggestions on any appointment, and Mr. Ramírez Marín has told Mexican reporters that while he and Mr. Chong were present at a meeting with the ambassador before the inauguration to discuss relations, the general’s possible appointment was not discussed.
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc said on Friday that it been the target of a series of attacks by an unidentified hacker group, but it had found no evidence that user data was compromised.
“Last month, Facebook security discovered that our systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack,” the company said in a blog post posted on Friday afternoon, just before the three-day Presidents Day weekend. “The attack occurred when a handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised.”
The social network, which says it has more than one billion active users worldwide, also said: “Facebook was not alone in this attack. It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well.”
Facebook’s announcement follows recent cyber attacks on other prominent websites. Twitter, the microblogging social network, said earlier this month that it had been hacked, and that approximately 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information including user names and email addresses.
Newspaper websites, including those of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have said they have also been infiltrated. Those attacks were attributed by the news organizations to Chinese hackers targeting their coverage of China.
While Facebook said that no user data was compromised, the incident could raise consumer concerns about privacy and the vulnerability of personal information stored within the social network.
Facebook has experienced several privacy missteps over the years for the way it handles user data, and settled a privacy investigation with federal regulators in 2011.
Facebook said it spotted a suspicious file and traced it back to an employee’s laptop. After conducting a forensic examination of the laptop, Facebook said it identified a malicious file, then searched company-wide and identified “several other compromised employee laptops.”
The company also said it identified a previously unseen exploit to bypass its built-in cyberdefenses, and that new protections were added on February 1.
(Reporting by Tim Reid; editing by Gary Hill, G Crosse)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
American Idol
From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban
Michael Becker/FOX.
After Ryan Seacrest all but begged us to vote for a female, we finally got to see the level of the women's talent. Angela Miller sat at the piano and sang her own song, "You Set Me Free." It was a show-stopping performance, prompting judge Keith Urban to rave.
"If that was recorded right there, I would play it in my car," he said. "That was just a beautiful song."
Miller was followed by Candice Glover, who gave an strong version of Alicia Keys's "Girl on Fire." Janelle Arthur also impressed with a pleasant version of Carrie Underwood's "I told You So."
Shubha Vedula had the nerve to sing a Mariah Carey song in front of Mariah Carey and did a great job.
And then there was Zoanette Johnson. (At some point, she needs to drop her last name and just be known as Zoanette.) She played the drums as she sang a song she had improvised onstage the previous night. It was a rambling tune about her Idol experience. It was manic and baffling. And then she came to an abrupt stop and yelled at the background singers.
"Slow it down! C'mon guys," she pleaded. "I need this to be right." At some point, she lost a drumstick.
It's fun to imagine what Simon Cowell's reaction would be to her performances.
Kez Ban, the season's other memorable contestant, was quickly cut from the competition after singing her original song. There is clearly only room for one unpredictable contestant this season – and her name is Zoanette.
As the show wound down, the judges cut the field down to 20 women, and then brought in the remaining 28 male singers to cut them down to 20. That's when the judges had Josh Holiday sing "Georgia on My Mind." He split his pants from crotch to knee.
But Holiday and 39 others are season 12's top 40. One of them will be the next American Idol. Will it be a girl?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 eked out a small gain for a third straight session on Thursday, helped by a flurry of merger activity, though investors see no catalysts to lift the market further with major averages near multi-year highs.
The market's slowed advance took the S&P 500 to its highest intraday level since November 2007 on Wednesday. While the index notched its third straight day of gains, none was more than 0.2 percent.
Shares of H.J. Heinz Co
Also supporting the market was data showing the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected in the latest week. The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> fell 2.4 percent, dropping to 12.67.
"While I'm not bearish, I don't see many upside motivations at these levels," said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York, who cited the low level of the VIX as a sign the market was overbought.
Equities have struggled to break above current levels where they have been hovering for almost two weeks. The S&P 500 is up more than 6 percent so far this year.
"We need to digest some of our gains to go higher, but people are so eager to buy on the dips that we're not even seeing dips anymore. People are just chasing the market higher," said Selkin, who helps oversee about $3 billion in assets.
Stocks fell earlier after a report the euro zone's gross domestic product contracted by the steepest amount since the first quarter of 2009. In addition, Japan's GDP shrank 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, crushing expectations of a modest return to growth.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 9.52 points, or 0.07 percent, at 13,973.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 1.05 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,521.38. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 1.78 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,198.66.
Constellation Brands
American Airlines and US Airways Group
Weakness in Europe contributed to a 5 percent drop in revenue from the region for Cisco Systems
General Motors Co
Only five more stocks rose than fell on the New York Stock Exchange, while 51 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed higher.
Volume was light, with about 6.36 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.
(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)
Brian Harkin for The New York Times
Krish Doshi, left, with his brother Karan Doshi, both 8, at Usha Foods in Floral Park, Queens. More Photos »
After much debate, it was decided: masala dosas all around.
The retirees clustered in front of the counter at Usha Foods, then got down to business: Who was paying? Seven credit cards appeared and seven hands waved them at the cashier, until one gray-haired man succeeded in swatting his friends away. Behind them, a scrum waited to order, chattering above the whir of the microwave and the warble of Bollywood hits. Over it all, a young man behind the counter raised a tray high and shouted: “Mr. Kamal! Two chole bhature!”
Usha Foods was one of the first Indian-owned businesses in Floral Park, Queens. Today, it’s where the city’s newest Little India gathers.
On a recent Saturday, Indira Mathur, 54, presided over the cash register in gold-rimmed glasses and a blazer, ringing up plate lunches, flatbreads and black pepper cashews. Her nephew Vardan, 34, speedily dished out plates of spiced chickpeas and creamy pakora curry while her husband, Anil, 57, ran the kitchen. Her son Abhinav, 28, manned the takeout sweets counter. The family bought the shop in 2001, and have already expanded twice.
Floral Park is perched on the far edge of the city, on the Nassau County line. The main thoroughfare of Hillside Avenue is lined with snack shops and kebab houses, sari boutiques and discount salons. A few months ago, a Hindu temple dedicated to the monkey-faced god Hanuman opened in an old supermarket space. Next door, the accurately named Variety Shop sells colorful statuary of Hindu gods and goddesses as well as luggage and watches. If you’re in need of a carrom board — an Indian game of tabletop billiards — you could stop in Butala Emporium down the block.
Intrepid eaters make the trip from Manhattan to visit restaurants like Mumbai Xpress, New Kerala Kitchen, Madras Woodlands and Southern Spice. But for all the cooking going on in this enclave, Usha Foods is one of the few places that is consistently full.
The shop serves pan-Indian, vegetarian comfort food designed to satisfy all comers, like the South Asian version of a diner. There are southern Indian dosas, saucy Punjabi dishes like baingan bharta and Gujarati snacks like dabeli (spiced potato patties served on hamburger buns). “People call and ask if we are a Punjabi shop or a Gujarati shop,” said Ms. Mathur, who moved from New Delhi to the United States in 1986. “I say we are a Hindustani shop,” using the Hindi word for all of India.
On a recent frigid Sunday afternoon, customers streamed in from the cold, salwar kameez and saris peeking out from puffy jackets. Many lined up for to-go boxes of crunchy snacks for Super Bowl parties; others sat at the simple wooden tables tucking into their orders. Outside, Fawad Taj smoked a postprandial cigarette and chatted with two friends. “The food is pretty close to what our mothers would cook,” Mr. Taj, who was born in Lahore, Pakistan, said. “And we’re having a lazy Sunday.”
After their own meal, Indu and D. P. Singh hugged their son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren goodbye. “Every two weeks we meet them here for lunch,” Ms. Singh said. “They have everything: Punjabi as well as southern cooking.”
Ms. Mathur said she particularly liked to see American-born children come in with their Indian parents: “We thought that when our generation gets old, the kids wouldn’t carry on with our foods. But now we see they follow our traditions — when they have a party, they want this food.”
Sridevi Krishna, 8, seemed to agree: Asked if she liked the sweets her father was carrying out, she offered only a huge, bucktoothed grin.
BEIJING (AP) — Kobe Bryant has stirred plenty of excitement by joining a Chinese-language microblogging site.
His first message came Friday morning Beijing time, about an hour and a half before Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers were due to play the Clippers.
“Valentine’s day sneaks ready to break Clippers hearts. Big game tonight,” the first message on his account said.
Sina Weibo verified that the NBA superstar has set up an individual account on its hugely popular microblogging site. Bryant’s followers numbered more than 100,000 within hours on Thursday, and by Friday they had surpassed 200,000.
The account came just a few days after a message appeared on Nike Basketball‘s Sina Weibo account, named Black Mamba, on Lunar New Year’s Day: “Hey it’s Kobe, I’ve decided to take over Nike basketball’s Weibo handle for a few days and I wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year.”
Bryant is widely known and extremely popular in China, rivaling hometown star Yao Ming. During the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, billboards of Bryant dominated China’s commercial districts.
The Los Angeles Lakers star has several fan pages on Sina Weibo.
One of them — “Home of Kobe” — has more than 200,000 followers. Along with other sites, it posted a welcome message for Bryant. By Friday, it was translating fans’ comments into English.
“Hello, Black Mamba, welcome to SINA WEIBO. It’s been a long time for Chinese fans to wait for this moment,” the page wrote.
Sina Weibo says it has more than 400 million users.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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