Five Things to Know About The Lumineers

By Marisa Laudadio

01/19/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

From left: Wesley Schultz, Neyla Pekarek and Jeremiah Fraites

Alan Poizner/PictureGroup

You already know their hit song "Ho Hey" with its catchy shout-it-out chant that sticks in your head – but what's behind Denver-based band The Lumineers' cool blend of indie rock and Americana?

Here are five things to know about the trio – Wesley Schultz (lead vocals, guitar), 30; Jeremiah Fraites (guitar), 27; and Neyla Pekarek (cello, piano), 26 – who are up for two Grammys (best new artist and best Americana album) and are also performing on Saturday Night Live this week alongside host Jennifer Lawrence.

1. Most people think that 'Ho Hey' – which reached No. 1 on three different charts – is about a romantic relationship, but that's not the whole story.
"The essence of the song was that I was really struggling to make ends meet in the big city when I was living in Brooklyn and working in New York. It was a myth, this idea that you'd go there and get discovered and it would be this great place for music," explains Schultz, who, like Fraites, hails from New Jersey and moved to Denver in recent years, where they met Pekarek.

"It's about a lost love in some ways, but it's also a lost dream. It's funny that a lot of people play it at their weddings because it was written from a different place. But it's kind of a beautiful thing, actually, that people can take something I was feeling really, really down about and turn it into a message of hope."

2. They've only recently been able to quit their day jobs.
"I was working as a busser, a bartender, a barista, a guitar teacher, caterer – a lot of service industry jobs, because it allows you to get away and tour if you need to or take a night off to play," explains Schultz.

"Jer was bussing tables right along beside me. And Neyla was a hostess and a substitute teacher. She'd been offered a full-time teaching position while we were in the midst of touring – and losing a lot of money – and she still stuck with it. Somehow she chose this over that, which is absurd, but we're glad she did!"

3. They named their hit song carefully.
Were they ever concerned people might call it "Hey Ho" in a derogatory way? "Yeah, at some point we laughed about it," says Schultz. "We specifically named it 'Ho Hey' instead of 'Hey Ho' [for that reason]. If people searched for it online, we'd rather it not be something that takes you in that direction."

Do they mind when people get the title wrong? "Oh no, that would be a little pretentious!" says Schultz with a chuckle. "It's kind of a silly name to begin with."

4. That's Schultz's mom on the cover of their debut, self-titled album.
"It's my mom, Judy, as a child, and her mother," he explains. "I'd asked my mom if she had any old photos that I could look through a while back, and I fell in love with it. You know if you set up a child for a picture then can't get out of the frame in time? My mom had a funny take on it: It's our first album, kind of our baby, like this child."

Schultz thanked his mom for all her years of emotional support with some heavy metal when their album went gold. "I had the plaque sent to my mom, because she'd been really supportive of us and believed in us when a lot of people were pretty concerned. And now she's got a platinum one!"

5. Their band name has more than one meaning.
While Schultz and Fraites have been playing music together for more than eight years (previous band names include Free Beer, 6Cheek, and Wesley Jeremiah), they've only been known as The Lumineers for the last four thanks to a mistake.

"We were playing a small club in Jersey City, N.J.," explains Schultz, "and there was a band out there at the time called Lumineers who were slotted for the same time, same day, the next week. The person running the show that night [mistakenly] announced us as The Lumineers."

The name stuck. "It doesn't mean anything literally. It's a made-up word," says Schultz. Another strange coincidence they learned? "It's also the name of a dental veneer company," he adds.

So how are Schultz's teeth? "I have a pretty good smile," he says with a big laugh. "I won 'Best Smile' in high school. It's a pretty big deal."

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Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study

Researchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.

The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.

Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.

"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.

In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.

Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

___

Online:

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

___

Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.

The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.

Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.

"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.

Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.

Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.

Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.

Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP

Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.

The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.

"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."

Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.

Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.

The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.

The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.

Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.

"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.

"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Priest Is Planning to Defy the Vatican’s Orders to Stay Quiet

Jekaterina Saveljeva for The New York Times

The Rev. Tony Flannery, an Irish priest, was suspended by the Vatican last year. “I refuse to be terrified into submission,” he said.

DUBLIN — A well-known Irish Catholic priest plans to defy Vatican authorities on Sunday by breaking his silence about what he says is a campaign against him by the church over his advocacy of more open discussion on church teachings.

The Rev. Tony Flannery, 66, who was suspended by the Vatican last year, said he was told by the Vatican that he would be allowed to return to ministry only if he agreed to write, sign and publish a statement agreeing, among other things, that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality.

“How can I put my name to such a document when it goes against everything I believe in,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “If I signed this, it would be a betrayal not only of myself but of my fellow priests and lay Catholics who want change. I refuse to be terrified into submission.”

Father Flannery, a regular contributor to religious publications, said he planned to make his case public at a news conference here on Sunday.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote to Father Flannery’s religious superior, the Rev. Michael Brehl, last year instructing him to remove Father Flannery from his ministry in County Galway, to ensure he did not publish any more articles in religious or other publications, and to tell him not to give interviews to the news media.

In the letter, the Vatican objected in particular to an article published in 2010 in Reality, an Irish religious magazine. In the article, Father Flannery, a Redemptorist priest, wrote that he no longer believed that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the church originated with Jesus” or that he designated “a special group of his followers as priests.”

Instead, he wrote, “It is more likely that some time after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.”

Father Flannery said the Vatican wanted him specifically to recant the statement, and affirm that Christ instituted the church with a permanent hierarchical structure and that bishops are divinely established successors to the apostles.

He believes the church’s treatment of him, which he described as a “Spanish Inquisition-style campaign,” is symptomatic of a definite conservative shift under Pope Benedict XVI.

“I have been writing thought-provoking articles and books for decades without hindrance,” he said. “This campaign is being orchestrated by a secretive body that refuses to meet me. Surely I should at least be allowed to explain my views to my accusers.”

His superior was also told to order Father Flannery to withdraw from his leadership role in the Association of Catholic Priests, a group formed in 2009 to articulate the views of rank-and-file members of the clergy.

In reply to an association statement expressing solidarity with Father Flannery, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith denied it was acting in a secretive manner, pointed out that Father Flannery’s views could be construed as “heresy” under church law, and threatened “canonical penalties,” including excommunication, if he did not change his views.

This month, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote to an American priest, Roy Bourgeois, notifying him of his laicization, following his excommunication in 2008 over his support for the ordination of women.

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100 Years of U.S. Presidential Inaugurations

On March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson took the oath of office. Nearly 100 years later, Barack Obama will take that same oath.

The U.S. presidential inauguration looks a tad different than it did a century ago. In 1913, women still did not have the right to vote and Wilson rode to the Capitol in a horse-drawn carriage. And don’t expect to see President Obama wearing a silk top hat like Wilson either.

[More from Mashable: Watch Every President’s Inauguration Since Reagan in 36 Seconds]

Thanks to the digital archiving of government images, zipping through 100 years of presidential history doesn’t even require a trip to the library. We’ve compiled the most memorable photographs and videos taken at presidential inaugurations since 1913 for a scrollable history lesson.

[More from Mashable: The Letters Kids Wrote to Obama About Gun Control]

If you like your history well-aged, then there’s also a special gallery at the bottom featuring images from inaugurations that occurred before 1913 — including those of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ulysses S. Grant.

Woodrow Wilson, March 4, 1913

“President-elect Wilson and President Taft, standing side by side, laughing, at White House prior to Wilson’s inauguration ceremonies” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Woodrow Wilson, March 5, 1917

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

“Telegram from Evangeline Booth, Commander of the Salvation Army” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Warren G. Harding, March 4, 1921

“Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Philander Knox and Joseph Cannon, in convertible” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Calvin Coolidge, March 4, 1925

“President Coolidge, Mrs. Coolidge and Senator Curtis on the way to the Capitol” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Herbert Hoover, March 4, 1929

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933

Inaugural Program, Inauguration. Franklin D. Roosevelt President of the United States. John N. Garner Vice President of the United States. Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 20, 1937

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

“Ticket for the 1937 inauguration, the first to take place on January 20th.” Image courtesy of FDR Library

“Eleanor Roosevelt poses in her inaugural gown at the White House.” Image courtesy of FDR Library

Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 20, 1941

“Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt riding in an open car, returning to the White House from FDR’s third inauguration.” Image courtesy of FDR Library

Excerpt from home movie of FDR driving and walking with assistance to take the Oath of Office on January 20, 1941.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 20, 1945

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

“Crowd stands in snow for inauguration” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Harry S. Truman, January 20, 1949

“Truman and Barkley during Inaugural parade.” Image courtesy of Truman Library

Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 20, 1953

“Ike responds to cheers of crowd.” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

“With smiles and a wave, President Harry Truman and his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, leave White House in an open car on way to Capitol for inauguration ceremonies.” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 21, 1957

“President Eisenhower waves to the crowd” Image courtesy of Eisenhower Library

“Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon watching inaugural parade with Anne & David Eisenhower and Julie & Tricia Nixon” Image courtesy of Eisenhower Library

“Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower attend the Inaugural Ball with John and Barbara Eisenhower” Image courtesy of Eisenhower Library

John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961

Image courtesy of National Archives

“President-elect John F. Kennedy shakes hands with Father Richard J. Casey, the Pastor, after attending Mass at Holy Trinity Church … prior to inauguration ceremonies.” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Lyndon B. Johnson, January 20, 1965

“President Lyndon B. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, Lynda Bird Johnson, and Luci Baines Johnson preparing for Inauguration ceremonies.” Image courtesy of LBJ Library

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

“Secret service agents try to hold back the crowds that surge forward to watch President Johnson dance with the First Lady at the inaugural ball at the National Guard Armory” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Richard M. Nixon, January 20, 1969

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

“President and Mrs. Nixon waving to the crowd from the Presidential limousine in the inaugural motorcade” Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Richard M. Nixon, January 20, 1973

Image courtesy of White House

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Jimmy Carter, January 20, 1977

Image courtesy of Jimmy Carter Presidential Library

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Ronald Reagan, January 21, 1985

Image courtesy of Reagan Library

“1985 Inaugural Ball: President and Mrs. Reagan in National Air and Space Museum” Image courtesy of Smithsonian

George H. W. Bush, January 20, 1989

Image courtesy of Smithsonian

“1989 Presidential Inaugration, George H. W. Bush, Opening Ceremonies, at Lincoln Memorial” Image courtesy of Smithsonian

Bill Clinton, January 20, 1993

“While the Clintons and Gores watch, Chelsea Clinton rings a replica of the Liberty Bell during festivities kicking off the Clinton/Gore 1993 Inaugural events.” Image courtesy of Smithsonian

“George Bush and Bill Clinton shake hands just after the inaugural ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol.” Image courtesy of Smithsonian

Image courtesy of Smithsonian

Bill Clinton, January 20, 1997

Image courtesy of Smithsonian

Image courtesy of Smithsonian

George W. Bush, January 20, 2001

Image courtesy of White House

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

George W. Bush, January 20, 2005

Image courtesy of White House

Image courtesy of White House

Image courtesy of White House

Barack Obama, January 20, 2009

Image courtesy of Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo, U.S. Air Force

“President Barack Obama is given the Oath of Office for a second time by Chief Justice John G. Roberts” Image courtesy of Pete Souza/White House

“President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama share a private moment in a freight elevator at an Inaugural Ball” Image courtesy of Pete Souza/White House

“President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama ride in a golf cart at an Inaugural Ball” Image courtesy of Pete Souza/White House

BONUS: Pre-1913 Presidential Inaugurations

Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Marla Sokoloff Blogs: Adventures in Baby Traveling

Shady ladies in Hawaii – Courtesy Marla Sokoloff

Our celebrity blogger Marla Sokoloff is a new mama!

Since audiences first got to know her at age 12 as Gia on Full House, Sokoloff has had many memorable TV roles — Jody on Party of Five, Lucy on The Practice, Claire on Desperate Housewives – as well as turns on the big screen in Whatever It Takes, Dude, Where’s My Car? and Sugar & Spice.

Sokoloff, 32, also sings and plays guitar and released an album, Grateful, in 2005.

She wed her husband, music composer Alec Puro, in November 2009 and the couple — plus pup Coco Puro — make their home in Los Angeles.

You can find Marla, now mom to 11-month-old daughter Elliotte Anne, on Twitter.

Happy 2013! I don’t know about you, but I’m completely amazed at how fast 2012 flew by! I must admit, on New Year’s Day I found myself a little weepy to say goodbye to the year that my little Elliotte came into this world. I realized that as long as I’m on this earth I will always have a soft spot for the year 2012, as it was a complete life and game-changer for me. (Clearly it’s also the year that turned me into a total sap!)

As far as resolutions go, I have a few. They include the usual suspects (exercise more, get more sleep, drink more than four sips of water per day!) but my main focus is going to be on my beloved iPhone and our very dysfunctional relationship.

I really want to work on being in the present and putting that thing down so I can suck up every delicious moment with my family. The social media and pinboards will just have to wait until after my daughter goes to bed. Baby steps!

Last week we hit a huge milestone … Elliotte took her first steps and is now walking (albeit a bit drunk-like) almost on her own! The moment was truly unbelievable and one that left me in tears (shocking … I know) as I was simply overwhelmed with joy. I was just so proud of her.

This is where my resolution isn’t a good thing because — had I not had my trusty iPhone glued to my body — I might have missed the moment. Her grandparents would have killed me! I’m just saying…

Happy New Year! – Courtesy Marla Sokoloff

We spent our Christmas vacation in paradise on the Big Island of Hawaii, but I’m here to tell you that getting there was nothing short of a nightmare. I’m not going to lie or candy-coat this blog at all because this experience was one I never want to relive.

All of my friends warned me about baby airplane travel … basically it could go either way. Kids are wild cards and you never really know what you’re going to get. So in preparation for my little wild card, I boarded our flight armed with earplugs and chocolates for the innocent passengers that could potentially be caught in the line of fire, so to speak. All the while knowing that I will never need to bring out said earplugs … I mean, my child is perfect after all!

This wasn’t Elliotte’s first flight — over the summer we traveled to San Francisco and my little angel slept for the hour flight each way, so I was certain we had this Hawaiian excursion in the bag.

I came equipped with two giant diaper bags. One was filled with diaper bag essentials (diapers, wipes, pacifiers, bottles, change of clothes for both of us) and the other ridiculously large bag was filled with toys and snacks. So many toys and snacks!! If this plane went down, Elliotte could feed the whole cabin with her copious supply of puffs and Cheerios. Basically the plan was, if this kid wasn’t sleeping, I was going to keep her busy and well-fed!

My special edition diaper bag also contained an emergency item. An SOS of sorts. An article that is generally considered a baby no-no in my house, but one that was only to be revealed if absolutely 100 percent necessary. Friends, I’m talking about the iPad. I loaded my secret weapon up with episodes of Sesame Street and adorable farm animal applications that looked like they would keep Elliotte entertained for at least a temper tantrum or two.

Very much like the aforementioned earplugs, I felt pretty confident that our no-no item wouldn’t be making an appearance.

Before takeoff… – Courtesy Marla Sokoloff

As our flight took off, I could see that Elliotte was not the happy camper I know and love. Her face turned beet-red within seconds and she was thrashing in her carseat as if it was a torture device. The tears were flowing fast and her scream was one that could not be silenced.

I looked at my husband, whose eyes said, “Bring out the iPad!!” but I knew it was way too early in our journey to pull such tricks out of sleeves.

As Alec handed out the chocolate and earplugs to our unlucky neighbors, I brought out some of Elliotte’s favorite toys. Every toy that was presented was met with a louder scream. I moved on to my trusted stash of snacks — surely a handful of puffs would soothe this outburst. Fail. I sang. I danced. I peek-a-booed. Nothing.

How can this be? The seat belt sign hasn’t even been turned off yet and I have pretty much emptied out the contents of my special-edition diaper bag!

Once the captain decided to put me out of my misery and turned the seat belt sign off, I ripped Elliotte out of her carseat (the one I brought thinking she would sleep in) and decided a nice walk down the aisle would do us both some good.

That mission was quickly aborted as the scream-fest continued to unaffected rows that were surely enjoying their cocktails and weekly gossip magazines.

My beach baby in Hawaii – Courtesy Marla Sokoloff

I handed her off to my husband and I took a much-needed break, as well as the first deep breath I had taken since leaving Los Angeles International Airport. We were now three-and-a-half hours into our six-hour flight and Elliotte showed no signs of slowing down. It was in this moment that I turned to my family and saw the chaos.

My seat was littered with toys and Cheerios and my poor child looked like a complete mess. Her face was tear-stained and her clothes were covered in squeezable applesauce. (Another failed mission.)

I knew it was time to bring out the big guns. Elmo needed to step in and he better be bringing his A-game.

I placed Elliotte on my lap and out came the iPad. Images of all of my favorite characters appeared on the screen and I instantly felt comforted by my childhood friends. Not only because they are the same characters that were my source of calm as a child, but also I knew they were the lifesavers we so desperately needed.

Well … I guess iPads and big yellow birds aren’t that comforting to teething babies that are 30,000 feet up in the air. The iPad went flying and I sunk into my seat holding my very unhappy girl tight. I was officially out of ideas.

Hawaiian fun in the sun – Courtesy Marla Sokoloff

A kind woman in front of me asked to hold Elliotte. She saw in my eyes that I was breaking down and she was a mom who got it. She understood. She didn’t judge or hate us for disrupting the beginning of her holiday vacation — she was happy to help because she had once been in our shoes with her own child. Elliotte enjoyed the break from her parents and was actually smiling in her arms.

We finally arrived in paradise and upon landing, Alec and I decided that we were moving to Hawaii as we were never going to step foot on a plane ever again.

In all fairness, in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Elliotte went from having two teeth to eight teeth so I think the plane and cabin pressure exacerbated any existing pain she was already having. Our journey home was slightly better and she even slept for two beautiful hours!

Thank you for letting me share my story — I would absolutely love to hear some of your travel woes! I’m sure it’s even more fun for those of you who have multiple children.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @marlasok or leave your comments below!

Until next time … xo,

– Marla Sokoloff

More from Marla’s PEOPLE.com blog series:

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.

The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.

Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.

"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.

Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.

Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.

Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.

Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.

CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP

Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.

The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.

"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."

Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.

Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.

The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.

The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.

Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.

The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.

"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.

"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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New Northern Ireland Violence May Be About More Than the British Flag

Peter Muhly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Police officers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, remained with their armored vehicles as a car burned after violence between unionists and loyalists on Jan. 12.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — For more than six weeks, it has been a dismal case of back-to-the-future, a crudely sectarian upheaval that has defied all attempts at peacemaking.

Paul Faith/Press Association, via Associated Press

Loyalist protests began in Belfast after the City Council voted to reduce the number of days a year the British flag was flown in public, to 18 from 365.

The scenes recall the sectarian bitterness that infused the 30 years of virtual civil war known as the Troubles: night after night of street protests marshaled by balaclava-wearing militants, who have updated their tactics by using social media to rally mobs; death threats to prominent politicians, some of whom have fled their homes and hidden under police guard; firebombs, flagstones and rocks hurled at churches, police cars and lawmakers’ offices; protesters joined by rock-throwing boys of 8 and 9; neighborhoods sealed off for hours by the police or protesters’ barricades.

Many had hoped that the old hatreds between Northern Ireland’s two main groups — the mainly Protestant, pro-British unionists, and the mainly Roman Catholic republicans, with their commitment to a united Ireland — would recede permanently under the auspices of the Good Friday agreement. That accord was reached 15 years ago as a blueprint for the power-sharing government that now rules the province.

But the fragility of those hopes has been powerfully demonstrated by more than 40 days and nights of violence that were triggered by a decision to cut back on the flying of the Union Jack, Britain’s red, white and blue national flag, over the grandly pillared, neo-Classical pile City Council building in central Belfast.

By the latest count, more than 100 police officers have been injured, along with dozens of protesters and bystanders. At times, the violence has expanded to other cities, including Londonderry. Business has slumped. Police commanders, their forces overwhelmed, have assigned dozens of officers to scan hundreds of hours of closed-circuit video, looking for ringleaders.

The crisis began modestly enough. The Belfast council, its pro-British members outvoted by a coalition of republicans and a small liberal bloc, decided in early December to limit the flag flying to 18 days a year, as specified by London for all of Britain. Through the decades when the council was dominated by Protestant unionists, committed to links with Britain, the flag flew from the pinnacle of the building every day of the year.

Incongruously, perhaps, most of those 18 days do not represent landmarks in Britain’s history — Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, say, or Germany’s surrender in the Second World War — but the birthdays of Queen Elizabeth II and her family members, including the former Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, on whose 31st birthday, Jan. 9, the Belfast flag fluttered for the first time since it came down in early December. Under Britain’s strict rules about flying the national standard on public and private buildings, not even the Parliament buildings in London fly it on any but government-designated days. But the hauling down of the Belfast flag provoked a furious reaction, the most protracted period of unrest in many years in Northern Ireland.

Among pro-British loyalists, the episode was seen as part of the step-by-step erosion of the British presence, a stripping of what many of them call their identity. Other examples they invoke have also been symbolic, including moves to delete the word Ulster — an ancient designation for the northern Irish provinces commonly used by Protestants but mostly shunned by republicans — from the formal names of the province’s police force and its military reservists, and to remove the British crown emblem from the cap and shoulder badges of prison guards and other public officials.

But many of the province’s political commentators see the flag dispute as a token of something more profound and ultimately more threatening to the hopes for a permanent peace here.

They say the council’s decision on the flag, made possible by the fact that nationalists now hold 24 seats on the council, compared with 21 for the unionists, reflects the rapid growth of the Catholic population in the years since the Good Friday agreement, unsettling the long-held assumption among unionists that Protestants would constitute a permanent majority in the province.

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Paid apps are history

This week marked an important moment in the evolution of the iOS app market. As Pages just slipped out of the iPad top 10 highest grossing apps chart, there are now no paid apps among the ten applications that generate most revenue on the iPad. When the iPad application market was born a few years ago, it was dominated by relatively stiffly priced applications, mimicking the PC software or game console software markets. But over the past couple of years, app vendors have realized that free apps with clever in-app purchasing hooks create much more revenue than paid apps.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]

The same applies to the iPhone — there is only one paid app among the twenty highest grossing iPhone apps today. It is notable that some of the highest grossing apps have relatively low download volumes. Clash of Clans has been the top-grossing iPad application for all of January, but it is only ranked 53rd on the iPad download chart. Hay Day is the seventh-biggest application when it comes to revenue generation on the iPhone, but is only ranked at #104 when it comes to download volume.

[More from BGR: Galaxy S IV benchmarks may confirm 1.8GHz CPU and Android 4.2]

Leading app developers have figured out how to decouple download volume from revenue generation by creating free games that seduce their fans into paying steadily for in-app features. The types of of games that require a $ 0.99 or a $ 2.99 fee per download are turning into something resembling nostalgia items. For a stark example of how badly the revenue generation power of paid apps has faded, consider that the current #1 paid app on iPhone, Wood Camera, is 46th on the iPhone chart that lists top-grossing apps.  The future belongs to free apps.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Inspiring Singers Outshine American Idol's Feuding Judges

TV Watch

American Idol

By Steve Helling

01/17/2013 at 11:00 PM EST

From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban

George Holz/FOX

The second episode of American Idol delivered more drama, but a handful of singers managed to eclipse the ongoing feud between new judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj. And that's no easy task considering one of the battling divas is wearing a blonde and pink wig.

The night's most memorable contestant was Lazaro Arbos. As he entered the audition room, one thing became immediately clear: the 21-year-old from Naples, Fla., had a severe stutter. Arbos, who emigrated from Cuba when he was 10, told viewers that he had few friends growing up due to his speech impediment.

But something magical happened when he began to sing. His stutter vanished and he gave a moving performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." As the judges unanimously put him through to Hollywood, Arbos dissolved into tears.

Equally inspiring was Mariah Pulice, a 19-year-old restaurant hostess from Darien, Ind. The last two years have been difficult for Pulice, who told judges she was recovering from anorexia. "If there was no music," she said, "I would not be alive." After singing the Beatles' "Let it Be," the judges were unanimous in their praise. "I really, really, really felt that song coming from you," said Minaj.

Carey agreed: "You touched me," she said. "I know what it's like to have to sing through tears. I'm proud of you."

But it wasn't all drama and emotion. Minaj started a baffling trend of asking handsome singers if they had a girlfriend. (She also managed to charm the shirts off of a couple of them, although you get the feeling they were happy to show their abs on national TV.) "You have a hole in your pants," she told one contestant. "Why are you looking?" he shot back.

And poor Keith Urban. Sitting between Minaj and Carey, he found himself in the crossfire. "I feel like a scratching post," he said at one point, before repeatedly banging his head on the table.

The judges found a lot of talent in Chicago. All told, 46 contestants were put through to Hollywood. The competition will head to Charlotte, N.C., next Wednesday.

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Will Obama's order lead to surge in gun research?

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Nearly as many Americans die from guns as from car crashes each year. We know plenty about the second problem and far less about the first. A scarcity of research on how to prevent gun violence has left policymakers shooting in the dark as they craft gun control measures without much evidence of what works.

That could change with President Barack Obama's order Wednesday to ease research restrictions pushed through long ago by the gun lobby. The White House declared that a 1996 law banning use of money to "advocate or promote gun control" should not keep the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies from doing any work on the topic.

Obama can only do so much, though. Several experts say Congress will have to be on board before anything much changes, especially when it comes to spending money.

How severely have the restrictions affected the CDC?

Its website's A-to-Z list of health topics, which includes such obscure ones as Rift Valley fever, does not include guns or firearms. Searching the site for "guns" brings up dozens of reports on nail gun and BB gun injuries.

The restrictions have done damage "without a doubt" and the CDC has been "overly cautious" about interpreting them, said Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"The law is so vague it puts a virtual freeze on gun violence research," said a statement from Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's like censorship: When people don't know what's prohibited, they assume everything is prohibited."

Many have called for a public health approach to gun violence like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.

"The answer wasn't taking away cars," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

However, while much is known about vehicles and victims in crashes, similar details are lacking about gun violence.

Some unknowns:

—How many people own firearms in various cities and what types.

—What states have the highest proportion of gun ownership.

—Whether gun ownership correlates with homicide rates in a city.

—How many guns used in homicides were bought legally.

—Where juveniles involved in gun fatalities got their weapons.

—What factors contribute to mass shootings like the Newtown, Conn., one that killed 26 people at a school.

"If an airplane crashed today with 20 children and 6 adults there would be a full-scale investigation of the causes and it would be linked to previous research," said Dr. Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

"There's no such system that's comparable to that" for gun violence, he said.

One reason is changes pushed by the National Rifle Association and its allies in 1996, a few years after a major study showed that people who lived in homes with firearms were more likely to be homicide or suicide victims. A rule tacked onto appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services barred use of funds for "the advocacy or promotion of gun control."

Also, at the gun group's urging, U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas, led an effort to remove $2.6 million from the CDC's injury prevention center, which had led most of the research on guns. The money was later restored but earmarked for brain injury research.

"What the NRA did was basically terrorize the research community and terrorize the CDC," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who headed the CDC's injury center at the time. "They went after the researchers, they went after institutions, they went after CDC in a very big way, and they went after me," he said. "They didn't want the data to be collected because they were threatened by what the data were showing."

Dickey, who is now retired, said Wednesday that his real concern was the researcher who led that gun ownership study, who Dickey described as being "in his own kingdom or fiefdom" and believing guns are bad.

He and Rosenberg said they have modified their views over time and now both agree that research is needed. They put out a joint statement Wednesday urging research that prevents firearm injuries while also protecting the rights "of legitimate gun owners."

"We ought to research the whole environment, both sides — what the benefits of having guns are and what are the benefits of not having guns," Dickey said. "We should study any part of this problem," including whether armed guards at schools would help, as the National Rifle Association has suggested.

Association officials did not respond to requests for comment. A statement Wednesday said the group "has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership" and that "attacking firearms" is not the answer. It said nothing about research.

The 1996 law "had a chilling effect. It basically brought the field of firearm-related research to a screeching halt," said Benjamin of the Public Health Association.

Webster said researchers like him had to "partition" themselves so whatever small money they received from the CDC was not used for anything that could be construed as gun policy. One example was a grant he received to evaluate a community-based program to reduce street gun violence in Baltimore, modeled after a successful program in Chicago called CeaseFire. He had to make sure the work included nothing that could be interpreted as gun control research, even though other privately funded research might.

Private funds from foundations have come nowhere near to filling the gap from lack of federal funding, Hargarten said. He and more than 100 other doctors and scientists recently sent Vice President Joe Biden a letter urging more research, saying the lack of it was compounding "the tragedy of gun violence."

Since 1973, the government has awarded 89 grants to study rabies, of which there were 65 cases; 212 grants for cholera, with 400 cases, yet only three grants for firearm injuries that topped 3 million, they wrote. The CDC spends just about $100,000 a year out of its multibillion-dollar budget on firearm-related research, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said.

"It's so out of proportion to the burden, however you measure it," said Dr. Matthew Miller, associate professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. As a result, "we don't know really simple things," such as whether tighter gun rules in New York will curb gun trafficking "or is some other pipeline going to open up" in another state, he said.

What now?

CDC officials refused to discuss the topic on the record — a possible sign of how gun shy of the issue the agency has been even after the president's order.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement that her agency is "committed to re-engaging gun violence research."

Others are more cautious. The Union of Concerned Scientists said the White House's view that the law does not ban gun research is helpful, but not enough to clarify the situation for scientists, and that congressional action is needed.

Dickey, the former congressman, agreed.

"Congress is supposed to do that. He's not supposed to do that," Dickey said of Obama's order. "The restrictions were placed there by Congress.

"What I was hoping for ... is 'let's do this together,'" Dickey said.

___

Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Housing, job data push S&P to five-year high; Intel down late

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stronger-than-expected data on housing starts and jobless claims lit a fire under stocks on Thursday, pushing the S&P 500 to a five-year high and its third day of gains.

A pair of economic reports lifted investors' sentiment. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell to a five-year low last week and housing starts jumped last month to the highest since June 2008.

Strength in the housing and labor markets is key to sustained growth and higher corporate profits, helping to bring out buyers even on a day when earnings reports were mixed.

Gains were tempered by weakness in the financial sector, with Bank of America down 4.2 percent to $11.28 and Citigroup off 2.9 percent to $41.24 after their results.

In other negative earnings news, shares of chipmaker Intel fell 5.2 percent to $21.49 in extended-hours trading after the company forecast quarterly revenue that fell short of analysts' expectations. Intel had ended the regular session up 2.6 percent at $22.68.

The S&P 500 ended at its highest since December 2007 and now sits just 5.6 percent from its all-time closing high of 1,565.15.

"Having consolidated really for the last two weeks, the fact that we broke out, I think that that is sucking in quite a bit of money," said James Dailey, portfolio manager of TEAM Asset Strategy Fund in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 84.79 points, or 0.63 percent, at 13,596.02. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 8.31 points, or 0.56 percent, at 1,480.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 18.46 points, or 0.59 percent, at 3,136.00.

Better-than-expected earnings and revenue reported by online marketplace eBay late Wednesday helped the stock gain 2.7 percent to $54.33.

In the housing sector, PulteGroup Inc shares gained 4.9 percent to $20.29 and Toll Brothers Inc advanced 3.1 percent to $35.99. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> climbed 2.4 percent, reaching its highest close since August 2007.

Semiconductor shares <.sox> rose 2 percent to the highest close in eight months.

Financials were the only S&P 500 sector to register a slight decline for the day.

Bank of America's fourth-quarter profit fell as it took more charges to clean up mortgage-related problems. Citigroup posted $2.32 billion of charges for layoffs and lawsuits.

Energy shares led gains on the Dow as U.S. crude oil prices jumped more than 1 percent. Shares of Exxon Mobil were up 0.8 percent at $90.20 while shares of Chevron were up 0.7 percent at $114.75.

S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, Thomson Reuters data showed. Expectations for the quarter have fallen considerably since October when a 9.9 percent gain was estimated.

Volume was roughly 6.5 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.

Advancers outpaced decliners on the NYSE by about 22 to 7 and on the Nasdaq by about 2 to 1.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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In Regional Elections, a Microcosm of Trouble Ahead for Merkel

BERLIN — With the national parliamentary election scheduled for September, many in Germany are looking to Lower Saxony, which holds regional elections on Sunday, for clues of what could happen in Berlin this autumn.

Political experts insist that regional elections in Germany have traditionally had little direct influence on the outcome of national elections. But several similarities between Lower Saxony and the German government make it appear a microcosm of the larger political scene.

Like Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, Lower Saxony’s is led by a center-right coalition of her Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats. The Christian Democratic candidate in the state, David McAllister, is personally popular with voters, as is the chancellor, helping him to close in on his Social Democratic rival, Stephan Weil, making for a tight race.

But also like the chancellor, Mr. McAllister will rely heavily on the Free Democrats’ winning enough votes to earn seats in the regional legislature to continue his current government. In recent surveys, the party has hovered around 5 percent, the threshold needed to secure representation at the regional and national levels.

That polling has focused attention on the vote in Lower Saxony as a make-or-break moment for the party and perhaps even for Ms. Merkel’s coalition in Berlin.

The Free Democratic Party ended a string of losses at the regional level by winning slightly more than 8 percent of the vote in two states last year, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. But for now that performance has not translated into a stronger position at the national level.

Many blame a lack of leadership. The party chairman, Philipp Rösler, who also serves as economy minister, consistently ranks as among the country’s least-popular politicians. But Karl-Rudolf Korte, a professor of politics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, says the party’s problems reach deeper than who is at its helm.

“It is not a problem of personality — it is a problem of issues,” Mr. Korte said.

Regardless of the outcome Sunday, he predicts that the party would be well advised to go for a two-pronged approach, keeping Mr. Rösler as its leader, but choosing the party’s parliamentary leader, Rainer Brüderle, as its main candidate because of his popularity.

Traditionally the Free Democrats have provided a clear voice for individual citizens’ rights against an overly powerful nanny state. They have served in more governments in postwar Germany than any other political party, although as the junior coalition partner. Two respected presidents, Theodor Heuss and Walter Scheel, hailed from the Free Democrats, as did an influential former foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

Four years ago, the Free Democratic Party, or F.D.P., emerged with its strongest showing ever, earning 14.6 percent of the vote after campaigning on a promise to cut taxes. But with the euro crisis, that promise has been watered down and the party has failed to find other issues that resonate with voters.

At a party congress this month, Mr. Brüderle sought to drum up support by singling out legislation passed by the current coalition that clearly reflected the Free Democrats’ influence.

“The F.D.P. made the union better,” he said of the coalition, citing the scrapping of required military service, a €10 payment at doctors’ offices, policies affecting growth and consumer protection laws. “We need to believe in ourselves then many others will believe in us.”

A poll by the Forsa Institute, published by the weekly Stern on Wednesday showed the Free Democratic Party getting only 3 percent support, which would translate to their ejection from lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag.

Such an outcome would force Ms. Merkel, whose center-right Christian Democrats appear to be stronger than ever, earning 43 percent support in the Forsa survey, to find a new partner in government.

The center-left Social Democrats, however, polled their lowest since 2011, earning only 23 percent, largely because of a plunge in popularity for their candidate in the national election, Peer Steinbrück.

Manfred Güllner, who heads the Forsa Institute, said that even if the Social Democratic candidate in Lower Saxony, Mr. Weil, could pull off a victory, it would be unlikely to translate into increased support for Mr. Steinbrück.

“The latest survey shows that peoples’ image of Mr. Steinbrück has become increasingly negative,” Mr. Güllner said. “People view him as greedy, arrogant and awkward. Very few people associate him with political competence.”

Mr. Steinbrück’s image as a former finance minister who shepherded Germany through the first days of the financial crisis has been battered by a drawn-out debate over his private earnings from a book and, more recently, a comment that Ms. Merkel benefited from a “women’s bonus.”

Even an attempt by Mr. Steinbrück to change that image by inviting undecided voters to his home for a personal talk backfired earlier this week when the media began reporting that the family of a person in Lower Saxony that was selected from 150 candidates included an active member of the party’s local branch.

A victory by the Social Democrats in Lower Saxony, however, could have a greater impact on national politics through the upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat, which is made up of representatives of the country’s 16 states. Together with their main political allies, the Greens, they could form a majority.

“If a party is clever, such a majority can be used to block, drag out or otherwise delay any legislative procedure,” Mr. Korte said.

That power would effectively hamper the government’s ability to pass legislation, regardless of their popularity.

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American Idol's New Judges Make Their Debut

TV Watch

American Idol

01/16/2013 at 11:00 PM EST

From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban

Michael Becker/FOX.

American Idol is back!

Season 12 premiered Wednesday night with the first auditions in New York City. And fans hoping to get a taste of drama from new judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj were not disappointed.

"Right away we knew it was going to be an interesting couple of days," host Ryan Seacrest said at the start of the two-hour episode.

And he was right. (Spoilers ahead!) While fellow newbie Keith Urban and veteran judge Randy Jackson were all about the business of finding talented singers, there was immediate tension between Carey and Minaj, who wore a drum major's hat to her first day on the job.

"We can have accessories?" Carey said disapprovingly after taking her seat at the panel. "I didn't know that was allowed."

"Why did you have to reference my hat?" Minaj responded.

Later, when Carey boasted about her holiday hit, "All I Want for Christmas," Minaj clenched her fists, gritted her teeth and used the b-word. Carey's response? "I rebuke it," she said.

The two women talked over each other at times, rolled eyes and seemed to annoy one another. More than once Carey said "Nicki" like an frustrated mother calls her child out for misbehaving. And Minaj pushed Carey's buttons by talking in a British accent.

But as the two formerly feuding judges have said in recent interviews, the show should be about the hopeful contestants – and there were a handful of talented singers who earned golden tickets to Hollywood:

• Tenna Torres, who attended Camp Mariah and had previously sung for the singer, impressed the panel with her version of "You've Got a Friend," and made her idol very proud.

• Christina "Isabelle," who told a story of losing weight and finding confidence, had Minaj saying, "OMG! OMG!" with her version of "Summertime."

• Frankie Ford, who sings for change on the New York City subway system, stumbled at first but delivered a soulful version of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams." "I like your big voice," Urban said. "There's a lot of musicality in the tone."

Added Carey: "You have an inner glow, which is always beautiful to see."

• Despite hearing loss in both ears, Angela Miller, who sang "Mama Knows Best" by Jessie J, was "definitely one of the best," according to Jackson.

• And Ashlee Feliciano thrilled the female judges with her version of Corinne Bailey Rae's "Put Your Records On." "So pretty," Minaj said. "I want to come to your show ... I'm so inspired by you."

"The potential is great. It was beautiful," Carey said. "You should be really proud of yourself."

At the end of the first two days of auditions, the re-invented Idol panel had done its job: the judges praised the talented singers and handed out 41 tickets to Hollywood; they sent home the kooky contestants (often sweetly) and offered constructive criticism and an invitation to come back next year to the ones still on their way to greatness.

"We gel well in a weird crazy way," Minaj said at the end of the show. Carey said, "I agree."

We'll see how long that lasts! Auditions continue Thursday (8 p.m. ET) on Fox.

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Large study confirms flu vaccine safe in pregnancy

NEW YORK (AP) — A large study offers reassuring news for pregnant women: It's safe to get a flu shot.

The research found no evidence that the vaccine increases the risk of losing a fetus, and may prevent some deaths. Getting the flu while pregnant makes fetal death more likely, the Norwegian research showed.

The flu vaccine has long been considered safe for pregnant women and their fetus. U.S. health officials began recommending flu shots for them more than five decades ago, following a higher death rate in pregnant women during a flu pandemic in the late 1950s.

But the study is perhaps the largest look at the safety and value of flu vaccination during pregnancy, experts say.

"This is the kind of information we need to provide our patients when discussing that flu vaccine is important for everyone, particularly for pregnant women," said Dr. Geeta Swamy, a researcher who studies vaccines and pregnant women at Duke University Medical Center.

The study was released by the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday as the United States and Europe suffer through an early and intense flu season. A U.S. obstetricians group this week reminded members that it's not too late for their pregnant patients to get vaccinated.

The new study was led by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. It tracked pregnancies in Norway in 2009 and 2010 during an international epidemic of a new swine flu strain.

Before 2009, pregnant women in Norway were not routinely advised to get flu shots. But during the pandemic, vaccinations against the new strain were recommended for those in their second or third trimester.

The study focused on more than 113,000 pregnancies. Of those, 492 ended in the death of the fetus. The researchers calculated that the risk of fetal death was nearly twice as high for women who weren't vaccinated as it was in vaccinated mothers.

U.S. flu vaccination rates for pregnant women grew in the wake of the 2009 swine flu pandemic, from less than 15 percent to about 50 percent. But health officials say those rates need to be higher to protect newborns as well. Infants can't be vaccinated until 6 months, but studies have shown they pick up some protection if their mothers got the annual shot, experts say.

Because some drugs and vaccines can be harmful to a fetus, there is a long-standing concern about giving any medicine to a pregnant woman, experts acknowledged. But this study should ease any worries about the flu shot, said Dr. Denise Jamieson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The vaccine is safe," she said.

___

Online:

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

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Asian shares consolidate, caution ahead of Chinese data

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares eked out modest gains Thursday, consolidating amid better-than-expected U.S. earnings but demand was capped by caution ahead of Chinese data on Friday.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> added 0.1 percent, after falling in the past two sessions, pulled higher by a surge in Australian shares <.axjo>, which rose 1 percent to a 20-month high.

Australian employment surprisingly contracted by 5,500 in December, bolstering the odds for another interest rate cut. The prospect of further policy easing boosted local shares but sent the Australian dollar down to session lows of $1.0534 from $1.0560 before the data.

Analysts said the data came against a fairly positive global backdrop.

"There's a growing sentiment among investors that international risks have been significantly reduced, particularly after the U.S. made a start on its fiscal negotiations," said Ric Spooner, market strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney.

World stock markets ended flat on Wednesday with the banking sector rising as earnings from Goldman Sachs nearly tripled and JPMorgan Chase's fourth-quarter net income jumped 53 percent and earnings for 2012 set a record.

Investors will now turn to economic reports from China on Friday, including fourth-quarter GDP, December industrial output, retail sales and house price, which will offer clues on the health of Asia's biggest economy.

Data showing demand for new cars in recession-bound Europe fell to a 17-year low in 2012 reminded investors of the challenges facing the global economy, after the World Bank sharply cut its outlook for world growth this year to 2.4 percent from 3 percent, citing a slow recovery in developed nations.

YEN RESUMES WEAKNESS

The dollar and the euro regained ground against the yen, snapping two days of selling when investors took profits from these currencies' sharp and rapid rises against the Japanese currency since November.

Traders expect the yen to remain on a weakening trend amid expectations for bolder monetary easing measures from the Bank of Japan as part of the new government's push to drive Japan out of years of deflation and economic slump.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei average <.n225> inched up 0.2 percent, after tumbling 2.6 percent for its largest daily decline in eight months on Wednesday. The Nikkei hit a 32-month high on Tuesday as the yen's slump to multi-year lows against the dollar and the euro bolstered exporters on improving earnings outlook. <.t/>

The dollar was up 0.1 percent to 88.50 yen, off its peak since June 2010 of 89.67 touched on Monday, while the euro climbed 0.3 percent to 117.75 yen, after surging to its highest since May 2011 of 120.13 yen on Monday.

Anxiety about a possible protracted fight in Washington over raising the federal borrowing limit pushed the five-year cost to insure against a U.S. default up to 44 basis points on Wednesday, the highest since August 2011 during the first debt ceiling battle between U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican lawmakers.

The euro was up 0.1 percent to $1.3306 against the dollar, after reaching an 11-month high of $1.3404 on Monday.

COMMODITIES SEEN RISING

Reduced concerns over the euro zone debt problems, relatively more solid global economic fundamentals than last year and China's moderate recovery suggest there are buying opportunities for shares in cyclically dependant sectors and economies including Japan, Philip Poole, Head of Strategy at HSBC Global Asset Management, told a seminar in Tokyo this week.

"Recovery will feed through into 2013, but China won't go back to pre-crisis (of 2008) levels of growth of 10 percent," Poole said, adding that growth was likely to be 7-8 percent in 2013, a level investors now need to get used to.

"Cyclically sensitive sectors look relatively cheap in emerging countries and developed countries," while defensives were less attractive given their relative outperformance in 2012 under the more stressed financial environment, Poole said.

Another sector likely seen getting a boost from the reduced risk environment is commodities.

"Investment focus for 2013 is shifting to economically sensitive areas as global recovery takes place, boosting commodities prices," said Naohiro Niimura, a partner at research and consulting firm Market Risk Advisory.

The rally in platinum prices to 3-month highs this week, regaining its premium over gold for the first time since March 2012, is an indication of investors turning more proactive about taking risks, he said.

U.S. crude was down 0.2 percent at $94.05 a barrel while Brent was steady around $109.64.

(Additional reporting by Thuy Ong in Sydney; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

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India Ink: A Hospital Network With a Vision

Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.

As the United States struggles to find new business models for health care, some innovators are looking to other industries, ones that provide high-quality services for low prices. In a recent article in The New Yorker, for example, Atul Gawande suggests that the Cheesecake Factory restaurant chain — with its size, central control and accountability for the customer experience — could be a model of sorts for health care. That’s not as outlandish as it seems. The world’s largest provider of eye care has found success by directly adapting the management practices of another big-box food brand, one that is not often associated with good health: McDonald’s.

Aravind can practice compassion successfully because it is run like a McDonald’s.

In 1976, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy — known as Dr. V — retired from performing eye surgery at the Government Medical College in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, a state in India’s south. He decided to devote his remaining years to eliminating needless blindness among India’s poor. Twelve million people are blind in India, the vast majority of them from cataracts, which tend to strike people in India before 60 — earlier than in the West. Blindness robs a poor person of his livelihood and with it, his sense of self-worth; it is often a fatal disease. A blind person, the Indian saying goes, is “a mouth with no hands.”

Dr. V started by establishing an 11-bed hospital with six beds reserved for patients who could not pay and five for those who would pay modest rates. He persuaded his siblings to join him in mortgaging their houses, pooling their savings and pawning their jewels to build it. Today, the Aravind Eye Care System is a network of hospitals, clinics, community outreach efforts, factories, and research and training institutes in south India that has treated more than 32 million patients and has performed 4 million surgeries. And it is still largely run by Dr V’s siblings and their spouses and children — he has at least 21 relatives who are eye surgeons. (Aravind’s story is well-told in depth in a new book, “Infinite Vision.”)

Aravind is not just a health success, it is a financial success. Many health nonprofits in developing countries rely on government help or donations, but Aravind’s core services are sustainable: patient care and the construction of new hospitals are funded by fees from paying patients. And at Aravind, patients pay only if they want to. The majority of Aravind’s patients pay only a symbolic amount, or nothing at all.

Dr V was guided by the teachings of the radical Indian nationalist and mystic Sri Aurobindo (Aravind is a southern Indian variation of Aurobindo), who located man’s search for his divine nature not in turning away from the world, but by engaging with it.

This philosophy, however, has produced a sustainable business model because of the other major influence on Dr. V: McDonald’s. Sri Aurobindo and McDonald’s are an unlikely pair. But Aravind can practice compassion successfully because it is run like a McDonald’s, with assembly-line efficiency, strict quality norms, brand recognition, standardization, consistency, ruthless cost control and above all, volume.

Aravind’s efficiency allows its paying patients to subsidize the free ones, while still paying far less than they would at other Indian hospitals. Each year, Aravind does 60 percent as many eye surgeries as the United Kingdom’s National Health System, at one one-thousandth of the cost.

Aravind’s ideas reach around the world. It runs hospitals in other parts of India with partners. It is also host to a parade of people who come to learn how it works, and it sends staff to work with other organizations. So far about 300 hospitals in India and in other countries are using the Aravind model. All are eye hospitals. But Aravind has also trained staff from maternity hospitals, cancer centers, and male circumcision clinics, among other places. Some share Aravind’s social mission. Others simply want to operate more efficiently.

The vast majority of people blind from cataracts in rural India have no idea why they are blind, nor that a surgery exists that can restore their sight in a few minutes. Aravind attracts these patients in two ways. First, it holds eye camps — 40 a week around the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The camps visit villages every few months, offering eye exams, basic treatments, and fast, cheap glasses. Patients requiring surgery are invited with a family member to come to the nearest of Aravind’s nine hospitals; all transport and lodging, like the surgery, is free.

When Aravind surveyed the impact of its camps, it found to its dismay that they only attracted 7 percent of people in a village who needed care, mainly because they were infrequent. To provide a permanent presence in rural areas, Aravind established 36 storefront vision centers. They are staffed by rural women recruited and given two years’ training by Aravind. They have cameras, so doctors at Aravind’s hospitals can do examinations remotely. These centers increase Aravind’s market penetration to about 30 percent within one year of operation.

At Aravind’s hospitals, free patients lodge on a mat on the floor in a 30-person dormitory. Paying patients can choose various levels of luxury, including private, air-conditioned rooms. All patients get best-practice cataract surgeries, but paying patients can choose more sophisticated surgeries with faster recoveries (but not higher success rates). The doctors are identical, rotating between the free and paid wings.

Also standard for all patients is the Aravind assembly line. Dr. V spent a few days at McDonalds’ Hamburger University in Oak Brook,, Ill., but that visit was a product of his longstanding obsession with efficiency. “This man would go into an airport and walk around with the janitor and see how he cleans the toilet,” said Dr. S. Aravind, an eye surgeon with a masters degree in business who is Aravind’s director of projects. (He is Dr. V’s nephew, also named for Sri Aurobindo.) “He would go to a five star hotel and follow the catering people.”

Doctors are hard to find and expensive, so the surgical system is set up to get the most out of them. Patients are prepared before surgery and bandaged afterwards by Aravind-trained nurses. The operating room has two tables. The doctor performs a surgery — perhaps 5 minutes — on Table 1, sterilizes her hands and turns to Table 2. Meanwhile, a new patient is prepped on Table 1. Aravind doctors do more than 2,000 surgeries a year; the average at other Indian hospitals is around 300. As for quality, Aravind’s rate of surgical complications is half that of eye hospitals in Britain.

This volume is key to Aravind’s ability to offer free care. The building and staff costs are the same no matter how many surgeries each doctor performs. High volume means that these fixed costs are spread among vastly more people.

In the 1980s, Aravind faced a dilemma. A new surgery, which implanted a lens in the patient’s eye, had become the gold standard for treating cataracts. But these lenses were not made in India, and Aravind could persuade manufacturers to reduce their cost only from $100 to $70 per lens. Should Aravind begin providing first-class treatment for paying patients and second-class treatment for free ones? Or should it try to get enough money from paid patients to cover intraocular lenses for all? Neither was acceptable.

The solution was to get into manufacturing. In 1992, Aravind set up Aurolab, which now makes lenses (for $2 apiece), sutures and medicines. Aurolab is now a major global supplier of intraocular lenses and has driven down the price of lenses made by other manufacturers as well.

Aravind could not do its work without paying patients, of course — they subsidize free patients. They also improve service, by demanding high quality for their money. But it also works the other way around: the free patients improve service and price for patients who pay. “One of our big advantages is the scale of the work we do,” said Dr. Aravind. “You become a good resource center for training doctors, nurses, everybody. Because of high volume, doctors get better at what they do. They can develop subtle specialties.” And free patients make cost control a priority. “If 60 percent of your patients are paying very little or nothing, your cost structure is attuned towards that,” Dr. Aravind said.

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Whenever there is an innovator like Aravind, the question arises: how replicable is this? Do you need a Dr. V? Or is there a system that ordinary mortals can adapt?

The answer is a little of both. Other hospitals can and do successfully use the model. Lions Clubs International, which has worked to prevent blindness for more than a century, finances and supports a training institute. Aravind also works with the Berkeley-based Seva Foundation to grow eye hospitals in other countries. “There are a lot of eye hospitals in the developing world. Almost every single one is considerably underproducing,” said Suzanne Gilbert, the director of Seva’s Center for Innovation in Eye Care. “Surgical programs so often focus on the technique being used. Often the same level of scrutiny not applied to management, human resources and other systems that make the surgery work.”

Seva has worked with Aravind to establish hospitals in other countries (the Lumbini Eye Institute in Nepal has been particularly successful).  But its campaign to turn those hospitals into training centers has gone slowly. It’s hard to build those hospitals to be able to reach out while keeping good quality,” said Gilbert.   Seva was aiming to have 100 hospitals in the network by 2015, but has scaled back that goal.

“Of the 300 hospitals (that use Aravind’s model), I’d say 20 percent get the whole thing,” said Dr. Aravind. “Another 50 percent pick up pieces — how to make your operating tables more efficient, for example.  And the rest struggle.”

Combining paid and free care in a self-sufficient hospital is not possible for most health specialties. “The essential ingredient is volume that straddles the socioeconomic spectrum,” said Jaspal Sandhu, a Berkeley engineer who has studied Aurolab, and who is co-founder of the Gobee Group, a design firm that works with organizations to increase their social impact. “If you’re focusing on rich diseases or poor diseases, this model in existing form can’t really play out. The nice thing about cataracts is that it doesn’t greatly discriminate. And a cataract is a one-time hit. There’s a cure for it. You can treat it in a couple of days and it won’t come back.”

Male circumcision — an AIDS prevention measure — fits this description, and the World Health Organization’s guidelines for scaling up male circumcision uses Aravind’s principles. “When I was a doctor in a government hospital we did between 8 and maybe 12 circumcisions in a day per doctor,” said Dino Rech, a South African physician who has overseen the expansion of circumcision in several countries.  “With this model, the slowest doctors are doing 40 in a day — up to 60 for the faster ones.”

The McDonald’s part is the easiest piece of the Aravind model to export. More difficult to replicate is Aravind’s commitment to serving the largest number of free patients possible — indeed, to aim to eventually serve all of them. What’s needed, said Dr. Aravind, “is not leadership in the sense of organizing and making it work. It’s leadership that comes from empathizing with the community.”

Aravind spends a lot of resources recruiting free patients. “Never restrict demand. Build your capacity to meet the demand,” Dr. Aravind said. This community outreach work is the easiest part to sacrifice, he said. “This is where mission and leadership come in. People try to justify it with many things — we’ll build a bigger organization, then we’ll go back to community. If you have a choice between your paying and your free patients — well, the team is watching how you prioritize. Here’s its been internalized that this is the way we deal with any issue.  If someone can embody that, they can be like our founder.”

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Tina Rosenberg won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism.” She is a former editorial writer for The Times and the author of, most recently, “Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World” and the World War II spy story e-book “D for Deception.”

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