Jada Pinkett Smith Defends Daughter Willow's Hairstyles

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

11/28/2012 at 06:00 PM ET

Kevin Winter/Getty

Whether daughter Willow is whipping it back and forth or cutting it all off, Jada Pinkett Smith is committed to allowing her  daughter wear her hair any way she chooses.

The actress and mom of two took to her Facebook page to address critics of her parenting style, particularly those who questioned why she “let” her 12-year-old chop off her locks and sport a super-short style a few months ago.

“This is a world where women, girls are constantly reminded that they don’t belong to themselves; that their bodies are not their own, nor their power or self determination,” she writes.

Pinkett Smith, also mother to Jaden, 14, continues: “Willow cut her hair because her beauty, her value, her worth is not measured by the length of her hair.”

She also added that “even little girls have the RIGHT to own themselves and should not be a slave to even their mother’s deepest insecurities, hopes and desires.”

And it sounds like she has husband Will Smith‘s full support. “When you have a little girl, it’s like how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body?” the actor told Parade earlier this year.

“If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world.”

– Shakthi Jothianandan

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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing surgery-linked infections is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million, the Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons announced Wednesday. The two groups directed the 2 1/2-year project.

Solutions included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Some hospitals used special wound-protecting devices on surgery openings to keep intestine germs from reaching the skin.

The average rate of infections linked with colorectal operations at the seven hospitals dropped from about 16 percent of patients during a 10-month phase when hospitals started adopting changes to almost 11 percent once all the changes had been made.

Hospital stays for patients who got infections dropped from an average of 15 days to 13 days, which helped cut costs.

"The improvements translate into safer patient care," said Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission. "Now it's our job to spread these effective interventions to all hospitals."

Almost 2 million health care-related infections occur each year nationwide; more than 90,000 of these are fatal.

Besides wanting to keep patients healthy, hospitals have a monetary incentive to prevent these infections. Medicare cuts payments to hospitals that have lots of certain health care-related infections, and those cuts are expected to increase under the new health care law.

The project involved surgeries for cancer and other colorectal problems. Infections linked with colorectal surgery are particularly common because intestinal tract bacteria are so abundant.

To succeed at reducing infection rates requires hospitals to commit to changing habits, "to really look in the mirror and identify these things," said Dr. Clifford Ko of the American College of Surgeons.

The hospitals involved were Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; Mayo Clinic-Rochester Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn.; North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY; Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago; OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill.; and Stanford Hospital & Clinics in Palo Alto, Calif.

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Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

American College of Surgeons: http://www.facs.org

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Wall Street jumps in another "fiscal cliff" swing

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rallied on Wednesday after comments from House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, on a possible compromise to avoid the "fiscal cliff" turned the market around.

The S&P 500 rebounded from a 1 percent decline, gaining more than 20 points from its low after Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said he was optimistic that a budget deal to avoid big spending cuts and tax hikes can be worked out. President Barack Obama added to the good feelings, saying he hoped to get a deal done in the next four weeks.

Whether or not those remarks reflect the reality of negotiations is another story.

"The fiscal cliff is dominating the discussion, and short term, we're a little bit too optimistic on it being fixed right away," said John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds in New York.

In expectation of higher dividend tax rates in 2013, companies have been shifting dividends or announcing special payouts to shareholders.

Costco Wholesale Corp , up 6.3 percent at $102.58, was the S&P 500's biggest percentage gainer after it became the latest company to announce a special dividend.

The market's move marked the second straight day where a leading legislator dictated trading action. On Tuesday, stocks fell on pessimistic remarks from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada.

The market has been swinging for weeks now on headlines from Washington, with Wednesday's gyrations once again highlighting the importance that Wall Street is giving to finding a solution to avoid the series of tax increases and spending cuts that could push the U.S. economy into recession.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 106.98 points, or 0.83 percent, to 12,985.11 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained 10.99 points, or 0.79 percent, to 1,409.93. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 23.99 points, or 0.81 percent, to close at 2,991.78.

The S&P 500 bounced off a strong support area near 1,385 that includes both its 200- and 14-day moving averages. It closed above 1,400 for the third session in four - an optimistic sign for stock bulls.

Knight Capital Group Inc shares jumped 15.2 percent to $3.42 on news that Getco Holding proposed a $1.4 billion merger with Knight, while Virtu Financial offered to buy Knight for at least $1.1 billion.

Apparel retailer Express Inc rose 8.9 percent to $14.15 after it forecast strong earnings for the current quarter as lower prices and easy-to-understand discounts led to robust Black Friday sales.

The S&P retail index <.spxrt> gained 1.4 percent.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters surged 27.3 percent to $36.86 a day after it forecast quarterly and full-year earnings well ahead of analysts' expectations.

Nearly 6.1 billion shares changed 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.

On the NYSE, roughly seven stocks rose for every three that fell, and on Nasdaq, five issues rose for every three that fell.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Protesters Gather Again in Cairo Streets to Denounce Morsi

CAIRO — Thousands of people flowed into the streets of Cairo, the Egyptian capital, Tuesday afternoon for a day of protest against President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to assert broad new powers for the duration of the country’s political transition, dismissing his efforts just the night before to reaffirm his deference to Egyptian law and courts.

By early Tuesday afternoon in Cairo, a dense crowd of hundreds had gathered outside the headquarters of a trade group for lawyers, and thousands more had filed in around a small tent city in Tahrir Square. In an echo of the chants against Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian’s ousted president, almost two years ago, they shouted, “Leave, leave!” and “Bring down the regime!” They also denounced the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Mr. Morsi.

A few blocks away, in a square near the American Embassy and the Interior Ministry headquarters, groups of young men resumed a running battle that began nine days ago, throwing rocks and tear gas canisters at riot police officers. Although those clashes grew out of anger over the deaths of dozens of protesters in similar clashes one year ago, many of the combatants have happily adopted the banner of protest against Mr. Morsi as well.

Egyptian television had captured the growing polarization of the country on Monday in split-screen coverage of two simultaneous funerals, each for a teenage boy killed in clashes set off by disputes over the new president’s powers. Thousands of supporters of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood marched through the streets of the Nile Delta city of Damanhour to bury a 15-year-old killed outside a Brotherhood office during an attack by protesters. And in Tahrir Square here in Cairo, thousands gathered to bury a 16-year-old killed in clashes with riot police officers and to chant slogans blaming Mr. Morsi for his death. “Morsi killed him,” the boy’s father said in a video statement circulated over the Internet.

“Now blood has been spilled by political factions, so this is not going to go away,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a professor at the American University in Cairo and a left-leaning activist, adding that these were the first deaths rival factions had blamed on each other and not on the security forces of the Mubarak government since the uprising began last year. Still larger crowds were expected in the evening, as marchers from around the city headed for the square. Many schools and other businesses had closed in anticipation of bedlam, and on Monday, the Brotherhood called off a rival demonstration in support of the president, saying it wanted to avoid violence.

Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council met again on Tuesday to consider its response to the president, and the leader of Al Azhar, a center of Sunni Muslim learning that is regarded as the pre-eminent moral authority here, met with groups of political leaders in an effort to resolve the battle over the president’s decree and the deadlock in the constitutional assembly, which is trying to draw up a new constitution.

But even as Mr. Morsi met with top judges Monday night in an effort to resolve the crisis, a coalition of opposition leaders held a news conference to declare that preserving the role of the courts was only the first step in a broader campaign against what Abdel Haleem Qandeil, a liberal intellectual, called “the miserable failure of the rule of the Muslim Brothers.” Mr. Morsi “unilaterally broke the contract with the people,” he declared. “We have to be ready to stand up to this group, protest to protest, square to square, and to confront the bullying.”

Mr. Morsi’s effort to remove the last check on his power over the political transition had brought the country’s fractious opposition groups together for the first time in a united front against the Brotherhood. But the show of unity papered over deep divisions between groups and even within them, said Ms. Mahdi of the American University.

“This is not a united front, and I am inside it,” she said. “Every single political group in the country is now divided over this — is this decree revolutionary justice or building a new dictatorship? Should we align ourselves with folool” — the colloquial term for the remnants of the old political elite — “or should we be revolutionary purists? Is it a conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Mubarak judiciary, or is this the beginning of a fascist regime in the making?”

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

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The Voice Contestants Explain Their Song Choices

TV Watch

The Voice

By Julia Haskins

11/27/2012 at 07:00 PM EST

From left: Cassadee Pope, Terry McDermott, Dez Duron, host Carson Daly, Cody Belew, Nicholas David, Trevin Hunte, Melanie Martinez and Amanda Brown

Tyler Golden/NBC

Contestants on The Voice already have the talent, but to make it to the top, they need the perfect song. On Monday night's show, Coach Cee Lo Green anticipated that at this point in the competition, song choice would be the ultimate factor in determining the next star. Now, hear from the competitors themselves:

Team Blake

• Terry McDermott sang Blake Shelton's "Over"
"Me and Blake went back and forth and I'd said I wanted to do something different," he said of the song choice. "He suggested his song – and the second I heard it I was like, "That's it!" It worked out tremendously. It was really fun."

• Cassadee Pope sang Michelle Branch's "Are You Happy Now?"
"It was a big deal," she told PEOPLE of closing the show with that number. "There was pressure to close out with a bang and also top the last week. I tried to push it all aside and go out and have fun because I love Michelle Branch and that song. She is one of my songwriting idols."

Team Christina

• Dez Duron sang Justin Bieber's "U Smile"
"That song was totally my groove," he said of the performance. "Christina came up with the Justin Bieber idea. I wanted to do it my way. I love the song. It's a huge song, but I know Justin has a lot of avid fans. I knew we had to make it me. It ended up being a great risk."

Team Cee Lo

• Trevin Hunte sang Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All"
"It's definitely kind of scary because I feel like America will want something different," he says of the fact that the past two Voice winners have been soul singers. "I just want to leave a mark."

• Nicholas David sang Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On"
"I loved being able to switch it up and play a little piano and add a sax," he said of the performance. "I get nervous when I stand there waiting for the judges to talk because I have so much energy right after playing. But I'm just excited."

• Cody Belew sang Queen's "Somebody to Love"
"I never felt like I would out sing Freddie Mercury because you can't, but I wanted to put my own spin on things and embody his lyrics," he explained of performing with a choir behind him. "It was a big moment for me."

Team Adam

Melanie Martinez sang Alex Clare's "Too Close"
"It's always going to be hard when you're singing about your personal experiences," she says of the recent breakup that informed her performance. "I never expected to do it on TV. I hope that now on I can let my personal experiences be fuel for the fire."

Amanda Brown sang Adele's "Someone Like You"
"I feel like it was intense ... and I hope people were moved by it, by the rock soul," she said. "Hopefully that was enough."

• Reporting by JESSICA HERNDON

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CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.

The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said blacks represented more than half of new infections in youths. The estimates are based on 2010 figures.

Overall, new U.S. HIV infections have held steady at around 50,000 annually. About 12,000 are in teens and young adults, and most youth with HIV haven't been tested.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

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Wall Street falls, hit by Reid's "fiscal cliff" comments

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks slid on Tuesday in a choppy session, losing ground in the last hour before the close after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed disappointment that there has been "little progress" in dealing with the "fiscal cliff."

The market was flat for most of the session but fell sharply after Reid's comments, a signal that investors remain skittish about the wrangling in Washington. The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, rose on Reid's words.

"It may be that the market feels the goodwill before (last week's) Thanksgiving is evolving into more political intransigence," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark.

"The clock is ticking on Wall Street, regarding a framework for (political) consensus," she said.

Markets are focused on whether Congress and the White House can agree on ways to avoid some $600 billion in automatic spending cuts and tax increases that are due to kick in early next year.

As budget talks linger, Las Vegas Sands and Supertex added their names to a growing list of companies announcing special dividends aimed at helping investors avoid a possibly higher tax burden next year.

Higher dividend and capital gains taxes are part of the negotiations in Washington and may rise even if a deal is crafted.

Las Vegas Sands jumped 5.3 percent to $46.36. Supertex rose 6.9 percent to $18.

The S&P 500's modest losses on Tuesday marked its worst day in eight sessions - indicating traders are unwilling to sell aggressively as a deal probably would trigger a rally. The benchmark S&P 500 once again closed below 1,400, a key psychological level that it had reclaimed last week as it rose nearly 4 percent.

The VIX <.vix> shot up 2.7 percent to 15.92 at the close. Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. in New York, the VIX was up 3.9 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 89.24 points, or 0.69 percent, to 12,878.13 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> dropped 7.35 points, or 0.52 percent, to finish at 1,398.94. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> lost 8.99 points, or 0.30 percent, to end at 2,967.79.

Dealings in Washington obscured strong economic figures, including an increase in planned business spending and consumer confidence hitting its highest level in more than four years.

Strengthening the case for a sustained rebound in housing, single-family home prices rose for an eighth straight month in September. Shares of M/I Homes gained 2.1 percent to $22.36. KB Home added 1.1 percent to $14.61.

"As long as you have interest rates as low as they are right now, housing is definitely back," said Brian Amidei, managing director at HighTower Advisors in Palm Desert, California.

In another good sign for consumer demand, Corning Inc shares rose 6.9 percent to $12.13 after the specialty glass maker said it expects full-year sales of its Gorilla glass, used in smartphones and tablets, to approach $1 billion.

Food maker Ralcorp Holdings shares jumped 26.4 percent to $88.80 after long-time suitor ConAgra Foods sealed a deal to buy it for $5 billion. ConAgra shares gained 4.7 percent to $29.63.

McMoRan Exploration Co shares tumbled 15.2 percent to $8.18 a day after the oil and gas driller gave a disappointing update on a key gas prospect in a Gulf of Mexico well.

About 5.9 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.5 billion shares.

On the NYSE, roughly five issues fell for every four that rose. On Nasdaq, six stocks fell for every five that rose.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Egypt’s President Said to Limit Scope of Judicial Decree

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptians stand near a burned out school, before the funeral of Mohammed Gaber Salah, an activist who died Sunday from injuries sustained during protests.

CAIRO — President Mohamed Morsi agreed on Monday to limit the scope of a sweeping decree he had issued last week that raised his edicts above any judicial review, according to a report by a television network allied with his party. The agreement, reached with top judicial authorities, would leave most of Mr. Morsi’s actions subject to review by the courts, but it appears to preserve a crucial power: protecting the country’s constitutional council from being dissolved by the courts before it finishes its work.

The agreement was announced by a spokesman for the president; as of Monday night it had not yet been confirmed by the judges.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that sponsored Mr. Morsi and his party, announced that it was canceling a major demonstration in support of the president that had been planned for Tuesday.

Mr. Morsi’s deal with the judges follows four days of rising tensions and flashes of violence across the country set off by his decree, which removed the last check on his power to rule Egypt.

Mr. Morsi said he was forced to issue the decree in order to protect the constitutional assembly from the courts, which had shuttered Egypt’s first freely elected parliament and disbanded an earlier constituent assembly, both dominated by Mr. Morsi’s Islamist allies. But the scope of the new powers claimed by the president galvanized his political opposition. Vandals attacked more than a dozen offices of his political party, and thousands of people demonstrated in the streets to vent their fears of a new autocracy in a country that had just shaken one off.

The agreement announced on Monday could be a watershed moment for Egypt’s new order: a triumph of respect for the rule of law and the independence of the courts, and a demonstration that Egypt’s new leaders are capable of the kind of compromise in the national interest that often eludes the party leaders in even the most practiced democracies.

But opponents appeared set to hold out for a further withdrawal of presidential authority, as well as the immediate dissolution of the constitutional assembly. Speaking at a press conference while Mr. Morsi was meeting with the judges, the opposition activist and intellectual Abdel Haleem Qandeil called for “a long-term battle,” declaring that the limiting of the decree should only be the first step toward the opposition’s goal of “the withdrawal of the legitimacy of Morsi’s presence in the presidential palace.”

Mr. Morsi’s advisers emphasized on Monday that they had not altered the decree’s language, and they portrayed the agreement with the judges as merely an explanation of the president’s original intent, rather than any pullback.

But the statement Mr. Morsi issued last Thursday to claim his broader powers had explicitly exempted all his future edicts from judicial oversight until a new constitution is ratified, and in recent days Mr. Morsi’s justice minister, Ahmed Mekki, publicly criticized the wording of the decree as over-broad; he argued that the president should add a phrase restricting its application only to presidential edicts related to the constitutional assembly and certain other matters.

Some of the ramifications of the deal remain unclear. Mr. Morsi and the judges of the Supreme Judicial Council agreed to limit the scope of the president’s immunity from judicial review to matters known in Egypt as acts of sovereignty. That is an established formulation in Egyptian law, so interpreting the decree that way meant he would not be claiming new immunity.

By accepting that interpretation, Mr. Morsi in effect pulled back from the aspects of his decree that aroused alarm about a power grab.

Still, the deal appeared to give Mr. Morsi the power he said he had deemed most essential: to protect the constitutional assembly so that it can stay in business long enough to finish a charter and end Egypt’s tortured transition after the overthrow of its former strongman, Hosni Mubarak.

Cracks appeared in Mr. Morsi’s government on Sunday over the decree. At least three other senior advisers resigned over the measure, and the move had also prompted widening street protests and cries from opponents that Mr. Morsi, who already governs without a legislature, was moving toward a new autocracy in Egypt, less than two years after the ouster of the strongman Hosni Mubarak.

With a threatened strike by the nation’s judges, a plunge in the country’s stock market and more street protests looming, Mr. Morsi’s administration initially sent mixed messages on Sunday over whether it was willing to consider a compromise: a spokesman for the president’s party insisted that there would be no change in his edict, but a statement from the party indicated for the first time a willingness to give political opponents “guarantees against monopolizing the fateful decisions of the homeland in the absence of the Parliament.”

Mayy El Sheikh and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Larry Hagman Memorials Set for Dallas and Los Angeles

Update

By Champ Clark

UPDATED
11/26/2012 at 05:50 PM EST

• Originally published 11/26/2012 at 06:50 PM EST

Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing

TNT

Larry Hagman will be remembered in two memorials this weekend – one in Dallas and one in Los Angeles – while his family decides what to do with his ashes.

"Right now we are going to be keeping his ashes within the family and we going to wait for my mother to pass on so they can be together," says his son Preston.

Hagman's wife of 58 years, Maj Hagman, is "in the later stages of Alzheimer's," says Preston, "so she’s not the person that she was, but she’s very well taken care of."

"My father spoke to her and saw her every day," Preston says. "He was the most kind and caring man to my mother right up until the end."

Hagman, who also starred in TV's I Dream of Jeannie, died Nov. 23 at age 81 of complications from cancer. He was surrounded by family and friends.

A previous announcement that the actor's ashes would be spread "around the world" was premature, says Preston.

The two-state, invitation-only "Celebration for Larry" memorials will both take place this weekend.

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Bounce houses a party hit but kids' injuries soar

CHICAGO (AP) — They may be a big hit at kids' birthday parties, but inflatable bounce houses can be dangerous, with the number of injuries soaring in recent years, a nationwide study found.

Kids often crowd into bounce houses, and jumping up and down can send other children flying into the air, too.

The numbers suggest 30 U.S. children a day are treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains, cuts and concussions from bounce house accidents. Most involve children falling inside or out of the inflated playthings, and many children get hurt when they collide with other bouncing kids.

The number of children aged 17 and younger who got emergency-room treatment for bounce house injuries has climbed along with the popularity of bounce houses — from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to nearly 11,000 in 2010. That's a 15-fold increase, and a doubling just since 2008.

"I was surprised by the number, especially by the rapid increase in the number of injuries," said lead author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Amusement parks and fairs have bounce houses, and the playthings can also be rented or purchased for home use.

Smith and colleagues analyzed national surveillance data on ER treatment for nonfatal injuries linked with bounce houses, maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Their study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Only about 3 percent of children were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.

More than one-third of the injuries were in children aged 5 and younger. The safety commission recommends against letting children younger than 6 use full-size trampolines, and Smith said barring kids that young from even smaller, home-use bounce houses would make sense.

"There is no evidence that the size or location of an inflatable bouncer affects the injury risk," he said.

Other recommendations, often listed in manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, include not overloading bounce houses with too many kids and not allowing young children to bounce with much older, heavier kids or adults, said Laura Woodburn, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.

The study didn't include deaths, but some accidents are fatal. Separate data from the product safety commission show four bounce house deaths from 2003 to 2007, all involving children striking their heads on a hard surface.

Several nonfatal accidents occurred last year when bounce houses collapsed or were lifted by high winds.

A group that issues voluntary industry standards says bounce houses should be supervised by trained operators and recommends that bouncers be prohibited from doing flips and purposefully colliding with others, the study authors noted.

Bounce house injuries are similar to those linked with trampolines, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended against using trampolines at home. Policymakers should consider whether bounce houses warrant similar precautions, the authors said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

Trade group: http://www.naarso.com

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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