Amy Poehler Is the Latest Star to Get Bangs - Who Should Be Next?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/20/2013 at 01:30 PM ET

Landov, AKM-GSI, BEImages, Wireimage

We’ve filled out our Oscar ballots and predicted the gowns, now the PEOPLE StyleWatch team is ready to talk hair.

Bold bangs are sizzling hot in Hollywood right now: Amy Poehler’s just the latest star to step out with fringe, which is why we’re hoping for a big bang debut at the Oscars. Now we just have to decide who will follow in the footsteps of Michelle Obama, LeAnn Rimes and Poehler, all who have gotten sassy chops in the last month. Here are our front runners:

Amanda Seyfried: The actress has had these long, layered golden locks since her Mean Girls days, so we’re ready for her to spice it up a bit. Seyfried, call your stylist and request some side-swept bangs. They’re flattering, flirty and not-too-frightening for a first-timer … and let’s be honest, you wouldn’t mind stealing some of that Les Mis spotlight from Anne Hathaway come Sunday night.

Jessica Chastain: Chastain already gives us major mane envy, which is why the star is a prime candidate for a blunt bangs cut à la Jessica Biel. Just think how chic she’d look if she wore her tresses straight with serious statement stunners — and since she’s been sporting dramatic hairstyles throughout awards season, we bet she’d dare to try something similar at the Oscars.

Bradley Cooper: Given that he’s one of the sexiest men alive, we’re not telling him to change much, but a little cleanup to his already face-framing locks could do wonders for Cooper‘s floppy hairdo.

Who do you think should try bangs at the Oscars? Vote below and sound off in the comments!

–Jennifer Cress

PHOTOS: SEE MORE STAR HAIRSTYLES!

Read More..

Obama admin. tackles colonoscopy confusion

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new health law requires that most insurance plans cover all costs for preventive care, including colon cancer screening.

But it didn't turn out to be that simple.

Many patients ended up with a bill when the doctor performing the colonoscopy removed precancerous growths known as polyps. Why the bill? Because a preventive screening had turned into a procedure.

Now the Obama administration is trying to straighten out the confusion: Polyp removal is part of preventive care, and therefore free of charge to the patient.

Health plans also must cover an expensive genetic test for breast cancer if a woman's doctor orders it. And the lowly aspirin for heart trouble is covered too, if prescribed.

Read More..

Wall Street drops as energy sector drags

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday, pressured by a drop in energy shares as investors found few reasons to buy equities following a rally that has propelled indexes close to all-time highs.

Stocks were volatile after minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve suggested the central bank may have to slow or stop buying assets before seeing a pickup in hiring, raising the prospect of an earlier end to quantitative easing.

"What Wall Street wants to hear is an absolute sign that the Fed will continue with QE for the indefinite future. When it says we may end it faster, that just raises the uncertainty and the market hates that," said Todd Schoenberger, managing partner at Landcolt Capital in New York.

Energy companies' shares were among the weakest, hurt by disappointing results in the sector and a 2.3 percent drop in crude oil prices. The Energy Select Sector SPDR exchange-traded fund fell 1.2 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 36.65 points, or 0.26 percent, to 13,999.02. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> dropped 9.50 points, or 0.62 percent, to 1,521.44. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 24.63 points, or 0.77 percent, to 3,188.96.

In the energy sector, Newfield Exploration tumbled 7.7 percent to $25.19 while Devon Energy Corp dropped 4.6 percent to $57.75. Both companies posted fourth-quarter losses, with Devon hurt as it wrote down the value of its assets by $896 million because of weak natural gas prices.

Equities have been strong recently. The day's modest decline was the largest for the S&P 500 since February 4. The index has jumped about 7 percent so far this year and is on track for its eighth straight week of gains.

However, many of those weekly gains have been slight, with equities trading within a narrow range for the past few weeks, suggesting valuations may be stretched at current levels.

"The market seems very tired and listless, and investors are prone to take profits now as they wait for the music to stop," said Matt McCormick, money manager at Bahl & Gaynor in Cincinnati.

Earlier in the day, unconfirmed rumors that a troubled hedge fund was selling assets added some downward pressure to the market. The rumors appeared to be unfounded.

"I heard the chatter about a hedge fund liquidating things today but how big, I don't know. Certainly, it sparks concern," said Michael James, senior trader at Wedbush Morgan in Los Angeles.

Housing shares also declined, pressured by weaker-than-expected results at Toll Brothers Inc and a drop in groundbreaking to build new U.S. homes, also known as housing starts, in January.

Toll Brothers' stock fell 6.1 percent to $34.66, but is up about 7 percent so far this year, building on a jump of nearly 60 percent in 2012. The Dow Jones U.S. Home Construction index <.djushb> lost 4.3 percent.

"Valuations appear a bit high at these levels, and if I was in a name that had seen a huge run, I'd want to take some chips off the table," said McCormick, who helps oversee about $8.2 billion in assets.

The Dow's losses were limited by Boeing Co , up 1.2 percent at $75.56 after a source told Reuters that the company had found a way to fix battery problems on its grounded 787 Dreamliner jets. Concerns over that line have weighed on Boeing recently, contributing to a 2 percent drop in the stock's price in January.

In economic data released on Wednesday, permits for future home building rose in January to a 4 1/2-year high while a separate report showed wholesale prices rose last month for the first time in four months. The U.S. Producer Price Index rose in January for the first time in four months.

Shares of OfficeMax Inc fell 8.5 percent to $11.87 while Office Depot slid 18.5 percent to $4.09 as the companies announced a $1.2 billion merger agreement. The shares had surged in Tuesday's session after a source said a deal would be announced. Rival Staples Inc fell 5.5 percent to $13.84 and ranked as one of the S&P 500's biggest decliners.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning, of the 405 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results so far, 71 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.7 percent, according to the data, exceeding a forecast for a 1.9 percent gain at the start of the earnings season.

(Additional Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Read More..

Maoists Block Deal to Break Nepal’s Long Political Deadlock

NEW DELHI — Nepal’s major political parties failed on Tuesday to complete an expected agreement to settle a years-long political standoff, after Maoists insisted that the accord include amnesty for past crimes.

The amnesty issue derailed a tentative deal reached on Monday to appoint as interim prime minister the chief justice of the country’s supreme court, Khil Raj Regmi, to lead the country until elections in June. Now it appears that the wrangling will continue indefinitely, worsening the paralysis of the country’s civic functions.

Nepal has been trying to establish a working representative democracy since 2008, when a constituent assembly was elected to replace the former monarchy. But the assembly has been unable to draw up a constitution or settle on when or how to hold further elections. Maoists, who fought a long civil war against the monarchy, now control the most important government posts, but the ethnic, caste, religious, ideological and regional differences that permeate Nepalese society have made even the most basic political agreements impossible.

Meanwhile, the country’s judiciary has been arresting former Maoist fighters from the bitter civil war, which cost at least 13,000 lives, prompting the Maoist party to call for amnesty and for a less punitive reconciliation process, such as a parliamentary committee that the party could influence.

“Amnesty is still under consideration,” said Devendra Poudel, adviser to the present Maoist prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai. “Instead of addressing one or two issues separately, why not deal with them all in the same package?”

But the country’s other political parties and civil-society organizations have insisted on a process in which war criminals are jailed.

“The Maoists are very much afraid of the regular judiciary of this country,” said Rajendra Dahal, a spokesman for President Ram Baran Yadav, a leader of the centrist Nepalese Congress party. “But until there is an agreement, they will control the government,” he said of the Maoists. “So they benefit from the standoff.”

Mr. Dahal said that the president had welcomed the tentative deal to put the chief justice in charge temporarily. “The president’s single mission is to have elections,” he said early Tuesday. “Any way the parties get some consensus in the goal of having elections, the president will support.”

By late Tuesday evening, however, the optimism surrounding the tentative agreement had faded.

Kanak Mani Dixit, a civil rights activist and commentator, said he was worried that the Maoists supported the deal in hopes of discrediting the Supreme Court, which he said is the last civic institution in Nepal with any credibility.

“The Maoists agreed because they have already destroyed every other important institution of the state,” Mr. Dixit said.

Mr. Regmi was expected to be appointed to a three-month term as prime minister, following which he would return to the court. If Mr. Regmi had been unable to oversee elections in that time, a new agreement would have had to be reached.

The Maoist leader, Mr. Bhattarai, rejected all previous proposals to replace him, and other political parties have refused to allow elections while Mr. Bhattarai and his allies hold the crucial levers of government, saying that his oversight would make the elections unfair.

In the meantime, basic civil functions in Nepal have begun to fail one after another, and the country’s economy, never robust, has stalled. As a result, Nepalese have been emigrating to neighboring countries in large numbers, to the exasperation particularly of India, where many of the migrants settle.

Read More..

Maggie Simpson's The Longest Daycare Is Nominated for an Oscar

By Patrick Gomez

02/19/2013 at 02:30 PM EST

Maggie Simpson may not be much of a talker on her FOX cartoon, but this year she plans on making a statement on the red carpet.

The youngest member of The Simpsons clan stars in the Oscar-nominated animated short film The Longest Daycare and the eternal infant is looking for fans to help choose her dress for her big night out Sunday. Scroll through all of her proposed looks in our carousel of images above.

PEOPLE has a sneak peek at Simpson's three potential red carpet looks: a sparkly, red, backless stunner; a purple, tiered, strapless gown; and a leg-barring black number reminiscent of Angelina Jolie's 2012 Oscars dress. All can be paired with complementary pacifiers, of course.

Fans will be able to vote starting Tuesday for their favorite look. The short can be viewed below:

The 85th annual Academy Awards will air live on Sunday, Feb. 24, on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Read More..

UK patient dies from SARS-like coronavirus

LONDON (AP) — A patient being treated for a mysterious SARS-like virus has died, a British hospital said Tuesday.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, said the coronavirus victim was also being treated for "a long-term, complex unrelated health problem" and already had a compromised immune system.

A total of 12 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the disease, six of whom have died.

The virus was first identified last year in the Middle East. Most of those infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan, but the person who just died is believed to have caught it from a relative in Britain, where there have been four confirmed cases.

The new coronavirus is part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. In 2003, a global outbreak of SARS killed about 800 people worldwide.

Health experts still aren't sure exactly how humans are being infected. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus and scientists are considering whether bats or other animals like goats or camels are a possible source of infection.

Britain's Health Protection Agency has said while it appears the virus can spread from person to person, "the risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low."

Officials at the World Health Organization said the new virus has probably already spread between humans in some instances. In Saudi Arabia last year, four members of the same family fell ill and two died. And in a cluster of about a dozen people in Jordan, the virus may have spread at a hospital's intensive care unit.

Read More..

M&A deals lift shares, suggest value in market

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday as this year's ongoing surge of merger activity suggested investors were still finding value in the market even as indexes hover near five-year highs.

Office Depot Inc surged 12.4 percent to $5.15 after a person familiar with the matter said the No. 2 U.S. office supply retailer was in advanced talks to merge with smaller rival OfficeMax Inc , which jumped 22 percent.

News of the potential move came just days after Berkshire Hathaway and a partner agreed to acquire H.J. Heinz Co for $23 billion, and a revised $20 billion takeover of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo by Anheuser-Busch InBev .

Deal activity has helped equities resist a pullback as investors use dips in stocks as buying opportunities. The S&P is up about 7 percent so far in 2013 and has climbed for the past seven weeks in its longest weekly winning streak since January 2011, though most of the weekly gains have been slim.

"Deals are good for the market," said Frank Lesh, a futures analyst and broker at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago. "The fact that they're being done is a positive."

More than $158 billion in deals has been announced so far in 2013, more than double the activity in the same period last year and accounting for 57 percent of global deal volumes, according to Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 54.19 points, or 0.39 percent, to 14,035.95. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 9.66 points, or 0.64 percent, to 1,529.45. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 13.53 points, or 0.42 percent, to 3,205.56.

Other stocks in the office supplies sector also rose. Larger rival Staples Inc shot up 12.9 percent to $14.61 as the best performer on the S&P 500.

"Equity investors have to be encouraged by M&A since, if the number crunchers are offering large premiums, that shows how much value is still in the market," said Mike Gibbs, co-head of the equity advisory group at Raymond James in Memphis, Tennessee.

On the downside, health insurance stocks tumbled, led by a 6.4 percent drop in Humana Inc to $72.99 after the company said the government's proposed 2014 payment rates for Medicare Advantage participants were lower than expected and would hurt its profit outlook.

UnitedHealth Group lost 1.9 percent to $56.25. The Morgan Stanley healthcare payor index <.hmo> dropped 1.6 percent.

Wall Street's strong start to the year for was fueled by better-than-expected corporate earnings, as well as a compromise by legislators in Washington that temporarily averted automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that are predicted to damage the economy.

The compromise on across-the-board spending cuts postponed the matter until March 1, at which point the cuts take effect. Ahead of the debate over the cuts, known as sequestration, further gains for stocks may be difficult to come by.

"If there's no major contention with sequestration, it looks like stocks are prepared to handle it, but until then we'll probably stay in a consolidation period marked by sideways trading with a slow rate of ascent," said Gibbs.

Economic data showed the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index unexpectedly edged down to 46 in February from 47 in the prior month as builders faced higher material costs.

According to the Thomson Reuters data through Monday morning, of the 391 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.1 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Express Scripts rose 1.7 percent to $56.49 after the pharmacy benefits manager posted fourth-quarter earnings.

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

Read More..

India Ink: Image of the Day: Feb. 18

Read More..

Jerry Buss, Lakers Owner, Dies at 80

By Maggie Coughlan

02/18/2013 at 02:10 PM EST

Jerry Buss, the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, has died, the Associated Press reports. He was 80.

Buss had been hospitalized for cancer, but died of kidney failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Monday, said his assistant, Bob Steiner.

Paying $67.5 million when he first bought the the Lakers from Jack Kent Cooke (in a deal that also included the N.H.L.'s L.A. Kings, the L.A. Forum sports arena and Cooke’s California ranch), Buss saw their value increase to $1 billion, according to a Forbes ranking in January, reports The New York Times. That made the team second in the N.B.A. to the New York Knicks’ $1.1 billion valuation.

During his 32 years with the Lakers, Buss's team made the N.B.A finals 16 times (through 2011), winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010.

At just 24, Buss earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and later had careers in aerospace and real estate development.

Buss is survived by his six children.

As news of his death traveled, athletes and celebrities took to Twitter to share their condolences.

Read More..

Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior

SEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.

The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said.

"It's not just about turning off the television. It's about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch," said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute.

The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.

The study involved 565 Seattle parents, who periodically filled out TV-watching diaries and questionnaires measuring their child's behavior.

Half were coached for six months on getting their 3-to-5-year-old kids to watch shows like "Sesame Street" and "Dora the Explorer" rather than more violent programs like "Power Rangers." The results were compared with kids whose parents who got advice on healthy eating instead.

At six months, children in both groups showed improved behavior, but there was a little bit more improvement in the group that was coached on their TV watching.

By one year, there was no meaningful difference between the two groups overall. Low-income boys appeared to get the most short-term benefit.

"That's important because they are at the greatest risk, both for being perpetrators of aggression in real life, but also being victims of aggression," Christakis said.

The study has some flaws. The parents weren't told the purpose of the study, but the authors concede they probably figured it out and that might have affected the results.

Before the study, the children averaged about 1½ hours of TV, video and computer game watching a day, with violent content making up about a quarter of that time. By the end of the study, that increased by up to 10 minutes. Those in the TV coaching group increased their time with positive shows; the healthy eating group watched more violent TV.

Nancy Jensen, who took part with her now 6-year-old daughter, said the study was a wake-up call.

"I didn't realize how much Elizabeth was watching and how much she was watching on her own," she said.

Jensen said her daughter's behavior improved after making changes, and she continues to control what Elizabeth and her 2-year-old brother, Joe, watch. She also decided to replace most of Elizabeth's TV time with games, art and outdoor fun.

During a recent visit to their Seattle home, the children seemed more interested in playing with blocks and running around outside than watching TV.

Another researcher who was not involved in this study but also focuses his work on kids and television commended Christakis for taking a look at the influence of positive TV programs, instead of focusing on the impact of violent TV.

"I think it's fabulous that people are looking on the positive side. Because no one's going to stop watching TV, we have to have viable alternatives for kids," said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston.

____

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

___

Contact AP Writer Donna Blankinship through Twitter (at)dgblankinship

Read More..