FOURTH OF JULY - INDEPENDENCE DAY

Variously known as the Fourth of July and Independence Day, July 4th has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1941, but the tradition of Independence Day celebrations goes back to the 18th century and the American Revolution (1775-83). In June 1776, representatives of the 13 colonies then fighting in the revolutionary struggle weighed a resolution that would declare their independence from Great Britain. On July 2nd, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence, and two days later its delegates adopted the Declaration of Independence, a historic document drafted by Thomas Jefferson. From 1776 until the present day, July 4th has been celebrated as the birth of American independence, with typical festivities ranging from fireworks, parades and concerts to more casual family gatherings and barbecues.

check the video gallery: http://www.history.com/topics/july-4th

When a miscarriage isn't a fluke

When a miscarriage isn't a fluke

By Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent

June 9, 2011 10:14 a.m. EDT

On Monday, Anthony Arnold was born full term, weighing 6 pounds, 12 ounces.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Melissa Arnold was told her miscarriages were just "nature's way"
• Obstetrician group rescinded guidelines on managing pregnancy loss
• Doctor: Before 6 weeks, 70% of miscarriages are tied to random chromosomal abnormalities

(CNN) -- As part of the Catholic wedding vows they took four years ago, Melissa and Jacob Arnold promised to be "open to children."
Choosing not to use birth control, the couple dreamed of having a large family. Six months later, Arnold's period was late.
"One day at work, a friend came up to me and said, 'I've got a bun in the oven!' " Arnold says. "I thought, 'Maybe I do too!' So I ran home at lunch to take a pregnancy test. My husband read it and said to me, 'You're going to be a mommy!' We were so thrilled. I ran back to work and said, 'Guess what, I'm pregnant, too!' "
But Arnold, who was 23 at the time, wasn't going to be a mother, at least not yet. When she was eight weeks pregnant, she miscarried. A few months later she was pregnant again, and again she miscarried, this time at 10 weeks.
Finally, she had a healthy baby girl, but then she miscarried twice more, including one pregnancy with twins. In all, Arnold had four miscarriages, losing five babies in less than three years.
"I read a lot of books, and I learned there are tests you can do to see if there's a reason you're having a lot of miscarriages," she says. "But my doctor said the miscarriages were just nature's way, and we didn't need to do any testing."

2010: Rancics talk about miscarriage

Her doctor told her it was inappropriate to do testing until she'd had three consecutive miscarriages without a live birth. By this time, Arnold was feeling defeated, and her marriage was strained.
"I was so bitter and angry, I couldn't even cry after I lost the twins," she says.
"This can be very frustrating for patients"
There's no consensus among doctors about when miscarriages go from being a fluke that most likely won't happen again to being a pattern that needs investigating. This can leave many patients like Arnold at a loss for what to do.
In 2001, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists devised guidelines for doctors on how to manage recurrent pregnancy loss, but the group rescinded those guidelines last year and has not replaced them, according to Greg Phillips, a spokesman for ACOG.
"This can be very frustrating for patients," says Dr. Elwyn Grimes, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth. "There's no easy answer. I tell patients to go on the Internet and do their own research and lay it all on the table for the doctor, and to just persevere finding a doctor who can help them."
Melissa's story
Dissatisfied with her obstetrician's response, Arnold set out to find a doctor to do testing to find a cause for her miscarriages. She says doctor after doctor refused, citing the same three-consecutive-miscarriage "rule."
"This theory about three consecutive miscarriages was promulgated back in the 1930s, based on no evidence and no research," Grimes says, adding that even so, there are still doctors who believe it.

Author Darci Klein encouraged Arnold with her book "To Full Term."

After asking her family to pray for her, Arnold contacted Darci Klein, another woman who suffered recurrent miscarriages and wrote the book "To Full Term." Klein encouraged her to keep looking for a doctor who would do testing.
It was especially urgent, as Arnold had just found out she was pregnant again.
Finally, her phone calls worked: She found a doctor who would do the testing in Houston, not far from her home in Spring, Texas.
"The nurse told me to come in, and I said, 'You mean, you're going to accept me as a patient?' and she said, 'Yes, sweetheart. Something's wrong. It's not normal to have four miscarriages, especially at your age,' " Arnold remembers. "I cried out of relief and happiness and hope for this baby I was carrying."
That doctor found that Arnold carried a genetic mutation that some researchers say is linked to miscarriages. She was prescribed baby aspirin to prevent clotting.
On Monday, Anthony Arnold was born full term, weighing 6 pounds, 12 ounces.
"I was very grateful that Darci encouraged me to fight," Arnold says.
Miscarriages often a random event
Many times when a woman has a miscarriage, it truly is a roll of the dice -- an unfortunate event due to a chromosomal abnormality that's random and not caused by any defect in the mom or dad. There's no treatment for such events, and patients are encouraged to try to get pregnant again.
In fact, before six weeks, 70% of all miscarriages are associated with random chromosomal abnormalities, according to Dr. Mary Stephenson, director of the Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Program at the University of Chicago.
That number goes down to 50% of miscarriages between six and 10 weeks, and 5% of miscarriages after 10 weeks.
Tests after a miscarriage
Not only is there controversy about when to test, but also what testing should be done on women who've had miscarriages, and what treatment, if any, should be given based on the results of those tests.
After a woman miscarries, some doctors suggest that a chromosomal analysis be done on the fetal tissue to check for abnormalities.
Here are diseases that can be checked for in the mother, and sometimes the father, too. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has a good overview.
Clotting disorders
Some clotting disorders, such as factor V Leiden and antiphospholipid antibodies, can put women at a higher risk for pregnancy loss. For a list, see Clot Connect, run by Dr. Stephan Moll, a hematologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
Hyperthyroidism
It may be harder for women with hyperthyroidism to become pregnant. The Columbia University Medical Center has more information.
Uterine abnormalities
Fibroids and other problems with the uterus or cervix can cause miscarriage, according to the March of Dimes.
Hormone imbalance
If progesterone levels are too low early in pregnancy, miscarriage can occur. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has more information.
Other medical conditions

Women with conditions such as kidney disease, diabetes and lupus may have a higher chance of miscarriage, according to ACOG.

Study: Quitting Smoking With Chantix May Increase Risk of Heart Attack

By Alice Park Monday, July 4, 2011 | 2 Comments

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Bloomberg via Getty Images

A popular drug prescribed to help people quit smoking may pose a significantly increased risk of heart attack in users, a new study finds. The results may further complicate doctors' and patients' decisions to use the drug, Chantix, which has been associated with various safety concerns since its approval in 2006.

The new paper, an analysis of data from 14 previous studies involving Chantix (varenicline), found that smokers and smokeless tobacco users taking the drug experienced a 72% increased risk of a serious heart event within a year.
"The magnitude of the risk did surprise us," says Sonal Singh, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the study's co-authors.
Shortly before the July 4 release of the paper by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a safety announcement warning users that Chantix, while helping smokers quit for as long as a year, was associated with a "small, increased risk of certain cardiovascular adverse events in patients who have heart disease."
That announcement was based on the findings of a randomized trial of 700 smokers with diagnosed cardiovascular disease who took either Chantix or placebo for three months. The data have prompted the FDA to include a warning on the drug's label.
The CMAJ analysis included the study on which the FDA based its safety announcement. But most of the other participants included in the CMAJ study were healthy and did not have heart problems and still showed a similar spike in cardiac events.
The results may pose a quandary for many smokers who attempt to give up cigarettes each year — about half of the 46 million current smokers in the U.S. — as well as the doctors who advise them. Should people try to quit smoking with Chantix, or will using the drug increase their risk of heart disease just as much as, or even more than, smoking itself?
This is not the first time that harmful side effects have been associated with Chantix. According to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), a nonprofit organization that educates the public about drug safety, numerous reports of adverse effects from Chantix have been reported to the FDA since the drug was approved five years ago. In the final months of 2007, for instance, varenicline accounted for more occurrences of serious injury than any other drug, according to the FDA's adverse events reports. These side effects included irregular heartbeat, seizures and blackout, as well as more serious psychiatric effects including aggression and suicide.
In 2008, when the ISMP published a compilation of its findings on Chantix's potential harms, the drug's psychiatric risks caught the attention of the FDA. The agency immediately ordered pilots with the Federal Aviation Administration to stop taking the drug; soon after, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which oversees the trucking and bus industry, issued a similar ban for its commercial drivers. The Department of Defense followed suit and prohibited certain weapons and aircraft personnel from using the smoking cessation drug as well.
In 2009 the FDA gave the drug its most restrictive black box warning because of "serious neuropsychiatric events" including suicidal behavior.
The FDA says that it wasn't aware of any potential heart risks until 2010, when Pfizer, which manufactures Chantix, conducted a study of the drug in heart patients to see whether it was as effective at reducing tobacco use in high-risk smokers as in those without heart trouble. When the company provided its results to the FDA, agency officials paid particular attention to any indication of heart problems. "We did a careful assessment of endpoints, exactly because it was a population of patients with known heart disease," says Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the Office of New Drugs at the FDA. "That was where we saw the first signal that was particularly concerning, and led us to issue the safety communication."
The agency acknowledges, however, that there may have been hints of heart issues in the original data that Pfizer submitted to win approval for Chantix in 2006. "When the application came in, we did notice a difference in cardiovascular events [between varenicline users and control subjects] just based on rough counts," says Curtis Rosebraugh, director of the Office of Drug Evaluation II at the FDA. "What we typically do when we see an imbalance is assign viewers to look at the individual patient data to make sure things were coded correctly. We did that, and one reviewer said the imbalance was not as big as what the original data showed, and the other reviewer said that the difference actually favored Chantix. When we see things like that, that's not a clear signal to us. That's why things [such as a warning] weren't put on the label."
Singh takes issue with that decision, noting that if Pfizer and the FDA had noted the potential heart risks earlier, proper studies might have been done to investigate whether some people were more likely to develop heart problems than others on Chantix, potentially sparing many patients further harm. "What's missing here is that this information was present with Pfizer in 2006," says Singh. "Why wasn't that presented on the original label? Why wasn't this information given then? Why wasn't I as a provider given that information in 2006? That's what I'm mad about."
Pfizer maintains that the drug is safe, and notes limitations in Singh's analysis, including the small absolute number of heart events associated with Chantix. "The actual difference in cardiovascular event rates seen in the Singh analysis was less than one quarter of one percent (i.e., 1.06% with varenicline versus 0.82% with placebo)," Dr. Gail Cawkwell, vice president of medical affairs at Pfizer said in a statement. "The health benefits of quitting smoking are immediate and substantial."
That's something about which everyone can agree. The question is, how does the risk of continuing to smoke stack up against the risk of heart problems with varenicline? The currently available data aren't sufficient to answer that question, so the FDA is asking the company to conduct its own study of all existing data on varenicline and heart issues among users.
In the meantime, some experts are turning to other smoking cessation options to help their patients quit. "Try the nicotine patch, try bupropion, try everything you can, and if you really can't quit, and if you don't have a lot of heart disease risk, then try varenicline," says Dr. Steven Nissen, department chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. "But I have to be careful in also telling people that I can't tell you with absolute certainty that it's safe."
Quitting cigarettes, however, is always safer than continuing to smoke. It's just a matter of weighing the risks of the way you decide to kick the habit.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/04/study-quitting-smoking-with-chantix-may-increase-risk-of-heart-attack/#ixzz1RFlwKc83

Cultural Fabric

For Muslim immigrants in the U.S., the days following 9/11 were a harrowing encounter with American hate. iPod-bearing, second-generation techies faced insults in Silicon Valley parking lots; schoolgirls in headscarves were attacked; mosques across the country were vandalized. For many months, it seemed unclear whether America's Muslims — from the cocktail-swilling secular to the mosque-attending pious — would ever live again without apprehension.
That period, Harvard academic Leila Ahmed argues in a new book, turns out to have been a very good thing. Its long-term effect has been to remake American Islam, making the country's most conservative Muslims tolerant of criticism and open to a young generation's more liberal demands. The result, Ahmed writes in A Quiet Revolution, is no less than a new moment "in the history of Islam as well as of America." (See pictures of Muslim life in America.)
She arrives at this conclusion by way of tracing the history of the veil. The bareheaded women of Ahmed's Cairo girlhood considered veiling an outmoded habit of a repressive past, but by the early 1990s many Muslim women around the world were again covering up, and Ahmed sets out to understand why.
The story behind the veil's resurgence is not straightforward: everything plays a role, from British colonialism and the rise of Islamism to Egypt's sclerotic economy, Arab enmity with Israel and Saudi money. What Ahmed wants us to understand is that the veil has gone through the wash cycle of history and that its meaning today is both fresh and local. It is no longer a bandanna version of the all-enveloping burqa, signaling a woman's brainwashed submissiveness. Today, Ahmed argues, the veil often reflects attitudes that have little to do with piety. Many women in post-9/11 America, she notes, began wearing it to protest discrimination against Muslims. (See pictures of Islam's revolution.)
The portrait of post-9/11 Muslim America that Ahmed offers up bolsters her case for this new era's promise. There are the campaigns to move the women's sections of mosques out of basements, the feminist translation of the Koran and the accounts of conventions where Muslim authorities offer critics a platform to lambast their faith. Even if Muslim elders are merely putting up a facade of liberality to ward off political attack, Ahmed concludes, the climate is shaping a new generation of Muslims who demand more progressive ways.
Many, of course, will be skeptical when it comes to Ahmed's rosy assertion that the veil's resurgence dovetails with a feminist, activist spirit. Some will question whether it even makes sense to discuss the veil so sweepingly when the climates in which women wear it — from Connecticut to Karachi — vary so dramatically. And feminists will rebuke Ahmed for trying to honey-coat a covering that to them will always symbolize Islam's patriarchy. (Watch a video on a play about post-9/11 life for Muslims.)
Of course, the veil has a remarkable ability to provoke impassioned arguments on many issues besides gender politics, from the success or failure of multiculturalism to secularism in education. Ahmed's book will doubtlessly continue the debate. But laced into her historical account of the veil are gems of insight. Saudi Arabia's shadow looms long across the book, and the kingdom emerges as the victor in the veil's resurgence, its longtime project to export Wahhabi Islam's stricter ways a global success. Most striking of all, we learn that conservative Muslims, and veiled Muslims, make up a decided minority in America. The rest are living discreet lives — either secular or private in their practice of Islam — a silent majority receiving no one's attention.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2080665,00.html#ixzz1RFlJOYfs

Larry Crowne: Tom Hanks's Unemployment for Beginners

By Mary Pols Thursday, June 30, 2011

Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in Larry Crowne.

Universal Studios

The harmless film Larry Crowne opens with the harmless Larry (Tom Hanks) getting fired from his job at a Wal-Mart-like big-box store in the San Fernando Valley. Although the story quickly proceeds through familiar hallmarks of recent years — the fruitless job search, the necessary yard sales and looming foreclosure — this is not a recession story. Hanks, who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay with his friend Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), isn't trying to bring anyone down. Larry Crowne is a reinvention tale, at times cloying, but not without small charms. It's about as substantial as a pep rally and serves the same function.
Larry has long been U-Mart's most conscientious employee. In the morning he scans the empty parking lot with happy anticipation of another day in retail sales. But as they let him go, his bosses explain that since Larry didn't go to college, he can't advance in management. (Should he have joined a class action suit? Oh, right — no point.) He joined the Navy right out of high school, cooked his way around the world on ships for 20 years. He's humble and kind, a swell guy. In another era, Jimmy Stewart could have played him.
On the advice of his jovial neighbor Lamar (Cedric the Entertainer), who runs a perpetual yard sale on his front lawn with his wife B'Ella (Taraji Henson), Larry enrolls at a community college. He tells the dean he wants to make sure he's never downsized again (and no one squashes his hopes by telling him that college provides no such protection). Part of his plan is to downsize his own lifestyle; he leaves his gas guzzler in the driveway and uses a scooter, courtesy of Lamar, to get about the San Fernando Valley. Brave man.
(See "Tom Hanks: America's Chronicler-in-Chief")
The prop speaks volumes about the movie. If there is a cuter, peppier mode of transport than a scooter, I haven't seen it. It's the careful placement of the feet that does it: dainty, a little mannered, the mechanized version of riding sidesaddle. Arriving to school by scooter, Larry immediately falls in with a cozy little campus clique of fellow scooter enthusiasts, headed by bubbly Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Talia takes Larry under her wing: she shows him how to text, nicknames him Lance Corona and reforms his hair and wardrobe. She buzzes around him with such bubbly goodwill that his prickly public-speaking teacher (and love interest, naturally), Mercedes "Mercy" Tainot (Julia Roberts), is prompted to remark, "What do men see in irritating free spirits?"
Thank you, Mercy. Your bitterness is overdone, but at least you provide the voice of reason here. Talia is, sadly, the only means Hanks and Vardalos came up with to get Larry from Point A (dorkiness) to Point B (worthy of wooing the hot teacher). The nine other students taking Mercy's class, "Speech 217: The Art of Informal Remarks," are an agreeable enough lot, although wholly predictable. There's the hearty athlete (Grace Gummer), the texting dope (Rami Malek) and the shy middle-aged lady (Maria Canals-Barrera). Larry's economics professor (George Takei) is cutely eccentric. The whole community-college gang is the diet version of the Danish movie Italian for Beginners, a more charming tale featuring grown-ups going back to school.
Hanks is endearing and Roberts is as deft as ever with unchallenging material; he's Tom, she's Julia. Don't worry, be happy. I'd take Larry Crowne to task for its lack of tension, but I don't believe Hanks or Vardalos ever had narrative tension on their radar. Casting Roberts as the love interest is a guarantee that Larry is going to be just fine. Theirs is a placid romance — Mercy and Larry share one long kiss that's more like a wrestling match than anything sensual — but then again, this is a staid movie aimed at an older audience. Edgeless, it takes a wistful, hopeful approach to heartbreak and job loss. That's sweet, but when it comes to unemployment-themed cinema, I'll take the greater realism of last year's The Company Men or this year's Everything Must Go over Hanks's too rosy vision of life after the pink slip.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2080802,00.html#ixzz1RFl4B07D

Box Office: Transformers Shoots Off Worldwide Fireworks

By Richard Corliss Monday, July 04, 2011

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

The robots' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through this Independence Day weekend that the Transformers franchise still had muscle to spare. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, third in Michael Bay's HASBRO-Spielberg series of epic-length, fortissimo toy commercials, earned $97.4 million during the standard three-day weekend, and $116.4 million for the four-day holiday frame, according to early studio estimates. In its first six-and-a-half days, from Tuesday-night screenings through July 4th, the 3-Destructo-fest will have earned about $181 million in North America. Those mighty numbers left all competitors in the rubble, including Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, whose recession-era romantic comedy Larry Crowne took in just $15.7 million from Friday to Monday, or about a seventh of the Transformers haul.
Optimus Prime and his bot pals hit a goal that most blockbusters aim for: attracting customers who are young (55% of the audience was under 25) and male (62%) and willing to pay extra for the bells, whistles and tinted glasses. Three-fifths of the film's gross came from 3-D showings, and $13.8 million from IMAX screens. A solid "A" CinemaScore rating from early moviegoers indicates that Dark of the Moon isn't going away any time soon. And as hot as T3 was in North America, it was scalding abroad. The movie equivalent of an all-star tractor pull earned $217 million in 58 territories, which was more than 50% ahead of the overseas take for the series' 2009 predecessor, Revenge of the Fallen. Nearly $400 million in a week: all in all, well played, sirs. (See Richard Corliss's review of the new Transformers movie.)
Except. The $97.4 Fri.-Sun. domestic figure was well below the $109 million three-day weekend take of Revenge of the Fallen, which didn't benefit from the 3-D surcharge. And it meant that, for the first time in a decade, no Hollywood film released in the first half of the year grossed as much as $100 million on its opening weekend.
Consider that, by this time last year, three movies — Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2 and Toy Story 3 — had enjoyed weekends in excess of $110 million. Transformers 2 crossed the nine-figure mark in June 2009, as did the fourth Indiana Jones caper in May 2008. May 2007 saw three smash hits: Spider-Man 3 at $151.4 million, Shrek the Third at $121.6 million and the third Pirates of the Caribbean at $114.7 million. X-Men: The Last Stand had a three-day gross of $102.75 million in May 2006, and the May before that Star Wars: Episode Three — Revenge of the Sith earned $108.5 million. In June 2004, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban opened to $93.7 million, or about $123 million at today's ticket prices; and the $91.8 million that The Matrix Reloaded earned in its first three days in May 2003 would tabulate to about $125 million today. Add the $114.8 million opening of the original Spider-Man in May 2002, and you have a nine-year string of one or more $100-million movies released before July 4th. A string that snapped this week.
We grant that, for a blockbuster opening on a Tuesday night, moviegoers who don't catch it until Friday are considered stragglers. T3's most ardent fans had pumped $64.7 million into the coffers by the close of business Thursday. And nobody who has profit participation in the movie is going to go broke. But it now looks as though the first 2011 movie to break $100 million in its opening weekend will be — had better be — the final Harry Potter film, hitting the screens July 13. (See the 25 All-TIME Best Animated Features.)
Cars 2, Pixar's G-rated answer to the Transformers demolition derby, finished second with a 60% drop from last weekend's tally — the biggest second-week fall-off of any Pixar feature. And Cameron Diaz's Bad Teacher survived a stern C-plus from CinemaScore pollees to take third place over Larry Crowne, in which Roberts plays Nice Teacher to Hanks' unemployed everyman. Four years ago, these golden stars of the '90s teamed for Charlie Wilson's War and cruised to a sleepy $66.7 million domestic total. Larry Crowne, which Hanks directed and co-wrote as well as starred in, will be lucky to reach even that middling empyrean. Even further behind, but meeting its modest expectations, was Monte Carlo, starring ex-Disney teen hottie Selena Gomez. Intended to separate young females from their discretionary spending, it earned $8.75 million — little bucks from little girls.
As T3 proves, if you want the really big bucks, make movies for the international audience; glamour, action and loud noises are understood in any language. This weekend, the utterly vapid Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides crossed the $1 billion mark in worldwide ticket sales. It is just the eighth movie to reach that mark, and the third to star Johnny Depp (after Alice last year and Pirates 3 in 2007). The Pirates and Transformers movies may be warmly recalled only by their accountants, but in the movie business, that calls for a Hollywood holiday. More fireworks, please. (See the top 10 expendable girlfriends and the men who briefly loved them.)
Here are the three- and four-day estimates of the holiday weekend's top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo:

1. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, $97.4 million Fri.-Sun., $116.4 million Fri.-Mon.; $181.1 million, first six days
2. Cars 2, $26.5 million, Fri.-Sun., $32.1 million, Fri.-Mon.; $123 million, second week
3. Bad Teacher, $14.5 million Fri.-Sun., $17.6 million Fri.-Mon.; $63 million, second week
4. Larry Crowne, $13 million Fri.-Sun., $15.7 million, Fri.-Mon., first weekend
5. Super 8, $7.8 million Fri.-Sun., $9.5 million Fri.-Mon.; $110.1. million, fourth week
6. Monte Carlo, $7.5 million Fri.-Sun, $8.75 million Fri.-Mon., first weekend
7. Green Lantern, $6.6 million Fri.-Sun., $8 million Fri.-Mon.; $103.7 million, third week
8. Mr. Popper's Penguins, $5.4 million Fri.-Sun., $6.85 million Fri.-Mon.; $51.9 million, third week
9. Bridesmaids, $3.8 million Fri.-Sun., $4.4 million Fri.-Mon.; $153.8 million, eighth week
10. Midnight in Paris, $3.7 million Fri.-Sun., $4.3 million Fri.-Mon.; $34.5 million, seventh week

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2081380,00.html#ixzz1RFknhKLG

Cirque du Soleil's Zarkana: The Summer's Great Stage Show

By Richard Corliss Saturday, July 02, 2011

A preview of Zarkana on May 24, 2011 at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

Don Emmert / AFP / Getty Images

Since its inception in 1984, Cirque du Soleil has taken its intoxicating mix of acrobatics and theatrics around the world. The Montreal-based troupe has staged tent shows in every major North American city, traveled Europe and Asia, and built permanent shows — all-time marvels like O and Kà — in Las Vegas, Orlando, Tokyo and Macao. This week, with the official premiere of its new show Zarkana, Cirque finally found its ideal home: New York's Radio City Music Hall.
The Art Deco cavern-cathedral, designed by Edward Durrell Stone and decorated by Donald Deskey for its opening in 1932, is a wonder even when it's empty. But fill its 144-foot-wide stage with 70 elastic performers and a panoply of oversize theatrical and video effects — and pack the Music Hall's 6,000 seats with gaping visitors — and you have the perfect union of site and spectacle. (See Cirque's Kooza show at Randall's Island in New York.)
On either side of the stage, two Pierrots pound plangent chords at the Mighty Wurlitzer organs, out of which sprouts metal piping, fancifully twisted like a Ted Geisel Seussaphone. Then the show begins, and behind the radiated arches of the Hall's proscenium we see the two interior arches that Cirque's Stéphane Roy has designed to frame this episodic fairy tale. The frames' ornamentation suggests winding tree rots at one moment, writhing snakes at another. And soon the stage is peopled with dozens of brightly plumed figures (costumes by Alan Hranitelj) in a teeming rainforest, a Noah's Zarkana of exotic creatures. Later, five men holding umbrellas will ascend at a stately pace, but upside down, from the floor to the flies, like a Magritte painting in seductive slow motion. The message to the audience: Abandon all laws of physics and probability, and surrender to the gorgeously alien planet of Cirque.
Written and directed by François Girard, whose movie work includes Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and The Red Violin, the new show purports to have a plot. I quote from the Zarkana website: "The story follows Zark [Garou], a magician who has lost his powers, and the love of his life, in an abandoned theatre populated by a motley collection of off-the-wall characters and incomparable acrobats. He runs into the Mutants, four sirens as sinister as they are fabulous, who are determined to divert him from his quest." It's not essential to know what Girard thinks is going on — which is just as well, since anyone not a mind-reader or a member of the crew won't get the narrative drift — because this, like virtually all Cirque spectacles, is a series of acrobatic feats encased in heavy Euro-pop music and elevated by sumptuous theatrical mystification. (See Corliss's review of Cirque's Elvis spectacle in 2010.)
In that sense, Zarkana is a more sprightly sibling to the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. In the early stages of that show's elephantine birth agonies, director Julie Taymor was trying to duplicate the surreal grandeur and technical legerdemain of a Cirque Vegas event. (She briefly consulted a few Cirque wizards on the mechanics of flying.) Zarkana boasts a spider woman, in its lead chanteuse Cassiopee, plus mammoth web designs and lots of flying. Nick Littlemore, an Australian protégé of Elton John, provides some sonorously lugubrious pop-operatic songs that Garou declaims in a rich rock-star baritone, and which have a smidge more melodic heft than the ones Bono and The Edge composed for Taymor. And whereas her show had the insect goddess Arachne hover over Peter Parker's travails, Zarkana one-ups Taymor in the creepy-crawly sweepstakes by summoning a legion of snakes to complement its spiders.
Ellen Chen, finger-painting in sand on a light table whose images are shown on a large screen above her, opens Act Two with artful portraits of a spider in its web and a mermaid with a snake's tail. During one number, Cassiopee, who throughout the evening sports costumes that Lady Gaga might deem a tad outré, rises slowly above the stage while undulating in a 30-foot-long snake torso. Animated snakes appear to hiss their approval at the climax of one acrobatic display. Back in the arachnophilia department, Zarkana recalls Spider-Man's aerial trickery, and then tops it, by sending one of its clowns soaring on invisible wires 20 rows into and above the Music Hall audience — just to show how it can be done with grace, humor and no medical bills.
The customers may be sitting in a theater two blocks from Broadway, but they aren't here to see an improved riff on Spider-Man; they've come for the death- and gravity-defying exploits of performers who turn bodily movement into works of kinetic art. Cirque du Soleil is, au fond, a circus, and that includes a clown act — an apparently essential vestige of Cirque's street-performer days that, in this incarnation, lacks the magical wit of the rest of the show. (See why Kà was bigger than Vegas.)
The other routines in Zarkana fall in the medium-high range of the company's rich history — and a dazzling trapeze act that may be Cirque's all-time finest. Di Wu and Jun Guo perform an intense rope duet, she appending glamorously from the thick strand, he swinging the low end of the rope and eventually joining her to form an intimate airborne pas de deux. The trio of Ray, Rony and Rudy Navas Velez prove that a high wire is just the place on which to balance a man, on a chair, on a board on the shoulders of two other men. Ray and Rudy return in Act Two to clamber over the Wheel of Death, a pair of humongous wheels held by an outside steel belt and spinning deliriously as the men execute leaps and somersaults like daredevil hamsters. Familiar from Cirque's Kà and Kooza, the act never fails to thrill. On opening night, the Navas Velezes performed flawlessly, as did the rest of the eccentrically, supremely gifted Cirqueans.
On earlier forays into New York theater venues, the company stubbed its artistic toe: with the kids' show Wintuk and the vaudeville-style Banana Shpeel. This time, they're back to glorious basics. Zarkana will play eight times a week through Oct. 3, after which it heads for Madrid and Moscow. In its New York City home it will offer families a grand seasonal treat: the show of the summer in the Showplace of the Nation.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2081266,00.html#ixzz1RFkHuolR

Less-Educated Women Have More Children. Or Is It the Other Way Around?

By Bonnie Rochman Tuesday, July 5, 2011 | Add a Comment

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• It makes sense that education would impede childbearing. In nearly every country, women with more education tend to have fewer children than less-educated mothers. But new research suggests it may actually work the other way around: having more children hamstrings women's education.

The research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was led by Joel Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University, who's spent decades researching the people who call Earth home. Cohen decided to undertake his latest research after realizing, at a 2009 conference convened by the United Nations, that it appeared no one had yet investigated the obvious question about education and fertility: do more educated women have fewer kids because they're educated or because having children prevented them from going on to get more education.
That kind of data, which allows researchers to make chicken-or-egg inferences, is not tracked in the U.S., although plenty of people — particularly policymakers — would likely take interest.
The case for education influencing fertility is strong. After all, more educated women have children with better survival rates, and they have their children later in life. "There are a lot of people who think it's education that interferes with fertility. For example, more educated people are better at using contraception, or more educated people want to have educated children and they realize that to have children of high quality is more difficult with many children than with fewer children," says Cohen.
MORE: The Latest Figures on American Motherhood
But a large analysis of Norwegian data would suggest otherwise. Tipped off by a fellow demographer at the U.N. meeting that Norway maintains a registry tracking women's fertility and educational history, Cohen explored data on 26,349 women born in Norway in 1964 who stayed in the country from age 17 to age 39. Cohen and researchers from the University of Oslo were able to determine, year by year, how being enrolled in school influenced a woman's probability of having a child and proceeding to the next level of education.
They found that women who had children early — by their mid-20s — were much less likely to continue their education beyond the required first two years of high school; they were also less likely to achieve a higher degree later in life than women who delayed childbearing until they finished their education.
So is it education that inhibits fertility, or vice versa? "It seems to be fertility that gets in the way of education," says Cohen. "If the opposite were true, we would not have seen that the women who put off childbearing had so much more education than the women who bore children early."

MORE: Vote for Me for President! I Have Many Kids

Assuming other studies confirm Cohen's findings, it might behoove governments to let young women know of the potential chilling effect of childbearing. "Young women should be informed of the likely difficulty of pursuing their education if they have children early," says Cohen.
The study's findings also underscore the need for affordable child care — and for contraception, considering that half of U.S. pregnancies are unintended. "That represents a huge social cost to the mothers and to society," says Cohen.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/05/education-impacts-fertility-or-is-it-the-other-way-around/#ixzz1RFiPXbsp

Prince William Beats Kate in Friendly Dragon Boat Race

By Simon Perry

Monday July 04, 2011 02:15 PM EDT

Prince William rows with his winning team

Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press,/AP

It started with some friendly rivalry and ended with a consoling hug from the winning prince.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge went head to head in a dragon boat race across Dalvay Lake in Canada Monday.

The royal couple, who enjoy battling it out in tennis and other sports, showed off their competitive spirits at the Prince Edward Island boat race, in which they lead teams of local athletes.

PHOTOS: Prince William & Kate Middleton Take Canada!

Asked who was going to win, William told PEOPLE, "We are. Of course!" When Kate approached with her team, she was less certain. Asked if she would win, the duchess replied: "Not sure about that. I'm feeling slightly nervous."

Kate, in open-necked sweatshirt and slim navy trousers, was asked by photographers if she would stand at the bow of the boat the whole way. "I'll try to!" she answered.

At the end of the race, it was William's team that came in first by a third of a length. William gave Kate a hug as they stepped off the jetty, but showed no signs of regretting his victory. "No chivalry!" he said as he accepted the prize of a bottle of champagne.

A Water Landing

Earlier in the day, Prince William demonstrated "waterbirding" – a technique developed in Canada to safely land a helicopter in water in case of an emergency – before a captive audience. Most excited: his wife, who snapped pictures at the edge of the lake as he successfully executed the maneuver several times.

A trained search and rescue pilot for the Royal Air Force, William was joined on the gray Sea King helicopter by Colonel Sam Michaud and Major Patrick MacNamara of the Canadian Armed Forces. They demonstrated the technique three times. The first was just a training exercise. But for the second and third attempts, William piloted the chopper, carrying out the landing by wearing a mask to stop him from accessing other visual information.

After each successful landing, the helicopter glided along the lake.

RELATED: Prince William & Kate Will Party with British Stars in L.A.

It's a skill that will serve him well once he returns to Anglesey, Wales, where his missions take him flying over the Atlantic Ocean.

"He'll be the envy of his crew and colleagues back at RAF Valley," a royal source said.

Holmes Throws Tom Cruise a Surprise 49th Birthday Bash

Holmes Throws Tom Cruise a Surprise 49th Birthday Bash

Monday July 04, 2011 06:00 AM EDT

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise

• Katie Holmes surprised Tom Cruise, who is in Florida filming Rock of Ages, with a surprise 49th birthday bash at Miami Beach's SoHo Beach House. "Katie planned everything herself," a source tells us. Cruise's three kids – Suri, Connor and Isabella – were all there to celebrate, along with 40 close friends. The bash took place on the roof and inside the private venue, and guests enjoyed pasta, shrimp and other Italian dishes, in addition to chocolate birthday cake. "Katie has been very excited and actually did the RSVPs herself," the source says. "She wanted to be sure everything was just right."

• Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez have hit the Hamptons! The young couple dropped over $700 at Flying Point Surf and Sports in Bridgehampton, N.Y., according to an eyewitness. Gomez picked up Toms wedges and a dress, and Bieber also bought a pair of Toms shoes, among other items. "He kept calling her babe," a source says of the cute couple. Next, they headed across the street to Candy Kitchen for ice cream. But when Bieber didn't have any cash on him to pay – he offered to walk to a nearby ATM – another customer treated them.

• Jessica Simpson and fiancé Eric Johnson were in good company during dinner at Santa Monica's Ivy at the Shore: they dined with the singer's mom, Tina, and best pal Cacee Cobb. The group sat at a corner table, and Simpson was approached by two fans for a photo. Says an onlooker: "She was sweet and said yes." During the leisurely meal, Simpson and Johnson were relaxed and "adorable with one another," the onlooker says.

• Gabrielle Union partied with beau Dwyane Wade at Aura Nightclub at the Bahamas's Atlantis Paradise Island Resort during a holiday weekend getaway. The two were joined by Wade's Miami Heat teammate LeBron James and his girlfriend Savannah Brinson, and the group sipped cocktails and enjoyed an intimate night in the club's VIP room.

• By JENNIFER GARCIA, LINDA MARX and JEFFREY SLONIM

 

Daniel Radcliffe Reveals Secret Alcohol Addiction

Monday – July 04, 2011 – 5:04pm

 

Daniel Radcliffe is revealing his dark side.

In a new interview with GQ U.K. (and excerpted by the Daily Mail), Harry Potter's 22-year-old star admits he became "so reliant" on booze to fuel his days while filming the mega-smash film series in his teen years.
PHOTOS: Nine years of Harry Potter premieres
"I became so reliant on alcohol to enjoy stuff," Radcliffe, who currently appears in Broadway's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and will open Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II July 15, tells GQ. "There were a few years there when I was just so enamored with the idea of living some sort of famous person's lifestyle that really isn't suited to me."
Radcliffe, who appeared in the first Harry Potter film when he was 11, considers himself lucky that the paparazzi didn't bust up his booze habit. "I really got away with that because there were many instances when a paparazzi shot like that could have been taken," says the actor.
PHOTOS: Summer movie preview
Clean and sober since August 2010, Radcliffe tells GQ his life has slowed down considerably since he kicked his habit nearly a year ago.
"As much as I would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time, that doesn't work for me," he tells GQ. "I'm actually enjoying the fact I can have a relationship with my girlfriend where I'm really pleasant and I'm not f--king up totally all the time. There's no shame in enjoying the quiet life. And that's been the realization of the past few years for me."
PHOTOS: Daniel Radcliffe and other hot Brits!
And that quiet life means stowing away the hard-earned cash Radcliffe raked in during his years playing the boy wizard, if for no other reason than he just doesn't know what to do with it.
"I'm very fortunate to have it, and it gives you room to maneuver. But the main thing about having money is it means you don't have to worry about it," he tells the mag. "And that for me is a lovely thing. It's not for fast cars and hookers."

US Magazine

Credit: Jackson Lee/Brian Prahl/Splash News

PIC: Rachel Weisz Shows Off Massive Wedding Ring

Tuesday – July 05, 2011 – 12:38pm

 

That's some serious bling! 

Rachel Weisz showed off her wedding ring for the first time on Tuesday. The newlywed actress, 41, boarded a flight out of New York City with pal Michelle Williams and her daughter Matilda Ledger. PHOTOS: Stars' blingy engagement rings Last month, Weisz and Daniel Craig said "I do" in a top-secret ceremony in upstate New York. The Dream House costars dated for six months before they made things official. PHOTOS: Celebs who fell in love on set According to The Daily Mail, only four people attended the couple's intimate wedding ceremony: Henry, Weisz's 5-year-old son from her previous relationship with director Darren Aronofsky, Craig's 18-year-old daughter, Ella (from his previous marriage to Fiona Loudon); and two friends of the couple who acted as witnesses. PHOTOS: Over-the-top Hollywood weddings Tell Us: What do you think of Rachel's ring? US Magazine