The Lede Blog: Under Attack, Cairo Hotel Tweets an S O S

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Video of unidentified men streaming into the lobby of Cairo’s Semiramis InterContinental hotel was shown live on Egypt’s ONTV early on Tuesday.

Last Updated, 5:57 p.m. As our colleagues Kareem Fahim, David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh report, the mayhem on Cairo’s streets briefly spilled into the lobby of one of the city’s luxury hotels, the Semiramis InterContinental, during intense clashes between riot police and protesters along the Nile Corniche overnight.

Images of a mob streaming into the hotel, shown live on Egyptian television and then posted online, raised fears of further damage to the country’s already battered tourist industry. Coming at the same time as violence in cities on the Suez Canal, this week’s unrest threatened two of the main pillars of the Egyptian economy.

Judging by a series of urgent pleas for help posted on the hotel’s Twitter feed, the raid came just after 2:30 a.m. local time.

Within an hour of sounding the alarm on the social network, the staff reported on Twitter that the security forces had arrived.

Guards at the hotel told Bel Trew of the Egyptian news site Ahram Online that phone calls to the police and the army initially went unheeded as about 40 men armed with shotguns, knives and a semiautomatic weapon broke into the shuttered lobby and started looting.

An Ahram Online journalist who witnessed the attack, Karim Hafez, said that protesters had stopped fighting with the police to help secure the hotel: “When they realized these groups were trying to loot the hotel, protesters shot fire crackers at them as they attacked the building and tried to push them away from the area but these groups were armed with birdshot bullets.”

This reported cooperation of the protesters with the police officers they have been battling for days on the street outside the hotel prompted bloggers like the British-Egyptian journalist Sarah Carr to comment on the black comedy of the situation.

Another Egyptian blogger, Mohammed Maree, reported on his @mar3e Twitter feed that a police captain on the scene confirmed to him that the protesters who were fighting with the security forces when the raid took place were not responsible for the storming of the hotel.

Mr. Maree also reported that witnesses to the raid said it began after four people drove up in a car with no license plates and fired shots to scare protesters away, before storming the hotel. He later posted a photograph of some of the hotel’s guests leaving under the protection of protesters.

Nabila Samak, a spokeswoman for the hotel who posted the calls for help on Twitter, told The Times that the staff members had called Egyptian television stations for help earlier in the evening, well before the attack, after appeals to the security forces for protection went unanswered.

Ms. Samak told Ahram Online that the staff worked to secure the hotel’s guests but were not equipped to cope with the effective collapse of the police force, since, “no guards of hotels in Egypt are armed.” Later she thanked protesters for coming to the aid of the hotel’s staff and guests.

A Saudi women who identified herself as a guest at the hotel, Hilda Ismail, posted updates and photographs from a shelter the guests were taken to during the incident on her Arabic-language Twitter feed.

In one message, she wrote: “If there is no Egyptian security, and if Morsi is sleeping, where are this country’s men!! Come get these dogs, the Semiramis Hotel is being ransacked and we are there.”

Later, Ms. Ismail uploaded a brief video clip of a man attempting to reassure guests that they were safe after the arrival of special forces officers from the ministry of the interior led by a Captain Moataz.

In the clip, the man tells the guests that the police captain wants “to assure you that the hotel is secured and it is under the control of the ministry of the interior now. Within no time you will go back to your rooms and already are in safe hands.” The police, the man added, “will make sure that such thugs will not enter the hotel again. We are sorry.”

Ms. Ismail also posted an image of the ransacked lobby on Twitter.

Ms. Ismai’s claim to have been a guest at the hotel was supported by the fact that she had uploaded a brief video clip, apparently shot from a high floor of the hotel, showing the fighting on the Nile Corniche below.

An unnamed hotel manager in Cairo told Al-Masry Al-Youm, an Egyptian newspaper, that “more than 45 clients insisted on leaving despite the hotel’s offer to relocate them to higher floors, away from the clashes.”

Ignace Bauwens, an executive with the luxury hotel chain, which was created in 1946 by Pan American World Airways, said in a statement e-mailed to The Lede: “The safety of our guests and colleagues is paramount and we have a responsibility to do everything we can to look after them. With the recent escalation of the situation near Tahrir Square we have decided to temporarily close the hotel for security reasons. Our guests have been relocated to other hotels further away from the demonstrations and we’re not taking any new bookings for the coming week.”

Late Tuesday, the staff posted another urgent plea for help on Twitter.

The latest message prompted some alarm, but, as the journalist and blogger Mosa’ab Elshamy observed, the hotel’s staff, like other Egyptians, appeared to be getting used to “the daily chaos.”

Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Survey shows strong consumer interest in BlackBerry 10, but few are willing to buy just yet

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The good news for RIM (RIMM): Lots of people are interested in checking out its upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform. The bad news: Few are willing to commit to buying a BlackBerry 10 device at the moment. According to a new online survey of more than 1,100 Americans commissioned by mobile application specialist BiTE interactive and conducted by reputable pollster YouGov, 47% of Americans find “at least one of BlackBerry’s new features appealing,” although only around 13% say they’ll consider buying a BlackBerry 10 device.


[More from BGR: Apple’s 128GB iPad shows the world exactly what Apple does best]






[More from BGR: Apple unveils new 128GB iPad]


The survey found that the new Time Shift Camera, which lets users rapid-shoot multiple pictures of the same subject and then choose the best one from the bunch, was the most popular new BlackBerry feature, followed by BlackBerry 10′s new predictive keyboard. But as BiTE operations executive vice president Joseph Farrell notes, there’s a big difference between interest in new features and a commitment to spend money acquiring them. Farrell also thinks that RIM will still struggle to be relevant as long as app developers neglect BlackBerry in favor of iOS and Android.


“RIM’s much anticipated BB10 launch is a major, and much needed overhaul for the one-time smartphone leader and all indications are that it has, at very least succeeded in convincing Americans to give BlackBerry a second look,” he says. “However, it is clear that while all the new features can catch the interest of Android and iOS owners, the key chink in RIM’s armor remains its apps ecosystem. RIM has made great efforts to catch up with iOS and Android in this regard, but it, like Microsoft, is likely to find this far easier said than done.”


BiTE’s full press release is posted below.



BlackBerry 10 Captures Attention of One in Two Americans


But only one in eight will actually consider buying a BB10 device


Los Angeles, January 29, 2013 – Ahead of the launch of Research in Motion’s long-anticipated BlackBerry 10 operating system and two new smartphones this week, nearly one in two Americans online (47 percent) finds at least one of BlackBerry’s new features appealing.


Despite interest in the new features only one in eight Americans (13 percent) will consider buying a BB10 device, and only one in 100 plans to get one immediately. The findings are according to a report from BiTE interactive, the native mobile application specialist for Fortune 1000 brands, which commissioned YouGov to poll the views of a representative sample of 1,127 American adults online.


Time Shift Camera wins most American hearts, especially with Android owners


RIM’s Time Shift Camera is the most compelling new BB10 feature for 16 percent of Americans. The Time Shift Camera takes multiple shots of a subject in a single picture and lets you choose the best composite image. 46 percent more women than men identify it as the most attractive new feature of BB10, while it is most appealing for one in five (21 percent) 18-34 year olds. The same age group is also the most likely to find one of the BlackBerry 10’s features appealing (66 percent). RIM’s new predictive keyboard feature is the most compelling new feature for only six percent of Americans while only one in 100 picked the new ‘flow’ interface.


The new BB10 features appeal to more Android (65 percent) than iPhone owners (56 percent).


“RIM’s much anticipated BB10 launch is a major, and much needed overhaul for the one-time smartphone leader and all indications are that it has, at very least succeeded in convincing Americans to give BlackBerry a second look,” said Joseph Farrell, EVP Operations, BiTE interactive. “However, it is clear that while all the new features can catch the interest of Android and iOS owners, the key chink in RIM’s armor remains its apps ecosystem. RIM has made great efforts to catch up with iOS and Android in this regard, but it, like Microsoft, is likely to find this far easier said than done. A lot of eyes will be on the new BlackBerry World from day one, as its success is pivotal to that of the BB10 devices as viable mainstream consumer handsets.”


iPhone owners least likely to jump to BlackBerry


According to BiTE interactive’s report, iPhone owners are the least likely to buy into BB10. Only around one in 10 (11 percent) have any interest in owning one of RIM’s new phones compared with around one in five (21 percent) Android owners. Overall, almost one in two (44 percent) Americans definitely will not get a BB10 device while a further one in four (27 percent) say they will likely not get one.


Joseph Farrell added, “RIM’s challenge is compounded by the fact that Google and Apple have already built up huge mobile user bases who, for the most part, have invested lots of time and money learning and using their platform of choice. To switch to any new platform, even between the two, means a new investment of time and resources that many do not wish to spend, let alone taking a perceived risk on the new BB10 platform, no matter how impressive some of the new technology is.”


Research methodology


BiTE interactive commissioned YouGov to poll the views of a representative sample of 1,127 US adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between January 23-25, 2013. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all US adults (aged 18+).



This article was originally published on BGR.com


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Megan Fox: My New Career Is Motherhood

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Celebrity Baby Blog





01/29/2013 at 05:00 PM ET



Megan Fox Marie Claire UK
Courtesy Marie Claire UK


Plunging into parenthood has certainly placed Megan Fox on a new career path.


After welcoming son Noah Shannon in September, the new mom admits it has become increasingly more difficult to balance both her personal and professional lives.


“It’s very hard for me to do this stuff because I feel like this isn’t my job anymore. My job is to be with him,” the This Is 40 star says in the March issue of Marie Claire U.K.


“All I wanted to do my whole, whole life was have a baby and, now, I’ve finally done it. I just want to give Noah as much of myself as I can.”

Swapping out the glitz and glamour for diaper duty and late nights with Noah wasn’t a hard transition for the actress, who, after meeting her future husband Brian Austin Green at the age of 18, spent much of her younger years with him at home.


“Maybe it’s just because I don’t know any different,” she says of her low-key lifestyle. “I’ve never been validated by work or fame of Hollywood or any of that.”


With her priority placed on family, Fox, 26, is willing to put in the extra effort to ensure her marriage is successful. “I believe he’s my soul mate,” she shares. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take work, because we are very, very different.”


And when she’s not bonding with her baby boy or nurturing her relationship with Green, the actress makes it her mission to not watch the news.


“Everything makes me cry. Because everyone is someone’s child, every woman seems like someone’s mother,” Fox explains. “I have so much more patience for people and women in general.”


– Anya Leon


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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

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On Facebook, he describes himself as a "wounded warrior...very wounded."


Brendan Marrocco was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, and doctors revealed Monday that he's received a double-arm transplant.


Those new arms "already move a little," he tweeted a month after the operation.


Marrocco, a 26-year-old New Yorker, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. He had the transplant Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday.


Alex Marrocco said his son does not want to talk with reporters until a news conference Tuesday at the hospital, but the younger Marrocco has repeatedly mentioned the transplant on Twitter and posted photos.


"Ohh yeah today has been one month since my surgery and they already move a little," Brendan Marrocco tweeted Jan. 18.


Responding to a tweet from NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski, he wrote: "dude I can't tell you how exciting this is for me. I feel like I finally get to start over."


The infantryman also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.


The military sponsors operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in Iraq or Afghanistan.


Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it. Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.


"He was the first quad amputee to survive," and there have been four others since then, Alex Marrocco said.


The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.


Brendan Marrocco has been in public many times. During a July 4 visit last year to the Sept. 11 Memorial with other disabled soldiers, he said he had no regrets about his military service.


"I wouldn't change it in any way. ... I feel great. I'm still the same person," he said.


The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins. It was the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States.


Lee led three of those earlier operations when he worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.


Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms.


"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.


While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the immune-suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand-transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well, and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.


Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants.


Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new immune-suppression approach.


Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been fitted with prosthetic legs and had learned to walk on his own.


He had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."


The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.


Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from the tube that was in his throat during the long surgery and decided he sounded like Al Pacino. He soon started doing movie lines.


"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.


___


Associated Press Writer Stephanie Nano in New York contributed to this report.


___


Online:


Army regenerative medicine:


http://www.afirm.mil/index.cfm?pageid=home


and http://www.afirm.mil/assets/documents/annual_report_2011.pdf


___


Follow Marilynn Marchione at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP .


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S&P 500 eases, ends longest winning run in eight years

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 eased slightly on Monday after an eight-day run of gains, while the Nasdaq edged higher as Apple shares rebounded.


The index remained above 1,500, however, after closing above that level on Friday for the first time in more than five years. The S&P 500's eight sessions of gains was its longest winning streak in eight years.


Caterpillar shares helped limit losses on the Dow industrials even as the company posted a 55 percent drop in quarterly profit due to a charge connected with accounting fraud at a Chinese subsidiary and weak demand among its dealers. Caterpillar's shares, down 2.2 percent in the past three sessions, rose 2 percent Monday to $97.45.


"I think this multi-year high is really something that's in play both for shorter-term traders and with folks with money on the sidelines," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.


Bargain hunters lifted Apple after the tech giant's stock dropped 14.4 percent in the previous two sessions. With Apple's stock up 2.3 percent at $449.83, the iPad and iPhone maker regained the title as the largest U.S. company by market capitalization as Exxon Mobil fell 0.7 percent to $91.11 and slipped back to second place.


On the down side, Boeing fell 1.4 percent to $74 on worries about the potential hit from delays in its 787 Dreamliner program.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 14.05 points, or 0.10 percent, at 13,881.93. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 2.78 points, or 0.18 percent, at 1,500.18. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 4.59 points, or 0.15 percent, at 3,154.30.


Investors poured $55 billion in new cash into stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in January, the biggest monthly inflow on record, research provider TrimTabs Investment Research said.


"What we have seen this year is, it appears the individual investor is allocating some 401(k) money to equities. Hopefully that's a decision that will be with us for a while," Hellwig said.


Data on Monday pointed to growing economic momentum as companies sensed improved consumer demand.


U.S. durable goods orders jumped 4.6 percent in December, a pace that far outstripped expectations for a rise of 1.8 percent. Pending home sales, however, unexpectedly dropped 4.3 percent. Analysts were looking for an increase of 0.3 percent.


Corporate earnings so far have mostly been stronger than expected. Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 150 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 67.3 percent have beaten analysts' expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


After the bell, shares of Yahoo rose 4.4 percent to $21.21 following the release of its results.


During the regular session, Hess Corp shares shot up 6.1 percent to $62.48 after the company said it would exit its refining business, freeing up to $1 billion of capital. Separately, hedge fund Elliott Associates is looking for approval to buy about $800 million more in Hess stock.


Stocks have also gained support from a recent agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing power. On Monday, Fitch Ratings said that agreement removed the near-term risk to the country's 'AAA' rating.


Volume was roughly 6.1 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.


Decliners outpaced advancers on the NYSE by nearly 4 to 3, while advancers beat decliners on the Nasdaq by about 7 to 5.


(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal and Nick Zieminski)



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Yemen Seizes Boat Suspected of Smuggling Iranian Arms

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WASHINGTON – Authorities in Yemen have seized a boat in their territorial waters filled with a large quantity of explosives, weapons and money, according to American officials briefed on the interdiction. The officials said there were indications that Iran was smuggling the military contraband to insurgents inside Yemen, although they declined to provide details.




Yemeni security forces halted and searched the 130-foot dhow last Tuesday, and found the weapons in three large cargo rooms in the hold, according to reports on the mission reaching Washington. There was American support for the interdiction, officials said.


A full inventory of the arms cache has not been disclosed. Two senior American officials cited reports from Yemen saying the weapons included shoulder-launched missiles designed for shooting down aircraft.


If the weapons turn out to be the Iranian-made Misagh-2 as cited in the reports from Yemen, it would reflect a significant increase in lethality for the insurgents. A large amount of C-4 explosives also was on board, the officials said, as well as rocket-propelled grenades and 122-milimeter rockets.


It was not possible to independently verify the details of the mission, the type of cargo seized or the exact intelligence said to link the explosives, arms and money to Iran. Yemen has not revealed the seizure, although a public statement was expected in the coming days.


Yemen is already awash with small arms and explosives acquired over years of war and insurgency, much of it brought in from a number of foreign sources through its poorly controlled ports. There has been little effort to regulate the supply – one governor of a northern province is also a major arms dealer – and insurgents have often raided the stores of Yemen’s corrupt and divided military. Many of Yemen’s unruly tribes command powerful arsenals.


The United States has a publicly acknowledged security assistance effort under way with Yemen. At the same time, the American military and the C.I.A. are engaged in a clandestine program of using drones to strike militants associated with a terrorist organization, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen. With the United States and Saudi Arabia providing both public and secret security assistance there, and with Iran also said to be arming militant forces, Yemen has become the battlefield for a major proxy war by outside powers.


American officials said the weapons on board were made in Iran, and that the pattern of shipment aboard the boat matched past instances of suspected Iranian smuggling into Yemen. Officials described the smuggling as part of a plan by Iran to increase its political outreach to rebels and other political figures in Yemen. To identify with greater certainty the source of the seized weapons, the boat’s navigation instruments will most likely be examined to determine its origin and route, and the crew will be questioned.


For years, Yemen has accused Iran of supporting the Houthi rebels, who fought an intermittent guerrilla war against the Yemeni government from 2004 to 2010. Those accusations – including claims of intercepted weapons shipments – often lacked evidence and, up until about a year ago, routinely were dismissed as propaganda.


But after the uprising in Yemen in 2011, the Houthi movement expanded from its base in the northwest — now a de facto Houthi statelet — across the country. It has benefited from widespread dissatisfaction with both Yemen’s government and the local equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood, known as Islah.


By last spring, American military and intelligence officials described what they viewed as a widening effort to extend Iranian influence across the greater Middle East.


Iranian smugglers backed by the Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, had begun shipping AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and other arms to replace older weapons used by the rebels, American officials said early last year.


Thom Shanker reported from Washington, and Robert F. Worth from Sana, Yemen. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.



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TSX little changed, RIM positioning offsets banks

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TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index finished little changed on Monday, as gains in the financial group were partially offset by Research In Motion Ltd shares, which sagged ahead of its critical BlackBerry 10 launch this week.


The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> was down 0.72 of a point at 12,815.91. Half of the index’s 10 key sectors climbed higher.</.gsptse>






(Reporting by Solarina Ho)


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Elisa Donovan Blogs: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists

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Elisa Donovan's Blog: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists
With Scarlett on Christmas – Courtesy Elisa Donovan


Thanks for welcoming one of our newest celebrity bloggers, Elisa Donovan!


Best known for her roles as Amber in Clueless and Morgan on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Donovan currently stars in the ABC Family franchise The Dog Who Saved Christmas. Following that, she will costar in MoniKa, set for release this year.


Donovan, 41, is also a writer and yogi. A recovered anorexic, she assists in counseling and supporting young women struggling with eating disorders.


She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Charlie Bigelow, and their 8-month-old daughter Scarlett Avery.


She can be found on Facebook, as well as Twitter @RedDonovan.



Okay — I want to talk about my body. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to get weird.


I hate to state the obvious, but women’s bodies — especially after they’ve had a baby — still seem to be an obsession of society. It’s a challenge to find a women’s magazine that doesn’t have at least one item about weight loss or body on its cover; or a women’s talk show that doesn’t have at least one feature on the same thing.


Since I had Scarlett, more people have wanted to talk to me about my body than anything else, so I thought I should jump on the bandwagon. (If you’ve read my previous blog, you’ll know how I feel about a bandwagon…)


Having recovered from anorexia many years ago, I’ve made it a way of life not to talk about my body, or your body or anybody else’s body. I learned long ago that at their core, eating disorders and “body image” issues have very little to do with the physical body at all. They’re about control, perfection and the size of our feelings and desires — not the size of our hips. For years, any comments made to me about my body — positive or negative — were twisted into a soup of insanity that only made me feel more fat; further convincing me that my restricted and unhealthy ways were the path to perfection.


It took many years of therapy, determination and love to overcome my disorder. Through my persistence and care, I have come to be grateful for the challenges I once faced. For my recovery brought me not only to the spiritual basis from which I now lead my life, but also gave me great knowledge and insight into the true goals and desires I have for my future.


One of the more literal and quantifiable assets to my recovery is this: I never judge anyone (including myself) by the physical body one walks around in. I am far more concerned with what is going on inside rather than outside. Skinny or fat, tall or short, sculpted or curvy — the body is truly one of the last things I focus on.


When I was anorexic and bulimic, I had a field day listening to what other people ate — creating my own contorted diets and restrictions in comparison. Then I would berate myself when I would inevitably fail at sticking to any of them; a process which inevitably led me back down the dangerous dead-end road of starving.


This is why today, in general, I don’t think that talking about food and body is healthy. I believe putting the focus on feelings, desires and goals is far more useful. So whenever I’m asked what I eat I usually dodge the question, not wanting to give women more reasons to create obsessions with their bodies, food and exercise.


But not even when I was severely anorexic and people would whisper things like, “I just want to give her a sandwich” was my body such a template for commentary, as it has been since I got pregnant and had a baby. So I thought maybe this was the time to break my silence in discussing this directly. I hope that by sharing my personal experience it may help to demystify the process of being healthy and fit.


Of course, every woman’s body is different. Hence, my experience is unique to me. As yours is to you. But it’s my hope that anyone who might be struggling with this can find the places they identify with what I’m writing and be brought some comfort; maybe our dialogue about this will help propel a shift in the collective consciousness.


Elisa Donovan's Blog: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists
Collage I made for Scarlett while I was pregnant – Courtesy Elisa Donovan


This stuff is really tough to talk about. See how I’m talking in circles around the subject so far? I’m cagey because, well — everyone goes bananarama-looney-tunes about this issue. We are all hyper-sensitive. And the last thing I want is to contribute to any of the insanity. I’m actually trying to stop the insanity, and bring us back down to earth. So here goes…


Throughout my pregnancy and post, it has been revelatory to discover just how much the body is what everyone — both men and women alike — feel most compelled to focus on. I’m not suggesting that people are instinctively mean-spirited in doing this. In fact, I’m trying to point out that I don’t think most people even realize it.


When someone comments about a woman’s pregnant or post-baby body, they think it is perfectly acceptable to do so. As if simply because a woman is about to have a child, or just had one, that makes her an open target for public discussion and invasion of her privacy.


I once watched a man at a party dig himself an Olympic-sized hole as he compared the bodies of two expectant women standing next to him (one of which was his wife). “You’re SO much bigger,” he said to the other woman. “You must be due really soon.” A bit stunned, the woman replied, “No, not for another three months.” “No way, really? It’s just that you’re so much bigger than her,” he said, pointing to his wife (who was mortified). “Maybe it’s the color of your sweater that’s making you look huge,” he offered, totally unaware of the gigantic gaping pit he had created for himself.


One friend told me that when she was six months pregnant a woman said to her, “You are ENORMOUS!! You look like you’re having twins!!” (She wasn’t.) Another woman, a complete stranger, said to me when I was almost five months, “You must be having a girl — you’re carrying it sort of … everywhere,” as she gesticulated grotesquely around her entire frame.


I’m just asking — in what universe are these appropriate things to say to a person?


Comments from “You barely look pregnant!” to “Oh my God — you’re huge!” to “You barely gained an ounce!” and “She gained a ton!” lead to “How did you lose the baby weight?” “Are you worried about losing the baby weight?” “Don’t worry — you will lose the baby weight!!” — and they all pre-suppose that one’s physical body is the main concern.


I can say with 100 percent honesty: I never worried about my weight when I was pregnant. Not once. Even during those periods where I felt like a water mammal trapped on land laboriously straining to lumber down the sidewalk, I didn’t worry about it. This is not because I have a super-human sized ego and gargantuan self-esteem. It is because of two things:


1) Everything I’ve already stated about my lessons in body image, and 2) I never looked at the scale when the nurse weighed me at each doctor visit. I told her I didn’t want to know what I weighed, unless there was something abnormal or unhealthy about it. I understood it was necessary for the doctor to know my weight, but it was virtually useless for me to know the number. I hadn’t looked at the numbers on a scale in over 15 years, so why should I start now?


Though I was never one of those women that felt AMAZING while pregnant (I did not see unicorns and rainbows all day and feel “sexier than ever!”), I did feel extraordinarily lucky that for the most part (aside from that brutal first trimester), I felt okay. Though much of this could just be chalked up to the luck of the draw, I believe my choices were an equal contributor.


Elisa Donovan's Blog: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists
Charlie and Scarlett at SFMOMA – Elisa Donovan


I didn’t change the quality of what I ate (aside from several fierce cravings which I will get to later, I am an organic and non-processed foods person). I didn’t take “eating for two” to mean “overindulge in every sugary, fatty food I can get my hands on for 10 months.” I ate when I was hungry (which was often) and made sure I got the proper vitamins and minerals from the foods I ate. (Roasted chicken was a favorite, I could not get enough of it. And lemon water. I would have swallowed an entire lemon tree if I could have.)


I also practiced vinyasa yoga nearly every day, when I wasn’t working. Especially on the days when I didn’t feel like getting off of the couch — those were the times it actually felt the best. I even practiced the day before I gave birth. (I loved knowing that I was carrying a baby in my belly in yoga, as I moved through the age-old postures and chanted at the opening and close of class.) I walked a lot. These things cleared my head, energized my body and lifted my spirit. They made me feel like an active participant in nourishing this little being, rather than sitting back and letting something just happen TO me.


Just so you don’t think I’m some out-of-touch-granola-hippie — you should also know that during my second trimester, I developed an insatiable desire for chocolate bars. This trimester fortuitously coincided with Halloween. I would send text messages to my girlfriends with photos of mini-Milky Ways, with the title “FUN SIZE!.” (To be clear: I believed I was maximizing the fun by eating three or four of them.) I would text my husband while he was at the office, “Can you bring me home a Snickers? Don’t judge me.”


For anyone that knows me, it was hilarious and a great source of joy for them to see me delight in eating these things. My chocolate bar fetish was soon replaced by a wild rampage in pursuit of anything red velvet. This is a story that requires its own blog altogether — so I will just tell you this: I have tasted every red velvet cupcake in the greater San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles County areas, and was known to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge just to purchase mini-bundt cakes.


After I had Scarlett, people very quickly said they couldn’t believe I had just had a baby. “OHMYGOD I hate you!” some women would even say, as if I had committed some personal crime against them by physically recovering what they considered to be too quickly. I know these sorts of comments were meant to be compliments, and on one level they were very nice to hear. But this didn’t mean I didn’t feel like a cow.


The reality was, I HAD just had a baby. So regardless of what my body looked like, I still felt predominantly crazy and pudgy. Emotionally, I was no different than anyone else who just had a baby, but because my body seemed to come back quicker, people equated that with everything going back to normal. Back to pre-pregnancy.


Let me take a moment to rally on behalf of striking the term “back to pre-pregnancy” from the lexicon we are allowed to use with regard to — well, anything. Because guess what—nothing is the same as it was before. Nothing. So why do we even pretend it is, or strive to make it so? People have told me I look just like I did before having the baby, that “you can’t even tell!.” This is both very kind and very false.


For one thing, my hips will never be the same … simply never be the same! I also think that my face, my boobs, and my everything else are all forever altered. And I don’t mean to say it’s all change for the worse. I think women’s faces change in a really deep and lovely way once they’ve had a baby; there’s an openness and a brightness that, even amidst the exhaustion and insanity of those first couple of months, is beautiful. I wouldn’t take my pre-pregnancy face back for anything … even for the circumference of my pre-pregnancy hips.


Like most women, I didn’t have an expensive trainer barking at me and kicking my ass into squats at 5 a.m. to “lose that pregnancy weight.” I didn’t have a fancy chef cooking me tastily gourmet but calorically feather-light meals; nor did I have full time help to watch my kid so I could run to the gym and yoga and spinning in order to “get my body back.”


But also like most women, I did have the natural workout (which felt like what I imagine prepping for a marathon might feel like) of suddenly being responsible for the survival and well-being of this tiny human. Between that stunning revelation, the sleep deprivation, and the sheer adrenaline required to metabolize both, my body was operating at maximum capacity from the second Scarlett was born.


To me, it felt like the constant actions of carrying her, walking up and down stairs while lifting car seats and strollers around, burned more calories than an hour on the treadmill could ever hope to.


Elisa Donovan's Blog: The Waste of Talking About Our Waists
Upside-down reading – a good start – Elisa Donovan


I guess what I’m trying to get at here is this: are we so concerned with what we look like that even a woman who has just given birth is supposed to make her primary focus and primary source of pride be “getting her body back?”


I am not condoning using childbirth as an excuse to not take care of yourself, nor am I suggesting that we completely stop complimenting one another altogether. But I am talking about the danger of body obsession taking over the psyche and trickling out into everything we do, and I am asking if we can find additional ways to support and applaud each other, not just for our physical appearance.


How did we get so far away from what matters, that living up to some ill-conceived standard of physical perfection has become so important? I wonder about how I will instill my beliefs in Scarlett, when there is an epidemic of body obsession surrounding her everywhere she looks.


How will I make sure she understands that an emaciated waistline and injected lips are not what make for a fulfilling and inspired life? Charlie and I can infuse our values in her daily and teach her by our own example what we believe is right; but how do I make sure she knows that our values are better, if the majority of images and words around her defy them?


Rather than focusing on diets and losing dress sizes, wouldn’t our energies be better spent figuring out how to love one another more, and how to enjoy the wealth of opportunities that are afforded us in 2013? Can’t we do better at encouraging curiosity and inner strength? Couldn’t we focus just a little more on cultivating expression and gaining wisdom, rather than on how to lose 20 pounds in 20 minutes?


I’d like Scarlett to know that her mom isn’t a total loon, just because she is not in constant search of the perfect diet. I hope that Scarlett grows up asking me about books and art and achieving goals, and not whether her stomach is too fat for the dress she is wearing.


I realize this may be a tall order. And I know I can not and should not shelter my child from everything the world will reveal to her. But I can strive to make sure she knows what her mom believes: That her brain, her spirit and her heart are far more valuable than the size of her behind.


– Elisa Donovan


More from Elisa’s PEOPLE.com blog series:


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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West

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New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.


Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.


There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.


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CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/


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Fed waits for job market to perk up

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LONDON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve's ultra-loose monetary policy is a root cause of the "currency wars" that some see as a looming threat to the world economy, but don't expect the U.S. central bank to signal a shift back to normal any time soon.


The Fed, whose policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday, said just last month that it expects to keep short-term interest rates exceptionally low until the U.S. unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent, inflation permitting.


That goal is still distant. Figures on Friday are likely to show that the jobless rate was unchanged in January at 7.8 percent, while the economy created 155,000 jobs, the same as in December, according to economists polled by Reuters.


So it would be a huge surprise if the Fed were to do anything other than reaffirm last month's decision to anchor short-term interest rates in a range of zero to 0.25 percent and to keep buying $85 billion of bonds each month to hold down long-term rates.


The only question mark is whether the FOMC vote will be unanimous now that Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, who opposes the current round of bond-buying, has rotated off the panel, said Harm Bandholz, an economist with UniCredit Bank in New York.


Most economists polled by Reuters expect the Fed to keep its open-ended bond-buying program in place well into next year, even though the economic news flow and market confidence are improving markedly.


True, Wednesday's preliminary report on fourth-quarter GDP is likely to show that growth slowed to an annualized rate of 1.2 percent from 3.1 percent in the July-September period.


And the current quarter will also be soft as the expiry of a 2 percent payroll tax cut is dampening consumer spending.


But then Bandholz expects an average growth rate of 2.8 percent over the rest of the year. That would be the strongest three-quarter period of the recovery so far, he said.


"The outlook has improved a lot in the U.S. I've been on the cautious side for the last three years, but this time I'm a bit more bullish," he said.


THE FED BIDES ITS TIME


The recovery in housing would add at least half a percentage point to GDP growth in 2013, while capital spending was likely to revive now that uncertainty over budget talks in Washington had been largely allayed, Bandholz said.


"There's a lot of pent-up demand in the system. I don't think all these investments have been abandoned; they've just been postponed," he said.


At some point, investors' exuberance over the super-easy stance of the world's major central banks will give way to worries that they are about to take away the punch bowl.


Gustavo Reis, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York, said concerns about the costs of money-printing were likely to spread but would be offset by uncertainty over the impact on growth of fiscal tightening in the United States and Europe.


"All told, although global activity seems more robust now than at any point in 2012, we expect policymakers to continue to worry predominantly about downside risks," he said in a note.


The bank does not expect the Fed to consider halting asset purchases before 2014, while the latest episode of monetary easing announced by the Bank of Japan is likely to be ‘long-lived and significant'.


Many economists argue that bold monetary action is long overdue in Japan, whose nominal output has not grown in 20 years, saddling the government with a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 220 percent.


But Douglas McWilliams, who heads the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a London consultancy, fears Japan's decision will lead the global economy into unpredictable currency wars.


"It's a bit like if someone's rude to you, you're rude to them back. You get tit-for-tat behavior," McWilliams said.


CURRENCY FRICTION, BUT NO WAR


Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, last week called talk of currency wars overblown and said countries had to pull the right policy levers to get their economies back on track, with corresponding consequences for exchange rates.


However, McWilliams said the problem was that it was difficult to get countries to agree NOT to wage currency wars.


Tellingly, Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced German concerns last week that Japan might be deliberately seeking to cheapen the yen to give its exporters a competitive edge.


"So we may well find that there is a period of very heavy volatility before the authorities involved try and get some kind of agreement," McWilliams said.


In a relatively quiet week for economic data in the euro zone - money supply figures and confidence surveys from the European Commission are the highlights - the focus is likely to remain squarely on the euro, which has been rising briskly as traders price in the policy shifts that Blanchard had in mind.


While the Fed and the Bank of Japan are expanding their balance sheets, the European Central Bank is starting to soak up some of the emergency cash it lent to banks a year ago.


The central bank said on Friday that banks would repay early 137 billion euros of cheap borrowed money.


"I'm not sure if we have too strong a euro for the moment but certainly we would not want to see a currency war of competitive devaluations which would have a negative effect on the euro," the European Union's top monetary official, Olli Rehn, told Reuters.


(Additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Davos; editing by Jason Neely)



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