Maude Standish: Why I'm Bucking the Trend and Not Taking My Fianc?'s Name

My mom is a Boomer and I'm a Millennial -- two quite different generations -- and yet we both made the decision to keep our maiden names. It isn't shocking that I would follow in my mother's footsteps. What is surprising is that as a Millennial woman, I'm more alone in making this choice than my Boomer mother was.

Recently, I started noticing that my Millennial newlywed girlfriends had opted to take their husbands' names. They weren't the types that are dying to give up their jobs and put on aprons. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) They had other reasons. "He has a better last name than me. It's shorter and easier to spell," they'd say. Or in the case of the women who were taking on longer more convoluted names from their husbands, they would say, "I just don't want any confusion'" and "I want us to be a team." In each case, the friend had a valid point, so I didn't think much of it at the time. But as more and more of my Gmail contacts started changing, I couldn't help noticing a trend.

Apparently, my focus group of friends was an accurate representation of Millennial women in general: more are choosing to take their husbands' names. According to a New York Magazine article:

For the last two decades, the already small portion of American women who keep their maiden names has been shrinking. The highest that figure got was 23 percent in the nineties. By the early aughts, it had dropped to 18 percent. In 2011, TheKnot.com surveyed 19,000 newlywed women and found that only 8 percent kept their last names.

My first thought was that this was yet another dismaying sign of the death of feminism. Our mothers fought to keep their names, and one diamond ring later we can't wait to hand them back over. But then I remembered that Millennials grew up in historically fragmented families. Not only were their parents divorced, but many lived far away from their core relatives. By taking their husbands' last names, Millennials are not trying to define themselves as anti-equality, they are trying to establish themselves as part of a team and community. They are hyper aware of the prevalence of divorce, and they are taking every precaution they can to battle against it. Hyphenated and different last names were the route their mothers took -- the same mothers who got divorced at massive rates. Instead they are looking to their grandmothers who gladly "teamed up" and stayed married so long they wore out the engravings on their wedding rings. I understand why Millennial women are making this choice. It's just not the right choice for me.

I'm not married yet -- that's just a few short months down the line -- but I've already made up my mind. And when I say made up my mind, I mean that until someone recently asked me if I was taking my husband's name, I had never truly considered the possibility of doing so. (I'm not a name-thief after all!) I'm not keeping my name because of "professional claims." I'm not that advanced in my career that I couldn't just ditch "Standish." I'm not changing my name because it is one of the few things that makes me feel the most "me." Everything else seems fleeting in this unstable and increasingly terrifying world. My job, my house, my clothing... Everything feels like it's just dressing and could be taken away in a snap. But as time alters my body into something unfamiliar and I live check to check, the one thing that I truly feel full ownership over is my name.

Though I'm pretty alone in making this decision, my Millennial friends are understanding. They aren't holding my decision against me or acting like they are "better" wives than I'll ever be. (Though knowing my housekeeping skills, I have no doubt that they are better in most traditional ways.) Interestingly, the person who was the biggest advocate of changing my surname was my mom. "You have so much more autonomy and independence than we did," she told me when I asked her opinion. "We had to fight to be seen as individuals, but now I think it's time for couples to fight to be together." She rightfully pointed out that my fianc? had already compromised so many times to be with me. He moved across the country twice, left jobs, friends, and family behind, and put my career over his. As she talked, I knew she had a point.

That night, I told my fianc? that I'd change my name if he truly wanted me to. He looked at me a bit like he had won a prize and just said, "You shouldn't. If you did, you wouldn't be you."

?

Follow Maude Standish on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MaudeChild

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maude-standish/why-im-bucking-the-trend-_b_3179873.html

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Uncle: Family to claim Boston bomb suspect's body

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) ? Relatives of the dead suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing say they will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it.

An uncle of 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev (tsahr-NEYE'-ehv) in Maryland says the family will take possession of Tsarnaev's body. It has been at the medical examiner's office in Massachusetts since he died after a gunfight with authorities more than a week ago.

Amato DeLuca, a Rhode Island attorney for Tsarnaev's widow, Katherine Russell, said Tuesday that his client had just learned the medical examiner was ready to release the body. He says she wants it released to Tsarnaev's side of the family.

Officials say the cause of death has been determined but will not be made public until the remains are claimed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uncle-family-claim-boston-bomb-suspects-body-005731969.html

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AT&T now offering trade-in discounts on new devices

Every smart phone trade-in qualifies for at least a $100 credit towards the purchase of a new device

AT&T is extending an offer from any of its retail locations that will give customers who trade-in an old smart phone at least $100 towards a new phone of their choice on the network. As long as the phone you are trading in is no more than 3 years old, and is in good working condition, you'll receive an instant credit of $100 or more to put towards a new device. AT&T says that each device will be evaluated, and some could be worth more than $100 as well. The credit can be applied towards brand new devices like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One, or lower-end devices as well.

While some authorized retailers may participate in the trade-in program, corporate AT&T stores are guaranteed to participate and may accept a wider range of devices, including tablets, data sticks and even feature phones. The offer seems like a pretty good deal for those trying to make an upgrade and save an easy few dollars, and could bring your on-contract price for a new device near $0 if you're lucky.

Source: AT&T

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/4Rp1QPTRhk4/story01.htm

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Ashton Kutcher Fights Security Guy at Stagecoach Festival

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/ashton-kutcher-fights-security-guy-at-stagecoach-festival/

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Herbalife says results will prove Ackman wrong

By Lisa Baertlein

(Reuters) - Herbalife Ltd posted surprisingly strong quarterly earnings and raised its full-year profit forecast on Monday, putting pressure on high-profile investor Bill Ackman, who is betting against the nutritional products company.

Ackman's Pershing Square Capital has a $1 billion bet against the "multi-level marketer" whose weight loss products are sold through a network of independent individuals. In recent months Ackman has called the Los Angeles-based company "a pyramid scheme" and predicted that its shares will eventually be worthless.

Herbalife executives, who have been befriended by hedge fund titan Carl Icahn, told Reuters that the company's global growth speaks for itself.

"The proof is in the results. Ultimately people will realize that Bill Ackman's reckless bet is based on an unfounded hypothesis," Herbalife President Des Walsh told Reuters in an interview.

"The resilience of our customer base and our distributor base will continue to show that he's wrong and dead wrong," Walsh said.

BIG BEAT

Herbalife's first quarter net income grew to $118.9 million, or $1.10 per share, in the first quarter, compared with $108.2 million, or 88 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding a hit from the devaluation of Venezuela's currency and expenses related to defending the company from criticism by Ackman and other high-profile investors, the company earned $1.27 a share during the quarter - 20 cents more than the average of analysts' estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net sales rose 17 percent to $1.1 billion.

Based on those results, Herbalife raised its 2013 forecast for adjusted earnings per share to a range of $4.60 to $4.80 from $4.45 to $4.65 previously.

Herbalife shares, which have been volatile due to the debate over its future, slipped 0.9 percent to $38.42 in extended trading. The shares plummeted from about $45 to about $25 at the time of Ackman's attack in December.

Icahn, another closely watched investor, rushed to the firm's defense - taking a stake and putting two representatives on the Herbalife board in February.

But the company also disclosed in February that its operations have been the subject of an inquiry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement since late last year.

It was later discovered that a senior KPMG auditor for Herbalife was leaking nonpublic information about the company in exchange for money, forcing the firm to resign from Herbalife's service.

(Reporting by Martinne Geller in New York and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Richard Chang)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/herbalife-posts-higher-profit-raises-2013-forecast-203118592.html

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Follow the Money

One of the truest things ever written about politics is something that renowned Yale political scientist Edward Tufte wrote in his 1978 classic, Political Control of the Economy: ?When you think economics, think elections; when you think elections, think economics.? One way or another, the state and direction of the U.S. economy strongly affects the political debate and the contours of national elections.

When the economy is good and improving, voters typically have one mind-set; when it is bad and getting worse, voters are in a different state of mind. When Americans feel they?re getting ahead economically, that?s one thing; when they feel they are either falling behind or just can?t get ahead, they view things?including their political leaders?very differently.

In recent months, economists have been watching the state and direction of the economy very closely, looking for signs that the softness felt about this time in 2010, 2011, and 2012 will occur again. In each case, the first few months of the year started out reasonably strong, but then around April, May, and into June, growth slowed appreciably before picking up again for the rest of the year. In each of the past three years, the reasons the economy slowed in the spring and regained momentum later in the summer differed. And although the economy improved a good bit in the second half of each year, coming out of what economist Sid Jones refers to as ?the longest, deepest, and most diffused? economic downturn since the Great Depression, what this economy needs is four or five consecutive years of strong growth. These fits and starts aren?t helping things. Simply put, Americans in the bottom three-quarters of income groups suffered enormously during the downturn, and even though that period is over, they are not having any fun yet.

To be sure, central banks around the world have been pumping money into their economies at a furious rate over the past few years, and, as a result, the U.S. stock market is doing great, investors are finally getting back into the market, the housing sector is at last coming back to life, and people are starting to buy houses again. Clearly, our economy is doing better than most on the other side of the Atlantic. Economists were further encouraged last week when unemployment claims hit the second-lowest level in five years.

One can focus exclusively on the good news in the U.S. economy, but the fact is, for each piece of favorable news another one is pointing in the opposite direction, and that is what is making some economists a little nervous. For example, economists are scrutinizing corporate reports and forecasting slower earnings, and businesses are showing caution by borrowing less and slowing down certain kinds of spending. That?s obviously not good for an economy trying to break completely free from a sustained downturn. While Monday?s Bureau of Economic Analysis report showed that consumer spending increased by a bit more than expected, personal income came in lower than forecast. Real disposable personal income, which had dropped sharply (by 4 percent) in January, picked up a bit (seven-tenths of 1 percent) in February, but gained only two-tenths of a point in the March report. After inflation and taxes, since the first of this year, improvement in personal income has been running well behind its pace for most of last year, and there has been less improvement than the general pace for most of the past three years.

While the slowdown in government spending, particularly with budget sequestration in place, is having a pronounced positive effect on the federal budget deficit, the decreased level of government spending is offsetting private-sector spending to some extent, again slowing the economy when it needs to be growing. In other words, something good is happening?deficits are dropping?but at the cost of dragging down the economy and further delaying a complete recovery.

How all of this fits into next year?s midterm elections is unknowable at this point, but voters who are cranky about not getting ahead think differently than those who are feeling more comfortable and hopeful about the future?and cranky voters are more likely to punish than reward. We don?t have a sense yet what the zeitgeist will be next year, what people will be thinking and worried about, or whom they will be grateful to or mad at. In a period of divided government and in the absence of a partisan wave, an improving economy might well result in more of a typical, all-politics-is-local election, the kind we haven?t seen since 2004. Economic uncertainty or despair, on the other hand, might make for a more turbulent political environment, with voters more likely to lash out if provoked by one side or the other. In short, we don?t know what voters are telling us yet, but it?s wise to listen very carefully.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/money-193341072.html

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Austerity is hurting our health, say researchers

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - Austerity is having a devastating effect on health in Europe and North America, driving suicide, depression and infectious diseases and reducing access to medicines and care, researchers said on Monday.

Detailing a decade of research, Oxford University political economist David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist at Stanford University, said their findings show austerity is seriously bad for health.

In a book to be published this week, the researchers say more than 10,000 suicides and up to a million cases of depression have been diagnosed during what they call the "Great Recession" and its accompanying austerity across Europe and North America.

In Greece, moves like cutting HIV prevention budgets have coincided with rates of the AIDS-causing virus rising by more than 200 percent since 2011 - driven in part by increasing drug abuse in the context of a 50 percent youth unemployment rate.

Greece also experienced its first malaria outbreak in decades following budget cuts to mosquito-spraying programs.

And more than five million Americans have lost access to healthcare during the latest recession, they argue, while in Britain, some 10,000 families have been pushed into homelessness by the government's austerity budget.

"Our politicians need to take into account the serious - and in some cases profound - health consequences of economic choices," said David Stuckler, a senior researcher at Oxford University and co-author The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills

"The harms we have found include HIV and malaria outbreaks, shortages of essential medicines, lost healthcare access, and an avoidable epidemic of alcohol abuse, depression and suicide," he said in a statement. "Austerity is having a devastating effect."

Previous studies by Stuckler published in journals such as The Lancet and the British Medical Journal have linked rising suicide rates in some parts of Europe to biting austerity measures, and found HIV epidemics to be spreading amid cutbacks in services to vulnerable people.

But Stuckler and Basu said negative public health effects are not inevitable, even during the worst economic disasters.

Using data from the Great Depression of the 1930s, to post-communist Russia and from some examples of the current economic downturn, they say financial crises can be prevented from becoming epidemics - if governments respond effectively.

As an example, they say, Sweden's active labor market programs helped the numbers of suicides to fall there during its recession, a big rise in unemployment. Neighboring countries with no such programs saw large increases in suicides.

And during the 1930s depression in the United States, each extra $100 of relief spending from the American New Deal led to about 20 fewer deaths per 1,000 births, four fewer suicides per 100,000 people and 18 fewer pneumonia deaths per 100,000 people.

"Ultimately what we show is that worsening health is not an inevitable consequence of economic recessions. It's a political choice," Basu said in the statement.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/austerity-hurting-health-researchers-231119361.html

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