Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden Booed by NASCAR fans

First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's wife, were at the Homestead-Miami Speedway to promote Joining Forces, an organization that promotes the hiring and training of veterans, when they were booed by some NASCAR fans as they served as the grand marshals for the racing circuit's final event Sunday. They were joined by Army Sgt. Andrew Barry, a veteran of the Afghan and Iraqi wars who now volunteers at an Orlando, Fla., veterans center, and his family. The clip shows that people cheer for the soldier, but boo when the two women's names are announced. There are some audible sounds of approval, but they seem to be mostly drowned out by the dissenters.

It would not be too difficult to overanalyze this incident. Sports fans tend to be raucous, especially after they have been well lubricated. It is possible the NASCAR crowd would have booed the Second Coming if it came before the big race.

On the other hand, Mrs. Obama has delved into controversy in her pet cause of getting people to eat healthy. Her campaign against childhood obesity, while well intentioned, is being greeted by many people as an attack on their parenting. A lot of two-income households do not have the time or the energy to cook a traditional family dinner where nutrition can be controlled to a certain extent. In too many homes, home delivered fast food or something that can be nuked quickly in the microwave have become the featured dinner. Harried parents are not likely to take very well someone lecturing them about feeding their children properly, especially if they are eschewing playing at the park for lying about with their game boys.

By and large, "It's a sad statement on our political discourse if the booing was indeed directed at Mrs. Obama and Dr. Biden," said ABC News Senior Political Reporter Rick Klein. "They were appearing on behalf of military families, a cause which transcends party lines."

Does Soy Ease Symptoms of Menopause?

Sora Song
Times Magazine

What is a menopausal woman to do? A new study finds that taking soy supplements, a popular alternative to hormone-replacement therapy, does not help relieve the symptoms of menopause or protect against bone loss.

After two years of taking daily soy isoflavone tablets, women showed no differences in bone density and no improvement in symptoms such as hot flashes or night sweats, compared with women taking a placebo. Indeed, by the end of the study, more women taking soy were having hot flashes than women taking placebos.

Soy has been considered a potentially safer alternative to hormone therapy because of its isoflavones, or plant-based estrogens. Researchers have also observed that women in Asia, whose diets are typically rich in soy, are less likely to have bone loss, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease than their Western counterparts. To date, however, most clinical trials of soy have been limited by their small size, short duration or faulty design. The aim of the current study was, therefore, to offer a more definitive conclusion.

Researchers led by Dr. Silvina Levis, director of the Osteoporosis Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, randomly assigned 248 women to take either 200 mg of soy isoflavones — a dose that is roughly twice the amount of dietary soy isoflavones found in a typical Asian diet — or placebo tablets for two years. Neither the researchers nor the women knew who was taking which pills until the end of the study.

The women were 45 to 60 years old at enrollment, and all were within five years of the start of menopause.

Researchers used bone scans to measure women's bone mineral density at the hip and spine. At the end of the study, the scans showed no differences between the soy and placebo groups. Both groups had small amounts of bone loss.

The Natural Menopause Plan: Overcome the Symptoms with Diet, Supplements, Exercise and More Than 90 Delicious Recipes

Researchers also used questionnaires to gauge the frequency of women's menopausal symptoms. At the start of the study, 176 women reported at least one symptom. The most common ones: hot flashes (50%), night sweats (38%), insomnia (37%), loss of libido (37%) and vaginal dryness (31%).

At the end of the two-year intervention, the two groups showed no differences in symptom improvement. In fact, the frequency of hot flashes didn't change in the soy group, but decreased in the placebo group, so that more women taking soy (48%) ended up with hot flashes than those taking placebo (32%). Women in the soy group were also more likely to have constipation and bloating.

"When we started the study we wanted this to work, because it would provide an easy and healthy way to help women in the initial stages of menopause," Levis told Reuters.

Seeing as how it didn't, what other alternatives to hormone therapy do women have? For hot flashes, some antidepressants or the anti-seizure medication gabapentin may work. Exercise also helps, and so may deep breathing exercises done regularly. Some women say they have found relief through yoga and acupuncture.

To protect against bone loss, women should make sure to get enough calcium and vitamin D, get regular weight-bearing exercise and refrain from smoking or overindulging in alcohol. Taking bisphosphonates can also help maintain bone mass.

So far, efforts to develop alternative menopause therapies as effective as hormone replacement have come up short, notes Dr. Deborah Grady, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, in an invited commentary accompanying the study.

"The important question for women is what degree of symptom relief is sufficient," Grady and co-author Katherine Newton, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington Seattle, write. "Perhaps efforts should be directed away from the hope of a one-size-fits-all therapy for menopausal symptoms toward using existing treatments to target the symptoms that disturb patients most."

Madeleine Pickens - the Mustangs' Messiah

By Tim McGirk / Wells, Nev
Times Magazine

As the wife of a billionaire and a wealthy woman in her own right, Madeleine Pickens is accustomed to traveling in limos and private jets. But this afternoon, she is bumping along in a rusty pickup truck. The truck halts in the middle of a sagebrush valley. Nearby, a broad mountain shifts in color from ochre to indigo in the fading afternoon light.

Pickens, 64, a petite blonde in a fringed buckskin jacket and matching boots, jumps from the truck and points to a low thundercloud of dust moving across the valley. It's a galloping herd of mustangs, tan and black and pinto, their manes streaming like water. Soon, the earth is drumming with their hoofbeats. "These horses were going to the slaughterhouse," she says, admiring the racing herd, "and so I brought them to my ranch, where they can run wild."

Her giant ranch, in northeastern Nevada, is spread across three valleys and two mountain ranges, and Pickens intends to turn it all into a wild-horse sanctuary, or as she calls it, Mustang Monument. The first arrivals are 500 horses she bought from a Paiute Indian reservation. The horses, she says, would otherwise have been slaughtered across the border.

The trouble is, many of Nevada's ranchers look upon wild horses as vermin, chomping grass that is meant for their cattle. These ranchers say they are afraid that Pickens, who is married to energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, will lead a stampede of "touchy-feely" millionaire horse lovers who will start buying up pastures to save the pretty horses. And this, they insist, may run the cattlemen out of business.

Pickens may have money and high connections, but she is confronting powerful forces. The cattle ranchers, according to Chris Heyde, deputy director of the Animal Welfare Institute, an animal-rights group in Washington, have an "absolute choke hold on the state legislature in Nevada." The ranchers are trying, so far unsuccessfully, to push through a bill that would bar wild horses from having access to water — condemning them to die of thirst. In the U.S. Congress, the cattlemen have allies among legislators from 21 farm states and the influential agricultural lobby.

Nobody can dictate to ranchers if they want to raise cows or kangaroos on their own land. But in Nevada's high deserts and extreme weather, most ranches are granted access to vast tracts of federal land for grazing. Pickens' original spread of 28 sq. mi. (72.5 sq km) gives her access to another 875 sq. mi. (2,266 sq km) of federal grazing land. And it is this public land — controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) — that has become the battleground for Pickens and the cattlemen.

Pickens envisions Mustang Monument with a museum and lodging for visitors in futuristic teepee villages beside a creek from where they can view the roaming mustangs. Because her horse sanctuary will partly be on federal land, and because she is angling for federal help to keep the refuge running long after she is gone, Pickens needs approval from the BLM. So far, the agency has been slow to respond. Animal-rights advocate Heyde says the federal bureaucracy is lassoed to the cattlemen's interests, and has been "trying to tie Ms. Pickens' applications in knots." The BLM says it is studying Pickens' proposals before making a decision on whether to help her sanctuary.

Caught in the middle is Pickens' ranch manager, Clay Nannini, a rangy ex-rodeo cowboy from Wells, Nev., who is as adept with his smart phone as he is with his lariat. "Some of the local ranchers could care less, some are in favor, but mostly they're opposed to what Ms. Pickens is trying to do," he says with a shrug. "People I've been involved with all my life are giving me the bird and walking away."

Back in the sagebrush, Pickens grabs an armful of fresh-cut hay and walks boldly toward a wild stallion, black with a splash of white between its wary eyes. The stallion was gelded a few days before and is understandably skittish, retreating from her fearless advance. "Riding isn't a big part of my life," says Pickens, who was born in Iraq to a British father and a Lebanese mother. "I used to watch [the TV horse opera] Bonanza, and when I came to America, I saw that the things I loved about it — like the mustangs — were being destroyed."

Pickens has always had a soft spot for animals. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, she and her husband arranged six airlifts for 800 stranded dogs and cats. Pickens says this gave her a direct, emotional satisfaction she never got by just writing checks for charity. Then an animal activist drew her attention to the plight of wild mustangs.

Brought to North America by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, the horses thrived in the boundless, grassy plains of the West. Estimates in the early 1900s put the number of wild horses at over 2 million, but by the 1960s, the herds were on their way to extinction, with only 17,000 mustangs left. Herds were being rounded up and butchered. Domestic horses were not spared slaughter: even tottering old thoroughbreds ended up being sold for horseflesh. Today the BLM reckons that there are more than 33,000 horses in the wild, far too many, the agency insists.

This struck a chord with Pickens. With her first husband, the late Gulfstream Aerospace founder Allen Paulson, she had bred racehorses. "The Japanese actually made a big deal of eating a Kentucky Derby winner named Ferdinand," says Pickens, who is a dainty vegetarian. "I was horrified."

Her Bonanza-inspired spiritual quest to save America's mustangs belies the fact that Pickens is an astute operator. As T. Boone Pickens tells TIME, "When Madeleine sets her sights on something, you best get on board or get out of the way. She makes things happen. I'm amazed by her passion for horses and preserving this critical piece of America's heritage."

A formidable duo, the billionaire couple lobbied Congress successfully in 2007 to ban horse slaughter in the U.S. Consequently, many horses are trucked over the border to Canada and Mexico to be butchered and exported to Japan and Europe, where horse meat is a prized delicacy. In 2008, the BLM announced that it was considering a massive cull of wild horses. The BLM backed off on this due to public outrage, but it spurred Pickens into action nonetheless. In 2011, she closed on two adjacent Nevada ranches for her eco-sanctuary, a place where mustangs could roam free and the public could watch these equine icons of the Wild West.

The BLM keeps more than 41,700 horses in captivity. More than 15,000 are crammed into corrals, "butt to butt," says Pickens, while the others are kept in long-term pastures, costing taxpayers about $70 million a year to feed and care for the animals. "Forget about sentiment. You're talking about $70 million for a government that's busted," she argues. "I can look after mustangs more cheaply and humanely."

Prodded by the cattlemen, the BLM rounds up thousands of wild horses every year, using helicopters that swoop low over the stampeding herds and drive them until they are so exhausted, they can be easily caught. The BLM says more than 33,000 mustangs and wild burros still roam free, more than can be sustained by the available pasture, but animal-rights activists dispute this. Says Heyde: "There are 8 million cattle and sheep on government land, and yet a few horses get blamed for everything."

Pickens knows that even with her fortune, she can't save all of America's mustangs. With pasture sparse, even her massive ranch can handle only 1,800 mustangs. But she insists that her eco-sanctuary will serve as a model for other reserves where horses can run free and that the size of the herd can be managed. With no predators and ample food, a herd of mustangs can double in size in five years, a prospect that scares cattle ranchers. Steve Boyce, a former President of the Nevada Cattleman's Association, says, "We're made out to be the bad guys here. But there's a limited amount of forage out there. In the winter, it's all frozen out. We're worried that if the horses aren't gathered, they'll eat the pasture for our cattle."

A helicopter buzzes down to chauffeur Pickens on an aerial tour of her property. She is joined by Tommy, her pet dachshund, who is so accustomed to his mistress's jet-set lifestyle that, as soon as the helicopter roars skyward, he falls asleep in her lap. The helicopter banks over juniper-clad mountains, into the high meadows. And there below is a herd of mustangs, racing along the mountain ridge, wild and free-spirited. "To me, these mustangs are emblematic of America's freedom," Pickens says later. "And they're ending up on dinner plates in Japan and Europe."

Anti-Anorexia Model Isabelle Caro Dies at 28

A French model who posed nude for an anti-anorexia campaign while suffering from the illness herself has died at the age of 28, her colleagues confirm.

Isabelle Caro died on 17 November after being treated for an acute respiratory illness, Swiss singer Vincent Bigler told journalists.

He added that he did not know the exact cause of death.

Ms Caro appeared in posters for an anti-anorexia campaign in 2007, but the ads were banned in several countries.

It was not clear why it took so long for her death to be made public.

The anti-anorexia campaign came amid a debate among fashion circles on the use of "ultra-skinny" models on the catwalk.

The AFP news agency reported her as saying at the time: "I thought this could be a chance to use my suffering to get a message across, and finally put an image on what thinness represents and the danger it leads to - which is death."

The model, who was 5ft 4in tall (1.65m) at the time of the poster campaign, reportedly weighed 32kg (five stones).

Ms Caro's acting instructor, Daniele Dubreuil-Prevot, told the Associated Press news agency that Ms Caro had died after returning to France from a job in Tokyo.

She said family and close friends had held a funeral ceremony in Paris last month.

Mr Bigler, who was a friend of Ms Caro, told Swiss media: "She was hospitalized for 15 days with acute respiratory disease and was recently also very tired, but I do not know the cause of her death."

Danica Patrick At Indy500, Her Best Not Enough

Danica Patrick might not be IndyCar's most popular driver anymore, either because fans are tired of the excuses, don't like her turning on her teammates, or are unhappy because she's splitting time between open-wheel and NASCAR. Patrick has said she made a mistake in criticizing her teammates, but insists there are issues with the car. She'll start outside the top 10 for the first time in six Indys.

Despite the sexy commercials, big-buck sponsors, model looks and international attention, she's yet to win the big one - the Indy 500 - or even string together enough smaller wins to match the attention she garners off the track.

Moreover, to some she has committed the ultimate open-wheel sin by dabbling with those full-fendered boys in NASCAR.

Could there be a Danica backlash brewing?

As the sport gets ready today for the IndyCar Series' 94th running of the Indianapolis 500, some long-time followers of open-wheel racing are thinking there just might be.

Last week, after publicly blaming her car for her poor qualifying effort that has her starting in Row 8, fans booed Patrick at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which some have taken as a sign that her pristine image may be starting to turn.

"Truthfully, I talked to some of the fans that were there," says Marty Reid, who will work the broadcast booth for ABC's telecast today starting at 1 p.m. "There is a bit of resentment that she went over to NASCAR by some of them. There's those that felt like she threw her team under the bus."

The NASCAR foray has Patrick testing the waters in a handful of races this season, which started at Daytona in February. For fans of IndyCar, which popularity wise is behind NASCAR, that was like someone willingly leaving the Yankees for the Red Sox.

"Getting booed does not make me want to go somewhere else more," Patrick tells Bloomberg. "Hopefully just as quickly as they get mad, they get happy and cheer for me."

Not surprising, there are a handful of I Hate Danica Patrick pages on Facebook, where, of course, the fans are piling on.

"She's setting out to be a Sideshow Performer instead of a legitimate driver!" says one poster this week.

Patrick is one of four women starting in Sunday's race. Ana Beatriz will start 21st, Simona De Silvestro will start 22nd, Patrick 23rd, and Sarah Fisher 29th.

Sunday is the first time Patrick hasn't started among the top-10 at Indy where she finished third last year.

Helio Castroneves, also a fan favorite, is on the pole for the race, and at the precipice of winning a historic four Indy 500s.

Yet, despite Castroneves' appeal, a majority of the eyes in the stands - and the media - will be focusing on what Patrick does.

No other race on the IndyCar circuit draws as many fans or media attention, so Patrick's turn comes on the sport's biggest stage.

"More than personality, success breeds fans," said long-time motorsports writer Lewis Franck, a contributor to ESPN the Magazine. "It's been two years since her only victory."

Franck suggests that Patrick's honeymoon is over.

"It hurts my feelings, of course, I don't want to be booed," Patrick told ESPN's Hannah Storm this week.

"I feel bad if I offended anyone, for sure, and, of course, I don't like not to have a good public opinion."

Earlier this year, Patrick ran at Daytona in cars co-owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The two together, interestingly, are in similar predicaments. Both are the most popular drivers in their genres, both are with good teams, yet neither has been able to put together the performance on the track to match the fan and media attention.

Likewise, those vaulted spots carry an additional burden to win that, in Patrick's case, isn't riding on the shoulders of the drivers starting next to her today.

"They're all competitors, they all want to win, but Danica, in my opinion, because of the exposure, the platform, the high Q score, the recognition, she carries more pressure," says Terry Angstadt, president of the IndyCar Series commercial division.

Angstadt says he was a little surprised by the boos Patrick got last week, but he says Patrick has always been very passionate and outspoken.

More important, controversy also builds attention for the sport.

NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon, Angstadt noted, gets as many boos as cheers, and that hasn't hurt the stock car series.

"She will have far more people cheering for her to make history," Angstadt said of Sunday's race.

There's no doubt that simply having her in the field is good for the IndyCar series.

Watch any show skewed toward a male audience - even the Super Bowl - and one is bound to see a sexy godaddy.com commercial featuring Patrick. That visibility helps bring fans to the IndyCar series.

Fans line up at trackside souvenir stands in far greater numbers for Patrick than any driver. And, earlier this week, when the series brought the drivers to Manhattan for a promotional event she got a louder cheer than anyone else in the field.

Yet, cheers only go so far.

And it was outside Macy's on Tuesday that Patrick managed to do her best bit of maneuvering, steering clear of the media, save one lone interview session with Bloomberg News Service, before being whisked inside the department store to eat and sign autographs.

ESPN.com writer Terry Blount suggested that Patrick might be heading for something scarier than an Indy wreck - irrelevancy.

"I think Danica would be the first to agree, she is driven and focused to perform every time out there," Angstadt said. "Is she happy with where she is right now? I don't think so. Everyone involved, especially Danica, understand its performance that counts."

And for IndyCar, having Patrick do well is what everyone is rooting for in Indianapolis.

Ratings spike when she does well, such as her third-place finish last year.

When she ran at Daytona in February, ratings jumped more than 30%.

"Our sports world is just like everything else in business: What have you done for me lately?" says Reid. "I think there are some fans out there that are going to be demanding her to do well and not just to finish in the top 10, but she's got to have the podium, she's got to win. They're going to keep putting that pressure on as time goes on."

That pressure could be relieved - along with some of the boos - with a win Sunday at Indianapolis.

"I might get booed if I win, too, but that's OK," Patrick told the Associated Press. "Winning will solve everything for me. That's the be-all, end-all cure for me. I don't know if it'll cure everything from the fans' perspectives, but I can't force them to feel a certain way."

Becoming the first woman to ever win the historic race could erase bad feelings and propel Patrick to even greater heights.

"That would be a real big deal," Angstadt said of a Patrick win Sunday. "That would be world-wide news."

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Only Bad Mothers Don't Breast-Feed Their Babies?

World Breastfeeding Week can leave bottle-feeding mothers feeling guilty and resentful of society's judgemental pressure.

Picture this. A newborn child is brought to the mother for its first feed. Mother and child both glow with health and happiness as they bond over this age-old ritual, which has well-documented benefits.

But in the case of Simran Jha, 28, the experience wasn't quite like this rosy picture. "It was embarrassing as I tried to breast-feed but couldn't produce milk for over an hour," says the accounts executive. The fact that all her relatives were around, trying to figure out what was going wrong, only added to her woes.

Jha eventually opted for bottle-feeding a month after her baby was born but resents the labels that come with the decision. "Women who don't breast-feed their kids are accused of being selfish and lazy," she says. "To people who make such harsh allegations, I say: it is my breast, my milk, and my child."

The benefits of breast-feeding have been well established -- it is nutritious, economical, and boosts the immunity of infants, besides reducing the chances of breast cancer in women. But as a massive campaign to promote World Breast Feeding Week kicks off, it has left a number of bottle-feeding mothers feeling alienated and defensive.

Rina Bhatnagar*, 25, a homemaker, hates it when she watches TV and comes across an advertisement that encourages breast-feeding: "It is all fake; the mum looks happy, her skin is glowing and healthy -- very unlike what actually happened in my life."

Bhatnagar didn't have an easy delivery. After a caesarean section, her wound didn't heal for a couple of months. "While breast-feeding, you are asked to sit up straight and feed your kid. That was very painful for me. I have on many occasions given my kid a milk bottle as I didn't have the energy to sit up or feed him."

Dr Anjali Malpani, author of How To Have A Baby, says, "There are young urban mothers who are preferring bottle milk for a variety of reasons. But it is rare that society understands their position. These mothers are faced with societal pressure and feel guilty for not breast-feeding their children."

Doctors say that high stress levels and demanding jobs among young mothers along with fewer public facilities for breast-feeding are aggravating the problem. "The city lacks a breast-feeding culture and it is rare to find nursing rooms at public places where mothers can breast-feed their kids," says gynaecologist Rashmi Nair. "In restaurants, mothers are asked to use the most uncomfortable place to breast-feed their kids -- the toilet. So when out on parties or at work, if the mother happens to forget to pump her milk, she will usually ask the nanny to give bottle milk to the kid and, over a period of time, bottle milk replaces breast milk."

While most mothers insist that what they feed their children is a personal choice, the spiral of negative emotions can cause reluctance to seek support on bottle-feeding their infants. For Kurien, lack of information on bottle milk was a disadvantage. "I once placed the bottle with the milk inside the microwave to heat it. Later when I removed the bottle the plastic had melted. It is taboo to speak about bottle milk when you have a young child at home. If you try to speak to doctors and relatives about how to proceed with bottle milk, you get a lecture on breast-feeding instead. There is little information and literature available on what can be given to kids who aren't breast-fed."

For Jha, World Breastfeeding Week is not a happy prospect. It is likely to be filled with phone calls from relatives to tell her how wrong she is in not breast-feeding her child. "Neither my parents nor my in-laws live with me," she says. "So during the week, they will take the opportunity to remind me of my responsibilities."

Breast-feeding advocates are adamant, however, that there should be more promotion for breast-feeding as the rates are falling.

Shah Rukh Khan and Ash Jodi are back Together

Time heals all wounds, especially in the entertainment business' and none would vouch for this truism of life more than super icons Shah Rukh

Remember, they parted on a sour note after her hasty departure from his home production Chalte Chalte six years ago?

She had already canned a portion of the film when Salman Khan reportedly landed on the sets... and, well, the rest as they say is history.

Post that scene, SRK let Ash off the hook and took Rani Mukerji as his leading lady. And, since then, many big banners including Yashraj and Dharma failed to reunite the pair that created such magic in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas.

Subsequently, though the Bollywood Badshah wasn’t invited to the Ash-Abhishek wedding, King Khan and wife Gauri posed with the Bachchans for the shutterbugs at the Drona premiere last year. And more recently, at Karan Johar’s birthday party on May 25, the two couples — SRK and Gauri, Ash and Abhi — spent quality time together.

In the light of this thawing of relations, comes the news of cinematographer-director Rajiv Menon (whose Kandukonden Kandukonden in Tamil had Tabu and Ash) reuniting the SRK-Ash jodi. Menon is said to have flown to London to narrate a dramatic script (with Ash in mind) to Shah Rukh, which the actor liked.

At this point of his career, SRK is looking to do films that explore his dramatic intensity as in Devdas. He has no problems working with Ash and she with him. At Karan’s birthday, the Bachchans and Khans got along famously. Rajiv Menon’s film is being seen as a natural progression towards mending the bridges between two of the most powerful families of Bollywood.