World smile day activities

The parents of a girl who suffers up to 500 seizures a day have revealed she may not live long enough to see her 18th birthday. Amelia Revitt was just 12-months-old when she had the first of her epileptic fits which have blighted her life ever since. She turned grey, stopped breathing and was completely unresponsive when her dad tried to revive her, reports WalesOnline . Unfortunately the fits have since become increasingly frequent and by the time she reached school age she was suffering up to 500 of them every day. Doctors have told her parents that her seizures cannot be controlled with medication, unlike many other sufferers. "At times I just want to scream at the doctors to help my child, but there's very little they can do for her," said Amelia's mum Elizabeth Elworthy. "The chances are she won't make it to her 18th birthday. It's just so scary." Amelia, now nine, was born at the Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, Wales, just 28 weeks and five days into Elizabeth's pregnancy … [Read more...] about Little girl has 500 seizures a day and is unlikely to see her 18th birthday

You walk up many flights of stairs to reach Celia Paul’s flat, but the climb is worth it. The windows of her studio and bedroom look down on the courtyard and facade of the British Museum. All the world and its history, in every available London light, is just across the street. Paul has lived and painted here – the two things are inseparable in her mind – since 1982, when she discovered this place with Lucian Freud, her then lover and the father of her only child, Frank, also a painter. “When we first came to look,” she recalls, “the entrance was at the back and the place seemed a bit dingy. It had been bedsits and there were gas fires where you put coins in the meter, but then we came in here and saw these windows and we were just overwhelmed. Lucian put down the cash deposit immediately.” Paul, who will turn 60 next month, rented the flat for a couple of years before the landlord offered it for sale. Freud bought it for her for £75,000, … [Read more...] about Celia Paul on life after Lucian Freud: ‘I had to make this story my own’

Oomph! The Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville, Iowa, was bustling with activity. A winter clearance sale, coupled with special weekend offers, guaranteed a huge turnout at stores like Younkers, Target, Sears and JC Penny. Barnes & Noble, the huge bookstore, tucked quietly in a corner, effused a strange calmness, though. My first urge was, of course, to follow the crowd and come out of the showrooms a tad poorer; the serenity of the bookstore, however, captivated me. I stepped in with an eagerness to explore the newsstand, which I presumed would be quite different from the ones I had perused in India. However, I was in for a surprise. The men's section was loaded with magazines flaunting pictures of barely clad women oozing sex appeal. Dressed in a low-cut, cleavage-showing white blouse, Salma Hayek displaying her 'fire and passion' on the cover of Vanity Fair looked no different from the sultry beauties adorning the newsstands back at home. Men, it seems, are drawn toward well-endowed … [Read more...] about Oomph!

Amy Schumer is in a familiar position. She’d have every right to be fed up about being back here, but instead she’s facing it with admirable open-mindedness and even some optimism. Once again, there has been histrionic reaction to one of her projects and, once again, here she is setting the record straight about any number of misconceptions. That’s the thing when you’re a cultural lightning rod. You might bear the brunt of a charged debate. But you also end up pretty electrified yourself. When the trailer was released for Schumer’s new comedy I Feel Pretty, there was instant, vitriolic backlash to the perceived message of the film. “I was surprised,” Schumer tells us, sitting in a Manhattan hotel room in the middle of a long press day. It’s near the end of a marathon publicity push in which she has yet to break stride in the measured way she’s engaged in the debate the trailer sparked: “But then I understood it right … [Read more...] about Amy Schumer Responds to Her Backlash: I’m Not Going to Shut Up

Driving along Ponchatoula's Pine Street last May, you couldn't miss the street lamps wrapped in silver tinsel, giant red bows topping doorways and the more-than-usual amount of twinkling white lights stretched over the Tangipahoa Parish city's main thoroughfare.Were they getting their holiday decorating done early or had they neglected to dismantle last season's adornments?Neither. Starring New Iberia: 'Christmas in Louisiana' makes Lifetime debut Saturday Ponchatoula, known as "America's Antique City" and "The Strawberry Capital of the World," is playing itself in Lifetime's new yuletide movie "A Christmas Wish," which was filmed last spring."Every December in the small town of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, a wooden wishing box is placed in the park as a Christmas tradition. People write down their true heart’s desire on a slip of paper and place it in the box in hopes that their wish will be granted," the film synopsis explains. "After a night out together, Maddie (Megan Park) … [Read more...] about Ponchatoula gets ‘A Christmas Wish’: Town stars in new Lifetime holiday movie