Brooke Burke-Charvet Refuses to Say 'Fat' Or 'Diet' in Front of Her Kids

By Dahvi Shira

01/31/2013 at 07:15 AM EST

A healthy home is a happy home for Brooke Burke-Charvet.

The mother of four kids – Neriah, 12, Sierra, 10, Rain, 6, and Shaya, 4 – hopes her lifestyle rubs off on them.

"I always tell other parents to lead by example," Burke-Charvet, 41, told PEOPLE on Tuesday. "My kids know I'm always working out and I love to cook. I'm always preparing healthy meals. I think it's also about giving them healthy options, which is so, so important. My little ones, especially, grocery shop with me. They're in the kitchen. They love to cook."

Part of what she believes helps guide her children down the right path is being as cautious about what comes out of her mouth as what goes into it.

"I try to never use words like 'fat' or 'diet,' " she says. "I try to choose my words carefully with my kids. It's just about making good choices and enjoying what we eat and making delicious flavorful foods that are healthy. I'm just teaching them about being healthy and strong, not about being thin."

But a mom who is always "working out super hard" deserves a break.

"I love my red wine," the Dancing with the Stars co-host says. "I think every mom deserves a glass of wine. I eat so healthy, but I listen to my body when I have cravings and I think that's why I'm able to maintain a healthy lifestyle. If I'm really craving something, I have it. The next day, I'm back on track."

Brooke Burke-Charvet doing her Kleenex duties

Michael Simon

Burke-Charvet, who began filming her own line of workout videos over the summer, isn't only healthy when it comes to her weight. She already feels "back to normal" following a thyroidectomy in December, and it shows. She was recently spotted looking radiant and smiling with husband David Charvet at brand new members only spot 41 Ocean in Santa Monica.

"I'm so blessed and fortunate with the way things worked out with my surgery," she says. "Now I'm back in the swing of things, working and feeling great."

Now that she's no longer on the mend, she wanted to help someone else who is. Burke recently teamed up with Kleenex to deliver a special care package (tissues, sanitizers, lip balm, a cozy blanket and music downloads) to an ailing Malibu sweepstakes winner during flu season.

"It's the perfect sort of recovery care package. It was a really thoughtful gift to send to somebody. The winner was really surprised," Burke says.

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Sex to burn calories? Authors expose obesity myths

Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.

All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.

Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting from real solutions to the nation's weight problems.

"The evidence is what matters," and many feel-good ideas repeated by well-meaning health experts just don't have it, said the lead author, David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Independent researchers say the authors have some valid points. But many of the report's authors also have deep financial ties to food, beverage and weight-loss product makers — the disclosures take up half a page of fine print in the journal.

"It raises questions about what the purpose of this paper is" and whether it's aimed at promoting drugs, meal replacement products and bariatric surgery as solutions, said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition and food studies.

"The big issues in weight loss are how you change the food environment in order for people to make healthy choices," such as limits on soda sizes and marketing junk food to children, she said. Some of the myths they cite are "straw men" issues, she said.

But some are pretty interesting.

Sex, for instance. Not that people do it to try to lose weight, but claims that it burns 100 to 300 calories are common, Allison said. Yet the only study that scientifically measured the energy output found that sex lasted six minutes on average — "disappointing, isn't it?" — and burned a mere 21 calories, about as much as walking, he said.

That's for a man. The study was done in 1984 and didn't measure the women's experience.

Among the other myths or assumptions the authors cite, based on their review of the most rigorous studies on each topic:

—Small changes in diet or exercise lead to large, long-term weight changes. Fact: The body adapts to changes, so small steps to cut calories don't have the same effect over time, studies suggest. At least one outside expert agrees with the authors that the "small changes" concept is based on an "oversimplified" 3,500-calorie rule, that adding or cutting that many calories alters weight by one pound.

—School gym classes have a big impact on kids' weight. Fact: Classes typically are not long, often or intense enough to make much difference.

—Losing a lot of weight quickly is worse than losing a little slowly over the long term. Fact: Although many dieters regain weight, those who lose a lot to start with often end up at a lower weight than people who drop more modest amounts.

—Snacking leads to weight gain. Fact: No high quality studies support that, the authors say.

—Regularly eating breakfast helps prevent obesity. Fact: Two studies found no effect on weight and one suggested that the effect depended on whether people were used to skipping breakfast or not.

—Setting overly ambitious goals leads to frustration and less weight loss. Fact: Some studies suggest people do better with high goals.

Some things may not have the strongest evidence for preventing obesity but are good for other reasons, such as breastfeeding and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, the authors write. And exercise helps prevent a host of health problems regardless of whether it helps a person shed weight.

"I agree with most of the points" except the authors' conclusions that meal replacement products and diet drugs work for battling obesity, said Dr. David Ludwig, a prominent obesity research with Boston Children's Hospital who has no industry ties. Most weight-loss drugs sold over the last century had to be recalled because of serious side effects, so "there's much more evidence of failure than success," he said.

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Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Stock futures edge lower ahead of data, earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures edged lower on Thursday ahead of data on the labor market and a slew of corporate earnings reports.

Facebook Inc shares dropped 6.7 percent to $29.14 in premarket trading. The company doubled its mobile advertising revenue in the fourth quarter but that growth trailed some of Wall Street's most aggressive estimates.

Qualcomm Inc gained 6 percent to $67.35 in premarket trading after the world's leading supplier of chips for cellphones beat analysts' expectations for quarterly profit and revenue and raised its financial targets for 2013.

Investors will look to weekly initial jobless claims data at 8:30 a.m. ET (1330 GMT) for clues on the health of the labor market ahead of the payrolls report on Friday. Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a total of 350,000 new filings compared with 330,000 in the prior week.

Also at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT), the Commerce Department will release December personal income and spending data; economists expect a 0.8 percent rise in income and a 0.3 percent increase in spending.

ConocoPhillips reported a drop in quarterly profit as oil and gas prices weakened and output from the third-largest U.S. oil and gas producer remained steady compared with a year ago, though it anticipated a decline in the first quarter.

Later in the session at 9:45 a.m. (1445 GMT), the Institute for Supply Management Chicago releases January index of manufacturing activity. Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a reading of 50.5 compared with 50.0 in December.

S&P 500 futures fell 1.4 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 5 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 9.75 points.

The S&P 500 <.spx> is up 5.3 percent for the month, as legislators in Washington temporarily sidestepped a "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that could have derailed the economic recovery, and amid improving economic data and better-than-expected corporate earnings.

But the benchmark index has stalled recently, hovering near the 1,500 mark over the past four sessions as investors look for more catalysts to justify further gains.

Thomson Reuters data through Wednesday morning shows that of the 192 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 68.8 percent have exceeded expectations, a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 3.8 percent. That's above the 1.9 percent forecast from the start of the earnings season, but well below a 9.9 percent fourth-quarter earnings growth forecast on October 1, the data showed.

European shares fell as investors digested mixed earnings reports, with a warning from AstraZeneca knocking its shares while Ericsson surged after fourth-quarter results. <.eu/>

Asian shares fell slightly after rallying to multi-month highs, and more for some Southeast Asian markets, while the U.S. Federal Reserve's pledge to retain its stimulus policy undermined the dollar.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Letter from India: A Paradise for Those Who Take Offense

JAIPUR, INDIA — One of India’s favorite spectator sports is “taking offense.” People go about their lives, brushing their teeth, ironing their shirts, waiting for the bus. Then some man somewhere says something ordinary and a community erupts in what looks like joy even though they say they are offended. They go in a carnival procession to some place to announce that they are offended, often laughing and waving to the television cameras. Politicians express their deep hurt at what the man has said and demand swift action from other politicians. The police file criminal charges against the offender, and the offender then begins to say he has been misquoted, possibly by himself.

But the carnival does not wish to die down early. That was what the crowd outside the Jaipur Literature Festival was about last Saturday evening. Men were cheering, laughing and screaming as a television journalist was reporting their claim that they had been insulted by a speaker at the festival.

A few hours before, an amiable billionaire stood on the fringes of a huge audience and listened to a serious debate on the topic “Freedom of Speech and Expression.” A hilarious thought must have crossed his mind, for he chuckled, fell silent, and then said to me: “What freedom of speech? Now a masked man should rise from the audience, and tearing his mask he must reveal himself as Salman Rushdie. This debate will end right now, and everybody can go home.”

Last year, Mr. Rushdie, whose novel “The Satanic Verses” was met with protests and death threats from those who said it insulted the Prophet Muhammad, was forced to cancel his appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival after some Muslim groups said they would be offended by his presence and the government of Rajasthan, the state whose capital is Jaipur, said it could not guarantee his safety.

But what the amiable billionaire and I did not realize was that a festival session that morning had already set in motion a chain of events that would remind everyone, once again, that India encourages discussions of free speech but not free speech itself.

In a session titled “Republic of Ideas,” one of the panel members, the sociologist Ashis Nandy, said something that only fellow Indians would immediately understand.

“It will be an undignified and vulgar statement, but the fact is that most of the corrupt come from the O.B.C., the S.C.’s and now increasingly S.T.’s,” he said, referring to “other backward classes,” “scheduled castes” and “scheduled tribes.” “As long as this is the case,” he said, “the Indian republic will survive.”

What he meant was that most of India’s corrupt are from the historically disadvantaged groups officially called the backward castes. From a purely statistical point of view, this is an unremarkable statement given that the castes he had mentioned together constitute a majority of the Indian population. So it should not come as a surprise that “most of the corrupt” would hail from most of the nation.

But then most of India’s heart surgeons do not hail from the backward castes, and that is where the substance of Mr. Nandy’s message emerged: In an unequal society, corruption provides opportunity for those who do not have the means to progress easily otherwise.

Politicians from the backward castes wasted no time in calling for Mr. Nandy’s arrest. Among the first was Mayawati, the first female Dalit to serve as a chief minister in India, who is currently facing serious corruption charges. If there were canned laughter in real life, this country would resound with deafening guffaws.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nandy’s face soon assumed the look of a man who knew he was in serious trouble. In a courtyard outside the authors’ lounge, he gave several interviews to television cameras, often telling anchors who were grilling him from studios in New Delhi that he had been researching and writing about the backward castes “before you were even born.” Since then, the police have invoked the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against him as well as a charge of criminal intimidation.

Among those who expressed shock at Mr. Nandy’s comment were liberals attending the festival, whose conversations hinged on the evident distinction between upper-caste corruption, which involves the talent to open Swiss bank accounts and perform sophisticated forms of brokering, and backward-caste corruption, which is amateurish and carries a greater risk of being exposed. A popular young writer who did not wish to be identified told me, “I know a Dalit politician in Chennai who asks people to donate gold to him — along with the receipts.”

Even as Mr. Nandy was struggling to put out fires, the release of a Tamil-language film starring one of India’s most popular stars was blocked in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and elsewhere by Muslim groups whose members had not seen the film but claimed that it hurt their religious feelings.

India is a paradise for those who take offense because the first reaction of the state is to appease those who claim to have been offended. The law itself favors those who claim to be offended. And the police, who are so often reluctant to press charges against politicians accused of murder or men accused of rape are quick to arrive at the doorsteps of intellectuals, movie stars and other public figures who have allegedly offended people by words, actions or photographs. The fact is that India’s intellectual elite is one of the few oppressed castes left in the country today.

Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.”

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Charlize Theron Relaxes With a Girls' Dinner in West Hollywood

Caught in the Act

01/30/2013 at 06:00 AM EST

Charlize Theron shared dinner with a girlfriend at Tortilla Republic in West Hollywood on Monday.

Wearing a black blouse, blue jeans and high heels – while sporting her new short dark hair style – the Snow White and the Huntsman actress and her friend ordered up huarache hongos flatbread, housemade guacamole and jalapeño Margaritas.

Theron – who is mom to son Jackson – seemed to be enjoying her down time.

"She was relaxed and in a good mood," an onlooker tells PEOPLE.

– Jennifer Garcia

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Soldier with new arms determined to be independent

BALTIMORE (AP) — After weeks of round-the-clock medical care, Brendan Marrocco insisted on rolling his own wheelchair into a news conference using his new transplanted arms. Then he brushed his hair to one side.

Such simple tasks would go unnoticed in most patients. But for Marrocco, who lost all four limbs while serving in Iraq, these little actions demonstrate how far he's come only six weeks after getting a double-arm transplant.

Wounded by a roadside bomb in 2009, the former soldier said he could get by without legs, but he hated living without arms.

"Not having arms takes so much away from you. Even your personality, you know. You talk with your hands. You do everything with your hands, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," the 26-year-old New Yorker told reporters Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Doctors don't want him using his new arms too much yet, but his gritty determination to regain independence was one of the chief reasons he was chosen to receive the surgery, which has been performed in the U.S. only seven times.

That's the message Marrocco said he has for other wounded soldiers.

"Just not to give up hope. You know, life always gets better, and you're still alive," he said. "And to be stubborn. There's a lot of people who will say you can't do something. Just be stubborn and do it anyway. Work your ass off and do it."

Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, head of the team that conducted the surgery, said the new arms could eventually provide much of the same function as his original arms and hands. Another double-arm transplant patient can now use chopsticks and tie his shoes.

Lee said Marrocco's recovery has been remarkable, and the transplant is helping to "restore physical and psychological well-being."

Tuesday's news conference was held to mark a milestone in his recovery — the day he was to be discharged from the hospital.

Next comes several years of rehabilitation, including physical therapy that is going to become more difficult as feeling returns to the arms.

Before the surgery, 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.

"We'll get it back together. We've been through a lot worse than that," his father, Alex Marrocco, said.

For the next few months, Marrocco plans to live with his brother in an apartment near the hospital.

The former infantryman said he can already move the elbow on his left arm and rotate it a little bit, but there hasn't been much movement yet for his right arm, which was transplanted higher up.

Marrocco's mother, Michelle Marrocco, said he can't hug her yet, so he brushes his left arm against her face.

The first time he moved his left arm was a complete surprise, an involuntary motion while friends were visiting him in the hospital, he said.

"I had no idea what was going through my mind. I was with my friends, and it happened by accident," he recalled. "One of my friends said 'Did you do that on purpose?' And I didn't know I did it."

Marrocco's operation also involved a technical feat not tried in previous cases, Lee said in an interview after the news conference.

A small part of Marrocco's left forearm remained just below his elbow, and doctors transplanted a whole new forearm around and on top of it, then rewired nerves to serve the old and new muscles in that arm.

"We wanted to save his joint. In the unlucky event we would lose the transplant, we still wanted him to have the elbow joint," Lee said.

He also explained why leg transplants are not done for people missing those limbs — "it's not very practical." That's because nerves regrow at best about an inch a month, so it would be many years before a transplanted leg was useful.

Even if movement returned, a patient might lack sensation on the soles of the feet, which would be unsafe if the person stepped on sharp objects and couldn't feel the pain.

And unlike prosthetic arms and hands, which many patients find frustrating, the ones for legs are good. That makes the risks of a transplant not worth taking.

"It's premature" until there are better ways to help nerves regrow, Lee said.

Now Marrocco, who was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, is looking forward to getting behind the wheel of his black 2006 Dodge Charger and hand-cycling a marathon.

Asked if he could one day throw a football, Dr. Jaimie Shores said sure, but maybe not like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.

"Thanks for having faith in me," Marrocco interjected, drawing laughter from the crowd.

His mother said Marrocco has always been "a tough cookie."

"He's not changed that, and he's just taken it and made it an art form," Michelle Marrocco said. "He's never going to stop. He's going to be that boy I knew was going to be a pain in my butt forever. And he's going to show people how to live their lives."

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Associated Press Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee and AP writer David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., contributed to this report.

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Stock futures flat ahead of data, Amazon climbs early

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were flat on Wednesday as investors digested recent gains and awaited a new round of key U.S. economic data, though Amazon surged after its earnings results.

Equities have soared in recent weeks, with the S&P 500 rising for nine of the past 10 sessions. The Dow Jones industrial average has been flirting with 14,000, a level it hasn't seen since October 2007. Many analysts have said markets may need to take a pause at current levels.

Amazon.com Inc was the latest high-profile name to rally after results, rising 8.8 percent to $283.30 in premarket trading after the online retailer late on Tuesday reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit and posted revenue that jumped 22 percent.

Investors are looking ahead to a first read on fourth-quarter economic growth, with the release of gross domestic product data at 8:30 a.m. Analysts see a 1.1 percent annualized pace of growth, down from the 3.1 percent in the third quarter.

Growth likely slowed in the quarter on the impact of superstorm Sandy, as well as uncertainty stemming from the "fiscal cliff" debate in Washington, D.C.

Traders will also look to the January ADP employment report, which is expected to show 165,000 private-sector jobs were created in the month, down from 215,000 in December. The report precedes the closely watched nonfarm payroll report on Friday, which is expected to show modest but steady job growth.

Dow component Boeing Co is on tap to report, and the results will be scoured not only for details about the company's recent difficulties with its Dreamliner passenger jet, but also about the industrial space. Facebook Inc reports results after the market closes.

Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 174 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 68.4 percent have been above analyst expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.

S&P 500 futures fell 0.3 point but remained above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures were flat and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 2.5 points.

The S&P has been hovering around 1,500, a level market technicians say is an inflection point that will determine the overall direction in the near term. The benchmark index is on track to post its best monthly performance since October 2011 as investors poured $55 billion in new cash into stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in January, the biggest monthly inflow on record.

The Federal Reserve concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday, and while the central bank is expected to keep monetary policy on a steady path, intensive debates continue behind the scenes over when the controversial bond-buying program should be curtailed.

U.S. stocks advanced on Tuesday, led by defensive sectors, in a sign the cash piles recently moving into the market are being put to use by cautious investors to pick up more gains.

(Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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The Female Factor: Chinese Courts Turn a Blind Eye to Abuse

BEIJING — Before they married in 2009, Tan Yong admitted to Li Yan that he had beaten his three previous wives. He promised to change.

The promises didn’t last, said Li Dehuai, Ms. Li’s brother. Soon after the wedding, Mr. Tan began abusing his wife.

“He stubbed out cigarettes on her face and legs. He would take her hair and hit her head against the wall. He locked her on the balcony for hours in the winter,” said Mr. Li, speaking by telephone from Chongqing in southwestern China. The abuse went on for more than a year.

Today, Mr. Tan is dead, beaten to death by Ms. Li with the barrel of his air gun during an argument in November 2010, and Mr. Li is trying to save his sister’s life as she sits in a jail in Sichuan Province awaiting execution for murder. The case has caused an outcry among Chinese legal experts and feminists, who say it underscores the severe sentences often imposed on women who fight back, injuring or killing abusive husbands.

“Li Yan’s case tells people that extreme tragedy will happen if an abused woman cannot get effective help from the neighborhood committee, the women’s federation, the police,” said Feng Yuan, of the Anti-Domestic Violence Network, based in Beijing.

“When power cannot deliver justice, abused women will find their own way of achieving justice, sadly and wrongly,” Ms. Feng said.

Chinese law requires that a history of domestic abuse be considered in such cases. Ms. Li’s was especially gruesome: After killing her husband (which she confessed to early, asking a neighbor to call the police), she cut him up and boiled some of the parts. If that is hard to excuse, consider this, said Ms. Feng: She wasn’t in her right mind.

“There’s something called abused women’s syndrome, and she had it. A woman like that may lose her reason and lose control,” said Ms. Feng, one of hundreds of people petitioning the courts to retry Ms. Li, this time taking the abuse into proper consideration. This was not done the first time, making Ms. Li’s case a miscarriage of justice, they say.

Others who have joined the appeal include lawyers, deputies to the National People’s Congress and Amnesty International, which last week issued an urgent action call for the Chinese authorities not to execute Ms. Li. The sentence could be carried out any day now, activists say, probably before the Lunar New Year’s Eve on Feb. 9.

Women’s jails are filled with women who have injured or killed abusive husbands, according to the Anti-Domestic Violence Network, citing studies by local women’s federations and scholars. They account for 60 percent of inmates in one jail in Anshan, in Liaoning Province, and 80 percent of women serving heavy sentences in a jail in Fuzhou, in Fujian Province.

In a study by Xing Hongmei of China Women’s University, of 121 female inmates in a Sichuan jail who were serving time for attacking or killing abusive partners, 71 were originally sentenced to life in prison or to death (sometimes commuted, delayed or overturned on appeal), and 28 more were sentenced to at least 10 years. This means more than 80 percent received the heaviest possible sentences for murder or bodily harm, the study said.

For months before she killed Mr. Tan, Ms. Li sought help from the authorities in Anyue County, in Sichuan Province, where they lived, her brother said.

“She telephoned the police in, I think, May 2010, after a beating, but they said it was an affair between married people and hung up,” he said.

She went to her neighborhood committee. “They told her to go to the women’s association. The women’s association told her to go to the police. The police told her to go to the neighborhood committee,” and so it continued, he said. “She was sent from place to place and didn’t know what to do.”

Officials at the local justice department whom she asked about divorce told her that unless Mr. Tan agreed, she could be left destitute. She was better off tolerating the abuse, they advised.

There was some documentation of the abuse, including police photographs of injuries and a medical report after hospital treatment, said Mr. Li. But both the Sichuan court that sentenced her and the Supreme Court in Beijing, which reviews all death sentences — Mr. Li and activists say it upheld his sister’s sentence last week — failed to take this into account when sentencing her, Mr. Li said.

“We all hoped the court would recognize the torture she’d suffered in those years,” he said. “But it didn’t.”

“I know what my sister did was wrong, but since this happened, I have studied many cases of domestic abuse, and I know her situation is not uncommon,” he said.

He has not yet been able to tell their mother, or Ms. Li’s 18-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, that Ms. Li faces imminent execution.

“I think my niece knows, somehow,” he said. “But my mother couldn’t take it.”

Their father, who died last year, had worked in the same silk factory as Ms. Li and Mr. Tan, and had disliked the man from the start, Mr. Li said.

“He was so depressed at her situation,” he said. “I think he died of grief.”

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Troubled smartphone pioneer RIM prepares to raise the curtain on BlackBerry 10

NEW YORK, N.Y. – After several technical blunders, two unexpected delays and one major shakeup in its leadership, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is about to raise the curtain for its new smartphone devices in hopes that consumers share the excitement.

The unveiling of the phones and operating system on Wednesday marks the start of an advertising blitz that will stretch to social media, the Super Bowl and beyond as RIM tries to regain the cool factor that was once firmly in its grasp.

If all goes according to plan, the event will also mark the end of a troublesome 12 months that has seen RIM try to stay afloat while its future was constantly in question by outsiders, and its stock price tumbled to the lowest level in about a decade.

While the first hurdles to overcome on Wednesday are the opinions of tech analysts and investor reaction, the true measure of success — actual sales of the phones — is still weeks away.

As a crowd of thousands gathers Wednesday at Pier 36, a massive entertainment venue on the shores of Manhattan, chief executive Thorsten Heins will step onto the stage holding the BlackBerry that has been at once considered the company’s last hope, but also its biggest hurdle.

Just over a year ago, when Heins took over the top spot at RIM, the smartphone maker was in a state of flux as its marketshare tumbled in North America against growing competition from Apple’s iPhone and various devices on the Android operating system.

Analysts had widely blamed the lack of leadership from former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis as the reasons that RIM failed to innovate its way out of trouble, but they also said that Heins had much to prove in hardly any time.

The company was in a bubble, insisting that it hadn’t lost its footing in the smartphone industry, even though from the outside their downfall was indisputable.

But as the dust settled from Balsillie’s exit in March 2012, Heins began to face the realities of RIM’s problems and launched a major overhaul of its middle management and deep cuts to its operations.

While Heins preferred to call it removing a “little fat on the hips,” the changes at RIM were a far more strategic and complex surgery.

The company closed some of its manufacturing facilities and announced plans to lay off about 5,000 workers, as it aimed to save $ 1 billion across RIM’s operations by February 2013. Heins reached that savings goal, and he did it three months ahead of schedule.

“He is probably one of the least dogmatic people at RIM,” said Carl Howe, vice-president of consumer research at Yankee Group.

“I think he learned from his predecessors.”

Despite all of the changes, Heins was still up against the fact that development of the BlackBerry 10 operating system was woefully behind schedule. Already delayed from a launch in 2011, the CEO was forced in June to further push the debut into 2013, missing crucial sales periods like the back-to-school and Christmas holiday shopping seasons.

While analysts hated the idea of another delay, it also bought the company some extra time to tweak the software to capitalize on the weaknesses of competitors’ smartphones.

One of those features is the BlackBerry Balance technology, which allows one phone to operate as both a business and personal device entirely separate from each other. Another one lets users seamlessly shift between the phone’s applications like they’re flipping between pages on a desk.

The BlackBerry Messenger chat program will also get an update that includes video chat and screen sharing options.

RIM’s executives also began an aggressive campaign last year to win the developer community. Under its previous leadership, the BlackBerry had practically ignored the growing popularity of smartphone applications for services like Netflix, Skype and Instagram.

A sea of change was coming under its new leaders, and Heins had managed to at least steady a company that was swaying on its pillars by coming up with unconventional ideas.

As the BlackBerry lost steam in North America and Europe, he turned to developing countries like Indonesia and Nigeria to keep revenues flowing in the near term. In those places, consumers were hungry for low-cost smartphones and the BlackBerry was still considered a status symbol.

The decision helped RIM keep its subscriber base steady, and maintain its $ 2-billion cash reserve, which was set aside for emergencies. It will use some of that money to promote the new phones.

“Up until now I think everything (Heins) laid out in terms of his plan … he’s shown that he’s executed on it,” said Richard Tse, an analyst at Cormark Securities Inc.

“In terms of what they’ve done on the development side, in terms of streamlining the operations and preserving the cash, I think he’s done a very good job to date.”

Investors aren’t satisfied with all of his decisions, however, especially when Heins unveiled a rough plan in December that will likely eat into the lucrative service fees charged to BlackBerry subscribers.

Heins told analysts on its most recent earnings conference call that RIM plans to launch an a la carte menu of services where both enterprise customers and casual smartphone users can pick their packages. The change would likely mean reduced revenues in one of the most lucrative areas of its business.

Even on the dawn of the new BlackBerry unveiling, there are still questions about whether RIM will exist in its current form this time next year. Some analysts have said the company will eventually be forced to sell off at least its hardware division, if not more.

“They’re in such a difficult position that I can’t think of a management change that would help them get out of it,” Tim Long of BMO Capital Markets.

“Clearly there are people out there that think the BlackBerry 10 is going to be something that gets them back on the map. We don’t think so.”

Long said his checks within the mobile phone industry have shown that carriers aren’t particularly interested in RIM’s touchscreen smartphone, but they’re more anxious for the keypad version, or QWERTY phone, due sometime after the initial launch.

“We think that’s an issue,” he said.

If the stock price is any sign, RIM’s investors are at least more confident this month then they’ve been in a long time. As of Monday’s closing price, RIM’s shares have risen 167 per cent from its lowest level in about a decade, reached in September, on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Several analysts have boosted their target prices for the company’s stock in the past two weeks.

Whatever happens after the new BlackBerrys are unveiled, it’s certain that RIM isn’t in the clear yet.

“Product transitions are always pretty ugly,” said Howe.

“The good news is if you can get yourself through to the other side … you have an opportunity to disrupt the market yourself.”

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Soldier talks about his new arms after transplant

BALTIMORE (AP) — A soldier who lost all four limbs in an Iraq roadside bombing has two new arms following a double transplant at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Twenty-six-year-old Brendan Marrocco along with the surgeons who treated him will be at the Baltimore hospital on Tuesday to discuss the new limbs.

The transplants are only the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant ever conducted in the United States.

The infantryman was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. The New York City man also received bone marrow from the same dead donor. The approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new arms with minimal medication to prevent rejection.

The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.

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