| 'Is my daughter harming her baby by smoking?'
Q: My daughter stopped smoking when she was pregnant, but, unfortunately, she went back to smoking after she delivered her baby. She never smokes in the house, which is good, but you can still smell it on her, and she sometimes smokes around her baby as does her husband. Can this affect the baby? Am I concerned for no reason?
A: It is clear that babies can inhale and absorb particles and dangerous chemicals emitted by cigarettes from walls, carpeting, clothes, hair, skin and the air around them. In a recent study, it was found that babies of parents who smoked, but did so outside, had 50 times less cotinine in their bodies (a by-product of nicotine) than babies whose parents smoked around them. These rates, however, were still seven times higher than babies of parents who did not smoke.
Billion Dollar Baby Play — with Oscar Winner Patty Duke — Begins ...
Patty Duke, most recently on Broadway in the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, stars in the new play Billion Dollar Baby, which begins performances at the University of Idaho's Hartung Theatre Feb. 8. The production is part of the University of Idaho Department of Theatre & Film and the Idaho Repertory Theatre's "New Works Festival," which will be presented through Feb. 18. Penned by Julie Jensen, Billion Dollar Baby is a one-woman show about "a grandmother who has definite opinions about her daughter's . . . child-rearing." Idaho Repertory Theatre artistic director Jere Lee Hodgin helms the production. Patty Duke who also goes by her non-stage name Anna Pearce became famous after starring as Helen Keller in the original Broadway production and then the film adaptation of The Miracle Worker, winning a 1962 Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
Smith's death still a mystery
The mystery surrounding Anna Nicole Smith's death cleared up only slightly Friday, while the husband of an elderly ex-starlet added to the circus surrounding her life. Broward County authorities said no illegal drugs were found in the hotel room where the 39-year-old former centerfold collapsed Thursday, and that she had suffered no serious physical injury. But the medical examiner said it could take weeks to determine whether drugs, natural causes or a combination of the two is to blame. In Los Angeles, meanwhile, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, Prince Frederick von Anhalt, said he had a decade-long affair with Smith and may be her infant daughter's father. The claim comes amid a paternity fight over the girl between Smith's former boyfriend and a lawyer whose name is on Dannielynn's birth certificate.
Why ID woman who found baby?
Editors took plenty of flak for identifying the woman who recently discovered a partially mummified baby boy wrapped in a Jan. 9, 1957, edition of The New York Daily News inside a suitcase packed in a larger suitcase. The Post originally reported that neither the name of the woman, who found the child while cleaning out her deceased parents' Delray Beach storage unit, nor the names of her parents had been released by police. But a Feb. 1 article, "Woman: Let dead baby 'rest in peace,''" about a statement the woman had released, stated: .
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