NowMyNews

Kim Kardashian attends the Topshop Topman LA flagship store opening party at Cecconi's Restaurant on February 13, 2013 in Los Angeles, California Pregnant Kim Kardashian is taking it easy -- doctor's orders. Expecting her first child (with love Kanye West) this July, the 32-year-old reality starlet endured a minor pregnancy scare on Tuesday after arriving home in Los Angeles from Paris. "All fine -- doctor-ordered rest," one pal assures Us Weekly. Indeed, in addition to her always-hectic schedule of work duties around the world, Kardashian is also dealing with a move -- and her divorce case with ex Kris Humphries. (After many contentious months -- Humphries, 28, had argued unsuccessfully for an annulment -- a judge recently ruled that Kardashian and Humphries' divorce trial will begin May 6, with all parties required to attend. In happier news, Kardashian and rapper West, 35, purchased an $11 million home in Bel Air, Calif. back in January.) Explains the sour

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi stuck to his view that the euro region will gradually recover later this year even as officials trimmed their economic forecasts and considered cutting interest rates. “Later in 2013 economic activity should gradually recover, supported by a strengthening global backdrop and our accommodative monetary policy stance,” Draghi told a press conference in Frankfurt after the ECB left its benchmark interest rate at 0.75 percent, a record low. While officials discussed cutting borrowing costs today, the “prevailing consensus was to leave the rates unchanged,” Draghi said. Uncertainty caused by the stalemate in last month’s Italian election, where anti-austerity parties won more than half the vote, has renewed concern that the euro area may struggle to overcome the sovereign debt crisis and exit recession. The ECB today predicted the 17-nation economy will shrink 0.5 percent this year, more than the 0.3 percent contraction forecast three mont

The number of Americans who filed for unemployment benefits declined to a six-week low, showing further improvement in the labor market. First-time jobless claims unexpectedly fell by 7,000 to 340,000 in the week ended March 2, the lowest since the period ended Jan. 19, according to data today from the Labor Department in Washington. The median forecast of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an increase to 355,000. The four-week average dropped to a five-year low. Companies are easing up on dismissals as purchases of equipment climb and households maintain spending in the face of higher payroll taxes. Further declines in firings are a first step toward bigger employment and wage gains, and a report tomorrow may show payrolls picked up in February. “Every indication we have is that the labor market is beginning to pick up steam,” said Drew Matus, deputy U.S. chief economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut, who correctly projected the drop in claims. “It’

A new study finds another reason to cut down on the salt: Increased salt intake may trigger and sustain some autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune diseases are illnesses that cause the immune system to attack healthy cells instead of pathogens and can affect any part of the body. This includes everything from Type 1 diabetes, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health, there are more than 80 different types of autoimmune diseases that affect 23.5 million Americans. Autoimmune diseases have been associated with an overproduction of TH17 immune cells, a type of helper T cell (or white blood cell) that produces an inflammatory protein called interleukin-17, but science hasn't been able to determine why some people produce more TH17 than others, Nature pointed out. But, three separate studies published in Nature on Mar. 6 may provide more clues. Researchers note that autoimmune diseases h

NBC News grabs a key detail from the dinner President Obama held with 12 Senate Republicans last night:     It was serious. It was respectful. And it was informative. (In fact, one senator told us that he learned, for the first time, the actual cuts that the president has put on the table. Leadership hadn’t shared that list with them before). The number of Republicans who don’t know what the White House is actually offering is stunning. Last week I wrote about a Republican legislator who didn’t know Obama had publicly said he’d be willing to move to chained-CPI.     Would it matter, one reporter asked the veteran legislator, if the president were to put chained-CPI — a policy that reconfigures the way the government measures inflation and thus slows the growth of Social Security benefits — on the table?     “Absolutely,” the legislator said. “That’s serious.”     Another reporter jumped in. “But it is on the table! They tell us three times a day that they want to do chained-CPI.”    

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have been queuing to pay their last respects to President Hugo Chavez, who died on Tuesday after 14 years in power. His body is lying in state at the military academy in the capital Caracas before his state funeral on Friday. His supporters want him interred alongside Simon Bolivar, the 19th Century independence leader he claimed as his "revolutionary" inspiration. Mr Chavez died at the age of 58 after a two-year battle with cancer. Thousands queued through the night to file silently past the open coffin, where Mr Chavez is lying in an olive-green military uniform and his signature red beret. His family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, paid their respects on Wednesday. Other world leaders - including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - are flying into Caracas for his funeral. Several Latin American nations are holding periods of national mourning for the left-wing leader, who was a strong a

The United Nations Security Council approved a new regimen of sanctions on Thursday against North Korea for its underground nuclear test last month, imposing penalties on North Korean banking, travel and trade in a unanimous vote that reflected the country’s increased international isolation. The resolution, which was drafted by the United States and China, was passed in a speedy vote hours after North Korea threatened for the first time to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States and South Korea. “The strength, breadth and severity of these sanctions will raise the cost to North Korea of its illicit nuclear program,” the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, told reporters after the vote. “Taken together, these sanctions will bite and bite hard.” Li Baodong, the ambassador from China, which lent its support to the new sanctions to the anger of the North Korean government, told reporters the resolution was aimed at the long-term goal