Blog Posts by Beth Greenfield, Shine Staff

The royal couple. Photo: Getty Images/IndigoRoyal officials have been given the go-ahead to make improvements to the likely future country home of Prince William and Kate Middleton, it was reported Tuesday.

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News that the royal couple would likely be gifted the Sandringham Estate mansion Anmer Hall was reported in January by the Telegraph. And now approval of plans to improve it have come just as another overhaul, at the royal couple’s Kensington Palace home, nears completion.

While some of the planned work is needed to update the ancient structure of Anmer Hall, much of it is meant to better shield the expecting Duke and Duchess of Cambridge from public view.

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“Privacy, obviously, is huge,” royal expert Victoria Arbiter told Yahoo! Shine, noting that it’s still “all speculation” that this home is indeed for the young couple. But if it does wind up being the case, she said, the

Erin Callan. Photo: Lehman Brothers via NYU LawFormer Lehman Brothers CFO Erin Callan joined in the ongoing public debate on work-life balance this week, telling the world she had regrets over the sacrifices she made for success, and prompting renewed buzz on the topic. 

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“I can’t make up for lost time,” she wrote in a Sunday New York Times opinion piece, “Is There Life After Work?” In it, Callan, who resigned as CFO in 2008, describes how work always came first for her, often at the expense of family, friends and her marriage (which eventually ended in divorce). It also got in the way of her starting a family, though she is now remarried and has stepchildren.

“I missed having a child of my own,” she writes. “I am 47 years old, and Anthony and I have been trying in vitro fertilization for several years. We are still hoping.”

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Reactions to her piece have been thoughtful and numerous,

Judd at a Tennesseans For Obama Benefit. Photo: Getty Images/Rick DiamondWe’ve seen plenty of male actors turned politicians: Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Fred Thompson, Fred Grandy, just for starters. But the female version—Shirley Temple Black, Eva Perón… Anyone? Anyone?— has been decidedly shorter.

Now Ashley Judd hopes to change that, despite snickers about her run that are louder than bombs.

Her potential 2014 run against conservative Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell seems all but sewn up, according to a Friday report in Fox411’s Pop Tarts column. In it, an unnamed source was quoted as saying, “At least in Ashley’s mind, it is happening. She has devoted herself to many important causes and stepped away from the Hollywood spotlight so this seems like the logical next step. I don't know if she will be successful, but her heart is in the right place.”

Reactions in the Twitterverse were swift and harsh, with critics calling the news “beyond pitiful,” “funny” and Judd “stupid” an “airhead bimbo” and “Elmer Fudd.” (Huh?)

But all that

The new cover of Us Weekly. Photo via Us Weekly.There are certain words that may reasonably come to mind with the mention of Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi: “Jersey,” “reality TV,” “alcohol,” “Guidette,” and even, now, “mom.”

But “diet guru”?

It’s a distinct (though scary) possibility. On Friday, Snooki announced plans to publish a pregnancy book next year. Though it's not going be an "advice" book, according to the reality star, she does "hope that this book will help all pregnant ladies out there."

She started giving moms pointers earlier this week, though we wouldn't necessary call her tips "helpful."

Online excerpts from her  interview in latest issue of Us Weekly detail her quick postpartum weight loss. The mag's cover photo, spreading like wildfire on the internet, boasts a svelte Snooki and the promise of her secrets to so-called success.

Since when are we taking health advice from the patron saint of the "Jersey Shore" hangover? Since celebrities started making a second career of this post-baby body business. See Miranda Kerr,

Beware of bacon. Photo: Getty Images/Flickr/Cara SlifkaYou know in your gut (and your gut knows it, too) that bacon is bad for you. And yet you can’t resist. But a new study might make it easier. It found that consuming high amounts of the breakfast favorite and other processed meats can raise your risk of premature death by 44 percent.

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The research, conducted by scientists across 10 European countries, included tracking the health of more than 450,000 participants over the course of a decade or more. Of the 26,000-plus who died during those years, the ones who ate the most processed meats—5.5 ounces or more every day of bacon (so, five strips), sausage, hotdogs, salami, ham and the like—were 44 percent more likely to have died than those who ate little or none. In other terms, the meats were to blame in about 1 in 30 deaths, the main causes of which were cancer and heart disease. 

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The aim of the study, "Meat

Marilyn Hagerty, left, joined Padma Lakshmi as a guest judge on Top Chef Season 10. Photo: David Moir/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images.Stop the presses! Marilyn Hagerty, perhaps the most famous food reviewer since Anton Ego, has returned to her Grand Forks, ND, Olive Garden, to pen an update—and this time around she's not quite as impressed.

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In the piece, published in the Grand Forks Herald, Hagerty is more critical about the chain's offerings than she was the first time. She also ruminates about how much her life has changed since she first critiqued the place—a move that gave the octogenarian columnist instant celebrity status one year ago.

“That was March 7, 2012, and my world has not been the same. I went viral, and I didn’t even know what that meant,” Hagerty, 86, writes in today’s review. “In the past year, I have learned.”

The reviewer, who has been with the paper since 1957, touched off a media circus with her first review of the new Olive Garden, a completely earnest rundown in which she called the eatery “impressive” and “the largest and