Bon Jovi daughter recovering after heroin OD in NY

HAMILTON, N.Y. (AP) — Authorities say Jon Bon Jovi's 19-year-old daughter is hospitalized after overdosing on heroin in a dorm at her upstate New York college.

Town of Kirkland police say an ambulance was sent to Hamilton College early Wednesday morning after a report that a female had apparently overdosed on heroin.

Investigator Peter Cania (KAYN'-yah) says Stephanie Bongiovi, of Red Bank, N.J., is recovering at a hospital he declined to name.

Police say Bongiovi and 21-year-old Ian Grant, also of Red Bank, were charged with drug possession. Both were issued tickets and ordered to appear in court at a later date. Police didn't know if they have lawyers.

The musician's representative isn't commenting.

Bon Jovi is scheduled to perform at a benefit concert for Hamilton in Times Square on Dec. 5.

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F.D.A. Asking for More Control Over Drug Compounding

WASHINGTON — The commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration will recommend changes in the regulatory landscape for compounding pharmacies, placing those that produce drugs on a large scale in a new category that would give the agency greater powers to police them.

The commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, will tell the House Committee on Energy and Commerce during a hearing on Wednesday that compounding in its traditional form — mixing medicine for individual patients — should be preserved, but that pharmacies that have in effect turned into mini-drug companies should be placed under the agency’s oversight, according to her written testimony posted by the committee.

Pharmacy compounding has come under a spotlight in recent months since the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass., produced thousands of vials of pain medicine contaminated with fungus that caused a national meningitis outbreak, sickening more than 400 people and killing 32. Dr. Hamburg’s testimony was her first substantive comment on regulatory problems in the compounding industry since the outbreak, and outlines the changes that the Obama administration will seek.

Among the changes proposed by Dr. Hamburg are requiring larger compounders to register with the F.D.A. and abide by its so-called good manufacturing practice, which requires drug producers to report any problems with their products to the agency. She is also recommending new labeling requirements that would make the origin and the risks of a compounded drug clear. She is also requesting that some products, including drugs with complex dosage forms, be banned for compounders.

“In light of growing evidence of threats to the public health, the administration urges Congress to strengthen federal standards for nontraditional compounding,” Dr. Hamburg stated in the written testimony. “Such legislation should appropriately balance legitimate compounding that meets a genuine medical need with the reality that compounded drugs pose greater risks than those that are evaluated by F.D.A.”

Large-scale pharmacy compounding has greatly expanded since the early 1990s, lifted by tectonic shifts in the health care industry, including a widespread turn toward outsourcing. The practice fills shortage gaps in the health care system and provides lower-cost drugs. But pharmacies are primarily regulated by states, a situation that federal regulators argue is risky.

The F.D.A. had dealings with the New England Compounding Center in the past, including an inspection in 2002 after reports of problems and a warning letter in 2006. The agency argued that the actions failed to head off the current disaster, in part, because the company took great pains to avoid F.D.A. oversight.

“Throughout this time, N.E.C.C. has repeatedly disputed F.D.A.’s jurisdiction over its facility,” Dr. Hamburg said in the written testimony.

Barry J. Cadden, the chief pharmacist at the company and one of its principal owners, was subpoenaed by the House committee. To every question posed by committee members on Wednesday, he replied: “On advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer on the basis of my constitutional rights and privileges, including the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

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Stocks fall after gloomy retail report

Stock indexes moved lower in light trading on Wall Street Wednesday. Strong earnings from Abercrombie & Fitch were offset by a gloomy report on retail spending from the government.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 56 points at 12,692 shortly after noon. The Standard & Poor's 500 index slipped four points to 1,370 and the Nasdaq composite was down four points at 2,879.

Abercrombie & Fitch, the purveyor of apparel to teenagers, was among the standout stocks. Abercrombie jumped $8.76 to $39.94 after reporting that its international business was thriving and that its net income soared 40 percent in the most recent quarter, more than analysts were expecting.

The strong results from Abercrombie were tempered by a report from the Commerce Department saying that Americans cut back on spending in October, suggesting that many are still cautious about the economy.

Sales dropped 0.3 percent last month after three months of gains. That's worse than analysts had been expecting, according to FactSet. The government also said auto sales fell 1.5 percent, the most in more than a year. Sales may have been hurt by Superstorm Sandy.

Investors will be closely watching a press briefing later Wednesday by President Barack Obama.

Stocks were roiled in the immediate aftermath of last week's presidential election on concern that the U.S. will fall over the “fiscal cliff.” Unless lawmakers hammer out a deal to cut the budget deficit by Jan. 1, a series of tax increases and revenue cuts will be implemented that will likely push the U.S. back into recession.

“Investors' hopes that the election would end uncertainty remain unfulfilled,” said Lawrence Creatura, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors in Rochester, New York. “Investors are still grasping for visibility….it's very tough to determine what happens next.”

The S&P 500 has slipped 3.7 percent since Obama won re-election Nov. 6, and has dropped 6.5 percent from Sept. 14, when it hit the highest point of the year. Stocks had risen over the summer before the Federal Reserve announced Sept. 13 that it would extend its so-called quantitative easing program by mortgage-backed securities with the intention of holding down borrowing costs.

Market participants are also awaiting the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's October meeting on Thursday for more insight into how the U.S. economy is doing. The notes are scheduled to be released at 2 p.m. Eastern.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.61 percent from 1.59 percent.

Among other stocks making big moves:

Cisco Systems, the world's largest maker of computer networking equipment, gained $1.05 to $17.89. Cisco said late Tuesday that its earnings rose 18 percent in the latest quarter and that U.S. companies are starting to spend again.

Mosaic, a company that mines for potash, a key ingredient in fertilizers, slipped $1.92 to $48.82 after saying that international demand for its product had weakened and that it was lowering its sales forecasts.

Advanced Micro Devices, a chipmaker, slumped 11 cents, or 5.3 percent, to $1.98 after the company denied a report that said it was considering a sale. The stock has lost about 76 percent of its value since reaching a 52-week high of $8.35 in March as the company's sales dwindled as consumers shift away from PCs to tablets and smartphones.

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Mike D'Antoni plans to coach Lakers on Sunday

Mike D'Antoni won NBA coach of the year in his first full season as head coach of the Phoenix Suns. (Jeff Gross / Getty Images)

By T.J. Simers

November 13, 2012, 8:36 a.m.

Just finished interviewing new Lakers Coach Mike D’Antoni by telephone, and how’s that for a fine start in town — he's talking to Page 2.

It’s going to take a little while to transcribe tape and write a column, but here’s how we began Tuesday morning.

"Got bad news for you, Mike. You’re losing 73% to 11% to Phil Jackson in a poll of who people would like to see coaching the Lakers."

D’Antoni laughs. "I’ve got some really close friends who are Laker fans and they were disappointed I got the job."

Reminded that the fans in Staples Center have been chanting, "We want Phil," D’Antoni says, "They can’t chant, 'We want Mike,' because they got him."

D’Antoni is still recovering from reconstructive surgery on his right knee. He’s getting around now with one crutch or a cane.

He will fly to Los Angeles on Wednesday, meet his team Thursday and says he’s probably aiming to make his Lakers coaching debut Sunday.

"When I feel better I’ll start coaching, and I think miraculously I’ll start feeling better when Steve [Nash] is feeling better," he says. "I’ve already tried coaching without him and that didn’t work out too well, so I’m thinking I’ll be smart this time."

If the tape recorder batteries hold up, more to come soon.

ALSO:

Phil Jackson gets call from Lakers and it's not what he expected

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It's unanimous: Lakers' selection of Mike D'Antoni over Phil Jackson is wrong

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Day-Lewis heeded inner ear to find Lincoln's voice

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A towering figure such as Abraham Lincoln, who stood 6 feet 4 and was one of history's master orators, must have had a booming voice to match, right? Not in Daniel Day-Lewis' interpretation.

Day-Lewis, who plays the 16th president in Steven Spielberg's epic film biography "Lincoln," which goes into wide release this weekend, settled on a higher, softer voice, saying it's more true to descriptions of how the man actually spoke.

"There are numerous accounts, contemporary accounts, of his speaking voice. They tend to imply that it was fairly high, in a high register, which I believe allowed him to reach greater numbers of people when he was speaking publicly," Day-Lewis said in an interview. "Because the higher registers tend to reach farther than the lower tones, so that would have been useful to him."

"Lincoln" is just the fifth film in the last 15 years for Day-Lewis, a two-time Academy Award winner for best actor ("My Left Foot" and "There Will Be Blood"). Much of his pickiness stems from a need to understand characters intimately enough to feel that he's actually living out their experiences.

The soft, reedy voice of his Lincoln grew out of that preparation.

"I don't separate vocal work, and I don't dismember a character into its component parts and then kind of bolt it all together, and off you go," Day-Lewis said. "I tend to try and allow things to happen slowly, over a long period of time. As I feel I'm growing into a sense of that life, if I'm lucky, I begin to hear a voice.

"And I don't mean in a supernatural sense. I begin to hear the sound of a voice, and if I like the sound of that, I live with that for a while in my mind's ear, whatever one might call it, my inner ear, and then I set about trying to reproduce that."

Lincoln himself likely learned to use his voice to his advantage depending on the situation, Day-Lewis said.

"He was a supreme politician. I've no doubt in my mind that when you think of all the influences in his life, from his childhood in Kentucky and Indiana and a good part of his younger life in southern Illinois, that the sounds of all those regions would have come together in him somehow.

"And I feel that he probably learned how to play with his voice in public and use it in certain ways in certain places and in certain other ways in other places. Especially in the manner in which he expressed himself. I think, I've no doubt that he was conscious enough of his image."

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Global Update: A Solar Device to Help Sterilize Instruments

Solar power can steam-sterilize surgical instruments, according to a new study — but the contraption needed to do so is not pocket-size.

Sterilizing instruments needed in surgical emergencies like Caesarean births or appendectomies can be a problem in rural clinics in Africa: There may be no electricity, jugs of bleach or tanks of propane.

So a Rice University team recently modified a prototype of an old solar stove to power a simple autoclave, which is a pressure-cooker for instruments, and tested it in the Texas sun.

On all 27 attempts, it reached United States government sterilization standards.

How practical it is awaits African trials; it is nearly 12 feet long and 6 feet tall and has bright curved mirrors to focus sunlight on a water-filled pipe. On sunny days, it can make steam at 150 degrees Celsius (302 degrees Fahrenheit) from about 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Douglas A. Schuler, above, a Rice business professor and lead author of the study, published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, said he “married into the project.” His French father-in-law designed the solar stove years ago after a student trip to West Africa. But women in Haiti, where they tested it, “just hated cooking on it,” Dr. Schuler said, so they found a different use for it.

The initial setup costs about $2,100. But sunlight costs nothing, making five years of operation about $2,000 cheaper than using propane.

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Medicare paid $1.5 billion in improper therapy claims in 2009

A new federal report says skilled-nursing facilities overbilled Medicare for therapy and other care, costing taxpayers $1.5 billion in 2009. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

By Chad Terhune

November 13, 2012, 10:48 a.m.

Medicare paid $1.5 billion in improper claims for skilled nursing care in 2009, federal investigators found.

The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday that 25% of all Medicare claims submitted by skilled nursing facilities had errors and the majority of those bills were "upcoded" for ultra-high therapy that wasn't necessary.

About 15,000 nursing homes and other facilities provide this physical therapy, rehabilitation and other care to patients, often after a hospital stay. Medicare generally covers these services for up to 100 days related to an illness.

The inspector general's office urged Medicare to increase its scrutiny of these skilled-nursing claims, particularly in light of previous reports identifying billing problems in this area.

Medicare officials agreed with the recommendations and said it has already taken steps to reduce inaccurate and fraudulent billing.

The $1.5 billion in improper payments represented nearly 6% of the $26.9 billion paid overall to skilled-nursing facilities in 2009, according to the report. Medicare's overall payouts for these services rose to $32.2 billion in fiscal year 2012.

In this latest report, the inspector general said in one case the skilled-nursing facility provided the highest level of therapy even though the physician refused to authorize it. In another case, speech therapy was billed for even though it wasn't medically necessary or given.

The Obama administration has tried to crack down on fraud and abuse in Medicare in hopes of recovering some of the estimated $60 billion lost annually in the federal program. The government's enforcement efforts have taken on added importance at a time of rising entitlement spending and mounting federal debt.

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Blue Shield's union ties raise concerns about conflicts

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Follow Chad Terhune on Twitter

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U.S. to become world's largest oil producer before 2020, IEA says

This post has been corrected. See below for details.

The U.S. will become the world’s top producer of oil within five years, a net exporter of the fuel around 2030 and nearly self-sufficient in energy by 2035, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

It’s a bold set of predictions for a nation that currently imports some 20% of its energy needs.

Recently, however, an “energy renaissance” in the U.S. has caused a boost in oil, shale gas and bio-energy production due to new technologies such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fuel efficiency has improved in the transportation sector. The clean energy industry has seen an influx of solar and wind efforts.

Quiz: Why are California gas prices so high? 

By 2015, U.S. oil production is expected to rise to 10 million barrels per day before increasing to 11.1 million bpd by 2020, overtaking second-place Russia and front-runner Saudi Arabia. The U.S. will export more oil than it brings into the country in 2030.

Around the same time, however, Saudi Arabia will be producing some 11.4 million bpd of oil, outpacing the 10.2 million from the U.S. In 2035, U.S. production will slip to 9.2 million bpd, far behind the Middle Eastern nation’s 12.3 million bpd. Iraq will exceed Russia to become the world’s second largest oil exporter.

At that point, real oil prices will reach $125 a barrel. By then, however, the U.S. won’t be relying much on foreign energy, according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook.

Globally, the energy economy will undergo a “sea change,” according to the report, with nearly 90% of Middle Eastern oil exports redirecting toward Asia.

“No country is an energy ‘island,’ and the interactions between different fuels, markets and prices are intensifying,” according to the report.

And what of energy efficiency efforts?

Fossil fuels, which enjoyed a 30% jump in subsidies last year to $523 billion worldwide, will still surpass renewable energy sources, according to IEA. But so-called green power will become the world’s second-largest form of generation within three years and will threaten coal’s supremacy by 2035.

That progression, however, “hinges critically on continued subsidies” for wind, solar and bio-fuel technologies, which last year amounted to some $88 billion and needs to reach $4.8 trillion through 2035, according to IEA.

Even then, however, “the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path,” according to the report.

Quiz: Test your knowledge of business news

Global energy demand will boom by more than a third by 2035, rising to 99.7 million barrels a day from 87.4 million last year. China’s demand will rise 60% over the period; India’s will more than double. Demand in developed countries will increase just 3%, with the desire for oil and coal losing share in the overall energy mix.

Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will creep up, causing a long-term average temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Celsius. Energy production will continue to suck at the world’s water resources – it already accounts for 15% of total water use.

[10:15 a.m.: A previous version of this post gave an incorrect conversion of the temperature increase in Fahrenheit. The correct Fahrenheit increase is 6.5 degrees.]

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IMF warns of 'alarmingly high' risk of deep global slowdown

Like Feinstein, Boxer urges federal inqury into high gas prices

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Dutch teenagers sentenced in “Facebook murder”

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Two Dutch teenagers were sentenced to two years in juvenile detention and three years of compulsory therapy on Monday for ordering the death of a girl after an argument on Facebook.

The case, known in the Netherlands as the “Facebook murder”, has caused widespread debate about the role of social media in violent crime.

The victim, identified only as 15-year old Winsie, was fatally stabbed in January at the request of the boy and girl, who were aged 17 and 16 respectively at the time.

Winsie had argued for weeks with the girl, and they had swapped insults on the social networking site.

“The defendants are guilty of a particularly serious criminal offence. The fact that a friendship between two young girls can turn into deep hate and ultimately into murder being incited is shocking and hard to comprehend,” a court in the city of Arnhem said in a statement.

The killer, who Dutch media named only as Jinhua and who was 14 when he committed the crime, was sentenced in September to one year in juvenile detention.

(Reporting Gilbert Kreijger; Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Pravin Char)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Elmo puppeteer accused of underage relationship

NEW YORK (AP) — The puppeteer who performs as Elmo on "Sesame Street" is taking a leave of absence from the popular kids' show following allegations that he had a relationship with a 16-year-old boy.

Sesame Workshop says puppeteer Kevin Clash denies the charges, which were first made in June by the alleged partner, who by then was 23.

In a statement issued Monday, Sesame Workshop said its investigation found the allegation of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated. But it said Clash exercised "poor judgment" and was disciplined for violating company policy regarding Internet usage. It offered no details.

At his request, Clash has been granted a leave of absence in order to "protect his reputation," Sesame Workshop says. No duration for the leave was specified. Clash has voiced and animated Elmo since the 1980s.

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