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Planned $45M Pulse memorial faces resistance by some shooting victims

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 15:49:45 -0500

ORLANDO, Fla. -- At 1912 S. Orange Avenue, hundreds of visitors a day pay their respects as rainbow flags dance in the wind.

Some stop by and gaze at the dozens of faces making up the memorial's bright, colorful walls. Others scrawl messages like "love wins" on the tall, towering sign at the property's edge -- a sign that reads just one word: "Pulse."

Once a gay nightclub just down the road from Orlando Regional Medical Center, Pulse has been transformed into a shrine: honoring the lives of 49 people killed and another 53 injured after gunman Omar Mateen burst into the nightclub on June 12, 2016 and opened fire as the club celebrated Latin night.

The current Pulse memorial is a temporary one. Barbara Poma, the club's owner, has since founded the onePULSE Foundation, which is in the process of putting the finishing touches on a $45 million plan to build a permanent memorial.

But the ambitious and costly plan is meeting resistance by some family members of Pulse victims, who feel it's a tad exploitative.

"It’s obnoxious!" said Christine Leinonen, whose son, Christopher Leinonen, 32, was killed in the attack. "It’s an obnoxious thing to do!”

Her fear is that the project will become just another Orlando tourist attraction, standing in the shadows of the huge theme parks the home of Disney World has to offer.

Leinonen is in favor of a modest memorial that yields individual reflection -- not a massive endeavor that she believes will glamorize her son's death and profit off of the tragedy.

"Build another volcano ride…or slide. Build another Space Mountain ride," said Leinonen. "But don’t capitalize on my son’s brutal murder."

But proponents of the project believe the site of the mass shooting deserves a permanent marker that honors the victims. Poma said that some details still must be fleshed out but the vision would be to build a brand new memorial where the nightclub once stood and a museum just a block away.

"What’s most important is that we make sure what happened here is always remembered. Never erased," said Poma. "The most important thing we do is preserve that. Preserve the history and the story of those that were not only killed but survived.”

When asked about the accusations made regarding the project, Poma defended the decision to move forward.

"Museums are not tourist attractions," she said. "They’re educational institutions. And that is what the museum will be."

Poma said that since the beginning, a primary focus has been to work closely with the affected families. While she acknowledges that not everyone will come to a complete agreement, she claims the majority of families who lost loved ones in the attack are in favor of the project.

That includes Mayra Alvear, whose daughter Amanda Alvear, 25, went to the club that night and never came home. Alvear describes her late daughter as "smart" and "tough" and was looking toward the future with wide eyes.

"She wanted to find a cure for cancer because my older son died of cancer when he was 11 years old," said Alvear. "She wanted to do that. And I know she would have done it if it weren't for what happened."

Alvear serves as a victim's liaison with the onePULSE Foundation.

"The Pulse Memorial site, it's sacred ground. It's where our loved ones took their last breath," said Alvear. "It's a solemn peaceful place where I feel this strong force."

Alvear said there is ample -- if not absolute -- support among many of the victims' families for the Pulse Museum. She's hopeful that the project, once completed, will not only help tell her daughter's story but will also spread a message of love.

"It will be a place to honor their legacy. A legacy of love. To educate, to bring people together, to teach each other about our differences," Alvear said. "The museum is something that is really special. It's going to be a beacon of life. A beacon of hope. A beacon of learning and changing peoples' lives and peoples' hearts."

But the project has pitted Pulse survivors and family members of those who died against each other. And victims of gun violence across the country have also weighed in.

Leinonen founded the Community Coalition Against a Pulse Museum, which has collected more than 100 signatures from people tied to mass shootings across the county who want the project stopped. More than 30 of those who signed it are directly or indirectly related to the shooting at Pulse.

Michael Morales is one of them.

"They're treating it like a circus and I don't like that," Morales said.

He was at the club that night with his then-fiance, Martin Benitez, 33. Their wedding was slated to be held in 2018, but Benitez was killed during the shooting.

"I miss him every day," said Morales. "I have a little corner in my house with his pictures."

Morales may have survived the attack, but the shooting left him severely injured. He said that later this month, he will be having his thirteenth surgery. Morales said that he would prefer to see the foundation place more of an emphasis on helping survivors.

He, like Leinonen, is hoping to see the victims respectfully honored but also fears the museum will inevitably profit off of the attack. In his eyes, the project, in its current form, has not helped heal his physical or emotional pain.

"Instead of doing a museum and all of these flashy things, tear down the club and do a real memorial," Morales said. "A place where you can go and think about what happened."

Currently, the onePULSE foundation estimates that 300 people visit the Pulse Interim Memorial each day. Those visitation numbers are expected to rise when the project is complete.

Poma is hopeful that with more visitors, more people can leave with a valuable takeaway. She said organizers hope to break ground on the project in 2021. They're hopeful the new memorial and museum will be completed in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

"I think coming here," Poma said, "to see what hate does -- but how love wins -- can inspire change."

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Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:59:00 -0500

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Daewoo Founder Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

Tue, 30 May 2006 09:09:35 -0400

A Seoul court on Tuesday sentenced the founder and former chairman of collapsed conglomerate Daewoo to 10 years in prison for a range of charges including embezzlement and accounting fraud.

The Seoul Central District Court said it also ordered Kim Woo-choong, 69, to forfeit more than 21 trillion won ($22 billion) and pay a fine of 10 million won ($10,600).

Kim was indicted in June last year on charges of multi-trillion won accounting fraud, illegal financing and diverting funds out of the country. He was also accused of embezzlement and breach of trust.

A severe sentence was "unavoidable" since Kim was engaged in activities that contributed to Daewoo Group's bankruptcy and hurt South Korea's image abroad, the court said in the ruling.

"It is doubtful whether (Kim) is truly repentant as he tries to dodge the responsibility and justify his actions," the ruling said.

It wasn't immediately known whether Kim would appeal the ruling.

He was found guilty of the charges, including over 20 trillion won in accounting fraud, 9.8 trillion won worth of illegal financing, and diverting 19 trillion won out of the country, Judge Nho Yu-kyong said. He was also found to have embezzled $100 million, she said.

Kim started as a textile salesman in 1967, building an empire that came to stand among the largest conglomerates, or "chaebol," in South Korea.

Daewoo collapsed under massive debts in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, when the South Korean government was forced to accept a $58 billion International Monetary Fund bailout.

Parts of Daewoo were broken up and sold, with Detroit-based General Motors Corp. (GM)acquiring a major stake in Daewoo Motor to create GM Daewoo in 2002.

Kim fled the country in 1999, living mostly in France, until returning to South Korea last June to face charges.

The court ruling was less severe than what prosecutors had sought. Earlier this month, prosecutors requested the court order Kim to serve 15 years in prison and forfeit 23.4 trillion won ($24.8 billion).

On Both Sides of the Atlantic, a Debate Over Quality of Life

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:59:15 -0500

Two legal cases dealing with the rights of family members to decide life or death for a critically injured loved one have touched off a storm of controversy on both sides of the Atlantic, landing one mother in prison for life, and locking a young couple in battle with the very doctors charged with keeping their infant alive.

In East London, England, 57-year-old Frances Inglis’ self-confessed mercy killing of her 22-year-old son Thomas, who doctors said would live the rest of his life in a vegetative state after a catastrophic accident, made headlines when courts ruled her act was murder and sentenced her to life in prison.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in Edmonton, Canada, a young couple is engaged in a life-and-death court fight, trying to keep doctors from essentially doing the same thing to their infant son who suffered brain damage.

While there's an ocean separating these two cases, the same question applies to both: Who should have the authority to decide whether another person lives or dies? And does any one person have the right to decide whether someone else's life isn't worth living?

Experts say it is a complex issue that involves legal and ethical questions.

Inglis' son, Thomas, sustained serious head injuries after he jumped out of a moving ambulance in July 2007. He went into a vegetative state, but was not terminally ill. Two months after his injury, Inglis injected her son with an overdose of heroin. But nurses resuscitated him -- and she was charged with attempted murder. One year later, while out on bail, Inglis successfully administered the heroin overdose and killed her son.

In Canada, Isaiah May was born in October 2009 with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. He was deprived of oxygen, and had inhaled amniotic fluid and fecal matter. Isaiah is still alive; he requires a ventilator to breathe, and he is fed through a tube.

Doctors, who by Canadian law have the right to pull the plug, say Isaiah has no hope of getting better. But the baby's parents Isaac and Rebecka May, took the hospital to court and won a temporary extension. The Mays are waiting for another doctor to perform an independent assessment on their son.

"I think there are times when euthanasia may be justified," says Dr. Rosamond Rhodes, a professor of medical education and director of bioethics education at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

"The case of Francis Inglis is clearly a case of euthanasia from her point of view," she told FoxNews.com. "She (Inglis) saw it as a benefit to her son. She saw that ending the life of her son would be better than allowing it to continue. And for a great personal sacrifice, she was willing to do this for her son."

Rhodes said it could be seen as an "extreme offense to personal dignity to be kept alive in that type of condition."

"In terms of quality of life, if someone is actually experiencing only pain with no foreseeable alleviation of the pain or improvement and no meaningful interaction of the world… you can say for them… ending their life is a benefit. You can make that argument," Rhodes said.

On the other hand, Rhodes does not believe the Canadian case has anything to do with euthanasia.

"For the parents, they’re saying, ‘for my baby to continue life,’ is a benefit to them and they don’t want to end it," Rhodes said. "While the hospital is saying he will never recover, and it’s clearly a medical fact that they have established.

"Certainly if the parents have machines in their home and are bearing the burden and expenses, then it’s their decision. But they’re asking the state to provide the care. It’s a legitimate question of social justice. The state only has so many resources."

Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and Fox News contributor, said individuals should not be given the power to decide life and death, because it will ultimately be misused.

"If individuals can decide independently when enough is enough, and life should end, then we would be on a very slippery slope indeed," Ablow said. "(What about) parents of paralyzed children who see them face so many daunting obstacles in life, would they conclude their lives should end? What about mentally retarded individuals?"

As a psychiatrist, Ablow said, he wonders if Inglis had a motive other than ending her son’s suffering, "including her own desire to be done with the admittedly excruciating journey of visiting him in the hospital and seeing him so damaged."

Perhaps in the past, Inglis also felt her life was hopeless or not worth living, Ablow said.

On the other hand, Ablow said that the Canadian couple – Isaac and Rebecka May – are "demonstrating tremendous psychological strength in lobbying for their baby Isaiah to continue life-sustaining treatment. …No doctor can predict with absolute certainty that some level of recovery is not possible."

If these cases were being presented in America, the law is pretty clear-cut as to what would happen, said Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst .

Only two states — Oregon and Washington — have Death by Dignity Acts, which allow a person to be euthanized — and only if two physicians certify the person knows what they are doing and they agree the person’s case is terminal.

Since Thomas Inglis was in a vegetative state and could not express whether he wished to live or die, his mother would have been charged with murder in the U.S., Napolitano said.

Frances Inglis could have withheld extraordinary assistance -- breathing machines and nourishment -- if two or more doctors agreed that Thomas would not come out of his vegetative state, but "in no states can you affirmatively end the life of a person in a persistent vegetative state," Napolitano said.

In the case of the Mays, the hospital would have to abide by the parents’ wishes, since they are the next of kin.

"In this country, the consent of the guardian is an absolute necessity," Napolitano said. "If the hospital says yes, and the guardian says no, the patient stays on life support."

Napolitano says the Canadian case is political, because health care is paid for by the government, and the government most likely does not want to pay for Isaiah’s care any longer.

Click here to read more about the May's story.

Click here to read more about Frances Inglis' story.

Fox 411: 'Hanoi Jane': An Urban Myth Re-Examined

Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:37:32 -0500

'Hanoi Jane': An Urban Myth Re-Examined

'Hanoi Jane': An Urban Myth Re-Examined

The question of Jane Fonda’s actions during her visit to Hanoi in 1972 still raises a lot of emotion. Over the weekend, this column received several dozen e-mails calling her a traitor.

There were also several dozen e-mails, however, that cited Fonda’s actual activities in Hanoi. These e-mails were erroneous in the opinion of some former POWs and the U.S. government. Fonda — in error for posing for photos on tanks, etc. — is innocent of most of the accusations leveled at her in these missives.

I alert you first to a very good Web site run by an American Legion post in Arizona. The address is www.post44.org/misc/fonda.html. From that site it’s also possible to email the POWs who have become part of the stories and ask them what happened.

To wit: Although Fonda did go to Hanoi, participated in a staged press conference with American POWs and posed for some regrettable pictures, she did not — I repeat did not — turn in the names of American POWs to the North Vietnamese military. There was no passing of pieces of crumpled paper from Americans to her. Her main speech, the text of which follows, simply describes her observations of the North Vietnamese people as fellow human beings.

This does not excuse what Fonda did or get her off the hook. Stanley Karnow, a highly respected journalist and author of the impressively reviewed Vietnam: A History, told me on Saturday: "I think what she did was reprehensible. And it’s not like the North Vietnamese took her seriously. If they wanted to make a statement to the U.S., they knew how to do it. Not through fringe activists, but through regular channels."

Nevertheless, Karnow told me — when I presented him with the many urban myths this column was sent about Fonda’s visit: "I’ve never heard of any of this."

Because they didn’t happen.

Fonda never came in contact with someone named Col. Larry Carrigan. She also was never spat at by a POW, who in turn was tortured as punishment for his actions.

In fact, Cora Weiss — a fringe anti-war activist who organized trips to Hanoi in those days — said in a previously published interview: "We asked Jane if she wanted to meet American POW pilots and she declined."

The point of this? As time has passed and the Internet has become a breeding ground for falsehoods, the story of Fonda’s trip has been turned inside out.

Was it wrong for her to go to Hanoi? Yes. Does she regret it? Again, yes.

Fonda first apologized during an interview with Barbara Walters in 1988. Fonda said, "I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did," she began. "I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families."

Last summer, in Oprah Winfrey’s magazine, O, Fonda reiterated her apology: "I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless."

Indeed, Fonda’s contrition was manifested when she produced a much-praised movie in 1977, Coming Home, which highlighted the plight of returning American servicemen, especially those who had been wounded. And it wasn’t like this was fashionable at the time.

What did Fonda actually say during her famous radio broadcast from Hanoi? Here is the text, in full. It comes from a transcript made by the U.S. Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas, HR 16742, 19-25 Sept., 1972, page 7671. Read it carefully; the committee did. It did not find Fonda to be in any way committing treason.

What’s most interesting about it is that Fonda never once blames American soldiers in her speech. She blames then President Richard Nixon for waging a war against the North Vietnamese and using civilians as targets. The anger and resentment toward Fonda and others who went to Hanoi will never be forgotten by those who were in the military or who had relatives who served in Vietnam. But to cloud what really happened with falsehoods only makes the truth less powerful.

Finally, let’s not forget that Jane Fonda is not the person who sent the U.S. military to Southeast Asia or continued to send them there despite countless domestic protests. She was not a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or President of the United States or a member of his Cabinet. It’s quite possible Fonda’s reputation suffers in part from anger displacement.

Herewith is her famous speech:

"This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life — workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the South to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me — the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while U.S. imperialists are bombing their country.

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam — these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while U.S. bombs fell nearby. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets — schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly — and I pressed my cheek against hers — I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, North and South, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created — being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools — the children learning, literacy — illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders — and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism — I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh."

Fox 411: Is Jive Records Jive Talkin'? Songwriter Says He's Never Been Paid

Tue, 19 Jun 2001 14:05:25 -0400

Is Jive Records Jive Talkin'? Songwriter Says He's Never Been Paid | Memento Opens Today in NY and LA | J-Lo Sinks Low as Puffy Awaits Verdict | Oscar Voting Wraps Up — Ballots Due Monday

Is Jive Records Jive Talkin'? Songwriter Says He's Never Been Paid

Something's rotten in Denmark, more or less.

Herbie Crichlow, the British-born songwriter of such Backstreet Boys hits as last year's "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely" and 1997's "Quit Playing Games With My Heart," told me he has yet to be paid for his work. And he's owed something in the ballpark of $3 million for albums and singles sold by the group through Jive/Zomba Records.

Crichlow has been living in Sweden for the last several years, writing songs at the "factory" called Cheiron Productions, owned by Max Martin (real name: Karl Martin Sandberg). Martin has become infamous for mass producing pop goop for acts like Backstreet, 'N Sync and Britney Spears. His company does all its business through Zomba Music, the parent of Jive Records, for which all those acts record.

Interestingly, Martin is rarely credited as a solo writer, but instead with established pairs of writers whose songs he supposedly "tweaks," then owns the rights to. Crichlow is one of the writers whose work Martin co-owns and claims co-authorship.

But Crichlow said that last year, when he started asking Martin to show him the money, Martin turned on him and the relationship soured. Crichlow and his manager Johnny Onyems figure Herbie, father of two, is owed about $3 million for five Backstreet hits including the radio smashes "Show Me" and "Quit Playing Games." Herbie has also written European hits for acts like 3T and Robin.

Crichlow said that Zomba, which administers the rights and writes the checks, is claiming that he was signed to Mega Records in Denmark, which was in turn sold to Edel America Records, and so they have had trouble getting the accounting done.

"That's ridiculous," both Herbie and Johnny O told me recently. "They know how many records have been sold. It's millions."

Zomba/Jive's Richard Blackstone did not respond to calls about Crichlow's claim — just as Herbie predicted. "I've tried to get an answer from Blackstone and from Barry Weiss, but they won't return calls," he said. So Crichlow has hired Atlanta-based powerhouse music attorney Joel Katz to sort out and resolve these problems.

Crichlow has received his performance royalty payments (meaning radio play) from ASCAP for his songs — but the money that's owed is from sales. And worldwide sales for albums and singles with his songs have been staggering.

Crichlow said that because of the fallout between him and Martin, he was banned from having songs on the Backstreet Boys' recent Black and Blue album. That record has turned out to be a sales disappointment, with only 4.8 million copies sold in the U.S. to date, according to SoundScan.

"I submitted a track called 'Over You,' and they said the album was closed. But then, after they listened to my song, they said the whole album was being reconsidered. You see, 'Over You' was the strongest thing they'd heard. But they couldn't use it because I was in this fight with them. I had to get the track back."

Backstreet's previous album, Millenium, on which Crichlow's "Show Me" was a hit single, sold 11.7 million copies in this country.

Last year, Martin shut down the incredibly successful Cheiron Productions with little notice. He put out a press release that strained the boundaries of credulity: "After eight years of incredible joy but also enormous pain (the death of our beloved partner Denniz Pop) it's time to move on. Cheiron was created with the intention of having fun, making a few hits and not getting too serious about it. At the end of this year we have fulfilled our commitments and are able to do as we please. We feel that the 'hype' of Cheiron has become bigger than itself and it's time to quit while we're ahead."

But Martin immediately restarted Cheiron as Merlin Productions. The reason, according to sources, was that the widow of deceased Cheiron partner Dag "Denniz PoP" Volle owned 50 percent of the former company. "And Martin didn't want to split the money with her anymore."

The business of corporate songwriting has been very lucrative for Martin. Another partner, Tom Talomaa, now owns homes around the world including one in Key West, Fla.

Merlin, according to Onyems and Crichlow, employs a staggering 27 producers. And to think, the first big group out of Sweden, the Shocking Blue, sang their hit "I'm Your Venus" phonetically in 1970 because they didn't know any English.

Crichlow, meantime, loaded with hot demo tapes and more hit songs, is busy shopping among the labels for a publishing/producing deal of his own. My guess is he'll be snapped up very shortly.

Memento Opens Today in NY and LA

Maybe the best movie I've seen in two years, Christopher Nolan's Memento, opens today in New York and Los Angeles. Over the next few weeks it will come to your local Cineplex.

Memento is a very deftly assembled mystery about a man without short-term memory who is searching for his wife's killer. Guy Pearce, of L.A. Confidential, is the main character. Joe Pantoliano — the great character actor currently in The Sopranos but famous from Risky Business and Bound — is possibly his friend, or a potential enemy. Same for Chocolat's Carri-Ann Moss.

Released by a small independent distributor, Memento runs the risk of being ignored or not even found by audiences at all. What a shame this would be. Here's a chance for a great film made outside the studio system to register and resonate. This is a movie made with the indie spirit, as well as intelligence and flair. I'm hopeful that a grassroots movement will sprout up, and turn Memento into an event.

J-Lo Sinks Low as Puffy Awaits Verdict

Jennifer Lopez's J-Lo album continues its downward spiral. SoundScan reported that the highly expensive sophomore effort by Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs' "gun moll" has yet to sell 1 million copies. As of Tuesday, J-Lo had found only 925,000 customers after seven weeks of release.

Interestingly, the single — "Love Don't Cost a Thing" — has done pretty well. But its title may say it all, since love seems to have cost Lopez a crucial million albums more that should have been sold already. Lopez is an expensive act for Sony Music, requiring a hefty seven-figure advance plus lots of extras.

On the other hand, Sony scores a slight victory this week with Aerosmith's Just Push Play debuting at No. 2 on the album charts. JPP sold around 225,000 copies. That's not huge, but not bad either, considering the group has been together since before the Bicentennial. Their terrific Super Bowl appearance probably helped — that, and the fact that the record sounds like unembarrassed, unabashed Aerosmith. No apologies, no regrets. How unusual.

Oscar Voting Wraps Up — Ballots Due Monday

It's almost over — 7 long months of buzz, hype and B.S. On Monday, Oscar ballots are due back at the Academy. And on Sunday, March 25, we'll finally see those envelopes get ripped open.

Has there been fallout? I hear Sean Connery fired his publicist, Nancy Seltzer, after striking out at every awards show for his work in Finding Forrester. I love Sean Connery, but frankly there was nowhere to go with that one. Finding Forrester was a mushy mess. Better luck next time, Sean.

Who really got gypped? Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp, who played John and Robert Kennedy, from Thirteen Days. They each deserved some recognition and got none. I have to laugh, too. Culp appears in some kind of weird learning video on public access here in New York. It's like English as a second language or something. Just shows you what our talented actors have to do while waiting for a break.

If there are some non-hanging chads out there, here are my weekend suggestions: Javier Bardem, from Before Night Falls, is the new dark horse favorite for Best Actor. And the Chocolat screenplay, adapted by Robert Nelson Jacobs from Joanne Harris's novel, is my choice for screenplay that didn't go through 100 rewrites. Ang Lee must be Best Director. And Ennio Morricone's score for Malena is a cinch, since the venerable Italian composer has never won an Oscar. Of course, my original choice for Best Supporting Actress — Frances McDormand in Almost Famous — seems not to have a shot. So I'll go with Judi Dench in Chocolat.

And then wait for next year, and Memento. Academy voters are a lot like that movie's hero — they have no short-term memory. So I'll be reminding you all year long about this wonderful film.

Salman Rushdie Steals Film from Renée Zellweger… Almost

Thu, 05 Apr 2001 15:42:55 -0400

Salman Rushdie and Renée Zellweger | Hugh Grant | Mariah Carey and Sony | All About Eve — in Real Life!

Salman Rushdie Steals Film from Renée Zellweger… Almost

Well, the fatwa issued by the Iranians all those years ago — a death warrant on the head of writer Salman Rushdie — obviously doesn't include Hollywood. Rushdie makes not a small cameo in the film version of Bridget Jones's Diary, which premiered in New York last night to much applause and smiles.

Rushdie, let's say, holds his own with star Renée Zellweger in a couple of scenes that show off his comic abilities. Who knows? Maybe Rushdie is onto a new career.

Certainly star Zellweger cements her rapid rise to fame with her star turn as Bridget Jones. With an impeccable English accent, Renée — who's from Texas, born of a Norwegian mother and Swiss father — lights up the screen (as they used to say). Just as Melanie Griffith did in Working Girl, Renée is the centerpiece of almost every scene in the movie. She is more charming than ever, and I would wager, set for Oscar and Golden Globe nominations next fall.

At the premiere she worked like a dog, doing one-on-one interviews with press before getting anything to eat. "I haven't even talked to my mother," she said of the very elegant blond woman sitting with perfect posture on one of the uncomfortable looking couches. While Renée's mom waited patiently for her, her dad joined us.

"Can you believe I was sitting next to my dad through that whole movie?" she asked. "It's pretty racy!" Her dad didn't seem to mind the very tame sex scenes, but "all that cursing!" Renée said, "I was blushing!"

Next Zellweger will film White Oleander, the novel that soared to the top of the best seller lists when Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club last year. "I just do two weeks' worth of work on it," she said, "then I pile into my truck and head east." East, as in New York? "No, east — to Texas! I'm going to see some friends there and hang out." If there's a strike in Hollywood come summer, Zellweger says, "I will support it any way I can."

Hugh Grant, for the Defense

If Hugh Grant were a witness on the stand, a good lawyer would rip him to shreds. He bobs back and forth while he answers questions, and looks from side to side. I don't know what he's guilty of, but it's something.

Grant has previously played charming romantic leads in his films. In Bridget Jones, he's a cad, very unlikable, and a willing villain. When I asked him in person last night which character was more like the real Hugh, he said, "I wouldn't mind having a cocktail with either of them." His eyes then did this thing where they just rolled back and forth through his head like one of those car-window stuffed dogs. I'm told that his interview in the new Talk magazine, by Holly Millea, starts with the line "I'm too drunk to do this interview." Interesting, huh?

Grant is also sporting a new buzz haircut and a very drawn, lean look in his face. Elizabeth Hurley, come home!

Some other guests at the Bridget Jones premiere included Charlie's Angels actor Sam Rockwell; Erin Brockovich's Aaron Eckhart; Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky; twice-Oscar-nominated actress Sylvia Miles; and Saturday Night Live's great talent Ana Gasteyer (someone get this girl her own series, fast).

Bridget Jones's Diary also stars Colin Firth, who did not make the party because his wife is giving birth in Italy. But Firth holds up his third of this triangle and makes the film a total success as a chick flick, date movie, romantic comedy. Studios are always searching for the next While You Were Sleeping or Four Weddings and a Funeral. This is it.

Not uncoincidentally, Bridget is written by Richard Curtis, who also gave us Four Weddings and Notting Hill. Curtis has a formula, and I'll tell you what it is. He surrounds his main character with oddball friends who love and admire the person. It was Hugh Grant in Notting Hill and Four Weddings. It's Renée here. This Greek chorus shows the audience how to appreciate the hero or heroine, casting a warm glow over them.

The zany comedy is then disbursed to the chorus, and to other minor characters (like parents) while the hero(oine)'s foibles are only exaggerated so much. In the case of Bridget, Renée plays her like Georgie Girl, Rhoda, and Lucy Ricardo all rolled into one. Her zaniness is lovable, and — you have the feeling — correctable by her suitor at some point in the fictional future.

Bridget Jones will be a huge, huge hit precisely because Curtis has become a master of this formula. And rather than being predictable, his work is comforting, intelligent, and witty. How nice for all of us.

Mariah Carey Takes Her Act Away From Sony

Yesterday, the New York Daily News's Mitchell Fink reported that Mariah Carey had finally left Columbia Records for greener pastures. She signed a very lucrative recording contract with Virgin Records, a division of EMI. Virgin is also home to Janet Jackson and The Rolling Stones.

For Mariah, this was presumably her escape to freedom from ex-husband Sony CEO Tommy Mottola. However, Carey had owed Sony one more album, which was almost recorded. It's the soundtrack to her fall movie, All that Glitters. The first single is due for release in June. Mottola apparently let Carey take the soundtrack with her to Virgin rather than release it himself.

One wonders though what Sony's owners in Japan must think. One of the biggest stars in the record business just waltzed away to a competitor, with an album that was theirs under her arm. Jennifer Lopez was being groomed as Carey's successor, but now that her J-LO album has been a financial disappointment, the company will have to start looking elsewhere.

And Carey, I predict, will have a hit with the movie and the soundtrack. Director Vondie Curtis-Hall tells me that Carey has acquitted herself well in the film. "She won't be embarrassed," he told me last week. So all the nay-sayers, myself usually among them, will have to carp about something else.

On the brighter side, Sony does have the group Train and their album Drops of Jupiter. It's probably too sophisticated for the average teen of 2001, but boy, it's good. Just like the old days, when bands were musically adept and had melodic rock songs. It made me want to get out my Poco and Spirit albums.

All About Eve — in Real Life!

The local press and glitterati are atwitter: One of our own, a very wise older person with much respect and great celebrity standing, has been taken in by an evil career-climber with a hidden agenda.

So the word has been for the last several days. An internal matter for sure for this bellwether of star behavior, but fans and onlookers are shaking heads. A reliable second-in-command has been disloyally dumped and replaced with this newcomer — whose reputation for overzealous ambitiousness seems to be known to all except his or her new employer and fan.

The names? I won't say for now — but if this scenario plays out, we may be hearing more very soon. And who says there are no new stories left to tell?

Fox 411: The Best of 2000, Part 2

Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:37:31 -0500

05.24.00: Mark Hughes

6.20.00: Carlos Leon

8.23.00: Darcy LaPier

10.2.00: Debra Winger

2000: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

Here's just a sampling of some things that either happened on their own in 2000, or were helped along by this column. Some themes: the continuing adventures of characters like Herbalife widow Darcy LaPier, the saga of Mayor Rudy Giuliani's deteriorating marriage, the still-unreleased Warren Beatty movie Town and Country, and US Weekly twice killing negative reviews of albums by Jann Wenner's pals — Don Henley and Paul Simon — only to replace them with positive ones.

One theme I've left out — the sad spin-out of money manager to the stars Dana Giacchetto. Arrested in April, re-arrested a week later on suspicion of trying to leave the country, Giacchetto will be sentenced Jan. 17 in federal court. He's been in prison since April. Giacchetto's secret life is so interesting, this column will offer an exclusive look into how it all worked, in mid-January 2001.

In the meantime, Happy New Year. Try and catch one of this column's favorite films of 2000 — Crouching Tiger, Almost Famous, Chocolat, Malena or Erin Brockovich — over the holiday weekend.

5.24.00:Van Damme's Ex Becomes Diet Guru's Widow

There's no better story right now in Los Angeles than that of Mark Hughes' untimely death. His widow, to whom he was married for less than three years, is Darcy LaPier, former wife of Jean Claude Van Damme and billionaire Ron Rice — and that was just from the '90s.

The 44-year-old founder of Herbalife was found dead a few days ago in his $25 million Malibu mansion. The initial cause of death was said to be natural causes. An autopsy is pending because really, few healthy looking Americans under the age of 45 drop dead of natural causes. Especially those whose career was devoted to "health and well being."

Hughes should leave a neat little fortune behind, though, based on hawking ridiculous diet products for the last 20 years. You've probably seen him in those infomercials. He was the one with the '70s shag haircut. His customers would come up on a podium and announce their miraculous weight loss. "Before I met Mark, I weighed 350 pounds! Now I'm a top model!" Or some such nonsense. It was always fun to watch late at night.

Herbalife also served as an Amway-like sales tool: a big part of the corporation's profits came from turning average Joes into salespeople who worked on commission.

Nevertheless, Hughes was apparently in a fight to regain control of the company when he died. Herbalife had gone public during the last few years, but Hughes was attempting to take it private again. He was also preparing to build a $50 million, 45,000 square foot Mediterranean villa in the Benedict Canyon north of Beverly Hills. His prospective neighbors had been very unhappy with the plan.

And who stands to gain now that Hughes is dead? His wife, presumably. And she happens to be Darcy LaPier. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. Darcy was previously married to Jean Claude Van Damme, whom she divorced only two years ago. Prior to that she was married to Ron Rice, who owns Hawaiian Tropic. How did she meet Rice? As a contestant in a Miss Hawaiian Tropic beauty pageant, of course.

LaPier was married to Van Damme in 1994. She tried to get out once in 1996 and eventually divorced him in 1997. In 1998, she married Hughes, which is fast work no matter how you slice it. Viva Hollywood! They have one child.

Hughes leaves behind not only Herbalife itself but the Herbalife Foundation for Families. In 1998, the Foundation — according to its Form 990 filed with the government — claimed about $12 million in assets and dispersed just under $500,000 to charitable organizations. One of its disbursements, for $100,000, was to a building fund for an orphanage in, of all places, Monaco, playground of the rich and international tax haven.

Let me say now: I wouldn't mind being an orphan in Monaco. I hear the caviar at recess time is exceptional.

Meanwhile, here's six degrees of separation between the Hughes death and the 1994 slayings of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The executive director of Herbalife Foundation, Joan Kardashian, is the sister-in-law of Robert Kardashian, O.J. Simpson's best friend and ally before he turned on him after Simpson was acquitted in his murder trial. I can't imagine there is ever a dull dinner conversation at their house.

6.20.00: Scientology Accused of Harassing Moviemaker

Blasphemy, the first movie to star Carlos Leon, is a little jinxed if you ask me.

Over the weekend I told you that the film was executive produced by Andrew Scudiero, a convicted felon with mob ties and enough prosecutors after him to fill a courtroom.

That would be enough trouble for an independent film, you'd think. But there's more.

Director John Mendoza tells me that members of Scientology have been harassing him over a scene in the movie. In fact, Mendoza says, it all started before the movie was even made.

"We have an actor in one scene who plays L. Ron Hubbard," Mendoza told me. "He tries peddling some Scientology books to an actor playing Jesus. Before we shot one scene, the Scientologists tried to stop it. They asked me how much money I wanted to take the scene out of the script — even though I have no idea how they got the script. I told them, jokingly, $150,000."

When Mendoza went ahead with the film and with the scene, he says that both he and Leon were followed by Scientologists. Stalked might be a better word. "It was very scary," he says. Leon, who is also the father of Madonna's child, Lourdes, told friends he'd been followed as well.

Nevertheless, Mendoza, says, the scene stayed in the movie. Now he will start screening Blasphemy to distributors and hope like crazy there are no more problems.

Now, what does Scientology think of all this? Pam Shannon, public affairs director, wrote to me late last evening. She said:

"We don't care about a couple of lines in a film. That's the price you pay for prominence and popularity. But Mendoza is being dishonest, what he is not telling you is that when a Scientology parishioner contacted him, Mendoza made him an offer to take out the references about L. Ron Hubbard if the Church paid him $150,000. Needless to say, we didn't even consider doing this. Mendoza now seems to be resorting to a parasitic marketing scheme, trying to leech off our name recognition."

Sounds good, doesn't it? Only a couple of problems. This reporter found Mendoza all on his own, without any prompting or solicitation from the director. And Shannon does not say why a "parishioner" contacted Mendoza in the first place. The director stands by his original statement.

8.23.00: Herbalife Widow Looks for Hubby No. 5

OK — so no one believed me when I told you what would happen after Mark Hughes died. But his widow, Darcy LaPier, the much-married va-voom 35-year-old ex-wife of Jean Claude Van Damme, hit the Hamptons this past weekend like a hurricane. "She's definitely on the prowl," says one observer.

This item will remind you of a Jackie Collins novel.

Darcy, who apparently has accepted Hughes' untimely death, was besotted by hunky, younger Argentinean polo player Nacho Figueras last Friday night at a party for the Preservation of Hearst Castle. (Yes, yes, she was hoping to turn him into an appetizer, claro que si!)

At another party, on Saturday night, for the Animal Rescue Fund, she flipped for the 21-year-old son of local NBC newscaster Chuck Scarborough.

According to my source, when she spotted designer David Yurman's bejeweled dog collars and leashes, which were on auction, she said: "I hope they're big enough for my boyfriend." When asked who that was, she responded: "I'm looking for him now."

Let's review: Hughes, 44, was found dead in their Malibu bedroom on May 21. It turns out he was mixing liquor with anti-depressants and had been on a four-day binge when he finally conked out. Darcy, according to the police, noted that he wasn't feeling well, but didn't get concerned until she couldn't wake him.

"Gotta Fly Now," the theme from Rocky, was played at Hughes' tacky memorial service at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Darcy wore chic black and an Alexis Carrington-type hat and implored the audience to "keep selling" Hughes' much-maligned health products.

Darcy's previous husbands include Van Damme, with whom she has a child, and Hawaiian Tropic founder Ron Rice, with whom she also has a kid. Grieving be damned, she posed for pictures in this month's Talk magazine. My source commented upon spending time with LaPier over the weekend: "She's stunning, sizzling, a real diva."

Darcy stayed in Southampton with wealthy friends Rick and Kathy Hilton, whose two wayward teenage daughters, Paris and Nicky, are the subject of their own scandalous piece in the current Vanity Fair. Paris posed naked for the magazine, but believe me, that's another story altogether. The Hiltons' last most famous houseguest was Nicole Simpson biographer Faye Resnick.

Let's put it this way, it's not exactly Gertrude Stein's salon out there.

10.2.00: Debra Winger Makes Film Shrouded In Secrecy

Without any announcement or fanfare, Debra Winger is shooting a new movie. Even her old publicist didn't know until I told him that Winger — whose last movie was the forgettable 1995 release Forget Paris with Billy Crystal — is down in Oxford, Mississippi making something called Big Bad Love. Filming on the low budget feature began on Sept. 14 and should last another two to three weeks.

Big Bad Love is directed by Winger's husband, Arliss Howard, an actor she met when they made Wilder Napalm in 1993. Howard's acting credits include Amistad and several other films but this makes his directing debut. His brother Jim wrote the screenplay, which ties together several short stories by Oxford writer Larry Brown.

In the movie Winger plays the ex-wife of Howard's character, a struggling but failed writer.

Ironically, Big Bad Love is being produced by Barry Navidi, the Iranian born British producer whose last project, Divine Rapture, was aborted after seven days of filming in 1995. Winger was the co-star of that film with Marlon Brando, John Hurt, and Johnny Depp when that production ran out of money. Winger was said to be so unnerved by the experience that she decided to take a break, a long one.

Winger, who's in her mid-40s, has had an odd career. Her biggest commercial and artistic successes were An Officer and A Gentleman and Terms of Endearment.

Nominated twice for Oscars (for Terms and for Shadowlands), she gained a reputation as difficult and moody. Her choices for projects were also kind of weird: remember Mike's Murder, Wilder Napalm, A Dangerous Woman, Leap of Faith, The Sheltering Sky, and Everybody Wins? Though her performances were always on target, the material Winger chose was uniformly unfit for her.

(Divine Rapture was a comedy about a woman who dies while making love to her fisherman husband but comes back to life again at her funeral. Another poor choice of material for Winger, who may have dodged a bullet when it was canceled.)

So what's she been doing with herself? Raising two kids (one with Howard, and a teenager from her short, early marriage to Tim Hutton), and, according to one source, "teaching at Harvard."

Navidi told me Sunday: "We sent out a press release to the trade papers but no one called us. We wondered when the press would call." Nevertheless, at Winger's request, Big Bad Love is a closed set.

Winona Ryder Gets Hypnosis, Adam Sandler

Wed, 04 Apr 2001 12:54:54 -0400

Winona Ryder Gets Hypnosis, Adam Sandler | Fugee This: It's Another Wild Night in the Record Biz | Oscar This-and-That

Winona Ryder Gets Hypnosis, Adam Sandler

She can't stop smoking.

The talented young actress Winona Ryder, like many Americans, is addicted to cigarettes. So what's she going to do?

"Hypnosis," she told me last week. "I found a woman in Los Angeles who's supposedly famous for it. Her technique is supposed to work."

Ryder — who's almost as famous for dating as she is for acting — wants to be smoke-free when she joins Adam Sandler in his new movie this month, directed by actor Steven Brill (he appeared with Sandler in Big Daddy).

With her natural blond hair showing through for the first time, Winona is taking on the challenge of trying comedy — not dark comedy à la Heathers or Beetlejuice, but flat-out Sandleresque humor.

"It's my first one, and I'm looking forward to it," she said. Her previous accomplishments include dramatic turns in Girl, Interrupted, Little Women, The Age of Innocence, and How to Make an American Quilt.

Ryder doesn't even turn 30, by the way, until this October 29th.

As for Sandler, who's said to have a longtime girlfriend, all I can say is "look out." Nicotine-addicted or not, Winona usually gets close to her co-stars. Very close.

Fugee This: It's Another Wild Night in the Record Biz

Listen to me when I tell you that the record business is no fun. It is very cutthroat. I don't think movie execs would last a day in it.

(Well, I suppose we could ask Michael Fuchs that question. The successful head of HBO had his career foreshortened when he became the head of Warner Music years ago.)

So I do feel bad for Sony Music's Tommy Mottola. Why? Mariah Carey is gone, but not forgotten. On her Web site, www.mariahcarey.com, the scantily clad singer has left a voice message for fans.

It's only 11 seconds long, but basically Mariah sings, "I'm freeeeeeeeee." Followed by a laugh and a shriek. That says it all, no?

What could be worse? Tomorrow night the urbane rapper Wyclef Jean is performing at the 40th birthday party of Arista Records' executive vice president Jerry Blair.

You may recall that some months ago, Blair, who'd been head of promotion at Sony for 11 years, left the company to join L.A. Reid at Arista. This so infuriated Mottola when he found out about the negotiations that he had Blair removed from the Sony building on Madison Avenue by security guards.

A few months later, Wyclef was told he could stuff his label deal with Sony. Wyclef's manager David Sonnenberg, as I reported here, immediately called Clive Davis at J Records and voilá; — Clef Records is now with Davis.

J and Arista are both owned by BMG Music, which is trying to merge with EMI Music — the parent company of Virgin Records, which just signed Sony's biggest-selling artist, Mariah Carey.

Got that so far? There's more. About 18 months ago, Sony fired Michael Mauldin, the head of black music, who also happens to be the father of rapper Jermaine Dupri.

For quite a while, Mauldin had his eye on a teenager with a lot of talent who was signed to Columbia Records. Her name: Alicia Keys. When Alicia was eventually dropped by Columbia, she was picked up by Arista.

Last year, when Davis left Arista, he took Keys with him. Mauldin, meantime, is still her manager. Tonight, Keys performs the second of her two showcases at the Bottom Line in New York. Her debut album comes out in June.

From all signs so far, it looks like she will be a gigantic new star. It's not clear whether Mottola realizes that Mauldin, whom they fired, is now managing Keys, whom they dropped.

And Wyclef? Without Blair to help him, his second solo album for Columbia was a bust — even though it should have been a bestseller and a Grammy nominee.

Like its predecessor, The Carnival, the The Ecleftic is an ambitious, funny, musically complex piece of work. Now that Wyclef has moved his label away from Sony, it's only a matter of time before he probably tries to exit as a solo act.

Of course, his value to Sony remains because of one dangling carrot — the possibility that he will somehow make another Fugees record with Lauryn Hill.

But Hill seems adamantly opposed to that idea. As Wyclef raps on Ecleftic — "Fugee this, Fugee that, Where Fugee at?"

And to think that Barbra Streisand and James Brolin want to do a TV series about all this. Not even The Sopranos is this violent.

As for Sony, there's always that Train album. Love that Train album.

People ask me, "Why do you pick on Sony Music all the time?"

I'll tell you why. At least there are people to talk about. At Sony's former rival, Warner Bros. Records, the game is over. Eric Clapton's newest album, Reptile, was on and off the charts in record time. No one's run that shop for a long time, and it shows. At least Sony's out there developing and releasing some new artists!

Oscar This-and-That

It wasn't until I re-read some of the Oscar coverage I missed last week that something clicked. It was mentioned in Liz Smith's syndicated column that Houston socialite Lynn Wyatt was very much on the scene all Oscar weekend, particularly at the side of none other than Elton John.

What a dynamic friendship they have. I guess Wyatt is very interested, as everyone should be, in Elton's AIDS Foundation. It's one of the few charities run in the name of a celebrity that actually donates money to needy causes. ...

And this observation, from Fox News Channel's Bill McCuddy: "The red carpet is basically Vietnam with lip-gloss and sequins. The limo doors open, and Army Archerd cries, 'Incoming!'"

Ten Things Your Pharmacist Won't Tell You

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 12:01:45 -0400

1. "My prices will make you sick."
The pharmacy business should be all about uniformity. Go from drugstore to drugstore and your prescription should have the same name, dosage and instructions for use. Hey, the pharmacists even have the same white coats. So you might expect different pharmacies to charge the same prices. Think again.

Random phone calls made in early July 2000 to pharmacies in New York's Greenwich Village actually found little consistency in price: 30 tablets of Claritin sell for $72.99 at the chain store Value Drugs; at nearby competitor Duane Reade (DRD), the same exact order costs $82.49, a difference of 13%.

What gives? There are, of course, differences in the cost of doing business. Rents vary, as do other fixed expenses. But there's another factor at work, explains Larry Sassich, a pharmacist and researcher with the Public Citizens Health Research Group: "The pharmacist has to figure out his break-even point." Among the variables is the percentage of prescriptions filled that are covered by insurance. In pharmacies with a lot of covered customers, the break-even cost is shifted heavily to patients who are paying full price -- generally the elderly on Medicare or the working poor. "Pharmacists can't push around a big HMO," says Sassich, "but they can push around a little old lady."

In Florida, the attorney general's office recently took the state's Rite Aid (RAD) stores to court for jacking up prices in just that way. The charges? The drugstore chain raised prices for uninsured customers. While the judge dismissed the charges, Mary Leontakianakos, the attorney general's chief of economic crimes, thinks the practice is indefensible. "People would think that if you went to a medical professional with a prescription, that you would not have to haggle over the price like you would with a used-car salesman," she told the Legal Intelligencer. "We are very pleased with the judge's decision," says a Rite Aid spokesman. "It confirms what the company believed all along, that our pricing practices were and continue to be well within the law and consistent with pricing practices in many other industries."

The state of Florida does not agree, and has filed for a rehearing.

2. "I'm overworked..."
Have you noticed that your doctor is more likely than ever to prescribe medication? That is indeed the case. In 1998 pharmacists filled 2.5 billion prescriptions. That number is expected to clear 4 billion by 2005. Explains Frederick Mayer, a veteran pharmacist and president and chief executive of the Pharmacists Planning Service in California, "Managed care tells doctors to give patients medicine in order to get them in and out of the office quickly."

The upshot is that your pharmacist is probably working way harder than he should be. While the California Pharmacists Association recommends that its members fill a maximum of 15 prescriptions per hour, Mayer says he regularly works twice that fast. "Pharmacists are stressed out," adds Mayer. "And it's getting worse."

Not surprisingly, then, most pharmacists don't have the time to offer the counseling that federal and state law require with each prescription. In fact, in a recent undercover operation, Mark S. Herr, director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, found that nearly a third of Garden State pharmacists were not complying with that law.

3. "...so accidents will happen."
Back in 2000, a 20-year-old Danville, Calif., man named Daniel Hawkins had a prescription filled for penicillin. Hawkins took his medication and got violently ill. Days later, it was discovered that he had mistakenly been given Zoloft, an antidepressant. Such incidents are not isolated: In California alone, there were 359 complaints of prescription error filed with the state Pharmacy Board in 1999.

Those inside the industry blame such mix-ups on long hours, tough working conditions and a shortage of qualified personnel. And surely, the rapid pace of the work has much to do with the problem. "Things get so busy," says Mayer, "that I have no time to look at the computer screen or even to look inside the bottle and make sure that the pills I'm giving out are the right ones."

4. "I don't understand my merchandise."
These days, with many customers taking an interest in alternative medicine, most pharmacies sell profitable herbal remedies right at their prescription counter. This leads people to make impulsive herbal purchases while picking up their prescriptions. The problem, notes Brett Kay of the National Consumers League in Washington, D.C., is one of potentially harmful interactions. "While a lot of pharmacy computer systems have good drug-interaction software, herbal medicine is (usually) not kept in the database," he says. (The CVS (CVS) chain, to its credit, now has software that can incorporate any nonprescription supplements you are taking into your patient profile.)

And many pharmacists are woefully uninformed about the complications that can transpire when various drugs and herbs get taken in tandem. Even if your druggist sees you purchasing, say, the memory enhancer ginkgo as you pick up a prescription for the blood thinner Coumadin, studies have shown that he may fail to recognize that the two taken together increase your risk of internal bleeding and stroke. "It is a problem," says Varro E. Tyler, professor emeritus at the pharmacy school of Purdue University. "Herbs get sold in this country as dietary supplements and foods. But they are drugs. And all drugs have interactions."

5. "I count on kickbacks."
You might assume that pharmacists earn enough money by marking up medication. Apparently not. In fact, it is common practice for druggists to receive financial incentives for time spent trying to switch customers to medicines that cut costs for HMOs.

Some pharmacists are so hungry for the payments that they devote portions of each workday to calling physicians and pressing them to make prescription modifications. Dr. Martin D. Trichtinger, an internist in Jenkintown, Pa., says his practice receives as many as 15 such requests a day. And sometimes they make little medical sense. Once he got a call from a druggist who wanted to switch a patient with a heart condition from one beta blocker, Coreg, to another, Inderal.

"The change would have worsened this person's underlying condition, and there is a good chance that it could have been fatal," says Trichtinger, adding that he's never told whether the purpose of the switch is to save money for the patient or to make money for the pharmacist.

6. "Your private records are an open book."
In 1997, a Long Island, N.Y., woman in the midst of a nasty divorce and custody battle was prescribed an array of medications to treat her emotional problems -- problems that she had hoped to keep to herself. Then one day a letter came to her house on behalf of a pharmaceutical firm that was trying to get her to switch to a new antipsychotic drug. Her husband got his hands on that letter, explains Jeffrey R. Krinsk, a partner with the San Diego law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, and used it as fodder in their divorce battle. Armed with this proof that his soon-to-be-ex-wife was unstable, the husband got custody of their child.

Krinsk, who maintains that the woman's address and medical history came from her pharmacist without her authorization, views this as a case of privacy being invaded through leaked pharmaceutical records. And as he knows, this is not a rare occurrence. In 1999, the attorney launched a class action suit against CVS Pharmacies, among others, for allowing patients to become the targets of such mailings. "We are vigorously contesting what they say in court," says a CVS spokesman. "We believe that their case has no merit."

While the results of such privacy violations are not always as devastating as a loss of custody, they can surely be embarrassing. (The classic case, says Krinsk, is that of an unknowing wife discovering her husband's Viagra habit.) In either case, such breeches are surely unsuspected. "When you go to a pharmacist," notes former U.S. Justice Department attorney John Bentivoglio, who focuses on health-care fraud and privacy issues, "you don't expect that your personal information will be used for anything other than for you to get the right drug."

7. "I'm sneaky."
The rise of managed care has certainly made prescription drugs more affordable for many consumers. But it's also brought out the worst in pharmacists, who often resort to underhanded tricks in order to beef up their profit margins.

Jim Sheehan, an assistant U.S. attorney based in Philadelphia, found this out firsthand when he was on vacation in Florida and came down with strep throat. A pharmacist inspected Sheehan's prescription for antibiotics from a nearby urgent-care center and offered the following choice: "You can pay cash for the medicine and I will give it to you right now. Or else, if I need to run this through your insurance company, well, it'll take about 30 minutes since you're from out of state." Sheehan, who specializes in prosecuting health-care fraud cases, had heard of this scam. "The pharmacist figured that I had no idea of the retail price and he would have charged me whatever he wanted," he surmises. So he opted to wait. The process of checking with the insurance company, of course, ended up taking only a few minutes.

Other tricks Sheehan has come across are equally dodgy. He's seen pharmacists who buy deeply discounted drug samples from doctors and turn around and sell them at retail prices. He's also seen unethical druggists who will charge you your insurance plan's $10 co-payment even if the retail price for the drug is less than that.

8. "Your medication is stale."
Most people don't think that underworld crime figures can come between them and their Celebrex. Well, they haven't heard of Anthony "Tony Ripe" Civella. In 1991, Civella was convicted of buying $1 million worth of discounted drugs that were supposed to go to nursing homes -- where large quantities of medication are purchased at bulk prices and used quickly -- but instead found their way to retail pharmacies (at a tidy profit for Tony Ripe). The problem is called "drug diversion." In a typical case, crooked druggists buy diverted medication at reduced prices and in quantities way bigger than they're legally allowed to handle. By the time the last of the shipment reaches consumers, the pills are way out of date.

The big losers in all this are consumers who end up with stale medications that haven't been properly stored, explains Chris Whitley of the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City, Mo., where a case of drug diversion is pending trial. Secondly, he points out, there is a price paid even by the people who do not get stuck with any of these unintentional placebos: In the long run, he says, "it raises the cost to the consumer. Somewhere the drug manufacturers and wholesalers have to recoup their losses -- from having discounted drugs going to retail pharmacists."

9. "I don't just sell drugs. I make them."
Say your five-year-old needs a medication that comes only in pill form. If you think he'll do better with a liquid, you can ask your pharmacist to make the conversion himself -- right there at the store. It's called "compounding," and when done right, it's perfectly safe.

But some pharmacists compound drugs that already exist -- such as injectible morphine, for example -- because it's cheaper. "They do that so they can make more money," says Larry Sassich, explaining that greedy pharmacists purchase raw ingredients and whip up their own versions -- sometimes inadvertently weaker or more powerful than they ought to be. "Only the dangers get passed on; none of the savings," Sassich notes.

The bottom line is that if the product is available commercially, you're better off getting it that way. "Pharmacists don't do this under good manufacturing guidelines; they do it in the back of their shops," adds Sassich, advising that "if you can buy the FDA product, you should." Indeed, Cesar Arias, an investigator with the Florida Department of Health, saw a compounded drug for lung disease stored in the same refrigerator that pharmacy employees used for their lunch.

10. "I'll give you any drug you desire."
Go on the Internet to buy medicine and you'll probably save time and money. But you might also lose your good health. While there are many legitimate Web sites that sell prescriptions, such as PlanetRx.com, there are also countless dubious operations in cyberspace, which tend to specialize in "lifestyle drugs" like Viagra and Propecia. (Look for an insignia bearing the initials VIPPS, which stand for Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Site, to tell the difference.) And in lieu of requiring a doctor's prescription, such rogue sites offer e-physicals in which you answer questions to determine whether or not you should be taking the medication in question.

Not only is this illegal, it's dangerous. "Viagra can kill a man with a heart condition," warns New Jersey's Mark Herr. "You should not be buying Viagra online if you do not have a doctor prescribing it. You can be certain that if the only checkout is a layperson filling out a questionnaire online, well, sooner or later you will have a disaster."

The Importance of Networking

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:19:20 -0400

Ten Steps to Wise Decision-Making

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:31:05 -0400

Jenna Bush Weds Henry Hager at President's Ranch

Sun, 11 May 2008 15:25:23 -0400

The father of the bride beamed Sunday as he reported that his daughter and her new husband had the wedding every family hopes for.

"Our little girl Jenna married a really good guy. The wedding was spectacular. It was all we could hope for," President Bush said as he and wife Laura left for Washington, D.C., from Texas, where their Crawford ranch served as the location for Jenna Bush and Henry Hager to wed a night earlier.

"The weather cooperated nicely. Just as the vows were exchanged the sun set over our lake and it was just a special day and a wonderful day and we're mighty blessed," Bush said.

Click here for a photo essay of the Bush-Hager wedding.

The intensely private wedding between the younger Bush twin and the son of Virginia's former lieutenant governor was guarded by Secret Service, Texas State Troopers, a no-fly zone and a vehicle blockade.

Jenna Bush wore an Oscar de la Renta gown made of organza. It had a small train, and according to the band leader, she wore no veil. Hager wore a dark blue suit and powder-blue tie as did the president. Laura Bush also dressed in a metallic blue cocktail-length gown while Jenna's big sister Barbara, the only bridesmaid, was decked out in a greek-style moonstone blue gown with a gold waistband.

The other 13 women in the "house party" were clad in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match the palette of Texas wildflowers — blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds.

The best man was the groom's brother, John "Jack" Hager. Also part of the "house party" were 14 ushers, who walked with the 14 women down the aisle to their seats, but did not participate in the ceremony.

The band leader, Tyrone Smith of Nashville, Tenn., said the former President Bush and his wife Barbara spoke during the wedding. A store owner in Crawford told FOX News she woke up last night to the sound of fireworks over the ranch.

President Bush walked Jenna down the outdoor aisle to a limestone alter and cross next to the lake. The father and daughter danced to "You Are So Beautiful." The bride and groom danced first to "Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes" by Taj Mahal.

Security was so tight that the 200 guests had to go to an off-site location, get checked by Secret Service and then get bussed to the ranch.

Denver Broncos Coach Mike Shanahan, whose daughter was a college roomate of Jenna's, told FOX News Radio it was a great, elegant night, but would reveal little else.

The couple heads to a honeymoon in Europe before they settle down in Baltimore, where they've bought a house together.

In his weekly radio address ahead of Saturday night's wedding, Bush noted the event as one of the highlights in their storied family history.

"This is a joyous occasion for our family, as we celebrate the happy life ahead of her and her husband, Henry," Bush said in his Saturday radio address. "It's also a special time for Laura who this Mother's Day weekend will watch a young woman we raised together walk down the aisle."

Jenna, 26, is the 22nd child of a president to get married while their father was in the Oval Office. Their ceremonies have ranged from Tricia Nixon's extravagant wedding broadcast live from the Rose Garden in 1971 to the 1992 Camp David wedding of Jenna's aunt, Dorothy Koch. That one was kept so secret that the press didn't find out about it until it was over.

"All of them are different. This one really reflects the personality of both Jenna and the George W. Bush family," said Doug Wead, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and author of a book on presidents' kin.

"If they'd have gone on TV, the wedding would have been shown all over the world and Jenna Bush would have been an international celebrity — and she would have been a target. They're preparing the transition to private life and they're not particularly interested in seeing Jenna Bush become a huge celebrity."

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston officiated.

Festivities began Friday with a bridal lunch, rehearsal dinner and post-rehearsal dinner celebration in Salado, a tiny tourist village, which used to be a stagecoach stop. Jenna, her sister and the first lady were in Salado, more than an hour's drive south of Crawford, all day Friday and the president arrived in the evening by motorcade.

The rehearsal dinner for about 100 people was hosted by the parents of the groom, who turned 30 on Friday. Hager's father, John Hager, is the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party and is former lieutenant governor of Virginia and former U.S. assistant secretary of education.

The rehearsal dinner crowd, including the president, then walked down a street in Salado with the Belton High School Marching Band from Belton, Texas, to a "Texas-sized celebration" at another establishment. All the wedding guests were invited to this event. They were entertained by the five-member Duke Merrick Band from Charlottesville, Virginia, which performed classic Texas songs and original pieces by Merrick, a relative of the Hager family.

The groom's family also hosted a barbecue lunch Saturday in Salado ahead of the wedding.

Henry Hager met Jenna during her father's 2004 re-election campaign. He graduated from Wake Forest University and worked as an aide to Bush's former top political adviser Karl Rove. He is set to receive a master's degree in business administration later this month from the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business.

Between February 2005 and January 2006, he was an economic policy aide in the office of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and regularly briefed the secretary on economic data. "He was widely regarded as a super star," said Ann Marie Hauser, press secretary at Commerce.

• Fast Facts: Presidential Family Wedding Trivia

FOX News' Caroline Shively and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Fox 411: 'Party of Five' Star Finally Eats Something

Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:37:32 -0500

Party of Five Star Finally Eats Something

Sidney Lumet Conquers Television, Of Course

Farewell to a Publisher Always on Fire

Party of Five Star Finally Eats Something

Party of Five's Paula Devicq — who stars in Sidney Lumet's new TV series 100 Centre Street — swore to me last night she does not have an eating disorder.

"I eat! Look at me! I'm always trying to eat." Devicq, who at one point in the last season of Party of Five looked as though she was going to slip through the cracks of the Salinger house, has been on the cover of all the tabloids cited as an anorexic.

"I just laugh when I see that stuff," she said. "As long as they spell my name right it's good publicity, I guess. But last year I was literally going back and forth from New York to Los Angeles, doing Party, getting ready for this show, doing a play, trying to move back to New York, which I've done. I think that's what took its toll on me."

Devicq, who's from Vancouver, pointed to her youthful and quite fetching mother as an example. "You see, it's all in the genes. Look at her. Same thing." From not too far away, Mrs. Devicq could easily be mistaken for her daughter. So much for the rumors.

"Do you hear that?" Paula said to a friend. "Everyone thinks I'm too thin." In person, to tell you the truth, she's quite radiant and healthy looking.

What's happened to the Party of Five gang? "I'm friends with all of them," Devicq said. "I just spoke to Lacey Chabert, and I talk to the producers all the time. One of them asked if it was too early for a reunion show! I said, I think so, we just wrapped!"

Sidney Lumet Conquers Television, Of Course

God bless Sidney Lumet. The famed director of such gritty New York dramas as Prince of the City, Serpico, and Q & A is back big time. His TV series, called 100 Centre Street, debuts Monday night on A&E. It's a winner.

100 Centre Street marks the 76-year-old Lumet's return to television after nearly 50 years. After all, it was he who directed the recently deceased Jason Robards in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh in 1960, as well as many other high quality pieces from the medium's golden age.

But film is where Lumet has excelled. What a career! Fail-Safe with Henry Fonda, Dog Day Afternoon, Garbo Talks, Deathtrap, Daniel, The Wiz, The Verdict, The Morning After, Equus, Running on Empty, the underrated Night Falls on Manhattan, and the classic 12 Angry Men are all among his many celebrated accomplishments. (Isn't it time he got the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy?)

In 100 Centre Street he also returns to what he knows best: New York. With the genius stroke of casting Alan Arkin as a judge known for letting criminals walk (based on a real-life New York judge of some years ago), Lumet introduces us in the first two-hour episode to a number of continuing characters including a fledgling assistant D.A. played by Party of Five's Paula Devicq (see above), and a female African-American judge played by LaTanya Richardson — and she's such a revelation in her scenes with the terrific Arkin you can't believe she hasn't been a star all her life.

Right away, 100 Centre Street establishes itself as different. The opening scene is 12 minutes long — extraordinary for a TV series — and it's just a scene in the courtroom with Arkin presiding over an unruly and realistic night court, with Devicq trying get through her first night. You keep waiting for a cut to some other scene, but Lumet stays with it. On a regular network this would not be possible. But A&E has wisely given Lumet enough control that he's calling the shots.

At last night's premiere for the series at New York's Guastavino, I sat with the director and asked him about this. "It is 12 minutes long," he said, "and there was never a discussion of cutting it. I had to set it up because this is what the series is about."

When I asked him why the series looked so much like a "Sidney Lumet film," he shook his head. "It's just good people doing what they do best."

It's more than that — and Lumet knows it. A&E is trying to wedge its way into Sopranos territory here by launching an original, quality drama. They've done it. Viewers should get hooked right away on most of the characters, and Devicq — who was whiny and looked like she suffered from an eating disorder on Party of Five — gets to shine at last as a rich girl trying to break from her affluent Park Avenue father.

Not to knock Law and Order — but this show, which is produced by Law and Order's David Black — feels fresher and more alive than the other has in many seasons. Since A&E runs Law and Order reruns, the audience is there. I think we can look forward to many more seasons of 100 Centre Street.

Farewell to a Publisher Always on Fire

Bernie Geis died on Monday. He was 91; I had no idea what had happened to him, but in his heyday Geis was the publisher who brought Jacqueline Susann to prominence with Valley of the Dolls. He published hundreds of bestsellers, mostly commercial fiction, none well-written but all incredibly popular, good reads. One of his nonfiction bestsellers was called Happiness Is a Stock That Lets You Sleep at Night. That sort of thing.

I knew Bernie Geis in 1980 when he shared office space with Nat Sobel, a literary agent for whom I worked briefly on East 56th St. They were on the fourth and fifth floors of a five-story building that has since been all gussied up by the new prosperity. In 1980 that address was kind of run down. The building had five floors but the elevator only went to the fourth floor. It was like the old Catskills one liner about someone no longer being mentally well.

Because the elevator only went up to the fourth floor, it was necessary to walk one more flight, from Sobel to Geis, in order to see Bernie. It was a nice enough stairwell. But it was going down again that was always a little nerve-wracking. Bernie had put a fireman's pole into the office between four and five, cutting a wide hole in his floor. If you wanted to go to Sobel's office, you had to slide down the pole. Had to.

Some people protested — they were carrying papers. No problem. Bernie's very odd assistant, a gray, wiry woman named Alice whose lips were always pursed, simply clipped your papers into a large butterfly clip and lowered them through the hole on a long string. Why not? You don't want to go down? Alice looked at you as if you were the biggest jerk in town. Then she wrapped her arms around the pole, clicked her ankles together at the other end, and whoosh! If Alice could do it, so could you.

There was, luckily, a reward for going down via the pole. The fourth floor receptionist was happy to present you with it if you successfully made it downstairs. A pen, designed and ordered by Bernie Geis. The top half of it showed a young blonde girl, a secretary right out of 1960 with a Judy Jetson hairdo flip, sliding down the pole in a bright red mini skirt. Her legs were wrapped around the pole and she had a wide smile on her face. Bernie had had his name and phone number printed on the bottom part. The part of the joke offensive to women wouldn't have occurred to him: The pens were so old the phone number had letters in it. I treasure mine to this day.

Everyone went down that pole. Of course, the authors did, too. Around this time, Father Andrew Greeley showed up. He was the author of Geis's best-selling novel, The Cardinal Sins, a racy novel by a Catholic priest about a Catholic priest. Father Greeley — who had made the Catholics crazy — wore a velvet priest outfit since his big score, and had a beautiful Asian female assistant. It didn't matter who he was, though. Alice put his papers in the clip and snaked them through the hole. A crowd gathered. We'd seen everything come down that pole. A priest? Why not? And sure enough, Father Greeley came sliding down that shiny brass pole just like a fireman headed to a four-alarmer. Wheeee! His velvet was unmussed.

I do not know whether Father Greeley — whose books were heavily reworked and edited by a Geis editor — got the pen. I do know that no one who worked there ever forgot Bernie Geis. He had a sense of humor and a knowledge of publishing that has completely vanished and would be impossible to explain now to the corporate types who rule what was in Geis' day an older, better world.

Timeline: Tracking the Sniper's Trail

Tue, 29 Oct 2002 21:41:25 -0500

Oct. 2 | Oct. 3 | Oct. 4 | Oct. 5 | Oct. 6 | Oct. 7 | Oct. 9 | Oct. 10 | Oct. 11 | Oct. 12 | Oct. 14 | Oct. 15 | Oct. 16 | Oct. 17 | Oct. 18 | Oct. 19 | Oct. 20 | Oct. 21 | Oct. 22 | Oct. 23 | Oct. 24 | Oct. 25

Here's a rundown of the key events and search for evidence that led to Thursday morning's arrest of two men police believe may be related to the Beltway Sniper case.

Wed., Oct. 2

-- James D. Martin was killed by a sniper outside a Shopper's Food Warehouse in Silver Spring, Md.

Thurs., Oct. 3

-- Four more people are killed at various locations during a two-hour shooting spree in Montgomery County, Md.

-- Pascal Charlot is killed at 9:15 p.m. while standing on a street in Washington., D.C.

-- Police announce they are investigating the shootings as the work of a serial sniper, and describe the gunman as a "skilled shooter."

Friday, Oct. 4

-- A 43-year-old woman is shot and wounded outside a Michael's craft store in Fredericksburg, Va.

-- Police set up a tip hotline and offer a reward of $50,000. The reward eventually grows to $500,000.

-- Authorities say the same high-powered weapon was used to kill at least three of five Maryland residents.

-- Spotsylvania County, Va., police said witnesses to the Fredericksburg shooting described a possible suspect vehicle in that case as a mid-sized, newer model car.

Saturday, Oct. 5

-- Police link the Fredericksburg shooting with the sniper.

Sunday, Oct. 6

-- Investigators complete geographic profile of the killer. FBI works on a psychological profile.

Monday, Oct. 7

-- A 13-year-old boy in Bowie, Md., is shot outside his school in Bowie, Md., but survives. Investigators quickly link that shooting to the sniper.

Wednesday, Oct. 9

-- Dean Harold Meyers, 53, is shot dead at a gas station near Manassas, Va.

-- The Washington Post and WUSA-TV report a tarot "death" card was found near the Bowie crime scene. The card read, "Dear policeman, I am God." Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, who is heading the task force hunting down the sniper, blasts media and others for information leaks.

-- A woman is questioned by Prince George's County, Md., police. Law enforcement say she may have dropped off a man seen walking into a wooded area near a local high school. Officials search for but cannot find the man.

Thursday, Oct. 10

-- Virginia police report two males were seen driving away in a white vehicle after the Oct. 9 shooting of Meyers.

-- Maryland police detain a Kensington, Md., man "of previous interest" to investigators after being called to his home and finding a cache of weapons. The man was not arrested.

-- Prince William County, Va., police link the Meyers murder to the sniper shootings.

Friday, Oct. 11

-- 53-year-old Kenneth Bridges is shot dead while pumping gas at an Exxon station in Massaponax, Va. A white van was spotted leaving the area. Virginia police caution public not to focus just on white vans.

Saturday, Oct. 12

-- Police release composites images of a white box truck similar to the one witnesses said they saw near some of the shootings.

-- Spotsylvania County, Va., police link Bridges' death to the other shootings.

Monday, Oct. 14

-- Baltimore, Md., police seize a white van in Baltimore and find an assault rifle, sniper manual and ammunition similar to the .223 bullets used in sniper attacks. The van's owner, an ex-Marine, is questioned and released.

-- Linda Franklin, 47, is shot dead as she and her husband load packages into their car outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church, Va. Witnesses give information about license plates on vehicles seen fleeing the scene, including a light-colored Chevrolet Astro van with a burned-out taillight. Another witness describes the possible shooter as a dark-skinned man, possibly Hispanic or Middle Eastern, in a white van.

Tuesday, Oct. 15

-- Ballistics evidence connects Franklin's death to the sniper.

-- Defense Department announces it will provide military surveillance aircraft in the hunt. Army begins searching its records for people with sniper training.

Wednesday, Oct. 16

-- Witness to Franklin's shooting tells police the shooter used an AK-74 rifle and was of a certain ethnic descent.

-- Police issue a "how-to" list of tips for potential witnesses.

Thursday, Oct. 17

-- Police announce evidence from Home Depot witness is "not credible."

Friday, Oct. 18

-- Police arrested Matthew Dowdy, 37, of Falls Church, Va., for providing false information to authorities. He is arraigned Monday, Oct. 21.

Saturday, Oct. 19

-- A 37-year-old man is shot and critically wounded while leaving a Ponderosa steakhouse with his wife in Ashland, Va. Witnesses say they heard the shot coming from a nearby wooded area. Roadblocks are set up along I-95 in Maryland and Virginia and police search for a white 2000 Chevrolet van with Maryland plates and a ladder rack.

Sunday, Oct. 20

-- Surgeons remove the bullet from the man shot in Ashland and give it to authorities for testing. Sniper task force heads to the scene.

-- Police believe the Beltway Sniper left a note with a telephone number at the Ponderosa scene. Police ask the person who left the message to contact them.

Monday, Oct. 21

-- Police in Virginia surround a white Plymouth Voyager minivan with a roof rack and a phone booth adjoining a gas station in Hanover County, Va. Two men are taken into custody, but later turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service after it is determined they had no role in the shootings.

-- Moose holds news conference and delivers a message: "The message that needs to be delivered is that we are going to respond to a message that we have received... We are preparing a response at this time."

-- Police connect Saturday's Ponderosa shooting to the sniper.

-- Moose sends another message: "The person you called could not hear everything that you said …The audio was unclear and we want to get everything right. Call us back so that we can clearly understand."

Tuesday, Oct. 22

-- Conrad Johnson, a 35-year-old bus driver, is shot in the chest and wounded while on a parked commuter bus in Montgomery County. He dies at the hospital.

-- Reports say a note found at the Ponderosa scene demanded $10 million and warned the killings would continue unless cash was paid by a stated deadline. It also threatened children.

Wednesday Night, Oct. 23

-- Around 7 p.m.: New reports say police are searching the yard of a Tacoma, Wash., home, for ammunition evidence.

-- Investigators comb through John Lee Malvo's student records at Bellingham High School in Bellingham, Wash.

-- Around 7:30 p.m.: Federal law enforcement officials confirm the raid in Tacoma is related to the sniper case.

-- 8:30 p.m.: Seattle police say they are conducting a consentual search that they cannot confirm is part of the sniper case.

-- 11:45 p.m.: Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose holds a press conference and announces an arrest warrant for John Allen Muhammad, also known as John Allen Williams, described as "armed and dangerous." Moose says the man may he be traveling with Malvo.

-- Police issue an alert for a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice with New Jersey plates NDA-21Z Caprice and a white 1989 Chevrolet Celebrity with Maryland plates ZWE-517. Police caution Muhammad is not necessarily the Beltway Sniper.

-- Moose issues his final statement to the sniper, saying, among other things: "You've asked us to say, quote, We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose, end quote. We understand that hearing us say this is important to."

Thursday, Oct. 24

-- 3:19 a.m.: The sniper task force arrests Muhammad, 42, and Malvo, while they sleep in a car off I-70 in Frederick County, Md. A motorist and an attendant at the rest stop call police at 1 a.m. after they spot the pair sleeping inside one of the cars sought in the sniper investigation. Their car was a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice with New Jersey plates NDA-21Z.

-- Around 5:30 a.m.: Police confirm arrests and say a warrant is being sought to search the vehicle. Reports say a search warrant has been issued in Alabama.

-- 9 a.m.: Montgomery, Ala., police confirm that sniper task force called them on Sunday to see whether a September shooting at a liquor store there is related to the sniper shootings. A caller to the sniper investigation tip line claimed responsibility for both the sniper shootings and the Sept. 21 shooting outside ABC Beverage. Malvo's fingerprint was reportedly found on a gun magazine found at the Alabama crime scene.

-- 9:30 a.m.: Reports say a gun was found in the car in custody and that Muhammad is being charged on a federal gun violation and Malvo as a material witness.

-- 10:30 a.m.: Bellingham, Wash., officials say suspects in custody are working alone and not with an organized group. The officials add that authorities first had contact with Malvo Dec. 18 after noticing "suspicious activity." Malvo said he came to the area to finish high school.

-- Around 11 a.m.: The blue Caprice is towed to Gaithersburg, Md., and described as a "wealth of evidence." Reports say a rifle found in the car shoots .223 caliber bullets.

--11:55 a.m.: Reports say police found a gun, a scope and a tripod in the car as well as a hole in the trunk of the car police suspect was used to point the gun.

-- Authorities confirm that a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle found in Muhammad's car has been linked by ballistics to 11 of the 14 shootings, including one in which no one was injured.

Friday, Oct. 25

-- 10:30 a.m.: Montgomery, Ala., police say they will charge Malvo and Muhammad with capital murder. They say a positive ID was made placing Muhammad at the scene of the Sept. 21 shooting there and will charge Malvo as an adult.

-- A federal search warrant for the Caprice says that Muhammad also went by the names Wayne Weeks and Wayne Weekley. The warrant says that "numerous personal belongings" were found in the car when authorities arrested the men and that belongings indicated the car was being used as a residence.

-- Investigators ask residents of south Camden, N.J., what they know about the two sniper suspects. Authorities are also looking for Nathaniel Osbourne, who co-owns the car in which the suspects were found.

Iraqi Oil Well Fires Not a Major Health Threat

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Part of anti-war-think is the possibility Saddam Hussein might set Iraq’s 1,500 oil wells ablaze. It’s not unlikely since Saddam did just that to 600 Kuwaiti oil wells in 1991.

The anti-warriors forecast such sabotage would have catastrophic consequences.

"No one anticipated that Saddam Hussein would burn Kuwaiti oil fields, causing an epic health and environmental disaster. No one knows what he could do now," shrieked Physicians for Social Responsibility in a recent media release.

Greenpeace claims, "Fires from 600 deliberately damaged Kuwaiti oil wells … created a blanket of soot, gases and aggressive chemicals [that] led to immediate respiratory problems in local populations and generated serious long-term risks of birth defects and cancer in exposed people."

The media have also jumped on the oil fire-scare bandwagon.

The Associated Press reported, "The wind-borne pollution [from Kuwait] touched off health and environmental problems far beyond the Gulf." The AP failed to elaborate further on what the health problems were.

Agence France-Presse reported, "The release of oil and smoke from [Iraqi] fires would likely have long-term health effects." Again, the alleged health effects were unspecified.

A Missouri newspaper even found a Gulf War vet who "suspects his exposure to fuel and chemicals from the burning oil wells may have contributed to his memory loss, blurred vision, throat problems, nerve damage and muscle damage."

Would burning oil wells cause health calamities?

First, there’s no question the Kuwaiti oil well fires produced much pollution.

Peak soot emissions were equivalent to 3 million heavy-duty diesel trucks being driven at 30 miles per hour, according to a 1992 study in the journal Science. A May 1991 report estimated the then-526 burning wells emitted 3.8 million pounds of particles into the atmosphere per hour.

That said, virtually all published studies of people exposed to those emissions haven’t reported significant health effects.

A U.S. Army health risk assessment in December 1991 characterized the long-term health effects for exposed troops and civilian employees as "minimal."

The risk of cancer — based on many worst-case assumptions — was estimated to be about 3 "extra" cancers per 1,000,000 people exposed to the emissions. Even if true, this "extra" risk would not be detectable given about 300,000 to 400,000 of those people will develop cancer anyway.

The Army reported the risk of health effects other than cancer to be above levels considered acceptable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA standards, however, are set far below levels known to cause health effects.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted surveys of workers in Kuwait City and firefighters in the oil fields in October 1991. Blood samples were tested and compared with a group of people living in the U.S. Although the median concentration of certain substances (volatile organic compounds or VOCs) was quite elevated among firefighters, VOC concentrations in non-firefighting personnel were equal or lower than levels found among people in the U.S. survey.

A May 2002 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology compared postwar disease incidence between veterans exposed to the oil well fires and veterans not exposed — a total of 405,142 study subjects. "These data do not support the hypothesis that Gulf War veterans have an increased risk of postwar morbidity from exposure to Kuwaiti oil well fire smoke," concluded U.S. Navy researchers.

A November 2002 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives considered 1,560 Gulf War veterans, 94 percent of whom were in the Gulf theater during the oil well fires and 21 percent who remained for more than 100 days during the fires. "These findings do not support speculation that exposures to oil fire smoke caused respiratory symptoms among veterans," concluded the University of Iowa researchers.

Harvard School of Public Health researchers reported in 1999 the acute toxicity of particles from the Kuwaiti fires were no more "toxic" than particles collected from the air of St. Louis, Mo., or Washington, D.C.

A postwar survey conducted in Kuwaiti clinics and emergency rooms reported an increase in visits for upper respiratory irritation, but there was no documented evidence of an increase in visits for acute upper and lower respiratory infections or asthma, reported the World Federation of Public Health Associations in 1997.

Faced with the lack of evidence of health effects, anti-warriors might counter that it has only been 12 years since the Kuwaiti oil well fires and health effects like cancer may take 20 or more years to develop.

Perhaps. On the other hand, there’s no persuasive evidence that air pollution — regardless of its magnitude — has ever caused a single case of cancer.

It’s no wonder the anti-warriors attempt to alarm the public with vague warnings of health effects from potential oil well fires — one look at the Kuwaiti evidence and their scare goes up in smoke.

Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).

Respond to the Writer

10 Things Your Assisted-Living Facility Won't Tell You

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 17:01:32 -0400

An assisted-living residence is a whole lot better than a nursing home. But it's hardly a panacea. Here's what you need to know before choosing one.

Betty Ann Dresser wanted badly to trust the marketing director at Village Retirement Communities, an assisted-living company in Greenville, R.I. Her father, Howard Wyllie, suffered from both diabetes and Alzheimer's disease and had recently been discharged from another assisted-living facility that no longer had the resources to care for him. Dresser needed a new solution and she needed it fast. So when the first facility suggested she give Village a try, she called right away.

Dresser knew that her father needed lots of attention. He required a strict diet, as well as assistance with taking his medications. And because his Alzheimer's was well advanced, he needed what the industry indelicately calls a "lock-down" facility — a building where residents can be locked in to prevent wandering. Dresser says the marketing director foresaw no problems with Wyllie's special needs and she recommended he move into the Village at East Farms, a lock-down facility in Waterbury, Conn. She wrote down some figures on the back of an envelope explaining the fee structure, Dresser says, and the two sealed the deal with a handshake.

Or so she thought.

Problems arose just a few days later as Dresser was moving her father into his new residence. Not only did the marketing director present her with a contract that raised the fee by a couple of hundred dollars a month, but it became clear she had never told the head nurse or the kitchen at East Farms of Wyllie's medical condition. The facility wouldn't, in fact, cater to his dietetic needs and officials insisted that his prescriptions be reissued in a form that was easier to administer. Six days later, the facility called Dresser and said her father was running a fever. He would have to go see his personal physician.

When Dresser's sister arrived at East Farms to collect her father, she found him sitting naked in his own feces on the edge of his bed. No one helped her clean him up or dress him. And when she got to the doctor's office, Wyllie's physician said he wasn't running a temperature and that his sugar levels were fine. When the doctor called the officials at East Farms to tell them that Wyllie was in good health, he was informed that his patient wouldn't be allowed back into the facility. "When my brother-in-law called the head nurse," Dresser recalls, "she said, 'He's your problem now.'"

Dresser and her father's experience is an extreme one, there's no doubt about it. But their story raises a number of issues that, unfortunately, have become all-too-common in the sprawling, multibillion-dollar assisted-living industry. Lack of adequate care, broken marketing promises and a dearth of federal regulation are just a few.

Not all assisted-living residences, of course, suffer these problems. If you keep your eyes open, read the fine print and adjust your expectations, it's certainly possible to place your loved one in a facility that lives up to the industry's promise — providing a more comfortable, independent living experience than a standard nursing home. But as the financial pressures build on this fast-growing industry, problems are likely to proliferate. And in order to make an informed decision, you need to know what to look for. Here are 10 things that your average assisted-living director may not tell you.

1. We promise more than we can deliver
The biggest misconception consumers have about assisted living is that once their loved one is accepted into one of these facilities, he or she will live there for a very long time — perhaps avoiding a nursing home altogether. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the average resident stays only two years. Why? The assisted-living business model was never intended to provide care for frail and sickly seniors. When they get that way — as they inevitably do — many facilities will insist that they leave. In fact, state law often requires it.

To the extent that the industry acknowledges there's a misconception, it tends to blame consumers. "You can tell people (the rules) over and over again," says Whitney Redding, a spokesperson for the Assisted Living Federation of America. But when faced with family crisis, she insists, they often don't listen.

Our reporting suggests a more common reason for the confusion: marketing. As in Dresser's case, assisted-living companies — struggling to fill their beds — often suggest that their goal is to adjust to your loved one's needs, even if they become substantial. It used to be called "aging in place," but after pressure from consumer groups, the industry now discourages that phrase. Buzzwords aside, the message remains the same.

That is, until you read the disclaimer. Scan Altera Healthcare's (ALI) Consumer Information Page and the message is quite different. It says: "At times, medical condition, state regulation or failure to meet your obligations under the Resident Agreement dictates a move from our residence." In other words, if you require skilled nursing or need too much personal assistance, management can kick you out. So much for "postponing or eliminating" that move to a nursing home.

Even if a facility wants to keep your loved one on, the state may require he or she be moved to a nursing home. Consider the case of Marcia Gutterman, whose mother barely got settled into her Florida assisted-living residence before she had to move out. After less than two months Theresa Chasan fell and broke her hip, and according to Florida state law she had to move to a nursing facility. In Florida, an assisted-living facility with a basic license isn't allowed to tend to a resident who is bedridden for more than seven consecutive days.

Exceptions are made in terminal cases when hospice care is brought in. But the fact remains, if your dad's health deteriorates sharply, you run the risk he will be asked to leave just when you can least cope with it. How can you protect yourself? Read the resident contract very carefully and have a lawyer look it over before you sign. That way you can be prepared for an emergency situation.

2. We can raise our prices at any time
Get ready for sticker shock. The average assisted-living complex charges $2,000 a month for basic services and some of the pricier residences can run as high as $6,000. Moreover, while Medicare and Medicaid cover nursing-home care, they don't pay for assisted living. (There are four states where a Medicaid waiver can be granted, but funding is limited and hard to come by.) Seniors who are trying to work out a budget also need to realize that a complex can raise its prices at any time — and with little notice — warns Meredith Coty, the state ombudsman in Oregon.

The problem is often exacerbated by the industry's headlong growth. When a new facility opens it will often offer consumers a teaser rate to help fill the beds. Then, once the rooms are filled, it will hike its prices. Another tactic is to charge residents a basic monthly rate to cover a flat set of services and then tack on additional charges for care not included in the basic list.

When Lisa Lewis moved her father into Alterra's Sterling House in Ponca City, Okla., she was promised the fee would only increase incrementally as her salary rose over time. But less than two years later, her father was forced out of his residence after a new assessment program was instituted adding an additional $800 to his monthly bill — a burden the family couldn't afford. Alterra charged him every time he forgot to flush the toilet or when he needed help changing his clothes. He was even assessed because the staff had difficulty understanding him since his dentures didn't fit properly. The move back to Lewis's home proved traumatic for her father and he died less than two months later. When we called Alterra for comment, we were told the company doesn't discuss individual residents.

The key in a case like this is to ask beforehand what's covered by your contract and what's not. If your parent has special needs, count on paying an additional fee to have them taken care of. If the facility charges for something as silly as flushing the toilet, you might consider moving to the competition.

3. Our staff has very little training
According to Jeff Goldman, a former Manor Care (HCR) executive in charge of development and marketing, most assisted-living facilities were never designed to accommodate frail seniors or people with major health problems. The financial models, he says, were set up with "old ladies in fuzzy slippers" in mind.

Chains like Sunrise Assisted Living (SNRZ) and Alterra have tried to adjust by offering services to residents with higher degrees of "acuity." But even the best and most expensive assisted-living complexes man their facilities with mostly unskilled workers. The majority of the staff are personal aides working for close to the minimum wage. The folks who distribute medication need as little as 16 hours of classroom instruction in some states to qualify for the job. Even in Virginia, which is known for its strict rules, the training requirement jumps to just 48 hours.

Karen Love, a consumer advocate who works with the Consumer Consortium on Assisted Living, can personally attest to what a problem this can cause. During the mid 1990s she worked as an administrator for Sunrise Assisted Living's Arlington, Va., facility. She resigned after she realized she couldn't run a safe residence under the corporation's strict rules and staffing constraints. Her No. 1 complaint was that the caregivers had such little training. "You can't just throw (staff members) into a room and show them a tape," she says. "That's not meaningful training."

The incident that pushed her into consumer advocacy happened back in January 1995. One evening, a resident was found unresponsive in her wheelchair and the staff members were flummoxed. Rather than call 911 immediately, they first tried to perform a barbaric version of CPR. Then, thinking she was dead, they left the resident alone in her room for nearly an hour before help was called. "They freaked out," Love says, and "acted the way untrained people would." The resident died later that evening in the hospital.

Love blames an industry that expanded too quickly, growing at a compounded annual rate of 10% through out the 1990s. The pressure to make each new building profitable has been tremendous. A number of companies, such as Balanced Care and Alterra, admitted publicly that they struggled to meet debt obligations. It's clear looking back that in a rush to meet expected demand, many assisted-living operators pursued ill-conceived business models and failed to create the management infrastructure needed to operate a service-intensive business successfully. This includes keeping up with necessary infrastructure and support.

Asked to comment, a Sunrise spokesperson said, "We provide a safe and secure environment for residents and staff residences adequately to meet requirements enforced by each state and to meet our own guidelines."

4. Medication errors are common and our pharmacy charges too much
Trusting an assisted-living facility to properly dispense your medication is a bit like playing Russian roulette. Errors are common. While Lisa Lewis's father lived at Alterra's Sterling House, the health department found the facility failed to administer his ordered medications on 20 different occasions during the last four months of his stay. And during 15 of the 17 months he lived there, records indicate that the company lapsed in ordering or obtaining his medications.

Coty, Oregon's ombudsman, was hardly flabbergasted when we shared Lewis's story. "There is an epidemic (breakdown) in the medication administration system," Coty says. She also warns that pharmacies affiliated with assisted-living facilities will often charge residents more for prescriptions than an independent druggist would. When possible, residents should continue to use their own drugstore. But don't be surprised if your facility requires medications to come in a certain format, such as bubble dispensers, that may only be available through an affiliated pharmacy.

5. We face scant regulation
Al Schmidt's wife suffers from Alzheimer's disease and when he could no longer care for her on his own, he moved her into an assisted-living facility that appeared safe and loving. Only once it was too late did he realize that his spouse was better off at home.

While residing at Sunrise Assisted Living's Northville, Mich., facility, Ruth Schmidt was sexually abused by another resident who also suffered from dementia. This was discovered when an aide walked in on the man performing a sex act on Schmidt. The aide was instructed by the administrator of the facility not to report the incident to authorities, not document it in their files and not to tell Al Schmidt. The husband only discovered what had happened after a former employee felt a pang of guilt and called him at home to confess what she knew.

The facility initially denied the occurrence. But after the Northville police department investigated for criminal activity, Sunrise claimed that Ruth Schmidt — who can't think rationally — chose to participate in consensual sex. According to a state report, the administrator regrets trying to hide the incident, but chose not to tell Schmidt in an effort to spare his feelings. For his part, Schmidt isn't trying to conceal anything. "I want the world to know what goes on and I want it stopped," he says. A Sunrise spokesperson says the company doesn't comment on individual residents.

Unfortunately, Schmidt learned he had very little recourse against Sunrise. Since the facility didn't initially report the incident, there are no tangible records. And unlike nursing homes, which are federally regulated, assisted-living residences tend to face light state regulation. Marguerite Schervish, the long-term-care ombudsman for Michigan, says assisted-living facilities in her state, by law, have no requirement to protect vulnerable people other than what might be typically provided under a landlord/tenant relationship. Conversely, she says a nursing home would be liable and the state would take an accusation of sexual abuse in a licensed facility very seriously.

"It is up to a jury to prove without a reasonable doubt that she was abused, not the state prosecutor," Schervish says. Also, since assisted living isn't regulated by the federal government, rules and regulations differ by state. For information on your state's rules, check with your local department of aging or you can browse through the National Center for Assisted Living's state regulatory review.

6. You're practically on your own at night
A lot of seniors are like Elsie Lox. She moved into Atria Retirement & Assisted Living's Cranford, N.J., residence precisely because she wanted to have someone to watch over her in the evening. Only after settling in did she discover she was more alone than she had hoped. "At night, everyone went home and no one knew what was happening," says Lenore Lox, Elsie's daughter-in-law. The residence — which has more than 200 residents — employed just one aide to cover the night shift. Not exactly the security and care Elsie felt she was paying for.

Realizing she couldn't count on Atria, Elsie wore an emergency call button that contacted an outside service. The rest of her care eventually fell upon the shoulders of family. Lenore Lox and her husband spent countless evenings driving the 45 minutes back and forth from their home to the facility every time Elsie got a stomachache, felt dizzy or fell out of bed. The only help the night aide was trained to provide was placing a call to the ambulance.

Goldman, the former Manor Care executive, says the relatively healthy seniors that assisted-living centers were designed to treat don't really need 24-hour nursing care. But as the sector exploded from its infancy in 1981 to a $15.7 billion industry in 1999, beds needed to be filled and facilities started accepting people with more and more acute needs. The problem was, they couldn't increase staffing because that would inflate costs further, Goldman says. And they couldn't overtly raise rates because they were already sky high.

So how do you protect yourself or your loved one from moving into a poorly staffed facility? Insist on taking an extensive tour at different times of day to be sure there is adequate staff. It's rare that you would find a residence that's fully staffed in the evenings, but some are better than others. Observe whether the aides know the residents names and ask how many residents each staff person is responsible for. Don't be shy. Step right up and start talking to the people who already live in the residence. They'll tell you if they get enough service and attention.

7. You may have to hire a private-duty nurse, too
A few months ago, Heather Oppenheimer received a phone call. The administrator at Cincinnati's Evergreen Retirement Community wanted to meet and discuss her mother-in-law's care. Oppenheimer was told that her mother-in-law, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, needed help with toileting and bathing. This was more care and personal attention than the assisted-living facility was willing or able to provide.

The administrator recommended that Oppenheimer hire additional help from 7 a.m. through 9 p.m. — in other words, for most of the day. If she refused, her mother-in-law would be forced to move into a nursing home — only the one on the same campus was already full. Oppenheimer decided finally to comply with the facility's costly request. Now her mother-in-law is being tended to by a home-care nurse who costs an additional $100,000 a year.

Oppenheimer's experience is far from unique. "Once we can't keep up with all of (a resident's) needs, we give them the option to get more help or move to a nursing unit," Janet Lence, an assistant administrator at Evergreen, says. Although a facility will often offer a long menu of services, that doesn't mean your loved one is entitled to all of them. Each resident is allotted a certain amount of personal time and once that time is up you either have to pay more or get outside help.

Connie Rosenberg, president of the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers, says you need to factor those costs into your budget if you plan on keeping your loved one in an assisted-living facility for more than a couple of years. The last thing you want is to expend the family's resources on the basic service and then be left with few options for care, she says.

8. We stop spending once our beds are full
From our research, we found that the newer the facility the better the maintenance and care. Why? Companies need to fill their beds. When shopping for an assisted-living residence, consumers often pay close attention to the appearance of a facility. So it's in a company's best interest to maintain the grounds and make their current residents happy.

Lenore Lox found that her mother-in-law's assisted-living facility deteriorated significantly during the seven-plus years she lived there. First, a major corporation bought out the facility. Then, soon after the property changed hands, a new administrator came on board who didn't manage the operations with the same firm hand. Dr. Jon Pynoos, of the University of Southern California's Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, says consumers need to be very vigilant to avoid problems. "(It's) easy (for a facility) to slip into doing a very poor job," he says. "All it takes is an administrator to not know what she is doing."

To make sure your facility is keeping up to snuff, ask to see its most recent inspection report. Although each state varies, most conduct a full survey once every two years and document any problems, ranging from faulty paperwork to safety concerns and general cleanliness. This document should be available at the front desk. If it isn't, consider it a red flag.

9. Practically anyone can hang an assisted-living shingle
Steve Sheley, a registered nurse who owns Freedom Oaks, a small assisted-living residence near Orlando, Fla., says he was surprised by how easy it was for him to open his facility. After taking a one-week class, he was ready for business. You too can open a facility. It doesn't matter that you have no medical or industry experience. Getting a license, which you don't even need in certain states, is remarkably simple. In Florida, a state known for protecting the elderly, an administrator need only take a 26-hour course and pass an exam before setting up shop. The facility itself receives a license upon physical inspection, where state officials check for safety and cleanliness.

Consumers also need to realize that assisted living is just a marketing phrase, not a regulatory term, says Alison Hirschel, an elder-law specialist at the Michigan Poverty Law Program. Almost any building catering to the elderly can use this title, though their services may range from a room with a call button to a full-service facility. Hirschel also confirms that there have been nursing homes in Michigan that were shut down for various reasons, but were allowed to reopen under the assisted-living shingle.

10. Check your dignity at the door
The guiding philosophy behind assisted living is to treat seniors with respect and help them maintain their dignity. After all, that's the major reason people choose one of these facilities over a nursing home. But while some facilities excel at this, others fall short. And as the string of examples above shows, it's easy for a frail senior citizen to get into a situation where dignity and independence are compromised.

Sometimes the breach has more to do with civility than health issues. Virginia native Nancy Jean complains that staff at her mother's small residence nearby speaks to both the residents and visiting families rudely. The residents are relegated to the upstairs bedrooms and hallways except when eating in shifts in the small dining room. There are also restrictions placed on the amount of clothing they are allowed to keep at the facility. Jean says staff members will go through residents' closets and throw out items they feel are extraneous.

Most upsetting to Jean's mother is that she isn't trusted to hold on to her own over-the-counter remedies such as Tums and Gas-X. It embarrasses her to ask for them so oftentimes she simply goes without. "I say they have taken her dignity away," says Jean.

The best thing to do, obviously, is avoid such a facility altogether. And the only way to do that is to take several tours (preferably at different times of day) and talk to the residents themselves. "If a facility is unwilling to address the concerns, you need to start looking for another facility," says David Kyllo, a vice president at the National Center for Assisted Living. For a complete list of questions to ask during your informational tour click on the National Center for Assisted Living's Web site.

Missing 9-year-old Mo. Girl Found Dead

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:29:43 -0500

A 9-year-old girl who had been missing for a week was found dead Friday in a sinkhole, authorities said.

The body of Rowan Ford was found on private land about 10 miles south of the girl's hometown of Stella, a village of about 200 people, Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland said. He said authorities were still determining how the girl died.

"We know we have a homicide," Copeland said, declining to elaborate.

The McDonald County deputy who found the body had searched the area on his way to work after recalling that there was a cavern there, Copeland said.

Stella Mayor Bill Alsop, who answered the phone at the family's home Friday, said the girl's mother was "pretty shook up" when Copeland came to the home that morning and told her the body was very likely Rowan's.

"He told her they found the body of the little girl, and they were 99 percent sure it was her daughter," Alsop said.

Rowan was reported missing after her mother, Colleen Spears, returned home early Nov. 3 from a night shift at a Wal-Mart.

The girl's stepfather, David Spears, told investigators he and two male friends were with Rowan the night before until they went out around 10:45 p.m. He returned home around midnight but did not check on the girl, Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland said.

Spears also later told authorities that he called his mother sometime after 1 a.m. and asked to use her vehicle, Copeland has said. She took it to him about half an hour later, then stayed at his house while her son left in her vehicle for about 5 1/2 hours, Copeland has said.

Copeland also has said that Spears has not been able to explain what he did during that time. He has not been accused of a crime.

Spears, who has been staying with his parents, has said it was wrong for him to have left the girl alone.

Fox on Sex: Taming the Green-Eyed Monster

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:45:46 -0400

You know the feeling because you’ve experienced it — a nagging tendency to collect facts and see where they don’t line up, to casually question your spouse to see if dates and times are consistent. You make your heart race with the many scenarios you run through in your own mind, wondering whom they are bedding and how you could be such a sucker.

Or you’ve watched your otherwise reasonably sane spouse morph into this green-eyed monster, voice raised, eyes bulging, accusing you of staring, hiding, flirting and scheming.

In couples therapy, at times, I find it hard to figure out who is more tortured: The jealous ones whose detective skills are so time-consuming and petty, or the “jealousees,” who may revert to lying to keep the peace, hurt that they are constantly having to defend themselves and offer explanations for every longer-than-average trip to the bathroom.

There are different shades of jealousy, from the sort that hides behind the guise of being protective and loving (as psychologist Havelock Ellis described it: The “dragon that slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive”), to the militant kind that is a cornerstone for abusive relationships, alienating the spouse from friends and even family.

Often the jealous ones will give the excuse that they have experienced deceit in the past, as if that gives them license to torture their trustworthy present mates. The hardest part is breaking the “snooping cycle”: the modern technology of texting, e-mailing, and Facebook have made snooping a full-time job. This ain’t just about lipstick on the collar; we are talking about “sexting,” “chatting,” and “friending.”

A study done in 2009 found that the “cuddle hormone” oxytocin, which makes us more likely to trust others, find them attractive, and remember their faces, may also amplify the feeling of envy and gloating.

When all is said and done, if your partner IS trustworthy and you’ve heard about your “jealousy problem” in other relationships, it might be time to work on this ugly side of yourself. First step, of course, is admitting it, because denial and justification are two common dynamics Ms./Mr. Jealous uses. Here are some clinical and therapeutic things to ask yourself:

— Trust and jealousy are obviously related, so were you able to trust your parents to do what they promised? Was attention evenly divided among children or did you often feel shorted?

— If you were cheated on in the past, and are therefore hypervigilant and jealous, have you tried talking to your partner about the specific things they do that remind you of that last relationship?

— Does your jealousy spread to other people? That is to say, are you envious of your coworkers or friends, are you greedy?

— Have you been told your jealousy is out of normal range, that you are paranoid and suspicious? Do you feel as if you get fixated on situations, that your obsessions are beyond your control?

Doctor's orders? Keep reading:

1. Think about how it takes courage to trust. Acknowledge that letting yourself “fall” in love is about hoping that you’ll be metaphorically caught. Yes, it feels scary, but if you can back off from trying to control all aspects of it, it will be more fun.

2. Of course you have “abandonment issues,” most people do. It’s not that novel or special, and it’s not an excuse to drive your significant other crazy. Talk, think, and write about them, heal, and move on. You’re a grown-up now, and you don’t want to poison your adult relationship with those issues from decades ago.

3. Often jealousy is a reaction to your own (sometimes even unconscious) desire for others. We are sexual beings, and as long as you don’t lie, cheat, and break trust running after that object of your desire, you are OK. Acknowledge your desires and you’ll stop thinking it’s your spouse who has a wandering eye.

You can’t own anyone and you can’t “lose” them if they don’t want to go, so if insecurity is making you a monster, you are the only one who can really tame it.

Dr. Belisa Vranich is a psychologist and sex expert. She is the author of three books, including her latest "He's Got Potential," which is in stores now. Do you have a "Dear Doc" question? E-mail Dr. Vranich at DrBelisa@gmail.com and check out her Web site at www.drbelisa.com.

FOXSexpert: Lasting Dangerously Too Long

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:20:48 -0400

Many a man has dreamed of being a god in the bedroom. And thanks to sexual mythology spawned by the porn industry and media, long-lasting sex is a huge part of that daydream.

But there's such a thing as lasting too long. Priapism is the medical term for an erection that lasts way longer than any man would seriously want — hours, or even days. And it is a nightmare.

No mortal in his right mind wants to be like Priapus, the Greek fertility god for whom the condition is named.

It's a tireless topic for comedians, but priapism is no laughing matter.

A healthy erection is a matter of blood flow. Ischemic (meaning "lack of oxygen") priapism occurs when blood does not drain as it should. It gets trapped in the penis, depletes oxygen levels and results in unwanted consequences.

Dire for oxygen themselves, the red blood cells become stiff, making proper blood drainage even more difficult. This can cause major complications: Oxygen-poor blood can become toxic to tissues, damaging if not destroying them. This can result in scarring, disfigurement or permanent erectile dysfunction if the condition is not treated within four to six hours of onset.

So what causes this malfunction? It’s typically assumed that this often painful and tender condition is due to sexual thoughts, stimulation or desire that “can’t get no satisfaction.” But it’s not.

Most case of ischemic priapism can be explained medically:

— Drug injections for treating erectile dysfunction (ED) — especially if he uses more than what’s prescribed;

— Oral therapy medications for ED;

— Using or misusing medications, like anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, anti-psychotics, or blood thinners;

— Illicit drug use, including marijuana, ecstasy or cocaine;

— Recreational use of ED drugs or excessive alcohol consumption;

— Medical conditions, particularly those that lead to blood cells losing their flexibility and mobility, such as sickle-cell anemia, or diseases that cause the blood to clot easier, like diabetes;

— Trauma to the pelvic or genital area, such as a ruptured artery from a penile injury that prevents normal circulation;

— Spinal cord injury;

— Poisonous venom from black widow spider bites;

— Carbon monoxide poisoning;

— Cancers that affect the penis and its blood flow;

— Spanish fly, a hazardous “aphrodisiac.”

While priapism is uncommon, it is an emergency. Seek care pronto if you notice excess swelling, feel pain, or have an unusually long erection. Likewise, if you experience multiple persistent, unwanted erections, generally lasting 2-3 hours — known as stuttering priapism — see your physician.

Do not try to treat priapism on your own. This is an emergency situation that requires professional attention. Treatment will depend on the suspected cause, and may include:

— Medications to decrease blood flow to the penis;

— Ice packs to reduce swelling;

— Aspiration: a needle is inserted and the penis is drained of excess blood to reduce swelling and pressure, often followed by a saline flush of the penile blood vessels;

— Surgical ligation to repair any ruptured artery;

— Surgical shunt, where a passageway is inserted to “divert” blood flow, allowing normal circulation to resume;

— Intracavernous injection to narrow the arteries, reducing blood flow and alleviating swelling.

When treated in a timely manner, the prognosis is very positive. To prevent recurrence — or occurrence in general — options include avoiding triggers, hormone treatment, changing medications, using prescription muscle relaxants or self-injections of phenylephrine, or managing the physical conditions at the root of priapism.

Priapism can happen to males of any age, including newborns. It’s actually most common in boys ages 5-10 and men ages 20-50. Legend holds that Priapus was cursed with impotence while still in his mother’s womb. To make sure that doesn't happen to you, get help immediately if faced with this situation.

Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright is a sex educator, relationship expert, columnist and founder of Sexuality Source Inc. She is the author of several books including, "Touch Me There! A Hands-On Guide to Your Orgasmic Hot Spots."

Click here to read more FOXSexpert columns.

Fox News Reporting: The Right, All Along: The Rise, Fall & Future of Conservatism

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 13:28:16 -0500

Sunday, December 12 at 9 p.m. ET
Hosted by Brit Hume

"The Way Forward" is the sixth and final hour of Brit Hume's series on the history of the American conservative movement. This episode tells the inside story of the movement's struggles and eventual resurgence from 2001 to the present day.

Reel 6 covers:

• The presidency of George W. Bush, which sparked fierce disagreements within the conservative movement over the War on Terror, domestic spending, the Supreme Court, and the financial collapse

• The election of President Barack Obama and the rise of new conservative figures like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck

• The Tea Party movement and the conservative comeback in the 2010 midterm elections

This "Fox News Reporting" hour features rare footage and exclusive interviews with Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, Glenn Beck, Thomas Sowell, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Rand Paul and many others who tell their personal accounts of the past decade in conservatism.

• Click here to order the DVD set

Reel Five: "Passing the Torch"

"Passing the Torch" is part five of Brit Hume’s six-hour series on the history of American conservatism. This episode tells the inside story of the movement’s struggles and gains in the 11 years following the Reagan presidency.

Video: Watch a preview clip

Reel 5 covers:

• President George H. W. Bush who managed the collapse of the Soviet Union and won the Gulf War, but disappointed conservatives by breaking his "no new taxes" pledge

• The rise of conservative media, including radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh

• Newt Gingrich’s stunning upset in the 1994 midterm elections with a "Republican Revolution" backed by a Contract with America

• George W. Bush’s new kind of conservatism: "compassionate conservatism"

This "Fox News Reporting" hour features rare footage and exclusive interviews with William F. Buckley, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, Pat Buchanan, James Baker, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Sanford, and many others who tell their personal accounts of conservatism following the Reagan era.

Reel Four: "Reagan's Resolve"

"Reagan's Resolve" is part four of Brit Hume’s six-hour series on the history of American conservatism. This episode tells the inside story of the Reagan presidency and the battles to revive the U.S. economy and defeat communism.

Video: Watch a preview clip

Reel 4 covers:

• Reagan’s unwavering faith in his tax-cutting plan to turn around America's devastated economy

• Reagan’s strategy to confront Soviet communism and conviction that freedom would prevail

• Reagan’s determination to reverse the trend of judicial activism in the federal courts

This "Fox News Reporting" hour features rare footage and exclusive interviews with William F. Buckley, Donald Rumsfeld, George Shultz, David Stockman, James Baker, Jack Kemp, Steve Forbes, Ken Adelman, Robert Bork, Rush Limbaugh and many others who tell their personal accounts of conservatism’s golden era.

Reel Three: "Path to Power"

"Path to Power" is part three of Brit Hume's six-hour series on the history of American conservatism. This episode tells the inside story of how conservatives reshaped their movement following President Nixon's Watergate scandal.

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Reel 3 covers:

• Ronald Reagan's 1976 primary challenge to incumbent President Gerald Ford

• The rise of Christian conservatives on the national political scene

• The story of how the neoconservatives moved politically left to right

• Reagan's 1980 run for the White House and his victory as an unapologetic conservative

This Fox News Reporting hour features rare footage and exclusive interviews with Dick Cheney, Pat Robertson, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, Jack Kemp, Phyllis Schlafly, Steve Forbes, Rush Limbaugh and many others who tell their personal accounts of conservatism's struggles and ultimate victory from the 1970s to 1980.

Reel Two: "A Time for Choosing"

"A Time for Choosing" is the second hour of Brit Hume's six-hour series about the history of the American conservatism. This episode tells the inside story of how conservatives rebuilt their movement in the decade following Barry Goldwater's devastating defeat in the 1964 presidential election:

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• See actor Ronald Reagan inspire young conservatives as he moved from Hollywood to politics, served two terms as California governor and nearly won the Republican presidential nomination in 1968

• Follow National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. in his only foray into elective politics — a wild race for Mayor of New York

• Watch conservatives' hope turn to disappointment as Richard Nixon wins the White House, only to turn his back on conservative principles

This Fox News Reporting hour features rare footage and exclusive interviews with William F. Buckley, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Dan Quayle, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh and many others who tell their personal accounts of conservatism's startling victories and crushing defeats from 1964 through 1974.

Series Guide

Sundays at 9 p.m. ET
Hosted by Brit Hume

"The Right, All Along: The Rise Fall & Future of Conservatism" is the inside story of a political movement that, against all odds, changed the world.

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It started 60 years ago with a small group of determined thinkers and activists and grew into the most powerful force in American politics. This six-part Fox News Reporting series features rare footage and more than 75 exclusive interviews.

Follow the stories of William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Robert Bork, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush and many others who tell their personal accounts of conservatism's startling victories and crushing defeats.

"The Right, All Along: The Rise Fall & Future of Conservatism" is a unique blend of history, journalism and storytelling that explains how we got to where we are today and where we may be heading.

Episode Guide:

Sunday, November 7: "Right from the Start"

Sunday, November 14: "A Time for Choosing"

Sunday, November 21: "Path to Power"

Sunday, November 28: "Reagan's Resolve"

Sunday, December 5: "Passing the Torch"

Sunday, December 12: "The Way Forward"

FOXSexpert: Too Skinny? Not Sexy

Mon, 11 May 2009 17:13:35 -0400

Not having enough sex? Maybe your weight is to blame … and I’m not talking about being overweight.

Want to bring sexy back? Start by taking on the “thin is in” campaign we’ve been subjected to for decades. While the media delights in glamorizing eating disorders, those obsessed with being super slim have learned it’s anything but sexy. They’ve learned the hard way that the quest to become model chic — like any mental or physical “disease” — slowly eats away at one’s own sexuality.

Their sexual identity, sexual nature and sexual desires all ultimately pay the personal price for the need to be skinny or to gain control over their lives. Partners of those with anorexia nervosa or bulimia are affected by these sex sideliners as well, with the relationship suffering in a number of ways.

Far from their “girl”-disease stereotypes, anorexia and bulimia afflict the young and old of both genders.

In combating the signs of aging and maintaining their younger forms, more and more older adults are becoming obsessed with their diets. Adult-onset eating disorders appear to be on the rise, with a Cornell University survey finding an increase in the number of women in their 40s being hospitalized for an eating disorder.

Men can be affected too. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, males make up 1 million of the 8 million Americans with eating disorders. And they bear its burdens no more easily.

Research out of the University of Toronto found that men and women with eating disorders experience similar rates of anxiety, depression, panic disorders, phobias, and alcohol dependency.

Yet the bulk of the information and research data on eating disorders focuses on females, especially those with anorexia. With food and sex among a human’s most basic physiological needs, it’s no surprise that a lack of one impacts the other. Restricting one’s food intake (anorexia) or limiting the body’s retention of food — by vomiting, using laxatives or both — hits couples where it hurts on a number of levels.

Lack of Sexual Interest

Sexual attitudes among women with anorexia nervosa are rather poor. The majority of sufferers are sexually naïve and exhibit sexual disgust. Full of body hate and extremely self-conscious, they see themselves as less sexually appealing and are less interested in sexual activity than others.

They have a great deal of apprehension about their sexual expression, sexual interest and sexual attractiveness to others. Sexually anxious, many see pleasure as threatening. After all, she’s going to great lengths to avoid the pleasures eating offers. Naturally, then, there’s a higher incidence of sexual avoidance and aversion among women of low weight.

The depression, low self-esteem, general malaise, and fatigue lower one’s sex drive and sexual interest even further. Of the anorexics who are sexually active, many report lower rates of overall sexual activity and orgasm, and higher rates of negative emotions during sex. They also rarely engage in sexual fantasy.

But other studies, like one published in the journal Psychological Medicine, report that some females with anorexia report increased sexual activity, despite lowered libido.

This is because many women suffering from this eating disorder become hypersexual, using sex as an expression of power. They enjoy the control involved, even when it becomes self-destructive.

Sexual Functioning

Having an eating disorder is also linked to deficient sexual functioning in women when they become sexually active. When a female severely reduces her intake of food to the point she’s consuming hardly anything, naturally, her reproductive system shuts down.

With low body fat, her body fails to produce sufficient amounts of sex hormones, namely estrogen. Thus, she’ll quit menstruating, making pregnancy difficult for those hoping to reproduce. These endocrinal changes have a domino effect, starting with a lack of vaginal secretions.

This loss of vaginal lubrication makes intercourse painful and uncomfortable. As a result, many develop an aversive reaction to sex and further loss of interest. Lack of orgasm is also common in women with anorexia nervosa.

Relationship Problems

Given these issues, sexual problems are inevitable for the woman dealing with an eating disorder, as well as for her partner.

Determined to be the only person affecting her body, she will keep her figure to herself. This makes sexual advances increasingly difficult for an anorexic to deal with. It makes matters incredibly frustrating for her pained and confused partner, whom she comes to resent.

A strong sense of dislike toward a partner is the most widespread of sexual problems among women with anorexia nervosa. This is further complicated when her body weight is so low that the woman’s sexual attractiveness to her partner may diminish as well. Thus, the aversion becomes mutual. The sex becomes a forgotten matter.

Healing Your Relationship and Your Sex Life

So what are couples to do? First and foremost, the person with an eating disorder needs to get professional help from both a doctor and therapist. Nothing can change until this individual acknowledges that she needs help and seeks it out. Partners need to then buckle down for a long road to recovery. Even after a woman has recovered from an eating disorder, she may still continue to have sexual difficulties.

The good news is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Research published in Psychosomatic Medicine examining changes in sex drive during weight restoration in patients with anorexia nervosa found that an increase in sex drive accompanied weight restoration.

Until lovers can get to that place of reclaiming their sex lives, they can find faith in this Wayside Pulpit quote: “Look on worries like bad weather; unpleasant, but never lasting.”

Click here for more FOXSexpert columns.

FoxSexpert: 8 Painfully Obvious Sex Findings of 2009

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:01:51 -0500

As 2009 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect upon the time, money and efforts once again wasted upon sex-related facts we already know.

Perhaps what’s most ridiculous about these ’09 headlines is the very fact that some of these findings still need to be highlighted given unrelenting societal sexual inadequacies.

1. Youth see porn before age 18.

In a pornography-saturated world, it would be surprising if the opposite were true. But the Australian Institute of Criminology reported this well-known fact, highlighting that 84 percent of 16 to 17-year-old males had experienced inadvertent online exposure.

"Inadvertent" — really? This is almost palpable until you compare that stat to the girls: 60 percent have experienced online exposure to porn. A whole lot more appears to be going on with boys and maybe that’s worth researching.

2. Teens and young women having repeat abortions.

Britain’s Department of Health released figures showing that 20,247 women under 25 have had more than one abortion, with 5,000 of those female teenagers. This isn’t surprising when you consider that the U.K. has the highest teen pregnancy rate in all of Western Europe.

Deemed a failure of government policy, these heartbreaking statistics are largely due to people not receiving adequate sex education, including access to the information and services needed to protect themselves — to prevent pregnancy. Thankfully, Britain has announced legislation making sex education compulsory in all of its schools starting 2011.

3. Stress linked to sexual dysfunction and infertility.

Ask anybody suffering from either of these conditions and they can tell you just that -- they’re stressed. But University of California, Berkeley researchers decided to confirm this "missing piece of the puzzle." In all fairness, scientists showed exactly how the increase in stress hormones inhibits the body’s No. 1 sex hormone, the gonadotropin-releasing hormone. This, ultimately, suppresses ovulation, sperm count and sex drive.

4. Women still having satisfying sex as they age.

Between women’s sexual liberation and the Baby Boomer’s insatiable interest in sex, this finding was to be expected. But given the stereotype that elderly women aren’t into sex, it’s important to highlight this University of California at San Francisco study countering such.

Researchers surveyed 1,977 women between the ages of 45 to 80, finding that 57 percent were at least moderately sexually satisfied. What’s perhaps more interesting, though, is that two of the three most common reasons older women gave for not having sex had nothing to do with her.

Instead, the problems were a lack of partner and a lover’s physical problems. Naturally, those married or living with a partner tripled the chance of having sex on a weekly basis.

5. Link found between teen girls’ weight and risky sexual behaviors.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh confirmed that sexually active girls who were overweight, or who at least thought that they were, and those who were underweight were less likely to use condoms than sexually active girls of normal weight.

Given that weight and body image are closely intertwined and affect self-esteem, which impacts one’s relationships and sexual decision making, well, the domino effect here doesn't need to be spelled out. It’s been well-known for a while.

6. Sex talks happening way too late.

Anything that evokes fear, discomfort and great distress tends to get postponed. When it involves sex, it’s all the easier to put it off. So is it any wonder that a parent-child sex talk study published in "Pediatrics" found that more than 40 percent of teens have had intercourse before talking to their parents about safe sex, contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases?

"The results didn’t surprise me," Dr. Mark Schuster, one of the study’s authors, told Time magazine. Guess what? It didn’t surprise a lot of us, Dr. Schuster, especially given previous research efforts and literature reviews on this topic, like the one found in my parent-child sex communication dissertation.

7. Sexualized lyrics linked to higher levels of teen sex.

A study found that youths most exposed to songs containing strong sexual content are twice as likely to have had sex when compared to those with the least exposure to such lyrics. The research, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, focused on 711 ninth-graders who were exposed to more than 14 hours a week of lyrics describing degrading sex.

Admittedly, it’s interesting to see this long suspected influence get confirmed. Yet more eyebrow-raising would’ve been to inquire about the kind of sex these teens are having. Such findings could potentially be much more disturbing.

8. The size of his wallet matters.

Women go for men with money — really? A Newcastle University study’s findings are laughable until you hone in on its most interesting finding: Women derive more sexual pleasure from men earning bigger wages. The survey found that her orgasm is directly linked to his salary.

Click here to read more FoxSexpert columns.

FOXSexpert: Ohhh ... No? Dealing With Post-Sex Regret

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:15:05 -0400

“Uh-oh!” isn’t the “ohhhh” anybody wants to be making when it comes to sex. Yet many people feel such an exclamation echo from their soul following a supposedly erotic moment. Such post-sex regret is induced by questions like: What was that? What have I just done? Where was my orgasm? What about my satisfaction?

Whether riddled with guilt for wanton wrongdoing or regretting a rendezvous’ emotional disconnect, the sorrow that sets in after sex can leave one depressed instead of desiring more. But instead of shaking off such reactions, we need to listen to them. What are these feelings of sorrow trying to tell us about our sex lives? And are there ways to counter them for sex that’s worth having?

Humans experience all sorts of sexual regrets. One of the most widely known is the “morning after” regret, captured more dramatically as the “Coyote Syndrome.”

Like the coyote willing to chew off its own leg when caught in a trap, people have a very similar reaction when they wake up, arms wrapped around someone who was much hotter after a few drinks. Suddenly feeling sorry for what happened the night before, they can’t wait to escape.

Other sexual regrets include the “Monday morning” regret, where you have to face up to co-workers who witnessed your morning-after regret in the works. Sexual regrets can also arise from compromising your sexual and emotional needs, sleeping with somebody who is using you, or not realizing the orgasmic reactions you were hoping for.

Any of these situations can lead to the anger or sadness that reverberates as a sense of “hollowness” after sex. In “Be Honest – You’re Not that Into Him Either,” Ian Kerner explains this reaction as primarily female and one attributable to the release of oxytocin that comes with female orgasm.

If oxytocin, the cuddle hormone that promotes a sense of attachment, has no emotional connection to attach to, the body feels empty. Sad, sorrowful and/or angry, she regrets sex despite the physical gratification of climax.

For those who didn’t experience orgasm, but who faked, Kerner credits the post-sex sorrow to “post-faking regret.” This is especially common among those who helped their partners reach orgasm.

Men, on the other hand, experience post-orgasmic regret in terms of not wanting to commit to their sexual partners. They are ready to fly the coop and look for someone more suitable with whom to spread their seed and be with for the long-haul.

Of course, gender differences when it comes to sexual reactions and regrets should never be viewed as so cut and dried. A number of men have faked being sexually gratified and felt guilty for it. Plenty of women have wanted a lover for nothing more than sex and then thought twice of it.

No matter what your situation, the experience of post-sex regret provides you with the opportunity to take action – as in strive for a better sex life! Your heart, mind and soul are trying to tell you something, so listen! Ways to combat post-sex regrets include:

Seek meaningful sexual relationships. If you need sex with deep meaning – sex that doesn’t feel hollow – then avoid getting yourself into situations that involve somebody doing the walk of shame. It’s that simple.

Understand your limits. Some men and women can have sex for purely physical reasons. You may not be one of them. Unfortunately or not, some may feel the need to test their limits on this one, but once you know yourself in this sense, don’t push yourself. If you need to feel emotionally connected during sex, don’t settle for anything less.

Don’t fake orgasm. Let your partner know what gets you going, giving a show-and-tell if need be. If you didn’t climax during sex, approach your partner at a later date with a game plan on how to get there. Arm yourselves with knowledge, books chock full of ideas, sexual enhancement products ... anything you need to invite greater sexual response.

Cuddle. Snuggling post-sex can do wonders for both him and her. Contrary to popular belief, plenty of men love to cuddle. Some desire it more than women, in part because men also release oxytocin in sexually peaking. So their bodies are also encouraging some bonding during and post-sex with this hormonal high.

Understand his need to sleep. In many ways, men can’t help but feel sleepy after sex. He’s just had one heck of a workout, which can be an exhausting, tension-relieving experience. This is especially true in post-orgasm situations since his prolactin levels are high. Don’t take these reactions personally, especially in how they can impact your overall sexual satisfaction. He needs to rejuvenate both body and mind during this final phase of his sexual response cycle, known as the refractory period.

Engage in afterplay. Instead of hitting the shower or checking your e-mail, relish this time to relax in each other’s arms. Allow your energies to merge even more with affectionate touches and pillow talk. Use this time post-sex to exchange intimate thoughts, including what you liked about the sex you just had, for example,“That was so great when you...”

Mention how close you feel with every sexual experience. Reminisce about significant firsts you’ve shared, e.g., kiss, and what you adore about one another. Give a simple massage, e.g., to your lover’s hands or feet.

Seek to maintain the moment, doing things like playing sensual music. After all, who knows? Both of you may be up for some post-sex action, as in a second round, sooner or later.

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FOXSexpert: Dealing With a Selfish Lover

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:06:27 -0400

Occasionally, you are “that” lover. Then there are times when your partner becomes “that” lover. But when being erotically egocentric isn’t the exception to the rule, having a selfish lover can be a bit of a problem.

Despite the adage that “to give is to receive,” supporting only one person’s wanton welfare gets really old really fast.

At first, it’s hard to fault a lover for being self-consumed during sex. After all, it’s a bit of a compliment — a sign that he or she must be having a really good time. It’s sweet ... until you realize that you’re the one always left hanging. With your lover lost to the pleasuring, you’re getting zero help in becoming sexually satiated as well.

Selfishness happens. But when it’s habit, how do you handle this lover?

People are selfish lovers for different reasons. So dealing with this intimacy killer is going to come down to the type of situation you’re fielding ...

Scenario: Your lover doesn’t know how to give pleasure.

Some lovers don’t know how to have good sex, or at least not with you. Sexually ignorant, they think it’s OK to focus on the self. In this case, a “show and tell,” with explicit explanations, is in order. While your partner watches, you’re going to pleasure yourself, making sure to give plenty of instruction on what feels good.

Eventually, you’ll want to let your lover take over, giving direction when necessary. This can be done by taking your lover’s hands and moving them in ways you like to be touched. Alternatively, you can place your partner’s hand over yours in feeling the movements you like best.

Scenario: Your partner won’t reciprocate.

Your lover gladly accepts oral pleasuring, but return the favor? — no way. How should you respond? The next time your lover makes a request, respond with, “Okay, but me first!” If you don’t get what you want, go on strike.

Launch this by defusing the situation, acknowledging that selfishness happens on occasion. At the same time, one partner cannot be expected to continually make sacrifices for the other. Acknowledge that you can understand that your lover gets incredibly excited by your abilities — and that it’s quite nice to go to town — but that you need some attention too. Then outline the terms of your equal erotic rights campaign, stating your needs, especially as they relate to sexual gratification.

Scenario: Your lover can’t wait to get to home plate.

Caught up in the excitement of a pending orgasm, it can be all too easy to focus on the destination, forgetting about the ride. This goal-oriented lover needs to learn the importance of foreplay in building both sexual response and intimacy. You can start the process by being a tease, making your partner wait for the next pitch. For example, ask for a sensual massage.

Explain that neither of you is going to batter up till you warm up. If your lover doesn’t respect your needs, and continues to rush, bolster your efforts by stressing that togetherness makes for the grand slam. Yes, it can be fun to hit a solo home run, but it's even more satisfying when there are others on base.

Scenario: Your partner could care less about your pleasuring.

I saved the diciest for last, since working through this one requires the most work. If you’re involved with someone who isn’t into mutual pleasuring, remember that there’s a lot more fun to be had in grabbing your favorite enhancements and hanging a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your bedroom door. If the energy you’re putting out is depreciating in returns, save it for yourself.

Do not spoil this individual by maintaining this one-way street. The two of you should do no more than talk until this person realizes that it takes two to tango. In having such a discussion, make the point that you feel that your partner isn’t engaged. Don’t come at this in an accusatory way saying, for example, “You’re only out for yourself during sex.” Your partner will feel under attack and likely shut down.

Instead, strive for a better response by sharing your emotions, “I feel like we’re not connecting when we have sex. I’m sad that my pleasuring seems secondary.”

If your partner seems unsympathetic, bring out the big guns. Nothing gets a lover listening more than, “I’m frustrated that I have yet to have an orgasm with you.”

While a buzz kill, this is sure to get the attention you’re after. People take such matters very personally, and knowing one’s performance is substandard may be all the motivation needed.

In any of these cases, as you retrain your partner, you want to reward good deeds. This can be as simple as a positive affirmation when things go in your favor. (Note: “ooo’s,” and “ahhhh’s” are quite effective.) Other erotic awards should be based on what your lover enjoys, such as a nice rubdown during afterplay. Once selfish lovers realize that a pleasure shared is doubled, they’re likely to see that as the biggest prize.

Click here to read more FOXSexpert columns.