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Saturday, March 3, 2012

Odd Stories: Tenants Banned from Laundry Room

Karlstad, Sweden - A Swedish landlord said he had to ban a couple from using their building's laundry room because they were tying up the facilities too often.

The landlord told the Hem & Hyra newspaper he had to change the locks on the laundry room in the Karlstad apartment building because the couple, who he said have their own laundry facilities inside their apartment, were using the communal machines up to eleven times per month, The Local reported Friday.

The landlord said he initially spoke to the couple and they agreed to use the communal machines only once per month, but they did not abide by the agreement.

The man said he had to change the locks on the laundry room because the couple refused to surrender their key.

The couple lodged a complaint with the Rent and Tenancy Tribunal, but the panel sided with the landlord.

Odd Stories: Mustache Bill Puts Congressman in Hairy Situation

A Republican congressman from Maryland is in a hairy situation over a proposal to give tax breaks to Americans with mustaches.

The American Mustache Institute claimed Tuesday that Rep. Roscoe Bartlett had lent his support to the 'Stache Act, which calls for a tax deduction of up to $250 a year for facial hair grooming.

But Bartlett's office said he never supported the measure. Staffers said Wednesday that they only forwarded a copy of the proposal to the House Ways & Means Committee, without the congressman's knowledge, after receiving a media inquiry about it. That led the institute to believe Bartlett, who has long had a mustache, supported the measure.

"For the record: Roscoe is pro-stache, but he does not believe Americans should pay for people's personal grooming decisions," Bartlett's chief of staff, Deborah Burrell, said in a statement.

So far, no other representatives have supported the mustache proposal.

At least one of Bartlett's Republican primary opponents is criticizing him over the facial hair flap. The longtime incumbent faces several challengers in the 6th District, which was redrawn to include more Democratic voters.

The American Mustache Institute, meanwhile, issued a statement faulting Burrell for what it called a "shameful reversal."

"We are highly disappointed by their reversal based on the fact that the congressman's opponents in the race are jumping on the bandwagon to criticize him," chairman Aaron Perlut said. "They obviously don't understand what it is to be a mustached American."

The institute plans to send Burrell an autographed photo of Burt Reynolds as a goodwill gesture, Perlut said.
State Delegate Kathy Azfali, who is challenging Bartlett in next month's primary, said the 'Stache Act situation was a sign that the 10-term incumbent had lost control of his staff and "is out of touch with voters."

Bartlett told WTOP-FM last fall that he grew his mustache in the 1950s as an affront to the clean-shaven.

"For someone who was kind of a nonconformist, it was kind of a symbol of rebellion," he said.

Bartlett supports the Movember campaign, which encourages men to grow mustaches in the month of November to raise money and awareness for men's health, specifically prostate cancer. The mustache institute has contributed to that campaign and other charities.

"I would encourage people who find out about the mustache institute's efforts to make tax-deductible charitable contributions toward the serious Movember philanthropy effort," said Lisa Wright, Bartlett's press secretary.

Wright said she forwarded the mustache institute's white paper on the 'Stache Act to the Ways & Means Committee because it's the committee's role to address media inquiries about tax policy.

"I looked at it, and I knew it was a joke," Wright said of the 'Stache Act.

Odd Stories: Cyprus Drops Gambling Charges Against 98-year-old

Cyprus' attorney general has dropped gambling charges against about 40 elderly women, including a 98-year-old, whose weekly poker-and-bridge party had been raided by police.

The women, mostly in their 70s, had became a local cause celebre after receiving a court summons this week. Interviews with 98-year-old Eftychia Yiasemidou appeared in several media outlets.

An assistant for Attorney General Petros Clerides said Friday the official had been unaware of the case and only found out about it through media reports.

Gambling in Cyprus is punishable by up to six months in jail or a euro 750 ($1,000) fine. The ladies were playing at home with small amounts of cash during their weekly afternoon get-together in November 2009 when police raided the house.

Odd Stories: Prank Offer of Free Baby Lands Teen in Trouble

Clinton, Mississippi - A Clinton teen was pulling the leg of a friend when he advertised a free baby boy on Craigslist using the friend's cell number on the contact information, police say.

Police Chief Don Byington would not identify the youths involved, but said the posting was "a bad practical joke."

His department's investigation shows the 18-year-old student at Clinton High took a photo of an unknown baby boy from Google and placed the advertisement on Craigslist to give away - not to sell - the baby, Byington said.

Officers consulted with Craigslist and used the cell phone number to track down what happened, he said. The male student whose number was used without his permission "didn't know until his friends called it to his attention," Byington said.

Police contacted the family members of the student who placed the listing and allowed them to go get the student from school and bring him to the department Monday for questioning.

"We've talked to everyone involved, and we are consulting with the district attorney's office to see if there are any charges to be brought," he said. "We are exploring that."

Hinds County Assistant District Attorney Jamie McBride said the posting of such information on Craigslist can be prosecuted under state law that makes the "posting of messages through electronic media for the purpose of causing injury to another person" a felony.

A conviction carries up to five years in jail and up to a $10,000 fine, McBride said.

Youth offenders under 18 would not be prosecuted as an adult, but instead would fall under the jurisdiction of Youth Court, he said. "It would be considered a delinquency charge," he said.


Clinton schools Superintendent Phil Burchfield on Tuesday stressed the importance of proper behavior online.

Burchfield said the district will cooperate with law enforcement throughout its investigation. Disciplinary actions, if any, would be decided at the investigation's end, Burchfield said.

Working with the state attorney general's office, Clinton High recently hosted a Facebook Roadshow aimed at teaching students proper behavior and etiquette on social networking sites.

Byington said the student now understands his actions can be prosecuted.

"I think after speaking with him, he realized the magnitude of what took place when he placed it on there," the chief said. "It's a lack of maturity on his part."

Odd Stories: Florida Police Seek Beer Thieves

Miami - Authorities in Florida said they are working to identify a group of thieves believed to be behind a string of convenience store beer thefts.

The Miami-Dade Police Department said four young men have repeatedly been seen stealing 12-packs of beer from convenience stores in the county.

Police said a security camera captured images of the men from a 3 a.m. heist Jan. 17 at a convenience store in the 9900 block of Southwest 142nd Avenue in Miami.

The security camera footage has been released to the public and police are asking anyone with information on the suspects to come forward.

Odd Stories: Frenchman Sues Over Google Views Urination Photo


Nantes, France - A Frenchman took Google to court Thursday over a photo published online by its Street View application showing him urinating in his front yard which he believes has made him the laughing stock of his village in rural northwest France.

The man, who is aged around 50 and lives in a village of some 3,000 people in the Maine-et-Loire region, is demanding the removal of the photo, in which locals have recognized him despite his face being blurred out.

He also wants 10,000 euros ($13,300) in damages.

"Everyone has the right to a degree of secrecy," his lawyer, Jean-Noel Bouillard, told Reuters. "In this particular case, it's more amusing than serious. But if he'd been caught kissing a woman other than his wife, he would have had the same issue."

Google Inc.'s Street View, covering some 30 countries and available in France since 2008, enables users of Google Maps to also view photos of streets taken by its camera cars, which have cameras hoisted on frames on their roofs.

The man thought he was hidden from view by his closed gate as he relieved himself in November 2010. But Google's lens caught him from above his gate as it passed by. Bouillard did not explain why the man chose to urinate outside.

Google's lawyer in the case, named by local daily Ouest France as Christophe Bigot, was not immediately reachable, but the newspaper said he was pleading that the case should be declared null and void.
The court, in the nearby city of Angers, is due to give its verdict on March 15.

Odd Stories: Tricky Rescue Frees Roofer Who Nailed Hand To Roof

By Kelly Sedano

Coconut Grove, Florida - A man who nailed his hand of the roof of a Coconut Grove home required the help of Miami Fire Rescue Thursday afternoon, and they were forced to conduct a tricky rescue that involved cutting part of the roof away.

Rescue crews responded to the home at 2949 Day Avenue and found the man, who had been working on the roof, unable to free his hand from the roof.

Fire Rescue Lt. Iggy Carroll said the man was using a nail gun and accidentally nailed his finger to a piece of wood.

“It was that one finger on his left hand where the nail went through and into the wood. And we wasn’t able to free himself, so that’s when they called 911,” Lt Carroll said.

After determining that they could not safely free the man, crews used a  hand-held power saw to remove the section of roof attached to his hand.

“We actually had to cut the roof around his hands so we could safely move him down,” said Lt. Carroll.  “Anytime you have someone impaled you don’t want to pull it out. We cut around it.”

Lt. Carroll said it took about 90 minutes to safely get the man down, mostly because paramedics called to the houise decided they needed a little extra help to safely get the 47-year-old man down.

“Because of the pitch of the roof and the drop was about 30 feet, our units called for additional resources, so we brought a special team, our Technical Rescue Team, to come out here and provide a little more safety equipments for our paramedics to remove this gentleman.”

He was transported to the hospital for treatment, with the piece of roof decking still attached, in good shape

Odd Stories: Utah Mom Gives Birth to Her Third Leap Day Baby

Provo, Utah - A Utah couple may want to start buying lottery tickets after they beat astronomical odds to have their third consecutive Leap Day baby earlier this week.

David and Louise Estes are believed to be just the second family to have three babies born on Feb. 29, reports the Provo Daily Herald.

Xavier, their eldest of five children, was born on Leap Day 2004. Remington came along exactly four years later. And Jade was born this past Wednesday.

David thought it would be "cool" if they could time Jade's birth, the report said, but in fact, she was due Feb. 24. Louise was induced, as she has been with all of her previous pregnancies.

Although three of their children were born on Leap Day, the couple tries to make sure each child has their own special celebration, David told the paper.

The Henriksen family of Norway is the only other family on record with three children born on consecutive Leap Days — in 1960, 1964 and 1968. The odds are said to be less than one in a billion.

There are no plans yet to attempt a fourth Leap Day baby for the Estes family, but, David said, "You never know..."

Odd Stories: Man Tried to Get Sex for Photos

Golden Gate, Florida - A Florida man is accused of threatening to show naked photos of a woman to her husband if she would not have sex with the suspect, police said.

Collier County sheriff's deputies said the victim told them David Carrillo-Rodriguez, 33, of Golden Gate, approached her while she was walking home and said he wanted to talk, the Naples Daily News reported Friday.

The woman, who said she previously had a sexual relationship with Carrillo-Rodriguez but called it off because she is married, said the man grabbed her and pulled her behind a house when she refused to talk to him.

Deputies said Carrillo-Rodriguez then told the woman he would show naked pictures he took of her to her husband if she would not have sex with him.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Texas Rice Farmers Won't Get Water for Irrigation

Houston - Thousands of Texas rice farmers won't get water for irrigation this year because lakes and rivers remain low after more than a year of drought.

The Lower Colorado River Authority said Friday it won't release water from two Austin-area lakes into the rivers and canals the farmers use for irrigation. The announcement was expected, but notable as the first time in the authority's history that it won't provide the water.

Texas is one of the six largest rice producers in the country, and the farmers in the Colorado River basin make up almost three-quarters of the state's total rice acreage. But without irrigation, many farmers will be able to plant only a fraction of the rice they usually grow, and some won't plant any.

"Farmers were prepared for the almost inevitability of this ... but things came so close at the end, there were some who thought we might get it," said Ronald Gertson, who grows rice in Lissie, about 60 miles southwest of Houston.

Conditions have eased in recent weeks with some significant rains, but two-fifths of the state remains in a severe drought. As of Friday morning, lakes Travis and Buchanan were about 3,200 acre-feet, or more than 1 billion gallons, short of the level they'd need to reach for the farmers to receive water.

A small percentage of farmers, those with senior water rights along the river, will get about 20,000 acre-feet of water. The rest will not get any.

LCRA spokeswoman Clara Tuma had said Thursday that the authority did not expect to reach the 850,000 acre-feet needed to provide water to all farmers.

But even if the lake levels had hit that mark, farmers would have received only 25 percent of the water they needed for their crops for this season, Gertson said. They would have had to break up big fields into smaller ones and do a lot of other improvising to make that work, he said.

"It would not have been the most efficient use of resources," said Gertson, whose family has grown rice in the area for five generations. "So while I'm not happy not to get water, I wouldn't have been jumping for joy to get only 25 percent."

He has estimated he can grow about a third of his rice with groundwater. If he pushes it, he might get about 45 percent of the acres he normally plants. Like many farmers, he had already been looking at what he could do to cut costs and make it through what's clearly going to be a hard year.

The three counties that won't get irrigation water — Wharton, Colorado and Matagorda — are some of the poorest in the state, with poverty levels above the national average. Many farmers in the region alternate between growing rice and ranching, but those with cattle sold off much of their livestock last year as the drought parched rangeland and pushed up hay prices.

Man Denied Liver Transplant for Using Prescribed Marijuana: “Probably Too Late for Me”


By Noel Brinkerhoff
 
Los Angeles - Norman B. Smith, the 63-year-old cancer patient at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles who was denied a liver transplant because he used medical marijuana, says in a new interview that it’s probably too late for him to make a recovery even if he could get the surgery he needs.
 
Diagnosed three years ago with inoperable liver cancer, Smith was prescribed medical marijuana by Cedars-Sinai oncologist Steven Miles to help his patient deal with the effects of chemotherapy. Then Smith became eligible for a liver transplant, but was removed from the list after testing positive for marijuana.
 
Hospital officials insisted that Smith stop using marijuana for at least six months, undergo random drug testing, and attend weekly Alcoholics Anonymous classes before they will consider putting him back on the list. They say the policy has nothing to do with morality and is a decision based on the health of the patient.
 
Smith says he’s frustrated with the policy, but is resigned to the fact that he may have missed his chance at getting a new liver. “It’s probably too late for me,” Smith told Reason TV, “but I hope it makes it easier for the next guy…and there are plenty of us out there.”
 
Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, says she knows of a dozen patients who have died because of the same denial of a transplant.

Argentine Women Refused Legal Abortions in Cases of Rape

By Marcela Valente

Buenos Aires - For over 90 years, a law in Argentina has allowed women who become pregnant as a result of rape to have an abortion. However, hospitals often refuse to carry out the procedure, instead referring the women to the justice system.

Argentine law penalises doctors who carry out abortions and the women who have them, with certain exceptions.

The 1921 criminal code states that abortion is not punishable when a doctor performs it because the life or health of the mother is in danger, or "if the pregnancy is the result of rape or sexual assault of a feeble-minded or demented woman."

Nevertheless, cases periodically crop up where sexually abused or raped girls, teenagers and women are referred to the justice authorities for a decision about a procedure that in fact does not require authorisation.

"Abortion is a medical procedure. Doctors, not judges, should decide whether it needs to be done," Natalia Gherardi, a lawyer and head of the Latin American Group for Gender and Justice (ELA), told IPS.

In spite of the legal ban, between 460,000 and 600,000 abortions a year are performed in this country, according to NGOs, and an estimated 100 women die every year from clandestine abortions performed in unsanitary conditions.

Aware of the difficulties in obtaining approval of a law legalising abortion, women's organisations have long campaigned for at least an effective right to abortion in cases in which it is already legal.

Gherardi said "there is great uncertainty among doctors on how to interpret the article" in the law that establishes which cases of abortion are not punishable. And their confusion is understandable, given what happens when cases are referred to the justice system.

Some judges authorise the abortion; others rule that authorisation is unnecessary; and some judges rule, against the law, to prevent the procedure.

To avoid the referral of these cases to the justice authorities, in 2007 the Health Ministry issued a Technical Guide for the Comprehensive Care of Non-Punishable Abortions.

The guide book acknowledges that "for many decades" women have been prevented from exercising their right, enshrined in the criminal code, "to have access to an abortion in authorised circumstances."

"The state is obliged to guarantee the exercise of that right," says the guide, which adds that hospitals "have the legal obligation to carry out the procedure, and are not required to call for judicial intervention and/or authorisation" before acting, even in cases of under-age girls.

Nevertheless, there are regular instances of girls attending a hospital with their parents and being denied an abortion. The most recent case to have come to light occurred in January, in the province of Entre Ríos, where an 11-year-old girl who had been sexually abused became pregnant.

Doctors at the public hospital insisted on judicial authorisation, and a judge refused permission for the procedure. Furthermore, the provincial health minister, Hugo Cettour, publicly said that if the girl was capable of conceiving, she was capable of being a mother.

In the face of this pressure, and even more pressure from both the Catholic and evangelical churches, families give up the right to legal abortions. "This almost always happens to women who are poor or marginalised," Gabriela Filoni, a lawyer, told IPS.

Filoni is in charge of the regional litigation programme of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights (CLADEM), which in conjunction with other organisations succeeded in taking one of these cases to the international arena.

As a result of their intervention, in 2011 the United Nations Human Rights Committee ordered the Argentine state to provide "reparations, including an indemnity" to a mentally disabled young woman who was denied an abortion.

"The time period allowed for the state to respond has expired. We know the government asked for an extension, but what we want is a public policy or a legal measure that would prevent a repeat of these cases," said Filoni.

The 2006 case involved a 20-year-old woman identified in the records as LMR, in Guernica in the province of Buenos Aires, who has a mental age of between eight and 10 as certified by her physicians. The young woman was raped by her uncle, and became pregnant. But when her mother took her to the hospital for an abortion, the doctors refused and sent her to another facility.

At the second hospital, the bioethics committee met and referred the case to the justice system. A court denied permission for the abortion, and the ruling was upheld on appeal.

The provincial Supreme Court finally recognised the young woman’s right to a legal abortion. Furthermore, the court stated that judicial authorisation should not have been required in the first place.

But even then, the hospital refused to carry out the procedure, claiming this time that the pregnancy was too advanced. In the end, the family had to arrange an illegal abortion to terminate a 20-week pregnancy.

By this time, LMR's mother and sister had both lost their jobs because they stayed by her side throughout the whole process, and they had been harassed by Catholic groups applying pressure to prevent the abortion.

"Authorisation was not necessary in this case, yet the health providers washed their hands of the matter, and the problem here is that referring the case to the justice system takes time, and the pregnancy continues to advance," said Filoni.

In a survey carried out by Ibarómetro, a polling firm, seven out of 10 respondents asked about the case of the 11-year-old girl in Entre Ríos said she should have been given a legal abortion.

When asked about the legalisation of abortion, 60 percent of respondents said it should be a woman's right, and access should be guaranteed by the state.

Facing Painful Cuts and Tuition Hikes, U.S. Students "Occupy Education"

By Judith Scherr

Berkeley, California - Shawn Deez, a freshman in peace and conflict studies, says she thinks she knows why some classes are scheduled at the University of California, Berkeley, and some are not. It's corporate influence that makes the difference, she said.

It was Mar. 1, Occupy Education's National Day of Action, observed with marches and rallies at some 30 California universities and at a number of venues around the country.

While much of the media focused on the steep tuition hikes at state universities and community colleges, many participants at UC Berkeley used the lens of the Occupy Movement - the 99 percent versus the one percent - to examine the underlying problems in education.

Deez spoke to IPS during a downpour while waiting for a noontime rally on the UC Berkeley campus. She contended that the influence of corporations such as BP – formally British Petroleum – which has partnered with the university and its affiliated laboratories on a 400,000-dollar biofuels institute, heavily influences the departments in which university funds are spent. She said the humanities have no corporate funding and face increasing cuts.

Moreover, she said, corporate interests have turned the university away from its mission. 


"The idea of careerism has taken over the university," she said. "There's no idea of going to the university any more just for knowledge."

And then there's the question of who profits from the steep tuition hikes. Banks have been frequently targeted by the six-month-old Occupy Movement, for their bad home loans and foreclosures. But University of California, Davis instructor Joshua Clover explained to the Berkeley crowd of around 300 how banks profit from the hike in their tuitions.

"The public university wants to raise its price of admission much faster than any increase in people's ability to pay," he said. "Those banks really need you suckers for those loans. The university and banks enter into an alliance through which the banks make staggering profits from the university's huge fee hikes."

After that, the banks control the debtor's lives. "This is the outcome of the university's laying down with capital," he said, telling the students that the answer isn't a "kinder, gentler capitalism", but an end to the system.

Before the rally, "teach-outs" were held in small groupings around the campus. Matt Williams, a senior in sociology, led one on affirmative action. UC Berkeley statistics for 2010 show there were just four percent African American and 13 percent Latino undergraduates.

He said that part of the problem is the different quality of high schools, where some schools offer advanced placement classes in which a student can earn 4.5 points (an A is four points), and where counselors steer students into college preparatory classes and even help students write their entry essays.

Donnell Vital-Gibson, an eleventh grader at Oakland Technical High School, was listening to the speaker on affirmative action and talked to IPS afterward, explaining that he was one of the lucky ones in Oakland. His high school has advanced placement classes, he said, but schools in Oakland's poorer neighbourhoods do not.

"We're fighting the one percent right here," he said.

After the rally, the students took off on a march to Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, the former home of Occupy Oakland, to meet up with community college students and others from Occupy Oakland.

Then some 60 among them marched again, heading to a church in Richmond, about 12 miles away, where they would join students from San Francisco, spend the night at a church, then walk 99 miles over several days, to UC Davis, near the state capitol in Sacramento.

They are planning "Occupy the capitol," a statewide education rally in Sacramento Mar. 5.

"The march is a way to engage the community," said Stephan Georgiou, a student at San Francisco City College, a community college where 67 classes were cut this year. Georgiou said they're facing the "dismantling of community colleges in California," and that people are not aware of the programme cuts and layoffs.

He said some legislators are trying to "take the autonomy away from the colleges and turn them into vocational schools."

Around the time Georgiou was marching from Oakland to Richmond, 13 demonstrators were arrested in San Francisco for refusing to leave a state office building until their demands for education funding were met. A City College engineering instructor was among the arrestees.

Around 3 p.m., another rally was held in Berkeley. This one, at the K-12 school administration building, was put together by Occupy Berkeley High and attended by some 600 students, whose signs and t- shirts said: "Wake up! Stand up! Speak up! Shake up! We are the 99 percent. Tax the rich."

The "tax the rich" refers to a proposed "millionaires tax" that will be on California's November ballot, if its supporters collect the required signatures. It would levy an additional state income tax of three percent for Californians whose annual adjusted gross income is over one million dollars, and five percent for those making over two million dollars a year.

The funds would restore budget cuts to education, public safety, and other services. The California Federation of Teachers is backing this measure.

Berkeley High senior Amelia McCrea spoke to the crowd, calling for the millionaire's tax and asking: "Doesn't the government realise that someday, we're going to be running the show?

"We are the future innovators, artists, politicians, shapers of the world and we are the ones who supply the hunger for knowledge and drive to learn. We must show the state, the country, that we won't sit idly by while education is being undervalued."

McCrea continued, "I believe that students should be recognised as a priority over the funding of prisons," and then she invited the audience to enjoy the dance performances and music provided by fellow students. 

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Dinosaurs Had Fleas Too - Giant Ones, Fossils Show


In the Jurassic era, even the flea was a beast, compared to its minuscule modern descendants. These pesky bloodsuckers were nearly an inch long.

New fossils found in China are evidence of the oldest fleas — from 125 million to 165 million years ago, said Diying Huang of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology. Their disproportionately long proboscis, or straw-like mouth, had sharp weapon-like serrated edges that helped them bite and feed from their super-sized hosts, he and other researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Scientists figure about eight or more of today's fleas would fit on the burly back of their ancient ancestor.

"That's a beast," said study co-author Michael Engel, entomology curator at the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. "It was a big critter. I can't even imagine coming home and finding my miniature schnauzer with one or more of these things crawling around on it."

The ancient female fleas were close to twice the size of the males, researchers found, which fits with modern fleas.

But Engel said it's not just the size that was impressive about the nine flea fossils. It was their fearsome beak capable of sticking into and sucking blood from the hides of certain dinosaurs, probably those that had feathers.

These flea beaks "had almost like a saw running down the side," Engel said. "This thing was packing a weapon. They were equipped to dig into something."

While the ancient fleas were big, they had one disadvantage compared to modern ones: Their legs weren't too developed. Evolving over time, fleas went from crawling to jumping, Huang said.

"Luckily for the land animals of the Mesozoic, these big flat fleas lacked the tremendous jumping capacity that our common fleas have," said Joe Hannibal of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He wasn't involved in the study, but praised it as useful and interesting.

Just finding the fleas was a stroke of luck, Huang said. He first found one in a Chinese fossil market and mentioned it to someone at his hotel. The other guest showed him a photo of another fossilized flea, telling him it was from Daohugou in northeastern China, where there's a famous fossil bed from about 165 million years ago. Huang went there and found fleas preserved in a brownish film of volcanic ash. The grains of rock were so fine you could see antennae and other details of the fleas, he said.

Modern fleas get engorged after they feast on blood, but these didn't seem engorged, Engel said.

It shouldn't seem too surprising that there were large fleas more than 100 million years ago. If you go back even farther in time, ancestors of dragonflies and damsel flies had 3-foot wingspans, Engel said.

Study: Old Flu Drug Speeds Brain Injury Recovery


Researchers are reporting the first treatment to speed recovery from severe brain injuries caused by falls and car crashes: a cheap flu medicine whose side benefits were discovered by accident decades ago.

Severely injured patients who were given amantadine got better faster than those who received a dummy medicine. After four weeks, more people in the flu drug group could give reliable yes-and-no answers, follow commands or use a spoon or hairbrush — things that few of them could do at the start. Far fewer patients who got amantadine remained in a vegetative state, 17 percent versus 32 percent.

"This drug moved the needle in terms of speeding patient recovery, and that's not been shown before," said neuropsychologist Joseph Giacino of Boston's Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, co-leader of the study. He added: "It really does provide hope for a population that is viewed in many places as hopeless."

Many doctors began using amantadine for brain injuries years ago, but until now there's never been a big study to show that it works. The results of the federally funded study appear in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

A neurologist who wasn't involved in the research called it an important step. But many questions remain, including whether people less severely injured would benefit, and whether amantadine actually improves patients' long-term outcome or just speeds up their recovery.

Each year, an estimated 1.7 million Americans suffer a traumatic brain injury. Falls, car crashes, colliding with or getting hit by an object, and assaults are the leading causes. About three-quarters are concussions or other mild forms that heal over time. But about 52,000 people with brain injuries die each year and 275,000 are hospitalized, many with persistent, debilitating injuries, according to government figures.

With no proven remedies to rely on, doctors have used a variety of medicines approved for other ailments in the hopes that they would help brain injury patients. Those decisions are based on "hunches and logic rather than data," said Dr. John Whyte, of the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in suburban Philadelphia. He led the study along with Giacino.

Amantadine (uh-MAN'-tah-deen), an inexpensive generic, was approved for the flu in the mid-1960s. The first inkling that it might have other uses came a few years later when it appeared to improve Parkinson's symptoms in nursing home patients who got it. It was found to have an effect on the brain's dopamine system, whose many functions include movement and alertness, and it was later approved for Parkinson's.
It's now commonly used for brain injuries, and the researchers felt it was important to find out "whether we're treating patients with a useful drug, a harmful drug or a useless drug," Whyte said.

The study was done in the U.S., Denmark and Germany and involved 184 severely disabled patients, about 36 years old on average. About a third were in a vegetative state, meaning unconscious but with periods of wakefulness. The rest were minimally conscious, showing some signs of awareness. They were treated one to four months after getting injured, a period when a lot of patients get better on their own, Giacino noted.

They were randomly assigned to receive amantadine or a dummy drug daily for four weeks. Both groups made small but significant improvement, but the rate of recovery was faster in the group getting amantadine. 

When treatment stopped, recovery in the drug group slowed. Two weeks later, the level of recovery in the two groups was about the same.
There was no group difference in side effects, which included seizure, insomnia and rigid muscles.
The study was short, and the effect on long-term outcome is unknown. But Giacino said the drug still has value even if it only hastens recovery.

"What condition would we not jump for joy if we could have it over with faster?" he said.

The study didn't include those with penetrating head injuries, like the gunshot wound former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords suffered, but Giacino said the drug should have similar effects in those patients. Whether it would work in patients with brain injuries not caused by trauma, such as a stroke, isn't known.

Whyte said the researchers want to test the drug for longer periods.

Dr. Ramon Diaz-Arrastia said the results were welcome news in a field that has seen many failed efforts. He is director of clinical research at the government's Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine, which works with the military and government scientists on brain injury research.

"It's an important step toward developing better therapies," he said.

Since amantadine is so commonly used, he said U.S. troops with severe brain injuries in Iraq or Afghanistan probably get it, or should get it now. Since 2000, some 233,000 troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries, including about 6,100 serious cases, many of them from bomb blasts or shrapnel.

Laura Bacon said amantadine seems to be helping her brother recover from a car accident in Vermont last October. Nicholas Gnazzo, 47, of Rochester, N.H., was in a coma for weeks before he was taken for rehabilitation to Spaulding, where doctors put him on amantadine in January.

Since then he has been more alert, able to communicate with nods or gestures — like pointing to his eyes when he wants his glasses, his sister said. Giacino agreed her brother has gotten better, but whether it is because of the drug can't be determined. Gnazzo wasn't part of the study.

"It's been four months now, and we know we still have a long way to go," Bacon said. "Anything that could be faster — or feel faster to us — is a positive."

HIV Rate Among U.S. Injection Drug Users Falls: CDC


By Julie Steenhuysen


United States - HIV infections among injection drug users in the United States have fallen by half in the past decade, but HIV testing is also down and risky behaviors such as needle-sharing persist, raising worries that progress may be short-lived, U.S. health experts said on Thursday.

A study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based on a 2009 survey of 10,000 people from 20 urban areas found that 9 percent of IV drug users were infected with the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.


That compared with a rate of 18 percent in the 1990s.


"Despite the fact that we've seen declines in new HIV infections, a substantial number of IDUs (injection drug users) in major US cities are HIV-infected and their risk behavior remains fairly high," said Dr. Cyprian Wejnert, an epidemiologist at the CDC, whose study appears in the CDC's weekly report on death and disease.


"We found 9 percent of IDUs were HIV-positive and nearly half of those were unaware of their infection," Wejnert said in a telephone interview.


HIV rates have been falling in the United States, but pockets of infection continue to persist, especially in high-risk groups such as young people and men who have sex with men.

The latest survey tested individuals for HIV and asked questions about their risk behaviors and use of HIV prevention services.


It found about one third of injection drug users in the survey said they shared syringes, most said they had unprotected sex in the past year and more than half said they had more than one sexual partner.


The study also found that rates of HIV testing in this at-risk population are falling.


"While CDC recommends that individuals are tested for HIV at least annually, only 49 percent, less than half of those interviewed, reported being tested in the last 12 months," Wejnert said.

That represents a significant drop from a survey done in 2005-2006, he said.


Dr. Amy Lansky, deputy director in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at CDC, said the findings will be used as CDC focuses its prevention efforts on high risk populations.


"It's a really important part of understanding the leading edge of the epidemic," she said.

"What the data from this report shows is we really do need to continue our efforts to expand HIV testing and improve testing," she said, adding that the CDC also needs to focus its prevention efforts on reaching more drug users. Such efforts include offering new sterile syringes, condoms, and substance abuse treatment.


According to the CDC, 1.2 million Americans have HIV, and 1 in 5 U.S. adults with HIV do not know they are infected.

Q&A: Google to Dig Deeper into Users' Lives

Michael Liedtke

If you're amazed — and maybe even a little alarmed — about how much Google seems to know about you, brace yourself. Beginning Thursday, Google will operate under a streamlined privacy policy that enables the Internet's most powerful company to dig even deeper into the lives of its more than 1 billion users.

Google says the changes will make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, and allow the company to create more helpful and compelling services. Critics, including most of the country's state attorneys general and a top regulator in Europe, argue that Google is trampling on people's privacy rights in its relentless drive to sell more ads.

Here's a look at some of the key issues to consider as Google tries to learn about you.

Q: How will Google's privacy changes affect users?
A: Google Inc. is combining more than 60 different privacy policies so it will be able to throw all the data it gathers about each of its logged-in users into personal dossiers. The information Google learns about you while you enter requests into its search engine can be culled to suggest videos to watch when you visit the company's YouTube site.
Users who write a memo on Google's online word processing program, Docs, might be alerted to the misspelling of the name of a friend or co-worker a user has communicated with on Google's Gmail. The new policy pools information from all Google-operated services, empowering the company to connect the dots from one service to the next.

Q: Why is Google making these changes?
A: The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., says it is striving for a "beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google." What Google hasn't spent much time talking about is how being able to draw more revealing profiles about its users will help sell advertising — the main source of its $38 billion in annual revenue.
One reason Google has become such a big advertising network: Its search engine analyzes requests to figure out which people are more likely to be interested in marketing pitches about specific products and services. Targeting the ads to the right audience is crucial because in many cases, Google only gets paid when someone clicks on an ad link. And, of course, advertisers tend to spend more money if Google is bringing them more customers.

Q: Is there a way to prevent Google from combining the personal data it collects from all its services?
A: No, not if you're a registered user of Gmail, Google Plus, YouTube, or other Google products. But you can minimize the data Google gathers. For starters, make sure you aren't logged into one of Google's services when you're using Google's search engine, watching a YouTube video or perusing pictures on Picasa. You can get a broad overview of what Google knows about you at http://www.google.com/dashboard , where a Google account login is required. Google also offers the option to delete users' history of search activity.
It's important to keep in mind that Google can still track you even when you're not logged in to one of its services. But the information isn't quite as revealing because Google doesn't track you by name, only through a numeric Internet address attached to your computer or an alphanumeric string attached to your Web browser.

Q: Are all Google services covered by the privacy policy?
A: No, a few products, such as Google's Chrome Web browser and mobile payment processor Wallet, will still be governed by separate privacy policies.

Q: Is Google's new privacy policy legal?
A: The company has no doubt about it. That's why it's repeatedly rebuffed pleas to delay the changes since announcing the planned revisions five weeks ago. But privacy activists and even some legal authorities have several concerns.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group, sued the FTC in a federal court in an effort to force the FTC to exercise its powers and block Google's privacy changes. A federal judge ruled the courts didn't have the authority to tell the FTC how to regulate Google. The FTC says it is always looking for evidence that one of its consent orders has been violated.

Earlier this week, the French regulatory agency CNIL warned Google CEO Larry Page that the new policy appears to violate the European Union's strict data-protection rules. Last week, 36 attorneys general in the U.S. and its territories derided the new policy as an "invasion of privacy" in a letter to Page.

One of the major gripes is that registered Google users aren't being given an option to consent to, or reject, the changes, given that they developed their dependence on the services under different rules. In particular, people who bought smartphones running on Google's Android software, and signed two-year contracts to use the devices, may have a tough time avoiding the new privacy policy. They could switch to non-Google services, but those typically don't work as well on Android software. Or they could buy a different smartphone and pay an early-termination penalty.

Q: What regulatory power do government agencies have to change or amend the privacy changes?
A: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission gained greater oversight over Google's handling of personal information as part of a settlement reached last year. Google submitted to the agreement after exposing its users email contacts when it launched a now-defunct social networking service called Buzz in 2010. The consent order requires Google's handling of personal information to be audited every other year and forbids misleading or deceptive privacy changes.
Google met with the FTC before announcing the privacy changes. Neither the company nor the FTC has disclosed whether Google satisfied regulators that the revisions comply with the consent order.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Tobacco Health Labels Unconstitutional: U.S. Judge


By Jeremy Pelofsky

United States - A U.S. judge sided with tobacco companies on Wednesday, ruling that regulations requiring large graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging and advertising violate free-speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Cigarette makers challenged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rule requiring companies to label tobacco products with images of rotting teeth, diseased lungs and other images intended to illustrate the dangers of smoking.

"The government has failed to carry both its burden of demonstrating a compelling interest and its burden of demonstrating that the rule is narrowly tailored to achieve a constitutionally permissible form of compelled commercial speech," U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said in the ruling.

The judge granted a preliminary injunction last year blocking the new label requirement from taking effect in 2012, a decision the Obama administration has already taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The government is also likely to appeal the new ruling.

While educating the public about the dangers of smoking "might be compelling, an interest in simply advocating that the public not purchase a legal product is not," Leon wrote in a 19-page ruling.

Further, Leon noted the warning labels were too big to pass constitutional muster and that the government has numerous other tools at its disposal to deter smoking such as raising cigarette taxes or including simple factual information on the labels rather than gruesome images.

Congress passed a law in 2009 ordering the FDA to adopt the label regulation, which requires color warning labels big enough to cover the top 50 percent of a cigarette pack's front and back panels, and the top 20 percent of print advertisements.

The FDA released nine new warnings in June to go into effect in September 2012, the first change in U.S. cigarette warning labels in 25 years. Cigarette packs already carry text warnings from the U.S. Surgeon General.

Tobacco companies, including Reynolds American Inc's R.J. Reynolds unit, Lorillard Inc, Liggett Group LLC, Commonwealth Brands Inc, which is owned by Britain's Imperial Tobacco Group Plc, and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co Inc challenged the rule, arguing it would force them to engage in anti-smoking advocacy against their own legal products.

"Unfortunately, because Congress did not consider the First Amendment implications of this legislation, it did not concern itself with how the regulations could be narrowly tailored to avoid unintentionally compelling commercial speech," Leon wrote.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, which represented the FDA in the case, had no comment. Representatives for the tobacco companies involved in the litigation were not immediately available for comment.

Tobacco companies have said it would cost them millions of dollars to comply and also argued the graphics offer no information that could not be accomplished through messages similar to warnings already on cigarette packages and ads.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates some 45 million adults smoke cigarettes, which are the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States.

The ruling "ignores decades of First Amendment precedent that support the right of the government to require strong warning labels to protect the public health," Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said in a statement.

The case is R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co et al v. FDA, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 11-1482.

Autism Not Diagnosed as Early in Minority Children

Lauran Neergaard

Early diagnosis is considered key for autism, but minority children tend to be diagnosed later than white children. Some new work is beginning to try to uncover why — and to raise awareness of the warning signs so more parents know they can seek help even for a toddler.

"The biggest thing I want parents to know is we can do something about it to help your child," says Dr. Rebecca Landa, autism director at Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute, who is exploring the barriers that different populations face in getting that help.

Her preliminary research suggests even when diagnosed in toddlerhood, minority youngsters have more severe developmental delays than their white counterparts. She says cultural differences in how parents view developmental milestones, and how they interact with doctors, may play a role.

Consider: Tots tend to point before they talk, but pointing is rude in some cultures and may not be missed by a new parent, Landa says. Or maybe mom's worried that her son isn't talking yet but the family matriarch, her grandmother, says don't worry — Cousin Harry spoke late, too, and he's fine. Or maybe the pediatrician dismissed the parents' concern, and they were taught not to question doctors.

It's possible to detect autism as early as 14 months of age, and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that youngsters be screened for it starting at 18 months. While there's no cure, behavioral and other therapies are thought to work best when started very young.

Yet on average, U.S. children aren't diagnosed until they're about 4½ years old, according to government statistics.

And troubling studies show that white kids may be diagnosed with autism as much as a year and a half earlier than black and other minority children, says University of Pennsylvania autism expert David Mandell, who led much of that work. Socioeconomics can play a role, if minority families have less access to health care or less education.

But Mandell says the full story is more complex. One of his own studies, for example, found that black children with autism were more likely than whites to get the wrong diagnosis during their first visit with a specialist.

At Kennedy Krieger, Landa leads a well-known toddler treatment program and decided to look more closely at those youngsters to begin examining the racial and ethnic disparity. She found something startling: Even when autism was detected early, minority children had more severe symptoms than their white counterparts.

By one measure of language development, the minority patients lagged four months behind the white autistic kids, Landa reported in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

It was a small study, with 84 participants, just 19 of whom were black, Asian or Hispanic. But the enrolled families all were middle class, Landa said, meaning socioeconomics couldn't explain the difference.

One of the study's participants, Marlo Lemon, ignored family and friends who told her not to worry that her son Matthew, then 14 months, wasn't babbling. Boys are slower to talk than girls, they said.

"I just knew something was wrong," recalls Lemon, of Randallstown, Md.

Her pediatrician listened and knew to send the family to a government "early intervention" program that, like in most states, provides free testing and treatment for young children's developmental delays. Matthew was enrolled in developmental therapy by age 18 months, and was formally diagnosed with autism when he turned 2 and Lemon enrolled him in Kennedy Krieger's toddler program as well. In many of his therapy classes, Lemon says, Matthew was the only African-American.

Now 7, Matthew still doesn't speak but Lemon says he is making huge strides, learning letters by tracing them in shaving cream to tap his sensory side, for example, and using a computer-like tablet that "speaks" when he pushes the right buttons. But Lemon quit working full-time so she could shuttle Matthew from therapy to therapy every day.

"I want other minority families to get involved early, be relentless," says Lemon, who now works part-time counseling families about how to find services early.

For a campaign called "Why wait and see?" Landa is developing videos that show typical and atypical behaviors and plans to ask Maryland pediatricians to show them to parents. Among early warning signs:
—Not responding to their name by 12 months, or pointing to show interest by 14 months.
—Avoiding eye contact, wanting to play alone, not smiling when smiled at.
—Saying few words. Landa says between 18 and 26 months, kids should make short phrases like "my shoe" or "where's mommy," and should be adding to their vocabulary weekly.
—Not following simple multi-step commands.
—Not playing pretend.
—Behavioral problems such as flapping their hands or spinning in circles.

Paintings Hitler Bought Found in Czech Republic

Karel Janicek

A five-year search by a Czech author has discovered that 16 paintings in the Czech Republic were once owned by Adolf Hitler.

The art works, which Hitler bought in Germany during World War II, had been moved to Czechoslovakia after it was occupied by the Nazis to prevent them being damaged by Allied attacks.

On Monday, author Jiri Kuchar put seven of the paintings on display for reporters at the convent in Doksany in northern Czech Republic where he had identified them. Today, he said, they are probably worth about 50 million koruna ($2.7 million).

"Nobody believed me it could be true," Kuchar said of his findings. The author, who calls himself "an amateur and enthusiast," has written about his findings.

Kuchar said Hitler bought the 16 paintings — by German artists such as Franz Eichhorst, Paul Herrmann, Sepp Hilz, Friedrich W. Kalb, Oscar Oestreicher, Edmund Steppes and Armin Reumann — in 1942 and 1943 at the Great German art exhibitions that were held annually in Munich from 1937 to 1944.

The German institute whose database includes the works and their buyers — Zentralinstitut fur Kunstgeschichte in Munich — confirmed Hitler's ownership to The Associated Press. Its art experts said Tuesday that while "interesting," the collection is of "low" value.

As a former artist, Hitler was an art lover and collector. Countless paintings, many done by major European painters, were seized by the Nazis during the Second World War.

At one point, Hitler's private collection, known as the "Linz Collection," included almost 5,000 works, and the Nazis had once planned to create a museum for them in Linz, Austria.

In addition to the seven works identified at the convent, Kuchar found seven more that Hitler had once owned at the northern Czech chateau of Zakupy, and one each at the Military History Institute in Prague and the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague.

Some contain obvious signs of Nazi propaganda, the author said.

During the occupation, it is believed that the 16 works were part of Hitler's collection of more than 70 pieces of contemporary German art that the Third Reich stored at a monastery in the southern Czech town of Vyssi Brod, together with larger collections of valuable paintings stolen from Jewish families in Europe.

Christian Fuhrmeister of the German institute said Vyssi Brod was one of the depots where such seized art works were relocated to prevent damage caused by Allied air forces.

After the war, valuable paintings possessed by the Nazis were confiscated by the U.S. Army and taken to the Munich Central Collection Point in an effort to return them to their original owners. Many less valuable works were left behind after the 1945 liberation of Czechoslovakia and ended up scattered across the country.

Fourteen of the 16 works that Kuchar has identified as former Hitler possessions are now owned by the Czech National Institute for the Protection and Conservation of Monuments and Sites, and it doesn't plan to sell them or put them on public display.

"They will remain in the depositary," said Ivana Chovancova, an official at the institute.

Kuchar discovered the 16 works after investigating leads from the book "Hitler's Salon" by Swiss author Ines Schlenker, which listed Hitler's art purchases at the art exhibitions in Munich during the war.

Seven Accused of Bilking $375M from Medicare, Medicaid


A Texas doctor has been charged with running a massive health fraud care scheme with thousands of fraudulent patients and intermediaries allegedly offering cash, food stamps or free groceries, to bilk Medicare and Medicaid of nearly $375 million.

A federal indictment unsealed Tuesday charges Jacques Roy, a doctor who owned Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, and six others in an alleged scheme to bill Medicare for home health services that were not properly billed, not medically necessary or not done.

The scheme was the largest dollar amount by a single doctor uncovered by a task force on Medicare fraud, authorities said.

U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldana accused Roy of "selling his signature" to home health agencies that rounded up thousands of patients' names and billed Medicare and Medicaid for five years.

The indictment alleged that from January 2006 through November 2011, Roy or others certified 11,000 Medicare beneficiaries for more than 500 home health service agencies — more patients than any other medical practice in the U.S. More than 75 of those agencies have had their Medicare payments suspended.

Roy, 54, is charged with several counts of health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. He faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted on all counts. He appeared briefly in court Tuesday and is scheduled to have a detention hearing Wednesday. Authorities also moved to seize cash in Roy's bank accounts, cars and two sailboats.

His attorney, Patrick McLain, said authorities had contacted Roy months ago. McLain said it was too soon to comment on the case because prosecutors hadn't provided him with most of the evidence yet. Phone messages and emails left with Medistat, located just south of Dallas, were not immediately returned Tuesday.

The attorney for one of the home health agency owners, Cynthia Stiger, alleged to be part of the scheme called the charges and the dollar amounts listed overblown. Stiger pleaded not guilty Tuesday.

"They're not anywhere close to accurate," said Jeffrey Grass, Stiger's attorney.

Investigators for the U.S. Health and Human Services department noticed irregularities with Roy's practice about one year ago, officials said.
Roy had "recruiters" finding people to bill for home health services, said Saldana, the top federal prosecutor in Dallas. Some of those alleged patients, when approached by investigators, were found working on their cars and clearly not in need of home healthcare, she said.

Medicare patients qualify for home health care if they are confined to their homes and need care there, according to the indictment.
Saldana said Roy used the home health agencies as "his soldiers on the ground to go door to door to recruit Medicare beneficiaries."

"He was selling his signature," she said.

For example, authorities allege Charity Eleda, one of the home health agency owners charged in the scheme, visited a Dallas homeless shelter to recruit homeless beneficiaries staying at the facility, paying recruiters $50 for each person they found. A message was left Tuesday at Eleda's Dallas-based company, Charry Home Care Services, Inc.

Others indicted are accused of offering free health care and services such as food stamps to anyone who signed up and offered their Medicare number.

Roy would "make home visits to that beneficiary, provide unnecessary medical services and order unnecessary durable medical equipment for that beneficiary," the indictment alleged. "Medistat would then bill Medicare for those visits and services."

The indictment says Roy's business manager — identified only by his initials — recorded conversations between the two in January 2006. The business manager heard Roy describe his alleged scheme and refuse to market for patients in a legitimate way, the indictment said.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also announced the suspension of an additional 78 home health agencies associated with Roy. The agencies were collecting about $2.3 million a month, said Peter Budetti, CMS' deputy administrator for program integrity.

The alleged fraud went unnoticed for several years. After CMS suspended Medicare provider accounts belonging to Roy and Medistat last July, Medistat's employees allegedly started billing Medicare under a different provider number under Roy's supervision, authorities said.

Until recently, HHS could not effectively track data to identify the kind of fraud now linked to Roy, who was billing beneficiaries "off the charts" for more than five years, officials said. The department's inspector general, Dan Levinson, told reporters the department's technology "has not come online as quickly as we'd like to see."

The department is now beefing up its data analysis and tracking other cases, Levinson said. It has also established task forces in several U.S. cities to track Medicare fraud, officials said.

"We're now able to use those data analytic tools in ways — in 2012 and 2011 — that no, we really could not have done in years past," Levinson said.

A spokesman for Trailblazer Health Enterprises, which paid home health claims through a contract with federal authorities, did not return a phone message Tuesday.

Health care fraud is estimated to cost the government at least $60 billion a year, mainly in losses to Medicare and Medicaid. Officials say the fraud involves everything from sophisticated marketing schemes by major pharmaceuticals encouraging doctors to prescribe drugs for unauthorized uses to selling motorized wheelchairs to people who don't need them.

"These are public programs, and we must protect them for future generations," Saldana said.