Obama admin. tackles colonoscopy confusion

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new health law requires that most insurance plans cover all costs for preventive care, including colon cancer screening.

But it didn't turn out to be that simple.

Many patients ended up with a bill when the doctor performing the colonoscopy removed precancerous growths known as polyps. Why the bill? Because a preventive screening had turned into a procedure.

Now the Obama administration is trying to straighten out the confusion: Polyp removal is part of preventive care, and therefore free of charge to the patient.

Health plans also must cover an expensive genetic test for breast cancer if a woman's doctor orders it. And the lowly aspirin for heart trouble is covered too, if prescribed.

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Tourist's body found stuffed in hotel water tank; guest horrified

There were few details Wednesday on how the body of a missing Canadian tourist ended up at the bottom of a water tank on the roof of a downtown hotel.

For days, residents of the Cecil Hotel thought something was amiss. At least one said there was flooding in one of the fourth-floor rooms, while others complained about weak water pressure.
One of those complaints led a hotel maintenance worker to check Tuesday on one of the large metal water cisterns on the roof, where he discovered the body of an unidentified woman in her 20s at the bottom of the tank.

Authorities said late Tuesday the body was that of Elisa Lam, 21, a Vancouver, Canada, woman last seen at the hotel Jan. 31.

"We're not ruling out foul play," said LAPD Sgt. Rudy Lopez, noting that the location of the remains "makes it suspicious."

Los Angeles police investigators searched the roof of the Cecil with the aid of dogs when Lam was reported missing about three weeks ago. Lopez said he didn't know if the tanks were examined.

"We did a very thorough search of the hotel," he said. "But we didn't search every room; we could only do that if we had probable cause" that a crime had been committed.

Once a destination for the rich and famous in the 1930s and '40s, the Cecil has gradually deteriorated, mirroring the decay of downtown Los Angeles, particularly in the skid row area. With rock-bottom rents and flexible stays, the historic 1927 building attracted those who were a step away from homelessness.

The Cecil also became a magnet for criminal activity. Most notably it was the occasional home to infamous serial killers Jack Unterweger and Richard "Night Stalker" Ramirez. Even after a multimillion-dollar makeover in 2008, police said they frequently respond to the Cecil for calls relating to domestic abuse and narcotics.

In 2010, the hotel was the scene of a bizarre incident in which a Los Angeles city firefighter who had been honored as paramedic of the year said he was stabbed while responding to a distress call. But police found inconsistencies in the story and no assailant was ever located.

On Tuesday, the Cecil grappled with a deeper mystery.
According to detectives with the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division, Lam came to Los Angeles from Vancouver on Jan. 26. While they did not discuss her exact movements or whether she visited anyone here, they believe her ultimate destination was Santa Cruz. Lam's reasons for visiting California were unclear, detectives said.

She was last seen Jan. 31 inside the elevator of the hotel. In surveillance footage, Lam is seen pushing buttons for multiple floors and at one point stepping out of the elevator, waving her arms.
A cause of death is still to be determined by county coroner’s officials, Lopez said.

A locked door that only employees have access to and a fire escape are the only ways to get to the roof. The door is equipped with an alarm system that notifies  hotel personnel if someone is up there, Lopez said.

ALSO:

O.C. shootings: Killings occurred during morning routines

Body found in hotel water tank identified as Canadian tourist

Woman who ran surrogate parenting firm pleads guilty in fraud case

— Andrew Blankstein and Adolfo Flores

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Maoists Block Deal to Break Nepal’s Long Political Deadlock

NEW DELHI — Nepal’s major political parties failed on Tuesday to complete an expected agreement to settle a years-long political standoff, after Maoists insisted that the accord include amnesty for past crimes.

The amnesty issue derailed a tentative deal reached on Monday to appoint as interim prime minister the chief justice of the country’s supreme court, Khil Raj Regmi, to lead the country until elections in June. Now it appears that the wrangling will continue indefinitely, worsening the paralysis of the country’s civic functions.

Nepal has been trying to establish a working representative democracy since 2008, when a constituent assembly was elected to replace the former monarchy. But the assembly has been unable to draw up a constitution or settle on when or how to hold further elections. Maoists, who fought a long civil war against the monarchy, now control the most important government posts, but the ethnic, caste, religious, ideological and regional differences that permeate Nepalese society have made even the most basic political agreements impossible.

Meanwhile, the country’s judiciary has been arresting former Maoist fighters from the bitter civil war, which cost at least 13,000 lives, prompting the Maoist party to call for amnesty and for a less punitive reconciliation process, such as a parliamentary committee that the party could influence.

“Amnesty is still under consideration,” said Devendra Poudel, adviser to the present Maoist prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai. “Instead of addressing one or two issues separately, why not deal with them all in the same package?”

But the country’s other political parties and civil-society organizations have insisted on a process in which war criminals are jailed.

“The Maoists are very much afraid of the regular judiciary of this country,” said Rajendra Dahal, a spokesman for President Ram Baran Yadav, a leader of the centrist Nepalese Congress party. “But until there is an agreement, they will control the government,” he said of the Maoists. “So they benefit from the standoff.”

Mr. Dahal said that the president had welcomed the tentative deal to put the chief justice in charge temporarily. “The president’s single mission is to have elections,” he said early Tuesday. “Any way the parties get some consensus in the goal of having elections, the president will support.”

By late Tuesday evening, however, the optimism surrounding the tentative agreement had faded.

Kanak Mani Dixit, a civil rights activist and commentator, said he was worried that the Maoists supported the deal in hopes of discrediting the Supreme Court, which he said is the last civic institution in Nepal with any credibility.

“The Maoists agreed because they have already destroyed every other important institution of the state,” Mr. Dixit said.

Mr. Regmi was expected to be appointed to a three-month term as prime minister, following which he would return to the court. If Mr. Regmi had been unable to oversee elections in that time, a new agreement would have had to be reached.

The Maoist leader, Mr. Bhattarai, rejected all previous proposals to replace him, and other political parties have refused to allow elections while Mr. Bhattarai and his allies hold the crucial levers of government, saying that his oversight would make the elections unfair.

In the meantime, basic civil functions in Nepal have begun to fail one after another, and the country’s economy, never robust, has stalled. As a result, Nepalese have been emigrating to neighboring countries in large numbers, to the exasperation particularly of India, where many of the migrants settle.

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6 Things Not to Expect from Sony’s PlayStation Event

Would it be fair to call Sony‘s Manhattan-based Feb. 20 shindig “P-day”? We might as well, what with that PlayStation logo headlining Sony’s “Meeting 2013″ event teaser site — a site that’s now sporting a mini-history of most of the hardware that falls under the renowned moniker’s umbrella.

My memories of the first PlayStation’s earliest days are mixed. Maybe that’s because I was playing the thing months in advance. The guy I worked for — the store manager of a Babbages — paid a shedload of cash for a Japanese import model. He liked to drop it in the store display window, then run the Ridge Racer start screen demo to see how many passerby would stop to gawk, or ask what the heck it was. Remember when video games still had that power over us?

(MORE: The Great Hotmail-to-Outlook.com Transition Begins)

Don’t worry, this isn’t my PlayStation retrospective, which, like yours, could probably fill a book three people want to read. Let’s talk instead about Sony’s ballyhooed Wednesday evening event, 6:00pm ET, where we’re expecting to see the company’s next-gen game system. TIME Tech editor Doug Aamoth is kindly attending in my stead and should have all the details straightaway, and you’ll be able to watch things unfold live courtesy the event site.

I’ve already scribbled down a few lessons I hope Sony’s learned since the PS3′s debut in November 2006, so here’s another list — this one of things I’m not expecting from the event. Like…

…something that isn’t the next PlayStation. We don’t know what we don’t know, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, but the way this typically works is, a company announces it’s holding a major media event, the press speculates irresponsibly, and if that speculation morphs into certainty (as it has in this case), the company typically follows up with some sort of off-the-record denial to recalibrate expectations. Sony’s done nothing to quiet the rumor mill here. In fact you could say it’s poured rocket fuel on the rumormongering with its PlayStation retrospective videos, all but guaranteeing that what we’ll see tomorrow night is the next PlayStation. That said, whether Sony dubs it a “PlayStation 4,” something awful like “PlayStation Orbis,” or just goes with something catchall like “PlayStation,” Apple iPad-style, is anyone’s guess.

…a look at the new console and nothing else. Hardware, schmard-ware, we want software that’s interesting, not just pretty. I don’t expect Sony to go into elaborate detail about the next PlayStation’s backend systems, but I’m predicting (okay, really more hoping) that we’ll see event time given to whatever nifty new ecosystem this thing’s going to live in, including some of its hypothetical features, like game streaming (recall that Sony picked up streaming company Gaikai for about $ 380 million last summer and may be planning to tap that technology in lieu of, say, hardware-based backward compatibility). I know, I’m not a huge fan of game streaming either, but I’d rather hear about stuff like that than how many polygons this thing can shove around.

…much about motion-control. Motion-control’s spotlight moment may have passed, but it’s still pretty young technology. Microsoft‘s seemingly cool but too often clumsy Kinect did well enough off the block (driven, I suspect, mostly by hype), but sales slowed to a crawl by mid-2012. Sony’s more precise PlayStation Move — better received overall by critics — started even slower and never quite caught on. (Sony blames this on a lack of compelling software; I concur.) That said, I’m betting Sony’s going to redouble its motion control efforts, angling the experience more toward casual players, but that we won’t see much (or anything) about this at the event. That’d be fine by me, and shouldn’t be interpreted as the company jumping ship.

…much, if any, talk about pricing. The PlayStation 3 was, by all accounts, way too expensive at launch: $ 500 to $ 600, plus $ 60 a pop for games, plus whatever else you had to buy to get started, say an HDMI cable, which back then could go for upwards of $ 50. Whether you blame Sony for not taking a bigger margin hit (by selling for $ 300 to $ 400 at launch) or simply the hardware design team for overbuilding (some estimates put Sony’s PS3 manufacturing costs at $ 800 per system), the sequel to the bestselling game console in history (Sony’s own PS2) launched with negative momentum and, though it eventually made up for some of that lost time with price cuts, still lags behind the Xbox 360 in worldwide sales today. Early reports are that Sony’s next PlayStation could debut for $ 400, but given how much time there is between now and a probable fall launch timeframe — a timeframe during which manufacturing costs could change — don’t expect Sony to throw out specific numbers.

…a quiet, respectable, Apple-style briefing. This is Sony we’re talking about after all. Like Microsoft, the company doesn’t seem to know how to stage a presser that doesn’t feel like a garish Lady Gaga, WWF, Cirque de Soleil mashup. Speaking of, hopefully the company won’t be as pretentious as Microsoft was with its E3 2010 Project Natal (Kinect) launch, forcing everyone to don creepy cult-like ponchos and watch Cirque performers pull off crazy-cool gymnastics that had nothing to do with the actual technology…sort of like suggesting Taylor Swift is going to come play your house if you buy her new album.

…actual hands-on time. I’m thinking this event is meant to be a tease, a chance to highlight a handful of key system features while showing a few graphics-angled sizzle reels and maybe trotting out a few developers to demo stuff. My guess is Sony’s going to keep its powder dry for E3 2013, where, having hyped the merciful you-know-what out of this thing for months, it’ll pull the curtain all the way back and let us scribble to our heart’s content about what it’s like to actually use the thing. Expect to walk away with more questions than answers when the curtain drops, in other words.

What else might we see? In the “wishful thinking” column you could put a Sony designed and branded PlayStation phone (unlikely), a Sony designed and branded PlayStation tablet (surely not), a PlayStation Vita price cut (probable: Sony just dropped the Japan model’s price) as well as news about new Vita games (or updates on previously announced ones) and maybe even a swan song PlayStation 3 price cut. The irony of Sony announcing a reasonably priced next-gen system while dropping the cost of its original wallet-burner would be sweet indeed.

MORE: From Innovation to Marketing: Understanding Technology Cycles

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Maggie Simpson's The Longest Daycare Is Nominated for an Oscar

By Patrick Gomez

02/19/2013 at 02:30 PM EST

Maggie Simpson may not be much of a talker on her FOX cartoon, but this year she plans on making a statement on the red carpet.

The youngest member of The Simpsons clan stars in the Oscar-nominated animated short film The Longest Daycare and the eternal infant is looking for fans to help choose her dress for her big night out Sunday. Scroll through all of her proposed looks in our carousel of images above.

PEOPLE has a sneak peek at Simpson's three potential red carpet looks: a sparkly, red, backless stunner; a purple, tiered, strapless gown; and a leg-barring black number reminiscent of Angelina Jolie's 2012 Oscars dress. All can be paired with complementary pacifiers, of course.

Fans will be able to vote starting Tuesday for their favorite look. The short can be viewed below:

The 85th annual Academy Awards will air live on Sunday, Feb. 24, on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

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UK patient dies from SARS-like coronavirus

LONDON (AP) — A patient being treated for a mysterious SARS-like virus has died, a British hospital said Tuesday.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, said the coronavirus victim was also being treated for "a long-term, complex unrelated health problem" and already had a compromised immune system.

A total of 12 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the disease, six of whom have died.

The virus was first identified last year in the Middle East. Most of those infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan, but the person who just died is believed to have caught it from a relative in Britain, where there have been four confirmed cases.

The new coronavirus is part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. In 2003, a global outbreak of SARS killed about 800 people worldwide.

Health experts still aren't sure exactly how humans are being infected. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus and scientists are considering whether bats or other animals like goats or camels are a possible source of infection.

Britain's Health Protection Agency has said while it appears the virus can spread from person to person, "the risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low."

Officials at the World Health Organization said the new virus has probably already spread between humans in some instances. In Saudi Arabia last year, four members of the same family fell ill and two died. And in a cluster of about a dozen people in Jordan, the virus may have spread at a hospital's intensive care unit.

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Rapes may be tied to Christian dating website, officials say

Police in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa are investigating whether a 37-year-old man charged with raping a woman he met on the ChristianMingle website may have victimized other women he met on the dating website.

Sean Banks of Del Mar is charged with rape, burglary and penetration by force involving a woman in La Mesa, according to court records. He was arrested Feb. 11 and has pleaded not guilty.

Banks, a computer technician, worked in various locations across the United States. Police said they are investigating whether he may have lured other victims through ChristianMingle and other websites, possibly using pseudonyms, including Rylan Butterwood and Rylan Harbough.

In the La Mesa case, he used the name Rarity, police said. The alleged attack occurred in the woman's home the first time the two met in person after carrying on conversations over the Internet, police said.

Beverly Hills-based ChristianMingle is cooperating with the investigation, police said.

Anyone with information about Banks or other possible victims should call the La Mesa Police Department at (619) 667-7538.

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: Sean Banks. Credit: La Mesa Police Department

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India Ink: Image of the Day: Feb. 18

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Google executive promises ‘insanely great cameras’ on next-gen Nexus phones

The cameras on Google’s (GOOG) line of Nexus smartphones have consistently performed worse than the competition. Some have said the default Android image processing software is at fault, while others have suggested low-end sensors are to blame. Google’s smartphones, nevertheless, cannot compete with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, HTC’s (2498) DROID DNA or Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy S III when it comes to photo quality. Things may be about to change, however.

[More from BGR: Broadband ISPs put to the test: Real data speeds vs. advertised speeds charted by FCC]

Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, revealed that the company is “committed to making Nexus phones [with] insanely great cameras,” adding “just you wait and see.”

[More from BGR: Best Buy makes online price-matching policy permanent]

It is thought that the executive’s comments were related to Google’s upcoming flagship smartphone. The company is rumored to be working on a device with Motorola, codenamed X Phone, that is said to include revolutionary new features. The handset is expected to debut in May at the company’s annual I/O Developer Conference and will reportedly be equipped with a high-end rear camera, long battery life and a flexible display.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Jerry Buss, Lakers Owner, Dies at 80

By Maggie Coughlan

02/18/2013 at 02:10 PM EST

Jerry Buss, the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, has died, the Associated Press reports. He was 80.

Buss had been hospitalized for cancer, but died of kidney failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Monday, said his assistant, Bob Steiner.

Paying $67.5 million when he first bought the the Lakers from Jack Kent Cooke (in a deal that also included the N.H.L.'s L.A. Kings, the L.A. Forum sports arena and Cooke’s California ranch), Buss saw their value increase to $1 billion, according to a Forbes ranking in January, reports The New York Times. That made the team second in the N.B.A. to the New York Knicks’ $1.1 billion valuation.

During his 32 years with the Lakers, Buss's team made the N.B.A finals 16 times (through 2011), winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010.

At just 24, Buss earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and later had careers in aerospace and real estate development.

Buss is survived by his six children.

As news of his death traveled, athletes and celebrities took to Twitter to share their condolences.

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