Oh, Yoko! Ono's fashion line gropes for Lennon

NEW YORK (AP) — You remember that Beatles classic "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"? Turns out Yoko Ono had other things in mind.

Ono's new menswear collection inspired by John Lennon includes pants with large handprints on the crotch, tank tops with nipple cutouts and even a flashing LED bra.

The collection of menswear for Opening Ceremony is based on a series of drawings she sketched as a gift for Lennon for their wedding day in 1969. Ono said she the illustrations were designs for clothing and accessories to celebrate Lennon's "hot bod."

Also in the collection are a "butt hoodie" with an outline suggesting its name, pants with cutouts at the behind, a jock strap with an LED light, open-toed boots and a transparent chest plaque with bells and a leather neck strap.

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Well: Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop diabetes within five years of their operation.

The findings contrast with the growing perception that surgery is essentially a cure for Type II diabetes. Earlier this year, two widely publicized studies reported that surgery worked better than drugs, diet and exercise in causing a remission of Type 2 diabetes in overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control, leading some experts to call for greater use of surgery in treating the disease. But the studies were small and relatively short, lasting under two years.

The latest study, published in the journal Obesity Surgery, tracked thousands of diabetics who had gastric bypass surgery for more than a decade. It found that many people whose diabetes at first went away were likely to have it return. While weight regain is a common problem among those who undergo bariatric surgery, regaining lost weight did not appear to be the cause of diabetes relapse. Instead, the study found that people whose diabetes was most severe or in its later stages when they had surgery were more likely to have a relapse, regardless of whether they regained weight.

“Some people are under the impression that you have surgery and you’re cured,” said Dr. Vivian Fonseca, the president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, who was not involved in the study. “There have been a lot of claims about how wonderful surgery is for diabetes, and I think this offers a more realistic picture.”

The findings suggest that weight loss surgery may be most effective for treating diabetes in those whose disease is not very advanced. “What we’re learning is that not all diabetic patients do as well as others,” said Dr. David E. Arterburn, the lead author of the study and an associate investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. “Those who are early in diabetes seem to do the best, which makes a case for potentially earlier intervention.”

One of the strengths of the new study was that it involved thousands of patients enrolled in three large health plans in California and Minnesota, allowing detailed tracking over many years. All told, 4,434 adult diabetics were followed between 1995 and 2008. All were obese, and all underwent Roux-en-Y operations, the most popular type of gastric bypass procedure.

After surgery, about 68 percent of patients experienced a complete remission of their diabetes. But within five years, 35 percent of those patients had it return. Taken together, that means that most of the subjects in the study, about 56 percent — a figure that includes those whose disease never remitted — had no long-lasting remission of diabetes after surgery.

The researchers found that three factors were particularly good predictors of who was likely to have a relapse of diabetes. If patients, before surgery, had a relatively long duration of diabetes, had poor control of their blood sugar, or were taking insulin, then they were least likely to benefit from gastric bypass. A patient’s weight, either before or after surgery, was not correlated with their likelihood of remission or relapse.

In Type 2 diabetes, the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas tend to wear out as the disease progresses, which may explain why some people benefit less from surgery. “If someone is too far advanced in their diabetes, where their pancreas is frankly toward the latter stages of being able to produce insulin, then even after losing a bunch of weight their body may not be able to produce enough insulin to control their blood sugar,” Dr. Arterburn said.

Nonetheless, he said it might be the case that obese diabetics, even those whose disease is advanced, can still benefit from gastric surgery, at least as far as their quality of life and their risk factors for heart disease and other complications are concerned.

“It’s not a surefire cure for everyone,” he said. “But almost universally, patients lose weight after weight loss surgery, and that in and of itself may have so many health benefits.”

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Stocks higher on hopes for a deal to avoid 'fiscal cliff'









Stocks are closing higher on signs that lawmakers are edging toward a deal that would help the U.S. avoid a fiscal crisis at the end of the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 107 points to end at 12,985 Wednesday. It had been down as much as 112 points.

The Standard and Poor's 500 rose 11 points to 1,410. The Nasdaq composite rose 24 points to 2,992.

Huge tax increases and spending cuts will come into effect Jan. 1 if no deal on the U.S. budget is reached. President Barack Obama said he believed that both parties can reach a framework on a deal before Christmas.

Rising stocks outnumbered falling ones two-to-one on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was lighter than average at 3.3 billion shares.

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Alleged WikiLeaks source says he was illegally punished in jail









A key pretrial hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of giving classified material to the website WikiLeaks, which then made it public, began Tuesday in a case that highlights the government’s resolve to keep war and diplomatic material secret.


Manning, who has been charged on 22 counts, faces life in prison if convicted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. His court-martial is scheduled for February.


A former intelligence analyst in Baghdad in 2009 and 2010, Manning is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of logs about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.





The hearing at a military court at Ft. Meade outside Baltimore is scheduled to run through Sunday. Manning is expected to testify at some point. It would be the first time he has spoken publicly about the case and the conditions of his detainment since his arrest in 2010.


The defense will argue that all charges should be dismissed because Manning was subjected to “unlawful pretrial punishment,” according to a post on the website of his supporters, the Bradley Manning Support Network.


Manning will get a chance to testify about his treatment. His lawyers argue that he was illegally punished by being put alone in a cell for nine months at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. Military judges can dismiss all charges if pretrial punishment is particularly egregious, but that rarely happens, though the time in incarceration can be credited toward the sentencing.


“At this extremely important hearing, Bradley’s lawyer David Coombs ... will present evidence that brig psychiatrists opposed the decision to hold Bradley in solitary, and that brig commanders misled the public when they said that Bradley’s treatment was for ‘Prevention of Injury,' " his supporters said.


Manning has offered to take responsibility by pleading guilty to reduced charges. The military has not ruled on that offer.


Manning was in the brig from July 2010 to April 2011. The military argues the treatment there was proper since he classified as a maximum-security detainee. He was later moved to Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., where he was reevaluated and given a medium-security classification.


A United Nations investigator called the conditions of Manning's imprisonment cruel, inhuman and degrading, but stopped short of calling it torture.


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Woman locked up in Alec Baldwin NY stalking case

NEW YORK (AP) — A Canadian actress accused of stalking Alec Baldwin has been locked up again.

New York City police detectives arrested Genevieve Sabourin (JEHN'-uh-veev SAB'-oo-rin) at a Manhattan courthouse Tuesday after she apparently violated a restraining order.

Baldwin and Sabourin met on the set of the 2002 sci-fi comedy "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," in which he had a cameo and she was a publicist. Baldwin says they had dinner together in 2010.

A judge had ordered Sabourin to stay away from Baldwin following her arrest earlier this year on harassment charges. Recent news reports said she had been tweeting angry comments about the "30 Rock" star's new wife.

Sabourin was in court Tuesday after her lawyer asked to be taken off the case. Her new lawyer has no comment on her re-arrest.

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Global Update: Investing in Eyeglasses for Poor Would Boost International Economy


BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images







Eliminating the worldwide shortage of eyeglasses could cost up to $28 billion, but would add more than $200 billion to the global economy, according to a study published last month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.


The $28 billion would cover the cost of training 65,000 optometrists and equipping clinics where they could prescribe eyeglasses, which can now be mass-produced for as little as $2 a pair. The study was done by scientists from Australia and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.


The authors assumed that 703 million people worldwide have uncorrected nearsightedness or farsightedness severe enough to impair their work, and that 80 percent of them could be helped with off-the-rack glasses, which would need to be replaced every five years.


The biggest productivity savings from better vision would not be in very poor regions like Africa but in moderately poor countries where more people have factory jobs or trades like driving or running a sewing machine.


Without the equivalent of reading glasses, “lots of skilled crafts become very difficult after age 40 or 45,” said Kevin Frick, a Johns Hopkins health policy economist and study co-author. “You don’t want to be swinging a hammer if you can’t see the nail.”


If millions of schoolchildren who need glasses got them, the return on investment could be even greater, he said, but that would be in the future and was not calculated in this study.


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Federal budget standoff is nerve-racking for state's long-term jobless









SACRAMENTO — The federal budget crisis in Washington known as the "fiscal cliff" has an estimated 400,000 long-term jobless Californians on the edge.

A 41/2 -year-old program of emergency federal jobless assistance, which provides many of the state's unemployed up to $450 a week in benefits, is scheduled to expire Dec. 29 — unless Congress and President Obama agree to keep it going.

Nationwide, about 2 million people face a cutoff in unemployment benefits, estimated to cost $30 billion in the coming year. An additional 1 million jobless workers are expected to lose unemployment benefits by March.





"There's going to be millions of us who, basically, will be out in the streets," said Lis De Bats, 54, an Agoura Hills resident laid off in January from a job as a new-home sales manager. "I'd lose my home and everything that goes along with it. I've used up all my resources."

Although the federal budget debate has prompted worries in many sectors of the economy, including federal workers and aerospace workers in Southern California, the threat to these emergency benefits is especially nerve-racking to those with no other means of support.

In California, notices of the impending loss of benefits are being mailed this week. The letters also provide information about other types of state support, including food stamps, welfare and healthcare programs for the poor.

And the benefits are important not just to needy individuals and families but also to economically hard-pressed communities, economists say.

"If you take money out of the economy, it will slow economic growth," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. "What's happening in Europe should show us that taking money out of the economy leads to recession."

So far, the nation's policymakers on Capitol Hill and in the Obama administration haven't reached an agreement on whether to extend unemployment benefits, keep the President George W. Bush-era payroll tax cuts, and allow automatic federal spending reductions to kick in, among other options, before Congress adjourns at year's end.

The uncertainty is troubling for Eric Silvern, 53, a Culver City high school teacher laid off in June 2011 and whose federal benefits were scheduled to run out in April. But now they may be gone by the end of the year.

"I'm very scared because I'm eligible for four more months, and I totally depend on them," he said. "I'm biting my nails every day worrying about it. In the past, they postponed the cuts, and I'm hoping they do that again."

For many chronically unemployed, those who haven't found steady work more than a year after being laid off, these emergency benefits are often their only way to pay for mortgages or rent, food and gasoline. As of October, about 35% of the state's nearly 2 million jobless had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer, according to the state Employment Development Department.

De Bats of Agoura Hills said she applies for an average of 50 jobs a week only to see the few openings filled by lower-paid, entry-level job seekers.

"I've cut everything to the bare minimal needed," she said. "It's been really tough."

Her predicament is typical of a large group of stubbornly unemployed despite gradual improvements in both the California and national economies, experts said.

California's unemployment rate in October dropped to 10.1% from 11.5% in October 2011. Still, the state had the third-highest unemployment level in the nation after Nevada and Rhode Island. The national rate was 7.9% in October.

The unemployment insurance program was "only designed for temporary sustenance while looking for a new job. It was never a substitute for welfare," said Employment Development Department spokeswoman Loree Levy.

"What we have is a crisis of long-term unemployment," said Maurice Emsellem, policy co-director on the West Coast for the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for the jobless and working poor. "We've never had this many people unemployed for this long."

Whether the federal unemployment payments get another extension remains uncertain. Unemployment benefits got little attention during the presidential campaign. But the president did address the issue publicly at a town hall meeting in Cincinnati last summer when he responded to a question from the daughter of an out-of-work construction worker.

"We'll continue to negotiate with Congress to make sure that unemployment is there," Obama responded. "But the most important thing I want to do is make sure your dad can get a job."

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, said that "Democrats have supported extending unemployment insurance benefits over and over again." But he noted that the federal emergency extensions are just one of about "a dozen things that expire at the end of the year" and that might be addressed as part of a "fiscal cliff" deal.

For its part, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown is lobbying Washington about "the significant impact the end of benefits will have on unemployed Californians," said Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for Brown.

Jennie Roberson, 29, said she learned the hard way about the importance of the federal unemployment payments. The Los Feliz graduate of UC Santa Barbara "has been searching for solid work since August 2010" and been "couch surfing" — living with a friend — since May because she didn't have enough money for rent.

Roberson just started working part time as a waiter and feeling that her life soon might turn around. The former administrative assistant for a nonprofit golfing organization is eager to find any type of office position.

But until that happens, the extended benefits are "a lifesaver, absolutely," she said, because "if I didn't have that coming in, I wouldn't have had any income."

marc.lifsher@latimes.com





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Congress returns as 'fiscal cliff' talks slow









WASHINGTON – Congress returned in a lame duck session with no signs of quick compromise to prevent a tax hike for most Americans early next year.


Talks between the White House and Republican leaders in the House continued behind closed doors. Current tax rates expire Dec. 31.


Emboldened by his re-election, President Obama took his case for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to the public on Monday. He warned that the threat of higher taxes on middle-class Americans could dampen the Christmas shopping season.





"The President has called on Congress to take action and stop holding the middle class and our economy hostage over a disagreement on tax cuts for households with incomes over $250,000 per year," the White House said in a statement.


Quiz: How much do you know about the fiscal cliff?


The White House got a boost from billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who said the wealthy – himself included – should pay more. Noting the nation’s growing gap in income disparity, Buffett dismissed the Republican argument that tax hikes would hamper investments.


“In recent years, my gang has been leaving the middle class in the dust,” Buffett said. “So let’s forget about the rich and ultrarich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if — gasp — capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased.”


Key Republicans, including House Speaker John A. Boehner, have signaled they are willing to put new tax revenues on the table, creating the outlines of a possible deal. Several Republican lawmakers used the Sunday talk shows to distance themselves from their party’s anti-tax pledge, publicly breaking with conservative stalwart Grover Norquist, although they insisted any agreement must include spending cuts.


A so-called grand bargain of tax hikes and spending cuts has eluded Washington in the past, but both political parties are wary of rattling the financial markets and sparking a crisis in consumer spending. Wall Street has signaled a bold deficit-reduction plan is needed to prevent a credit downgrade.


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No talks between the president and congressional leaders have been scheduled. The parties had agreed to meet this week to put the framework of a two-part deal on the table.


If Republicans continue to fight higher tax rates for the wealthy, Boehner will face pressure to propose an alternative way to raise new revenue – either by closing individual loopholes or capping deductions in a way that produces new money.


“Congressional and White House staff continue to work to find common ground that is consistent with the ‘balanced approach’ the White House says it wants – with significant spending cuts, and without job-killing small business tax hikes,” said a senior House leadership aide.


Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook


Lisa.Mascaro@latimes.com


CParsons@latimes.com


Twitter: @LisaMascaroinDC





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Fox interview ends after author criticizes network

NEW YORK (AP) — A Fox News Channel interview ended abruptly Monday after an author accused the network of hyping the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and "operating as a wing of the Republican Party."

The charges were made by Thomas Ricks, a veteran newspaper reporter and author of "The Generals," who was brought on for an interview with anchor Jon Scott about GOP criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's comments about the attacks.

Ricks said he thought the story of the Benghazi attacks was "hyped, by this network especially."

Scott asked why Ricks would call it hype when four Americans were killed, including the first U.S. ambassador in more than 30 years.

Ricks responded that few people knew how many U.S. security contractors were killed in Iraq and compared that to the attention paid to "what was essentially a small firefight" in Libya.

"I think that the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party," Ricks said.

With that, Scott thanked him and turned to a co-anchor, who introduced a commercial.

"When Mr. Ricks ignored the anchor's question, it became clear that his goal was to bring attention to himself and his book," Fox News executive Michael Clemente said.

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Hospitals Face Pressure From Medicare to Avert Readmissions


After years of gently prodding hospitals to make sure discharged patients do not need to return, the federal government is now using its financial muscle to discourage readmissions.


Medicare last month began levying financial penalties against 2,217 hospitals it says have had too many readmissions. Of those hospitals, 307 will receive the maximum punishment, a 1 percent reduction in Medicare’s regular payments for every patient over the next year, federal records show.


One of those is Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, which will lose $2 million this year. Dr. John Lynch, the chief medical officer, said Barnes-Jewish could absorb that loss this year, but “over time, if the penalties accumulate, it will probably take resources away from other key patient programs.”


The crackdown on readmissions is at the vanguard of the Affordable Care Act’s effort to eliminate unnecessary care and curb Medicare’s growing spending, which reached $556 billion this year. Hospital inpatient costs make up a quarter of that spending and are projected to grow by more than 4 percent annually in coming years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.


The readmission penalties will recoup about $300 million this year. But the goal is to pressure hospitals to pay attention to what happens to their patients after they walk out the door. The penalties have captured the attention of hospitals, and many are trying to improve their supervision of discharged patients’ recoveries.


“I’ve been doing this for over two decades and talking to hospital leaders about readmissions, and I used to get polite but blank stares,” said Dr. Eric Coleman, a professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus who has devised widely adopted methods to reduce hospitalizations. “Now they’re paying attention.”


With nearly one in five Medicare patients returning to the hospital within a month — about two million people a year — readmissions cost the government more than $17 billion annually.


Hospitals’ traditional reluctance to tackle readmissions is rooted in Medicare’s payment system. Medicare generally pays hospitals a set fee for a patient’s stay, so the shorter the visit, the more revenue a hospital can keep. Hospitals also get paid when patients return. Until the new penalties kicked in, hospitals had no incentive to make sure patients didn’t wind up coming back. The maximum penalty is set to double next October and then reach 3 percent of reimbursements in October 2015. Medicare also is expanding the list of conditions it will assess in setting punishments.


Right now it only evaluates readmissions of heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients, counting every rebound, even ones not related to the original reason for hospitalization. The penalties are based on readmission rates in the past and applied to future payments for all Medicare patients.


Researchers say that while some readmissions are unavoidable, many are caused by the short shrift hospitals have given patients on their way out.


Jonathan Blum, principal deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the penalties had helped galvanize hospitals’ efforts to avoid readmissions. “We’ve seen a small but significant reduction,” he said. “That tells me we’ve focused the industry on improvement.”


Medicare’s tough love is not going over well everywhere. Academic medical centers are complaining that the penalties do not take into account the extra challenges posed by extremely sick and low-income patients. For these people, getting medicine and follow-up care can be a struggle.


At Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Dr. Lynch said physicians from all over the Midwest referred their sickest heart patients to his facility for transplants and other major interventions. But those patients can skew his hospital’s readmissions numbers, he said: “The weaker your heart, the more advanced your emphysema, the more likely you are to be readmitted to the hospital.”


Dr. Lynch said Barnes-Jewish set up follow-up appointments for patients who didn’t have their own doctors. But about half of the patients never showed up, he said, even after the hospital made reminder phone calls and arranged for free rides. Sending nurses to see patients at home did not significantly reduce readmission rates either, he said.


“Many of us have been working on this for other reasons than a penalty for many years, and we’ve found it’s very hard to move,” Dr. Lynch said. He said the penalties were unfair to hospitals with the double burden of caring for very sick and very poor patients.


“For us, it’s not a readmissions penalty,” he said. “It’s a mission penalty.”


Various studies, including one commissioned by Medicare, have found that the hospitals with the most poor and African-American patients tended to have higher readmission rates than hospitals with more affluent and Caucasian patients. But the studies also determined that some safety-net hospitals performed better than average, showing that hospitals can overcome the challenges posed by the kinds of patients they treat.


In some ways, the debate parallels the one on education — specifically, whether educators should be held accountable for lower rates of progress among children from poor families.


“Just blaming the patients or saying ‘it’s destiny’ or ‘we can’t do any better’ is a premature conclusion and is likely to be wrong,” said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, director of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at Yale-New Haven Hospital, which prepared the study for Medicare. “I’ve got to believe we can do much, much better.”


Some researchers fear the Medicare penalties are so steep, they will distract hospitals from other pressing issues, like reducing infections and surgical mistakes and ensuring patients’ needs are met promptly. “It should not be our top priority,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who has studied readmissions. “If you think of all the things in the Affordable Care Act, this is the one that has the biggest penalties, and that’s just crazy.”


With pressure to avert readmissions rising, some hospitals have been suspected of sending patients home within 24 hours, so they can bill for the services but not have the stay counted as an admission. But most hospitals are scrambling to reduce the number of repeat patients, with mixed success.


A few days after Eda Laurion was discharged from the Banner Del E. Webb Medical Center near Phoenix after treatment for her congestive heart failure in August, a nurse showed up at her house.


“She helped explained the medicines I’m taking, the side effects, what they do for you,” said Ms. Laurion, 91, of Sun City West.


Still, readmissions can’t always be prevented. The nurse, Sue Koner, sent Ms. Laurion back to the hospital after two weeks for dangerously low sodium caused by an undiagnosed kidney problem. However, Ms. Laurion avoided re-hospitalization in October when Ms. Koner deduced that her hallucinations were a reaction to an antibiotic.


Overseeing former patients is expensive and time-consuming, so many hospitals are relying on financing from community health organizations and foundations. Ms. Koner works for Sun Health, a foundation-supported nonprofit. Since Sun Health started its program in November 2011, only nine of 213 patients have been readmitted.


Dr. Krumholz said hospitals should think of readmissions as a challenge to overcome. “One day, we’ll look back,” he said, “and we’ll be incredulous that one out of every five patients ended up back in the hospital.”


This article was produced in collaboration with Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.



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