Husband and wife behind 'The Bible' miniseries

NEW YORK (AP) — Mark Burnett was taken aback by the scale of what his wife, actress Roma Downey, had in mind when she suggested over tea one morning four years ago that they make a television miniseries based on the Bible.

"Momentarily, I think he thought I'd lost my mind," Downey recalled. "He went out on his bicycle and he prayed on it and he came back and said, 'You know what, I think it's a good idea. I think we should do it together.' We shook hands and haven't looked back."

The series debuts on History Sunday at 8 p.m. EST, the first of five two-hour chunks that will air each weekend. The finale airs on Easter Sunday.

Different stories in the Bible have been Hollywood fodder for years. Burnett, the prolific producer behind "Survivor" and "The Voice," said no one had tried to tie it all together and use modern computer graphics to bring images like Moses parting the Red Sea to life on screen.

Instead of being all-encompassing, they tried to concentrate on stories in depth and on characters who would emotionally engage the audience. The first episode illustrates the wisdom of that approach: it flounders at the start with a discussion about the world's creation but becomes more gripping when the emphasis turns to the lives of Abraham and Moses.

Burnett said he believes there's a growing "Biblical illiteracy" among young people.

"It's like saying you never heard of Macbeth or King Lear," he said. "In school, you have to know a certain amount of Shakespeare, but no Bible. So there's got to be a way to look at it from a pure literature point of view. If it wasn't for the Bible, arguably Shakespeare wouldn't have written those stories."

Downey, the former star of "Touched By an Angel," said she wanted to be part of something that would glorify God.

After pitching their idea to several networks, Burnett and Downey found a fit with Nancy Dubuc, History's president and general manager. She likes the challenge of ideas that seem unwieldy. History made the 2010 miniseries "America the Story of Us," which was a big hit, and 2012's "Mankind the Story of All of Us," which wasn't. Last spring's miniseries on the Hatfields and McCoys was an eye-opening success.

Burnett and Downey have been building anticipation for "The Bible" by previewing it at churches and for religious leaders. Rick Warren, Joel Osteen and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, have all endorsed the work.

"The faith community is going to sample it, unquestionably," Dubuc said. "Whether they stay or go remains with the TV gods. Our job has been to present this as an epic tale of adventure."

History's own campaign is not targeting a religious audience, emphasizing some of the dramatic scenes to suggest that audiences won't be preached to. The screening that Downey and Burnett have sweated the most was when their teenage children showed it to some friends.

"We knew that we could make it heartfelt," Downey said. "We knew we could make it faithful. But we wanted to be sure that we could make it cool."

Downey spent nearly half of 2012 in Morocco supervising filming, beginning in the cold of February and ending in the blistering heat of July. "We wanted it to be gritty and authentic," she said. "We didn't want it to look like somebody had just stepped out of the dry cleaners."

Her husband flew back and forth to the United States, where he would work on his other programs. Downey said she initially had no intention of appearing onscreen, but stepped in when they had trouble casting an actress for an older Mary, mother of Jesus.

Except for Downey, few of the actors involved are well known in the United States. Portuguese TV star Diogo Morgado portrays Jesus Christ, and many of the other lead actors are based in Britain.

The television airing of "The Bible" on History is only the beginning for this project. Lifetime will air a repeat each week after a new episode appears on History. It will air internationally, and a DVD package will go on sale this spring. The series' scripts are bound together into a book. Producers will make a theatrical release movie of a portion of the story, and are looking at showing it in stadiums this fall. Burnett and Downey have also reached a deal to make parts of the film available as part of a religious education curriculum for churches.

"More people will watch this than any of our other series combined over the next three decades," Burnett said.

Even better, their marriage survived the grueling process intact — even stronger, Downey said.

"Nobody has taken on the broad vision from Genesis to Revelation, and I think we probably realized at midpoint why no one had done it before," she said. "It was maddeningly complicated and extraordinarily hard work. We approached it humbly, but we were exhilarated by it."

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EDITOR'S NOTE — David Bauder can be reached at dbauder(at)ap.org or on Twitter (at)dbauder.

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The New Old Age Blog: Why Can’t I Live With People Like Me?

“Aging in place” is the mantra of long-term care. Whether looking at reams of survey data, talking to friends or wishing on a star, who among us wouldn’t rather spend the final years — golden or less so — at home, surrounded by our cherished possessions, in our own bed, no cranky old coot as a roommate, no institutional smells or sounds, no lukewarm meals on a schedule of someone else’s making?

That works best, experts tell us, in dense cities, where we can hail a cab at curbside, call the superintendent when something breaks and have our food delivered from Fresh Direct or countless takeout restaurants. We’d have neighbors in the apartment above us, below us, just on the other side of the wall. Hearing their toilets flush and their children ride tricycles on uncarpeted floors is a small inconvenience compared to the security of knowing they are so close by in an emergency.

Urban planners, mindful that most Americans live in sprawling, car-reliant suburbs, are designing more elder-friendly, walkable communities, far from “real” cities. Houses and apartments are built around village greens, with pockets of commerce instead of distant strip malls. Some have community centers for congregate meals and activities; others share gardens, where people can get their hands in the warm spring dirt long after they can push a lawn mower.

All of this is a step in the right direction, despite the Potemkin-village look of so many of them. But it doesn’t take into account those who are too infirm to stay at home, even in cities or more manageable suburban environments. Some are alone, others with a loving spouse who by comparison is “well” but may not be for long, given the rigors of care-taking. It doesn’t take into account people who can’t afford a home health aide, who don’t qualify for a visiting nurse, who have no adult children to help them or whose children live far away.

But by now, aging in place, unrealistic for some, scary or unsafe for others and potentially very isolating, has become so entrenched as the right way to live out one’s life that not being able to pull it off seems a failure, yet another defeat at a time when defeats are all too plentiful. Are we making people feel guilty if they can’t stay at home, or don’t want to? Are we discouraging an array of other solutions by investing so much, program-wise and emotionally, in this sine qua non?

Regular readers of The New Old Age know that I am single, childless and terrified of falling off a ladder while replacing a light bulb, breaking a hip and lying on the floor, unattended, until my dog wails so loudly a neighbor comes by to complain. A MedicAlert pendant is not something that appeals to me at 65, but even if I give in to that, say at 75, I’m not sure my life will be richer for digging my heels in and insisting home is where I should be.

So I spend a lot of time thinking about the alternatives. I know enough to distinguish between naturally-occurring-retirement communities, or NORCs (some of which work better than others); age-restricted housing complexes (with no services); assisted living (which works fine when you don’t really need it and not so fine when you do); and continuing care retirement communities (which require big upfront payments and extensive due diligence to be sure the place doesn’t go belly up after you get there).

What I find so unappealing about all these choices is that each means growing old among people with whom I share no history. In these congregate settings, for the most part, people are guaranteed only two things in common: age and infirmity. Which brings us to what is known in the trade as “affinity” or “niche” communities,” long studied by Andrew J. Carle at the College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Mr. Carle, who trains future administrators of senior housing complexes, was a media darling a few years back, before the recession, with the first baby boomers approaching 65 and niche communities that included services for the elderly — not merely warm-weather developments adjacent to golf courses — expected to explode. In newspaper interviews as recently as 2011, Mr. Carle said there were “about 100 of them in existence or on the drawing board,” not counting the large number of military old-age communities.

Mr. Carle still believes that better economic times, when they come, will reinvigorate this sector of senior housing, after the failure of some in the planning stages and others in operation. In an e-mail exchange, Mr. Carle said there were now about 70 in operation, with perhaps 50 of those that he has defined as University Based Retirement Communities, adjacent to campuses and popular with alumni, as well as non-alumni, who enjoy proximity to the intellectual and athletic activities. Among the most popular are those near Dartmouth, Oberlin, the University of Alabama, Penn State, Notre Dame, Stanford and Cornell.

At the height of the “affinity” boom, L.G.B.T.-assisted living communities and nursing homes were all the rage, seen as a solution to the shoddy treatment that those of different sexual orientations in the pre-Stonewall generation experienced in generic facilities. A few failed, most never got built and, by all accounts, the only one to survive is the pricy Rainbow Vision community in Sante Fe, N.M.

A handful of nudist elder communities, and ones for old hippies, also fell by the wayside, perhaps too free-spirited for the task. According to Mr. Carle, despite the odds, at least one group of RV enthusiasts has added an assisted-living component to what began as collections of transient elderly, looking only for a parking spot and necessary water and power hook-ups for their trailers. Native Americans have made a go of an assisted-living community in Montana, and Asians have done the same in Northern California.

But professional affinity communities, which I find most appealing, are few and far between.

The storied Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, a sliding-scale institution in the San Fernando Valley since 1940, survived near-closure in 2009 as a result of litigation, activism by the Screen Actors Guild and the local chapter of the Teamsters, and news media pressure. Among film legends who died there — along with cameramen, back-lot security guards and extras — were Mary Astor, Joel McCrea, Yvonne De Carlo and Stepin Fetchit.

New York State’s volunteer firefighters are all welcome to a refurbished facility in the Catskill region that offers far more in the way of care and activities, including a state-of-the-art gym, than when I visited there five years ago. At that time, the residents amused themselves by activating the fire alarm to summon the local hook and ladder company, which didn’t mind a bit.

Then there is Nalcrest, the retirement home for unionized letter carriers. Even as post offices nationwide are preparing to eliminate Saturday service, and snail mail becomes an artifact, the National Association of Letter Carriers holds monthly fees around the $500 mark, is located in central Florida so its members no longer have to brave rain and sleet to complete their appointed rounds, and bans dogs, the bane of their existence.

So why not aged journalists? We surely have war stories to embroider as we rock on the porch. Perhaps a mimeograph machine to produce an old-fashioned, dead-tree newspaper, which some of us will miss once it has given way to Web sites like this one. Pneumatic tubes, one colleague suggested, to whisk our belongings upstairs when we can no longer carry them. Other colleagues wondered about welcoming both editors and reporters. How can these two groups, which some consider natural adversaries, complain about each others’ tin ears or missed deadlines if we’re not segregated?

I disagree. The joy of this profession is its collaboration. We did the impossible day after day when young. We belong together when old.

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Detroit Car Sales Climb Again

DETROIT – Sales of new vehicles in the United States rose modestly in February, as consumers continued to buy more fuel-efficient cars and as businesses replaced aging pickup trucks with newer models.

Auto executives said overall industry sales for the month would improve about 2 percent over the strong results reported in the same period a year ago.

The seasonally adjusted annual sales rate – a closely watched indicator for the industry – is expected to total about 15.5 million vehicles for February.

That seasonal rate bodes well for the industry going forward, as automakers ratchet up production to meet demand for their new products.

The Detroit auto companies all posted positive results during the month.

General Motors, the largest American automaker, said it sold 224,000 vehicles in February, a 7 percent increase from the same month in 2012.

All of G.M.'s domestic brands – Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick – had higher year-over-year sales. Cadillac led the way with a 20 percent gain, primarily because of healthy sales of the new ATS compact sedan.

G.M. also reported increases in sales of its newest small cars, like the Buick Verano and the Chevrolet Spark. But its most prominent gains were in pickup trucks.

The company said that sales of the Chevrolet Silverado pickup rose 29 percent, and the GMC Sierra increased 25 percent. Executives attributed the performance to a surge in housing starts and the need for construction companies to replace older pickups.

“A significant tailwind for our industry is new home construction, which is creating jobs and fueling the demand for pickups,” said Kurt McNeil, G.M.'s vice president of United States sales operations.

The Ford Motor Company, the second-biggest Detroit auto company, said it sold 195,000 vehicles during the month, a 9 percent gain from a year ago.

Ford said that many of its gains came from sales of sport utilities such as the Escape and Explorer. The company’s redesigned midsize sedan, the Fusion, also had a good month, with a 28 percent improvement over last year.

Like G.M., Ford also benefitted from the surging demand for pickups. Ford said that it sold 54,000 F-series trucks during the month, a 15 percent increase from February of 2012.

Chrysler, the smallest of the Detroit automakers, saw its growth rate slow somewhat after several months of reporting double-digit increases.

The company said that it sold 139,000 vehicles in February, a 4 percent improvement over a year earlier. That is a smaller increase than Chrysler has reported in previous months.

“In spite of a cautious ramp-up of some of our most popular products, which limited inventory last month, we still managed to record our strongest February in five years,” said Reid Bigland, head of United States sales for Chrysler.

Chrysler’s best performers during the month were passenger cars such as the new Dodge Dart. Sales of its Ram pickup increased 3 percent, while sales of its Jeep SUVs dropped 16 percent.

The big Japanese automakers were to report results later Friday. Analysts expected Toyota and Honda to continue their steady comeback from inventory disruptions because of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan two years ago.

Volkswagen, the German automaker that is rapidly expanding its American operations, said it sold 31,000 vehicles in February, a 3 percent increase from a year earlier.

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After Pledging Loyalty to Successor, Pope Leaves Vatican

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI left the Vatican by helicopter on Thursday afternoon to spend the final hours of his nearly eight-year, scandal-dogged papacy at the papal summer residence. Onlookers in St. Peter’s Square cheered, church bells rang and Romans stood on rooftops to wave flags as he flew from Rome to Castel Gandolfo, a hilltop town southeast of the city where popes have summered for centuries.

More carillons heralded his arrival, and he was greeted by a vivid contingent of silver-suited firemen, gendarmes in red capes, and bishops in black and pink.

Addressing cheering well-wishers from a window at the residence, he said: “Dear friends, I am happy to be with you! Thanks for your friendship and affection! You know this is a different day than others.”

His retirement formally takes effect at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. Eastern). “I am just a pilgrim who has reached the last stage in his pilgrimage on this earth,” he said.

Earlier in the day, in one of his concluding acts, Benedict addressed a gathering of more than 100 cardinals who will elect his successor, urging them to be “like an orchestra” that harmonizes for the good of the Roman Catholic Church. From a gilded throne in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, the pope thanked the cardinals collectively, and then rose to greet each of them individually.

Draped in a red and gold mantle lined with snow-white ermine, Benedict clasped each cardinal’s hands as he removed his red skullcap and kissed ther pope’s ring. Benedict told them, “I will be close to you in prayer” as the next leader of the church is chosen. Many of them were appointed to their powerful positions as so-called princes of the church by Benedict or by his predecessor, John Paul II, and are thus seen as doctrinal conservatives in their mold.

“Among you is also the future pope, whom I promise my unconditional reverence and obedience,” Benedict told the cardinals, reflecting the concern among Vatican watchers about what it will mean to have two popes residing in the Vatican.

As pope emeritus, Benedict intends to reside in Castel Gandolfo for several months and then return to the Vatican to live in an apartment being prepared for him in a convent whose gardens offer a perfect view of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.

He surprised many on Feb. 11 when he announced that, feeling his age and diminishing strength, he would retire, a dramatic step that sent the Vatican hierarchy spinning. He reassured the faithful on Sunday that he was not “abandoning” the church, but would continue to serve, even in retirement. In an emotional and unusually personal message on Wednesday, his final public audience in St. Peter’s Square, Benedict said that he sometimes felt that “the waters were agitated and the winds were blowing against” the church.

His retirement will bring changes in style and substance. Rather than the heavy ornate robes he wore to greet the cardinals, Benedict will wear a simple white cassock, with brown shoes from Mexico replacing the red slippers that he and other popes have traditionally worn, the color symbolizing the blood of the martyrs.

The conclave to elect the next pope, expected in mid-March, will begin amid a swirl of scandal. On Monday, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s senior Roman Catholic cleric, said he would not participate in the conclave, after having been accused of “inappropriate acts” with several priests, charges that he denies. Other cardinals have also come under fire in sexual abuse scandals, but only Cardinal O’Brien has recused himself.

On Monday, Benedict met with three cardinals he had asked to conduct an investigation into a Vatican scandal in which hundreds of confidential documents were leaked to the press and published in a tell-all book last May, the worst security breach in the church’s modern history. The three cardinals compiled a hefty dossier on the scandal, which Benedict has entrusted only to his successor, not to the cardinals entering the conclave, the Vatican spokesman said earlier this week.

On Thursday, Panorama, a weekly magazine, reported that the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, had been conducting his own investigation into the leaks scandal, including requesting wiretaps on the phones of some members of the Vatican hierarchy. That would be taking a page from the playbook of magistrates in Italy, where wiretaps are extensive.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said on Thursday that in the context of an investigation into the leaks, magistrates of the Vatican, not the secretary of state, “might have authorized some wiretaps or some checks,” but nothing on a significant scale. The idea of “an investigation that creates an atmosphere of fear of mistrust that will now affect the conclave has no foundation in reality.” A shy theologian who appeared to have little interest in the internal politics of the Vatican, Benedict has said that he is retiring “freely, and for the good of the church,” entrusting it to a successor who has more strength than he does. But shadows linger. The next pope will inherit a hierarchy buffeted by crises of governance as well as power struggles over the Vatican Bank, which has struggled to conform to international transparency norms.

Many faithful have welcomed Benedict’s gesture as a sign of humility and humanity, a rational decision taken by a man who no longer feels up to the job.

As he stood near St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday after attending the pope’s last public audience, Vincenzo Petrucci, 26, said he had come to express “not so much solidarity, but more like closeness” to the pope. “At first we felt astonished, shocked and disoriented,” he said. “But then we saw what a weighty decision it must have been. He seemed almost lonely.”

Many in the Vatican hierarchy, known as the Roman Curia, are still reeling from the news. Many are bereaved and others seem almost angry. “We are terribly, terribly, terribly shocked,” one senior Vatican official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 28, 2013

A photo credit with an image on earlier version of this article misstated the photographer. He is Alberto Pizzoli, not Alberto Pizzolialberto.

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Donald Trump returns to the 'Apprentice' boardroom

NEW YORK (AP) — There is something Donald Trump says he doesn't know.

Trump has welcomed a reporter to his 26th-floor corner office in Trump Tower to talk about "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice." And here in person, this one-of-a-kind TV star, billionaire businessman, ubiquitous brand mogul and media maestro strikes a softer pose than he has typically practiced in his decades on public display.

Relaxed behind a broad desk whose mirror sheen is mostly hidden by stacks of paper that suggest work is actually done there, Trump is pleasant, even chummy, with a my-time-is-your-time easiness greeting his guest.

He even contradicts his status as a legendary know-it-all with this surprising admission: There's a corner of the universe he doesn't understand.

The ratings woes of NBC, which airs his show, are on Trump's mind at the moment, and as he hastens to voice confidence in the network's powers-that-be ("They will absolutely get it right"), he marvels at the mysteries of the entertainment world.

"If I buy a great piece of real estate and do the right building, I'm really gonna have a success," he says. "It may be MORE successful or LESS successful, but you can sort of predict how it's gonna do. But show business is like trial and error! It's amazing!"

He loves to recall the iffy prospects for "The Apprentice" when it debuted in January 2004. With show biz, he declares, "You NEVER know what's gonna happen."

Except, of course, when you do.

"I do have an instinct," he confides. "Oftentimes, I'll see shows go on and I'll say, 'That show will never make it,' and I'm always right. And I understand talent. Does anybody ask me? No. But if they did, I would be doing them a big service. I know what people want."

So maybe he does know it all. In any case, lots of people wanted "The Apprentice." In its first season, it averaged nearly 21 million viewers each week.

And it gave Trump a signature TV platform that clinched his image as corporate royalty. He presided in a mood-lit stagecraft boardroom where celebrity subjects addressed him as "Mr. Trump" and shrank at that dismissive flick of his wrist and dreaded catchphrase, "You're fired."

The two-hour premiere of "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice" (Sunday at 9 p.m. EST) starts by rallying its 14 veteran contenders in the even more evocative setting of the 2,000-year-old Egyptian Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

There, grandly, Trump receives such returning players as Gary Busey, Stephen Baldwin, LaToya Jackson and reality mean queen Omarosa.

Soon, teammates are chosen by team leaders Bret Michaels and Trace Adkins. Their first assignment: concoct a winning recipe for meatballs, then sell more of them than the rival team.

This is the 13th edition of the "Apprentice" franchise, which has now slipped to less than one-third its original viewership, according to Nielsen Co. figures. But even an audience matching last season's 6.26 million viewers would be pleasant news for NBC, which has recently fallen to fifth place in prime time, behind even Spanish-language Univision.

"I could probably do another show when I don't enjoy 'The Apprentice' anymore," says the 66-year-old Trump, mulling his TV future. "I have been asked by virtually every network on television to do a show for them. But there's something to sticking with what you have: This is a good formula. It works."

Years before "The Apprentice," Trump had hit on a winning formula for himself: Supercharge his business success with relentless self-promotion, putting a human face — his! — on the capitalist system, and embedding his persona in a feedback loop of performance and fame.

Since then, he has ruled as America's larger-than-life tycoon and its patron saint of material success. Which raises the question: Does he play a souped-up version of himself for his audience as Donald Trump, a character bigger and broader than its real-life inspiration?

He laughs, flashing something like a you-got-me smile.

"Perhaps," he replies. "Not consciously. But perhaps I do. Perhaps I do."

It began as early as 1987, when his first book, "Trump: The Art of the Deal," became a huge best-seller.

And even without a regular showcase, he was no stranger to TV. For instance, in the span of just 10 days in May 1997, Trump not only was seen on his "Miss Universe Pageant" telecast on CBS, but also made sitcom cameo appearances as himself on NBC's "Suddenly Susan" and ABC's "Drew Carey Show."

Meanwhile, as a frequent talk-show guest then (as now), he publicized his projects and pushed his brand.

"I'll be on that show for 20 or 30 or 60 minutes, and it costs me nothing," he notes. "When you have an opportunity for promotion, take it! It's free."

No one has ever accused Trump of hiding his light under a bushel. But his promotional drive (or naked craving for attention) has taken him to extremes that conventional wisdom warns against: saying and doing things that might hurt your bottom line.

Item: Trump's noisy, even race-baiting challenge to President Barack Obama to prove his American citizenship. This crusade has earned Trump the title from one editorialist as "birther blowhard."

For an industrialist and entertainer, where's the profit in voicing political views that could tick off a segment of your market or your audience?

"It's a great question, and a hard question to answer, because you happen to be right," Trump begins. "The fact is, some people love me, and some people the-opposite-of-love me, because of what I do and because of what I say. But I'm a very truthful person. By speaking out, it's probably not a good thing for me personally, but I feel I have an obligation to do it."

But isn't he being divisive with some of his pronouncements?

"I think 'divisive' would be a fair word in some cases, not in all cases," he replies. "But I think 'truthful' is another word."

The publicity he got from his political activism reached a fever pitch during his months-long, media-blitzed flirtation with running for president that seemed conveniently to dovetail with the Spring 2011 season of his TV show.

That May, he announced he would not run. For some, it was the final scene of nothing more than political theatrics.

"They weren't," Trump says quietly. "I was very seriously considering running. It was a race that the Republicans should have won. I made a mistake in not running, because I think I would have won."

He says he has no designs on this year's race for mayor of New York. But his politicizing continues apace. In his Twitter feed, with 2 million followers, he continues to bash China and rant about Washington. He phones in to Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" each Monday morning to vent his spleen.

"I believe in speaking my mind," he says, "and I don't mind controversy, as you probably noticed. I think sometimes controversy is a good thing, not a bad thing."

Last summer saw the opening in Aberdeen, Scotland, of Trump International Golf Links after a bitter, yearslong fight waged by environmentalists and local residents against government leaders and, of course, Trump.

A man for whom it seems no publicity is bad publicity, Trump insists the controversy helped the project.

"If there wasn't controversy surrounding it, I don't think anybody would even know it exists," he says, laying out the alternative: "I could take an ad: 'Golf course opening.'"

Trump even seems to profit from the harsh attention focused on his hair.

"I get killed on my hair!" he says, with no trace of remorse. But he wants everyone to know, "It's not a wig!" Nor is it an elaborately engineered coif to hide a hairline in retreat, as many Trump-watchers imagine.

To prove it, Trump does a remarkable thing: He lifts the flaxen locks that flop above his forehead to reveal, plain as day, a normal hairline.

"I wash my hair, I comb it, I set it and I spray it," he says. "That's it. I could comb it back and I'd look OK. But I've combed it this way for my whole life. It's become almost a trademark. And I think NBC would be very unhappy if I combed it back, 'cause — you know what? — maybe I wouldn't get as high a rating."

___

Online:

www.nbc.com

___

Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier

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The New Old Age Blog: For the Elderly, Medical Procedures to Avoid

The Choosing Wisely campaign, an initiative by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation in partnership with Consumer Reports, kicked off last spring. It is an attempt to alert both doctors and patients to problematic and commonly overused medical tests, procedures and treatments.

It took an elegantly simple approach: By working through professional organizations representing medical specialties, Choosing Wisely asked doctors to identify “Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question.”

The idea was that doctors and their patients could agree on tests and treatments that are supported by evidence, that don’t duplicate what others do, that are “truly necessary” and “free from harm” — and avoid the rest.

Among the 18 new lists released last week are recommendations from geriatricians and palliative care specialists, which may be of particular interest to New Old Age readers. I’ve previously written about a number of these warnings, but it’s helpful to have them in single, strongly worded documents.

The winners — or perhaps, losers?

Both the American Geriatrics Society and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine agreed on one major “don’t.” Topping both lists was an admonition against feeding tubes for people with advanced dementia.

“This is not news; the data’s been out for at least 15 years,” said Sei Lee, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the working group that narrowed more than 100 recommendations down to five. Feeding tubes don’t prevent aspiration pneumonia or prolong dementia patients’ lives, the research shows, but they do exacerbate bedsores and cause such distress that people often try to pull them out and wind up in restraints. The doctors recommended hand-feeding dementia patients instead.

The geriatricians’ list goes on to warn against the routine prescribing of antipsychotic medications for dementia patients who become aggressive or disruptive. Though drugs like Haldol, Risperdal and Zyprexa remain widely used, “all of these have been shown to increase the risk of stroke and cardiovascular death,” Dr. Lee said. They should be last resorts, after behavioral interventions.

The other questionable tests and treatments:

No. 3: Prescribing medications to achieve “tight glycemic control” (defined as below 7.5 on the A1c test) in elderly diabetics, who need to control their blood sugar, but not as strictly as younger patients.

No. 4: Turning to sleeping pills as the first choice for older people who suffer from agitation, delirium or insomnia. Xanax, Ativan, Valium, Ambien, Lunesta — “they don’t magically disappear from your body when you wake up in the morning,” Dr. Lee said. They continue to slow reaction times, resulting in falls and auto accidents. Other sleep therapies are preferable.

No. 5: Prescribing antibiotics when tests indicate a urinary tract infection, but the patient has no discomfort or other symptoms. Many older people have bacteria in their bladders but don’t suffer ill effects; repeated use of antibiotics just causes drug resistance, leaving them vulnerable to more dangerous infections. “Treat the patient, not the lab test,” Dr. Lee said.

The palliative care doctors’ Five Things list cautions against delaying palliative care, which can relieve pain and control symptoms even as patients pursue treatments for their diseases.

It also urges discussion about deactivating implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, or ICDs, in patients with irreversible diseases. “Being shocked is like being kicked in the chest by a mule,” said Eric Widera, a palliative care specialist at the San Francisco V.A. Medical Center who served on the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine working group. “As someone gets close to the end of life, these ICDs can’t prolong life and they cause a lot of pain.”

Turning the devices off — an option many patients don’t realize they have — requires simple computer reprogramming or a magnet, not the surgery that installed them in the first place.

The palliative care doctors also pointed out that patients suffering pain as cancer spreads to their bones get as much relief, the evidence shows, from a single dose of radiation than from 10 daily doses that require travel to hospitals or treatment centers.

Finally, their list warned that topical gels widely used by hospice staffs to control nausea do not work because they aren’t absorbed through the skin. “We have lots of other ways to give anti-nausea drugs,” Dr. Widera said.

You can read all the Five Things lists (more are coming later this year), and the Consumer Reports publications that do a good job of translating them, on the Choosing Wisely Web site.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: For S.E.C., a Setback in Bid for More Time in Fraud Cases

The Supreme Court on Wednesday delivered a swift and decisive rejection of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s argument that it should operate under a more forgiving statute of limitations in pursuing penalties in fraud cases.

As a result of the decision, the agency will have to find a long-term solution to give itself more time to investigate cases.

In Gabelli v. Securities and Exchange Commission, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the unanimous decision rejecting the S.E.C.’s argument that a federal statute that limits the government’s authority to pursue civil penalties should commence when a fraud is discovered, not when it occurred.

The S.E.C. was hoping that the court would apply what is known as the “discovery rule.” In 2010, the Supreme Court endorsed this rule in a private securities fraud class-action suit, Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, stating “that something different was needed in the case of fraud, where a defendant’s deceptive conduct may prevent a plaintiff from even knowing that he or she has been defrauded.”

The discovery rule is an exception to the protection afforded by a statute of limitations, which puts an endpoint on potential legal liability for conduct. Unlike most cases, when fraud is involved, it may not be apparent to the victims that they were harmed because the primary goal of deceptive conduct is to keep it from being exposed.

In the Gabelli case, the S.E.C. filed fraud charges in 2008 against the mutual fund manager Marc Gabelli and a colleague, Bruce Alpert, saying they had violated the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 for permitting an investor to engage in market timing. Ten years ago, a major scandal erupted when it came to light that some advisers had permitted select investors to buy shares at favorable prices to take advantage of pricing disparities in the securities held by mutual funds.

In its complaint, the S.E.C. sought civil monetary penalties based on market timing that it claimed had taken place from 1999 to 2002, and resulted in the preferred investor purportedly reaping significant profits while ordinary investors suffered large losses. The defendants denied the charges and filed a motion to dismiss the case because it was not brought in time.

A federal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2462, provides that “an action, suit or proceeding for the enforcement of any civil fine, penalty, or forfeiture, pecuniary or otherwise, shall not be entertained unless commenced within five years from the date when the claim first accrued.” The provision dates to 1839, and applies to any government agency.

A decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan allowed the case to proceed by applying the discovery rule to a governmental action. Coincidentally, that decision was written by Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who despite being an occasional thorn in the S.E.C.’s side, accepted the agency’s argument to avoid a strict application of the five-year statute of limitations.

The Supreme Court, however, saw things differently. This week, it issued its opinion less than two months after it heard oral argument in the case in January, a clear sign the justices found no merit in the S.E.C.’s contention that the agency should be treated the same as private plaintiffs in trying to get around the statute of limitations.

According to the Supreme Court, victims in securities fraud cases should have a longer period to file a claim – from when the fraud was discovered. “Most of us do not live in a state of constant investigation,” the court wrote. “Absent any reason to think we have been injured, we do not typically spend our days looking for evidence that we were lied to or defrauded.”

Chief Justice Roberts explained that “the S.E.C. as enforcer is a far cry from the defrauded victim the discovery rule evolved to protect.” One of the reasons the agency exists is to detect and penalize violations, with tools that the ordinary investor simply does not have, like the authority to compel testimony and the production of documents. The message is simple. When it’s your job to investigate fraud, you cannot argue that your failure to do so is a justification for not meeting a statute of limitations.

The Supreme Court’s decision puts increased pressure on the S.E.C. to pursue its investigations with greater alacrity and not let them gather dust, which can occur as a result of staff turnover or other pressing issues. The market timing case is a good example of how an investigation might get lost in the shuffle as corporate accounting frauds at large companies like Enron and WorldCom, which also came to light in 2002, strained the S.E.C.’s investigative resources.

There are a couple of options to deal with this issue in the long run, apart from a substantial increase in the agency’s budget – an unlikely prospect in the face of the looming federal budget sequestration deadline.

The S.E.C. can obtain an agreement to stop the statute of limitations, known as tolling, from those it is investigating, something it has done in the past. For example, in its insider trading and securities fraud case against Samuel E. Wyly, his now deceased brother, Charles J. Wyly Jr., and two other defendants, the S.E.C. got an agreement that let it pursue claims beyond the normal five-year limitations period.

A permanent solution would be to seek legislation from Congress that would give the S.E.C. a longer window to complete its investigations. The statute of limitations is not a constitutional protection, so Congress can amend it as it sees fit, which it has done in other areas involving fraud.

The limitations period for banking crimes, for example, was extended to 10 years during the savings and loan crisis because of the crush of cases that made it difficult to finish investigations in the five-year window to initiate criminal prosecutions. The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 added mail and wire fraud affecting a financial institution to the list of crimes that get the benefit of the 10-year limitations period, again because of fear that cases would be lost because of the number of investigations taking place after the financial crisis.

The issue of the statute of limitations may even come up at the confirmation hearings of Mary Jo White, who has been nominated to be chairwoman of the S.E.C. That could be an early indicator of whether she would be willing to push for relief from the effect of the Gabelli opinion to help out the enforcement division.

In the short run, the Supreme Court’s decision will cause defendants in government enforcement actions to examine whether they might be able to take advantage of the five-year limitations period. Given how slowly the government has been known to move on occasion, it may be that some cases will fall by the wayside because of the Gabelli decision.

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Conservative Justices Voice Skepticism on Voting Law

WASHINGTON — A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be in peril, judging from tough questioning on Wednesday from the Supreme Court’s more conservative members.

Justice Antonin Scalia called the provision, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal permission before changing voting procedures, a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a skeptical question about whether people in the South are more racist than those in the North. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked how much longer Alabama must live “under the trusteeship of the United States government.”

The court’s more liberal members, citing data and history, said Congress remained entitled to make the judgment that the provision was still needed in the covered jurisdictions.

“It’s an old disease,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said of efforts to thwart minority voting. “It’s gotten a lot better. A lot better. But it’s still there.”

Four of the nine-member court’s five more conservative members asked largely skeptical questions about the law. The fifth, Justice Clarence Thomas, did not ask a question, as is typical.

The law, a landmark achievement of the civil rights era was challenged by Shelby County, Ala., which said that the requirement had outlived its usefulness and that it imposed an unwarranted badge of shame on the affected jurisdictions.

The county’s lawyer, Bert W. Rein, said that the “problem to which the Voting Rights Act was addressed is solved.”

In reauthorizing the provision for 25 years in 2006, Congress did nothing to change the criteria for inclusion under the provision, relying instead on a formula based on historic practices and voting data from elections held decades ago. Much of the argument concerned that coverage formula.

Should the court strike down the coverage formula, Congress would be free to take a fresh look at what jurisdictions should be covered. But making distinctions among the states based on new criteria may not be politically feasible.

Four years ago, the court signaled that the law may need revision to withstand constitutional scrutiny, hinting that Congress might want to take a fresh look at the places subject to the preclearance provision, called Section 5. Congress failed to act.

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said Congress had made a considered and cautious decision in extending the act.

Debo P. Adegbile, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that “our right to vote is what the United States Constitution is about.”

Section 5, originally set to expire five years after the law was enacted, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1966 as a rational response to the often flagrantly lawless conduct of some Southern officials then.

Congress repeatedly extended the requirement: for 5 years in 1970, 7 years in 1975, and 25 years in 1982. Congress renewed the act in 2006 after holding extensive hearings on the persistence of racial discrimination at the polls, again extending the preclearance requirement for 25 years.

But it made no changes to the list of jurisdictions covered by Section 5, relying instead on a formula based on historical practices and voting data from elections held decades ago. It applies to nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — and to scores of counties and municipalities in other states.

Last May, a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the law. Judge David S. Tatel, writing for the majority, acknowledged that “the extraordinary federalism costs imposed by Section 5 raise substantial constitutional concerns,” and he added that the record compiled by Congress to justify the law’s renewal was “by no means unambiguous.”

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Van Cliburn, American classical pianist, dies

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Van Cliburn, the internationally celebrated pianist whose triumph at a 1958 Moscow competition helped thaw the Cold War and launched a spectacular career that made him the rare classical musician to enjoy rock-star status, died Wednesday after a fight with bone cancer. He was 78.

Cliburn died at his home in Fort Worth surrounded by loved ones, said his publicist and longtime friend Mary Lou Falcone.

"Van Cliburn was an international legend for over five decades, a great humanitarian and a brilliant musician whose light will continue to shine through his extraordinary legacy," Falcone said in a statement. "He will be missed by all who knew and admired him, and by countless people he never met."

Cliburn made what would be his last public appearance in September at the 50th anniversary of the prestigious piano competition named for him. Speaking to the audience in Fort Worth, he saluted the many past contestants, the orchestra and the city. "Never forget: I love you all from the bottom of my heart, forever," he said to a roaring standing ovation.

Cliburn skyrocketed to fame when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow at age 23 in 1958, six months after the Soviets' launch of Sputnik embarrassed the U.S. and propelled the world into the space age. He triumphantly returned to a New York City ticker tape parade — the first ever for a classical musician — and a Time magazine cover proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia."

But the win also proved the power of the arts, bringing unity in the midst of strong rivalry. Despite the tension between the nations, Cliburn became a hero to music-loving Soviets who clamored to see him perform and Premier Nikita Khrushchev reportedly gave the go-ahead for the judges to honor a foreigner: "Is Cliburn the best? Then give him first prize."

In the years that followed, Cliburn's popularity soared, and the young man from the small east Texas town of Kilgore sold out concerts, caused riots when spotted in public and even prompted an Elvis Presley fan club to change its name to his. His recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with Russian conductor Kirill Kondrashin became the first classical album to reach platinum status.

Time magazine's 1958 cover story quoted a friend as saying Cliburn could become "the first man in history to be a Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one."

Cliburn performed for royalty, heads of state in Europe, Asia and South America, and for every U.S. president since Harry Truman.

"Since we know that classical music is timeless and everlasting, it is precisely the eternal verities inherent in classical music that remain a spiritual beacon for people all over the world," Cliburn once said.

But he also used his skill and fame to help other young musicians through the Van Cliburn International Music Competition.

Created by a group of Fort Worth teachers and citizens in 1962, the competition, held every four years, remains a pre-eminent showcase for the world's top pianists. An amateur contest was added in 1999.

"It is a forum for young artists to celebrate the great works of the piano literature and an opportunity to expose their talents to a wide-ranging international audience," Cliburn said during the 10th competition in 1997. The 14th competition is to be held in May and June.

President George W. Bush presented Cliburn with the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation's highest civilian honor — in 2003. In 2004, he received the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I still have lots of friends in Russia," Cliburn said at the time. "It's always a great pleasure to talk to older people in Russia, to hear their anecdotes."

After the death of his father in 1974, Cliburn announced he would soon retire to spend more time with his ailing mother. He stopped touring in 1978.

He told The New York Times in 2008 that among other things, touring robbed him of the chance to enjoy opera and other musical performances. "I said to myself, 'Life is too short.' I was missing so much," he said. After winning the competition, he added, "it was thrilling to be wanted. But it was pressure too."

Cliburn emerged from his sabbatical in 1987, when he played at a state dinner at the White House during the historic visit to Washington of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev leapt from his seat to give the pianist a bear-hug and kisses on the cheeks.

The 13th Cliburn competition, held in 2009, made history when a blind pianist from Japan, Nobuyuki Tsujii, and a teenager from China, Haochen Zhang, both won gold medals. They were the first winners from any Asian country, and Tsujii was the first blind pianist to win. And it was only the second time there were dual first place winners.

Cliburn was born Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. on July 12, 1934, in Shreveport, La., the son of oilman Harvey Cliburn Sr. and Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn. At age 3, he began studying piano with his mother, herself an accomplished pianist who had studied with a pupil of the great 19th century Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt.

The family moved back to Kilgore, Texas, within a few years of his birth.

Cliburn won his first Texas competition when he was 12, and two years later he played in Carnegie Hall as the winner of the National Music Festival Award.

At 17, Cliburn attended the Juilliard School in New York, where fellow students marveled at his marathon practice sessions that stretched until 3 a.m. He studied under the famed Russian-born pianist Rosina Lhevinne.

Between 1952 and 1958, he won all but one competition he entered, including the G.B. Dealey Award from the Dallas Symphony, the Kosciusko Foundation Chopin Scholarship and the prestigious Leventritt. By age 20, he had played with the New York Philharmonic and the symphonies of most major cities.

Cliburn's career seemed ready to take off until his name came up for the draft. Cliburn had to cancel all shows but was eventually excused from duty due to chronic nosebleeds.

Over the next few years, Cliburn's international popularity continued as he recorded pieces ranging from Mozart to a concerto by American Edward McDowell. Still, having been trained by arguably the best Russian teachers in the world, Cliburn's heart was Russian, with the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff concertos.

After 1990, Cliburn toured Japan numerous times and performed throughout the United States. He was in the midst of a 16-city U.S. tour in 1994 when his mother died at age 97.

Cliburn made his home in Fort Worth, where in 1998 he appeared at the opening of the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall, both in recital and as soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He endowed scholarships at many schools, including Juilliard, which gave him an honorary doctorate, and the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories.

In December 2001, Cliburn was presented with the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors Medallion at the televised tribute held in Washington.

Until only recently, Cliburn practiced daily and performed limited engagements.

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Online:

Van Cliburn Foundation: http://www.cliburn.org

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Personal Health: Too Many Pills in Pregnancy

The thalidomide disaster of the early 1960s left thousands of babies with deformed limbs because their mothers innocently took a sleeping pill thought to be safe during pregnancy,

In its well-publicized wake, countless pregnant women avoided all medications, fearing that any drug they took could jeopardize their babies’ development.

I was terrified in December 1968 when, during the first weeks of my pregnancy, I developed double pneumonia and was treated with antibiotics and codeine. Before swallowing a single dose, I called my obstetrician, who told me to take what was prescribed, “reassuring” me that if I died of pneumonia I wouldn’t have a baby at all.

In the decades that followed, pregnancy-related hazards were linked to many medicinal substances: prescription and over-the-counter drugs and herbal remedies, as well as abused drugs and even some vitamins.

Now, however, the latest findings about drug use during pregnancy have ignited new concerns among experts who monitor the effects of medications on the developing fetus and pregnancy itself.

During the last 30 years, use of prescription drugs during the first trimester of pregnancy, when fetal organs are forming, has grown by more than 60 percent.

About 90 percent of pregnant women take at least one medication, and 70 percent take at least one prescription drug, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since the late 1970s, the proportion of pregnant women taking four or more medications has more than doubled.

Nearly one woman in 10 takes an herbal remedy during the first trimester.

A growing number of pregnant women, naïvely assuming safety, self-medicate with over-the-counter drugs that were once sold only by prescription.

While many commonly taken medications are considered safe for unborn babies, the Food and Drug Administration estimates that 10 percent or more of birth defects result from medications taken during pregnancy. “We seem to have forgotten as a society that drugs pose risks,” Dr. Allen A. Mitchell, professor of epidemiology and pediatrics at Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine, said in an interview. “Many over-the-counter drugs were grandfathered in with no studies of their possible effects during pregnancy.”

Medical progress has contributed to the rising use of medications during pregnancy, Dr. Mitchell said. Various conditions, like depression, are now recognized as diseases that warrant treatment; drugs have been developed to treat conditions for which no treatment was previously available, and some conditions, like Type 2 diabetes and hypertension, have become more prevalent.

Misled by the Web

Now a new concern has surfaced: Bypassing their doctors, more and more women are using the Internet to determine whether the medication they are taking or are about to take is safe for an unborn baby.

A study, published online last month in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, of so-called “safe lists for medications in pregnancy” found at 25 Web sites revealed glaring inconsistencies and sometimes false reassurances or alarms based on “inadequate evidence.”

The report was prepared by Cheryl S. Broussard of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with co-authors from Emory, Georgia State University, the University of British Columbia and the Food and Drug Administration.

“Among medications approved for use in the U.S.A. from 2000 to 2010, over 79% had no published human data on which to assess teratogenic risk (potential to cause birth defects), and 98% had insufficient published data to characterize such risk,” the authors wrote.

But that did not stop the 25 Web sites from characterizing 245 medications as “safe” for use by pregnant women, which “might encourage use of medications during pregnancy even when they are not necessary,” the authors suggested.

Furthermore, the information found online was sometimes contradictory. “Twenty-two of the products listed as safe by one or more sites were stated not to be safe by one or more of the other sites,” the study found.

The question of timing was often ignored. A drug that could interfere with fetal organ development might be safe to take later in pregnancy. Or one (for example, ibuprofen) that is safe early in pregnancy could become a hazard later if it raises the risk of excessive bleeding or premature delivery.

Fewer than half the sites advised taking medication only when necessary, and only 13 sites encouraged pregnant women to consult their doctors before stopping or starting a medication.

Doctors, too, are often poorly informed about pregnancy-related hazards of various medications, the authors noted. One woman I know was advised to wean off an antidepressant before she became pregnant, but another was told to continue taking the same drug throughout her pregnancy.

“In many instances the best bet is for mom to stay on her medication,” said Dr. Siobhan M. Dolan, an obstetrician and geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She said that if a woman is depressed during pregnancy, her risk of postpartum depression is greater and she may have difficulty bonding with her baby.

Dr. Dolan, who is author, with Alice Lesch Kelly, of the March of Dimes’ newest book, “Healthy Mom Healthy Baby,” emphasized the importance of weighing benefits and risks in deciding whether to take medication during pregnancy and which drugs to take.

“In anticipation of pregnancy, a woman taking more than one drug to treat her condition should try to get down to a single agent,” Dr. Dolan said in an interview. “Of the various medications available to treat a condition, is there a best choice — one least likely to cause a problem for either the baby or the mother?”

She cautioned against sharing medications prescribed for someone else and assuming that a remedy labeled “natural” or “herbal” is safe. Virtually none have been tested for safety in pregnancy.

Among medications a woman should be certain to avoid, in some cases starting three months before becoming pregnant, are isotretinoin (Accutane and others) for acne; valproic acid for seizure disorders; lithium for bipolar disorder; tetracycline for infections, and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor antagonists for hypertension, Dr. Dolan said.

“Many medications that are not recommended during pregnancy can be replaced with low-risk alternatives,” she wrote.

Dr. Broussard, who did the “safe lists” study, said in an interview, “We’ve heard about women seeing medications on these lists and deciding on their own that it’s O.K. to take them. “Women who are pregnant or even thinking about getting pregnant should talk directly to their doctors before taking anything. They should be sure they’re taking only what’s necessary for their health condition.”

A reliable online resource for both women and their doctors, Dr. Mitchell said, are fact sheets prepared by OTIS, the Organization of Teratology Information Specialists, which are continually updated as new facts become available: http://www.otispregnancy.org.

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