R.A. Dickey, David Price win Cy Young awards

NEW YORK (AP) — R.A. Dickey languished in the minors for 14 years, bouncing from one team to another before finally perfecting that perplexing knuckleball that made him a major league star.

David Price was the top pick in the draft and an ace by age 25, throwing 98 mph heat with a left arm live enough to make the most hardened scout sing.

Raised only 34 miles apart in central Tennessee, Dickey and Price won baseball's Cy Young awards on Wednesday — one by a wide margin, the other in a tight vote.

Two paths to the pantheon of pitching have rarely been more different.

"Isn't that awesome?" said Dickey, the first knuckleballer to win a Cy Young. "It just shows you there's not just one way to do it, and it gives hope to a lot of people."

Dickey said he jumped up and yelled in excitement, scaring one of his kids, when he saw on television that Price edged Justin Verlander for the American League prize. Both winners are represented by Bo McKinnis, who watched the announcements with Dickey at his home in Nashville, Tenn.

"I guess we can call him Cy agent now," Price quipped on a conference call.

The hard-throwing lefty barely beat out Verlander in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, preventing the Detroit Tigers' ace from winning consecutive Cy Youngs.

Runner-up two years ago, Price was the pick this time. He received 14 of 28 first-place votes and finished with 153 points to 149 for Verlander, chosen first on 13 ballots.

"It means a lot," Price said. "It's something that I'll always have. It's something that they can't take away from me."

Other than a 1969 tie between Mike Cuellar and Denny McLain, it was the closest race in the history of the AL award.

Rays closer Fernando Rodney got the other first-place vote and came in fifth.

The 38-year-old Dickey was listed first on 27 of 32 National League ballots and totaled 209 points, 113 more than 2011 winner Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Washington lefty Gio Gonzalez finished third.

Cincinnati right-hander Johnny Cueto and Atlanta closer Craig Kimbrel each received a first-place vote, as did Gonzalez. Kershaw had two.

Dickey joined Dwight Gooden (1985) and three-time winner Tom Seaver as the only Mets to win the award. The right-hander went 20-6 with a 2.73 ERA, making him the club's first 20-game winner since Frank Viola in 1990, and became the first major leaguer in 24 years to throw consecutive one-hitters.

Perhaps most impressive, Dickey did it all during a season when the fourth-place Mets finished 74-88.

"It just feels good all over," he said on MLB Network.

Dickey switched from conventional pitcher to full-time knuckleballer in a last-ditch effort to save his career. It took him years to finally master the floating, darting pitch, which he often throws harder (around 80 mph) and with more precision than almost anyone who used it before him.

"I knew what I was going to be up against in some regard when I embraced this pitch," Dickey said.

He was the first cut at Mets spring training in 2010 but earned a spot in the big league rotation later that season and blossomed into a dominant All-Star this year. He led the NL in strikeouts (230), innings (233 2-3), complete games (five) and shutouts (three) — pitching through an abdominal injury most of the way.

"I am not a self-made man by any stretch of the imagination," Dickey said. "The height of this story, it's mind-blowing to me, it really is."

A member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team and a first-round draft pick out of Tennessee, Dickey was devastated when the Texas Rangers reduced their signing-bonus offer from more than $800,000 to $75,000 after they discovered during a physical that he was missing a major ligament in his pitching elbow.

Undeterred, perseverance got him to the big leagues anyway. When he failed, the knuckleball brought him back.

Among those he thanked ceaselessly for helping him on that long and winding road to success were all his proud knuckleball mentors, including Charlie Hough, Tim Wakefield and Hall of Famer Phil Niekro.

"It brings a real degree of legitimacy I think to the knuckleball fraternity and I'm glad to represent them and I'm certainly grateful to all those guys," Dickey said. "This was a victory for all of us."

Dickey said he received 127 text messages and 35-40 phone calls in the moments immediately following the Cy Young announcement.

The only call he took was from Niekro, a 318-game winner from 1964-87. The first texts Dickey responded to were from Wakefield and Hough.

"Most well-deserved," Niekro said in a comment provided by the Hall of Fame. "I'm super proud of him, as a pitcher and as an individual."

Dickey has one year left on his contract at $5.25 million and New York general manager Sandy Alderson has said signing the pitcher to a multiyear deal is one of his top offseason priorities. Alderson, however, would not rule out trading his unlikely ace.

"I believe the Mets are going to be a lot better and I want to be part of the solution," Dickey said, adding that he hopes the sides can strike a deal and he'd be happy to end his career in New York.

"I want to be loyal to an organization that's given me an opportunity," he said. "At the same time, you don't want to be taken advantage of. I've been on that side of it, too, as a player."

Price went 20-5 to tie Jered Weaver for the American League lead in victories and winning percentage. The 27-year-old lefty had the lowest ERA at 2.56 and finished sixth in strikeouts with 205.

Verlander, also the league MVP a year ago, followed that up by going 17-8 with a 2.64 ERA and pitching the Detroit Tigers to the World Series. He led the majors in strikeouts (239), innings (238 1-3) and complete games (six).

Price tossed 211 innings in 31 starts, while Verlander made 33. One factor that could have swung some votes, however, was this: Price faced stiffer competition in the rugged AL East than Verlander did in the AL Central.

"I guess it's a blessing and a curse at the same time," Price said. "There's not an easy out in the lineups every game. It feels like a postseason game."

The No. 1 pick in the 2007 amateur draft out of Vanderbilt, Price reached the majors the following year and has made three straight All-Star teams.

Despite going 19-6 with a 2.72 ERA in 2010, he finished a distant second in Cy Young voting to Felix Hernandez, who won only 13 games for last-place Seattle but dominated most other statistical categories that year.

The two MVP awards will be announced Thursday. Verlander's teammate, Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera, is a leading contender in the American League.

NOTES: The last AL pitcher to win back-to-back Cy Youngs was Boston's Pedro Martinez in 1999 and 2000. San Francisco RHP Tim Lincecum did it in the National League in 2008-09. ... Price and Dickey became the fourth pair of Cy Young winners born in the same state, according to STATS. The others were Jim Lonborg and Mike McCormick in 1967 (California), Viola and Orel Hershiser in 1988 (New York) and Pat Hentgen and John Smoltz in 1996 (Michigan). ... Niekro and his brother, Joe, both finished second in Cy Young voting, as did fellow knuckleballer Wilbur Wood.

Read More..

Beta Blockers May Calm Nerves, Keeping Them Banned by PGA and L.P.G.A.

Greg Norman, winner of 91 tournaments worldwide, remembers a time when panic attacks on the elite golf circuit were often alleviated with the illicit use of a common heart and blood pressure medicine, the beta blocker.

“In my day, lots of guys were on beta blockers,” Norman, 57, said in an interview at the P.G.A. Championship in August. “It wasn’t openly acknowledged, but it was obvious to the rest of us. A guy’s personality would change. In practice rounds or friendly matches, we’d see the real guy under stress. Then in competition, he was like a different, calmer person. Those guys were trying to take the nerves out of the game. But nerves are very much a part of the game.”

Norman was far from the only one with the tacit understanding that beta blockers, also prescribed for stage fright, were part of big-time golf. So in 2008, when the PGA and L.P.G.A. Tours were establishing their antidoping programs, beta blockers were included on the banned substance lists.

The little pill that inadvertently, or not so inadvertently, soothes the jitters and helps settle the bets in a recreational weekend match — nearly one in three Americans have high blood pressure, so it might be resolving a lot of $5 wagers — is strictly policed when the PGA Tour paydays top $1 million.

The permissibility of beta blockers in golf’s top level has come into focus anew this week. Charlie Beljan won a PGA Tour event Sunday, two days after being hospitalized with a panic attack. Beljan, who said that this week he was going to consult doctors near his home in Arizona, might be treated with medication to prevent future panic attacks. But in competition, he will not be allowed to take certain medications, like beta blockers, without applying for a therapeutic use exemption, which requires a review by an independent panel of doctors.

Dr. Nicole Danforth, a psychiatrist, the medical director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s sports psychology program and a former professional golfer, said, “I think beta blockers could treat the yips, and I think the tours think so, too, or they wouldn’t ban them.”

Beta blockers are prohibited in many sports other than golf, including Olympic sports. The PGA Tour took its lead from the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency in adding beta blockers to its list.

“One of the many pharmacological uses of beta blockers is the steadying of hand tremors,” said Andy Levinson, the executive director of the PGA Tour’s antidoping program. “Anything requiring fine motor skills could be affected, something necessary in sports like archery or golf.”

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kim Jong-su of North Korea had to return the silver medal he won in the 50-meter pistol event and the bronze he won in the 10-meter air pistol event after testing positive for propranolol, a beta blocker.

For millions of Americans who take beta blockers, enhancing athletic performance is far from the purpose. Beta blockers are heart medicines meant to control blood pressure, slow the heartbeat and treat a variety of other heart conditions. That they might help calm nerves in a pressure situation is almost an accidental side effect.

“It so happens that the response to an anxiety-producing situation is also driven by the sympathetic nervous system that the beta blocker is trying to control for the good of the patient’s heart,” said Dr. Binoy K. Singh, the associate chief of cardiology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

But Singh said he knew of no long-term, randomized clinical trials measuring beta blockers’ effectiveness in resolving anxiety or improving performance in pressure situations, even if he has had patients tell him they have noticed a calmness in those settings.

There is, in fact, no universal agreement on whether beta blockers help or hurt in some athletic situations.

“Some level of anxiety is good for performance,” said Richard Ginsburg, a sports psychologist at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. “It keeps you on your game. A beta blocker can take away some edge, mellow you too much.”

Danforth, who twice played in the United States Women’s Open, agreed, though she added that beta blockers, purely from a golf perspective, had been likened to the stabilizing advantage some find using a long putter.

There are medical concerns for those who acquire beta blockers without a prescription, perhaps through the plethora of Web sites selling the drugs. Singh said there was a serious risk for people using beta blockers without a genuine, long-term medical need for them.

“They are a very powerful class of drugs that have enormous impact on essential bodily functions,” he said. “They are not without adverse effects.”

Beta blockers are far from the primary treatment for panic attacks. There are a variety of medications, doctors said, and there are multiple treatments that do not involve drugs. Among the most effective treatments has been cognitive behavioral therapy. Some anti-anxiety drugs, like Xanax or Valium, are not on most prohibited substance lists, including the one used by the PGA Tour.

But if a golfer on the PGA or L.P.G.A. Tours can prove a documented medical condition that requires the use of a prohibited substance, an exemption is granted. Levinson said a beta blocker exemption had been granted.

When it comes to the recreational golfing community, no doctors said they had a patient who requested a beta blocker prescription to help with the frustrations and strain of playing golf. Singh, who said he was a golfer who had played in stressful weekend matches, was asked if he had ever been tempted to take a beta blocker for the benefits it might bring to his scorecard.

“No, but I would have benefited from a better golf game,” he said.

Read More..

BP to Admit Crimes and Pay $4.5 Billion in Gulf Settlement

LONDON — BP, the British oil company, said Thursday it would pay $4.5 billion in fines and other payments to the United States government and plead guilty to 14 criminal charges in connection with the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago.

US Coast Guard, via Associated Press

An explosion in 2010 on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was connected to a well owned by BP killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil.

The payments include a $4 billion fine to be paid over five years, with much of it to go to government environmental agencies, BP said in a statement.

As part of the settlement, BP pleaded guilty to 11 felony misconduct or neglect charges related to the deaths of 11 people in the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010, which unleashed millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.

A law enforcement official familiar with the case also said that two BP employees would be charged with manslaughter in the case. The United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., was scheduled to hold a news conference in New Orleans later Thursday.

“Today’s agreement is consistent with BP’s position in the ongoing civil litigation that this was an accident resulting from multiple causes, involving multiple parties, as found by other official investigations,” the company said in a news release.

The company said earlier Thursday it was in advanced talks with the United States about settling all criminal claims stemming from the spill.

Even with a settlement on the criminal claims, BP would still be subject to other claims, including federal civil claims and claims for damages to natural resources.

In particular, this settlement does not include what is potentially the largest penalty: fines under the Clean Water Act. The potential fine for the spill under the Clean Water Act is $1,100 to $4,300 per barrel spilled. That means the fine could be as much as $21 billion, according to Peter Hutton of RBC Capital Markets in London.

BP repeatedly said it would like to reach a settlement with claimants if the terms were reasonable. The unresolved issue of the claims has been weighing on BP’s share price as the oil company has been under pressure from investors to move on from the disastrous oil spill that had hurt the company’s reputation and finances.

An explosion in 2010 on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was connected to a well owned by BP killed 11 oil workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the surrounding water.

BP in March agreed with the lawyers for plaintiffs to settle claims on economic loss, including from the local seafood industry, and medical claims stemming from the oil spill. BP said at the time it expected the cost of that settlement to be about $7.8 billion, which it will pay from a trust the company set aside to cover such costs.

The company returned to profitability in the third quarter and increased its dividend, it said in October. It has been shrinking as it sold assets to raise funds to pay for costs related to the oil spill.

Stanley Reed contributed reporting from London. Charlie Savage contributed from Washington.

Read More..

Israelis Kill Hamas Military Commander in Gaza

Reuters

Palestinians extinguished a fire after an Israeli airstrike on a car carrying Ahmed al-Jabari, who ran Hamas's military wing, on Wednesday in Gaza City.

GAZA — The Israeli military carried out multiple airstrikes in Gaza on Wednesday and blew up a car carrying the commander of the Hamas military wing, making him the most senior official of the group to be killed by the Israelis since their invasion of Gaza four years ago. Hamas announced that Israel would “pay a high price.”

The death of the commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, 52, who was on Israel’s most-wanted list of Palestinian militants, was confirmed by Hamas and Israeli officials. The Israeli military said it had ordered the airstrikes as part of a response to days of rocket fire launched from Gaza into Israeli territory.

Mr. Jabari’s death signaled a further escalation in the renewed hostility between Israel and Hamas, the militant organization regarded by Israel as a terrorist group sworn to Israel’s destruction. The Israeli attacks could also further complicate Israel’s fragile relations with Egypt, where the new government has established closer ties with Hamas and had been acting as a mediator to restore calm between Israel and Gaza-based militant groups.

Hamas reacted furiously, saying in a statement that it considered the Israeli attacks to be the basis for a “declaration of war” against Israel. A spokesman for Hamas, Fawzi Barhoum, said the Israelis had “committed a dangerous crime and broke all redlines,” and that “the Israeli occupation will regret and pay a high price.”

Military officials in Israel, which announced responsibility for the death of Mr. Jabari, later said in a statement that their forces had carried out additional airstrikes in Gaza targeting what they described as “a significant number of long-range rocket sites” owned by Hamas that had stored rockets capable of reaching 25 miles into Israel. The statement said the airstrikes had dealt a “significant blow to the terror organization’s underground rocket-launching capabilities.”

Yisrael Katz, a minister from Israel’s governing Likud Party, issued a statement saying that the operation had sent a message to the Hamas political leaders in Gaza “that the head of the snake must be smashed. Israel will continue to kill and target anyone who is involved in the rocket attacks.”Hamas and medical officials in Gaza said both Mr. Jabari and a companion were killed by the airstrike on his car in Gaza City. Israeli news media said the companion was Mr. Jabari’s son, but there was no immediate confirmation.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that Mr. Jabari had been targeted because he “served in the upper echelon of the Hamas command and was directly responsible for executing terror attacks against the state of Israel in the past number of years.”

The statement said the purpose of the attack was to “severely impair the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership as well as its terrorist infrastructure.”

The statement did not specify how the Israelis knew Mr. Jabari was in the car but said the operation had been “implemented on the basis of concrete intelligence and using advanced capabilities.”

Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007, a year after the Israelis withdrew from the territory captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. But Israeli forces went back into Gaza in the winter of 2008-09 in response to what they called a terrorist campaign by Palestinian militants there to launch rockets into Israel. The three-week military campaign killed as many as 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and was widely condemned internationally.

Israel has long said it would hold Hamas responsible for attacks launched from Gaza on its forces and population, regardless of which group was behind them. Like the United States and Europe, Israel defines Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Mr. Jabari became the acting leader of the Hamas military wing after Israel had severely wounded Muhammad Deif, the top commander, in an assassination attempt in 2003. Mr. Jabari had survived several previous Israeli raids. In 2004, Israeli planes attacked his house killing one of his sons and three other relatives.

Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency, considered Mr. Jabari responsible for what it called “all anti-Israeli terror activity” emanating from Gaza.

He was also known for having played a major role in negotiations that led to the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants in a cross-border raid in 2006. Mr. Jabari personally escorted Mr. Shalit to a handover to Egyptian intermediaries last year as part of a prisoner exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Video of the handoff to Egypt showed Mr. Jabari standing near Mr. Shalit.

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military, acknowledged Mr. Jabari’s role in that prisoner exchange during a conference call with journalists on Wednesday announcing the airstrike on Mr. Jabari’s car. She also said Mr. Jabari had “a lot of blood on his hands.”

Fares Akram reported from Gaza, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.

Read More..

Leftwich to start at QB for Steelers on Sunday

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Pittsburgh Steelers will be playing for first place in the AFC North without quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

The team announced Wednesday that backup Byron Leftwich will start against the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday in place of Roethlisberger, who sprained his right shoulder in Monday night's victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Steelers (6-3) have won four straight to pull within a game of first-place Baltimore (7-2), but Roethlisberger left the 16-13 overtime win over the Chiefs in the third quarter after getting slammed to the ground by a pair of Kansas City linebackers.

The two-time Super Bowl winner underwent extensive testing Tuesday to determine the extent of the injury to his throwing shoulder. It's still unknown how long Roethlisberger will be sidelined. Pittsburgh faces the Ravens twice in the next three weeks.

Leftwich completed 7 of 14 passes for 73 yards after replacing Roethlisberger. He will be making his first start since 2009 when he played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The former first-round pick has been plagued by injuries the last two seasons and said he felt a little rusty after seeing his first regular season action in nearly two years, though coach Mike Tomlin anticipates the rust to wear off this week.

"I'll trust his assessment if that's his assessment, but I'm not overly concerned about it," Tomlin said. "We got a lot of ball in front of us this week. If he is the guy, he'll get a great opportunity to prepare and we'll expect him to play winning football."

The Steelers have managed to survive without Roethlisberger before. They are 7-5 in games without their franchise quarterback since 2005, including a 4-1 mark over the last two seasons. Roethlisberger missed the first four games of the 2010 season after being suspended for violating the league's personal conduct policy, but Pittsburgh started 3-1 behind Dennis Dixon and Charlie Batch, who will serve at Leftwich's backup on Sunday.

Batch filled in nicely last December when Roethlisberger was sidelined with an ankle injury, throwing for 208 yards in a 27-0 win over the St. Louis Rams.

Leftwich is 0-6 in his last six games as a starter, his last victory coming on Oct. 8, 2006 while playing the Jacksonville Jaguars, who selected Leftwich with the seventh overall pick of the 2003 draft.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Read More..

Drug Compounders Get Help on Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON — Despite two decades of dire health warnings and threats of federal intervention, the specialty drugmakers at the center of the nation’s deadly meningitis outbreak have repeatedly staved off tougher federal oversight with the help of powerful allies in Congress.

Over the years, industry friends like Tom DeLay, the former House Republican leader from Texas, have come to its defense. Even Senator Edward M. Kennedy, regarded as the strongest health care advocate in Congress in recent times, dropped efforts to impose new safeguards.

But the pharmacists known as compounders are now facing their biggest regulatory threat as they confront questions on Wednesday and Thursday at Congressional hearings on the deadly outbreak. The question is whether Congress will move to oversee the niche industry more aggressively.

“A lot of the blame for the meningitis situation lies at Congress’s door,” said Larry D. Sasich, a research pharmacist who has written about compounders’ safety record. For specially mixed drugs that fall into a gray area of federal law, he said, “the protections for your cat or dog are stronger than for your wife and children.”

By Washington standards, the industry’s financial clout is not terribly large. The main trade group, the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists, has spent $1.1 million on lobbying in the past decade, while major players in the business have given at least $300,000 to candidates since 2008, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group in Washington.

But by positioning itself as a more affordable, community-based alternative to huge drug manufacturers, compounders have attracted broad support from politicians. They have become popular among proponents of hormone therapy to slow aging and advocates for the autistic, who often distrust the traditional pharmaceutical industry, and rely on compounders’ tailor-made blends.

If history is a guide, it often takes a disaster to get real change in the law.

In 1938, Congress passed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act after a drug company mixed an antibiotic with a toxic solvent and more than 100 people were killed, many of them children. In 1962, it amended that act to effectively create the modern drug approval system after thalidomide, a German drug intended to treat morning sickness in pregnant women, caused severe birth defects in Europe, said Kevin Outterson, an associate professor of law at Boston University.

Experts say the magnitude of the current crisis, in which more than 400 people have been sickened with meningitis and 32 have died, may finally spur action. This week’s hearings are expected to include testimony from the head of the Food and Drug Administration and the head of the Massachusetts pharmacy that produced the tainted drug.

Much of the scrutiny has focused on lax oversight by state boards and the Food and Drug Administration. But public health and drug industry experts say Congress is partly to blame for failing to clearly define the F.D.A.’s authority to police the practice.

A familiar cycle has played out in Washington since the 1990s: Publicity over illnesses or deaths from compounding drugs prompts outrage. Expert witnesses warn of the dangers of an unregulated industry. Proposals to fix the system follow. Then nothing happens.

“The public is at risk, an alarming great risk,” one pharmacist warned in 2003 Senate testimony after one person died and five more fell ill from contaminated medicine in 2002 produced by a South Carolina pharmacy.

Compounding, the practice of mixing medicines for individual patients, has grown in recent decades, helping fill gaps during drug shortages and offering cheaper versions of commercial drugs. But it has also become prone to abuse, with some pharmacies becoming, in effect, mini-drug manufacturers.

While the F.D.A. has clear authority to regulate drug manufacturers, state authorities have the main jurisdiction over pharmacies. Determining which category a company falls into is difficult because compounders are not required to give the F.D.A. access to their books.

Ultimately, stronger regulation has been stymied by sharp opposition from the industry and its defenders in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, many of whom have compounders in their districts.

In 2008, the F.D.A. challenged what it said were misleading claims by compounders that their hormone therapy for older women was safer and more natural than that of big drug makers; it was met with staunch opposition, including objections from Suzanne Somers, the celebrity anti-aging advocate. The agency eventually prevailed.

Hundreds of members of Congress have attended conferences or taken part in charitable events and letter-writing campaigns organized by the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists. The trade group said recently that its Congressional supporters had surged in recent years and that compounding had “gone from being a little-known practice to having a strong and steady presence in Washington.”

Texas, home to many compounding pharmacies and their main trade lobbying group, has been an important base of support, producing industry allies like Mr. DeLay and Representative Joe L. Barton, a Texas Republican.

Read More..

Top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Is Linked to Petraeus Scandal

PERTH, Australia — Gen. John R. Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has become ensnared in the scandal over an extramarital affair acknowledged by David H. Petraeus, a former general. General Allen is being investigated for what a senior defense official said early Tuesday was “inappropriate communication” with Jill Kelley, a woman in Tampa, Fla., who was seen by Mr. Petraeus’s lover as a rival for his attentions.

In a statement released to reporters on his plane en route to Australia early Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that the F.B.I. on Sunday had referred “a matter involving” General Allen to the Pentagon.

Mr. Panetta turned the matter over to the Pentagon’s inspector general to conduct an investigation into what a defense official said were 20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents, many of them e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley, who is married and has children.

A senior law enforcement official in Washington said on Tuesday that F.B.I. investigators, looking into Ms. Kelley’s complaint about anonymous e-mails she had received,  examined all of her e-mails as a routine step.

“When you get involved in a cybercase like this, you have to look at everything,” the official said, suggesting that Ms. Kelley may not have considered that possibility when she filed the complaint. “The real question is why someone decided to open this can of worms.”

The official would not describe the content of the e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley or say specifically why F.B.I. officials decided to pass them on to the Defense Department. “Generally, the nature of the e-mails warranted providing them to D.O.D.,” he said.

Under military law, adultery can be a crime.

The defense official on Mr. Panetta’s plane said that General Allen, who is also married, told Pentagon officials he had done nothing wrong. Neither he nor Ms. Kelley could be reached for comment early Tuesday. Mr. Panetta’s statement praised General Allen for his leadership in Afghanistan and said that “he is entitled to due process in this matter.”

But the Pentagon inspector general’s investigation opens up what could be a widening scandal into two of the most prominent generals of their generation: Mr. Petraeus, who was the top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan before he retired from the military and became director of the C.I.A., only to resign on Friday because of the affair, and General Allen, who also served in Iraq and now commands 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan.

Although General Allen will remain the commander in Afghanistan, Mr. Panetta said that he had asked President Obama to delay the general’s nomination to be the commander of American forces in Europe and the supreme allied commander of NATO, two positions he was to move into after what was expected to be easy confirmation by the Senate. Mr. Panetta said in his statement that Mr. Obama agreed with his request.

Gen. Joseph A. Dunford, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps who was nominated last month by Mr. Obama to succeed General Allen in Afghanistan, will proceed as planned with his confirmation hearing. In his statement, Mr. Panetta urged the Senate to act promptly on his nomination.

The National Security Council spokesman, Tommy Vietor, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Obama also believes that the Senate should swiftly confirm General Dunford.

The defense official said that the e-mails between Ms. Kelley and General Allen spanned the years 2010 to 2012. The official could not explain why there were so many pages of e-mails and did not specify their content. The official said he could not explain how the e-mails between Ms. Kelley and General Allen were related to the e-mails between Mr. Petraeus and his lover, Paula Broadwell, and e-mails between Ms. Broadwell and Ms. Kelley.

In what is known so far, Ms. Kelley went to the F.B.I. last summer after she was disturbed by harassing e-mails. The F.B.I. began an investigation and learned that the e-mails were from Ms. Broadwell. In the course of looking into Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, the F.B.I. discovered e-mails between Ms. Broadwell and Mr. Petraeus that indicated that they were having an extramarital affair. Ms. Broadwell, officials say, saw Ms. Kelley as a rival for her affections with Mr. Petraeus.

The defense official said he did not know how General Allen and Ms. Kelley knew each other. General Allen has been in Afghanistan as the top American commander since July 2011, although before that he lived in Tampa as the deputy commander for Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.

The defense official said that the Pentagon had received the 20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents from the F.B.I. and was currently reviewing them.

The defense official said that at 5 p.m. Washington time on Sunday, Mr. Panetta was informed by the Pentagon’s general counsel that the F.B.I. had the thousands of pages of e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley. Mr. Panetta was at the time on his plane en route from San Francisco to Honolulu, his first stop on a weeklong trip to the Pacific and Asia. Mr. Panetta notified the White House and then the leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.

General Allen is now in Washington for what was to be his confirmation hearing as commander in Europe. That hearing, the official said, will now be delayed.

After arriving in Perth Mr. Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia for a United States-Australian security and diplomatic conference. Asked by a reporter while pausing for photos with Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Gillard if General Allen could remain an effective commander while under investigation, Mr. Panetta said nothing.

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also in Perth for the defense meetings and had no comment on the investigation of General Allen. “I do know him well and I can’t say,” General Dempsey said of General Allen late on Tuesday after returning from an official dinner with the Australian officials, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Panetta.

Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington.

Read More..

Roethlisberger hurt, Steelers survive Chiefs 16-13

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Pittsburgh Steelers are right where they expected to be heading into a vital three-week stretch that includes two games against the AFC North-leading Baltimore Ravens.

They're just not sure quarterback Ben Roethlisberger will be along for the ride.

The Steelers survived a scare from lowly Kansas City on Monday night, winning 16-13 in overtime when Lawrence Timmons intercepted Matt Cassel on the second snap of the extra session and Shaun Suisham hit a 23-yard field goal one play later.

It took some of the sting out of watching Roethlisberger head to the locker room — and ultimately the hospital — with a busted right shoulder after getting slammed to the turf by a pair of Kansas City linebackers in the third quarter.

Coach Mike Tomlin declined to speculate on Roethlisberger's status, though backup Byron Leftwich sounds like he's planning to be pretty busy over the next few days.

"I don't know the situation with Ben, but I got to make sure I'm ready if he can't go," Leftwich said.

The Steelers (6-3) have won four straight and can move into first place next week if they can beat the Ravens (7-2). The showdown takes on a different hue with Roethlisberger's health in question.

"You obviously worry about it because that's your starting quarterback, you want to see him out there," Pittsburgh linebacker James Harrison said. "But at the same point in time you've got a guy, two guys that are behind him can do the job just as well if not better."

Roethlisberger completed 9 of 18 passes for 84 yards and a touchdown before leaving. Leftwich, playing for the first time in the regular season in nearly two years, completed 7 of 14 passes for 73 yards and led the Steelers to a go-ahead field goal in the fourth quarter.

"After four or five plays, it was like riding a bike," Leftwich said. "I took a few hits. I hadn't hit the ground in a while. It was a whole lot of things I hadn't done in a while. It was good."

Even if Roethlisberger was not. Tackle Max Starks didn't think the notoriously gritty Roethlisberger was in any real danger when he stood up after getting sandwiched between Tamba Hali and Justin Houston.

"It didn't seem like a tough hit ... but he came to the sideline and next thing you know he was gone," Starks said. "I'm hoping it was nothing serious. Honestly it didn't seem like it."

While the Steelers ponder their postseason prospects with Roethlisberger uncertain, the Chiefs (1-8) are simply wondering when they're going to win another game.

Jamaal Charles ran for 100 yards and a score but couldn't stop Kansas City from dropping its sixth straight.

The Chiefs had their chances, taking their first lead in regulation all season in the first half then overcoming a series of embarrassing miscues to tie the game at 13 at the end of regulation.

Taking over at the Kansas City 20 with 1:51 remaining, Cassel led the Chiefs 52 yards — converting a fourth-and-15 in the process — to set up a 46-yard field goal by Ryan Succop as time expired.

"I thought our guys played and competed all night long," Cassel said. "We went up against a good football team and unfortunately we weren't able to pull it out in the end, but I thought the way the guys handled the environment of Monday Night Football was great."

Kansas City's only other victory this season came in overtime, a stunning upset in New Orleans in September. Any chance at a repeat faded when Cassel's pass on the second play of extra period landed in the hands of Timmons, who returned it 23 yards to set up Suisham's second game-winning field goal of the season.

It was sweet vindication for a Pittsburgh defense that allowed AFC lesser lights Tennessee and Oakland mount fourth-quarter comebacks earlier this season. Though the Steelers only managed to get the Chiefs — last in the NFL in turnover differential — to cough it up once, timing is everything.

"We got the one that count baby," linebacker Larry Foote said. "We got the one that count. They did a good job tonight, but we got the one that was big time."

NOTES: The Steelers have won 15 consecutive home games on Monday night ... Roethlisberger topped 1,000 career rushing yards with a 13-yard scramble in the first half ... Pittsburgh S Ryan Clark left the game in the fourth quarter with a concussion.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Read More..

Q & A: Weighing the Evidence

Q. My husband weighs twice as much as I do, yet we take the same dose of over-the-counter medications, as recommended on the packaging. Shouldn’t weight be a factor?

A. There is little information about using weight as a factor in adjusting doses of either prescription or over-the-counter medications, said Dr. Steven A. Kaplan, director of the Iris Cantor Men’s Health Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital.

“We are beginning to study different responses by weight,” he said, but he and other researchers have reached no conclusions on recommendations for therapy.

“In my own field, urology,” he added, “my opinion is that it is more likely for the recommended dose to be ineffective in a larger person rather than to be toxic in a thinner adult.”

Some prescription drugs, like chemotherapy agents, already have their dosages adjusted for weight because of their highly toxic nature. As for over-the-counter drugs, recommended doses generally tend to be weighted in favor of safety rather than efficacy, Dr. Kaplan said.

He and other doctors emphasized the importance of following package directions. For example, acetaminophen (like Tylenol) can present a life-threatening risk if the liver cannot process a high dose. If you find that the recommended dose does not work for you, Dr. Kaplan said, speak to your doctor.

C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Readers may submit questions by mail to Question, Science Times, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018, or by e-mail to question@nytimes.com.

Read More..

Square Feet: A Wounded Wall Street Is Expected to Stay Put

Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A businessman made his way Monday into One New York Plaza in Manhattan's financial district, where the cleanup from Hurricane Sandy was still underway.

More than two weeks after Hurricane Sandy came ashore in Manhattan, sending an 11-foot surge of seawater over much of the southern tip of the island, the financial district is still in tatters.

Dozens of office buildings that were flooded by the storm still lack power and are off-limits to tenants, and many streets are a chaotic mess of generators, work crews and pumps.

Still trying to gauge the extent of the damage, many landlords have been vague about when their buildings will reopen. And some tenants, who have been uprooted to tiny conference rooms in New Jersey or industrial spaces in Brooklyn, are weighing whether to come back to the neighborhood at all.

But despite the uncertainty and destruction, many analysts don’t expect the bulk of tenants to pack up and leave for good, nor do they think that future tenants will rule out the neighborhood over fears they might get flooded.

“I don’t think it will become an overriding factor in the location decision,” said John Wheeler, the head downtown broker for Jones Lang LaSalle, echoing other top brokers. “I guess time will tell if I’m being too sanguine about this.”Brokers add that the neighborhood remains a compelling place to locate a business. Even with some train lines hampered by storm damage, it is still amply served by mass transit, with more than a dozen subway lines and ferry service. The new apartments and condos built in recent years, along with new boutiques and restaurants, also mean that many people can now live a few blocks from their office.

Besides, rents are notably competitive with other business districts in Manhattan, at about $40 a square foot in the financial district, compared with $65 in midtown, according to Cassidy Turley, the brokerage, though the downtown figure is expected to climb when the two new World Trade Center buildings come online.

Complicating the prognosis about the neighborhood’s long-term health is the fact that getting an exact handle on the extent of damage has been tricky. Many major landlords have been reluctant to respond to even basic questions about the status of their buildings. And many brokers have refused to discuss individual properties.

And while the city’s Buildings Department declared early last week that nine downtown buildings were completely off-limits, and another 445 were partially habitable, it did not differentiate between commercial and residential structures.

Jones Lang LaSalle has been one of the few brokerages to tackle the issue. It concluded that a hefty 20 percent of all the major office buildings below Canal Street are closed, or 37 out of 183, according to data compiled as of Monday. And those shuttered buildings, most of which are east of Broadway, represent 29.2 million square feet of space, the data shows.

Anecdotal evidence, too, suggests the damage has been severe. Late last week, the Water Street corridor, which runs along the East River, appeared alarmingly hard-hit.

Men in white hazmat outfits pushed garbage bins on streets, which rumbled with the sounds of generators. Several traffic lights were still dark. Clumps of yellow hoses snaked up escalators and through lobbies. And security guards, protecting against looters, were more numerous than people wearing suits.

Among the buildings confirmed closed were: 99 Wall Street, 199 Water Street, One Wall Street Plaza and 180 Maiden Lane. Others that appear to be closed include 55 Water Street, 85 Broad Street, 7 Hanover Square and 10 Hanover Square, among others. Four New York Plaza, where The Daily News is based, could be closed for a year, though One New York Plaza, whose basement shopping center took on 30 feet of water, should reopen in two weeks, according to a spokeswoman for the building’s landlord, Brookfield Office Properties.

Going forward, some tenants are concerned that floods will become a regular occurrence; after all, just 15 months ago, the city was soaked by Tropical Storm Irene. These tenants say their fears were confirmed by comments that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made after Hurricane Sandy about how destructive weather events are likely to recur.

“He was like, ‘If you don’t believe in global warming, wake up and see what’s happening here,’ and he was right,” said Andrea Katz, a development director for WBAI, the public radio station, which has a 10,000-square-foot space at 120 Wall Street. The lower floors of the Art Deco building, which is at South Street and owned by Silverstein Properties, were flooded by Hurricane Sandy.

Read More..