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LONDON (AP) — Britain‘s royal family is attending Christmas Day church services — with a few notable absences.
Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, Queen Elizabeth II arrived at St. Mary Magdelene Church on her sprawling Sandringham estate in Norfolk. She was accompanied in a Bentley by granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie.
Her husband, Prince Philip, walked from the house to the church with other members of the royal family.
Three familiar faces were missing from the family outing. Prince William is spending the holiday with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury. Prince Harry is serving with British troops in Afghanistan.
Later Tuesday, the queen will deliver her traditional, pre-recorded Christmas message, which for the first time will be broadcast in 3D.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times
Mushrooms and spinach together is always a match made in heaven. I use a mix of wild and regular white or cremini mushrooms for this, but don’t hesitate to make it if regular mushrooms are all that is available.
1/2 ounce (about 1/2 cup) dried porcini mushrooms
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium onion or 2 shallots, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound mixed regular and wild mushrooms or 1 pound regular white or cremini mushrooms, trimmed and cut in thick slices (or torn into smaller pieces, depending on the type of mushroom)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup fruity red wine, such as a Côtes du Rhone or Côtes du Luberon
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or a combination of thyme and rosemary
6 ounces baby spinach or 12 ounces bunch spinach (1 bunch), stemmed and thoroughly cleaned
3/4 pound penne
Freshly grated Parmesan to taste
1. Place the dried mushrooms in a Pyrex measuring cup and pour on 2 cups boiling water. Let soak 30 minutes, while you prepare the other ingredients. Place a strainer over a bowl, line it with cheesecloth or paper towels, and drain the mushrooms. Squeeze the mushrooms over the strainer to extract all the flavorful juices. Then rinse the mushrooms, away from the bowl with the soaking liquid, until they are free of sand. Squeeze dry and set aside. If very large, chop coarsely. Measure out 1 cup of the soaking liquid and set aside.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy, nonstick skillet over medium heat and add the onion or shallots. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes. Turn up the heat to medium-high and add the fresh mushrooms. Cook, stirring often, until they begin to soften and sweat, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and salt to taste, stir together for about 30 seconds, then add the reconstituted dried mushrooms and the wine and turn the heat to high. Cook, stirring, until the liquid boils down and glazes the mushrooms. Add the herbs and the mushroom soaking liquid. Bring to a simmer, add salt to taste, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until the mushrooms are thoroughly tender and fragrant. Turn off the heat, stir in some freshly ground pepper, taste and adjust salt.
3. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Fill a bowl with ice water. Add the spinach to the boiling water and blanch for 20 seconds only. Remove with a skimmer and transfer to the ice water, then drain and squeeze out water. Chop coarsely and add to the mushrooms. Reheat gently over low heat.
4. Bring the water back to a boil and cook the pasta al dente following the timing suggestions on the package. If there is not much broth in the pan with the mushrooms and spinach, add a ladleful of pasta water. Drain the pasta, toss with the mushrooms and spinach, add Parmesan to taste, and serve at once.
Yield: Serves 4
Advance preparation: The mushroom ragout will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator and tastes even better the day after you make it.
Nutritional information per serving: 437 calories; 9 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 73 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 48 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste or Parmesan); 17 grams protein
Up Next: Spinach Gnocchi
Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”
To expand service, cellular phone companies are turning to a higher power.
They're not increasing the wattage of their transmitters. They're looking for churches near residential areas willing to let them hide cell sites in steeples, belfries and crosses.
Wireless companies are hunting for new sites as they scramble to close gaps in phone reception and expand their networks to meet the explosion of smartphones and tablets. Conventional cellphone towers in neighborhoods are often opposed as eyesores, and sometimes banned. Churches offer an alternative.
Not so fast, some worshipers and residents near churches say.
Cell tower opponents contend there is a potential radiation danger to children and neighbors from cellular transmitters, an assertion that the wireless industry says is false.
The cellphone trade group CTIA says that emissions from the industry's towers are "thousands of times less than the FCC's limits for safe exposure," and it cites reports from the Federal Communications Commission asserting that no evidence links cancer to wireless devices or, according to the National Cancer Institute, to radio-frequency energy.
But in 2011, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer classified radio-frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans, bolstering fears raised by tower opponents.
Earlier this year, parents in Burbank protested when plans were announced to install a T-Mobile cell site at the Little White Chapel. Twelve antennas were to be placed in the church's steeple and other equipment installed on the first floor of the sanctuary.
In May, the Burbank City Council unanimously declined to approve the Planning Board's OK of the project, which was based on a 2011 ordinance allowing antennas on institutional buildings such as churches and schools.
In Tujunga, parents and others, citing aesthetic grounds, have protested plans for a Metro PCS cell tower disguised as a pine tree at Our Lady of Lourdes School.
Verizon had better luck in October when the Camarillo Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit for a dozen cellular antennas inside a 53-foot church steeple and cross at Trinity Presbyterian Church.
The idea is not new. In 1997, Nextel Communications sought to place a tower on the playground of Holy Redeemer School in Montrose but stopped its plans after parents complained.
But the trend may be accelerating: A recent survey by California Watch, an investigative reporting group, noted that no one keeps track how many churches in California have cell sites but found that some congregations actively market themselves.
The Canyon Creek Presbyterian Church in San Ramon sought out wireless providers when it was constructing a building six years ago and eventually struck a deal with T-Mobile that brings $25,000 to $30,000 a year to the church.
While the church lost part of its property tax exemption because of the cell site, it still comes out financially ahead.
Churches with cell sites say they welcome the income from working out lease deals with wireless companies. It can total as much as $4,000 a month.
The Green Hills Baptist Church in La Habra first leased space to Pac Bell about 20 years ago, said Pastor Bob Gallina. These days the nine or so T-Mobile transmitters that are attached to an outdoor cross bring in about $20,000 annually, he said.
Legal experts say ministers and other church leaders should read the fine print closely when considering a carrier's offer. "Often church people are entirely too trusting," said John W. Pestle, a Tucson-area lawyer who frequently advises property owners who are considering hosting cell sites.
Long-term leases can stymie a church that needs to physically expand in the future, Pestle said. And because wireless companies prefer to keep lease amounts confidential, churches may have difficulty comparing rates.
Until now, the growth in cell sites tucked in steeples, bell towers and in crosses has been modest; only a couple of hundred of the 5,000 new sites built in the U.S. this year were in churches, said Ken Schmidt, president of the consulting firm Steel in the Air based in Ft. Myers, Fla.
But that could change as wireless companies ramp up service. Schmidt said AT&T has announced plans to add 10,000 additional macro cell sites on tall towers and 40,000 smaller, shorter-range sites on existing buildings.
That means churches with tall towers and steeples close to neighborhoods will be sought out by the wireless industry.
Carriers may pass the collection plate among customers to pay for the new cell sites.
bob.pool@latimes.com
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Emmy-winning actor Jack Klugman, a versatile, raspy-voiced mainstay of U.S. television during the 1970s and early ’80s through his starring roles in “The Odd Couple” and “Quincy, M.E.,” died on Monday at the age of 90.
Klugman, whose pairing with Tony Randall on “The Odd Couple” created one of television’s most memorable duos, died at his home in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles following a period of declining health, according to his son, Adam Klugman.
“He went very suddenly and peacefully … he was there one minute and gone the next,” the actor’s son told Reuters, adding that the elder Klugman had “been in convalescent mode for awhile.”
He said his father had lost his ability to walk and spent much of his time in bed. His wife of four and a half years, Peggy Crosby, former daughter-in-law of the late singer Bing Crosby, was with him when he died, his son said.
In addition to his TV success, Klugman enjoyed a healthy career on the stage as well as in movies and made successful forays into horse breeding and political activism. Not even the loss of a vocal cord to cancer in 1989 could silence him for long.
Klugman gained fame for playing slovenly sports writer Oscar Madison in the sitcom “The Odd Couple” – a role he also had played on Broadway – and then as a crusading coroner in the crime drama “Quincy, M.E.“
“The Odd Couple,” based on Neil Simon’s play about two disparate divorced men forced to share an apartment, ran for five years on the ABC network, starting in 1970, but was never a hit during that time. Only through reruns did Klugman and co-star Randall, who played neat-freak Felix Unger, leave their mark as one of U.S. television’s great sitcom teams.
“We had wonderful respect for one another, we liked working together but we never became friends,” Klugman told the Miami Herald in 2005. “I think that was on account of me. I was withdrawn. I never let anybody get too close.”
It was not until Klugman’s cancer surgery, following years of heavy smoking and throat problems, that a friendship developed with Randall. Klugman had no voice and was glumly resigned to the end of his acting career, but with Randall’s encouragement, he returned to the stage.
They resurrected their “Odd Couple” roles in a 1993 TV movie, and Klugman paid tribute to Randall, who died in 2004, in the memoir “Tony and Me: A Story of Friendship.”
“Quincy, M.E.,” which ran on NBC from 1976 to 1983, saw Klugman assume a heavy behind-the-scenes role. He recalled that he spent 20 hours a day working on the series, and he twice sued its producer, Universal Studios, for a share of the net profits he claimed were owed to him.
LOVE OF HORSES
Horses were perhaps Klugman’s first love – both as a keen gambler starting in his teens and later as a breeder. One of his horses, Jaklin Klugman, finished third in the 1980 Kentucky Derby and earned millions as a stud.
Born Jacob Joachim Klugman on April 27, 1922, he grew up in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood. In 1945 a loan shark was after him due to gambling losses so he fled to Pittsburgh, where he studied drama at Carnegie Tech and worked several jobs to settle his debts.
Two years later in New York, Klugman appeared opposite Henry Fonda in the national stage production of “Mr. Roberts.” In 1960, Klugman received a Tony nomination for his supporting role in the musical “Gypsy.”
In Hollywood, Klugman had notable supporting roles in such films as “12 Angry Men” (1957), “Days of Wine and Roses” (1962) and “Goodbye, Columbus” (1969).
He won the first of three Emmys in 1964 for an appearance on the legal drama “The Defenders.” Klugman and Randall each received Emmy nominations for each of the “Odd Couple” seasons, with Klugman winning in 1971 and 1973 and Randall in 1975.
Klugman also earned four Emmy nominations for NBC’s “Quincy, M.E.” His character, who stepped out of his role as medical examiner to solve murders that flummoxed the Los Angeles police, never had a first name.
Klugman is survived by Crosby, his second wife, whom he married in 2008 after a 20-year courtship; and two sons, Adam and David, from his first marriage to late “Match Game” panelist Brett Somers. Klugman and Somers were separated for more than 30 years of their 54-year marriage, which ended with her death in 2007.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; additional reporting and writing by Dean Goodman; Editing by Steve Gorman and Paul Simao)
TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News
How in the world did something as innocuous as the sugary pink polio vaccine turn into a flash point between Islamic militants and Western “crusaders,” flaring into a confrontation so ugly that teenage girls — whose only “offense” is that they are protecting children — are gunned down in the streets?
Nine vaccine workers were killed in Pakistan last week in a terrorist campaign that brought the work of 225,000 vaccinators to a standstill. Suspicion fell immediately on factions of the Pakistani Taliban that have threatened vaccinators in the past, accusing them of being American spies.
Polio eradication officials have promised to regroup and try again. But first they must persuade the killers to stop shooting workers and even guarantee safe passage.
That has been done before, notably in Afghanistan in 2007, when Mullah Muhammad Omar, spiritual head of the Afghan Taliban, signed a letter of protection for vaccination teams. But in Pakistan, the killers may be breakaway groups following no one’s rules.
Vaccination efforts are also under threat in other Muslim regions, although not this violently yet.
In Nigeria, another polio-endemic country, the new Islamic militant group Boko Haram has publicly opposed it, although the only killings that the news media have linked to polio were those of two police officers escorting vaccine workers. Boko Haram has killed police officers on other missions, unrelated to polio vaccinations.
In Mali, extremists took over half of the country in May, declaring an Islamic state. Vaccination is not an issue yet, but Mali had polio cases as recently as mid-2011, and the virus sometimes circulates undetected.
Resistance to polio vaccine springs from a combination of fear, often in marginalized ethnic groups, and brutal historical facts that make that fear seem justified. Unless it is countered, and quickly, the backlash threatens the effort to eradicate polio in the three countries where it remains endemic: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
In 1988, long before donors began delivering mosquito nets, measles shots, AIDS pills, condoms, deworming drugs and other Western medical goods to the world’s most remote villages, Rotary International dedicated itself to wiping out polio, and trained teams to deliver the vaccine.
But remote villages are often ruled by chiefs or warlords who are suspicious not only of Western modernity, but of their own governments.
The Nigerian government is currently dominated by Christian Yorubas. More than a decade ago, when word came from the capital that all children must swallow pink drops to protect them against paralysis, Muslim Hausas in the far-off north could be forgiven for reacting the way the fundamentalist Americans of the John Birch Society did in the 1960s when the government in far-off Washington decreed that, for the sake of children’s teeth, all drinking water should have fluoride.
The northerners already had grievances. In 1996, the drug company Pfizer tested its new antibiotic, Trovan, during a meningitis outbreak there. Eleven children died. Although Pfizer still says it was not to blame, the trial had irregularities, and last year the company began making payments to victims.
Other rumors also spring from real events.
In Pakistan, resistance to vaccination, low over all, is concentrated in Pashtun territory along the Afghan border and in Pashtun slums in large cities. Pashtuns are the dominant tribe in Afghanistan but a minority in Pakistan among Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis and other ethnic groups. Many are Afghan refugees and are often poor and dismissed as medieval and lawless.
Pakistan’s government is friendly with the United States while the Pashtuns’ territory in border areas has been heavily hit by American Taliban-hunting drones, which sometimes kill whole families.
So, when the Central Intelligence Agency admitted sponsoring a hepatitis vaccination campaign as a ruse to get into a compound in Pakistan to confirm that Osama bin Laden was there, and the White House said it had contemplated wiping out the residence with a drone missile, it was not far-fetched for Taliban leaders to assume that other vaccinators worked for the drone pilots.
Even in friendly areas, the vaccine teams have protocols that look plenty suspicious. If a stranger knocked on a door in Brooklyn, asked how many children under age 5 were at home, offered to medicate them, and then scribbled in chalk on the door how many had accepted and how many refused — well, a parent might worry.
In modern medical surveys — though not necessarily on polio campaigns — teams carry GPS devices so they can find houses again. Drones use GPS coordinates.
The warlords of Waziristan made the connection specific, barring all vaccination there until Predator drones disappeared from the skies.
Dr. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian who is chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization, expressed his frustration at the time, saying, “They know we don’t have any control over drone strikes.”
The campaign went on elsewhere in Pakistan — until last week.
The fight against polio has been hampered by rumors that the vaccine contains pork or the virus that causes AIDS, or is a plot to sterilize Muslim girls. Even the craziest-sounding rumors have roots in reality.
The AIDS rumor is a direct descendant of Edward Hooper’s 1999 book, “The River,” which posited the theory — since discredited — that H.I.V. emerged when an early polio vaccine supposedly grown in chimpanzee kidney cells contaminated with the simian immunodeficiency virus was tested in the Belgian Congo.
The sterilization claim was allegedly first made on a Nigerian radio station by a Muslim doctor upset that he had been passed over for a government job. The “proof” was supposed to be lab tests showing it contained estrogen, a birth control hormone.
The vaccine virus is grown in a broth of live cells; fetal calf cells are typical. They may be treated with a minute amount of a digestive enzyme, trypsin — one source of which is pig pancreas, which could account for the pork rumor.
In theory, a polio eradicator explained, if a good enough lab tested the vaccine used at the time the rumor started, it might have detected estrogen from the calf’s mother, but it would have been far less estrogen than is in mother’s milk, which is not accused of sterilizing anyone. The trypsin is supposed to be washed out.
In any case, polio vaccine is now bought only from Muslim countries like Indonesia, and Muslim scholars have ruled it halal — the Islamic equivalent of kosher.
Reviving the campaign will mean quelling many rumors. It may also require adding other medical “inducements,” like deworming medicine, mosquito nets or vitamin A, whose immediate benefits are usually more obvious.
But changing mind-sets will be a crucial step, said Dr. Aylward, who likened the shootings of the girls to those of the schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.
More police involvement — what he called a “bunkerized approach” — would not solve either America’s problem or Pakistan’s, he argued. Instead, average citizens in both countries needed to rise up, reject the twisted thinking of the killers and “generate an understanding in the community that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.”
BAKER — The temperature hit 114 degrees in July, but most folks passing by the "World's Tallest Thermometer" in this Mojave Desert pit stop never knew it.
Once a shimmering beacon of light to Las Vegas-bound drivers heading up Interstate 15 with fat wallets and paper-thin dreams, Baker's 13-story thermometer marks California's last-stop oasis of bathrooms and burger joints before the Nevada state line.
Now it's an eyesore. The pinkish roadside oddity has been on the blink for years. The string of ovals that lighted up in 10-degree increments, the top one also giving the exact temperature, are black and lifeless. The gift shop below is padlocked, its shelves stripped bare.
"It's totally disappointing,'' said Brad Roach, 27, of Los Alamos, N.M., who pulled off the highway on an L.A.-to-Vegas road trip with friends to get a closer look. "It's kind of like the biggest ball of twine," he said, referring to another storied American roadside attraction. "If you're diving by, you have to stop and see it. But there's nothing here.''
The thermometer's demise now serves as a billboard for a town on the brink. A chain link fence surrounds Baker's prized Starbucks — which closed its doors four years ago. Two of the town's three motels are shut. The Royal Hawaiian, which in the best of times aspired to two stars, peeks sadly out onto Baker Boulevard with smashed windows and graffiti-splattered walls.
Part of the blame belongs to the merciless Mojave Desert, where bleached 2-by-4s and cinder blocks are all that remains of gas stations, diners and other ventures that turned to dust along the highways. Part of the decline can be blamed on the recession, which depleted the conga line of vehicles heading to and from Las Vegas that sustains life in this tiny town of 735 on the edge of Death Valley.
Tough times are nothing new in this desert town, born more than century ago as a railroad station serving the borax mines in Death Valley. It was wiped off the map by floods in the '30s and saw its rails pulled up and shipped overseas during World War II. There still isn't a single stoplight in town.
Still, its people persevere. "There's always been work in Baker, but now, instead of one job, people are working two or three,'' said Ronda Tremblay, superintendent of the Baker Valley United School District, which has fewer than 190 students.
Baker has no bank or supermarket, no drugstore or health clinic — those are an hour's drive away, in Barstow.
But some hold out hope for the town and, not surprisingly in these parts, it could come from an unusual place: a spaceship.
The owner of Alien Fresh Jerky, one of the more popular stops on Baker's main drag, has plans to build a three-story, disc-shaped "UFO Hotel." Still in the permitting process, it would tower over the tiny markets, gas stations and restaurants on Baker's main drag. Plans call for a gift shop, cafe and 30-plus rooms. Outside, there would be a pool in the shape of an alien's noggin for guests to take a dip in on hot summer days.
"Forty percent of Americans believe in UFOs. Those are my customers," Luis Ramallo said. "No one has ever seen anything like it.''
A wacky dream? Perhaps. But Ramallo, an electrician who emigrated from Argentina in 1988, has parlayed on those before with great success. His beef jerky store started as a tiny, roadside stand outside of Nevada's Area 51, the top secret U.S. Air Force base that has morphed into the Bethlehem of UFO theology. After Ramallo's oddball enterprise became a hit, he relocated to Baker.
Now his store, on good days, has a line snaking out the door, Ramallo said. He expects even more business once the spaceship hotel opens, which he hopes will be in the next year or two.
"This will be the new big attraction in Baker,'' Ramallo said. "I don't want them to fix the thermometer. I want them to tear it down. It's gone from good to bad to ugly.''
The 134-foot-high thermometer was the brainchild of local businessman Willis Herron, who plunked down $700,000 to build the giant monolith in 1991 next to his Bun Boy Restaurant. The thermometer's 4,900 bulbs glowed so bright that Herron, who lived across the street, had to close his window shades at night.
"For 25 years I've had this dream of putting up the world's tallest thermometer, because people pulling off the freeway in the heat of summer are always making remarks like: 'Whew! It's hotter 'n hell. How hot is it anyway?'" Herron, who died years ago, told the Times in 1991.
The tower's height commemorated the 134-degree record temperature set in nearby Death Valley in 1913.
Shortly after it was finished, the thermometer snapped in two after being buffeted by 70-mph winds. Two years later, the rebuilt thermometer again twisted and swayed as gusts whipped through the valley, popping out light bulbs. The problem was solved when a work crew poured concrete inside the steel tower, anchoring it against the harsh desert wind.
Herron sold the Bun Boy and the giant thermometer to business partner Larry Dabour, owner of the Mad Greek restaurant, another Baker institution. It changed hands again in 2005 when Dabour "liberated" himself from the thermometer, Bun Boy and some other enterprises he owned.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bethenny Frankel and husband Jason Hoppy are separating.
The 42-year-old TV personality, chef, author and entrepreneur told The Associated Press Sunday that the split brings her “great sadness.”
“This was an extremely difficult decision that as a woman and a mother, I have to accept as the best choice for our family,” Frankel said. “We have love and respect for one another and will continue to amicably co-parent our daughter who is and will always remain our first priority. This is an immensely painful and heartbreaking time for us.”
Frankel and Hoppy were married in 2010 and have a daughter, Bryn, who was born that same year. The couple’s courtship and marriage were documented in two reality series, “Bethenny Getting Married?” and “Bethenny Ever After…” Frankel gained fame as a star of “The Real Housewives of New York City.” Since her stint on the Bravo show, she has written four books, released a fitness video and founded her Skinnygirl line of cocktails, shapewear and nutritional supplements.
She launched a talk show, “Bethenny,” over the summer that is set to air nationally on Fox stations in 2013.
___
AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy .
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Training to become a doctor takes so long that just the time invested has become, to many, emblematic of the gravity and prestige of the profession.
But now one of the nation’s premier medical schools, New York University, and a few others around the United States are challenging that equation by offering a small percentage of students the chance to finish early, in three years instead of the traditional four.
Administrators at N.Y.U. say they can make the change without compromising quality, by eliminating redundancies in their science curriculum, getting students into clinical training more quickly and adding some extra class time in the summer.
Not only, they say, will those doctors be able to hang out their shingles to practice earlier, but they will save a quarter of the cost of medical school — $49,560 a year in tuition and fees at N.Y.U., and even more when room, board, books, supplies and other expenses are added in.
“We’re confident that our three-year students are going to get the same depth and core knowledge, that we’re not going to turn it into a trade school,” said Dr. Steven Abramson, vice dean for education, faculty and academic affairs at N.Y.U. School of Medicine.
At this point, the effort involves a small number of students at three medical schools: about 16 incoming students at N.Y.U., or about 10 percent of next year’s entering class; 9 at Texas Tech Health Science Center School of Medicine; and even fewer, for now, at Mercer University School of Medicine’s campus in Savannah, Ga. A similar trial at Louisiana State University has been delayed because of budget constraints.
But Dr. Steven Berk, the dean at Texas Tech, said that 10 or 15 other schools across the country had expressed interest in what his university was doing, and the deans of all three schools say that if the approach works, they will extend the option to larger numbers of students.
“You’re going to see this kind of three-year pathway become very prominent across the country,” Dr. Abramson predicted.
The deans say that getting students out the door more quickly will accomplish several goals. By speeding up production of physicians, they say, it could eventually dampen a looming doctor shortage, although the number of doctors would not increase unless the schools enrolled more students in the future.
The three-year program would also curtail student debt, which now averages $150,000 by graduation, and by doing so, persuade more students to go into shortage areas like pediatrics and internal medicine, rather than more lucrative specialties like dermatology.
The idea was supported by Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a former health adviser to President Obama, and a colleague, Victor R. Fuchs. In an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March, they said there was “substantial waste” in the nation’s medical education. “Years of training have been added without evidence that they enhance clinical skills or the quality of care,” they wrote. They suggested that the 14 years of college, medical school, residency and fellowship that it now takes to train a subspecialty physician could be reduced by 30 percent, to 10 years.
That opinion, however, is not universally held. Other experts say that a three-year medical program would deprive students of the time they need to delve deeply into their subjects, to consolidate their learning and to reach the level of maturity they need to begin practicing, while adding even more pressure to a stressful academic environment.
“The downside is that you are really tired,” said Dr. Dan Hunt, co-secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting agency for medical schools in the United States and Canada. But because accreditation standards do not dictate the fine points of curriculum, the committee has approved N.Y.U.’s proposal, which exceeds by five weeks its requirement that schools provide at least 130 weeks of medical education.
The medical school is going ahead with its three-year program despite the damage from Hurricane Sandy, which forced NYU Langone Medical Center to evacuate more than 300 patients at the height of the storm and temporarily shut down three of its four main teaching hospitals.
Dr. Abramson of N.Y.U. said that postgraduate training, which typically includes three years in a hospital residency, and often fellowships after that, made it unnecessary to try to cram everything into the medical school years. Students in the three-year program will have to take eight weeks of class before entering medical school, and stay in the top half of their class academically. Those who do not meet the standards will revert to the four-year program.
Gun owners packed a hearing room in the Connecticut capital, vowing to oppose a bill that would require new markers on guns so that they are easier to trace.
One after another, they testified that the technology, called microstamping, was flawed and would increase the cost of guns.
But the witness who commanded the most attention in Hartford that day in 2009 was a representative of one of Connecticut’s major employers: the Colt Manufacturing Company, the gun maker.
The Colt executive, Carlton S. Chen, said the company would seriously consider leaving the state if the bill became law. “You would think that the Connecticut government would be in support of our industry,” Mr. Chen said.
Soon, Connecticut lawmakers shelved the bill; they have declined to take it up since. Now, in the aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, the lawmakers are formulating new gun-control measures, saying the state must serve as a national model.
But the failed effort to enact the microstamping measure shows how difficult the climate has been for gun control in state capitals. The firearm companies have played an important role in defeating these measures by repeatedly warning that they will close factories and move jobs if new state regulations are approved.
The companies have issued such threats in several states, especially in the Northeast, where gun control is more popular. But their views have particular resonance in Connecticut, a cradle of the American gun industry.
Like manufacturing in Connecticut over all, the state’s gun industry is not as robust as it once was. Still, Connecticut remains the seventh-largest producer of firearms in the country, according to federal data.
Colt, based in Connecticut since the 1800s, employs roughly 900 people in the state. Two other major gun companies, Sturm, Ruger & Company and Mossberg & Sons, are also based in the state. In all, the industry employs about 2,000 people in Connecticut, company officials said.
Gun-control advocates have long viewed Hartford, the capital, as hospitable terrain, because Connecticut is a relatively liberal state and already has more gun restrictions than most. Democrats control both houses of the legislature.
Yet lawmakers in Hartford did more than shelve the microstamping bill in 2009. They also declined to push a bill last year that would have banned high-capacity ammunition magazines — the very accessory used by Adam Lanza to kill 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
In several states, the gun companies have enlisted unions that represent gun workers, mindful that Democratic lawmakers who might otherwise back gun control also have close ties to labor.
In Connecticut, the United Automobile Workers, which represents Colt workers, has testified against restrictions. The union’s arguments were bolstered last year when Marlin Firearms, a leading manufacturer of rifles, closed a factory in Connecticut that employed more than 200 people. Marlin cited economic pressures, not gun regulation, for the decision, but representatives of the gun industry have said the combination of the two factors could spur others to move.
State law significantly restricts the ability of corporations to make political donations in Connecticut. Employees of Connecticut gun companies have contributed several thousand dollars in total in recent years to state candidates, mostly Republicans, according to an analysis of state records.
Financially, the gun companies and their employees in Connecticut have exerted influence by donating to national groups, especially the National Rifle Association, which have in turn helped Connecticut gun rights groups, according to interviews and financial records.
But it appears that in Hartford, the companies are relying largely on economic arguments.
Their strategy has been led by the industry’s trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which happens to have its national headquarters in Newtown, a few miles from the site of the shootings.
When Connecticut lawmakers held a hearing in 2011 on the measure to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, the director of government regulations for the foundation, Jake McGuigan, opened his testimony with some statistics.
Mr. McGuigan told lawmakers that the state’s gun companies contributed $1.3 billion to the Connecticut economy, through their own operations and those of their suppliers.
“Each year, they get courted by other firearm-friendly states, like Idaho, Virginia, North Carolina,” Mr. McGuigan said. He later added, “It’s not an idle threat.”
The federation and Colt have declined to comment on gun-control legislation since the school killings.
“Our hearts go out to our fellow Connecticut residents who have suffered such unimaginable loss,” Colt said in a statement. “We do not believe it is appropriate to make further public statements at this very emotional time.”
Gun-control advocates in Hartford said the gun companies’ strategy was shrewd because it allowed Democratic lawmakers to oppose new regulations while proclaiming that they had not bowed to the National Rifle Association.
Michael Moss and Griff Palmer contributed reporting.
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