Chinese-American Faces Trial in China Over Business Dispute





BEIJING — As his family tells it, Vincent Wu is an industrious Chinese-American immigrant who sold his family’s suburban Los Angeles home to finance the construction of a shopping center in China he thought would allow him to retire early. To the police in Huizhou, a city in the southern province of Guangdong, Mr. Wu, 54, is a Mafia kingpin and illegal casino operator who dispatched his enemies through kidnapping, extortion and violence.




Whether an accurate depiction of Mr. Wu will emerge during a trial that begins Monday in Huizhou is anyone’s guess, although the 98 percent conviction rate enjoyed by Chinese prosecutors suggests that the defendant stands a slim chance of acquittal.


“It’s going to be a tough battle,” one of his lawyers, Wang Shihua, said Friday as he scrambled to sort through the 8,000 pages of evidence that the police had only recently delivered to Mr. Wu’s defense team. “At the very least, it’s going to be a very confrontational trial.”


That confrontation is likely to center on allegations that Mr. Wu was tortured into signing a confession, which is the crux of the case against him. In a deposition released by his lawyers, Mr. Wu says he was beaten while being hung upside down, deprived of food and water for several days and then given stimulants so he could not sleep. In the end, Mr. Wu says, he signed the declaration of guilt that was placed before him. “They pre-wrote everything,” he told his lawyers, according to the deposition. “If I didn’t sign it, they beat me.”


Mr. Wu’s case, human rights groups say, highlights the problems that even American citizens face in China’s flawed and deeply politicized criminal justice system. Although confessions extracted through torture are technically inadmissible in court, legal experts say the police frequently rely on heavy-handed tactics to win the confessions that often form the basis of convictions. “We’d be pleasantly surprised if the judge even allows the allegations of torture to be discussed in the courtroom,” said Roseann Rife, East Asia director for Amnesty International, which has been publicizing his case.


According to his family, powerful former business associates are behind Mr. Wu’s prosecution. They say one of them, Lin Qiang, a former provincial public security official, is seeking to claim his assets following a Chinese court ruling that favored Mr. Wu.


During an earlier entanglement with Mr. Lin in 2002, Mr. Wu says, he was detained by the police for 11 months, but later released after prosecutors decided that there was insufficient evidence to try him. His family said a ruling in February by the Supreme People’s Court vindicated Mr. Wu’s claims and cemented his ownership of the disputed property, a successful fruit market in the city of Foshan.


Mr. Lin could not be reached for comment, and police officials in Huizhou declined to comment. Kenny Wu, one of Mr. Wu’s sons, said in a phone interview that Mr. Lin warned his father that he would prevail in the end. “ ‘I control the laws in mainland China,’ ” Kenny Wu said Mr. Lin told his father. “ ‘Watch me put you back in prison like I did 10 years ago. Even President Obama and God cannot save you.’ ”


Mr. Wu was arrested in June; later that day, 300 police officers raided his still unfinished Lucky Star shopping center, detaining dozens of employees. After the police obtained incriminating statements against Mr. Wu, most of the detainees were released, although 33 other defendants face trial along with him.


American officials seeking to visit him in jail say they have been stymied because Mr. Wu did not use his American passport on his most recent visit to China from Hong Kong, the former British colony that enjoys some autonomy under Chinese law. Because he often drove between Guangdong and Hong Kong, where he lived before immigrating to the United States in 1993, Mr. Wu used his Hong Kong identification card to avoid the hassle of obtaining a Chinese visa for each border crossing, his family said. Under international law, the Chinese can restrict consular access to Mr. Wu based on the identification he used to enter China.


Shi Da contributed research.



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Facebook’s SnapChat-Style Sexting App Is Called Poke (Seriously)






Oh, well would you look at Facebook, trying to make a Christmas funny with its SnapChat copycat app. It’s called Poke! Get it? Because SnapChat is what the kids are all using for their sexting these days, apparently, and Poke — you know, that once kinda flirty Facebook future that’s now pretty much useless — can kind of do the same thing, and it kind of sounds like some bad sexual pun, too! Funny, Facebook, very funny, and way to admit the dirty little truth behind “poking” that we knew all along.


RELATED: Facebook to Launch Its Own SnapChat as Social-Network Clone Wars Live on






Oh, wait. They’re serious? Oh, yeah: Friday afternoon Facebook released Poke, its rumored iPhone app for the incredible vanishing half-message “that makes it fun and easy to say hello to friends wherever you are.” But don’t get too heavy on the old-school “Poke” comparisons, because the new app can actually send regular messages, photos, or videos, too — but only for short periods of time, because that is apparently what the kids like doing these days, if SnapChat’s huge success is any indication. There’s more of a time-bomb component to Poke, though: users can choose how long someone sees a poke before it ceases to exist forever — so you could sext poke all day long, because that, too, is apparently what the kids like doing these days, if SnapChat’s huge, smashing, sexy success is any indication.


RELATED: The Life and Philosophy of Mark Zuckerberg


Why would anyone use Poke over SnapChat? Well, the Facebook app itself has a much smoother interface than SnapChat, and you can report people behaving badly, and everyone’s already on Facebook, right? Maybe this is the breaking point Justin Bieber could never hit, when something sexy goes from the tween set to actual human beings. We’ll let you know when Poke shows up in our iPhone’s App Store; for now we’re not entirely sure if this is just some bad joke. (Although it is in the iTunes Store, so… we’ll see?)


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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See If You Can Spot the One Color That Popped on the Carpet This Week







Style News Now





12/21/2012 at 12:00 PM ET











Lauren Bush Lauren Beauty ProductsGetty; Splash News Online; WireImage


Even though we didn’t see as many stars on the red carpet this week as last — it’s quiet in Hollywood this holiday season! — we still saw some strong trends emerge at various events. What were they? Let’s get to it!



Up: Pops of red. You can thank the holidays for this festive mini-trend, which we spotted on Hailee Steinfeld’s purse, Bella Heathcote’s dress and Rose Byrne’s jacket. Adding just a hint of the bold hue to your outfit is an easy way to look all holiday-y without going overboard.




Up: Head-to-toe black. What, are stars sick of sequined dresses already? This week we saw nearly one dozen leading ladies wear all black: Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, LeAnn Rimes, Alexa Chung, Jessica Chastain, Miley Cyrus, Krysten Ritter and Kerry Washington … to name a few. As New Yorkers, we’re always happy to see all-black ensembles en force, and it is a look that’s usually pretty failsafe — and slimming.



Down: Stick-straight hair. Rita Ora was the only woman we saw with pin-straight locks this week; everyone else went for bouncy curls and elegant updos (and cropped cuts, if you count Miley Cyrus!). With Christmas and New Year’s Even upon us, we predict we’ll be seeing a lot more exciting hairdos and less of the minimalist straight looks.


Tell us: Which color are you more likely to wear at the holidays: red or black?






Want more Trend Report? Click to hear our thoughts on mini dresses, cut-outs and collars.


FIND ALL THE LATEST RED CARPET NEWS AND PHOTOS HERE!




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AP IMPACT: Big Pharma cashes in on HGH abuse


A federal crackdown on illicit foreign supplies of human growth hormone has failed to stop rampant misuse, and instead has driven record sales of the drug by some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, an Associated Press investigation shows.


The crackdown, which began in 2006, reduced the illegal flow of unregulated supplies from China, India and Mexico.


But since then, Big Pharma has been satisfying the steady desires of U.S. users and abusers, including many who take the drug in the false hope of delaying the effects of aging.


From 2005 to 2011, inflation-adjusted sales of HGH were up 69 percent, according to an AP analysis of pharmaceutical company data collected by the research firm IMS Health. Sales of the average prescription drug rose just 12 percent in that same period.


___


EDITOR'S NOTE — Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the second of a two-part series.


___


Unlike other prescription drugs, HGH may be prescribed only for specific uses. U.S. sales are limited by law to treat a rare growth defect in children and a handful of uncommon conditions like short bowel syndrome or Prader-Willi syndrome, a congenital disease that causes reduced muscle tone and a lack of hormones in sex glands.


The AP analysis, supplemented by interviews with experts, shows too many sales and too many prescriptions for the number of people known to be suffering from those ailments. At least half of last year's sales likely went to patients not legally allowed to get the drug. And U.S. pharmacies processed nearly double the expected number of prescriptions.


Peddled as an elixir of life capable of turning middle-aged bodies into lean machines, HGH — a synthesized form of the growth hormone made naturally by the human pituitary gland — winds up in the eager hands of affluent, aging users who hope to slow or even reverse the aging process.


Experts say these folks don't need the drug, and may be harmed by it. The supposed fountain-of-youth medicine can cause enlargement of breast tissue, carpal tunnel syndrome and swelling of hands and feet. Ironically, it also can contribute to aging ailments like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.


Others in the medical establishment also are taking a fat piece of the profits — doctors who fudge prescriptions, as well as pharmacists and distributors who are content to look the other way. HGH also is sold directly without prescriptions, as new-age snake oil, to patients at anti-aging clinics that operate more like automated drug mills.


Years of raids, sports scandals and media attention haven't stopped major drugmakers from selling a whopping $1.4 billion worth of HGH in the U.S. last year. That's more than industry-wide annual gross sales for penicillin or prescription allergy medicine. Anti-aging HGH regimens vary greatly, with a yearly cost typically ranging from $6,000 to $12,000 for three to six self-injections per week.


Across the U.S., the medication is often dispensed through prescriptions based on improper diagnoses, carefully crafted to exploit wiggle room in the law restricting use of HGH, the AP found.


HGH is often promoted on the Internet with the same kind of before-and-after photos found in miracle diet ads, along with wildly hyped claims of rapid muscle growth, loss of fat, greater vigor, and other exaggerated benefits to adults far beyond their physical prime. Sales also are driven by the personal endorsement of celebrities such as actress Suzanne Somers.


Pharmacies that once risked prosecution for using unauthorized, foreign HGH — improperly labeled as raw pharmaceutical ingredients and smuggled across the border — now simply dispense name brands, often for the same banned uses. And usually with impunity.


Eight companies have been granted permission to market HGH by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which reviews the benefits and risks of new drug products. By contrast, three companies are approved for the diabetes drug insulin.


The No. 1 maker, Roche subsidiary Genentech, had nearly $400 million in HGH sales in the U.S. last year, up an inflation-adjusted two-thirds from 2005. Pfizer and Eli Lilly were second and third with $300 million and $220 million in sales, respectively, according to IMS Health. Pfizer now gets more revenue from its HGH brand, Genotropin, than from Zoloft, its well-known depression medicine that lost patent protection.


On their face, the numbers make no sense to the recognized hormone doctors known as endocrinologists who provide legitimate HGH treatment to a small number of patients.


Endocrinologists estimate there are fewer than 45,000 U.S. patients who might legitimately take HGH. They would be expected to use roughly 180,000 prescriptions or refills each year, given that typical patients get three months' worth of HGH at a time, according to doctors and distributors.


Yet U.S. pharmacies last year supplied almost twice that much HGH — 340,000 orders — according to AP's analysis of IMS Health data.


While doctors say more than 90 percent of legitimate patients are children with stunted growth, 40 percent of 442 U.S. side-effect cases tied to HGH over the last year involved people age 18 or older, according to an AP analysis of FDA data. The average adult's age in those cases was 53, far beyond the prime age for sports. The oldest patients were in their 80s.


Some of these medical records even give explicit hints of use to combat aging, justifying treatment with reasons like fatigue, bone thinning and "off-label," which means treatment of an unapproved condition


Even Medicare, the government health program for older Americans, allowed 22,169 HGH prescriptions in 2010, a five-year increase of 78 percent, according to data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in response to an AP public records request.


"There's no question: a lot gets out," said hormone specialist Dr. Mark Molitch of Northwestern University, who helped write medical standards meant to limit HGH treatment to legitimate patients.


And those figures don't include HGH sold directly by doctors without prescriptions at scores of anti-aging medical practices and clinics around the country. Those numbers could only be tallied by drug makers, who have declined to say how many patients they supply and for what conditions.


First marketed in 1985 for children with stunted growth, HGH was soon misappropriated by adults intent on exploiting its modest muscle- and bone-building qualities. Congress limited HGH distribution to the handful of rare conditions in an extraordinary 1990 law, overriding the generally unrestricted right of doctors to prescribe medicines as they see fit.


Despite the law, illicit HGH spread around the sports world in the 1990s, making deep inroads into bodybuilding, college athletics, and professional leagues from baseball to cycling. The even larger banned market among older adults has flourished more recently.


FDA regulations ban the sale of HGH as an anti-aging drug. In fact, since 1990, prescribing it for things like weight loss and strength conditioning has been punishable by 5 to 10 years in prison.


Steve Kleppe, of Scottsdale, Ariz., a restaurant entrepreneur who has taken HGH for almost 15 years to keep feeling young, said he noticed a price jump of about 25 percent after the block on imports. He now buys HGH directly from a doctor at an annual cost of about $8,000 for himself and the same amount for his wife.


Many older patients go for HGH treatment to scores of anti-aging practices and clinics heavily concentrated in retirement states like Florida, Nevada, Arizona and California.


These sites are affiliated with hundreds of doctors who are rarely endocrinologists. Instead, many tout certification by the American Board of Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine, though the medical establishment does not recognize the group's bona fides.


The clinics offer personalized programs of "age management" to business executives, affluent retirees, and other patients of means, sometimes coupled with the amenities of a vacation resort. The operations insist there are few, if any, side effects from HGH. Mainstream medical authorities say otherwise.


A 2007 review of 31 medical studies showed swelling in half of HGH patients, with joint pain or diabetes in more than a fifth. A French study of about 7,000 people who took HGH as children found a 30 percent higher risk of death from causes like bone tumors and stroke, stirring a health advisory from U.S. authorities.


For proof that the drug works, marketers turn to images like the memorable one of pot-bellied septuagenarian Dr. Jeffry Life, supposedly transformed into a ripped hulk of himself by his own program available at the upscale Las Vegas-based Cenegenics Elite Health. (He declined to be interviewed.)


These promoters of HGH say there is a connection between the drop-off in growth hormone levels through adulthood and the physical decline that begins in late middle age. Replace the hormone, they say, and the aging process slows.


"It's an easy ruse. People equate hormones with youth," said Dr. Tom Perls, a leading industry critic who does aging research at Boston University. "It's a marketing dream come true."


___


Associated Press Writer David B. Caruso reported from New York and AP National Writer Jeff Donn reported from Plymouth, Mass. AP Writer Troy Thibodeaux provided data analysis assistance from New Orleans.


___


AP's interactive on the HGH investigation: http://hosted.ap.org/interactives/2012/hgh


___


The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate(at)ap.org


EDITOR'S NOTE _ Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the second of a two-part series.


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Wall Street ends lower after "fiscal cliff" setback

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks finished lower on Friday after a Republican plan to avoid the "fiscal cliff" failed to gain sufficient support on Thursday night, draining hopes that a deal would be reached before 2013.


Still, stocks managed to rebound from the day's lows near the end of the session, and for the week, the three major U.S. stock indexes still ended higher, with the S&P 500 gaining 1.2 percent.


Trading was volatile because of waning confidence in the prospect of a deal out of Washington, and in part, as the result of the quarterly expiration of options and futures contracts. The CBOE Volatility Index <.vix> or VIX, the market's favorite barometer of investor anxiety, finished below its session high.


Republican House Speaker John Boehner failed to garner enough votes from even his own party to pass his "Plan B" tax bill late on Thursday. It was the latest setback in negotiations to avoid $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts that some say could tip the U.S. economy into recession.


"The failure with Plan B was disappointing, if not terribly surprising, but now there's a real lack of clarity about what will happen, and markets hate that," said Mike Hennessy, managing director of investments for Morgan Creek in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 120.88 points, or 0.91 percent, to 13,190.84 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 13.54 points, or 0.94 percent, to 1,430.15. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 29.38 points, or 0.96 percent, to 3,021.01.


"Amazingly, this sharp decline today may not actually change the technical picture much - unless the decline gets worse," said Larry McMillan, president of options research firm McMillan Analysis Corp, in a research note.


For the week, the Dow gained 0.4 percent and the Nasdaq climbed 1.7 percent.


On Friday, Herbalife dropped for an eighth straight session. Investor Bill Ackman recently ramped up his campaign against the company. The stock skidded 19.2 percent to $27.27 and has lost more than 35 percent this week.


Plan B, which called for tax increases on those who earn $1 million or more a year, was not going to pass the Democratic-led Senate or win acceptance from the White House anyway. But it exposed the reality that it will be difficult to get Republican support for the more expansive tax increases that President Barack Obama has urged.


Still, the declines of about 1 percent in the three major U.S. stock indexes suggest that investors do not believe the economy will be unduly damaged by the absence of a deal, said Mark Lehmann, president of JMP Securities, in San Francisco.


"You could have easily woken up today and seen the market down 300 or 400 points, and everyone would have said, 'That's telling you this is really dire,'" Lehmann said.


"I think if you get into mid-January and (the talks) keep going like this, you get worried, but I don't think we're going to get there."


Banking shares, which outperform during economic expansion and have led the market on signs of progress on resolving the fiscal impasse, led Friday's declines. Citigroup Inc fell 1.7 percent to $39.49, while Bank of America slid 2 percent to $11.29. The KBW Banks index <.bkx> lost 1.19 percent.


Volatility on Friday was exacerbated in part by "quadruple witching," the quarterly expiration of stock index futures and options, stock options and single stock futures contracts.


About 8.59 billion shares changed hands on major U.S. exchanges, more than the daily average of 6.47 billion daily in 2012, in part because of the "quadruple witching" expiration.


The day's round of data indicated the economy was surprisingly resilient in November; consumer spending rose by the most in three years and a gauge of business investment jumped.


But separate data showed consumer sentiment slumped in December. The S&P Retail Index <.spxrt> fell 1.2 percent.


U.S.-listed shares of Research in Motion sank 22.7 percent to $10.91 after the Canadian company, known as the BlackBerry maker, reported its first-ever decline in its subscriber numbers on Thursday alongside a new fee structure for its high-margin services segment.


(Additional reporting by Ryan Vlastelica and Leah Schnurr; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Nick Zieminski and Jan Paschal)



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Ben Ali’s Possessions to Be Auctioned in Tunisia





TUNIS — It could be the Middle East’s most opulent yard sale.




Just in time for Christmas, Tunisia’s Finance Ministry has organized a public auction of cars, jewels, carpets and trinkets that once belonged to the deposed president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the first autocrat to fall in the Arab Spring revolution incubated here two years ago.


The monthlong sale and exhibition of 12,000 items begins Saturday at the Cleopatra Hotel, a sumptuous property in a northern suburb of Tunis.


For the price of a 30-dinar ticket, about $20, curious Tunisians can gape freely at the former president’s collection of rare clocks, rococo-themed picture frames and gold-plated falcons. Those in a shopping spirit can even take home one of the first lady’s treadmills or handbags.


Advertisements for the event feature a village of mud-brick houses lighted by one of the former president’s sparkling chandeliers and a poster of a smiling schoolboy whose image is Photoshopped into the back seat of Mr. Ben Ali’s Bentley.


According to the event’s French-language Web site, www.confiscation.tn, “bargain hunters” can buy an array of high-end electronics, while those with more “retro” tastes can indulge in one of Mr. Ben Ali’s many knickknacks, some of them gifts from wealthy businessmen and fellow despots.


The government aims to raise an estimated 20 million dinars, about $13 million, from the event, largely through the sale of big-ticket items like Mr. Ben Ali’s fleet of luxury automobiles, more than 300 items of silver and gold jewelry, and an extensive collection of local and foreign artworks.


Thirty-nine of his cars will be up for auction, including two Lamborghini Gallardos and an Aston Martin Vanquish that contains a personalized plate reading “hand-built in England for Sakher el Materi,” Mr. Ben Ali’s son-in-law, now 31.


The items are mostly from Mr. Ben Ali’s Sidi Dhrif residence, one of numerous presidential palaces peppered across Tunisia’s northeast coast. After the Jan. 14, 2011, revolution that sent Mr. Ben Ali and his family into exile in Saudi Arabia, locals destroyed or looted some of the family’s homes, including a sumptuous palace in the Hammamet resort district.


 Attempts to retake public ownership of Mr. Ben Ali’s assets, particularly his foreign holdings, have proceeded fitfully over the past two years.


Many Tunisians have criticized the government as moving too slowly on the sale of confiscated assets and have expressed frustration at the prospect that Mr. Ben Ali could reclaim some of his old possessions through Saudi purchasers.


According to a statement from Slim Besbes, then acting minister of finance, it took eight months just to determine the value of items and legal procedures surrounding the sale of Mr. Ben Ali’s confiscated assets.


While some cars in his collection have been sold in earlier auctions, the event starting Saturday is the government’s most ambitious sell-off effort yet. And even those items represent a small sliver of what the government considers Mr. Ben Ali’s corruptly attained assets, which included 398 holding companies, Tunisian banks and telecommunications concerns.


 


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Google working on “X Phone”, “X” tablet to take on rivals – WSJ






(Reuters) – Google Inc is working with recently acquired Motorola on a handset codenamed “X-phone”, aimed at grabbing market share from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.


Google acquired Motorola in May for $ 12.5 billion to bolster its patent portfolio as its Android mobile operating system competes with rivals such as Apple and Samsung.






The Journal quoted the people saying that Motorola is working on two fronts: devices that will be sold by carrier partner Verizon Wireless, and on the X phone.


Motorola plans to enhance the X Phone with its recent acquisition of Viewdle, an imaging and gesture-recognition software developer. The new handset is due out sometime next year, the business daily said, citing a person familiar with the plans.


Motorola is also expected to work on an “X” tablet after the phone. Google Chief Executive Larry Page is said to have promised a significant marketing budget for the unit, the newspaper said quoting the persons.


Google was not immediately reachable for comments outside regular U.S. business hours.


(Reporting by Balaji Sridharan in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Chang)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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The X Factor: Who Won the Show?






The X Factor










12/20/2012 at 10:10 PM EST







from left: Fifth Harmony, Tate Stevens and Carly Rose Sonenclar


Ray Mickshaw/FOX


The X Factor ended on a particularly high note for one of the show's finalists Thursday night.

After performing live one last time the night before, Britney Spears's contestant Carly Rose Sonenclar, along with L.A. Reid's Tate Stevens and Simon Cowell's Fifth Harmony all vied for the $5 million recording contract awarded to the season's winner.

Click after the jump to find out who won the coveted prize.

L.A. Reid's "Over 25" contestant Tate Stevens, 37, is the winner of The X Factor season 2. He's a dad of two and a road worker from Missouri.

"First and foremost I got to thank the man upstairs for taking care of me, my family, all the country music fans – God bless you," he said after hearing the results. "Thank you so much for all the votes. This is the best day of my life."

L.A. said, "You deserve this. I'm proud to work with you. I think you represent The X Factor really, really well. So on behalf of Simon and myself and all the judges, congratulations."

Britney's teen contestant, Carly Rose Sonenclar, landed in second place. She and Britney looked emotional but didn't get a chance to say anything at the end.

Third place went to Simon Cowell's girl group, Fifth Harmony.

Member Camila Cabello, said, "I feel like in this competition we've gained more than $5 million could because we've gained friends for life ... I'm so happy to be where I am right now."

Simon said, "I have a feeling that we're going to be hearing and seeing a lot more of these girls in the future."

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AP IMPACT: Steroids loom in major-college football


WASHINGTON (AP) — With steroids easy to buy, testing weak and punishments inconsistent, college football players are packing on significant weight — 30 pounds or more in a single year, sometimes — without drawing much attention from their schools or the NCAA in a sport that earns tens of billions of dollars for teams.


Rules vary so widely that, on any given game day, a team with a strict no-steroid policy can face a team whose players have repeatedly tested positive.


An investigation by The Associated Press — based on interviews with players, testers, dealers and experts and an analysis of weight records for more than 61,000 players — revealed that while those running the multibillion-dollar sport say they believe the problem is under control, that control is hardly evident.


The sport's near-zero rate of positive steroids tests isn't an accurate gauge among college athletes. Random tests provide weak deterrence and, by design, fail to catch every player using steroids. Colleges also are reluctant to spend money on expensive steroid testing when cheaper ones for drugs like marijuana allow them to say they're doing everything they can to keep drugs out of football.


"It's nothing like what's going on in reality," said Don Catlin, an anti-doping pioneer who spent years conducting the NCAA's laboratory tests at UCLA. He became so frustrated with the college system that it was part of the reason he left the testing industry to focus on anti-doping research.


___


EDITOR'S NOTE — Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the first of a two-part series.


___


While other major sports have been beset by revelations of steroid use, college football has operated with barely a whiff of scandal. Between 1996 and 2010 — the era of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong — the failure rate for NCAA steroid tests fell even closer to zero from an already low rate of less than 1 percent.


The AP's investigation, drawing upon more than a decade of official rosters from all 120 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, found thousands of players quickly putting on significant weight, even more than their fellow players. The information compiled by the AP included players who appeared for multiple years on the same teams.


For decades, scientific studies have shown that anabolic steroid use leads to an increase in body weight. Weight gain alone doesn't prove steroid use, but very rapid weight gain is one factor that would be deemed suspicious, said Kathy Turpin, senior director of sport drug testing for the National Center for Drug Free Sport, which conducts tests for the NCAA and more than 300 schools.


Yet the NCAA has never studied weight gain or considered it in regard to its steroid testing policies, said Mary Wilfert, the NCAA's associate director of health and safety.


The NCAA attributes the decline in positive tests to its year-round drug testing program, combined with anti-drug education and testing conducted by schools.


The AP's analysis found that, regardless of school, conference and won-loss record, many players gained weight at exceptional rates compared with their fellow athletes and while accounting for their heights.


Adding more than 20 or 25 pounds of lean muscle in a year is nearly impossible through diet and exercise alone, said Dan Benardot, director of the Laboratory for Elite Athlete Performance at Georgia State University.


In nearly all the rarest cases of weight gain in the AP study, players were offensive or defensive linemen, hulking giants who tower above 6-foot-3 and weigh 300 pounds or more. Four of those players interviewed by the AP said that they never used steroids and gained weight through dramatic increases in eating, up to six meals a day. Two said they were aware of other players using steroids.


"I ate 5-6 times a day," said Clint Oldenburg, who played for Colorado State starting in 2002 and for five years in the NFL. Oldenburg's weight increased over four years from 212 to 290.


Oldenburg told the AP he was surprised at the scope of steroid use in college football, even in Colorado State's locker room. "There were a lot of guys even on my team that were using." He declined to identify any of them.


The AP found more than 4,700 players — or about 7 percent of all players — who gained more than 20 pounds overall in a single year. It was common for the athletes to gain 10, 15 and up to 20 pounds in their first year under a rigorous regimen of weightlifting and diet. Others gained 25, 35 and 40 pounds in a season. In roughly 100 cases, players packed on as much 80 pounds in a single year.


In at least 11 instances, players that AP identified as packing on significant weight in college went on to fail NFL drug tests. But pro football's confidentiality rules make it impossible to know for certain which drugs were used and how many others failed tests that never became public.


Even though testers consider rapid weight gain suspicious, in practice it doesn't result in testing. Ben Lamaak, who arrived at Iowa State in 2006, said he weighed 225 pounds in high school. He graduated as a 320-pound offensive lineman and said he did it all naturally.


"I was just a young kid at that time, and I was still growing into my body," he said. "It really wasn't that hard for me to gain the weight. I love to eat."


In addition to random drug testing, Iowa State is one of many schools that have "reasonable suspicion" testing. That means players can be tested when their behavior or physical symptoms suggest drug use. Despite gaining 81 pounds in a year, Lamaak said he was never singled out for testing.


The associate athletics director for athletic training at Iowa State, Mark Coberley, said coaches and trainers use body composition, strength data and other factors to spot suspected cheaters. Lamaak, he said, was not suspicious because he gained a lot of "non-lean" weight.


But looking solely at the most significant weight gainers also ignores players like Bryan Maneafaiga.


In the summer of 2004, Bryan Maneafaiga was an undersized 180-pound running back trying to make the University of Hawaii football team. Twice — once in pre-season and once in the fall — he failed school drug tests, showing up positive for marijuana use but not steroids.


He'd started injecting stanozolol, a steroid, in the summer to help bulk up to a roster weight of 200 pounds. Once on the team, he'd occasionally inject the milky liquid into his buttocks the day before games.


"Food and good training will only get you so far," he told the AP recently.


Maneafaiga's former coach, June Jones, said it was news to him that one of his players had used steroids. Jones, who now coaches at Southern Methodist University, believes the NCAA does a good job rooting out steroid use.


On paper, college football has a strong drug policy. The NCAA conducts random, unannounced drug testing and the penalties for failure are severe. Players lose an entire year of eligibility after a first positive test. A second offense means permanent ineligibility for sports.


In practice, though, the NCAA's roughly 11,000 annual tests amount to a fraction of all athletes in Division I and II schools. Exactly how many tests are conducted each year on football players is unclear because the NCAA hasn't published its data for two years. And when it did, it periodically changed the formats, making it impossible to compare one year of football to the next.


Even when players are tested by the NCAA, experts like Catlin say it's easy enough to anticipate the test and develop a doping routine that results in a clean test by the time it occurs. NCAA rules say players can be notified up to two days in advance of a test, which Catlin says is plenty of time to beat a test if players have designed the right doping regimen. By comparison, Olympic athletes are given no notice.


Most schools that use Drug Free Sport do not test for anabolic steroids, Turpin said. Some are worried about the cost. Others don't think they have a problem. And others believe that since the NCAA tests for steroids their money is best spent testing for street drugs, she said.


Doping is a bigger deal at some schools than others.


At Notre Dame and Alabama, the teams that will soon compete for the national championship, players don't automatically miss games for testing positive for steroids. At Alabama, coaches have wide discretion. Notre Dame's student-athlete handbook says a player who fails a test can return to the field once the steroids are out of his system.


The University of North Carolina kicks players off the team after a single positive test for steroids. Auburn's student-athlete handbook calls for a half-season suspension for any athlete caught using performance-enhancing drugs.


At UCLA, home of the laboratory that for years set the standard for cutting-edge steroid testing, athletes can fail three drug tests before being suspended. At Bowling Green, testing is voluntary.


At the University of Maryland, students must get counseling after testing positive, but school officials are prohibited from disciplining first-time steroid users.


Only about half the student athletes in a 2009 NCAA survey said they believed school testing deterred drug use. As an association of colleges and universities, the NCAA could not unilaterally force schools to institute uniform testing policies and sanctions, Wilfert said.


"We can't tell them what to do, but if went through a membership process where they determined that this is what should be done, then it could happen," she said.


___


Associated Press writers Ryan Foley in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; David Brandt in Jackson, Miss.; David Skretta in Lawrence, Kan.; Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., and Alexa Olesen in Shanghai, China, and researchers Susan James in New York and Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report.


___


Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org.


Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the first of a two-part series.


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Asian shares slide as anxieties show over U.S. budget impasse

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares slid on Friday after a Republican proposal to fend off a U.S. fiscal crunch failed to get enough support, deepening uncertainty over prospects for the negotiations to avert automatic spending cuts and tax increases set to start in January.


"Markets disliked signs of further delay in talks, with the risk that a deal may not be reached by the end of the year deadline," said Yuji Saito, director of foreign exchange at Credit Agricole in Tokyo. "It clearly hit risk sentiment."


The U.S. House of Representatives will adjourn until after Christmas, Republican Representative Peter Roskam said on Thursday, after House Speaker John Boehner's proposed tax bill designed to avert the fiscal cliff failed to pass.


U.S. stock index futures fell sharply. S&P 500 stock futures slipped 1.7 percent, while Dow Jones stock futures and Nasdaq futures both lost 1.5 percent.


That sparked selling in Asian shares, with MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> wiping out earlier gains to tumble 0.7 percent.


Boehner's proposal was aimed at extracting concessions from the White House, which had threatened to veto it, and advance talks closer to a deal.


The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives, which abruptly recessed on late Thursday, may return as soon as December 27 with a yet-to-be-decided new plan, said a senior party aide.


"This is a major setback for a Fiscal Deal compromise between the two parties. I would say that chances of a deal are down to maybe 40 percent from 65 percent -- despite the dysfunction in Washington D.C," said Douglas A. Kass, founder of hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management Inc.


Risk assets were sold off, from shares, oil to currencies such as the Australian dollar and the euro, while the yen firmed slightly, though it was pinned near multi-month lows versus the dollar and the euro on expectations for more aggressive Bank of Japan easing next year to drive the economy out of deflation.


"Investors are disappointed by the latest development on fiscal talks. The market will continue to be swayed by the state of U.S. budget negotiations," Kim Soo-young, an analyst at KB Securities, said of Seoul shares <.ks11> which led the declines in Asia with a 1.1 percent fall.


Safe-haven government bond prices rose, with U.S. 10-year Treasury yields moving away from an 8-week high hit this week, falling about 6 basis points to 1.74 percent. Benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond yields also ticked down half a basis point to 0.765 percent.


Inflows into U.S. Treasuries underpinned the U.S. dollar, which inched up 0.2 percent against a basket of major currencies <.dxy>.


Jim Barnes, senior fixed income manager at National Penn Investors Trust Co. in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, saw Treasuries continuing to gain once U.S. markets open later, but expected a correction by the end of the day.


"Treasury yields will likely fall in Friday morning and will begin to reverse course in the afternoon as investors become more optimistic a deal will be reached," Barnes said.


"So far, the market has been handling set backs in negotiation talks very well. With still a little bit of time left on the clock, this time around will be no different."



Asset returns in 2012: http://link.reuters.com/nyw85s


U.S. GDP: http://link.reuters.com/guw34t


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Along with uncertainties surrounding the future of U.S. budget talks, a firmer dollar also weighed on dollar-based commodities.


The euro fell 0.4 percent to $1.3193, off an 8-1/2-month high of $1.33085 touched on Wednesday.


U.S. crude futures dropped more than $1 to $89.10 a barrel, and spot gold extended losses to near a four-month low touched on Thursday, shedding 0.6 percent to $1,638 an ounce.


YEN GAINS SLIGHTLY


Anxieties over the U.S. budget negotiations also took their toll on Japan's Nikkei average <.n225>, which had been supported by a weaker yen. The Nikkei lost all gains to ease 0.3 percent, although the drop was relatively modest compared to many other Asian bourses. <.t/>


The dollar was down 0.5 percent to 83.94 yen, moving away from a 20-month high of 84.62 yen hit on Wednesday.


The euro slumped 0.8 percent to 110.84 yen also off a 16-month high of 112.59 yen reached on Wednesday.


The yen was kept under pressure after the Bank of Japan further eased monetary policy as expected on Thursday, with investors anticipating that the central bank will be persuaded to pursue more drastic measures next year.


Incoming prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has called for bolder action by the central bank to help bring Japan out of decades-long deflation.


For all the fears of a fiscal cliff debacle to come, several data series showed the United States remained on a recovery track, helping to underpin the U.S. currency.


The world's largest economy grew at a faster-than-expected 3.1 percent annual rate in the third quarter, while other data on Thursday showed factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region picked up this month and home resales in November were the best in three years.


The improving U.S. economy and a stabilizing Europe eroded the appeal of gold as a crisis hedge, triggering a technical sell-off and heavy liquidation by hedge funds before the year-end.


(Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Chang Seong-won in Seoul and Masayuki Kitano in Singapore and Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)



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