Man Found With Suspicious Materials in Virginia

 

A Marine Corps reservist who was found in Arlington National Cemetery overnight after it had closed, and then ran from approaching federal parks police was arrested on Friday, the authorities said.

The man, identified as Yonathan Melaku, 22, of Alexandria, Va., had been carrying a backpack, which federal authorities said contained “suspicious materials,” though they later determined it was not an explosive substance, said Chris Allen, a spokesman with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Initial contact with Melaku found he was carrying items which caused initial concerns about the public’s safety, prompting the F.B.I. and other agencies to respond to the scene and roads around the Pentagon to be shut down,” the F.B.I. said in a statement.

The authorities searched Mr. Melaku’s car, a red 2011 Nissan, which was parked in a wooded area near the Pentagon, and directly off of Route 27 and Route 110. They did not find anything suspicious, Mr. Allen said.

Mr. Melaku’ house in Alexandria was also searched by the F.B.I. and the Fairfax County Police Department, the F.BI said.

Mr. Melaku joined the Marine Corps Reserve in September 2007 and holds the rank of lance corporal, the authorities said, having been awarded the National Defense Service Medal and the Selected Marine Corps Reserve Medal.?

He has not been deployed overseas, the authorities said.

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Frozen Dead Guy Festival for Sale (the Man Himself Stays on Ice)

But the concept and the rights to the name Frozen Dead Guy Days, the gleefully ghoulish late-winter bacchanal of ice and death and beer — that’s up for grabs. The Nederland Area Chamber of Commerce here in the mountains northwest of Denver owns the registered trademark to all things Dead Guy and has put those rights up for sale.

“It has grown out of our grasp,” said Blue Hessner, the chamber’s president. Mr. Hessner said that the board would consider all offers, with no pre-set price, and that depending on the buyer, “it could become a little more commercial.” He said discussions were under way with two potential buyers, but he declined to name any names.

Celebrating the mortal remains of an 89-year-old Norwegian named Bredo Morstoel, whose body became stranded here in 1993, is already a big local economic engine. Upward of 20,000 people came this year over a three-day weekend in early March to mark its 10th year and its packed agenda — the coffin races, the parade of hearses, the crowning of an Ice Queen and the not-to-be-missed frozen salmon toss.

Mr. Morstoel, or so local lore has it, died in 1989. His body, already frozen, was brought to Nederland by a family member who dreamed of opening a cryogenic-body-storage-in-the-mountains business. Local officials subsequently found two frozen bodies, including Mr. Morstoel’s, in the family’s possession and outlawed the practice of storing dead bodies. One of the bodies was relocated, but Mr. Morstoel’s was allowed to stay.

A caretaker was hired by the family, charged with keeping Mr. Morstoel in fine frozen fettle against the advent of a scientific breakthrough that would someday allow his revival. Tours to view the shed and the sarcophagus, about 10 minutes outside town, are offered separately by the caretaker during festival times.

The festival, meanwhile, moved on its own trajectory starting in 2001 as a way for the town to capitalize on the weird, unlikely tale. A spokeswoman for the chamber stressed that what is up for sale is the festival itself and the name, not Mr. Morstoel’s actual remains or responsibility for his upkeep.

Frozen Dead Guy Days falls right into the longstanding Western tradition of hyperbolic, manic absurdity in ways that Mark Twain, who chronicled the jumping frogs of Calaveras County, Calif., would probably have appreciated.

Fruita, Colo., holds an annual fete for a chicken named Mike who supposedly lived for 18 months after his decapitation on Sept. 10, 1945. Ainsworth, Neb., trying to make lemonade from lemons, holds a Middle of Nowhere festival in June. And Conway, Ark., has something called Toad Suck Daze.

Here in Nederland, at least one corporate sponsor has been on board for years. Tuff Shed, a maker of, well, sheds, spotted opportunity when the original outbuilding used for body storage started deteriorating — the company donated a new space for Mr. Morstoel and his ice (which gets replenished periodically). T-shirts with the company tagline: “Frozen Dead in a Shed, a Tuff Shed, That Is,” are sold on the chamber’s Web site, along with DVD copies of a documentary, “Grandpa’s Still in the Tuff Shed.”

In a place still tinctured by hippie-era tie-dye, where corporate franchises are widely unwelcome (people threatened to shoot out the Best Western motel sign when that company had the temerity to come to town some years back), the idea of Dead Guys going brand name has already set off a heated discussion.

“Anything corporate and people would be angry for sure, myself included,” said Jon Ridnell, 46, a musician. “That’s why we live here — to get away from that stuff.”

Other residents said they thought Frozen Dead Guy Days had already drifted beyond its original roots — for the worse, some said, in its emphasis on alcohol — and that it could perhaps use a little cleanup.

“By noon, everybody is three sheets to the wind and you want to get your kids out of there,” said Joe Cleveland, 35, a construction contractor who has 5-year-old twins with his wife, Stephanie Bowyer, 38.

Others say that in a town dependent for its livelihood on tourism, a new festival owner with deeper pockets could only be a good thing.

“It brings in revenue — we depend on it,” said Heather Taylor, 31, an artist. “Besides, I was Ice Queen once — I can’t complain.”

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Program Offering Waivers for Health Law Is Ending

No more applications will be accepted after Sept. 22, federal health officials said.

Steven B. Larsen, director of the federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, said employers and labor unions had until that date to seek exemptions or request the extension of waivers already granted.

The new health care law generally requires employers to provide at least $750,000 in coverage to each person in their health insurance plans this year. Many restaurants, retailers and small businesses do not meet the standard. Some provide “mini-med” coverage with annual limits that may be as low as $10,000.

“Mini-med plans do not provide comprehensive health coverage, but unfortunately they are the only insurance options some consumers have today,” Mr. Larsen said.

The minimum amount of coverage will increase. Federal rules require health plans to provide at least $1.25 million in coverage next year and $2 million in 2013. In 2014, annual limits for new health plans will be banned. In that year, individuals and small businesses will be able to buy comprehensive coverage through state-supervised insurance exchanges.

Waivers granted or renewed in the next three months will run through 2013. To date, the administration has granted waivers to 1,433 health plans covering 3.2 million people.

On Friday, the administration disclosed that it had denied 100 applications and then approved nearly one-third of them after reconsidering the evidence.

To obtain waivers, employers and health plans must show that compliance with the federal requirements would cause a significant increase in premiums or a significant decrease in access to benefits. Without waivers, some employers said, they would have increased premiums or dropped coverage this year because they could not afford to provide higher health benefits.

Republicans have seized on the waivers as evidence that the law is fundamentally flawed.

“If the law is so good, why are more and more employers begging for a waiver to get relief from its burdensome mandates?” asked Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming. “Americans need waivers from the president’s law because it causes health premiums to go up.”

The policy announced Friday may eliminate the waivers as an issue in the 2012 election year. Under the policy, the administration said, employers and insurers with annual coverage limits below $2 million will have “a reasonable opportunity” to apply for waivers in the next three months.

Republicans have repeatedly asserted that the administration was giving preferential treatment to its political allies by granting waivers to health plans sponsored by labor unions that had supported the legislation. But in a study this week, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said health officials had used objective criteria in deciding whether to grant waivers.

E. Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation, a trade group, said that ending the waivers was “a wise, appropriate step for the administration to take.”

“This step will avoid unnecessary politics and furor over the waivers,” Mr. Trautwein said.

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U2 Guitarist’s House Plan Rejected by California Board

LOS ANGELES — Turning that Malibu dream house into reality is never easy, even when you are a world famous rock star.

The California Coastal Commission, which oversees development near the shoreline, this week rejected a plan from David Evans, better known as U2 guitarist the Edge, to build five mansions along a remote stretch of scenic Malibu coastline. The commission’s 8-to-4 vote capped four years of wrangling over the project, and the battle may now move to court.

“This is one of the most environmentally devastating projects that I’ve seen in the 38-year history of the Coastal Commission,” said Peter Douglas, the agency’s executive director.

While celebrity mansions are hardly new to Malibu, Mr. Evans’s building plans have been a source of particular controversy, which pitted environmental groups against each other.

The houses Mr. Evans envisioned boast state-of-the-art green building techniques: solar panels, rainwater catching systems and native plants.

But despite that, environmentalists particularly opposed the road that would have to be built just to access the homes, while some potential neighbors in this most exclusive of enclaves disliked the idea of five homes — each more than 7,000 square feet — marring their view of the cliffs.

Mr. Evans and the four other property owners mollified one conservancy group that had opposed the project with a donation of $1 million, an open space dedication and a trail easement that would allow hikers to pass through an area currently closed to the public.

“The property owners worked diligently to develop home designs that would meet some of the highest standards for sustainability,” Fiona Hutton, a spokeswoman for the property owners, said in a statement. She noted dozens of other homes of similar size in the area that the Coastal Commission had supported.

But Mr. Douglas said the lack of infrastructure greatly multiplied the environmental impact of any project at the site.

Ms. Hutton said the owners were now considering their options, including litigation. A judge would then rule on whether the commission’s decision amounted to an unconstitutional “taking” of the land, which legally can be developed.

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Hospitals Performed Needless Double CT Scans, Records Show

Performing two scans in succession is rarely necessary, radiologists say, yet some hospitals were doing that more than 80 percent of the time for their Medicare chest patients, according to Medicare outpatient claims from 2008, the most recent year available. The rate is typically less than 1 percent, or in some cases zero, at major university teaching hospitals.

Next month, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is expected to release figures for 2009, but according to people who have seen the numbers, the practice of double scanning chest patients has continued.

“When I saw the 2009 numbers, they were the same essentially, and I was disquieted by that,” said Dr. Michael J. Pentecost, a radiologist and Medicare consultant who also reviews claims for commercial clients.

The overuse of scans has been the subject of growing concern in recent years, but a review of the federal data, focusing on a common procedure performed millions of times a year, offers a rare and detailed snapshot of the problem state by state, hospital by hospital.

In 2008, about 75,000 patients received double scans, one using iodine contrast to check blood flow, and one that did not. “If you do both, you bill for both,” Dr. Pentecost said.

Radiologists say one scan or the other is needed depending on the patient’s condition, but rarely both. Double scanning is also common among privately insured patients who tend to be younger.

Double scans expose patients to extra radiation while heaping millions of dollars in extra costs on an already overburdened Medicare program. A single CT scan of the chest is equal to about 350 standard chest X-rays, so two scans are twice that amount.

“The primary concern relates to radiation exposure,” said Dr. James A. Brink, chief of diagnostic radiology at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where double scans accounted for only a fraction of 1 percent of cases. He added: “It is incumbent upon all of us to limit it to the amount needed to make a diagnosis.”

Officials at hospitals with high scan rates said radiologists ordered the extra chest scan figuring that more information is better. In rare instances, the two scans might help a doctor distinguish between tangled blood vessels and a tumor, Dr. Pentecost said.

The Medicare agency distributed the data to hospitals last year to show how they performed relative to each other and to encourage more efficient, safer practices. The review of that data found more than 200 hospitals that administered double scans on more than 30 percent of their Medicare outpatients — a percentage that the federal agency and radiology experts considers far too high. The national average is 5.4 percent.

The figures show wide variation among states as well, from 1 percent in Massachusetts to 13 percent in Oklahoma. Overall, Medicare paid hospitals roughly $25 million for double scans in 2008.

Double scanning is more likely to occur at smaller, community hospitals such as Memorial Medical Center of West Michigan in Ludington. It gave two scans to 89 percent of its Medicare chest patients..

“We aren’t radiologists, but as we understand the practice, it was strictly a matter of physicians, independent practitioners who were doing their best to get to the bottom of what was ailing their patients,” said Bill Kerans, a spokesman for that hospital.

Since 2008, Memorial Medical Center lowered its rate to 42.4 percent in 2010 and to 3 percent in the first part of 2011. “We have made some dramatic changes in protocols and practices,” Mr. Kerans said.

A few large hospitals have had problems as well. St. John Health System in Tulsa double-scanned 80 percent — or 800 of its Medicare outpatients in 2008. “We recognized in late 2008 and early 2009 those numbers were higher than we needed to be,” said Charles Anderson, the hospital’s president and chief executive.

By changing protocols, the percentage of double scans is now “hovering around 5 percent,” Mr. Anderson said. “What that means for us is when a physician orders a scan from a radiology department, the radiologist begins to engage in a conversation with those physicians, talking about what might be a more reasonable and acceptable approach.”

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