NKorea says it has detained a US citizen

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea said Friday that an American citizen has been detained after confessing to unspecified crimes, confirming news reports about his arrest at a time when Pyongyang is facing criticism from Washington for launching a long-range rocket last week.

The American was identified as Pae Jun Ho in a brief dispatch issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang. News reports in the U.S. and South Korea said Pae is known in his home state of Washington as Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old tour operator of Korean descent.

An expert said he is likely to become a bargaining chip for the North, an attempt to draw the U.S. into talks. Five other Americans known to have been detained in North Korea since 2009 were all eventually released.

North Korean state media said Pae arrived in the far northeastern city of Rajin on Nov. 3 as part of a tour.

Rajin is part of a special economic zone not far from Yanji, China, that has sought to draw foreign investors and tourists over the past year. Yanji, home to many ethnic Korean Chinese, also serves as a base for Christian groups that shelter North Korean defectors.

"In the process of investigation, evidence proving that he committed a crime against (North Korea) was revealed. He admitted his crime," the KCNA dispatch said.

The North said the crimes were "proven through evidence" but did not elaborate.

KCNA said consular officials from the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang visited Pae on Friday. Sweden represents the United States in diplomatic affairs in North Korea since Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations.

Karl-Olof Andersson, Sweden's ambassador to North Korea, told The Associated Press he could not comment on the case and referred the matter to the U.S. State Department.

The State Department was not immediately able to provide any additional information about the report.

The operator of a Korean language website for the Korean community in the Northwest, Chong Tae Kim of JoySeattle.com, said the detainee's father lives in Korea and his mother lives in Lynnwood, Washington.

"She hopes the State Department and Swedish Embassy help with his release," he said Friday. "She's trying not to speak to reporters, fearing that could affect her son's release."

The office of U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene says it has reached out to the mother and is pressing the State Department for information.

"We are very concerned about it and seeing what can be done on our end to help with this," said spokesman Viet Shelton.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell on Friday would only say that they were aware of the detention and that Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang is providing consular services.

"We can, indeed, confirm that a U.S. citizen has been detained in North Korea," Ventrell said, adding that he could not say more because of privacy restrictions.

In Seoul, the Segye Ilbo newspaper reported last week that Bae had been taking tourists on a five-day trip to the North when he was arrested. The newspaper cited unidentified sources.

News of the arrest comes as North Korea is celebrating the launch of a satellite into space on Dec. 12, in defiance of calls by the U.S. and others to cancel a liftoff widely seen as an illicit test of ballistic missile technology.

The announcement of the American's detainment could be a signal from the North that it wants dialogue with the United States, said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. He said trips by former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to North Korea to secure the release of other detained Americans created a mood for U.S.-North Korea talks.

"North Korea knows sanctions will follow its rocket launch. But in the long run, it needs an excuse to reopen talks after the political atmosphere moves past sanctions," Cheong said.

Cheong said he expects that the American will be tried and convicted in coming months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has the power to grant amnesty and will exercise it as a bargaining chip, Cheong said.

Nuland said earlier this week that Washington had been trying to reach out to Kim.

"Instead, that was met not only with an abrogation of agreements that had been made by the previous North Korean regime, but by missile activity both in April and in December," she told reporters.

She said Washington had no choice but to put pressure on Pyongyang, and was discussing with its allies how to "further isolate" the regime.

In April 2009, a North Korean rocket launch took place while two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were in North Korean custody after allegedly trying to sneak into the country across the Tumen River dividing the North from China.

They were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor before being released on humanitarian grounds after Clinton flew to Pyongyang to negotiate their release.

Subsequently, three other Americans were arrested and eventually released by North Korea. All three are believed to have been accused of illegally spreading Christianity.

North Korea has several sanctioned churches in Pyongyang but frowns on the distribution of Bibles and other religious materials by foreigners. Interaction between North Koreans and foreigners is strictly regulated.

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AP writers Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Doug Esser in Seattle contributed to this report.

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Brain Benefits for the Holidays? Stuff the Stocking with Video Games

Title Post: Brain Benefits for the Holidays? Stuff the Stocking with Video Games
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Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.

The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.

Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.

Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."

Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.

Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.

Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.

The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.

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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.

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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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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."

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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.

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

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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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NRA move exposes deep divide on guns

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Any chance for national unity on U.S. gun violence appeared to wane a week after the Connecticut school massacre, as the powerful NRA gun rights lobby called on Friday for armed guards in every school and gun-control advocates vehemently rejected the proposal.

The solution offered by the National Rifle Association defied a push by President Barack Obama for new gun laws, such as bans on high-capacity magazines and certain semiautomatic rifles.

At a hotel near the White House, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said a debate among lawmakers would be long and ineffective, and that school children were better served by immediate action to send officers with firearms into schools.

LaPierre delivered an impassioned defense of the firearms that millions of Americans own, in a rare NRA news briefing after the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting in which a gunman killed his mother, and then 20 children and six adults at an elementary school.

"Why is the idea of a gun good when it's used to protect our president or our country or our police, but bad when it's used to protect our children in their schools?" LaPierre asked in comments twice interrupted by anti-NRA protesters whom guards forced from the room.

Speaking to about 200 reporters and editors but taking no questions, LaPierre dared politicians to oppose armed guards.

"Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America's gun owners," he asked, "that you're willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal?"

Proponents of gun control immediately rejected the idea, hardening battle lines in a social debate that divides Americans as much as abortion or same-sex marriage.

A brief NRA statement three days earlier in which the group said it wanted to contribute meaningfully to ways to prevent school massacres led to speculation that compromise might be possible, or that the NRA was too weak to defeat new legislation.

"The NRA's leadership had an opportunity to help unite the nation behind efforts to reduce gun violence and avert massacres like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School," said Democratic Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York. She supports new limits on ammunition and firearms, and universal background checks for gun buyers.

WAITING FOR A COMPROMISE

Adam Winkler, author of "Gunfight," a history of U.S. gun rights, said he expected the NRA might yield on background checks. About 40 percent of gun purchasers are not checked, according to some estimates.

"The NRA missed a huge opportunity to move in the direction of compromise. Instead of offering a major contribution to the gun debate, which is what they promised, we got the same old tired clichés," said Winkler, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Monday showed the percentage of Americans favoring tough gun regulations rising 8 points after the Newtown shooting, to 50 percent.

Inside the NRA, though, attitudes might not change much.

"The anti-gun forces which are motivated by hysteria and a refusal to deal with the facts are going to be facing a counter-attack here that is going to be very, very effective," said Robert Brown, an NRA board member and the publisher of Soldier of Fortune, a military-focused magazine.

During the news conference, LaPierre laid out a plan for a "National School Shield" and said former U.S. congressman Asa Hutchinson from Arkansas would head up the NRA's effort to develop a model security program for schools.

The NRA is far and away America's most powerful gun organization and dwarves other groups with its lobbying efforts. In 2011, it spent $3.1 million lobbying lawmakers and federal agencies, while all gun-control groups combined spent $280,000, according to records the groups filed with Congress.

ECHOES OF COLUMBINE

Ken Blackwell, another NRA board member, said NRA leaders were discussing how to react to the Newtown shooting on the day it happened, helping LaPierre formulate a position.

"He and the team of lawyers around him are very bright and they understand the Constitution," said Blackwell, a Republican former state official in Ohio.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court in 2008 guarantees an individual right to own firearms, though it allows for some limits.

While LaPierre's proposal to arm schools came as a surprise to those who hoped for compromise, it is not new.

Former NRA president, the late actor Charlton Heston, made a similar proposal after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre near Denver that killed 12 students and one teacher.

"If there had been even one armed guard in the school, he could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps ended the whole thing instantly," Heston said in April 1999, according to The New York Times.

Columbine had an armed sheriff's deputy who exchanged gunfire outside the school with one of the two teenage killers, according to a Jefferson County, Colorado, sheriff's office report. The deputy was unable to hit or stop the student, who was armed with a semiautomatic rifle, from entering the school, and the deputy stayed in a parking lot with police, the report said.

Protesters at the news briefing on Friday accused the NRA of being complicit in gun deaths.

"If teachers can stand up to gunmen, Congress can stand up to the NRA," said Medea Benjamin, co-director of the peace group Code Pink, who was escorted from the news conference.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Patrick Rucker and Alina Selyukh in Washington, and Stephanie Simon and Keith Coffman in Denver, Colorado; Editing by Karey Wutkowski, Mary Milliken and Eric Beech)

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Pakistani polio workers get police protection

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Under police guard, thousands of health workers pressed on with a polio immunization program Thursday after nine were killed elsewhere in Pakistan by suspected militants who oppose the vaccination campaign.

Immunizations were halted in some parts of Pakistan and the U.N. suspended its field participation everywhere until better security was arranged for its workers. The violence risks reversing recent progress fighting polio in Pakistan, one of three countries in the world where the disease is endemic.

The Taliban have denied responsibility for the shootings. Militants have accused health workers of acting as spies for the U.S., alleging the vaccine is intended to make Muslim children sterile.

Taliban commanders in Pakistan's troubled northwest tribal region also said earlier this year that vaccinations can't go forward until the U.S. stops drone strikes in the country.

Insurgent opposition to the campaign grew last year after it was revealed that a Pakistani doctor ran a fake vaccination program to help the CIA track down and kill al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the town of Abbottabad in the country's northwest.

There were a few attacks on polio workers in July, but the current level of violence is unprecedented. A polio worker died Thursday after being shot in the head in the northwestern city of Peshawar a day earlier, said health official Janbaz Afridi.

His death raised to nine the number of Pakistanis working on the campaign who have been killed this week. Six of the workers gunned down were women, three of whom were teenagers. Two other workers were critically wounded. All the attacks occurred in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the southern city of Karachi.

Despite the threat, local officials in the eastern city of Lahore continued the vaccination drive Thursday under police escort, said one of the top government officials in the city, Noorul Amin Mengal. About 6,000 Pakistani health workers were escorted by 3,000 police as they fanned out across the city, he said.

"It would have been an easy thing for us to do to stop the campaign," he said. "That would have been devastating."

Saddaf Malik, one of the polio workers in Lahore, said the killings sent a shudder of fear through him and his colleagues.

"We will carry on with our job with determination, but we want the government to adopt measures to ensure the security of polio vaccinators," he said.

This week's killings occurred as the government and the U.N. began a vaccination drive Monday targeting high-risk areas in the country's four provinces and the semiautonomous tribal region, part of an effort to immunize 34 million children under age 5. The campaign was scheduled to end Wednesday in most parts of the country, except for Lahore, where it ran a day longer.

Government officials ended the drive early in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in Sindh province, where Karachi is the capital, said Elias Durry, the U.N. World Health Organization's senior coordinator for polio in Pakistan. The campaign ran its full course in the provinces of Baluchistan and Punjab, where Lahore is the capital, as well as in the tribal region, he said.

The government has approximately 250,000 people working on the campaign, said Durry. Most of them have other jobs, such as teaching or working as government clerks, and sign on to the vaccination drive to earn a little more money, about $2.50 per day, officials said.

The WHO and UNICEF have about 2,000 people between them who provide technical assistance to the polio teams across the country and educate locals about the program, said Durry and Michael Coleman, a UNICEF spokesman in Pakistan. The U.N. staff were pulled out of the field and asked to work from home Wednesday.

The goal for this week's drive was to immunize 18.3 million children, but workers were only able reach about 9 million during the first two days of the campaign, said Durry.

Polio usually infects children living in unsanitary conditions, attacks the nerves and can kill or paralyze. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria remain the last battlegrounds for the fight against the disease.

There is no history of attacks on polio workers in Afghanistan, even though the country also faces a domestic Taliban insurgency. Muslim leaders in Nigeria have spoken out against polio vaccination in the country in the past, also claiming it makes children sterile. Many now support the campaign, but some Nigerians remain suspicious.

Prevention efforts have managed to reduce the number of cases in Pakistan to 56 this year, compared with 190 in 2011, a drop of about 70 percent. Most of the news cases in Pakistan are in the northwest, where the presence of militants makes it difficult to reach children. Clerics and tribal elders have been recruited to support polio vaccinations to try to open up areas previously inaccessible to health workers.

Israrullah Khan, a villager who attended the funeral of the polio worker who died Thursday, said most of the clerics and Islamic political parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were in favor of the campaign.

"We don't understand why these attacks have suddenly started," Khan said. "It's very sad because they were trying to save our children's future for very low wages."

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Associated Press writers Jamal Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, Zaheer Babar in Lahore, Pakistan, Adil Jawad in Karachi, Pakistan, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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Twitter post offers clue to The Civil Wars' future

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — While there still remain questions about the future of The Civil Wars, there's new music on the way.

Joy Williams, one half of the Grammy Award-winning duo with John Paul White, said Thursday during a Twitter chat that she was in the studio listening to new Civil Wars songs.

It's a tantalizing clue to the future of the group, which appeared in doubt when a European tour unraveled last month due to "irreconcilable differences."

At the time, the duo said it hoped to release an album in 2013. It's not clear if Williams was referring Thursday to music for a new album or for a documentary score they have composed with T Bone Burnett. They're also set to release an "Unplugged" session on iTunes on Jan. 15.

Nate Yetton, the group's manager and Williams' husband, had no comment — though he has supplied a few hints of his own by posting pictures of recording sessions on his Instagram account recently. The duo announced last summer it would be working with Charlie Peacock, who produced its gold-selling debut "Barton Hollow." The photos do not show Williams or White, but one includes violin player Odessa Rose.

Rose says in an Instagram post: "Playing on the new Civil Wars record... Beautiful sounds."

Even with its future in doubt, the duo continues to gather accolades. Williams and White are up for a Golden Globe on Jan. 13, and two Grammy Awards on Feb. 10, for their "The Hunger Games" soundtrack collaboration "Safe & Sound" with Taylor Swift.

Williams' comments came during an installment of an artist interview series with Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy sponsored by The Recording Academy.

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Online:

http://thecivilwars.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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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.

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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.

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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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Blizzards, blackouts hit Midwest

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The first major winter storm of the year hit the U.S. Midwest on Thursday, bringing a blizzard to the Plains and tornadoes to Alabama and Arkansas, and leaving some 133,000 customers without electricity.

Bad driving conditions led to a 25-car pileup on a highway near Clarion, Iowa, that left three people dead, authorities said. Blizzard warnings were in effect in eastern Iowa and parts of Wisconsin and Illinois Thursday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.

"It's going to be very windy with considerable blowing and drifting of snow," said Bruce Terry, a senior National Weather Service forecaster at the HydroMeteorological Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. He called the pre-Christmas storm "a major winter snowstorm" for the Midwest and western Great Lakes.

Accumulations of up to a foot of snow were expected in some areas, Terry said, adding there was a potential for severe weather on the so-called "warm side" of the storm in the U.S. Southeast.

Blowing snow led to school closures in parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri, plus the closure of all state government offices in Iowa.

"Thunder" snow was reported in Iowa Wednesday night, especially in southeastern Iowa, as thunder and lightning accompanied the storm as it surged across the state.

Travel was not advised on Iowa roads for the rest of the day, according to Annette Dunn with the Iowa Department of Transportation.

"We're going to have visibility and drifting problems through midnight," she said.

Late Thursday morning, troopers responded to a 25-car crash which killed three people on southbound Interstate 35 in northern Iowa. Iowa DOT closed I-35 at Highway 30 due to deteriorating conditions.

The Iowa National Guard has deployed about 80 soldiers from across the state to help highway assistance teams cope with the storm.

In Nebraska, portions of I-80 were closed Thursday due to snow-packed and icy road conditions. The entire road was expected to reopen before 4 p.m. local time.

In Chicago, rain was expected to change to snow Thursday night, with wind gusts of as much as 50 miles per hour, the NWS said.

Due to low visibility, airlines at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport were reporting delays of up to 90 minutes and have canceled more than 200 flights. At Midway Airport in Chicago, airlines canceled 150 flights and Southwest Airlines canceled all flights after 4:30 p.m.

A twister near downtown Mobile, Alabama, damaged buildings, snapped trees, downed power lines and flipped vehicles early on Thursday, but there were no reports of injuries, authorities said.

"The potential is there certainly for some isolated tornadoes," Terry said, referring to a broad swath of Gulf of Mexico coast and inland territory stretching from southeast Louisiana through the western Florida Panhandle.

The National Weather Service confirmed on Thursday that a tornado destroyed a mobile home southwest of Sheridan, Arkansas. There were no reports of injuries.

High winds of around 45 miles per hour in Tennessee knocked down trees and power lines.

While the heavy snow in the Upper Midwest will create potentially dangerous travel conditions, meteorologist Jeff Masters said it put an end to this year's "record-length snowless streaks in a number of U.S. cities."

Writing on his website weatherunderground.com, Masters said the storm would also provide "welcome moisture for drought-parched areas of the Midwest."

The winter storm, named Draco by the Weather Channel, began Tuesday in the Rocky Mountains and marked a dramatic change from the mild December so far in most of the nation.

High winds kicked up a dust storm in West Texas on Wednesday, leading to at least one death in a traffic accident near Lubbock.

Power companies reported electrical outages in Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, with a peak of 400,000 customers without power Thursday morning. That fell to 133,000 by Thursday afternoon.

(Writing by Tom Brown and Nick Carey; Reporting by Mary Wisniewski in Chicago, Eileen O'Grady in Houston, Kaija Wilkinson in Mobile, Alabama and Keith Coffman in Denver, Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Kay Henderson in Des Moines, Iowa, Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Matthew Waller in San Angelo, Texas and Suzi Parker in Little Rock, Arkansas.; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Greg McCune, Tim Dobbyn and Jim Marshall)

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SKorea's 1st woman leader vows new NKorea effort

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Park Geun-hye, daughter of a divisive military strongman from South Korea's authoritarian era, has been elected the country's first female president, a landmark win that could mean a new drive to start talks with rival North Korea.

After five years of high tension under unpopular incumbent Lee Myung-bak (Lee Myuhng Bahk), Park has vowed to pursue engagement and step up aid to North Korea, despite the latter's widely condemned long-range rocket launch last week.

On Thursday, Park mentioned the North Korean rocket launch during a nationally televised speech.

"The North's long-range missile launch symbolically showed how grave our security reality is," Park said following a visit to Seoul's National Cemetery, where she paid silent tributes to late presidents, including her father.

North Korean state media, however, have repeatedly questioned the sincerity of Park's North Korea engagement policy, since she and Lee are from the same conservative party.

Ties between the Koreas plummeted during Lee's term. Many voters believe Lee's policies drove North Korea to renew nuclear and missile tests and to launch two attacks in 2010 that killed 50 Koreans.

The rocket launch, which Park's party has called a test of banned ballistic missile technology, made North Korea an issue in the closing days of campaigning, although many voters said they cared more about the economy.

Park (Bahk guhn-hae) has said she is open to dialogue with North Korea, but she has also called on Pyongyang to show progress in nuclear dismantlement. She has also raised the possibility of a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but only if it's "an honest dialogue on issues of mutual concern."

Huge crowds lined up in frigid weather throughout the day to choose between Park and liberal candidate Moon Jae-in (Moon Jay-in), the son of North Korean refugees. Both candidates steered away from Lee's policies, including, most strikingly, his hard-line stance on North Korea.

Turnout was the highest in 15 years, and some analysts thought that might lift Moon, who is more popular with younger voters. Despite moving to the center, however, Park was carried by her conservative base of mainly older voters.

They fondly remember her father, Park Chung-hee, dictator for 18 years until his intelligence chief killed him during a drinking party in 1979.

Much of 60-year-old Park's public persona is built on her close association with her father's rule. When she was 22 her mother died in a botched attempt to assassinate her father, and she stood in as first lady for five years until her father's death.

She has created an image as a selfless daughter of Korea, never married, then a female lawmaker in a male-dominated political world.

After Moon conceded defeat, Park said that she would dedicate herself to uniting her people and improving their livelihoods.

"I really thank you. This election is the people's victory," Park told a crowd packing a Seoul plaza.

With about 98 percent of votes counted, Park had won 51.6 percent to Moon's 47.9 percent, according to the state-run National Election Commission. Park is to take office in February when Lee ends his single five-year term.

No Korean woman is believed to have ruled since the ninth century. Park becomes the most powerful figure in a country where many women earn less than men and are trapped in low-paying jobs despite first-class educations.

Her father's legacy is both an asset and a weak spot. Older South Koreans may revere his austere economic policies and tough line against North Korea, but he's also remembered with loathing for his treatment of opponents, including claims of torture and summary executions.

Park's win means that South Korean voters believe she would evoke her father's strong charisma as president and settle the country's economic and security woes, according to Chung Jin-young, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in South Korea.

"Park is good-hearted, calm and trustworthy," 50-year-old housewife Lee Hye-Young said at a polling station at a Seoul elementary school. "Also, I think Park would handle North Korea better. Moon would want to make too many concessions to North Korea."

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Associated Press writers Youkyung Lee and Sam Kim contributed to this story.

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