Colorado Woman Billed Medicaid for Dead Father

A Colorado woman was convicted this week for felony forgery for submitting fraudulent documents to Medicaid regarding personal health care services provided to her father after he died. It was the second announcement of Medicaid fraud-related convictions made by the Colorado Attorney General’s office in less than a week. Here are the details.

* According to the office of Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, 52-year-old Viola Kwong pleaded guilty to felony forgery in Denver District Court on Tuesday. She was sentenced to pay $ 16,000 in criminal restitution and perform 50 hours of public service. The restitution reflects all of the money illegally received by Kwong.

* Kwong will also be placed on supervised probation for four years, is responsible for all court costs and probation supervision fees associated with her case, and will pay a civil penalty of more than $ 37,000 to the Colorado Medicaid program, the Attorney General’s Office stated.

* The Attorney General’s Office stated that Kwong had requested services for her elderly father through a Medicaid program that allows the Medicaid client to direct his or her own home-based medical care.

* Because Kwong’s father was too ill to manage his care, Kwong was authorized by the program as his personal representative, in charge of obtaining those services for her father.

* Kwong’s father died on July 23, 2010, but Kwong continued to submit documents about personal health care services that were being provided to her father until Nov. 8, 2010.

* Suthers stated that the restitution ordered was “another significant recovery for Colorado’s Medicaid program.”

* Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing initially referred the case to the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

* Last week, the Attorney General’s Office announced the conviction of occupational therapist Cheryl Moss, 47, for felony theft and felony forgery. Moss pleaded guilty to forging treatment records and fraudulently billing the Colorado Medicaid program for services she did not perform.

* Moss agreed to repay the program $ 54,332, serve 60 days home detention and perform 300 hours of community service. She was also ordered to pay an additional $ 46,000 to resolve any potential civil issues and to report her conviction to the agency charged with licensing occupational therapists in Colorado.

* According to the Attorney General, Medicaid is health insurance for qualifying low-income, disabled individuals, and children and families. Covered services include hospital care, skilled nursing home care, residential adult family care services, hospice, mental health, dental and eyeglass services. Each state administers its own Medicaid program.

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Final day of funerals for Newtown shooting victims

The final three victims of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School will be laid to rest today, ending a somber week of funerals.

A mass will take place today at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church for Josephine Gay, who had celebrated her 7th birthday on Dec. 11.

Friends and family have been asked to wear Josephine's favorite color, purple, in her honor.

PHOTOS: Victims of Sandy Hook Massacre

A homegoing celebration will take place at The First Cathedral in Bloomfield, Conn., for Ana Marquez-Greene. The 6-year-old with a beaming voice sang in a home video with her brother, who was also at Sandy Hook Elementary School during the massacre, and seemed destined to take after her father, a jazz musician.

Emilie Parker, the budding artist who carried her markers and pencils everywhere, will be laid to rest in Ogden, Utah today.

The 6-year-old would have been one of the first to comfort her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School, had a gunman's bullets not claimed her life, her father said.

"My daughter Emilie would be one of the first ones to be standing and giving support to all the victims because that's the kind of kid she is," her father, Robbie Parker, said last Saturday.

"She always had something kind to say about anybody," Parker said. "We find comfort reflecting on the incredible person Emilie was and how many lives she was able to touch."

WATCH: Emilie's father speaks about his daughter

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Italy PM Monti resigns, elections likely in February

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti tendered his resignation to the president on Friday after 13 months in office, opening the way to a highly uncertain national election in February.

The former European commissioner, appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis a year ago, has kept his own political plans a closely guarded secret but he has faced growing pressure to seek a second term.

President Giorgio Napolitano is expected to dissolve parliament in the next few days and has already indicated that the most likely date for the election is February 24.

In an unexpected move, Napolitano said he would hold consultations with political leaders from all the main parties on Saturday to discuss the next steps. In the meantime Monti will continue in a caretaker capacity.

European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have called for Monti’s economic reform agenda to continue but Italy’s two main parties have said he should stay out of the race.

Monti, who handed in his resignation during a brief meeting at the presidential palace shortly after parliament approved his government’s 2013 budget, will hold a news conference on Sunday at which he is expected clarify his intentions.

Ordinary Italians are weary of repeated tax hikes and spending cuts and opinion polls offer little evidence that they are ready to give Monti a second term. A survey this week showed 61 percent saying he should not stand.

Whether he runs or not, his legacy will loom over an election which will be fought out over the painful measures he has introduced to try to rein in Italy’s huge public debt and revive its stagnant economy.

His resignation came a couple of months before the end of his term, after his technocrat government lost the support of Silvio Berlusconi‘s centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party in parliament earlier this month.

Speculation is swirling over Monti’s next moves. These could include outlining policy recommendations, endorsing a centrist alliance committed to his reform agenda or even standing as a candidate in the election himself.

The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) has held a strong lead in the polls for months but a centrist alliance led by Monti could gain enough support in the Senate to force the PD to seek a coalition deal which could help shape the economic agenda.

BERLUSCONI IN WINGS

Senior figures from the alliance, including both the UDC party, which is close to the Roman Catholic Church, and a new group founded by Ferrari sports car chairman Luca di Montezemolo, have been hoping to gain Monti’s backing.

He has not said clearly whether he intends to run, but he has dropped heavy hints he will continue to push a reform agenda that has the backing of both Italy’s business community and its European partners.

The PD has promised to stick to the deficit reduction targets Monti has agreed with the European Union and says it will maintain the broad course he has set while putting more emphasis on reviving growth.

Berlusconi’s return to the political arena has added to the already considerable uncertainty about the centre-right’s intentions and increased the likelihood of a messy and potentially bitter election campaign.

The billionaire media tycoon has fluctuated between attacking the government’s “Germano-centric” austerity policies and promising to stand aside if Monti agrees to lead the centre right, but now appears to have settled on an anti-Monti line.

He has pledged to cut taxes and scrap a hated housing tax which Monti imposed. He has also sounded a stridently anti-German line which has at times echoed the tone of the populist 5-Star Movement headed by maverick comic Beppe Grillo.

The PD and the PDL, both of which supported Monti’s technocrat government in parliament, have made it clear they would not be happy if he ran against them and there have been foretastes of the kind of attacks he can expect.

Former centre-left prime minister Massimo D’Alema said in an interview last week that it would be “morally questionable” for Monti to run against the PD, which backed all of his reforms and which has pledged to maintain his pledges to European partners.

Berlusconi who has mounted an intensive media campaign in the past few days, echoed that criticism this week, saying Monti risked losing the credibility he has won over the past year and becoming a “little political figure”.

(Additional reporting by Gavin Jones, Massimiliano Di Giorgio and Paolo Biondi; Writing by Gavin Jones and James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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TSX ends flat as RIM buckles, gold miners bounce

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index ended little changed on Friday as gold miners gained on safe-haven buying amid U.S. budget uncertainty, while BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd plunged more than 20 percent.

The index’s materials sector, which includes miners, rose 0.4 percent. Even though the price of gold was near its lowest level in four months, the gold-mining sub-sector added 0.9 percent as investors fretted over stalled U.S. budget talks that could throw Canada’s largest trading partner back into recession.

“As our tiptoes are over the (U.S.) fiscal cliff and we’re looking over the abyss, the markets are upset obviously, and this is sort of putting a damper on the stocks,” said John Ing, president of Maison Placements Canada.

“But we’ve had a mixed reaction in Canada, mainly because the resources have been much better, like gold for example, which is hedging into the uncertainty (around the budget talks),” he said, noting gold miners had been under pressure for the last two weeks.

Miner Barrick Gold Corp edged up 0.2 percent to C$ 33.29. Centerra Gold Inc jumped more than 3 percent to C$ 9.10.

Gold miners are playing catch-up after underperforming throughout the year and could rise further in 2013, said Gavin Graham, president at Graham Investment Strategy.

Shares of RIM dropped 22.2 percent to C$ 10.86 on fears that a new fee structure for its high-margin services segment could put pressure on the business that has set the company apart from its competitors.

The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> fell 3.01 points, or 0.02 percent, to end at 12,385.70. It gained 0.7 percent for the week.</.gsptse>

Efforts to avoid the looming U.S. “fiscal cliff” were thrown into disarray on Friday with finger-pointing lawmakers fleeing Washington for Christmas vacations even as the year-end deadline for action edged ever closer.

Graham said that until a deal is reached in the U.S. budget talks, investors will avoid economically sensitive Canadian stocks and those most closely tied to the U.S. economy: auto parts manufacturers, forestry companies and resource stocks generally.

“The resource sectors in Canada, which is half of the index, is going to be adversely affected, correctly or not,” he said.

“Chinese demand is likely to pick up somewhat now with the new leadership there but people will be focused on the U.S. given that it is still by far the most important export market for Canada.”

($ 1=$ 0.99 Canadian)

(Additional reporting by Claire Sibonney, Julie Gordon and Jeffrey Hodgson; Editing by Peter Galloway)

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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.

___

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

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Lauded cancer researcher, Springfield native, dies

A Springfield High School and Wittenberg University graduate whose research transformed the treatment of breast cancer and saved and prolonged the lives of women afflicted by it died Sunday in Cincinnati.

Elwood Jensen was 92.

Known as the “Father of the Nuclear Receptor Field,” Jensen was one of three researchers to share the 2004 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, what some call the American Nobel Prize.

The University of Cincinnati, where Jensen was a distinguished professor of cancer biology, noted that just one other of its graduates had won the honor, Albert Sabin, who developed a vaccine for polio.

“Some have estimated that his work annually saves or prolongs the lives of more than 100,000 women,” the university said in announcing his death.

A 1936 graduate of Springfield High School, Jensen was honored in 2008 as one of the Springfield City Schools Alumni of Distinction and he made periodic visits and lectures at Wittenberg University, one of five institutions to award him an honorary doctorate.

A 1940 graduate of Wittenberg, he went on to earn a Ph.D in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago, where he enjoyed a long career as a teacher and researcher. His interest in studying hormones began during 1946, when he spent a year as a Guggenheim Fellow at the Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich.

After his 1990 retirement from the University of Chicago, Jens also taught at Cornell, the University of Hamburg and the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm and did research at the National Institutes of Health.

In 2003, the University of Cincinnati honored him by organizing the Jensen Symposium on Nuclear Receptors and Endocrine Disorders, which drew more than 300 top researchers from around the world.

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Meet the man spearheading the effort to get armed guards in schools

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In 2006, a political ad swept through the state of Arkansas, touting Asa Hutchinson's values as "shaped in rural Arkansas, a half-mile down a dirt road."

In his unsuccessful bid for governor, the former federal prosecutor and U.S. congressman touted his conservative political views and garnered a strong endorsement from the National Rifle Association, a powerful U.S. gun lobby.

On Friday, the NRA announced that Hutchinson - also a former Homeland Security official and now a lawyer predominantly focused on white-collar crime - will spearhead an effort to put armed guards at schools in hopes of preventing mass shootings like the one on December 14 in Connecticut that killed 20 young children and 6 adults.

"School safety is a complex issue with no simple, single solution," Hutchinson said at Friday's news conference. "But I believe trained, qualified, armed security is one key component among many that can provide the first line of deterrence as well as the last line of defense.

His effort, dubbed the National School Shield Program, would have a "budget provided by the NRA of whatever scope the task requires." It will focus on producing a security model, which may rely on local volunteers as armed security guards and would be offered for adoption at every school in America free of charge, NRA officials said.

Opponents of the plan say the United States needs to tighten gun controls rather than introduce more guns into school environments.

NRA has contributed more than $30,000 to Hutchinson's various political campaigns for state and federal offices over more than a decade, becoming one of his top backers, according to the Sunlight Foundation that tracks money in politics.

In a brief stint as a registered lobbyist at Washington law firm Venable LLP Hutchinson in 2007 represented Point Blank Body Armor, a maker of body armor for the U.S. Army, according to another money-tracking group Center for Responsive Politics,.

Hutchinson, now 62, was the youngest U.S. Attorney in the country, when Republican President Ronald Reagan appointed the then-31-year-old to the post in 1982.

In what his political ads later touted as a character-forming experience, Hutchinson at the time put on a flak jacket to negotiate a stand-off between local, state and federal law enforcement and a white supremacist group known as The Covenant, The Sword and The Arm of the Lord.

After unsuccessful bids for Senate and Arkansas state attorney general, Hutchinson became a congressman in 1996, replacing his brother Tim Hutchinson in the U.S. House of Representatives. He later serving as one of the managers during the impeachment of Democratic President Bill Clinton.

At the time, he voted for a bill that would have shortened the waiting time for gun buyers for any necessary background checks to 24 hours.

Hutchinson later went on to become the administrator at the Drug Enforcement Administration and the first under-secretary of the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security under Republican President George W. Bush.

In 2006, he returned to Arkansas for his unsuccessful run for governor, during which he briefly came under fire from his Democratic opponent Mike Beebe for airing an attack ad that featured children delivering the anti-Beebe message, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette at the time.

In an interview with the newspaper in October 2006, Hutchinson also shared his enthusiasm for hunting deer and other game and said his favorite hunting firearms were "a Remington 12-gauge shotgun and a Remington bolt-action .308 deer rifle."

"I think promoting hunting and shooting sports in general is a strong tradition in Arkansas, and it's a tradition that dies out if it is not passed on to the next generation," he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

When asked about the connection between hunting weapons and the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Americans the right to bear arms, he said: "To me, it's a matter of freedom, it's a matter of history and tradition, and it's a matter of self-protection."

(Additional reporting by Suzi Parker in Arkansas; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Video game shares down in wake of shooting

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shares of video game makers and sellers fell Thursday in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which has renewed debate about violent games and their potential influence on crime.

Shares of GameStop Corp., whose stores sell video games as well as systems like the Xbox and Wii, fell 5 percent in afternoon trading.

Investors are seen as being increasingly concerned that the government may impose tougher rules on the sales of games rated for “mature” and older audiences.

Investors may be worried that parents will also avoid buying first-person shooter games like “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2″ after the tragedy Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary, in which 20 children and six adults were shot and killed by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.

“Maybe there will be more stringent efforts to make sure youth are not playing games that they’re not old enough to play,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst with National Alliance Securities. “Maybe there will be a greater effort by parents in managing the content their kids are playing.”

Shares of companies involved in the video game industry, many of which had been dropping since the shooting, declined further Thursday.

— GameStop stock lost $ 1.37, or 5 percent, to $ 26.18. Shares have barely changed since last Thursday’s close, the day before the shooting, to Wednesday’s close.

— Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc., the publisher of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2,” fell 9 cents to $ 10.70. The stock had already dropped 5.6 percent.

— Electronic Arts Inc. shares fell 41 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $ 13.99. Shares had dropped 5.6 percent.

— Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. shares slipped 29 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $ 11.69. The stock had dropped 8 percent.

The declines came as broader markets rose. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.3 percent at 13,295.

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World Music Awards postponed due to visa issues, Newtown tragedy

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The World Music Awards was postponed on Thursday due to “logistical and multiple visa issue,” organizers said, two days before the event was scheduled to be held in Miami.

Event producers John Martinotti and Marcol International said in a statement that the December 22 awards ceremony also was being delayed in the wake of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, last week.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience but this decision had to be made due to logistical and multiple visa issues and in view of this week’s national mourning. Fans have been a great support to the artists and have voted online in huge numbers,” the producers said in a statement.

The winners in categories ranging from world’s best song, world’s best artists and entertainer of the year, are picked by fans who vote online. The statement said that votes will continue to be collected until a new date is set for the show.

This year’s nominees include Usher, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Chris Brown. Past winners include Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson.

The awards ceremony, founded in 1989 and hosted by Monaco’s Prince Albert II, has primarily taken place in Monte Carlo and proceeds from the show go to charity. This year, show producers decided to move it to Marlins Park Stadium in Miami.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Eric Kelsey)

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Pentagon day care review expanding to schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expanding a Pentagon review of hiring at military day care centers to include Defense Department schools, youth centers and other facilities where children are present.

Pentagon press secretary George Little said Wednesday that officials are also questioning why it took three months for the Army to inform Panetta about arrests and problems with background checks at a day care center at Fort Myer, Va. Two people were arrested in September on multiple charges of assault against children at the Fort Myer center.

Little also said reports that parents of children at the center weren’t told about the problems indicate there may have been a serious breakdown in communications.

“We need to do everything we can wherever our children are entrusted to the care of DOD-employed personnel to insure we have the right personnel with the right background taking care of them,” said Little. “We want to insure that there’s consistency in the standards and policies and practices in hiring wherever military youth are involved.”

Panetta on Tuesday ordered a military-wide review of hiring at day care centers shortly after the Army disclosed problems with security background checks of workers at Fort Myer. Little said Pentagon leaders were surprised to hear of the problem and that “clearly this information did not get reported up the chain of command as quickly as we think it should have.”

The actions stem from the Sept. 26 arrests of two Army employees. One was charged with five counts of assault and the second was charged with four counts of assault.

But the problems at Fort Myer apparently went much deeper. Indications are that at least 30 workers at the facility have histories that call into question their suitability to care for children, according to two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation into worker backgrounds at Fort Myer has not been completed.

After the Fort Myer arrests, the Army replaced the day care center’s management team and found what the Army called “derogatory information” in the background of an unspecified number of other employees there. Army officials did not reveal the information, and officials said it’s not clear if the background checks were not done, were not sufficient or simply were not used appropriately in screening personnel.

Col. Fern Sumpter, the Fort Myer commander, said the day care center was closed “out of an abundance of caution” and the children moved to a separate day care center at Fort Myer. A Fort Myer spokeswoman, Mary Ann Hodges, said the center was closed on Dec. 13.

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